January 30th, 2013

Rose-coloured reviews: The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf

The Beauty Myth is the 11th book of my overlong 2012 Reading Challenge. Closer every day!

I know, I know–what’s wrong with me? This book came out in 1992 and 20 years later, I’m just getting around to it? In fact, my mom even read it right when it came out, and mentioned that my newly teenaged self might benefit from reading about where the enforced self-consciousness of females in our culture actually comes from. But I wasn’t interested. I did for some reason read Misconceptions when it came out in 2003. It was a fascinating but to me entirely irrelevant accounting of the medicalization–some would say patholisation–of childbirth in our society. It was also astoundingly gory–childbirth is, I guess. At that time, I didn’t know what an episiotomy was, and was much dismayed to find out. It was an eye-opening read.

At this point in history and in my life, *The Beauty Myth* was much less eye-opening. The link above on Naomi Wolf’s website says this book changed how we think about beauty and it’s true–Naomi Wolf’s dense and well-researched, imaginative and forceful treatise has wormed its way into the public consciousness. No one reads advertising or, indeed, models the same way anymore, and I’ve seen countless less-incisive writers spouting her ideas if they were original. They feel original; they feel as if we never didn’t know.

It was very interesting to go back to the source and read about how she investigated this stuff at a time when it just was what it was. But it was also…so earnest! One thing Wolf lacks is irony–her Biblical exegesis is soooo grad school (uglyness as sin), which doesn’t make it less brilliant. But sometimes, her inability to see pneumatic breasts and $100 skin cream as a humourous gets a little tiresome. I guess, too, I have the luxury of vantage point–Wolf didn’t know the near future would turn out the way it did. She assumed a woman’s ideal breast size would just keep getting bigger until we couldn’t walk upright, when in fact the ideal is now smaller but firmer, a la Megan Fox. Who knew?

So the reasons I don’t entirely relate to the book are various–20 years of distance and irony, the fact that I’m not exposed to a tonne of media–but intriguingly, the chapter that really resonated with me was the last one, “Violence.” I don’t know what I was expecting–domestic violence, I guess, which doesn’t really suit the context at all. It turns out that that chapter is about plastic surgery, and as in Misconceptions Wolf spares no sensibility in her gory evocation of how it really goes down.

Some of her panic is justified–in the late 80s and early 90s, women were dying from complications from liposuctions, breast implants were having to removed because they’d “gone rigid”–early plastic surgery was not a good scene. But it’s also improved greatly since the book was written, as all medical technologies do–she must have known that would happen. And also, though there’s always going to be a market for this sort of thing, most people actually don’t get their faces and bodies reconstructed. They don’t even think about it.

I was thinking this and then I realized…I did! I don’t think of it that way, because I was told by doctors that my jaw misalignment would eventually destroy the joint and therefore I needed the operation…but the fact remains that it was the same surgery many women have to look better. I’m always way too eager to explain I didn’t do it for cosmetic reasons, but the fuller story is a bit more complex. When I first began preparing for the operation, nearly 2 years out, they didn’t tell me I’d look different, and for some reason it didn’t occur to me that moving my jaw around would change my appearance. I found out when I was already well into the process and the surgeon, who was proud of his aesthetic successes, was disgusted that I didn’t want to be “improved.”

“Well, you don’t look normal now, you know,” he snapped. Now I think about what a weird statement that is–the ideal is not the median, and people with perfect faces are definitely not “normal.” Then I was just horrified. Anyway, he was extremely aggressive about persuading me that there was no non-stupid way to correct my medical problem without correcting my cosmetic “problem” to. I cried, but my jaw really hurt and I’d been preparing for the operation for a year. I didn’t research what I was told or try to dissect how much of the surgeon’s medical reasons were actually just a patholization of imperfection. I agreed to the operation, whatever it took.

I think that’s what Wolf was afraid of. Not that women walking down the street feeling good about ourselves will see a Botox poster and feel our self-esteem shatter, but that how self-perpetuating the beauty industry is, how proselytizing. It was strange for me, reading the book, not to get it and then to get it exactly.

