Author: carin

reading canada

~ carin ~ Leave a comment

I like what the LRC has done in the July/August issue, ie. offering up a list of thirteen books that epitomize each province and territory—as chosen by writers from said locale.

Not saying I’m going to read every one of them (and why exactly not? I ask myself…) but I’ll keep the list handy. I am, however, very intrigued with two of the titles. Joan Thomas’ choice: The Two-Headed Calf, by Sandra Birdsell, representing Manitoba, which interests me because—ever since, a couple of years ago, I was hugely and pleasantly surprised by what Winnipeg has to offer (extraordinary art gallery, especially its collection of Inuit carvings; smoked fish, best eaten with thinly sliced red onions, rye bread, and washed down with ice cold vodka; great restaurants in very funky neighbourhoods; Fringe Festival; fabulous kids’ theatre arts program; annual lit festival: Thin Air; the North End; the downtown library; the freaky and beautiful Masonic architecture of the Legislative Building; the Forks, especially Tall Grass Prairie Bread Co. & Deli)—I’ve been very into that province generally.

Also want to read my friend Steven Mayoff’s PEI choice—My Broken Hero and Other Stories, by Michael Hennessey, about which he says, in part:  

“Hennessey’s prose adopts an easy, anecdotal tone…There are also dark streaks of violence… complex undercurrents thrumming beneath what is widely known as the ‘Gentle Island'”.

Hmm.

And because I also love B.C.—and occasionally spend part of my year there nestled in a small trailer in the woods—I may also have to read Lee Henderson’s choice: The Invention of the World, by Jack Hodgins.

Because how can I resist this—

“…about B.C., but also about the bigger ideas of heaven and earth, earning a living, human nature and the supernatural. It is a portrait of the B.C. way of being and one awesome read.”

Then there’s Denise Chong’s pick: Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion, which I’m embarrassed to say I have never read. Madeleine Thien’s choice for Quebec is also intriguing. And I know nothing about New Brunswick and Saskatchewan and I want to know more about Newfoundland (Lisa Moore suggests Michael Winter’s The Architects are Here) and the Yukon and NWT and Nunavut. And how could I not want to read the definitive book of Nova Scotia? I love NS.

And let’s not forget Alberta, a province I lived in for three years and know practically zippity doo dah about except it’s a 40 minute flight from Edmonton to Calgary.

So, yeah, I’ll keep the list handy.

But I’m not saying I’ll read every book.

I’m really not saying that.

I think.

~  

a good sign

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

Seen next to a busy street.

Had to stop of course.

None of the gardeners were there.

So I wandered about being amazed and delighted at the variety of contraptions and ‘constructions’

—humbled at the idea that people would come all the way out here to the middle of nowhere to work in the heat, tending rows of cucumber

and string beans

cauliflower

tomatoes (112 plants in this patch alone)

as well as lettuce (not to mention zucchini, eggplant, brussel sprouts, beets, carrots, herbs, peppers, kohlrabi…)

for the benefit—at least in part—of others.

~

just a minute

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Here’s another one minute ‘movie’ feature, this time at Geist. Really more like sixty seconds captured on film.  I like the idea of stitching together a glimpse of the country this way—a kind of cinematic quilt. My favourite, without having looked at them all, is Albion, B.C., with the sound of the train passing by the ‘station’—all that split second excitement and possibility, yet leaving everything just as it was—leaving us to wonder: is that good or bad?

~

a ripening of cucumbers

~ carin ~ 1 Comment

Maybe it’s summer, the heat, the mosquito bites. Maybe it’s where I am in the novel—ie. nearing the end [of the latest draft]. Or maybe I’m just not in the mood to read fiction and maybe I shouldn’t keep forcing myself to try.

The truth is I’m presently in love with memoir. Also personal essays, letters, biographies, diaries. It’s not a sudden thing. When I think about it I’ve been heading in this direction for months and months. There have been signs. I don’t know why I pretend to be so gobsmacked.

Still, the question needs to be asked: how did this happen?

Nothing would be easier than to say, oh yes, I know exactly when and where it began—it was with this book, or that book, that’s what led me down the memoir/diary/bio path. But who am I kidding? I can’t pin this whole mood thing on a single book—after all, I was attracted to the book, right? There must have been a reason for that. I was in the mood for what it had to offer.

That’s how these things work. It’s not like you’re so happy with fiction then you trip over a diary and out of the blue go crazy for the genre. You have to have been open for that genre to come into your life in the first place—otherwise you wouldn’t even notice it. And it’s the being open to it that comes as a surprise. Not even knowing what it is you need until it’s right there in front of you.

Anyway. No more guilt. No more pretending or ‘trying’. I’m off fiction temporarily. Period. I’m reading memoir. My stack includes Viola Whitney Pratt, Pablo Neruda, Pat Lowther, I Nuligak: The Autobiography of a Canadian Eskimo, Marina Nemat’s Prisoner of Tehran, Margaret Laurence’s Dance on the Earth, something called The Woman Who Walked to Russia, which I bought on a whim—no idea who or what this is about; The Letters of Alice B. Toklas, a biography of Dorothy L. Sayers, Confessions of an Advertsing Man by David Ogilvy, Wayson Choy’s Not Yet, and two old favourites: Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift from the Sea (in progress), and Alix Kates Shulman, Drinking the Rain.

Sigh.

I swear I feel better already.

“Menus, recipes, small scandals, small journeys; exchange of neighbourly courtesies and little kindnesses, little tasks; an earache, an inoculation; the text of a sermon, a ‘scene’ of some kind in church; sixpence won at cards, or a maidservant’s dismissal; a snowstorm, a ripening of cucumbers, a rumour from the wars in France; the garden, the weather, the walk before dinner—always these three—the garden, the weather…”

(from: English Diaries and Journals, by Kate O’Brien; Collins, London, 1943)

planting solitude

~ carin ~ 1 Comment

“How one hates to think of oneself as alone. How one avoids it. It seems to imply rejection or unpopularity. An early wallflower panic still clings to the word… we seem so frightened today of being alone that we never let it happen… if family, friends, and movies should fail, there is still the radio or television to fill up the void.

“…Even day-dreaming was more creative than this; it demanded something of oneself and it fed the inner life. Now, instead of planting our solitude with our own dream blossoms, we choke the space with continuous music, chatter, and companionship to which we do not even listen. It is simply there to fill the vacuum. When the noise stops there is no inner music to take its place We must re-learn to be alone.

“…how inexplicable [the need for solitude] seems. Anything else will be accepted as a better excuse. If one sets aside time for a business appointment, a trip to the hairdresser, a social engagement, or a shopping expedition, that time is accepted as inviolable. But if one says: I cannot come because that is my hour to be alone, one is considered rude, egotistical or strange. What a commentary on our civilization, when being alone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it—like a secret vice.”

(from: Gift from the Sea, by Anne Morrow Lindbergh)