Category Archives: Books

In It Together

Posted on by

I was taking a Peloton class the other day, and I noticed something. I am a person who likes to send out “high fives” to everyone surrounding me on the leaderboard, particularly people who have the same group hashtags as I do. My people! I will think, happily, if I see someone from the #yestoyoucrew or #PelotonCanada. I was cheerfully moving my way up when I saw the hashtag #therapyfortherapists.

It reminded me of the time I saw #therapistsofpeloton and all I could think of was this:

What I’m saying is that I’m glad the rapists are getting therapy through exercise.

I love Peloton for many reasons, and one of them is that I love the idea that there are other people out there, doing the same exact workout as me at the same exact time. It gives me that wonderful feeling of we are all in this life together, doing the same things, but differently that I absolutely love. Here we all are, going about our lives, separately, but somehow interconnected.

When I was in university, I took a couple of classes from a professor who had the worst body odour you can imagine. This wasn’t simply a matter of oops, forgot my deodorant before I hit the gym. This was on another level altogether. It had to have been a medical issue; it was a Seinfeld-level entity. You didn’t dare sit in the first three rows in his classroom, or, if you did, you’d never make that mistake again. Even in the very back, at best you’d leave the classroom surreptitiously sniffing your clothes to ensure that the smell didn’t cling, at worst, you’d finish class with a nauseous headache.

It occurred to me one day, as I took notes on microeconomic systems, that this professor was married. I looked with wonder at the fluorescent overhead light glinting on his wedding ring, and I marvelled at the idea. There is a lid for every pot, I thought with awe. It hit me, maybe for the first time ever, that day back in 1995, that we all have sides of us that other people don’t see. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, as I scribbled down the required equations. Maybe his wife had no sense of smell, I thought, or maybe she liked his smell, maybe she felt it was a sexy, manly musk. Maybe she just loved him so much that his smell didn’t matter, and this realization – that maybe this professor had a whole different personality and set of interests that no one else knew about – made me feel a bit dizzy. Or maybe it was the body odour, wafting its way to my desk.

It started a bit of a fascination for me; not with that professor in particular, but with people in general. Professors for sure were interesting to think about. If you have ever been in an economics department, you will know what I mean. How interesting it is to think that at some point, these men – they were almost exclusively men back then, in the 90s – fell in love and, presumably, proposed to the women that they were married to. At some point, that professor who was dully talking about the utility curve had passionately declared his love and, most likely, had sexual relations. THEY INTERCOURSED. Most likely, anyway.

Later, when I was working in a very male-dominated department, the same thing would occur to me, not the intercoursing, but the romantic relations. I would be sitting in a meeting or working on a pricing model or listening to someone talk about synergies or optionality or circling back, and suddenly the idea that the speaker in question had presumably gone to a jeweler and chosen an engagement ring and given it to a woman, a woman who I had met at the office holiday party, with words of love and romance, popped into my head. Once, when speaking about a case of mergers and acquisitions, a former boss used the term opening the kimono. I’m sure that phrase is now out of use, but at the time I thought what if he HAD a kimono, an actual kimono, and he opened it for his wife.

The point of all this is that people are complicated, and interesting, and can be more than one thing at the same time. Every single person is so much more than they present to the world, which is something I try to remember every day. That person is beloved to somebody, I’ll think when I have a less-than-rosy interaction, sometimes with my teeth gritted.

A few months ago I was driving home and was followed very closely by a very large truck. I was driving with the flow of traffic, just barely over the speed limit, and I was being tailgated in an alarming way. All I could see in my rearview mirror was this giant truck grill. I stopped at a red light and just as it turned green, the driver in question wildly passed me on the right, which wasn’t a lane at all but a shoulder, cut me off, and then slammed on the brakes. He then proceeded to drive at least thirty kilometres below the speed limit.

What you have to understand is my reaction. His slow driving did not even register to me until I realized that there was no one in front of him to cause it. It took me a few minutes of this to realize that he was “getting me back.” Buddy. You’ve got the wrong girl. I wasn’t bothered at all by this, in fact, I was amused. I didn’t mind in the least. What, am I going to be two minutes late to get home? Am I going to be late to unload these groceries? I calmly, smilingly continued to follow him at this slow speed, listening to my Forever 35 podcast, when he tired of this ruse, and screeched his tires as he sped through the upcoming traffic circle. I imagined him going home, and complaining to someone about the middle aged bitch who slowed him down. I hope he had someone to complain to.