*The Beauty Myth* is not a fun read, although unlike many academics Wolf writes with clarity, concision, and occasionally real beauty. It took me nearly 3 months to read it, and I stopped in the middle to read Bridget Jones’s Diary and Bossypants among other things, because it was just too sad for Christmastime. But it was instructive reading nonetheless and I feel good to have read it. Because far as we’ve all come in reading media for the commercial, coercive enterprise that it is, apparently we (or at least I) can still be stunned by an attack in the name of beauty. And it’s worth thinking about why.

For the record, I don’t look that different now, unless you’re one of the people who think I look very different. It depends on how you look at faces, I guess. I think I look fine and my new face is now entirely my face–I relate to it. However, although I know have a “perfect” ratio of space between my nose and upper lip, and lower lip and chin (seriously–I was told there’s a number), I still miss my old face, which was longer and seemed narrower. I believe Kathrine Mansfield would’ve called it “horsey” but it was mine and I always rather liked it.

January 21st, 2013

What I’ve Been Doing

Despite the overwhelming tidal wave of job-related work I’ve been doing, there’s been some writing-related stuff going on too. Here’s some highlights if you’ve missed me:

–my story, “Anxiety Attack” is in the current issue of Freefall Magazine, which is delightful news. My contributer’s copy is currently winging its way towards me but if you spot a copy in the wild I’d love to know how it looks–awesome, I bet.

–an article I wrote, “When Your Culture Is Counter-culture” is now live on the website Offbeat Bride. A new year’s resolution I don’t think I’ve mentioned here yet is to do more of this sort of lifestyle writing and service journalism, and actually try to get it published in places other than on this blog, where it doesn’t really belong. Literary journalism and criticism, as you know, give me hives, and even when I manage, through much struggle and editing, to make something decent, I’m still miserable. The above article, an advice-y chatty piece about my wedding and what others might learn from it, filled me with delight while writing it and I’m so happy reading the few comments its garnered so far. Next to fiction, this sort of thing is my favourite to read and write, so I think I should pursue it. If you know a website I should be submitting to, please let me know!

–I’ll be reading at Racket at the Rocket, organized by Open Minds Toronto on May 17, sharing the stage with my beloved husband. Yes, we’re just that cute.

–And finally, my story “Love-Story Story” will be published in the next issue of This Magazine. If you’ve not read my fiction, or only my second book, this won’t mean anything to you, but LSS is an Isobel story–a character that appeared in 2 stories in Once as well as “I Have Never Loved You Less” in Road Trips, and half a dozen other stories in various places. I’m always happy to see her and write about her–I do hope you enjoy the story.

January 8th, 2013

Cohabitational Reading Project 2: The Information, by Martin Amis

Longtime readers will recall that after we moved in together, my now-husband and I thought it might be charming to read the same book at the same time–dinner table and long drive conversation fodder. We also thought it would be cool to revisit books we had read separately in our unformed youth, the reassess their merits in the cold hard light of maturity (ha!)

The first read was A Prayer for Owen Meaney last summer. This winter’s read is The Information by Martin Amis.

Some background: I first read the book as an 18-year-old naif on my first (and so far only) trip to Europe, pretty shortly after it came out. Like anything cool I read in those days, a member of my family had hand-picked it for me–in this case, my younger brother, though my mom ended up reading it too so we could all discuss. Making the original read “cohabitational,” too, though I was technically on another continent for a chunk of it.

Reading the first few chapters, I am stunned at how much I liked the both in my naif-hood–how did I even know what was going on? This is an extremely cynical, caustic book, and if you think I’m saccharine now, you should’ve seen me on that art-student trip I’d waitressed so many hours for, off to see instructive European art and not drink any alcohol or talk to strangers.

*The Information*’s protagonist is Richard Tull, a novelist with 2 published novels behind him and 3.5 unpublished. He also works at a vanity press 1 day a week, and is an indifferent husband to Gina and father to small twin boys Marius and Marco. He’s also a terrible person, constantly drunk, taking any drug he can find, financially dependent on his wife, adultrous, and mean. His “oldest and stupidest friend,” Gwynn has in the past few years decided he wants to be a novelist too, and been monstrously successful at it.

