February 15th, 2013

Various Nice Things

It’s a bit vain, but every now again I look myself up in various places–embarrassing, but I often discover information worth knowing, so I keep doing it.

Anyway, yesterday I was ordering some books from the library and I search my name in their database. I was happy to find a bunch of my books and even a few holds, but was extra-delighted to see 9 copies of *Road Trips*. That was my 2010 chapbook with Frog Hollow–something I was proud of but I think very few people saw. It was pricey and available only by mail-order. The price has gone down now, if you’re interested in ordering it, and anyway I think it was worth every penny of the original price, as Frog Hollow does some of the most gorgeous printing and binding I’ve seen. Nevertheless, I know it just wasn’t realistic for many budgets.

But 9 copies in TPL–that means your hold would come in pretty fast! So if you were curious about *Road Trips*, this could be your chance…

Other nice things I found out about recently include Deanna McFadden’s lovely blog review of *The Big Dream*, and my contributor’s copy of Freefall Magazine. And then there are my Valentine’s gifts, the traditional perfume, candies, and George Saunders collection. And it’s Public Lending Right in the mail day today.

So basically, in summation, yay!

February 14th, 2013

Fan letter to Brooke Fraser

Dear Brooke Fraser,

I am writing to let you know that when my husband and I got married on August 11, 2012, your song Something in the Water was our recessional. We had a really hard time choosing wedding music, but as soon as I heard this song I knew it was perfect (my husband is a Brooke Fraser fan and introduced me to it). It’s such a joyous, celebratory, *rising* song that I felt it was perfect for the moment of finally being married, after all the solemn, ceremonial stuff was done.

For weeks before the wedding, I guess I was having a reoccurring dream about this song and the wedding, but for some reason I never quite processed it as a dream. It was just an image I had in my head that when we were pronounced husband and wife, we would turn to the guests, “Something in the Water” would come on, and everyone would start dancing. It’s a very dancable song!

I guess I was stressed before the wedding, because this image never came to the level of conscious thought, but instead just became my version of the plan. I never questioned how realistic it was to expect 80 people to spontaneously start dancing without me asking them to (or even if I did). I think in the moment, I realized that it had been a dream and no one knew about the dancing but me, but I had my heart set on it by that point–I danced anyway! One of the guests said I was the happiest bride she’d ever seen. Probably lots of brides get told that, but she is a professional wedding photographer and probably has been to a lot of weddings. And I was really really happy–still am!

Anyway, I just wanted to share that silly story to let me know how joyful and inspiring I found “Something in the Water” and to thank you for making it. And to wish you a happy Valentine’s Day!

All best,
Rebecca

Yay!

PS–One of my new year’s resolutions was to write fan letters to artists I’m grateful to and thank them for their work. This is the first–hopefully more to come soon!

February 10th, 2013

Lately

Lately, I have been completely failing to like things my friends adore, which makes me sad. If you know me personally, you know I’m rarely happier than when falling in line with my peers. Which is why I’m so sad not to be enjoying *Mad Men* and completely baffled by *The Silver Linings Playbook*. I really have to accept that tastes aren’t universal, but I so *want* them to be.

Here’s something I DO like–a video of Alice the kitten with her head stuck in a kitchen chair. It would not be funny if she hadn’t freed herself 20 minutes later, but she did so it is, so enjoy!

The reason I don’t like MM and SLP is not because they don’t have kittens in them–really.

February 5th, 2013

Dumb Things People Say to Single Women

I’ve been married nearly 6 months now, and apparently starting to lose my single-girl cred. When I try to empathize with or add to stories of single life, I’ve been getting some as-if-you-know eye-rolls. This sucks, because I lived alone for 10 years, so I know a little about that lifestyle. Plus, when I actually was single, I tried to avoid too much complaining about weird comments people made to me. I didn’t want it to come off as  sour grapes. It wasn’t–by and large I enjoyed my life then, but not some of the commentary folks offered thereof. Now I wish I’d spouted off more when it was appropriate. Our society seems to give some sort of craziness license when it comes to talking to single women–you can say whatever you want to them, apparently, without worrying about coming across as mean, stupid, or a lunatic. Here is a small sampling of things said to me *in a friendly manner* when I was uncoupled:

Why don’t you have a boyfriend?
What do you eat?
How are you going to get home?
Don’t you want to get married?
You miss out on so much when you don’t have a partner–movies, parties, dinners…
It’s so hard to fall asleep alone, isn’t it?
You must hate weddings.