Weekly Reading

It was re-read week at the Boyhouse! I re-visited some old favourites. I’d like to please remind my friends that, when it comes to Alice Munro, I am only interested in discussing her craft and writing. Thank you for supporting my mental and emotional health.

Diary of a Provincial Lady. When I mentioned this book last week, I had an absolute craving to re-read it. This is one of my all-time favourites and no, nothing happens. I have read it so much that it is literally falling apart, and I have to carefully keep the pages in order. It is just so witty and clever. It contains one of my favourite paragraphs ever written: “Move about after dinner, and meet acquaintance whose name I have forgotten, but connect with literature. I ask if he has published anything lately. He says that his work is not, and never can be, for publication. Thought passes through my mind to the effect that this attitude might with advantage be adopted by many others.” HA. Also, I love this: “Overhear one lady in stalls ask another: Why don’t you write a play, dear? Well, says the friend, it’s so difficult, what with one thing and another, to find time. Am staggered. (Query: Could I write a play myself? Could we all write plays, if only we had the time?)”

Amy and Isabelle. No one can write like Elizabeth Strout; her prose is so beautiful and moving and heartbreaking. This book was a reread for me. I first read it in April 2020; my husband gave it to me for my birthday, when all the libraries were closed, and because of that, I was reminded of that time, rereading. It’s a bleak story about a mother and daughter in a small town in Maine – it IS Elizabeth Strout, after all – and the secrets they keep from each other. I am always fascinated by people’s lives, and the things we don’t know about the people we think we know, and this book is all about that. What I didn’t know until I read it this time is that this is Strout’s debut, which she wrote at age 42! I love knowing that. And what a debut! It’s a really incredible, character-driven book. It’s gritty. It’s grim. It’s beautiful. I love it.

Too Much Happiness. This book is a master class in spare, moving writing, and it is one of the few – maybe it’s the only? – Alice Munro collections that contains a novella. The novella is the title story, about famed Russian mathematician Sophia Kovalevskaya. More than that, this collection contains a really wide variety of really incredible stories. Munro is unmatched in creating stories of characters that I think about often.

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. In an unbelievable twist, I actually finished my Christmas shopping, which is a new record by far, and one which I don’t really want to repeat. There’s a reason for that, but I will tell you all about it later. For now, I hope you all have a beautiful October week. xo

Boring Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

Posted on by

I remember exactly what I was doing when I realized it. I was on the couch, with two babies in my lap, watching Sesame Street. What you must remember is what Gen X mothers were like, back in the early 2000s. Our generational Meh Attitude completely morphed into something else when our babies were born. We became laser-focused on the task at hand, the task of raising our now Gen Z children to be future stars of the world, and screen time was not a part of that process.

At the time, the expert recommendation was no screen time at all for children under two, and so any time I collapsed on the couch with my one-year-old and my newborn, colicky baby, I felt a deep sense of guilt and wrong-doing. It would only be a few years later where small children would be pacified with iPads in the grocery store, in waiting rooms, in restaurants, but that was not part of my reality, not at all. My generation was the one with the Baby Einstein board books and activity toys, it was the generation that actually put thought into whether black-and-white toys were more intellectually stimulating than colourful ones, and screen time was akin to neglect at best.

But my god, I was tired. I was tired and lonely in only the way you can be when you are surrounded by crying, needy little beings all day long. Someone was always crying, it seemed, someone always needed something, and it took a solid two hours to prepare to leave the house. And so sometimes I would succumb to the siren song of PBS Kids and watch Sesame Street.

And it was then that I realized that I really identified with Bert.

It was a startling, St Paul on the road to Damascus feeling, akin to the day I realized I wasn’t Jo March, I was Amy, and I wasn’t Elizabeth Bennett, I was Charlotte Lucas. Sure, I don’t have a paperclip collection, nor an interest in pigeons, but I did show everyone I know the photo I took of a blue heron.

I would have liked to think I was a wildcard like Grover, or a good time like Ernie, or even a secretive, mysterious Snuffalupagus, but no. I’m Bert. I like the colour grey, particularly in clothing and home decor, I enjoy oatmeal very much, and, most of all, I love what other people might term Boring Stories.