Richard’s failure as a writer coupled with Gwynn’s success coupled with Richard’s general loathesomeness means that he is undone by Gwynn’s success. He actually strikes one of his little boys upon finding out that Gwynn’s second novel is on the bestseller list. He sets out, amid the ruins of his own career and his marginally less ruined life, to “fuck Gwynn up.”

I’m not accurately portraying how *funny* this all is–Richard’s loserishness and self-pity, Gwynn’s self-aggrandizement, the always looming spectre of London weirdness that pervades all of Amis’s writing–so much fun to read.

Of course, when I was 18, it barely even registered that these men were writers. To me, they were just old people doing stupid stuff. I wrote all the time, too, and even published a few things in high school, but I didn’t think of myself as a writer or having anything in common with these deluded gents.

Now, of course, I realize I’m only a few years younger than Gwynn and Richard, who both turn 40 in the first few chapters. I know all about little magazines, slush piles, vanity presses, agents, advances, PLR, and all the other writerly in-jokes Amis makes. I wonder what I was laughing at before, because despite the dreadful earnestness of me in my youth, I did realize the information was supposed to be funny.

Probably it’s the narration–Amis makes very VERY good on Thoreau’s comment that it is always the first person that is speaking. The narrator wanders the line between writing the book and living in it, and at this point in the narrative we aren’t sure how real the characters are to each other. As a youth, I was obsessed with narrative devices (no, I didn’t date a lot, actually) and this was and is one of my favourites.

But I’m not even 100 pages in and a *lot* more happens, I know. In fact, Mark’s already written a kickoff post and an update, and is out in the living room reading right now.

Have you read *The Information*? Do you read along with your co-locataires? Feel free to share experiences in the comments!

November 21st, 2012

Rose-coloured Reviews *Mouthing the Words* by Camilla Gibb

Wowsers. I’ve never read a book like Camilla Gibb‘s first novel Mouthing the Words. It’s terrifying, horrifying, very funny, and brilliant. I really needed this, having read such a series of deeply flawed, baffling, or dull novels recently that I was starting to wonder if the problem was me–if I just didn’t *like* novels anymore.

So I’m really grateful to Gibb’s book for saving the novel for me. Strange, of course, that I hadn’t read *Mouthing* before now, since it came out in 1999 and is really well thought of, as are all Gibb’s books. I’ve also met the author a number of times and even collaborated with her on The Journey Prize Stories 21 and can report that she’s a lovely human. Sometimes it’s just this sort of constellation of glowing praise and lovely humanness that can intimidate me into not reading a book for 13 years.

I’d also heard that *Mouthing the Words* is a tale of child abuse not for the faint of heart, and I sometimes am fainthearted, so that was another dissuasion. And while it’s true that some of the abuse is very very distressing, the wonderful voice that carries the story made me want to keep reading. That is the voice of Thelma, the protagonist, the abused child and later mental patient, anorexic, law student, friend, girlfriend, mess, saviour, nutjob, and possibly genius.

She’s very very funny, confused and ironic and weird. The voice reminded me a lot of Esther Greenwood in The Bell Jar, the baffled crazy person persona not quite stifling a sharply sarcastic wit. The best bit in Bell Jar is when Esther wanders around with a noose around her neck, trailing rope like a cat’s tail, because she can’t find anywhere to fasten it in her smooth-ceilinged house. The best bit in *Mouthing the Words* is “I am eighteen and I am still note adopted. How many people have I asked? It’s starting to get embarrassing.” Tell me that doesn’t sound like Plath.

The novel is interesting because Thelma is sometimes self-aware and sometimes not, sometimes writing from the distant peaks of adulthood, and sometimes right in the thick of it with her young character. Sometimes it was not 100% photorealistic–like Thelma retains her imaginary friends into her 20s and it is difficult to tell whether she acknowledges them as symbolic or actually thinks they are speaking to her. I’m fine with that ambiguity, but I don’t know how to describe it really.

