Splash du Jour: Tuesday

The ever cute-as-all-hell Ann-Marie MacDonald, on the “award” of being a writer:
“The award is: Are people liking the book and do they want to give it to their best friend? That’s the award.”

Have a great Tuesday!

Splash du Jour: Monday

I’ve woken up from dreams and the whole song is there.
I'm listening to it in my dreams. I consciously have to wake myself up and get a tape recorder because I hear it like a record.
-- Lenny Kravitz –

Have a great Monday!

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The Devolution of Suspicion

OK, here’s what happens.
As most of you probably already know, I spend an incredibly inordinate amount of time in the coffee shops of my fair city.
For instance, I’m in one right now!
I am an urbanite. Live downtown. Love coffee.
Love not being in my apartment in the daytime, because the dust shows.
I have long ago learned that if I just leave there when the sun comes up, and return when it begins to set…. HELL….→ the place ends up looking really good!
In this way I am able to utilize a huge chunk of time that would be spent cleaning up, if I ever saw the place in something other than candlelight!

So, here is what tends to happen if you sit in a Chapters bookstore say, for like nine or ten hours. Periodically, you have to get up and leave your table.
Nature calls! Or, you go on what I like to call a bit of a “book browse.” You stroll about the store a bit. Or, you have to go and get another coffee.
The conundrum of this is that I have an expensive laptop computer on the table, and it could potentially get stolen if I leave it there.
Now here is the wild thing I have noticed. Over time, I have relaxed my vigilance, in these matters.
Like… when I first got this new Mac PowerBook G4, I was seriously convinced that everyone else in the world wanted it. Hence, the thing never left my sight. I unplugged it and took it with me on all of my rambles, whether to the bathroom, or to the coffee counter.
The computer went where I went!
But soon, I began to look over at some other person, especially if they too were using a laptop, and I would ask them if they would not mind watching mine as I left town for a while. Usually they would comply, but I have already written elsewhere about the inherent absurdities of this action, so I will not re-state it all here.
Thing is, I have now descended to an even lower level of non-security.
I tend to just walk away, often for a good five minutes.
Enough time for even a really useless criminal to sit down and do some of his own data-entry stuff prior to walking away with the thing.
Scary.
This…. this devolution of suspicion. This thing that has happened to me.
Usually what I do now is that I will look around the room and sort of do a bit of immediate occupational profiling, if you will.
I will try to determine which people LOOK like they would steal my computer.
→ Usually, they all look pretty damn innocent.
So I walk away.
But before I walk away I will take the book I am reading and sort of fold it [turn it over] on top of this closed $3,000 piece of machinery!
What an amazing trick!
I mean…. what criminal-type person [who has been over in the corner salivating, waiting for this very moment that my bladder calls me hitherward…] what person is going to come over and actually LIFT that book off of the Mac-treasure?
Right?
I mean, that would just be…. → craziness!

The whole scenario reminds me of a certain Jerry Seinfeld routine. One of his joke segments, on the DVD called “I'm Telling You For The Last Time.”
And by the way, if you have not ever seen this DVD, umm… you really need to get it. It is the funniest conglomeration of laughs I have ever encountered. I’ve watched the thing at least 40 times and I can recite any portion of it, verbatim.
It’s a gift. A gift.
My nephew Bradley is even better at it than I am.
If I ever falter with a line or two, he jumps right in and finishes off the gag!
He and I should go on tour, honest to God.
The Jerry Seinfeld Severely-Plagiarized© Tour!

Anyhoo, Jerry says, We can't stop getting ripped-off. We're gonna get ripped off. We think we're not, we think we're very clever. We think we're gonna foil the crooks.
We go to the beach, go in the water.
You put your wallet in the sneaker, ‘who's gonna know?’
What criminal mind could penetrate this fortress of security?
"I put it down by the toe. They never look there."
"They check the heels, they move on."

I think I peed my pants the first time I heard that one…. But then he goes on, [and I’d rather not tell you the effect it had on me…]

You have a TV set in the back of your car and you gotta leave the car in the street for a few minutes?
So you put a sweater over the TV.
"It's a couple of sweaters, that's all."
"One of them is square with an antenna coming out of it."

Yep!
Caused a mess!

I just love that kind of situational humor though.
Because we do these things. These utterly stupid things.
Like me and my folded book over the laptop.
I am an idiot!
I need counseling.
If I lost my laptop to a crook, I would want to DIE!

