January 7th, 2012

The To Be Read 2012 Challenge

I really enjoyed the 2011 To Be Read Challenge from the Roofbeam Reader site; so much so that I’ve decided to do the 2012 one even though signups have closed and I can’t be an official participant. I think just having the list in mind will be enough to keep me reading.

I was pleased with the challenge because it got me to read books I bought or was given as gifts–therefore, books I had a good reason for wanting to read–but was intimidated by and had been avoiding. The challenge also got me to do another thing I should do but get intimidated by, which is review. There is no better way to study and understand a book than to form a cogent piece of writing about what you think of it. And I seriously doubt I would’ve written 12+ reviews, and thus been 12+ reviews smarter, last year if this list hadn’t been pushing me. So let’s do it again.

The first two books will the alternates from last year–those were no less desirable than the others on the list, just farther down the shelf and thus listed last. Ok, here we go:

1. *Little Eurekas* by Robyn Sarah
2. *Subways Are for Sleeping* by Edmund G. Love
3. *Hamlet* by William Shakespeare (illustrated version by Harold Copping)
4. *The Story of English* by Robert McCrum, William Cran, and Robert MacNeil
5. *Beatrice and Virgil* by Yann Martel
6. *The Bull Is Not Killed* by Sarah Dearing
7. *Small Change* by Elizabeth Hay
8. *The Beauty Myth* by Naomi Wolf
9. *Moon Deluxe* by Frederick Barthelme
10. *A Nail in the Heart* by Ian Daffern
11. *Mouthing the Words* by Camilla Gibb
12. *The Book of Other People* edited by Zadie Smith
13. *On the Road* by Jack Kerouac

Alternates
14. *Burning Ground* by Pearl Luke
15. *The Pickup Artist* by Terry Bisson

Wish me luck!

January 4th, 2012

Rose-coloured reviews *Snow Crash* by Neal Stephenson

I don’t know know much about hard science fiction, but I think Neal Stephenson’s *Snow Crash* might be the closest I’ve come to reading some. The structure and plot of the book depend heavily on real–or reality-based–scientific propositions, and the writing is highly logical, research-based, and dense. I believe Scott chose this book to give to me (please correct me if I’m wrong, SW) because Stephenson, possibly unlike some others of his breathren, is a very vivid, fun writer, and *Snow Crash* is at times wildly exciting, hilarious, and even a bit sexy.

The story starts with the Deliverator, a pizza-delivery-person named Hiro Protagonist–half-black, half-Asian, entirely brilliant computer programmer but too alienated and independent to work with others. So he is an aggressive vigilante style pizza guy zooming through the franchulates of what was once Los Angeles.

Oh, did I mention that *Snow Crash* is set in some other version of reality than ours? It’s not the future: the book was published in 1992, and I think that’s about when it is set. At least, at one point we learn Hiro is 30, and at another, that his father was a WWII veteran, so it would seem 1962 is about the latest he could’ve been born. But it’s a far advanced version of 1992, where the twenty years between then and now seem to have already happened: people spend copious time on the internet (called “the metaverse” here), within there are programs called “Earth” and “Librarian” that do almost exactly what GoogleEarth and Google do now. But it’s also a seemingly post-apocolyptic America, where there are no laws, most suburbs are run by commercial enterprises, and the rest by the mafia. It was very confusing and I never really worked out what the recent history of Stephenson’s universe was.

It didn’t keep me from enjoying the book, though. Let’s go back to that first scene–it’s brilliant. Actually, it’s probably the best part of the book but we’ll get to that. This 20-page zoom through the burnt-out remains of LA in a mob-owned car is full of new ideas and new words, my favourite of which is “loglo”–the yellow glow of the all the illuminate logos on a commercial street. Neat, huh? It took a second reading to realize that the first half-dozen pages have no action at all–just hyper-kinetic descriptions of the wild, Mafia-run world in which Hiro Protagonist lives and works and drives really fast.