But certainly the book was realistic in many ways, particularly in the fact that there is no cosmic justice coming down at the end and smiting the evil-doers.I sometimes think that sexual abuse and other abuses of children is so popular in contemporary fiction because it’s so morally easy–who *doesn’t* think it’s terrible to have sex with little children? Who *wouldn’t* despise someone who did? It’s such a comfortably righteous position and in many novels that’s all you get–you know what evil is? Gold star! No thinking! Gibb’s novel goes beyond that by staying with the violated character for two decades and leaving the violator in the dirt–we never find out what happened to him, and no one seems to care. That’s his punishment. But Thelma lives on in the world and continues to punish herself and sometimes those around her, but she also has a life and it’s pretty interesting. There’s still some moral simplicity but we all need a little of that–Thelma’s much more like a human than a virtue embodied. She’s also damn funny.

Mouthing the Words is the 10th/October (I’m behind) book in my To Be Read 2012 Challenge (and probably my favourite so far). More to come.

Power Couple

People who describe Mark and I as a “power couple” are, almost without exception, kidding and/or drunk. But this week we get close because Mark is poetry champion of The Puritan Magazine’s Thomas Morton Prize and will thus be reading at their Black Thursday issue/anthology launch/celebration on Thursday night right here in Toronto. And then, a scant two days later, I’m reading in Ottawa at the Carlingwood library on Saturday afternoon. I highly encourage you to come out to whichever event is geographically possible for you–I think both will be stellar.

Naturally, we will each be in the audience for the other, cheering and holding coats. Because that’s what good power couples do.

September 21st, 2012

Rose-coloured reviews *The Bull Is Not Killed* by Sarah Dearing

I liked Sarah Dearing‘s short novel The Bull Is Not Killed far more than I expected to. The cover blurbage makes it seem exclusively like a caught-between-two-cultures love story of the sort we have all read a million times. But *The Bull…* is far richer and more complex than that. It takes place in a small fishing village in Portugal, and Dearing clearly has a good grip on that country’s history, its economy, its social rituals and most importantly its landscape: the descriptions of beaches, breezes, squares, and bars all ring with accuracy and intimacy.

I also really liked the characters. Yes, the young lovers–a 25-year-old Portuguese virgin named Luis and a 15-year-old Romany princess named Luisa–go through a lot of “I love you so much much much” nonsense, but in themselves they are both fully realized, complex characters. And though it sounds like a big squick, the age difference didn’t bother me much, probably because Luisa is so clearly wise beyond her years and Luis, wise behind them.

There are lots of other well drawn characters in the novel–Luisa’s abhorrent mother, the fascist police chief, various lawyers and self-seeking peasants, but the most interesting is Montiego, the kind-hearted cop. His right-heartedness and wry temper are a pleasure to read about–and when he is a key instigator at the start of the revolution, it is both thrilling and moral.

At least, I think it was moral–because the revolution wasn’t really ever clear to me, in reasoning nor execution. As I said before, I don’t doubt that Dearing has done the research and understands the social and economic conditions that set the revolutionary flames. It was just that I didn’t really get a sense of what these characters *in particular* were so angry about. Yes, the police chief is a big jerk, folks are unemployed, there’s an overseas war going on that I didn’t fully understand–and neither did the characters, it sometimes seemed to me. These are the reasons for the entire nation to take to the streets?

In many respects, my opinion of *The Bull* is suffering from my having read it very shortly after The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. That novel concerns a swirl of personal stories–like Dearing’s book, *Oscar* is told from various points of view–set against another oppressive and troubling polical regime, this time Rafael Trujillo’s brutal dictatorship in the Dominican Republic in the 1940s and 50s, and the far-reaching effects of his rule on that country for many years afterwards.

As I say, that’s not a fair comparison–*The Bull…* is a short, tight, solid little novel–*Oscar* is a huge sprawling masterpiece. But I do think it’s fair that I was disappointed in the second half of *The Bull…*–most of the “minor” characters disappear, including Montiego, whom I didn’t think of as minor at all. Some who remain are reduced to jokes, like Margaret Brown, the admittedly rather stupid Englishwoman who had nevertheless been depicted with some sympathy–until she wasn’t anymore.

So we end up with the young lovers on the run, which is sort of cliche and sort of moving, but I don’t think really the point of the novel. There were a number of points in the book where characters sat down to tell a personal or historical anecdote, but wound up with something that sounded very much like a fable or myth. These were my favourite parts of the book, both for their simple beauty and for the comment they seemed to make on book-writing as a construct. At one point, challenged on the veracity of her “history,” Luisa insists that it must be true because it makes her happy, and is therefore what she prefers to believe.