Oh, my gosh–I’m annoyed just typing. But I do understand that no one (almost) meant to me feel like a loser/zoo animal with these questions, so in case you are someone who wondered these things, I’ll try to answer below. And in case you are someone who gets these sorts of queries/comments, I’ll offer the best answers I came up with in my many single years–though honestly, I’m still at a loss for some of these.

Why don’t you have a boyfriend?
If I knew, don’t you think I would’ve worked on that issue? Hahaha! I know mainly folks meant the question rhetorically, as in, “You are so great, so what’s going on here?” But they did leave an awkward awkward non-rhetorical pause after the question mark, leaving me to suspect that beneath their so-called praise they suspected I was secretly spitting on my dates or poking them sticks or swearing celibacy or something else deliberate to drive them away. There is NO good answer to this question most of the time, and even when there is, it’s usually too personal to answer at a dinner party (eg., you’re not supposed to date in the first months of sobriety). But…
Best answer for someone you like: “Well, some people win the lottery a little earlier than others.”
Best answer for someone you don’t like: “I guess there’s something really wrong with me.” or “I prefer sleeping around, actually.”

What do you eat?
This question and its variants is surprisingly popular, which lead me, in harsh moments, to believe that many people equate being uncoupled in adulthood with being brain-damaged. Seriously, I know lots of people live in the ideal recipe-size of 4-person households, but surely people don’t ask this questions of childless couples, families of 3 or 5, etc? Do they really think lack of romance makes one unable to do fractions? Or order in? Or make a salad? Or eat leftovers?
Best answer for someone you like: “Whatever I want!”
Best answer for someone you don’t like: “I usually just have a fistful of cereal and cry myself to sleep in the bathtub.”

How are you going to get home?
Most of the questions here are just silly and don’t bug me, but this one, I’m still holding a grudge about in a couple cases. As a single female dependent on public transit, I considered myself responsible for myself, and I never made plans I knew I couldn’t get home from safely. I knew TTC routes, and whether I could afford a cab. If I understood the situation to be unavoidably dangerous (very very rare in Toronto) I simply didn’t attend. People casually asking if I knew how I was getting home–fine, that’s just thoughtful. Asking more than once, looking doubtful, implying that I don’t know how to transport myself safely around town–problematic.

I get more het up about this question when the asker implies I’m unsafe AND s/he is not going to do anything about it. For some, single women deserve to be unsafe, apparently. My brother always walks me to my streetcar stop and waits with me if it’s late, behaviour I find unnecessary but very sweet. It’s less sweet to make a fuss about me walking alone and then shut the door behind me! “Too bad you’re going to get mugged” seems to be the message there. Sob story: once I was walking home with a guy I thought was a friend and as we approached Carre St-Louis, he told me how unsafe he thought it was and how he always arranged his schedule to walk his girlfriend home through it if she was working late. I thought this was a long preamble to offering to walk to the far side of the park with me, but he simply bade me good night on the near side and walked off. After all these years, I’ve forgiven him, but barely.
Best answer for someone you like: “I know my way around; I’m pretty smart, you know.”
Best answer for someone you don’t like: “I have no idea. Could you walk/drive me?”

Don’t you hate weddings/talking about weddings/happy couples?
Seriously, the single woman=psycho shrew construction could not be more offensive. Even if said in a sympathetic tone of voice, this question still implies that to be single is to be so unhappy as to despise the happiness of others: nice. Yes, it’s classy to not talk *constantly* about one’s wedding planning to those who aren’t super-interested (how’d I do on that front, friends? I really tried!) But still, not being able to muster up a little proxy joy for dear friends’ celebrations seems awfully cold.
Best answer for someone you like: “Of course not. If I care about you, I want to hear about what makes you happy.”
Best answer for someone you don’t like: “Absolutely. Let’s just sit in silence for a while.”