I leave you with Jerry’s final jab at our stupidity…

So feeble the things we come up with to foil the crooks!
The 'Wanted' posters at the post office?
You're there, you got your package, you're trying to mail something, this guy's wanted in 12 states.
Yeah, now what?
Ok. I check the guy standing in line behind me... if it's not him, that's pretty much all I can do.
Why don't they just hold on to this guy when they're taking his picture?
THE GUY’S THERE WITH YOU!
COME OUT FROM BEHIND THE CAMERA AND GRAB HIM!
No, we don't do that. We take their picture, we let them go.
That's how we get the front and side shot.
The front is his face, the side is him leaving.
Why don't they put the pictures of the criminals on the postage stamps?
Let the postman look for them. He's out there walking around all day.
He's got the uniform on.
Can't he do something?

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Stumbling into greatness...

I began this day by waking up way too early and being prompt for my appointment with Carla.
She cuts my stupid hair.
Right now she is pregnanter than any human I have ever seen!
Holy moly, she could barely reach my actual hair with that preg-belly jutting out in front of her. She's got twins in there, she tells me. Each of them are going to be more than seven pounds! Anyway, the haircut turned out alright. Much better than this other time I reported on a bad experience.
Remember?
Note: -->That was NOT Carla that butchered me that time!
After my haircut, I wandered around downtown, and ended up at The Library.
[I know! Is that rowdy or what?]
Tell you what, though.
I absolutely LOVE The Library.
For one thing, it's so.... so full of BOOKS!
Found myself wandering down the "H" aisle. I had a look at this Ursula Hegi book, called Sacred Time (2003). I fell for the cover of the thing. Love those old cars! It's set in the Bronx, 1950's. I've read one other Hegi book, The Hotel Of The Saints (Short Stories) and really enjoyed it. So I signed this thing out and then spent the afternoon with it.
I AM LOVING IT!
It is just so well-written, honestly, I am marvelling over it. I am drawn into it, do not want to put it down. So, I may just have to stay awake with it tonight.
Thought I would just mention it to all late-night puddlers out there... awake with their own books, perhaps.
My preliminary report on this Hegi book is that it is just amazing. I love good dialogue, and this is some of the best I have ever encountered.
You know what? There are great authors [in every other respect] but.... when their characters talk, I do not hear them.
I hear Hegi's characters.
I have read and re-read and re-read paragraphs. Made copious notes.
At various points in the day [I read in a couple of different coffee shops] the book was so good that I sort of wanted to run out into the street and kick a few random people right in the shins!
[Please don't ask me to explain that?]
Isn't it exhilarating to latch onto a book that resonates with you?
That moves you, makes you shake your head, or look out the nearest window and somehow see the world, and even yourself, in a clearer light?

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Poem Day

Welcome to the long weekend, fellow North Americans!
I really need this weekend to replenish my primordial fires.
This past work week has sapped me. Zapped me of life.
Just before I leave to go and drink a few gallons of Starbucks coffee downtown, I thought I would share one of my award-winning poems with you.
It’s called Cavemirth.
To read it, you will have to drag your knuckles on over to my → Neanderthal-Poetry Page.
Have a great day y’all.

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Splash du Jour: Friday

Hey!
Who invited September?
Where is the summer going?

As the fall season of intense binge-reading rolls in, I’ve been thinking about one of my favorite writers.
Margaret Atwood.
Apparently, she will have a new book coming out THIS MONTH!
YES!
See it here!

“I don’t think you ever know how to write a book. You never know ahead of time. You start every time at zero. A former success doesn’t mean that you’re not going to make the most colossal failure the next time.”
-- Margaret Atwood –

Yeah RIGHT Maggie!
Like you don’t know how to write a book!
Gag me with a Booker!

I know there are a lot of Atwood fans out there. I want to take a poll.
Can you please use the comments section to answer my very simple question?
Here it is:
What is your favorite Atwood book of all time?
[If you tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine!]

Have a great Friday!

A great long weekend, Canada!
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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Have a great Wednesday!
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Emmanations...

I am still hyperventilating over a letter [an email] I received from Emma Donoghue.
← This is Emma. She is one of my favorite contemporary authors. Her work is exquisite, and [in my opinion] not read by nearly enough readers out there. If you yourself have not read her, then that alone proves my point.
You are one Emma-less person too many!
I have read three of her novels, and I am so glad that there is a lot more of her work, yet to read.