But then Hiro gets fired from his job for reasons that mostly pertain to his colleagues, who are a crazy ethnic stereotype of idiotic Eastern Europeans (there are lot of ethnic and sexual stereotypes in the book, which are annoying but not really worth discussion), and who never appear again. Nor does the job appear again, though a lot of what we learned about the mob is useful. However, the problem with this scene is not one I realized until afterward I’d finished the first reading and started again–Hiro never behaves in this way again, never does anything that coincides with, reflects, or refers to this period of pizza delivery. It’s a cool stunt, a neat thing to read and likely to write, but it could’ve been much shorter and allowed the real action of the book to get on.

One thing the scene does accomplish is to introduce the other main character, YT (Yours Truly), a skateboard courier who harpoons Hiro’s car (which is what the skateboard couriers of the future do to make time) while he’s struggling to deliver that pizza. When Hiro does something very stupid–drives into an empty swimming pool–YT helps him out and delivers the pizza at the last possible second, drawing her to the attention of the mob bosses.

YT is a 15-year-old girl and, unlike Hiro, a truly cool and fun character with an interesting backstory and definite personality. She is also a skateboarder, on a futuristic board (“plank”) that his millions of tiny feet instead of wheels, and which can skim over gravel, turf, and prone people. I *love* reading about skateboarding, and these scenes are awesome.

Unlike YT, Hiro never becomes a real character; he remains a vehicle for advancing story, as perhaps you would expect of someone named Hiro Protagonist. That’s what I’m not certain of–it’s certainly clever of Stephenson to make his hero/Hiro a blank cypher decorated with heroic awesomeness, but it’s kinda frustrating to read and I could never figure out if Hiro’s blankness was on purpose. Sometimes Stephenson seems to be making fun of sci-fi heroics, like when Hiro tags along on a murder investigation, running up a hill easily because “his legs are in incredible shape from sword-fighting.” That sort of teen-girl swoon writing is funny, or really bad–I’m not sure which.

However, this isn’t something I had a problem with as I read–the first half of the book moves very fast and is funny, interesting, and pretty exciting. Then…dadumdadum…we get to the part with the research. Oy vey, I’ve never seen anything like this. Hiro gets wind from an old love interest (who then disappears for 100s of pages) that various corporate and religious interests have become linked in a nefarious way that has something to do with the ancient language and culture of Sumer. He pursues this by doing what any of us present day folks would do–looking it up on the internets.

And then the book reproduces everything Hiro discovers. It’s not digested, it’s not worked into the narrative–it’s a big Wikipedia entry, broken up with action sequences (he has to take breaks from the research to do more interesting stuff). In Stephenson’s Metaverse, they’ve progressed beyond reading for them selves to a “Librarian Daemon” who speaks the information to you, but it’s not a like an actual character–it’s like Wikipedia in quotation marks.

My knowledge of Ancient Sumer ain’t what it ought to be and in large part I couldn’t figure out whether Stephenson had made up the more outlandish bits of the research or not. I wondered, if he had gone to the trouble of writing his own history of a civilization, why he didn’t present it in a more engaging manner, and if it wasn’t original, why he didn’t trust us to go read the encyclopedia ourselves if we were interested.

In the end, it would seem that the material is all real, because that digital librarian is always remarking on whom he’s quoting, and the in the acknowledgements the author states “most of the words spoken by the Librarian originated with [historians and archaeologists] and I have tried to make the Librarian give credit where due, verball footnoting his comments like a good scholar, which I am not.”

Which just goes to show that different people want different things from a novel. I certainly did not want 50 pages of relentless info-dumping, but that might be my fault. In all honesty, though I maintain as I always have that I am not stupid, I had a very very hard time following all the research and then a second section that worked over that material as a kind of metaphorical template for the present action. What were all those Russian Orthodox folks doing in Oregon? Why did Hiro’s long-lost love get an antennae implanted in her skull? Was Asherah a person? Why did the Mafia turn out to be the good guys…or did they?

Nevermind, the ending’s brilliant. I didn’t understand all of it by I don’t care–it was fantastic. All that running around on boats, and some really cool scenes with YT, proving when Stephenson gets interested in developing a character (pretty much only the one in the whole book), he does a great job of it. The action was amazing–helicopters, glass knives, oil tankers, heroic self-sacrifice and bitterly learned lessons, a posse of skateboarders, it was insane.