Wow, this post is over 1000 words–guess I have some pent-up rage there… I didn’t even get through all my questions. I should try to put this stuff behind me, but not entirely–I think forgetting how it feels is where a lot of these dunderheaded comments come from. Empathy, people–it’s the only way!

Anyone got any single-girl (or guy) crazy comments you’d care to share?

February 3rd, 2013

The Sky Has Always Been Falling

I came to Toronto to work in publishing at the beginning of 2002, just before Stoddart and General Publishing imploded. At the time, I was acquainted with only a very few bookfolk, but all were startled and scared about their jobs and the industry at large–they predicted that things were going to change a lot, for the worse, right away.

The sky was falling, and it’s been falling ever since.

Eventually, in my 10 years in the world of books–mainly publishing with brief forays into libraries, book stores, and the classroom–I’ve met more people, lots more people, in this world. And I discovered that publishing folks are uncomfortable without a catastrophe. It’s a hard job, making books for people who have so many shinier, easier forms of entertainment available for their leisure hours, and we–yeah, “we,” I’m in it–like it better when there is at least a focus for our frustrations, a suitable scapegoat for everything that makes delivering literature to readers so hard. Over the years it’s been everything from Dan Brown to Amazon to American dollars at par to ass-grabbing executives to Heather Reisman. I suppose this could be true of any industry–I’ve never worked in another one, come to think of it.

I started writing this post during the Douglas and McIntyre bankruptcy, lost interest as the news cycle wound down, and now I’m back because of the Globe and Mail books editor reshuffle. It’s always something! But every time is like the first time for most of us: I keep feeling like most of the conversation is all, “now we’re *really* doomed” with occasional breaks for nostalgizing how much better it was before this new bad thing happened. Which is fine, I guess, in small doses–cathartic, anyway. Bad things really have happened, we’ve got to get it out of our systems, and kvetching is sorta fun.

BUT–I feel like every literary article in the mainstream press that isn’t a straightup review lately is an end-of-days whinefest. We’re actually losing column inches across the board, but why are we squandering what we have saying over and over how it all is sucktastic?

And who knows, maybe it *is* that bad and my perspective is just clouded–see the name of this blog. But how is it going to get any better when our focus is so backwards facing, so sad about everything that has gone before that we’re unable to think of the future.

I’m hardly cutting edge, but I think some of my tiny bit of optimism comes from my unique position, which is actually multiple positions. I’ve published two old-fashioned, old-school paper books with a press that is actually still independent, still active, still innovative–somehow Biblioasis manages to keep their authors out in the world, relevant and engaged, while dealing primarily with printed pages.

But I’m also on the other side some of the time–5 days a week, in fact. I work in a publishing environment that is struggling pretty hard to do the new things–books that have no print dimension, or only a small one, but do things print could never do. Have I seen the future? No, I haven’t, but I have seen a lot of possibilities. It’s inspiring what people are coming up with. It’s also really really hard–this sort of work calls on a lot of skills that aren’t really active in most bookfolk. It’s another part of the brain–several other parts–and sometimes it makes me really sad how not-innate this stuff is to me. But I keep trying, because what choice do I have? Publishing *will* keep moving forward, and I would like to go with it as far as I can.

I do find it hard to be terribly pessimistic about the future of literature when I have seen all these great ideas–variations on the old and brand-new alike–that are coming forward. And if you’re more pessimistic than me, fine–there’s room to disagree. But surely the “we’re doomed, we’re doomed” folks must realize that they’re not the best friends a book ever had.

Literature is a vibrant part of culture–it reflects and questions and celebrates and protests what IS in our world, and therefore it has to be part of that world. If it’s hard to innovate right now, individuals and companies and the whole industry do suffer, but that’s the nature of growth. We’re just going to have to work harder. In tough times, well…you know what they say…

If you’re worried about who is going to be the next great books editor, apply for the job. If you think all the publishing houses suck, found a better one. If you don’t think there’s a book that really capitalizes on the new technologies, write one. Or write a book that transcends technology, that’s so good it would be relevant in any age. It’s something to shoot for, anyway.