During the pandemic, when I started posting all the books I read on Instagram, I received a nasty message from a woman who berated my literary choices. She had bought – bought! – several books that I had raved about, and was sorely disappointed in every last one of them. How could you even like these? she wrote. Literally nothing happens! They are the most boring books I’ve ever read in my life!

Well. If you know me at all you know I’m a big fan of character-driven literary fiction. It’s true, I don’t love a thick plot or a lot of action. One of my favourites is Diary of a Provincial Lady, and nothing at all does happen in that book. Literally, nothing.

The same is true in my choice of podcasts, and nowhere was this more apparent than when I was road tripping with my husband this past week. He likes Things To Happen, I don’t, and so we end up with a happy medium of comedy podcasts and celebrity interviews. A current favourite of mine is Cookbook Club, where the hosts sound like the Schweddy Balls ladies on SNL, and are apt to take a five-minute digression about rainbow sprinkles and whether white sprinkles should be included in a rainbow mix and should we all just create our own rainbow sprinkle mixes? If I were to play that in the car with my husband, he would be liable to drive us off a cliff just to end the suffering.

We did not drive off a cliff, obviously, but we did have poor driving conditions for at least seven of the nearly ten hours that we spent in the car on Tuesday. The least of it was rain; we also hit snow in Rogers’ Pass and through the Jasper Parkway, plus fog most of the way, but mostly in Saskatchewan Crossing.

We were visiting my parents; it was my dad’s 75th birthday, and so there was a nice big house party with my aunt, cousins, and uncle. I had a great time visiting, playing dice poker, eating and drinking. I also enjoyed the sunrises over the lake:

And of course, walking in the fall foliage.

Rex is a really great traveller, and was so well behaved when we stopped for an overnight with our friends in Calgary.

We came home on Saturday and although the conditions were better, the drive was so long and slow due to road construction and single lane traffic. The views made up for it though.

Even still, I am feeling slightly resentful having to get in the car after all that driving. The only thing I miss about Calgary, other than friends, is the ability to walk anywhere in my neighbourhood. I have to drive to walk the dog, and yesterday Rex and I were not super excited to get back into the Subaru.

Speaking of Calgary, we drove through that old neighbourhood, and I expected to be very emotional, but I was not moved at all. Did my soul leave my body without me knowing it? The old house looks the same, other than the garden being a shambles, but it wasn’t sad to me at all. I guess I’ve really moved on.

Weekly Reading

Speaking of boring books, I read some that were boring TO ME, and both of those were memoir. Typically I love memoir but these just did not hit. However, I read a really excellent novel this week, so I guess things even out.

On Being Human. As I was reading this, I kept thinking that this seemed familiar, this memoir of a yoga teacher who discovers that she has had lifelong hearing loss in adulthood. Well, I discovered the reason I found it so familiar: I read this in December 2019. Obviously it wasn’t all that memorable. I am kind of annoyed with myself for spending time reading this not once but twice. To be fair, I did enjoy reading about her childhood and yoga journey, but I was just not in the mood to read chapter after chapter of self-loathing, name-dropping, and her experiences with creating a brand via Facebook. Wow, was it repetitive. If I pick this up again in five years, thinking it looks interesting, please remind me to drop it.

Good Material. A stand-up comedian is going through a breakup, and it’s devastating to him. Suddenly he is an apartment-less, emotional wreck who discovers that being single and 35 is different than being single in his 20s. This book is written almost entirely from the male point of view, which is not usually something I read, but which was entertaining and very well written. The point of view switches near the end and really shows that there are two sides to every story, at the least. The book ends in January 2020, which is a really interesting choice by the author – we know that things are doomed, but our characters don’t. I really enjoyed this book, it is so well-written and uniquely thought out. 

More Please. A couple of years ago I swore off millennial memoirs, on account of me being just a bit too old to appreciate them. This is a Me Thing, not a Them Thing – I’m just not in the right stage of life. However, I heard this woman speak on a podcast and was impressed enough to pick up her book – and I wish I hadn’t. It was so repetitive and boring, not saying anything new or interesting. The good news is that it only took me a couple of hours to read. 