OK, so here is what happened.
My reading partner and I [The Surfacing Reading Club. Very elite! Over 3 years old. Membership → A steady 2.]… we decided to write Emma Donoghue a letter, because truly, of the over 100 books we have read together, Emma’s books definitely stand out as like…. top ten stuff!
So we wrote this letter, and when I say “we” I really mean that the better half of the Club wrote the thing, and that half is not me. She is a far better writer than I.
But the tone and the gist of the letter might as well be the words of both of us.
We sent the letter snail-mail.
It was returned to us, undeliverable.
Next step.
Email.
BINGO!

Just yesterday we received an e-reply from Emma.
When I came home from work and opened up that email I nearly fell over.
It begins thusly… I usually fire off an immediate two-line thanks for the rare fan letters I get, but this one deserved a more considered reply. In fact it's the most wonderful fan letter I've ever received.
Hey! She had me at hello!
Now, I am not going to divulge any more pure Emma-ness with you, because… the whole thing is just too sacrosanct. It is holy. → SHE WROTE STUFF TO US!
All of that awesome good juicy stuff about the inner workings of Emma’s characters. Answers to questions we asked her. Stuff about fictional personages that are so real to the Surfacing Book Club that real actual people seem so incredibly drab you want to throw something at them!
So no.
I shall not share our private and holy Wondrous Emmanations with the gawking world!
But I will say this. Ms. Donoghue closes her letter by telling us that she is busy at work on her next novel. It will be called The Sealed Letter, and is based on an 1860’s divorce case.
The Surfacing Book Club© will DEFINITELY be reading that book!
And in the meantime, we'll be reading the other Emma books that we have not yet gotten to!
Vive l’Emma!

To learn more about Emma, click here.
And even here.

Also, I have written about Emma in previous blogs, like here, and here, and here, and here.

Gotta go and re-read her email to me.
Bye for now…..

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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.

-- John Lennon –

Have a great Tuesday!

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Splash du Jour: Monday

The world is blue at its edges and in its depths. This blue is the light that got lost. Light at the the blue end of the spectrum does not travel the whole distance from the sun to us. It disperses among the molecules of the air, it scatters in water. Water is colorless, shallow water appears to be the color of whatever lies underneath it, but deep water is full of this scattered light, the purer the water the deeper the blue. The sky is blue for the same reason, but the blue at the horizon, the blue of land that seems to be dissolving into the sky, is a deeper, dreamier, melancholy blue, the blue at the farthest reaches of the places where you see for miles, the blue of distance. This light that does not touch us, does not travel the whole distance, the light that gets lost, gives us the beauty of the world, so much of which is in the color blue.
-- Rebecca Solnit –

I agree with Rebecca.
For my own whimsical/mythical take on blueness, click here.

Have a great Monday!

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A Few Must-NOT-Reads!

Well, I have had quite a weekend of not being around. Was not even near my computer at all, hence, no erudite and witty blogs to offer the world.
[Dear Bookpuddle: Does this mean that you are assuming that at other times you are erudite and witty? You should really take a poll on that.....!]
Hey!
Try being nice, for a change!
OK, so I have just gotten home, my cat is meowing his head off [at least someone loves me!] and I got to thinking...
[Hey Mildred, get over here.... this should be good...]
You know, so often people go on and on talking about their "Must-Read" List... books on the shelf, or on a pile, or on reserve at the library, waiting their turn to be read?
But no one ever says very much about books they HAVE NO INTENTION OF READING.
And so I thought it might be interesting to show you a few books I have absolutely no intention of ever reading, in my current lifetime....
First, this one.
Now seriously, I love a good sandwich as much as the next guy.... but dancing ones, hmmm. I don't know.
This one is #1 on my Must-NOT-Read list.

Next up is:Admittedly, it is a theory I have long held to be actually true, but.... other books I have read by this Fred Haley guy, they just weren't all that good. So this one is #2 on my list.

Then, there is, the infamous bestseller:

Sure.
That's all I need.
To learn how to cook food that is going to make me go BALD!
Not likely that I want to see this thing under the Christmas tree this year!

So there you have it.
What are some of your "Must-NOT-Reads"?
And yes, I mean... besides Bookpuddle?

