Monday, January 31, 2011

What's The Recipe?

Don't get me wrong, I'm in the throes of a fabulous book. Sam Harris's The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values.
I'm learning things from this book that I would not discover in four lifetimes, without Mr. Harris's help. But I find myself longing for fiction.
At different periods of my life I have established and followed a variety of reading regimens.
One part fiction <--> two parts non.
Equal time for each <--> reading both simultaneously.
Three parts fiction <--> one part non.

Lately I have been reading things at a rate of maybe fourteen parts fiction <--> one part nonfiction. And even then, while I am immersed in a book that is fascinating, I find myself longing for fiction.
If reading is a chemical rush for some, as I believe it is for me, I think I am getting my most powerful fix from books of fiction.
At times it causes me concern. The same kind of concern that might be healthily applied to my eating habits!
Lately I've been ten parts hamburger <--> one part….. nonhamburger.

I'm not equating the reading of fiction to the ingestion of grease… no, no.
Nor am I outright assuming that reading fiction is somehow less valuable than reading non-fiction. Some people thrive on movies, others on documentaries. For most people it's a little [or a lot] of both.
But what is the perfect recipe? Or is there one, at all?
Are there as many recipes as there are people?
How do you do it?
It's just that, more often than not, when I'm reading non-fiction I feel as though I'm nibbling on uncooked broccoli, surrounded by shelves of pizza.

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Splash du Jour: Monday

[Introducing the best adapted screenplay]
I handed in a script last year and the studio didn't change one word. The word they didn't change was on page 87.
-- Steve Martin at the 2003 Oscars --


Have a great Monday!
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Thursday, January 27, 2011

Some Crazy Hate-Email

Those of you more familiar with my taste for atheist writings will know that I love to read anything by The Four Horsemen of No-Nonsense: Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Richard Dawkins.
This evening as I was innocently sitting here drinking a snifter of beer I happened upon a videoclip from the Grand-Daddy of them all -- Mr. Dawkins himself. It is a brief clip of the scientist-author reading some of his Hate-Email. I laughed so hard that I felt I must immediately share this with you all.
One warning though -- Dawkins drops the ol' F-Bomb here a few times -- there is some swearing from time to time -- you may not want to have impressionable children nearby!
And yet, this is one of the very things that made me laugh about it all -- it's the inimitable smirk of the man -- he even pronounces all of the spelling errors of his illustrious respondents.
I find it delightful -- I hope you do, too.
And go figure -- I'm not even an atheist, per se. I think I am more what one might call an agnostic. --> a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God.



Splash du Jour: Thursday

Whatever is true about us, ethically and spiritually, is discoverable in the present and can be talked about in terms that are not an outright affront to our growing understanding of the world. It makes no sense at all to have the most important features of our lives anchored to divisive claims about the unique sanctity of ancient books or to rumors of ancient miracles. There is simply no question that how we speak about human values -- and how we study or fail to study the relevant phenomena at the level of the brain -- will profoundly influence our collective future.
-- Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape --


Have a great Thursday!
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Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Some fun for you, this Wednesday morning.
This year we will experience 4 unusual dates.... 1/1/11, 1/11/11, 11/1/11, 11/11/11.
And check this out.... take the last 2 digits of the year you were born plus the age you will be on your birthday this year. Did you do it?
Now click
--> HERE.


Have a great Wednesday!

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Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

But I want to understand in such a way as to be brought to the inevitably inexplicable. I want to realize that all that is inexplicable is so, not because the demands of my intellect are at fault (they are correct and apart from them I can understand nothing), but because I can recognize the limits of my intellect. I want to understand in such a way that everything inexplicable presents itself to me as being necessarily inexplicable and not as being something that I am under an obligation to believe.
-- from Tolstoy's Confession --


Have a great Tuesday!
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Monday, January 24, 2011

Splash du Jour: Monday

The light that radiates from the great novels time can never dim, for human existence is perpetually being forgotten by man and thus the novelist's discoveries, however old they may be, will never cease to astonish.
--Milan Kundera –



Have a great Monday!