Before we left on our road trip, we took our annual family photo. It’s interesting; we are not a family who fights or bickers, but when it comes to family photos, we all suddenly hate each other. Historically, that is, because somehow we took the photo with absolutely no conflict whatsoever. It was a red-letter day. Anyway, this photo will be our Christmas card, and if you are a person who also likes to send Christmas cards, let me know, and I will add you to my list. Very important caveat: I am only interested in a Christmas card exchange; I get hurt feelings if I send a card and don’t get one back. If we exchanged cards last year, you are already on my list! If you’d like to be included, message me in the comments and we’ll exchange addresses. Have a beautiful week, everyone! xo

Bear-ly An Update

Posted on by

After the neighbourhood started locking up their garbage in the spring, we hadn’t seen any signs of our resident bears until about a month ago. All of the ripening fruit around here was beckoning the bears with their fruity siren songs. Three weeks ago, my mother-in-law was sending me text after text, updating me on the sightings on our road; first the mama bear and her THREE cubs were in her friend’s fruit trees, then they were in another neighbour’s raspberry bushes, and then, finally, she spotted them herself, hanging out by our machinery shed. Later that night the bears pawed through our recycling bin, which was probably as disappointing to them as it was upsetting to me. The claw marks that they left on our bins were, to say the least, alarming.

I am relaying this very calmly, but I was not feeling very calm. I was very, very worried on behalf of Rex and all the myriad neighbourhood dogs, should they have a Close Encounter of the Bear Kind. In fact, a few weeks back Rex and I were headed to the garden and he took off at full speed. Typically this means he’s chasing off a deer or a squirrel or even a flock of birds, but as I saw a fuzzy brown bum disappear through the grape vines and down towards the hay fields below, I knew. My mother-in-law told me no, it surely must have been a deer, but I knew. I knew. And I was worried because although he’s proven he won’t go near a full-grown bear, the cubs are very small, and hence chaseable, for this time of year. I don’t think they are any bigger than Rex himself.

I was anxious and worried every time I let Rex out of the house or left the house myself. I’d scan the yard from every angle, I’d arm myself with the flashlight if it was dark, and my husband kept our bear-scaring noise-making gun loaded and our bear spray nearby.

I was writing in the office when my husband asked me to come look out our bedroom window.

There they were, snacking away at the grapes.

Something happened at that moment. I realized the bears are not here to terrorize me. This isn’t the 1976 film Grizzly. They are just trying to prepare for winter, they are trying to survive; which, by looking at those skinny tiny cubs, feels unlikely right now. They are eating the fruit and when the fruit is gone, they’ll move on, I thought, and that is exactly what happened. The fruit has been picked and/ or eaten, and the bears are no longer en evidence.

But in that moment, looking at those cubs, I felt an immense peace settle over me. It was a perfect example of changing my attitude when the circumstances were not in my control. Honestly, I felt at that moment like I could be a motivational speaker.

Literally nothing changed, except my feelings about the bears. I still scan the yard, I still take out the flashlight, I still watch and listen carefully, but I no longer feel anxious or even upset about it. They are just doing what they naturally need to do, and we can coexist.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not stupidly thinking that these bears are my friends or my pets or – if we go back to 1976 and the Governor General award-winning book Bear – my lovers. But I probably won’t see them until next spring, and I have a feeling that I won’t see those cubs again at all.

Weekly Reading

The unofficial theme this week is Unstable and Chaotic Women.

All Fours. Listen, there’s the usual chaos that surrounds perimenopause, and then there’s completely going bananas. When I put this on hold a few months ago, I saw a five-star review that simply said “middle-aged women going insane is my favourite genre” and I think “middle-aged woman going insane” pretty much describes this book. Wow, is it wild. IS IT WILD. A podcast was discussing it; one of the hosts had not finished, and the other said “have you got to the weird part yet?” and after reading this, I can say “what weird part?” THE WHOLE THING IS THE WEIRD PART. It is absolutely bonkers and I really enjoyed it BUT here is a warning for anyone who is sensitive in a totally normal way – this is very graphic, and very crazy, and it totally made me think of that woman who wrote a book about her open marriage and who recommended a waterproof dog blanket for a “sex blanket” as it was wipeable, for all the fluids. There are a lot of fluids in this book. So it’s about a woman’s journey into her own sexuality, gender, marriage, and kind of everything else? But it’s also really symbolic and pretty in-depth about women’s lives, expectations, and roles in society. The insights about being a woman in midlife, with all the power and all the invisibility and all the expectations, are spot on. It is also really, really funny. As an example: she is filming herself doing what can only be described as a mating dance, and she carefully buttons up a blouse and tucks it into giant beige panties, pulling the shirt hem through the leg holes. She looks at herself and thinks “this is a new outfit he’s never seen before.” I MEAN. I would not recommend this to anyone who has any kind of squeamishness about…kind of anything sexual, but also about open marriages and infidelity, and also, weirdly, dog poop? But I have to say I could not stop reading it and while I am generally a squeamish person, particularly about fecal matter – who isn’t, really – I did really enjoy this. But then, I like the kinds of books that have a lot of metaphors and symbolism.

