Well here we are at the last night of 2010 -- a time when I can reflect upon the 50 books I read this past year. There have been a few that I really did not enjoy [Mantissa by John Fowles, The Purest of Human Pleasures by Kenneth Radu] but overall -- it's been some terrific reading. It's difficult to pick out only a few to highlight, but I've given it some thought over a couple of Sapporos by candlelight, and here is my conclusion. My Top Five Reads of 2010 are as follows:
1. Affinity by Sarah Waters. [1999] This compelling, eerie book just had everything I like most in fiction. Gothic setting [late 1800's / Victorian England], suspense, psychological labyrinths, intellectually satisfying. I cannot recall an author so completely making me believe in the unbelievable. Sarah Waters had me as bamboozled as her protagonist in Affinity. My #1 unforgettable read of 2010.
2. Under The Skinby Michel Faber. [2000] I could not put this book down and walk away without it nagging at me. I was telling everyone at work about every step along the journey through the novel. In Under The Skin, [soon to be a movie starring Scarlett Johansson] sci-fi meets literature in a head-on collision. A tantalizing, horrifying, somewhat dystopian, "what-if" sort of story. Faber is a genius.
3. The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles. [1969] Wow, I gobbled this book up. Again, some of my favourite features present here… Victorian England setting / thwarted love -- eroticism. Interesting authorial digressions [I don't mind that] -- exquisite dialogue. An ending that produced in me perhaps my most pensive day of 2010. It made me go for a [deliberate] long walk in the rain.
4. The White Boneby Barbara Gowdy. [1999] A book not only about elephants, but narrated by elephants. You could say that this is a look into the psychological depths of disoriented pachyderms struggling to reunite after a brutal attack from the "hindleggers" [humans]. It is a searing, emotionally engaging work of staggering genius. Especially if you like animals, as I do.
5. Tender Morselsby Margo Lanagan. [2008] Prepare for liftoff, all ye who pick up this book. It's set in two worlds, and it seems that neither of them is really ours. What if the perfect world you envision [and create] is not necessarily as beneficial to others as it is to you? Would you want to remain there, at their expense? Not since C.S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces have I read such a vivid exploration of the ideas of selfish and healthy love. There have been so many other great novels I have read in 2010 -- I could go on forever about them. I would speak of The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters, and Beatrice & Virgil by Yann Martel, both of these authors proving to me by way of their most recent novels that I want to buy their next book even before they write it! Friends, is there any end? Any end to the wonderful world of reading available to us in 2011? You know it as well as I do --> the answer is "No". We are hapless victims of the most inexhaustible obsession known to mankind! The reading of good books! And so it is that I can say this final thing with 100% Sapporo-induced-conviction...
Freud: Anna, although I am your father, as part of your education I must show you my penis so you understand certain fundamental concepts. Now, do you see the difference between the penis and the phallus? Anna: Yes, Father. The penis is like the phallus, only much smaller.
"And why are writers bad at relationships?" "Because we can always imagine better ones. With much less effort. And the imaginary ones grow much more satisfying than the real ones." -- From Daniel Martin, by John Fowles --
I want to say, in all seriousness, that a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work. The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery. -- Bertrand Russell, In Praise Of Idleness –
I'm finding that size does matter! For a long while now I have been itching to get to this new biography of author Mordecai Richler. It's by Charles Foran. It's a big brick of a beauty! Thing is -- I said to myself, "First I will read more of Mordecai's work!" I really like what I have read of Richler [The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and St. Urbain's Horseman] but oh my Yahweh! There's so far to go! Right now I am past halfway in Solomon Gursky Was Here… and realizing that Richler isn't exactly something you zip through as if you were reading Ken Follett or Stephen King or what-have-you. It's fairly deep -- convoluted, even. Interesting, but a bit daunting. I have a long journey ahead of me if I think I am going to read all of his work and THEN read this biography! I can think of at least seven or eight major Mordecai novels, besides the ones I have read. So, my question to my readers is this--> Is it OK to read a biography of an author when you have not really read all of his/her stuff yet? Have you read worthwhile biographies, having known only a small percentage of the featured author's output? Or… or… should I be patient? Read the novels, no matter how long it takes [even as my eyesight is failing]… and then turn to this lovely bio? *******
A friend of mine just started his own business. He manufactures landmines that look like prayer mats. It's doing well. He says prophets are going through the roof.