Or hell, just read a book. Read anything, and engage with the content, and talk about what it is and could be. Even if the sky were truly falling, it would still be worth reading books, and I think it always will be.

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 24th, 2013

The Co-habitational Reading Challenge #2: Wrap up

So I finished *The Information* and it was devastatingly sad and grimly ironic and brilliantly written–you guys already know I love this book. I probably shouldn’t have left it to the end, but I do have to address the one really problematic aspect in the novel, and that’s the portrayal of women.

I think there’s some rumours going around about Amis being anti-woman, misogynist, what-have-you. I usually don’t give too much attention, because a good book with creditable characters and a plot that affects me is much more valuable than political correctness. And Amis *can* draw a creditable, even sympathetic and interesting female character–the problem is he chooses to draw pretty much exclusively the worst of the feminine race–Gwynn’s wife, Demi, is depressingly familiar as a sweet nitwit whose husband doesn’t respect her; his and Richard’s shared agent, Gal, is familiar too as successful striver with a desperate fear of getting fat and an unexpected slutty streak. Lizette the teenaged babysitter lives only to give her boyfriend blow jobs in cars, and Belladonna the crazed fan just has sex with anyone who asks.

Amis is usually too subtle to write bad caricatures of simplistic female ciphers. He writes fully fledged women who can imagine meeting, though you’d probably try to avoid them. The only female in the novel who seems to have a braincell and be worth talking to is Gina, Richard’s wife. Unfortunately, she is one of the least believeable characters in the novel–written as a black box, because that’s what she is to Richard, I had no idea why she did anything she did, or what she truly felt about anything else anyone did. She seemed smart, but she did some questionable things–or did Richard just think she did? Or was she a woefully inconsistent character? I have no idea, and honestly, I didn’t care at all about Gina–she wasn’t human enough to worry me, even though the narration alleges that she’s much more sympathetic than Richard.

Well, who cares, right? This is a novel about men and what they do to each other–the women are only collateral damage. A few lame female characters does not really disrupt that. The only character I can really complain about is Anstice. A vicious parody or outrageous stereotype–take your pick–Anstice is the 44-year-old administrative assistant at Richard’s literary magazine. When she takes him to bed with her, he’s impotent, but Anstice–clearly a pathetic and elderly virgin–thinks his fumbling *is* sex and talks for the rest of the novel about his “hugeness” in her. She also melodramatically plots suicide since Richard is married and cannot be with her.

And then she kills herself.

And that’s it! It!! Don’t worry that I’m giving something away about the plot, but Anstice’s suicide is utterly immaterial to anything. There’s an incidental comment that this has happened, and then Anstice is simply absent–first conveniently, then inconveniently–for the rest of the novel.

This is, of course, supposed to be evidence of Richard’s immorality, lack of human emotion and empathy. And it is, repellantly.

The problem is not that no one cares that Anstice is dead-it’s that she was never a real character to begin with. She is a spinster, as Richard thinks and comments over and over again, and so alone in the world the doesn’t even bother to clean herself or her apartment. She not only doesn’t know how sex works, she’s weirdly over-confident enough to talk about her one non-sex experience constantly. And she has other no other characteristics, interests, or associations. She’s just a weird sad pastiche of what both men and women fear most about women.

I’m sorry to go on and on about this–women truly are a small part of the novel and the actual story is populated by fascinating horrible males–the whole book is about wretched people, but I just feel the wretchedness is far more accurate and active in the dudes than in the ladies. And Anstice is a bridge to far for me.

Nevertheless, I loved the book and again apologize for ending the series with this post, which is not representative of my feelings overall. Still, it had to be said.

It was a pleasure reading with Mark, who has now moved on to a new rereading project with James Joyce’s *Ulysses.* I won’t be joining for that one, but cheering from the sidelines.