Same As It Ever Was. It takes massive talent to create a such an incredible character arc and redemption story; it takes so much talent to write such a compelling book with such an unlikeable protagonist. I spent the first half of this 500 page book strongly disliking and being frustrated by the main character; it took until the halfway point when I could see a complex backstory that was breathtaking. When I say “frustrated,” I mean that I passionately wanted to shake this woman by the shoulders and tell her to pull herself together, for the love of god. Her behaviour was absurd to me, and incredibly unrelatable. But then! Then we are introduced to her mother and wow, this mother makes all other mothers look like Mother Mary. This woman is one of the meanest women in literature – and yet, the backstory is woven in so cleverly that you can’t help but feel a bit of pity for her. This is such a complex family story about mothers and daughters, about marriage and aging, and about friendship. It’s beautifully written and so satisfying.

We are heading out on a road trip this week! Not an All Fours type of road trip – I hope, dear god, I hope – but a fun time nonetheless. I will catch up with you all when I’m back, and in the meantime, please enjoy these lovely photos from our beautiful, currently bear-free, home base. Don’t be deceived by appearances: the creek is gorgeous right now, but incredibly stinky. It’s Salmon Spawning and Subsequent Death season, and the creek is full of dead salmon. Alarmingly, every once in a while there will be a decaying salmon on the walking path and I’m just not sure of the logistics. I’m surprised I haven’t seen the bears down there, snacking, but I guess they don’t like already-dead fish. xo

Don’t You Get Me Wrong

Posted on by

I was just finishing preparing dinner the other night when I heard a very familiar guitar riff. I left what I was doing to run to the living room, which sounds dramatic, but it’s literally five steps away.

Rewinding twenty-seven years or so, I was modestly famous among my friends in grad school for my uncanny ability to identify a song – title and artist – by hearing only the first half-second of the opening chord. We Are Family! Sister Sledge! I would yell at Name That Tune Night in the grad lounge. I Am Woman! Helen Reddy! My abilities meant our team consistently came in first, although I don’t think I would be able to do that now, with any kind of modern music. And by “modern,” I mean music that came out this millennium. Maybe I’d be able to identify some Pitbull or Eminem, but even so, I would have to hear at least thirty seconds of a song before accurately naming it.

But essentially any song from the last century I’m good at both identifying and also singing all the lyrics to, and when I heard that familiar guitar whine I was excited because I knew Jesus Christ Superstar was on TV. Why now? I have no idea. I always think of it as an Easter show, but here we are, in September, learning about the Crucifixion.

The very best part of Jesus Christ Superstar is the beginning, when all those hippies are getting ready for the play. I could watch the overture over and over. I love seeing them create – and strike – the set, and getting into their characters. I also love Herod’s Song – who doesn’t? prove to me that you’re divine, change my water into wine – but honestly, the whole musical is kind of bland to me. Don’t you get me wrong but other than three or four songs, I think the music is boring and the whole thing is kind of a downer. You might be saying to yourself well, consider the subject matter, but the American war of independence, political corruption in Argentina, and a creepy disfigured man living underneath an opera house who is obsessed with a young ingenue singing his arias are not exactly uplifting either, and yet I love every moment of Hamilton, Evita, and The Phantom of the Opera.

I love musicals generally so I was very excited to be invited to watch Mamma Mia! with the girls at my friend Carolyn’s home theatre (HI CAROLYN). When I say “home theatre” I mean she actually has a literal theatre in her home. It’s one of the most incredible things I have ever seen inside someone’s house. Anyway, given my deep love for disco generally and ABBA specifically, it was surprising that I hadn’t ever seen this before, but I hadn’t, and I found it absolutely delightful. PIERCE BROSNAN AND COLIN FIRTH. Rawr. That girl seems too young to get married, I thought, like the aged woman that I am, but what a fun movie. Plus, did I mention Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth.