To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure how that ties into the larger story but I *feel* that it does, and that somehow made the book satisfying for me, though the ending was lacking. I should read this book again one of these days–and it’s short enough and good enough that I might actually do so!

This is my 9th/September book for the To Be Read challenge. I thought there should be three more to go (12 books on the list, 12 months in the year, 9 months achieved/read) but then I realized that way back in January when I made the list I included two #4s. So there’s an extra book on the list! I might well get around to reading them all, but if I don’t, which ones are the most urgent? Feel free to vote in the comments:
4. *The Story of English* by Robert McCrum, William Cran, and Robert MacNeil
7. *The Beauty Myth* by Naomi Wolf
10. *Mouthing the Words* by Camilla Gibb
12. *On the Road* by Jack Kerouac

July 28th, 2012

Readings and Writing, Past and Future

I’m thinking it’s going to be a European summer on Rose-coloured–ie., nothing much will get accomplished in August. But here are some snaps from a reading that took place in July, and a small list below of things up coming once unproductive August is over.

Fred Addis, Leacock Festival organizer and warm-hearted host (and BBQ master) kicking off the Happy Hour.

Me, reading at the Leacock Festival’s Happy Hour last weekend.

The wonderful Ken Babstock, whose reading from *Methodist Hatchet* was genuinely as thoughtful as this photo looks.

Mark Kingwell, the guiding force behind Happy Hour, reading an essay about poetry and suicide that was far more inspiring than you might think.

The Happy Hour was a really great event, and I’m only sorry that we couldn’t have stayed longer to see more Leacock Festival readings. And Orillia–so gorgeous! I went in a lake!!

Ok, onwards–in the fall I’ll have a couple new stories out and do a couple fun readings, so here’s where to go if you miss me:

My story, “Everyone Likes a Little Guy” will be in the September issue of The Rusty Toque.

My story, “The House that Modern Art Built” will be in the fall issue of PRISM international.

I’ll be doing a reading or two at the Vancouver International Writers’ Festival October 16-21 (exact dates and times to come)

I’ll be doing a reading and Q&A at the Carlingwood Library in Ottawa on Saturday November 24, 2-3 pm.

So there’s some stuff for me to look forward to, and hopefully some of you guys, too. And of course I’m open to adding to this slate, if opportunities come along!!

July 24th, 2012

Rose-coloured reviews *Moon Deluxe* by Frederick Barthelme

The first story in Moon Deluxe by Frederick Barthelme is called “Box Step” and it’s narrated by Henry, who seems to be the boss at a small company. I never quite figured out what he did or what the company did. He banters with Ann, who seems to be his assistant, and assorted other employees. At one point Ann says she’s “…planning a giant party tonight at Henry’s.” Though this has not previously been discussed, they go ahead with it, though few people show up and almost exclusively folks from the office. The next evening, Henry and Ann go out to dinner and a movie, without it having been pre-arranged or discussed, without us ever getting a sense of whether their relationship is physical or even romantic. Henry buys some toys from the daughter of an employee, and later at the restaurant they run into all of the employees again.

It’s a very odd story–Henry seems to have no volition except to acquire toys, and Ann steers him along like a child with a toy herself. There is no interior monologue, so we never know the reasons Henry has for doing, or not doing, anything. But the dialogue is quick and sharp, and the details closely observed. I was intrigued by the story, though I wouldn’t have quite said I liked it.

I had been expecting to like everything from the blurbs on the cover–one from Raymond Carver and one from Margaret Atwood (how often do you see that combo?) When the book came out in 1983, 13 of the 17 stories had been previously published in the New Yorker. After reading all that bumpf, I could hardly believe I’d let this book sit on the shelf for so long. I was very excited.

The enthusiasm waned as the stories went forward. Though they vary in quality, all 17 of these stories are about male protagonists with very little will or desire, who are lusted after by beautiful women who don’t get them, or not really. But that’s ok, because the women require little from them other than that they go to many restaurants and hang out by the sides of pools. I became so annoyed by these recurrent premises that I stopped enjoying truly funny dialogue and excellent observations about restaurants (so many restaurants in this book!) There are also many cars, and many apartment buildings set around an interior courtyard with a pool in it–near as I can figure, the setup is halfway between Melrose Place and a seniors’ village. I think most of the characters were meant to be low-income but since (a) after the first story none of the male characters has a job nor seemed worried about acquiring one and (b) everyone has a pool, they seemed rich and dissipated to me.