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Sunday, January 23, 2011

The Credence of Awards

I will begin by answering the very question I shall pose, later.
When it comes to books, I'm not a big follower of Awards, and definitely not a crowd-follower. In other words, I rarely succumb to that most unreliable of indicators --> SALES! Whether a book is a bestseller or not means little to me. I would just as soon read it because it had a great cover.
When it comes to Awards, I must admit that there are times when I am influenced by a book winning a prestigious Award, say the Booker or [in Canada] the Giller. The same can be said for a book being short or even long-listed for either of these. But I would not say I am a BIG follower of the Awards.
I know of one woman, an acquaintance from my current residency at a Chapters bookstore, every year when the Canada Reads nominees are selected [consisting of five novels] she promptly buys and reads all of the books.
I myself have never been so dedicated to any sort of book award competition.
In fact, it is almost a random thing -- when I happen to be reading an award-winning book.
Currently I am reading one -- the Booker Prize winner from 2004.
And truly, seeing that gold crest "Winner of the 2004 Man Booker Prize for Fiction" -- that does not hurt, as I roam through a used bookstore…
My question tonight is a simple one.
Are you a big follower of Book Awards?
Followed by:
In your experience, are award winning books noticeably "better" than other books in any significant way?
If you are a follower of book awards -- which ones are you partial to?
The Booker, The Giller, The Pulitzer, The Nobel Prize?



Friday, January 21, 2011

Splash du Jour: Friday

Sex almost always disappoints me in novels. Everything can be said or done now, and that’s what I often find: everything, a feeling of generality or dispersal. But in my experience, true sex is so particular, so peculiar to the person who yearns for it. Only he or she, and no one else, would desire so very much that very person under those circumstances. In fiction, I miss that sense of terrific specificity.
-- Anatole Broyard --


Have a great Friday!
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Thursday, January 20, 2011

Splash du Jour: Thursday

…the importance of manners, my mother always said, is inversely related to how inclined one is to use them, or, in other words, sometimes politeness is all that stands between oneself and madness.
-- From Great House by Nicole Krauss --


Have a great Thursday!
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Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Charles and James

After work I went to The Rideau Centre [a Mall] and grabbed a Second Cup coffee.
Sat down and read a bit in this excellent book, the 2004 Booker Prize Winner, The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst.
After about an hour of reading, a man walked toward me and asked, "Are you Charles?"
"No," I replied and turned back to my book as the guy walked a bit further and then leaned on the counter facing the escalators of the Mall. From time to time I looked over at him, but soon he was gone.
A little while later, as I myself was gathering my stuff together to leave, another guy, much younger, walked up to my table and asked, "Are you James?"
"No," I replied -- and just as he said, "Sorry" and began to walk away I called out to him, asking, "Are you Charles?"
"Yes," he replied.
I said, "James was here just a few minutes ago, looking for you!"
The guy thanked me and as I walked away I saw that he borrowed a girl's cellphone and was calling someone, presumably James, while looking at a business card.
So there you have it. Even as I am out and about living my life in complete urban anonymity, I'm somehow managing to bring complete strangers together!

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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Have a great Wednesday!
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Monday, January 17, 2011

Splash du Jour: Monday

The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live. If commitment is seen as a group of eggs, then to commit oneself to the present is to risk putting all one's eggs in the present basket, rather than distributing them between the baskets of past and future. And to shift the analogy to love, to finally accept that I was happy with Chloe would have meant accepting that, despite the danger, all of my eggs were firmly in her basket.
-- Alain de Botton in On Love --


Have a great Monday!
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Friday, January 14, 2011

Splash du Jour: Friday

I think... if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.
-- Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina --


Have a great Friday!
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Thursday, January 13, 2011

Remembering

Earlier this evening [at Starbucks] I began reading The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy's Final Year by Jay Parini -- and it put me on to a dear memory.
Many years ago, before my mother became increasingly ill with leukemia, I was visiting her and decided to take her out for coffee.
We ended up at a Chapters bookstore -- in the Starbucks.
It was such a cute time, chatting with her… it was very much like a date.
As we were about to leave she told me to go and pick out a book so that she could buy it for me. I protested, "No no mom -- you don't need to do that, I'm all fine for books, I have too many books," etc.
None of my arguments worked on her. She insisted. And I realized that this was an important thing for her to do, she really wanted to buy me something. I relented.
My mother was a deeply spiritual person, and so we found ourselves in that section of the bookstore, where I spied this book by Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You -- and as I thumbed through it -- I felt it was something I would be interested in reading one day. My mom paid for this book with cash, and I can still see her doing so. She was so pleased to hand it over to me.
The whole memory is just so 100% adorable to me tonight.
As soon as I got home I picked this currently unread book of mine from the shelf and held it in my hands -- remembering this sweet gesture of my dear mom.
I shall place it on my To Be Read List for 2011.