I have never been so divided on a book, I don’t think–so much to love, so much that made me want to stop reading. There’s no saying this author can’t write–obviously he can, but sometimes chooses not to? Or something. Whatever, I had fun, though the book took me two weeks to read and I fell asleep a few times. I would like to read another book by Stephonson, though preferably a shorter one.

This is my 12th and final book for the To Be Read 2011 challenge. Better late than never.

January 2nd, 2012

Back!

Hello and welcome to 2012–I hope you had an excellent holiday and did not spend as much time in the Halifax airport as I did. But except for that little blip, and the fact that I never seemed to get the time to blog as I meant to, I really enjoyed my time off. It was spent reading, swimming, eating, playing with cats, talking to friends, talking to family, talking to people who will soon be my family, eating, wishing for more cats, opening presents (so many presents), and eating some more. There was also a lot of sleep involved–sometimes multiple naps per day.

2011 was one crazy mofo of a year–a wonderful one, but there was a reason for all those naps over the holidays–I was exhausted. In 2011 I talked to so many cool people, read so many excellent books, petted so many excellent cats, there’s really no boiling it down. So here’s a list of random good stuff from 2011:

Best cat of 2011: Evan, who likes everyone and everything except boredom, who didn’t panic when he fell into a half-full bathtub (twice), who sometimes gives actual hugs, and who desperately wants to eat a moth.

Awfullest Moment: When I realized I had hired the movers for the wrong day. The fact that it was the realization and not the actual move that was the worst day tells you something about the excellent friends (and brother, and partner) I have. Thanks, Scott, Ben, Mark, and Wren, for being not only the nicest but the physically strongest people around!!

Best musical discovery on my part of 2011: I don’t know how long they’ve actually been around, but I didn’t know about Elliott Brood until this year, and I’m sorry it took me so long.

Best-Planned Book Launch: Jessica Westhead’s launch party for *And Also Sharks* was such a superlative example of fun and inclusivity for a book that actually merits the excitement that surrounded it.

Most puking: That honour would go to the lady across the aisle on my Toronto to London (England) flight, who vomited noisily for nearly four hours. Obviously she was very ill and I doubt that this small honour can make up for that–I really hope she was all right and able to enjoy England, but oh my goodness gracious, that was a lot of puking.

Closest approximation of my life in 1991: Nintendo Wii. Seriously, I was wicked good at Super-Nintendo, and some things never fade.

Best interviewer: Well, obviously I’ve not been interviewed by all that many people, but sometimes it starts to feel like I have–all the ones who don’t enjoy it (plenty of good ones, too, of course). But Kerry Clare’s stage interview with me on the night of my book launch was so thoughtful, so insightful, challenging and interesting, all those things the best interviews are supposed to be, that it makes up for a lot of inane questions.

Dumbest illness: Getting mono just before my 33rd birthday, and a trip to NYC. I was never *that* sick, but I was undiagnosed for a while, which led to the stupidest thing anyone said to me all year–“It’s probably not leukemia” from the doctor at the walk-in, which did not lead to a very restful sleep that night. They actually didn’t figure out what I had until I’d been prescribed the counter-indicated drugs, which resulted in the year’s (and hopefully the lifetime’s) worst rash. Also, now it’s painfully obvious that I didn’t get kissed much in high school!

Best moment: Getting proposed to on the beach. Rashes, vomit, moving, who cares–this was the best year ever.

Best rap video partially set at No Frills: Show Me Where Ya Noms At by Hannah Hart and Songs to Where Pants To. Seriously, watch it now.

December 22nd, 2011

Liking: Not Just for Facebook

While I’ve been completely dug under with horrible work, some things I wrote early, before the weight of the world crushed me, have been going up online. Good to remember my more positive days!!

A book I like, on the Advent Book Elf: And Also Sharks by Jessica Westhead

A journal I like, on The Literary Type blog: The New Quarterly

A website I like likes me back: Salty Ink’s Top 10 Canadian Books of Short Fiction

An artist I like: Marc Chagall and the Russian Avant Garde. Ok, that’s not online, but if you have a chance to see the exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario, go. So good, so joyful.