One morning when Winnie-the-Pooh was Doing Nothing Very Much, but doing it rather well, he thought he would call on his old friend Christopher Robin and see whether he was doing anything. If not, perhaps they could do nothing together, because there are few things nicer than doing nothing with a friend. -- From Return to the Hundred Acre Wood by David Benedictus --
"Possibly Not and Possibly Not and Possibly Not," said Eeyore, "and three Possiblys add up to one Probably." -- from Return to the Hundred Acre Wood, by David Benedictus --
Yesterday I took my new 2010 Mazda 3 in for its first servicing. While my car was up on the hoist I sauntered around the showroom and looked at the pristine orphans in there, waiting to be adopted. Nice cars. I'm quite happy with my purchase thus far and I feel that Mazda is in the business of making quite a good vehicle. Great design. Great features. And terrific advertising. Who among us, were we to hear someone say "Zoom! Zoom!" would not instantly think of Mazda? A Mazda marketing executive once said, "The exhilaration we felt as a child shooting down a hill on our bike, this is what Zoom-Zoom means at its most basic level." That is the raison d'être of ZoomZoomism. And it works. Even as I zip around in my own car, often those very two words float through my mind. They seem appropriate, so up front. Zoom! Zoom! Go fast! Go fast! But when it comes to high-level advertising -- wow, it is such a subliminal world out there! From a display rack I picked out a couple of Mazda brochures and noticed something interesting. Hmmm…. I've taken pictures of them here as you can see for yourself -- Do you notice anything strange about them?
So this very evening after work while I was up at the Starbucks counter getting a refill of my Grande Bold coffee I noticed that they were displaying a CD/DVD set of my favorite Christmas Special of all time! A Charlie Brown Christmas. In the time it took for the barista to turn towards me with my java I had the VISA card sitting atop this masterpiece of fine cinema! I just love it so much. It originally aired in 1965, when I was a mere lad going through my Terrible Twos. I've watched it umpteen times… but I never tire of its wonderful simplicity and innocence. To me, Charlie Brown always reminds me of a potential world where all grownups are offstage. Nowadays, as I approach my own dotage years -- my own senior citizenship if you will, my forehead quickly becoming a fivehead -- my spreading tonsure threatening to resemble Charlie Brown's signature three-strand cranium sooner than later… I find myself to be all the more desirous to not only watch this Christmas special once again, but to own it. And now I do. Charlie Brown -- for him the glass is always half empty. Who can ever forget Linus's assessment of the matter -- "Of all the Charlie Browns in the world, you're the Charlie Browniest."
At night, there was the feeling that we had come home, feeling no longer alone, waking in the night to find the other one there, and not gone away; all other things were unreal. We slept when we were tired and if we woke the other one woke too so one was not alone. Often a man wishes to be alone and a woman wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that. We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others. We were never lonely and never afraid when we were together. -- Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms --
We all grow up with the weight of history on us. Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies. -- Shirley Abbott --
Eleven years ago today, my father passed away after a lengthy battle with congestive heart failure. Dec.13th, 1999 -- just before the New Millennium arrived. And so it is that I cannot help but help think of him tonight, and how, in so many ways, he was the most loving and selflessly generous person I have ever known. The passing of years do not diminish that fact.
A while back now, I read a A Suitable Boy written by the Indian author, Vikram Seth. This novel has the distinction of being the longest fictional story ever written in the English language, weighing in at a hefty 1,474 pages. In it there is a character named Pran, and he is very ill. On page 914 there is the following dialogue between Pran and his doctor (named Imtiaz) and I found it to be very illustrative of what my own Dad would have been going through…
Dr. Imtiaz says: “There’s an intimate connection between the heart and the lungs; they share the same cavity, and the right side of the heart supplies stale blood to the lungs for it to freshen, to oxygenate, as we say. So when the lungs don’t do their job properly – for instance because of not getting enough air when the air-tubes to the lungs seize up asthmatically – the heart is affected. It tries to supply more blood to the lungs to make up for the bad oxygen exchange, and this creates its own supplying chamber to fill up with blood, to become congested and distended. Do you understand?” “Yes. You explain things very well,” Pran said sadly. “Now because of this congestion and distension, the heart loses its efficiency as a pump, and that is what we like to call ‘congestive cardiac failure’. It’s got nothing to do with what laymen understand by the term ‘heart failure’. To them that means a heart attack. Well, as I said, you are not in danger of that.” “Then why must I stay in bed for three weeks? It seems a terribly long time. What will happen to my work?” [Pran was a teacher]. “Well, you can do a bit of light work in bed,” said Imtiaz. “And later, you can go out for walks. But cricket is out for a while.” And then, later on down the page, Imtiaz says to Pran: “If you have congestive heart failure, you will have all the effects of pent-up blood in your system. Your liver will become enlarged, so will your feet, your neck veins will become prominent, you will cough, and you will get very breathless, especially on walking or exertion. And it is possible that your brain might become confused as well.” And then: When Imtiaz left the room, Pran tried to face these new facts.
