Facebook alert

My friends -- and, I suppose, friends of friends, etc. -- have begun a chain letter-esque "15 books" list.

The point is to list 15 books that your mind wanders back to again and again. Not necessarily the best books you've ever read, or your favourite books of all time. Just the ones that immediately come to mind, that perhaps you talk about a lot, the ones that have nested so far in your head they are part of who you are.

Briefly, my friend TSS's list begins with these five:

No Country For Old Men
Palestine
The English Patient
What Is The What
Go Jump In The Pool

While my friend R's list starts:

The Sword of Shannara
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The English Patient
Infinite Jest (Also, Consider the Lobster and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again)
Granta 33: What Went Wrong?

And here is my complete list with -- bonus! -- explanations:

Persuasion
At the end of the day, I have to say Austen's last novel is my favourite. Yes, the plight of Anne Elliot -- she of disappeared bloom and waiting around for Capt. Wentworth -- can read a little slow. And Austen goes into overdrive to wrap it all up in happily ever after. But under all that, under the boy-meets-girl, away from the fairy tale, lies layers of character development and painful, cringe-worthy, gut-wrenching human interaction.

Cat's Eye
Speaking of gut-wrenching. Teen and pre-teen girl drama haunt a woman's whole life in this Atwood classic.

Message from Nam
Yes. This was written by Danielle Steele. This is where we judge me freely for liking a Danielle Steele novel. But my defense? I was about 12 when I read this. And when you're a 12-year-old girl who dreams of becoming a reporter, the story of a war correspondent in Vietnam is something like a super hero comic book.

Fighting for Canada
This Diane Francis book about Quebec's separation movement was probably the first piece of non-fiction I read without a teacher breathing down my neck. I was fascinated by all things related to the 1995 referendum for years -- including all the newspapers my dad sent me from Montreal, English and French -- and as far as I'm concerned this book pushed me in the direction of political reporting years down the road.

The Vagina Monologues
Cunt! That's right. I said it. Out loud. Kind of. Eve Ensler's collection is a must-read for empowered women everywhere.

Bitter Chocolate
I successfully gave up chocolate for a year thanks to this Carol Off investigation.

Late Nights on Air
How awesome is Elizabeth Hay? In this book, she actually captures Yellowknife and puts it on the page for everyone in the world to enjoy. Granted, I have only ever been in Yellowknife for about five days altogether. So maybe I'm not the best expert. But when I was there, I couldn't stop thinking about the world Hay created.

Gone With The Wind
"Fiddle dee-dee. Tomorrow is another day." Actually a thing I say, more than a decade after discovering an author can have enough guts not to give her hero and heroine a happy ending.

The Queen's Fool
Philippa Gregory + history of the United Kingdom + romance = Unforgettable.

Tom Jones
Fact: Henry Fielding is the only man to sneak onto this list. Also, his is one of the first English novels that looks like the kind of novel you'd read today. Tom Jones is the perfect haphazard, accidental lady's man. He's a 17th century hero, yes. But you know who else he might be? Rob Lowe in St. Elmo's Fire. Bret in Flight of the Conchords. Matthew McConnaughey in everything.

Pride and Prejudice
Wanted: Mr. Darcy. Nuff said.

The Diary of Anne Frank
The ultimate proof, I think, that the mundane details are what pull you into a book. So, I was 10 years old, and here was this girl who talked about boys and crushes. And then, this girl I totally got was in the middle of a tragedy I could barely wrap my head around. To this day.

Anne of Green Gables
I learned about Tennyson -- my favourite author -- from this book. When Anne floats down the river in a boat? And nearly dies? Classic.

Rilla of Ingleside
This is L.M. Montgomery's ode to Canada, to pacifism, to Harlequin-esque romance.

Summer Sisters
Ok, this is weird. But every sex scene in this Judy Blume book -- for adults, obviously -- is super memorable. I know, it's weird. But it sticks with you. Read the book, and you'll find yourself thinking about how one might lay down towels in a hotel bathtub. Or best ways to do it in the front seat of a truck.

What I missed.... The Bell Jar. The Diviners. The Wars. The Piano Man's Daughter. (Ha! Two Timothy Findley books! I do like male authors!)

happily ever after, you say....