Also, hey, it’s Hanukkah, and almost Christmas, and the weather is nice. I still have so much to do but I think I can be the light (candles? twinkle lights?) at the end of the tunnel, and it’s sparkly.

December 19th, 2011

The Year in Books

I read a lot, and I never feel like I’m reading enough. Everyone is always talking about some book I’ve never heard of, or worse, some book I’ve heard of a thousand times and want to read but haven’t gotten to yet. I am perpetually behind in my periodicals, searching for the next book-club book, seeing reviews of stuff I need to pick up, attending launches and buying those books, being overwhelmed when my library holds finally come in, and then cruising past a “new releases” table at the library or bookstore and going, “Hey, what’s this?”

I would not, of course, have it any other way. I’ve read more this year than ever before (since I started keeping track in 2006) but still not nearly enough. Lots of bloggers run reading stats just to see, and I never have but it looks like fun, so I did it this year, just for those I read cover-to-cover only; I don’t count it if I skim or flip or don’t finish.

I categorized by genre (anthologies, novels, non-fiction, short stories, YA, graphic, and poetry, and then again by author genre. I don’t know why I picked these categories, except that they seemed obvious. I had meant to do national categories as well, but I realized I don’t know where all my authors are from, some move around, and I actually don’t care.

I’m not posting the math because I couldn’t actually make the two sets of numbers total the same, which is embarrassing but not worth doing all the math a third time to see what the problem is. I would approximately 85 books, about half of those prose fiction. Surprises? Yeah, that the poetry and graphic novel numbers were so lame (guess I know what my reading resolutions will be), that gender parity is perfect (the book I have in hand is by a dude, so I guess the scales could tip). On the other hand, I am not surprised that the YA number is low; I respect the genre but I rarely enjoy it, and I don’t think I’m going to resolve to read more, at least not this year. The non-fiction number is respectable but it’s also kind of a lie, containing narrative non-fic like *Black Like Me* in the same category as wedding planning guides (yes, I read them cover-to-cover; I can’t help it).

This was a curious exercise, and it proves some blind spots (not least of which are my math). I might try to reflect on the year more qualitatively in my next post–ie., a best-books-this-year post. The quantitative method doesn’t seem to be doing to much for me.

December 17th, 2011

Rose-coloured Reviews *Songs for the Missing* by Stewart O’Nan

I have been working in publishing for way too long not to read all the extra book bits no one cares about. Card page, acknowledgements, note about the type, copyright page–I’m on it. And that page of quotations from reviews some poor intern who hasn’t read the book cobbled together (that was me, once)–that too, though since this only happens once I’ve purchased it, there’s no point.

In fact, it can be problematic to sit down with a brand new reading project and start with 7 or 8 contextless statements on it’s extreme brilliance. Songs for the Missing by Stewart O’Nan was an extremely well-reviewed book and had 26 such statements, and I daresay I would’ve like it better had I not had my expectations overwrought by promises such as “As we read, we, too, are changed, and in ways we cannot even understand.” (San Francisco Chronicle) or “O’Nan is on a kind of mission to restore a simple, true sense of humantiy to the novel” (The New York Times Book Review)

After getting about halfway through the book, I actually followed up and read the whole of some of those reviews, and found that the excerpts were largely faithful to the wholes; this book is pretty universally adored. So at this point I just feel stupid for not really liking it all that much.

I’m not immune to the achievement of this novel. It’s about a family and a community suffering, waiting, and mourning when 17-year-old Kim Larsen goes missing. I understood that the author loved his characters and wished for a happier story than he could write for them–always a stunner to see that kind of restraint in writing. And the book felt very true: O’Nan never stooped to melodrama, never exaggerated or sugar-coated.

However: I never felt I knew the characters; even when I was terribly sad for them, it was more the many left-behind of the missing that they *represented* that I was sad for. Kim’s parents, Ed and Fran, never seemed to come alive for me, and her friends and boyfriend were little more than teenaged *types*.