I am still not sure if I was ever a suitable son, but I have no doubt… mine was much more than a suitable father. The -->Story. The-->Poem. ********
If you're writing a book that takes place in New York in the moment, you can't not write about 9/11; you can't not integrate it. My main character's view is the Statue of Liberty and the Trade Center. It doesn't have to take over, but it has to be acknowledged. -- Richard Price --
The average person lives 74.1 years and sleeps 1/3 of that time. If you break it down, 74.1 years = 649,400 hours. Multiplied by 1/3rd [or .33] that equals 214,302. So, the average person sleeps about 214,302 hours in their lifetime. Wow! The above snapshot captures one second of my own allotted sleep time. I don't know who took the picture [I was sleeping] and I'm not even sure how young I was [it's obvious it was prior to my development of breasts] -- but the thing that intrigues me is this…. I was THINKING something. I would love to know what I was thinking. What I was dreaming.
Last night I dreamed that I was buying a car and I was arguing with the salesman over the issue of power steering. Apparently, the reverse-anachronistic car I was buying did not have this option. Honestly, this is what I was dreaming. How crazy is that?
I bet the dream I was having when this picture was taken was way better. More interesting. Far deeper. Involving less day-to-day issues. It seems to me that I was dreaming of things that grown-ups know not of. ********
"…I feel that we read to learn new things, sure, absolutely, but more often than not, what we really get out of the good books we read is self-recognition. We read and discover stuff about life that we already knew, except that we didn't know we knew it until we read it it in a particular book. And this self-recognition, this discovering ourselves in the writings of others can be very exciting, can make us feel a little less isolated inside our own thing and a little more connected to the larger world." -- Ray Mitchell in Richard Price's, Samaritan --
Let's imagine a child and an adult in Paradise who both died in the True Faith. The adult, however, has a higher place in Paradise than the child. The Child shall ask Allah: 'Why did you give that man a higher place?' 'He has done many good works,' Allah shall reply. Then the child shall say, 'Why did you let me die so soon that I was prevented from doing good?' Allah will answer: 'I knew that you would grow up to be a sinner, therefore, it was better that you should die a child.' Thereupon a cry shall rise from those condemned to the depths of Hell, 'Why, O Master, did you not let us die before we became sinners?' -- From Nadeem Aslam, Maps For Lost Lovers --
From time to time, I write a boring blog. [Actually, you do it quite frequently, Cipriano!] Oh, shush! This one is going to be even more boringer than usual. Truth is, I haven't been doing much. And I like it that way! I ain't complaining. The biggest news is that today is my birthday. I am now officially 47 years old. Or, as the Romans might say XLVII. My friend is visiting me and we've been having a real terrific time doing nothing for the past couple of days. Took the day off work yesterday. I'm chilling out. Renewing my Inner Lazybones. Living in the "Now" a la Eckhart Tolle! Today, in honor of 47 years of existence I bought myself a gift. A new backpack. For a while now I've been researching backpacks, my old faithful Targus one giving up the ghost -- it's all tattered, and the zippers were failing to…….. zip, etc. It's bad enough that a lot of my clothes are in the same state of dilapidation! So today, after a marvelous breakfast at Richtree, we sauntered in to the Apple store and purchased the best laptop backpack in the universe. My friend got one, too. The brand name is Level 8. Or as the Romans called it, Level VIII. [See. I warned you that this blog was going to be extremely boring….] Seriously though, if you need an impressive laptop backpack, I can confidently guarantee you that you will never find one better than -->THIS. So, other than ogling this new self-bought birthday gift, I've been sitting around without any pants on, reading an excellent book, drinking Asahi [Japanese] beer and being extremely lazy. Oh yes, and watching John Mayer's concert DVD, Where The Light Is. In closing, here is a clip from that concert. I cannot watch it with being profoundly moved… I mean emotionally moved, at such a display of talent and musical genius. Listening to this may be the most important IX minutes XLIV seconds of your day!