Ok. I may have told you this one before, so I apologize.

But, briefly, when I was in first year, I wrote a paper about the downside of Elizabeth Bennet's happy ending. My point was that Elizabeth, like Sophia in Tom Jones, had to sacrifice everything she stood for and believed in to fit the author's idea of a happy ending. Which, in turn, fit the expectations of their time.

Drop Elizabeth in 2009, and Mr. Darcy's a snob she best wave off. (Ten years on I kind of think the world is lacking in Mr. Darcys, though.) And Sophia? Tom Jones is a ridiculous, Don Juan-lite figure. If he'd been a little more strategic and a little less accident-prone, he'd have been the John Mayer of the 18th Century. Girl: Walk Away.

Similarly -- spoiler alert -- Marianne Dashwood is a victim of her happy ending. Yes, marrying Colonel Brandon sets her for life. Even though he's 19 years older than her. And poorly drawn. And boring as all get-out.

I'm obviously not the first person to say that in the last 200 years. Sorry. And don't even get me started on my dislike of Edward Ferrars. He goes bumbling through the book, all, "Oops, did I lead you on? Did I not mention I'm engaged? Well, if I'm lucky, I'll get dumped, and we'll get married and I'll irritate the hell out of you forever, Elinor!"

But here's an excerpt from near the end of the book -- as if Austen herself were really reaching to tie it all up with a neat little bow:

Marianne Dashwood was born to an extraordinary fate. She was born to
discover the falsehood of her own opinions, and to counteract by her conduct her
most favourite maxims. She was born to overcome an affection formed so late in
life as at seventeen, and with no sentiment superior to strong esteem and lively
friendship, voluntarily to give her hand to another -- and that other, a man who
had suffered no less than herself under the event of a former attachment whom,
two years before, she had considered too old to be married, and who still sought
the constitutional safeguard of a flannel waistcoat!

I have a feeling that, in late-18th/early-19th century parlance, the flannel waistcoat is the rough equivalent to the windbreaker.

In other news....

• The next book club selection is Obasan. No date yet set for discussion, but the next hostess is crossing her fingers the novel gets the TSS Cool Seal of Approval.
• I love this bit from the April Vogue profile of Beyonce Knowles: "One senses that Beyonce wants to join the very small pantheon of pop superstars -- Cher, Diana, Barbra -- who went on to big dramatic-film careers. If she stays away from silly movies like Obsessed, she might actually have a shot at it...." Yow.
• I'm taking a low-brow (?) detour, reading Love the One You're With. Basic premise so far? Happily married woman happens to pass an ex-boyfriend on a random street in New York, sending her into a spiral. Excerpt?

"My favourite movie of all time is probably When Harry Met Sally....
What I had yet to learn, though, is that things are seldom as neat and tidy
as that starry-eyed anecdote you share documentary-style on a couch. What I
figured out over time is that almost always, when you hear those stories
from married couples, there is a little poetic license going on, a romantic
spin, polished to a high shine over time. And unless you marry your high
school sweetheart (and even sometimes then), there is usually a not-so-glorious back story. There are people and places and events that lead you to your final relationship, people and places and events you'd prefer to forget or at least gloss over. In the end, you can slap a pretty label on it -- like serendipity or fate. Or you can believe that it's just the random way life unfolds." (p. 7-8)

take five

All the charlatans I've known, of a certain age, are probably rolling their eyes at the title of this blog entry....

ANYWAY, in the spirit of the season (and not in the spirit of how cold my toes are, always, at this time of year), I offer my Top Five Christmas Movies. Warning: I sort of spoil them, but they're classics for the most part, so you should have seen them by now anyway. If not, where have you been? Honestly.

(Nope, has nothing to do with books. Erm..... pop cult for the masses. Like Tom Jones, but in 2007.)