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Splash du Jour: Friday

Whenever a writer puts out a thought, it can be disagreed with vigorously, vehemently, even violently. But it cannot be un-thought. That is the great, permanent gift a writer gives to the world.
-- Salman Rushdie --

Have a great Friday!

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Today is the birthday of a truly great writer.
He once said:
I cannot walk through the suburbs in the solitude of the night without thinking that the night pleases us because it suppresses idle details, just as our memory does.
-- Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) –

Have a great Thursday!

MAC-update!

Some of you Avid Puddlers© [if I may be so arrogant to believe that such a species exists…]… some of ye may recall that back in January, my laptop PC breathed its last.
Went out, with a poof of over-heated dismay.
There was no smoke, except for the stuff coming out of my ears!
At that time, a friend of mine came to my rescue.
He was willing to sell me his 8-month old [hell, just a new-born…] MAC Power Book G4.

So, I thought that tonight I would give you a little MAC-update.
What is my current opinion of my decision back then?

MOST AWESOME COMPUTER-ISH THING I HAVE EVER DONE!

MY CONVERSION IS ABSOLUTE!

I cannot see myself ever owning a "regular" PC [laptop or otherwise] ever again. Not saying that won’t happen, but I am just saying it will happen against my will!
I’ve been fully MAC-ed!

The machine is superior, that is all there is to it.
And in so many ways that I don’t know where to begin.

I mean, the graphics are about 600 times nicer than my old e-machines© [God rest its e-soul] machine.
I am not a gamer, but what I am referring to is the flat-out graphics of the images I post on my blogs.
My God, viewing bookpuddle [or anyone else’s blog] on this MAC and then viewing the same pages in any non-MAC environment is like…. umm… the difference between lying on your back and looking at the sky, and…. umm, putting a pillowcase over your head, and then lying back and looking at the sky!
Yeah! That’s about it.

There are no over-heating issues. NONE!

No virus issues. NONE!

The iTunes program has revolutionized how I listen to music.

The friend who sold me this thing went and bought the new MacPro laptop, and he loves it. What can one say?
No wonder some people get their heads shaved, leaving only the Apple logo visible!

It’s my next scheduled act of Mac-devotion…..

BECOME A BELIEVER!
Wanna watch an amazing speech by Mr. Apple? [Steve Jobs]
When you get there click on "Watch the keynote address.”
Oh yes, and one more thingy…. to SEE it real good, you’ll have to running a Mac!

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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Every man who amounts to a damn has several fathers, and the man who begat him in lust or drink or for a bet or even in the sweetness of honest love may not be the most important father. The fathers you choose for yourself are the significant ones.
-- The character Dunstan Ramsay, in Robertson Davies’, The Manticore –

Have a great Wednesday!

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

I met her – my fiddle – in 1963. She is about 250 years old. She’s from Italy. She eats spaghetti. I am really nice to her. Because if I am not nice to her, she is not nice to me. It’s an attachment. She is never out of my sight.

-- Pinchas Zukerman –

Have a great Tuesday!
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The Reader

Patricia @ BookLust, recently posted a great blog about how she made a wheelbarrow-type used-book-haul on her Muskoka vacation. One of the books she snagged was Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader.

Reading her blog made me recall my own reading of the book.
I am a slow, methodical reader.
[No kidding! We’ve noticed! Your “Currently Reading” book images stay on your bookpuddle sidebar for like…. months at a time! When do you ever change it? Only on years when Halley’s Comet goes by?]
Hey! Be NICE!
But seriously, it's painfully true. I read slow.
For me to sit down and consume an entire novel in "one go" is something that is quite rare, but that is exactly what happened when I read The Reader.
It is a testament to the writer's ability to keep me entranced and involved with the story that once I started, I could not stop.
The Reader is a first person narration of the life, from fifteen years onward, of one Michael Berg, in post-war Germany. As a fifteen year old he meets the vivacious 36-year old Frau Schmitz (Hanna), and he will never be the same.
Everything about her affects him for a lifetime, in ways that he could never have imagined.
In short pithy chapters and an economic style that never bogs down, Schlink separates the major phases of Michael's involvement with Hanna into three Parts.
Part 1 is where we learn of Michael's sexual initiation and subsequent emotional attachment to Hanna. Serious page-flipping stuff!
In Part 2 we are drawn into a courtroom situation (Michael is a law student) in which he is as shocked as the reader (us) to learn of the horrific nature of Hanna's secrets.
Part 3 outlines the way in which Michael attempts to bury the past, as best he can. But it is not possible. It is not possible. Michael's past is exhumed. There were moments in this section that I found gut-wrenchingly sad, yet, presented in a beautiful way. (How does one say it?) It is brutal. Brutal sad and shockingly so.
I will not go into WHY the book is called The Reader.
That would be saying too much, I think.
I enjoyed this book. You will sink into it quickly. But not as though into quicksand.
You will walk away from it, perhaps with a heavy heart (that is one thing I should say. There is nothing humorous about this book)... your heart may be heavy afterwards, but only because it will carry the weight of knowing that there are beautiful things to be felt towards those who have done even the most atrocious things imaginable.
Love is love.