The stories were set in the American south, where apparently pool access, car ownership, and presence of Shoney’s is taken for granted. Which was actually pretty interesting–this book offers a slice of life in a time and place I’ve never seen (I’ve been to the South a few times, but very briefly–though I do know you should eat Shoney’s if ever you get the chance). Never had I read a book that seemed so dated, though–Danskin leotards, carphones with cords, and going to the spa to lose weight. I don’t exactly know why this book seemed so aggressively alien to me–probably because so much work was put into capturing the moment that was, it doesn’t translate across the years.

Towards the end of the book, when I was coming up with the alternate title, “Chronicles of Impotent Unemployed Males,” I looked up Barthelme at the above Wikipedia link and found out he was a celebrated minimalist. So was Raymond Carver, apparently, but I remember Carver’s characters having, you know, feelings and desires, even if it was only the vague desire to be happy. But maybe I didn’t know what minimalism means, at least not in prose.

So I decided I needed to do better and I looked it up outside of the Wiki circles. This definition seemed pretty good, and actually mentions Barthelme. I see his points, and I particularly like the term “interpretative polyvalency”–I like the idea of readers being able to bring their thoughts to bear in creating a story.

The author of the above article, one Phil Greaney, goes on to make some other good points about the demandingness of minimalism, which I do get and appreciate. But I can’t help but feel it doesn’t excuse the unrelenting sameness of these stories. Any one of them I would’ve enjoyed, but over and over…here are some sample opening lines from this collection:

“Ann is pretty, divorced, a product model who didn’t go far because of her skin, which is very fair and freckled.”

“You watch the pretty salesgirl slide a box of Halston soap onto a low shelf, watch her braid slip off her shoulder, watch like an adolescent as the vent at the neck of her blouse opens slightly–she is twenty, maybe twenty-two, and greatly freckled…”

“Kathleen Sullivan is back on CNN, a guest on the call-in interview show. She’s supposed to be talking about the boom in news, but the callers, who are all men, only want to talk about her bangs, and the new drab-look clothes she wears on ABC.”

“Sally meets me in the driveway. “It’s great you’re back,” she says. She’s tall, willowy, tailored.”

So many women, very precisely and intriguingly described, but described a lot, and lasciviously you’re not going to believe me when I tell you there’s only one sexual encounter in this book, and it’s a fade-to-black. The rest of the women are just going to desperately and weirdly fawn over the narrators and never ever get laid, so all this lascivious description is for naught.

This is a long and fairly negative review, isn’t it? And I feel a bit that it’s unfair, but this was only Barthelme’s third book and he went on to write many more in the past 30 years. Possibly it’s not fair to judge him by this one. I mean, I did it with Mysteries of Pittsburgh but I had read the later, more excellent novels that Chabon wrote, so I was able to contextualize my dislike of the one at hand.

I couldn’t really do that here, having read nothing else of Barthelme’s, and while I wasn’t really tempted to, I was driven to be fair, so I read Driver in the Barcelona Review (it’s what I could find on line. This is from nearly 20 years after the stories in *Moon Deluxe*, and as I’d hoped it was much much better. Still not an ideal piece of fiction–I doubt Barthelme and I agree about what that would be–but an enjoyable developed fictional world with characters that seem to have real, human motivations, even if the reader can’t completely understand them. The female character is also recognizably human and surprising and intriguing. There’s also lots of interesting technical comments about cars–there’s actually stuff in the story other than vague desires and restaurants. And the end is a huge win–it changed my clinical nodding to a startled grin.

So what am I saying? Maybe I’m saying read Frederick Barthelme, just not this particular book.

This is my 8th/August (I’m ahead) book for the Off the Shelf Challenge. More to come!