I think the problem might have been one of ambition–there are six points of view in this novel, and it covers more than three years, so I never really felt that anything had been portrayed with the sort of depth I wanted.

But let’s back up and work through the book as a whole. The chapters are narrated in third-person-limited. That first one is from Kim’s perspective. It’s only after you read the whole of the book and come back that you realize how gorgeous this opening is, how perfect and elegaic it is, the only part I thought that was consciously poetic, without ever seeming to be. Kim’s viewpoint seemed honest, irreverent and flip as a person who doesn’t know she’s about to disappear. I completely got her character, though I didn’t necessarily like her.

And then she does disappear, from the narrative and from the world. I only picked up halfway through the book that the characters only got a narrative viewpoint when they were in the small town of Kingsville where it was set, or planning to go there imminently. It’s not giving too much away to say that, after the first chapter, Kim isn’t in Kingsville anymore, so we don’t get her POV.

The other points of view that take over after are Kim’s mom, dad, sister, best friend, and boyfriend. I thought it was telling that a number of reviews mentions that the point of view of *two* of Kim’s friends were used, but they weren’t: Nina gets a POV, Elise doesn’t, but the characters appear interchangeable until quite late in the story so it is very hard to keep it straight.

The pace of the novel is gut-wrenchingly slow, because the pace of a missing person’s investigation is, too, or at least feels that way to those waiting. I was bored, but I was pretty sure I was supposed to be bored; it was accurate for the situation being described.

Some of the various blurbage on the book described it as a kind of procedural, and not that I’ve read many of those but I don’t think it is. Big swaths of the investigation are ignored because the family isn’t actually privy to what goes on; the police/family relationship isn’t good. Again, that felt accurate if the book is a kind of procedural of how to be the family of the missing, which includes a lot of grace under condescension and forced ignorance.

There were some weird errors that I caught–Old Navy isn’t an expensive store and the Killers aren’t a British band. That made me worry about the facts I didn’t know enough to catch errors in, like…what the police did and when, and what the Larsens’ legal options were. The errors I mention here are trivial, but they were important in that they made me trust the narrative less, and thus distance myself from it–never a good thing.

As well, particularly at the beginning and the end, there were lots of things going on that the reader is never fully aware of even though the family is, and we certainly don’t know the exact procedures of the officials involved, even when our various narrators are well-involved. The narrative flits through time, and I often would’ve liked more detail about, say, Fran’s community organizing, but the story skips to focus on flirtations between Kim’s old friends.

This review is probably sadly revealing of my own goals as a writer. I like to live with my characters in what feels like real time–the framing of the story is the decision to write about it, and I don’t like the reader to feel her chin being nudged, “Look at this, no, *this,* this is what’s important and the rest doesn’t matter.” O’Nan is not embarrassed to nudge, to elide and emphasize what he sees as important.

So I never understood why the drug connection Kim and her friends had couldn’t be properly explained; the stigma lingers until the last page but I never figured out exactly what they did. For a while this is a secret so people are afraid to discuss openly, but after everyone knows, it’s still kept from the reader. Or it’s possible I’m just obtuse. Ditto the amount of obsessive detail about Ed’s readying of the first house he represents after he returns to work as a realtor following Kim’s disappearance. This section is so detailed that I was expecting him to find Kim’s body in the house’s basement, or something equally important. But there’s no obvious reason for these pages of emphasis–it drifts away and you don’t even find out what the house sells for, or if it sells at all. Very strange.

The ending is an anticlimax for both characters and readers as it would pretty nearly have to be, realistically, given all that has and hasn’t happened previously. O’Nan handles it with quiet aplomb–he doesn’t leave us quite without hope, but to the last, he doesn’t give us anything undeserved either. *Songs for the Missing* wasn’t really the book I wanted it to be, but nor was the reading of it in any way wasted time.

This was the 11th book in my To Be Read Challenge. One more to go before the end of the year!