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Splash du Jour: Monday

You can have a good book that isn’t “successful” and doesn’t make a lot of money, you can have a bad book that isn’t successful and doesn’t make any money, you can have a good book that is successful and makes a lot of money, and you can have a bad book that is successful and makes a lot of money. There is no correlation between literary goodness and success and money. All you can do as a writer is try and respect the page. Try and respect the reader. Try and respect who is going to pick up that page. That page is all you have, that is your sole means of communication, so try and make that page as good as you can make it for where it is in the book. That’s all you can do.
-- Margaret Atwood –

Have a great Monday!

Disaster Averted

I am writing this about three minutes after the event itself.
It was just real cute, the kind of thing I love to see, and further proves my theory that:
#1) Starbucks is a great place to spend half your life, and
#2) Starbucks personnel are great people.
As many of you will know, I am quite the Starbucks groupie.
I can barely endure driving past the wavy-haired siren on that green sign without stopping and going in for an americano, or regular old “grande bold.”
As a Canadian, I know that I am supposed to be this way regarding Tim Horton’s, but no.
Truth is, I do not like Tim Horton’s [bitter-as-hell] coffee AT ALL!
How they command the attention of all Canadians is a mystery to me. What extra-terrestrial force is at the bottom of the appeal of Tim Horton’s… I know not! What sort of cosmic pact was signed with nefarious underworld deities… I don’t even want to know.
No.
Give me Starbucks©!

So here I am today, right now even, settling into my third or fourth hour of a Starbucks stint. Sitting at a corner table.
This guy [mid-30’s?] came in and ordered a coffee and a slab of rice-krispie cake. The coffee is for him, and the cake, for his little two-and-a-half-foot tall son. Cute as ten buttons → [The kid, not the tall guy].
They both then sat down on these two poofy-nice velvetty sofa-type chairs, just a few feet away from me. I kept on reading my book. [I am not quite as voyeuristic as this blog is sounding… but yes, I do tend to notice things around me].
The guy sets his coffee down on the little table between the chairs and takes the rice-krispie cake out of its little brown paper envelope. Hands it to his child.
For some unfathomable reason… the youngster waves the sticky piece of cake in the air and it flies right out of his little hand and skips along the floor. He chases it and picks it up about eight feet away and quickly examines it to determine its present state of edibility.
Dad is saying, “Daniel, do not eat that. Do not touch…. bring it back to Daddy.”
The boy toddles over, holding this hairy, dusty piece of cake up to his dad.
There is severe disappointment on his face as he gives up his treat.

“Sit down, son.”
The boy hoists himself back into the chair.
Dad stands up and is rooting around in his pocket for change, turns to go up to order another piece of cake.

But the entire time, from my vantage point, I could see that from the very moment the cake took flight the Starbucks barista-girl had gone into immediate disaster-recovery mode.
Without hesitation, she had reached into the glass case and removed another piece of cake. And now, as the man turned, there she was, bending down, and handing the envelope to the boy.

Disaster averted.

“Here you go,” she says.
He takes the crinkly package and looks inside.
“What do you say, Daniel?”
“Thank you,” he says, reaching in to the cake.
Dad also says “Thank you,” and moves toward the counter to pay for the cake but the girl stops him.
“No, no. No problem at all,” she assures him.

Just a little scene, I know.
Nothing that is necessarily going to change the entire world or anything.
But still, I may draw upon it tonight.
May want to recall it, as I sit and watch the evening news.

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Damn Good Poetry!

Good morning. Or afternoon.
Happy Saturday to you.

I like to read good poetry.
And write it.
Even poems about poetry.
Whether this one is good or bad, I know not.
I will leave that judgment to yourself.
The good reader.

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