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 16th, 2013

Cohabitational Reading Challenge: The Information: Update

I’m on a break from Mr. Amis right now, due to pressing book-club committments, but I’m already about 2/3 of the way through *The Information* and finding it as good as I remembered. Better, even, because now I understand a great deal more. Amis compares impotency with trying to put an oyster in a parking metre, and compares *that* with Caussabon having sex with Dorothea. I laughed until I choked, which I’m almost positive I didn’t do at 18, not least because I hadn’t read *Middlemarch* yet. The nice thing about Amis, however, is that despite his smarty-smart pants-ness, he still provides a layer of the book that’s for everyone. Well, everyone but prudish teenagers, I guess, can laugh at the oyster/parking metre thing.

But actually, I’m feeling increasingly that the book’s target market is *me*, and not in comforting way. The book is very hard on the posturing and entitlement on the minor writer–“such people and their delusions of grander need to be put in their place” is the message I’m taking home. Richard has now signed his book with an independent American press with no advance $$, and has accompanied Gwynn on a book tour. Partly, Richard is writing a grudging profile of Gwynn for a large magazine and a large sum of money. Partly, he’s attempting to publicize his own book, and that’s of course going spectacularly badly. I recognize all the worst moments–sitting alone at the signing table heaped with your books while another author is surrounded by admirers; being forced to listen to lunatics at literary events because they’re the only one interested in speaking to me; carrying a heavy sack of my books to a sales event, only to have to lug them all home again.

Poor Richard. But also, 15 years later, poor *everybody*–at least in this country. If only Amis could’ve seen what was coming for the literary world–there are so very few mega-successes now, so many of us are comfortable with the idea that we can’t sit in our home offices dreaming all day, so much of a writer’s time is spent earning money often in non-literary ways, that Richard’s goals kinda do seem entitled, selfish, naive.

But, um, this would all be so much more poignant if Amis weren’t one of the few writers in the world that *does* fly first class, and never gets ignored at parties. Is this novel a parody of *himself*? My mother’s theory was that Amis saw Richard as himself if everything had gone wrong instead of right, as it actually did go. I now wonder if Amis isn’t supposed to be *Gwynn.* And how much less funny it is then.

I almost never do this, this decoding of the author’s secret self in the novel, but *The Information* almost begs it–too much of the author tour in the US rings like notebook observations of a stranger in a strange land himself.

In the end (or 2/3s, whatever), I don’t care who is supposed to be whom, orif this book is mean or anything, because it is SO funny, well observed, and gorgeously written. I’m pretty sure I don’t want Mr. Amis to be my friend, but he’s probably not interested in that position anyway.

I’m off to read Edgar Allen Poe for a few days, back at Amis next week. In the meantime, Mark’s farther ahead and probably will be finishing up soon.

And yes, it has been delightful reading the funny bits aloud to each other. The Cohabitational Reading Challenge is one of our better ideas, actually.

January 9th, 2013

Next: 2013

Some years I have a full complement of serious, specific resolutions; some years I have almost none. This year is…somewhere in between.

1) Read awesomely. Gotta start with the easy ones. Though I’ll leave off with the To Be Read Challenge after I finish the 2012 books (in a couple months, sigh) I don’t think I’ll abandon program reading–it’s fun and gives me a structure to work in. My last post was the first installment of awesome reading will be the Cohabitational Reading Challenge, wherein my beloved and read the same book, talk about it at meals, and blog about it. I’ll also be continuing with my super-great book club, and trying to make full use of my Kobo.

2) Cook everything in the Milk Calandar, preferably in the month in which the recipe appears. Also cook other new things–stop being culinarily boring/lazy.

3) Start writing fan letters to musicians, artists, writers, filmmakers, and maybe others that I like. I’m not above a “you suck and here’s why” note, as well, but largely I’d like to keep this resolution positive. I’ll post these as open letters on my blog as well–when someone is awesome at what they do, I think it’s worth spreading the news.

4) Finish a complete draft of my current book. That one seems really daunting, but originally I was supposed to finish it at the end of *last* year, so really, I should be able to manage it.

5) Don’t eat it just because it’s a cookie. There will be other cookies. Not all cookies need to be eaten.