5. The Family Stone -- Anyone else cringe during the Christmas Eve dinner scene? Really, who didn't cringe during that scene? The movie's all about Sarah Jessica Parker's pent-up, throat-clearing horror show visit to her boyfriend's picture perfect post card family. The family is enjoying their nice New England Christmas, complete with fashionable liberal values and lots of snow, but they can't get over their disgust with the favourite son's new girlfriend. Quintessential Christmas moment? When Awful Meredith heads to the small-town bar with Hunky Brother, meets up with Evil Sister's ex, and invites him to Christmas breakfast. Awesomely, recognizably small-town Christmas. The moral of the story? Be yourself, stop caring what everyone else thinks of you, and don't be afraid to crush on your sibling's significant other. Or your significant other's sibling.

4. A Christmas Story -- Filmed in St. Catharines, Ont., this one's a classic for anyone born after 1980. Or anyone who had nothing better to watch on TV the last few years, so saw the marathon showing on TBS. Remember when the dad gets the lamp that looks like a woman's leg? Most hilarious thing ever. Quintessential Christmas moment? Scary, scary Santa putting the boot to Ralphie. The moral of the story? Do not shoot anyone with a beebee gun. Ever. Also, nothing is as it seems. Even perfect 1950s nuclear families.

3. The Family Man -- So Nicolas Cage goes to sleep one night a hot, opera-singing, jackass in a suit. And when he wakes up, he is wearing ratty pyjamas, he's lying next to his college sweetheart and he's supposed to change dirty diapers. It's like a Dickensian novel -- in fact, it's like the Dickensian Christmas novel -- except he's not flitting in and out of possible realities. He's living just one. And his daughter -- or his alternate universe daughter -- totally knows he's not her dad. Quintessential Christmas moment? The airport scene. Would you have gotten on the plane? Tough call. The moral of the story? Business is bad, love is good, follow your heart, etc.

2. Love, Actually -- I know, I'm slotting this one in at No. 2, even though it has way too many characters and way too much neuroses and it's so hard to understand exactly what happens to Emma Thompson and Allan Rickman's characters.... But the soundtrack alone can put a girl in the mood for Christmas. Even the uber lame anthem. And, you have to love Hugh Grant's bumbling prime minister. And when the guy in love with Keira Knightley plays the carols on her front stoop and holds up massive cue cards telling her he loves her. Christmas is about being warm and fuzzy, right? And what's more warm and fuzzy than a whole movie about love? Quintessential Christmas moment? When Grant sings "Good King Wenceslas" to the little girls, and they hop around and dance. So cute! The moral of the story? Shagging your boss is bad, Joni Mitchell is a salve to all wounds, if your girlfriend cheats on you with your brother you should go to Portugal, and American presidents played by Billy Bob Thornton are surely bad guys.

1. It's a Wonderful Life -- Cliche attack! But the clicheness of the cliche is offset by the fact this is a movie that stars Jimmy Stewart. And if you don't appreciate Jimmy Stewart, you have no heart. Plus this is the cinematic equivalent to A Christmas Carol. If you think about it, this movie set the stage for classics to come, such as Sliding Doors or, well Family Man. So really, it would be a cliche not to include this cliche. And if that's not a post-modern thought.... Well, I've really never had a proper post-modern thought, so let's just drop this now. If you've not seen this movie, back away from the computer, run to a video store and rent it immediately. Or just wait until the week before Christmas and virtually every American channel will broadcast it at least once. Quintessential Christmas moment? The wings. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go and see this movie right now. The moral of the story? It's a wonderful life, darling. Stop underestimating it.

Bonus round.... movies that are really more about New Year's Eve than Christmas....

When Harry Met Sally -- Quintessential Christmas moment? Carrying a real pine tree along the snowy streets of New York City. Moral of the story? Take another look at the idiot who can't tell the difference between an opened or closed window. Why it's all about New Year's Eve: Christmas is about embracing what you already have. New Year's is about wondering if you could have more.

While You Were Sleeping -- Quintessential Christmas moment? A young, single woman asked to work Christmas day because she doesn't have any family in the city. Oh, something less bitter? Okay -- When Lucy's Christmas tree crashes through her landlord's window. Moral of the story? Pretending you're engaged to a comatose dude is fine so long as you don't hurt anyone's feelings and you manage to nab his brother. Why it's all about New Year's Eve: This movie is all about yearning for something just out of reach -- absolutely fundamental to dreaming up New Year's resolutions.

