Books J'ai Lu 2009

This is the first year, I think that I've read any amount of books worth listing- the result of a full year of reading-goodness-working in a bookstore. Almost all of these were excellent reads, or at least fulfilled their purpose at the time, because I usually will abandon a book if I find that it doesn't hold my interest for whatever reason. The following are in no particular order.

1. Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
2. Manhood for Amateurs, Michael Chabon
3. Education of a British Protected Child, Chinua Achebe
4. The Museum of Innocence, Orhan Pamuk
5. Barney's Version, Mordecai Richler
6. Too Much Happiness, Alice Munro
7. Asterios Polyp, David Mazzucchelli
8. Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
9. Youth, JM Coetzee
10. Elizabeth Costello, JM Coetzee
11. What the Dog Saw, Malcolm Gladwell
12. The Confessions of Edward Day, Valerie Martin
13. Superfreakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
14. Birthday Letters, Ted Hughes
15. Brightsided, Barbara Ehrenreich
16. Nickle and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich
17. Nocturnes, Kazuo Ishiguro
18. What is Stephen Harper Reading, Yann Martel
19. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel
20. Brooklyn, Colm Toibin
21. The Blue Hour, Lillian Pizzichini
22. Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
23. Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell
24. This is Not a Book, Keri Smith
25. Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, Carl Wilson
26. French Women for All Seasons, Mireille Guiliano
27. The First Person and Other Stories, Ali Smith
28. Food Rules, Michael Pollan
29. Late Nights on Air, Elizabeth Hay
30. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, David Sedaris
31. When You Are Engulfed in Flames, David Sedaris
32. Things I Have Been Silent About, Azar Nafisi
33. Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963, Susan Sontag
34. A Blue Hand, Deborah Baker
35. Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali
36. After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie, Jean Rhys
37. Somewhere Towards the End, Diana Athill

- All the ones that I had recorded or could readily remember, but the list may get slightly longer.

Little Crown

Little Crown, originally uploaded by _stringsong.

One of six drawings in a series. Pencil crayon and ink on found paper.

Starstruck

Photograph by Nicholas Alan Cope

In the beginning
She made it
Clear
Her dislike of astronauts.

Pure contempt
For those suited up
Flyers-
Bound for beyond
Heaven.

Their journey
The effect caused
By a rocket fuel
Explosion.

Hurdle jumping
Through space,
Exploring galaxies
and bombing the moon.

For great cause
or for country,
For space glory.

Gold medalists in
the cosmic Olympics,
With flags flying.
None of it
Could be figured out.

Bee's Nest- Bee's Knees

Bee's Nest
Originally uploaded by _stringsong

A pretty shot from my trip to Toronto's beaches in November. Wishing for blue skies on this dreary + cold day.

Going to try to make it this year...

Slow Sunday

(photo from ffffound.com)

Andre and I vowed several times to be Internet free this weekend, but we're finding it impossible! We constantly go back and forth on whether or not to cancel our Internet. I think we have been a teensy bit more mindful this weekend though and I haven't been on the facebook thing at all. I also got a lot of other nice things accomplished like cooking and baking and going to 7 West with friends.

Tonight I made this recipe for chana masala- adapted from a sweet little Orangette recipe. At first I thought it wasn't flavourful and Indian-foodish enough, but after it cooled a bit I was very happy with it. I recommend.

Now I'm waiting for my banana bread from Veganomicon to bake. Our oven takes about 1/3 longer than it should and I even turned the temperature up. Need to buy oven thermometer.

Happy Sunday evening everyone,

I recommend enjoying it with Boards of Canada and a whiskey and coke.

Home Tonight

Making pizza. Now eating pizza actually; pear, brie, onion, prosciutto.

Needing some new music: the new Tegan and Sara, Dead Man's Bones- both need to purchase. I'm also on the lookout for good podcasts. Anyone know of some?

I want to move to Kansas City,
Move to Kansas City;
Move pretty baby
Where the skies are so blue.

COME to Canzine

Will be offering my first ever lil poetry zine TOAST ATTACK.

Voila!



See you there!

Red Letters.

I never read the card you wrote.
I moved away.
floated
downstream.
settled offshore.
shoeboxed it-
locked it-
iced over
and
ended.

Pretended.
Built walls from
straw-
Blew them down.

Set fires.
Rewired
thought waves.
Had
heart worms
embedded,
then
unthreaded.

Regretted/
dreaded
going back.

Just for fun.

Very poorly lit photos of Ripley and Mowat.

Three shots from my first ever vegetable garden. (Three cheers!)

Collards and bright green cherry tomatoes.

VAMOOSE!

From the sketchbook. Ballpoint pen, black marker pen.

Love Coetzee

"In real life all that he can do well it appears, is be miserable. In misery, he is still top of the class. There seems to be no limit to the misery he can attract to himself and endure...Misery is his element. He is at home in misery like a fish in water. If misery were to be abolished, he would not know what to do with himself."

J.M. Coetzee, Youth, 2003.

Oh that.

Been drawing moose again
She says what
He says
Writing dialogue
I've been
trying anyways.
From underneath a cat.
Remember?
That's been me tip-typing.
Oh yes,
Now she can recall it.

12Hours

Wearing men's shoes,
she says relax
and writes lyrics for you to find
all over.

Bans nostalgia
breathes in deep
and says relax again.

Under stars,
It's a countdown.
To a problem
she can't solve
worth brooding over
every second.

Lighten up.