Oh Christ, the exhaustion of not knowing anything. It's so tiring and hard on the nerves. It really takes it out of you, not knowing anything. You're given comedy and miss all the jokes. Every hour, you get weaker. Sometimes, as I sit alone in my flat in London and stare out the window, I think how dismal it is, how hard, how heavy, to watch the rain and not know why it falls. -- John Self, in Martin Amis's Money --
Today at work, in a tedious, silent moment, Matthew asked a general question, addressing the entire congregation…. "If you could be an animal, what animal would you be?" I must be 100% honest and confess to you that I forget what most of the people said, [I was too busy morphing into my own beast] I only remember that Matthew himself became a lion. And so -- it finally came around to me, and I had the answer. An eagle. For one thing, I truly admire flight. Aside from this, I have never seen even one nature show in which an eagle is being carted away in the jaws of some other slavering beast. No. Usually, they are the ones majestically swooping earthward and snatching up some unsuspecting equivalent of a moving hamburger! And see -- I LIKE that! Plus, the whole flying thing in general, the way an eagle can ride the airwaves…. float around forever, over the Grand Canyon say, and not even flap its wings for half an hour -- see, all of that appeals to me. I want to be an eagle in my next life. Reminds me of a poem I wrote once…. anyway -- what would your answer be? What's your inner beastie? ********
A man in Calgary calls his son in Toronto the day before Christmas Eve and says, "I hate to ruin your day but I have to tell you that your mother and I are divorcing; forty-five years of misery is enough". "Dad, what are you talking about?" the son screams.. "We can't stand the sight of each other any longer", the father says. "We're sick of each other and I'm sick of talking about this, so you call your sister in Vancouver and tell her". Frantically, the son calls his sister, who explodes on the phone, "Like hell they're getting divorced", she shouts, "I'll take care of this". She calls Calgary immediately and screams at her father, "You are NOT getting divorced. Don't do a single thing until I get there. I'm calling my brother back and we'll both be there tomorrow… until then, don't do a thing, DO YOU HEAR ME?" and hangs up. The old man hangs up his phone and turns to his wife. "Done! They're coming for Christmas - and they're paying their own way."
Thank God for that sun-roof idea. Those two giraffes were about asphyxiated before Shem cranked it open. What angers me most? None of us asked for this.
Follow the ostriches. Follow the emus. Follow follow follow. If I had hands I would have taken that air horn and flung it into Ethiopia. We marched like animals.
Granted, nearly anything is better than drowning. But the noise and smell is killing me. On the intercom I heard that the Captain sent out a reconnaissance dove.
Rumour is we land tomorrow. Listen up now, Horatio. Evolve some better tailfeathers! Something with planets on it -- Something your future daughter cannot resist.
I refrained from going to a terrific book-reading event tonight. David Sedaris was at my local Chapters store this evening [the same one Sara Gruen was at a few weeks ago] and I deliberately did not go. Why? Because I know I would have bought at least two copies of his most recent book, squirrel seeks chipmunk. I have looked through this book several times and it is so exactly the type of thing I would love to read. It has animals in it! But, for those of you who have been following closely my November Adventures in the realm of book-acquiring, I have already purchased just under 40 books this month. Umm -- that is insane! I can't keep doing this! I've got to put a lid on this thing! Tonight is a hopeful sign -- I had the fortitude to flee the temptation. ********
This posting is in response to the comment of "C" in my blog of last night. Regarding my duplicate copies of White Noise -- ahh, it's too bad -- it would have been a nice friendly thing to do, to give you my extra. But immediately after work today I went back to the Book Mark store [same guy sitting there behind the till, same chair, cobwebs from his head to the leaning tower of books behind him…] and I explained the situation. He allowed me to browse and select a substitute. So, since I am really enjoying this crazy Martin Amis guy I am currently reading I found another by him, called London Fields. So, que sera sera -- next time I buy a duplicate book I will keep you in mind. The way things are going here -- you won't have long to wait. ********
Occasionally I will post a song just because I love it so much. And tonight I have been listening to this one over and over -- something about it really moves me. It's from one of my favorite artists, Alan Parsons. The song is called Blown By The Wind. From his 1996 CD, entitled On Air. Wishing you a terrific weekend. -- The Cip ********
People often say that 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder,' and I say that the most liberating thing about beauty is realizing that you are the beholder. This empowers us to find beauty in places where others have not dared to look, including inside ourselves. -- Salma Hayek --
…About me and reading (I don't really know why I tell you this -- I mean do you read that much?): I can't read because it hurts my eyes. I can't wear glasses because it hurts my nose. I can't wear contacts because it hurts my nerves. So you see, it all came down to a choice between pain and not reading. Not reading -- that's where I put my money. -- John Self, in Martin Amis's Money --
Then I clanked next door to the place where a caged chick cashes cheques around the clock but seems to keep half your dough as commission for this fine service. Actually it's more than half, or feels that way by now. It goes up all the time. One day I'm going to come in here, write a cheque for fifty quid, slide it over, hang about for a while, then ask: 'Come on -- what about my money?' And the caged chick will look up and say, 'Can't you read? We keep all that now.'