It occurs to me that there are many, many pop culture mainstays that I have never observed myself, although I am well aware of their contribution to our society. For example, I have never seen a single episode of Cheers, the movie Groundhog Day, or Star Trek in any iteration. I have never watched Gilmore Girls, Dawson’s Creek, or The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, although I can to this day rap every single word to Parents Just Don’t Understand. Okay, here’s the situation, my parents went away on a week’s vacation…

Everyone could save time by just assuming that the answer is “no” when wondering if I have seen any film or television adaptation of any book, ever, other than Little Women or a Jane Austen. I reread Bridget Jones’ Diary so many times that I have parts memorized, although now it seems very dated and quite toxic. I have never seen the movie, though, because I loved the book so much at the time that I couldn’t bear to see anything changed, even if Colin Firth WAS in it. That’s right, Mr Darcy himself couldn’t change my mind.

Weekly Reading

I have SO much to talk about this week, in terms of reading. Here we go!

The Burnout. This is a very cute, light read about a woman named Sasha who is suffering burnout at work; after a small breakdown she heads for the beach that she frequented as a child to stay at the once-fancy hotel. The hotel has gone through some rough times, and honestly the hotel staff and description of the issues are hilarious. She meets up with a man who is similarly burned out AND also frequented this same beach as a child. You can probably guess what happens! Let’s not overthink this. It’s just fun. 

Every Last One. This is the type of book I like thinking about more than I liked reading, if that makes sense. It follows a family in a small town in which there are many interconnected characters – kids’ friends’ parents are the parents’ friends – and a massive tragedy strikes. I thought I knew how things were going to go in this book and so I was very surprised when, after kind of a sleepy first half, there was a massively dramatic event halfway through. I think if you’ve ever parented teens you will recognize the particular challenges involved here, even without the tragedy. But the book begs the question: if you build your entire life around your kids, what happens when they aren’t around? I found myself thinking about this book a lot, but as I said, I didn’t love it. The writing style hops back and forth in time, which is interesting but can be a bit confusing. It’s a little slow and sleepy, even with the Big Dramatic Event.

Long Island. This is the sequel to Brooklyn, which I recently read, and despite the title, it mainly takes place in Ireland in 1976. After our protagonist Eilis discovers that not only has her husband slept with another woman, that woman is pregnant. The pregnant woman’s husband is going to just…deliver the baby to Eilis and her husband to raise, as he will not raise a child who is not his. What? Well, Eilis does not want anything to do with this baby, but her in-laws – who live next door, I feel seen – do. This strange storyline is the reason Eilis decides to go visit her mother in Ireland, who is turning 80, where she reconnects with an old flame. My friend Hailey (HI HAILEY) described this as a book where the characters have big emotions and face big issues, but the author only skims the surface, and I think that’s a perfect description. But, as with Brooklyn, I was left wanting more, wanting to know what happens next. And I didn’t get that. Maybe it’s the setup for another sequel.

We are now officially in fall! Happy first week of fall, friends! xo

Series-us

Posted on by

Just like everyone else in the reading world, I have strong preferences when it comes to certain genres and subjects. I gravitate towards those genres naturally, although I really do try to branch out every now and then to broaden my mind and my horizons.

Recently Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) wrote about twenty ideas for lists of twenty, and I thought I’d steal one of the lists for a blog post. Who doesn’t love a list? Then I came across number 5: twenty of my favourite book series. I realized then that not only could I not list twenty favourite book series, I’m not sure if I’ve even READ twenty book series in my entire life.

This, I think, goes back to genre. Mysteries, fantasy, and sci-fi all seem to lend themselves nicely to becoming series, but the books I tend to read do not. I could only think of two series that I have read as an adult: the Lucy Barton series, and the Rosie series.

Both of those I really loved, but for very different reasons. Lucy Barton is just such a stark, beautifully written series and I became invested in her character immediately. I just found out that Elizabeth Strout has published a Lucy Barton/ Olive Ketteridge mashup and I am torn between ordering it immediately or putting it on my Christmas list. If my husband is reading this right now, he’s probably taking notes.

I loved the Rosie series for being funny and warm-hearted, and I will note that this is a rare case of the books getting better as the series progresses. It’s also a rare case that I love not one but three books with a male author.