Bridget Jones's Diary -- Quintessential Christmas moment? Mark Darcy's reindeer sweater. Moral of the story? Forget the Hugh Grant baddies. Settle for nothing less than a man who likes you. Just as you are. Why it's all about New Year's Eve: What better time to start a diary....

Sucks/Doesn't Suck

Things that, frankly, suck:

• Moving
• Switching cable service from one floor to another (necessitating three weeks without Internet at home, leading to me sitting in a downtown café that has a high creep-factor, as a boy-child wearing a pink dress leans over my shoulder to look at my computer, while I review two-week-old Facebook messages that no longer make any sense and marvel at how Facebook had taken my life hostage and I think I might quit it altogether -- erm, Facebook, not life, to be clear)
• Mailboxes missing mailbox keys
• A broken iPod -- not related to anything else on this list, but sucky nonetheless.

Anyway, due to circumstances beyond my control -- some of them, at least -- I haven’t blogged in awhile. Which, I think, has been very disappointing for my (sole) readers.

Mom, Dad, Granny.

But I still have thoughts! And some of them are even new!

First, though, to go back to old thoughts that I’m still kind of proud of for their nouveau wannabe feminism -- when I was 18, I thought Elizabeth Bennet and Sophia Western were victims of happy endings, left to sacrifice any sort of individuality or independent thought or word to the men they would marry.

I may have been bluffing.

However, having just seen Becoming Jane, I’m contemplating the idea of victims or victors within happy endings.

The film -- starring the luminous Anne Hathaway and the blistering James McAvoy -- makes its heroine something of a victim of circumstance and love and destiny.

Which makes me think, really, that sometimes a woman is damned regardless.

Does Austen’s work really tell us she was unhappy with her lot in life? (Perhaps Persuasion does.)

For that matter, should we assume Emily Bronte or Lucy Maud Montgomery or Emily Dickinson or any other literary woman who died alone was unhappy?

(Or that they died alone? Most had nieces or nephews or brothers who later guarded their reputations rather well.)

Were the happy endings they put on the page representative of their dreams? Their wishes? Or an illustration of their own high standards? If these women could not have the perfection or passion of a Mr. Darcy, then did they simply not see the point of bothering at all?

I hate to put a 21st century spin on women I didn’t know, whose morals and needs likely couldn’t be less similar to my own.

But I wonder. Why think of any of these women -- authors or characters -- as victims when, perhaps, they simply made the best choices they could for themselves.

To make a film about Austen’s love life is to assume she wrote about herself in her books, developing her own sense of character through her heroines. It is also to assume she had a love life at all, and that the only way to write a love or a believable romance is to have tasted it herself. And to have somehow fallen short, left wanting forever.

On this, I can’t help but turn to an Austen biography written by Carol Shields.

“She was snatched from the good novel she had imagined herself into and placed into an alternate narrative of class bitterness…. The hero, it turned out, was part of a pragmatic design. For Jane Austen’s Tom Lefroy was gone, swiftly removed by the Lefroy family, who had greater plans for this young man than marriage to an unmoneyed clergyman’s daughter….
She never saw him again, although it is clear she thought of him. It is also apparent that the episode multiplied itself again and again in her novels, embedded in the theme of thwarted love and loss of nerve. In the novels, happily, there is often a second or third chance, a triumphant overriding of class difference but between Jane Austen and Tom Lefroy there is only silence. He returned to Ireland after his studies, married an heiress, produced a large family, became something of a pious bore, and eventually rose to become chief justice of Ireland.” (p. 50-51)

Bleh.

He also, apparently, named his oldest daughter Jane. Which, if they ever did do more than hold hands at a country ball, is icky. I do not believe I would smile courageously, lifting my chin and staring off into the near-distance for a moment, if I found out my ex had named his eldest child after me.

I think I’d more likely throw up a little in my mouth.

Speaking of throw-up, I have a single entry on the not-suck list.

• Two of my best friends, high school sweethearts since high school, welcomed their baby daughter to the world last week. A baby girl who will never ever lack for love from all the people around her and who, I am sure, will never be a victim of a happy ending but rather a victor.