December 15th, 2011

The Annual Christmas Conversation

I meet new people every year, and thus every December I get to have this strange conversation about my Christmas feelings . Sometimes I have to have it multiple years with the same person, as my confusing viewpoint is hard to remember. Perhaps I’ll just immortalize this in the blog, and then send people the link when they ask…

Ok, I won’t really do that, as people mean well and I am something of a special case–folks are right to be confused. Let me take you through it step by step:

1. I am Jewish.
2. I love Christmas.
3. I do not believe that Jesus is the Messiah.
4. I do believe in the brotherhood and sisterhood of humanity.
5. I like tinsel, cookies, carols, indoor trees, and time off work.
6. I attend Christmas parties, concerts, and other festivities, and enjoy them very much.
7. I do not represent anyone other than myself and, somewhat, my weird family. No one should use me as example when they are saying it’s ok to insist that non-Christian folks participate in Christmas festivities because, “Christmas is for everyone!” or “It’s really a secular holiday now.” It actually isn’t secular unless someone (like me) chooses to celebrate it in that way.
8. I am a secular Jew. Religious Jews–and religious other sorts of people–would likely have a much different reaction to Christmas stuff than I would. Or maybe not. The only way to know how anyone feels about anything is to ask that person specifically.
9. I am respectful of all cultures, including Christianity. I understand how devout Christians might find it off-putting if I told them I was taking an interest in their holy day merely for the music, cookies, tinsel, and hugs. I try to avoid invitations to truly religious occasions, even though they often have the best singing. I will not be hurt if I am not included.
10. I appreciate respect in return. I don’t do a lot of traditionally Jewish things, but no one gets to decide that I’m “not really Jewish” on my behalf.
11. Hanukkah is a pretty awesome holiday, but it is not a Christmas equivalent. It’s relatively minor in religious importance, though it’s been elevated in cultural significance due to closeness to Christmas on the calandar.
12. It’s fine to wish Jews Happy Hanukkah, but it’s also fine not to if you don’t know when it is (hint: it’s on the lunar calandar, so not the same dates every year) or what it celebrates (see Wikipedia link above). If you want to ask me about Hanukkah feel free, but you don’t have to.
13. One reason I love Hanukkah because it’s one of the only instances of a double “k” that I know of, and I think it looks neat.
14. Hanukkah tinsel exists, but it is really hard to find.
15. Sometimes I wear tinsel in my hair.

So…does that clear everything up?

December 9th, 2011

The past few days

In the past few days, my last two posts for the National Post’s book blog, The Afterword, have gone up: from Wednesday, Because there is no real and from Thursday, Oh my god, my friend is a writer–what do I do?. It was very fun writing for the Afterword, but I am happy to be back in my blog-home, without the pressure to post every day!

What else has happened recently? I went to a nice party, ate some really good but odd toffee, had a tough time catching a #7 southbound bus, and discovered that ligers are real! Did you think Napolean Dynamite made them up?? Me too! But no, really, there are actually ligers in the world. Also, tigons, or possibly tiglons. The information is a little unclear, mainly because most of the folks who have a big interest in this topic are crazy, but anyway, I just thought it was kinda neat. As if I was just sitting around chatting with friends and found out they have a gryphon in a zoo in upstate New York.

December 6th, 2011

Blog Promiscuity Continues

So today is day #2 of my affair with the National Post’s book blog, and on it I wrote a piece entitled Editors: Scourge of the Earth or Cheap Psychotherapists?”, which I hope you’ll find amusing and/or edifying.

I also had a one-night stand with The Story Prize blog, which resulted in this piece on finding the right point of view for a story.

I hope you can forgive me for all this blog debauchery–I promise to be back to the straight and narrow with Rose-coloured next week!

December 5th, 2011

Blog affair with the Afterword

You know how infidelity reveals itself–you get no action for ages and when you do it’s quick and perfunctory. And then, blammo, you realize that all your love and attention is going to someone else. Cheater!

Yes, it’s true, I’ve been blogging elsewhere and I wish I could say I’m sorry, but it’s been great! I’ll be pontificating all week long at the National Post’s book blog, The Afterword–here’s today’s post.

I’ll put the links here if you want to check it out. And I’ll be back full-bore on Rose-coloured by the weekend. Which if you keep going with the above metaphor, is sorta twisted. So let’s not.