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 --
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!