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Splash du Jour: Thursday

Men are all right for friends, but as soon as you marry them they turn into cranky old fathers, even the wild ones. They begin to tell you what's sensible and what's foolish, and want you to stick at home all the time. I prefer to be foolish when I feel like it, and be accountable to nobody.
-- Willa Cather, My Antonia --



Have a great Thursday!

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Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex.
-- Aldous Huxley --


Have a great Wednesday!
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Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

I find TV very educating. Every time someone turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
-- Groucho Marx --


Have a great Tuesday!
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Monday, January 10, 2011

Surprised by Dickens

I am not finished the book yet… I will be as soon as I post this blog, I've only got a few pages to go but I already want to say that I have been surprised by Dickens.
I've wanted to read Hard Times for years -- always kept putting it off.
I bet that a lot of you are the same, there are books on your shelves that you've been meaning to "get to" for the last 24 years. Usually these are the "classics".
Things like The Odyssey or Ulysses.
Occasionally you take one of these down and note that there are fossils embedded in the sedimentary layers of dust.
And you put it back -- to accumulate yet more paleontological data!

Well, a few days ago I took Dickens off the shelf, blew off the pre-Cambrian mould, and opened the crackly covers.
Lo and behold! This thing is GOOD!
It's bursting with humor and suspense and Victorian grime!
Granted, I am well aware that Dickens was the Stephen King of his day -- pumping this stuff out according to a restrictive timetable -- but I cannot deny -- I am enjoying it.
It's a grand story, wonderfully predictable at times, and at others, not so much.
Which reminds me, I've got a few pages to go...

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Splash du Jour: Monday

Have a great Monday!
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Friday, January 07, 2011

Splash du Jour: Friday

The sudden disappointment of a hope leaves a scar which the ultimate fulfillment of that hope never entirely removes.
-- Thomas Hardy --


Have a great Friday!
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Thursday, January 06, 2011

For A Million Bucks Would You...

Today at work we were playing this game called For A Million Bucks Would You….
The way it works is, someone would start with those words and then suggest a certain thing [sometimes it was real crazy] and we'd all have to say if we would or we wouldn't.
At one point Kelsey left the room just as Matthew asked this one:

"For a million bucks would you never read another book?"
As I hesitated with my answer he clarified that in the scenario you would still be allowed to read magazines and newspapers, but you could not read a BOOK!
I am thoroughly ashamed to say I was still hesitating with my answer as Kelsey walked back into the room.
Matthew restated the question and she instantly answered, "No!"
That's when it hit me -- What the hell am I hesitating for?
Of course my answer would be "No" as well!
And so I echoed Kelsey -- "No, I'd have to say no, too!"
But, the thing is, she led the way for me.
It was such a lesson in… betrayal. How could I have even envisioned for a moment that I would trade such a passion for any amount of money, much less a measly million clams!
How about you? What would your answer be?
An instant no? A hesitation… followed by a carefully considered no?
A carefully considered yes?
Or -- [God forbid]… an instant yes?

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Splash du Jour: Thursday

There are times when the kindness of strangers only makes matters worse because one realizes how badly one is in need of kindness and that the only source is a stranger.
-- From Great House by Nicole Krauss --


Have a great Thursday!
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Wednesday, January 05, 2011

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Pessimism is, in brief, playing the sure game. You cannot lose at it; you may gain. It is the only view of life in which you can never be disappointed. Having reckoned what to do in the worst possible circumstances, when better arise, as they may, life becomes child's play.
-- Thomas Hardy --



Have a great Wednesday!

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Tuesday, January 04, 2011

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Some of my darkest moments generally have to do with hearing something about the polar bears or the whales or whatever flagship species are endangered and going next. The thought to me of a world without wild tigers, which we’re on the brink of now — I mean, a world without tigers? Of course tigers are terrifying, but do you want to live in a world where there’s no such thing as a tiger?
-- Alissa York --


Have a great Tuesday!
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Monday, January 03, 2011

Splash du Jour: Monday








"…though in truth it was all just an illusion, just as solid matter is an illusion, just as our bodies are an illusion, pretending to be one thing when really they are millions upon millions of atoms coming and going, some arriving while others are leaving us forever, as if each of us were only a great train station, only not even that since at least in a train station the stones and the tracks and the glass roof stay still while everything else rushes through it, no, it was worse than that, more like a giant empty field where every day a circus erected and dismantled itself, the whole thing from top to bottom, but never the same circus, so what hope did we really have of ever making sense of ourselves, let alone one another."

-- Nicole Krauss, in Great House --


Have a great Monday!
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