<--There is one just down the street from where I live, and I drive past it all the time…. and amazingly, there are nearly always PEOPLE IN IT! Sometimes a line-up! I don't get it. I could understand if they were serving hamburgers at the cashier end of the thing! But, when all is said and exchanged... what are they selling? Money? And charging you for it? It does not make sense to me. Haven't any of these people in the queue ever heard of a BANK? Umm… where you can store your money for a very minimal fee [if any] and have the added advantage of writing your own cheques [sometimes free of charge] and having the added bonus of even a credit line to draw upon? And maybe even earn some interest on your money in the meantime? Why would any rational human being even go to a Money Mart at all? It sometimes gives me the shivers and/or heebie-jeebies to just drive past one! *********
The universe is a million billion light-years wide, and every inch of it would kill you if you went there. This is the position of the universe with regards to human life. -- Martin Amis --
So much of a child's life is lived for others… All the reading I did as a child, behind closed doors, sitting on the bed while the darkness fell around me, was an act of reclamation. This and only this I did for myself. This was the way to make my life my own. -- Lynne Sharon Schwartz --
This evening I read the following passage in a work of fiction. It's from The Conversations at Curlow Creek, by David Malouf: It was one of the many contradictions of Adair's existence that though he was by nature a man who would have liked nothing better than to see the sun rise and set each day on the same bit of turf, he had spent all the years of his manhood, thirteen to be precise, in one foreign army or another far from home -- if by home one means not four walls and a roof, with a fire and a chair before it, but the place of one's earliest affection, where that handful of men and women may be found who alone in all the world know a little of your wants, your habits, the affairs that come nearest your heart, and who cares for them.
Of all of my siblings [five of us in total] I am the one that has settled furthest from the nucleus. Atomically speaking, I am, far and away, the furthest flung electron. And I find that as my parents have now both passed on, the idea of "home" has indeed shifted a bit, for me. There was a time when going "home" for Christmas etc., had a certain inimitable feel to it. I still have the desire to go back to the place where I grew up, and all that, but now I feel just a little bit more as though I am imposing myself on others. As though I am a guest. In someone else's "home". As the only one of us five that have never married nor produced offspring, there is a tendency for me to sometimes feel as though I am in the way. But GOD, I love my family, every one of them. They are constantly inviting me to spend time with them, in their "homes".
When I first read the above passage tonight while drinking ten gallons of coffee at Starbucks, the part I loved best was where Malouf's narrator mentioned "home" as being "the place of one's earliest affection." I agree and I disagree.
Thanks to the wonder of Google Maps, the above photograph is the very house I most think of, as "home". I grew up there, on Argyle Street. I could not believe that I so easily found it tonight, with a simple search. The truck in the driveway? I do not know who owns it. But that green building behind it? That was once my "home". And yet -- it isn't my "home" today. There is an inner closet wall in that house -- up in an area that will never have reason to be repainted -- that says, in scribbled pencil "I was here." I wrote those words in November of 1972, when I was nine years old. The current tenants [whoever they are] walk past those words of mine every day, not knowing that they exist. And if they ever found them, they would not know who put them there.…. [How precociously prescient of me, to use the past tense "was".]
My point is -- I agree with the idea of home being "the place of one's earliest affection." But what is said next in the Malouf excerpt is even more important. For me, the above building, the "four walls" of it represent "home" only insofar as my parents are still alive in it, inviting me for a visit. This place here, where I am typing these words tonight, basically saying to you, my blogger friends, "I am here"……. this -- this is my new home. *********
Well here we are at the last night of 2010 -- a time when I can reflect upon the 50 books I read this past year. There have been a few that I really did not enjoy [Mantissa by John Fowles, The Purest of Human Pleasures by Kenneth Radu] but overall -- it's been some terrific reading.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