Now, as I have said many times, I am not a person that enjoys mysteries. I have tried, lord, how I have tried. I have become at peace with the idea that mysteries are just not for me. It may surprise you to know, then, that this has not always been the case! When I was a child, I was completely obsessed with The Bobbsey Twins Mysteries.

My mother tried to get me interested in Nancy Drew, but I would not have it. I would not read about that titian-haired heroine. Give me Bobbsey Twins or give me death.

These two books in particular were very formative back in 1982. When my younger brother was born that year, I read the Adventure in the Country and spent the entire summer pretending our backyard was a farm. I would go outside in the morning and pretend to feed chickens, milk cows, ride horses, and – in a strange twist, given my extreme distaste for them now – I gathered a pile of small white rocks together which, in my extremely active imagination, were a nest of mice.

The Tagalong Giraffe was also formative in that it instilled in me a lifelong desire to visit Africa and see giraffes in the wild. My husband is in the midst of planning such a trip, to take place in a couple of years, so stay tuned for that. I hope to have my very own tagalong giraffe adventure, minus the poachers, which is a key plot point in this book.

Of course I loved the Little House on the Prairie books which are somewhat horrifying to read now, given everything we now know about the idea of manifest destiny, the treatment of indigenous people, and how the terrible droughts were actually caused by misinformed farming practices that uprooted all the native grasses. I mean, I was six when I started reading these, so I really wasn’t all that discerning with regards to the politics and human rights and environmental atrocities of the settlement of America. I just loved the idea of a corncob doll, a single cake and a tin cup in my Christmas stocking, and, weirdest of all, having a pig’s bladder as a balloon.

I have a hot take regarding the Anne of Green Gables series: with the exception of Anne’s House of Dreams, which is dramatic and also GRIM, none of the subsequent books can hold a candle to the first one. This is in direct opposition to my beloved Emily Starr books, in which the first is not great, Bob, and then the last two are fantastic. I think it compares to the Rosie books, in that the third is probably the best.

Little Men and Jo’s Boys were written after Little Women and Good Wives – the latter of which is now merely considered “part two” to Little Women – and they definitely did not appeal to me much. Little Women is one of my all-time favourite books; probably I disliked the other two because they focused on boys, and who wants to read about them? Certainly not me. I didn’t then and I don’t now, honestly.

When I was in Grade Five, the Sweet Valley High books were all the rage. I could not get enough of Elizabeth and Jessica; a huge source of angst for me was that these books were not readily available at the library. I would scan the paperback rack weekly, but rarely were they there. Instead, I ended up reading the Cheerleader series, which was inferior in my ten-year-old opinion. I was absolutely thrilled to get this box set one Christmas. I mean, look at that cover art!

The books that I did not ask for at Christmas, because they were forbidden, were the VC Andrews series. Girls of a certain age, you know what I’m talking about. Flowers in the Attic! What could be a less appropriate book for eleven and twelve year old girls? I’m sure that if we dug deep we could find one, but it would be hard. If, for some reason, you never read Flowers in the Attic, let me give you the plot synopsis: a woman is trying to get back into her parents’ good graces after a marriage which they disapproved of. She was written out of the will, but is trying to get her inheritance, and so she hides from her rich father her four children from that star-crossed marriage. How does she hide them? She enlists the help of her mother, the children’s grandmother, to hide them in the grandparents attic, where they are starved and neglected and, in the case of the older two children, subject to a sexual awakening in which they have actual intercourse. With each other. So, incest. If that’s not disturbing enough, the grandmother blames the girl for tempting her brother (ew) and so pours tar on her head (what), and then attempts to poison all of them by putting arsenic in powdered doughnuts. One of the younger children dies from eating the doughnuts, and somehow the other three escape, but the details are as blurry as the vision of the child eating the arsenic treats. Clear in my mind, though, is that the older girl goes back later and pours hot candle wax on her grandmother’s head, to get back at her for the tar incident. I mean. It’s so wild and the only thing more wild is that we were all reading these. What I wouldn’t give for an hour to chat with VC Andrews; how fascinating to be the writer that came up with this whole idea.

Weekly Reading

Speaking of reading!