July 18th, 2012

Rose-coloured reviews Reading on a electronic reader

I sometimes say that I’m not against new technology, I’m just frightened of it. Some kind friends gave me a Kobo and gently talked me through how to read on it. There are some kinks to be worked out–now that I’ve finished reading my one book, I can’t seem to get anymore–but I did like the experience. And after one novel, of course I’m totally qualified to talk about it.

Pros

1. More than one book at once. Sometimes I’ll read two books at once–a “heavy” read for when I’m feeling strong, and a “light” read for when I’m too tired for the heavy one, but not tired enough to sleep. Sometimes I need to bring a second book because I know I’ll finish the first before I get home. Sometimes I wish I could check a fact from the first book in the series while reading the second. I can’t actually lug around all these books (though I do somewhat, in the second case) and the Kobo solves all these problems.

2. Surprisingly durable. I regularly bend back covers and break spines in my reading endeavours, and then I feel terribly guilty, though most books are of the same literary quality with and without a broken spine. The Kobo in it’s little leather cover does not get smushed in my bag and it lays perfectly flat on a table without me breaking anything.

3. Some things are available only in ebook format, like Found Press, the thing I tried to buy last night and was thwarted due to technological incompetence. But now, finally, I can dream of reading the estuff, somehow, someday…

Cons

1. Committment. The Kobo I have takes a few minutes to boot up, by which point the subway’s usually already arrived and I’ve wasted all my bench time staring into space. I probably read for 2 hours most days, but a lot of it is in tiny increments. That doesn’t work so well electronically. I like to read in long lines in stores, when my dining companion goes to the restaurant bathroom, all kinds of other little gaps in time. But the boot time makes that not really work. Ditto reading before bed, turning out the light for 5 minutes, realizing I’m not that sleepy, reading for 5 more minutes, then turning the light back off.

2. Fear. Even though I say above that the item is durable, I still get worried about this expensive piece of technology and put it back in its case every time I stand up. This is more my problem than the Kobo’s, but it did limit my reading time. I also can’t fathom how to read it in the bath. Sometimes I get my paper books a little damp, and then the pages are wrinkly, but oh well. I have the feeling the ramifications would be worse here.

3. Inferior quality ebooks. My one eread so far was Don DeLillo’s End Zone, a truly brilliant novel that came out in the 1970s. See where a problem might lie? I don’t know why, but apparently the Penguin folks, or whoever own the ebook rights, *scanned* a copy of the paper book and just made that into an ebook. I can’t explain any other way why there are NO hyphens in the entire book, and constant ligature problems (“Penn State” becomes “Perm State” and other hilarious examples). I regularly had to stop reading to think about what was actually supposed to be written there. I think this would only be a problem with older books, and probably there’s better QC on most, but this was a disappointing aspect of an otherwise wonderful experience.

***

In short, I am really really enamoured of my new reader, and despite a few flaws and things to get used to, I’m verily looking forward to reading more. As soon as I figure out how to get another book on it!!

July 3rd, 2012

What happens when you self-search

Guys, I’m ashamed to admit it, but sometimes I enter my own name into search engines and go in 8 or 10 pages, just to see what comes up. I do this for a couple reasons–mainly to kill time when I’m feeling simultaneously vain and bored. But also because I’ve discovered that Google Alerts (yes, of course I have one–that’s not even vanity, just efficient) is not all that–it misses a lot of stuff. And while the good stuff will eventually make its way to me, no one ever passes on a really negative review–unless I make some more sadistic friends, it’s up to me to find the scathing ones.

Sometimes, however, my sad little searches turn up fun stuff. Often, it’s stuff I already knew about, only in a shiny new package. Like, I always knew the time and date of my reading at the Leacock Festival, so no one thought to tell me that it’s now up on slick event page (scroll down). And though I’ve already talked SO MUCH about the film “How to Keep Your Day Job” it’s still pretty awesome to see it has a little web presence. And sometimes folks even forget to tell me about a really lovely review (scroll down again). Also, did you know that someone with almost the same name as me is Dr. Date?

Finally, somehow I failed to attach my proper full name to my YouTube channel, so you can’t find it by searching me–I don’t think that’s a huge loss to anyone but I’m going to try to work this out. In the meantime, in case you couldn’t fine it otherwise, I’ll leave you with my favourite kitty video creation so far, Evan versus Gunter Grass.