A Writer's Disconnect

Between the Impersonable
in person
and the forthright there.
Fourth right thing that you've
said today.
That they forced you to write down
and asked for you to like.
When your whispered or shy
mumbles were no match
for the OH HI,
Hello.

Who's Who who?

Tonight while on the phone with my mom, I was having a disagreement over the length of a chipmunk's tail. (Don't ask why.)(Also my hypothesis was wrong.)

Trying to prove myself right though, I did a quick Google search for chipmunk's tail (pretty cute search terms) and discovered Hinterland Who's Who.

Apparently their television clips should have been a staple of my childhood, but I can't remember every seeing any of them! Regardless, I'm really happy that the gov of Canada has a website like this. It helps me in my efforts to win disagreements over the dimensions of various wildlife, and I'm pretty excited about using some of the photos as references for drawing.

P.S. Still need to check out the WhoTube.

Keri Smith Guest Blogging at Penguin US this week.

(Photo from www.kerismith.com)
Check out Keri Smith's blog over at Penguin this week. I really like today's post on being different in school etc. I could definitely relate to being away/wanting to be away all of the time.

How I Discovered my Secret Powers

Very happymaking.

Excited about her new book coming out. Tomorrow???

Also, my Favourite Food.

Spent the day with my friend Alice.

I love Alice Munro. Every time I read her I'm inspired to write a short story. I think it's because she's literally so good, that reading her is like being taught the perfect form. She makes it look easy. I Highly recommend this book, I'm about halfway through. A bit sad and cynical at times, but always entertaining, and so, so Canadian.

Might be resurrecting some of my abandoned plot lines. Stay tuned.

Lady with a bald spot.

Weekend.

Have had a really good couple of days. A lot of visiting with friends, and lazy times at home. Went to see Julie and Julia last night with L and K. Amy Adams somehow looks like she belongs in my family. Like, genetically? A bit crazy, maybe. I love Meryl Streep and now really want to cook amazing french foods. Still working on mastering the art of "cooking," without any qualifier but we'll get there.

Lightselectric

Lightselectric
Originally uploaded by _stringsong

This is a test.

Turtle

I was relearning photoshop and did some very basic colouring in. It's been so long! I forgot how time consuming it is. I'm going to be putting up some more of my sketches over the next little while. Just for fun.

Lame Limericks

Silly Linny
On a lark
Got married to a question mark.
She liked his bite, she liked his bark,
but couldn't take him to the park?

Hamburglar

In line at McDonald's
buying a hamburger
I lean over the balcony
to people watch.
Over the partition
I spot a lady with a bald
spot.
I'm above her
she's below me
but only geographically.

My Cat is a Conch Shell

My cat is a conch shell
When I'm quiet I can
hear
waves
from the ocean of purrs
rolling in
purr, purr, purr
pure, pure, pure
noise waves
from inside the fur
Of my cat
the conch shell

26

Dear noisy annoying lighter clicker on the bus behind my head this morning half of me wants to test out my patience and keep quiet the other half wants to test my SPEAKING UP about it.

You;

are the superlative.

And then

What should I do?

Funeral Blues

Funeral Blues
by W. H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message She Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

She was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Tuesday, June.

Juney Tuesday stands at the bus stop
Stomps her foot
Hears a noise and looks up.
Gum Shoe
It's not a mystery
Her step is stuck.
When
One two three
The bus roars past-
Misses it's turn
Blocks up traffic
Blows it's horn.

Juney Tuesday sunburned
With a manuscript
and a shoulder bag.
Going home.

Home Alone Baseball Game.

Post grilled cheese sandwich- I watch Elvis Costello chat up Zooey Deschanel on television.

One.

Wilson, Carl.

Let's Talk (About Love)
(brackets mine)

Pg.77

...Brain science has shown how musical pleasure is structured by expectation and familiarity, in a particular song (when will the pattern resolve, and how?), between songs (is this music like other music we know and like?) and between genres (do you know the rules of this kind of music?). Balancing repetition and novelty is crucial.

The Next Little Bit...

This blog has been neglected to the highest degree. Like celsius, lately. I've been feeling guilty for not blogging and as such haven't even come near this place in months.

Doctor.(Homonym)
Remedy.(Synonym)

I'm going to start slowly, a toe-in.

A sort of hello-this-is-what-I'm-reading.

In quotes like.

Coyote in the Beach

In the future looking backwards, in the photo albums, this will be the rose period.
The glow period. Early.

Thinking about the nature of honesty, and secrets. We know we can't say absolutely anything to anyone. For the sake of peaceful relations. For the sake of propriety, for privacy. We can omit our disagreements, our tactlessness. We can stay silent.

How far does this go? Could you have a long relationship friendship with someone secretly disagreeing with decisions they make always? What about their haircut? What about something vital? Could we silently allow? Forever?

And the other person, would they want their friend, their intimate as a friend without knowing their strong opinions good or bad? Would they be happier not knowing? Would they rather be friends with you (as a doll)?

It's like Susan Sontag's idea of (x). It's very x-y. Secret personalities. The answer of course, I think is that we only become close to people whose dark and secret opinions match our dark and secret own. Or the ones whom we can't offend.

The other relations in our lives, largely acquaintances, maybe relatives see our x-ish personality. X, the scourge.

......

In Toronto right now there is a coyote loose in the beach. He killed a chihuahua. Newspaper headlines announce that the city is now hunting him. Bureaucrats are hunting the hunter. I don't think it's fair. While he killed someone's pet, to him it was just a bug, a squirrel. Now I imagine the circle is closing in on said coyote, in a shrinking habitat, and a shrinking city.