The Bee Sting. My dear friend Maya (HI MAYA) had recommended this book to me, in spite of the fact that it is written by a male author. What can I say, Maya knows me well. She was sure I would love it and she has never steered me wrong yet, so I put it on hold at the library. When I went to pick up this doorstop of a book I gave Maya a long-distance side-eye. It had better be good, I thought, if I’m going to invest the time into 649 pages! But lo, Maya was right. I was hooked right from the beginning and I have to say, this is a brilliant literary novel. Absolutely brilliantly written, with four POV in distinct and unique writing styles. Also, the book goes from third person close to second person for each POV, and I find that remarkable. I almost never see second person! This book is a wild ride, following a highly dysfunctional family with an incredible backstory; there were twists and turns – some I saw coming, some I sure didn’t. The ending is stunning. Absolutely stunning. The character arcs, everything is so well done. This takes place in postcrash Ireland and hops timelines, it delves into very important subjects, and most of all, ties together in the most startling of ways.

Speaking of my bookish friends, my good friend Steph (HI STEPH) is having technical issues with her blog. If you follow her you will probably think that she hasn’t published any posts since July but my friends, this isn’t true! There is some problem that is keeping her blog from being updated on The Old Reader AND Feedly, so why don’t you do what I did and pop over there to subscribe. That way you won’t miss a thing! And if you don’t follow Steph, why don’t you? She has two brand new kittens and a newly empty nest, so why not send her a little internet love.

Suzanne had another prompt about things we did twenty years ago, but not now. That’s an easy one for me: baby care. I was completely mired in baby care twenty years ago. And I can tell you exactly what I did nineteen years ago today, and that was bringing this guy home:

It was my younger son’s birthday yesterday and we had a great time celebrating. My parents had come for the weekend so we hosted a big dinner with both sides – complete with cake!

So it was a busy weekend and it looks to be a busy week ahead! I hope you all had a lovely weekend. xo

Nature, Nurture, Nerd

Posted on by

I am very accustomed to drawing a lot of attention on my daily walk, because I am accompanied by a living embodiment of a gigantic cartoon dog whose facial expression is exactly this for the duration:

Every day people pass me and actually laugh at him, in a good-natured, look at that silly dog kind of way. He’s a happy guy is something I hear many times a week. I am constantly being stopped and asked what breed he is, how much he weighs, what is his name, can they pet him.

So I’m used to attention and being stopped and spoken to, and therefore I thought nothing of it as a gentleman jogger approached me and started talking. He wanted to let me know that there was a vole on the path that didn’t seem to be moving. I was happy for this information so that I could be on guard. Last week on a walk Rex pounced into a garden full of daylilies and, startlingly, half-killed a small bird, leaving it flapping and bleeding on the sidewalk. It was, needless to say, very upsetting.

It reminded me of how Barkley, who looked exactly like a Gund stuffed animal, was actually a blood-thirsty killer. He once cornered and caught a squirrel and then tried to break its neck, he mangled a bird in our backyard that I THINK was already knocked out by hitting a window, but who knows, maybe Barkley was faster than I thought, and, unspeakably, ate an entire mouse, which I found out the hard way. Do not ask me what that hard way was, let us never speak of this again.

What I am saying is that I am no stranger to horror masked in furry adorableness.

I appreciated the public service announcement about the vole, not wanting another to deal with another harrowing Rex-versus-small-wildlife incident. Less appreciated was the way the man kept looking at my chest as if I was Marilyn Monroe reincarnated. I thanked him and went on my way.

It was so strange, every man who passed me kept glancing at my chest and then smiling at me. This would have been par for the course back in my youth; in those days, men had no compunction about ogling a young woman’s chest in a not-secret way, and also I was a lot more, shall we say, gifted back then. However, in the year of our lord 2024, I like to think that ogling isn’t the socially-sanctioned pastime it used to be, and also, the girls are not the glorious globes that they once were. Not to be too descriptive, but let’s think of semi-deflated water balloons, and you’ll probably have a good idea why I never go braless. Well, that and I can’t stand the feeling of being free and floppy.

On the way to the family reunion in August, we had stopped at my aunt’s house and I ended up visiting with one of my older cousins who I don’t see often at all. He told me that he had stopped using social media as his wife was worried about internet safety and stalking, to which I replied that I had reached a stage in life where I would be a little flattered to have a stalker. I was, of course, joking – NO ONE STALK ME PLEASE – but I thought of that as I walked with Rex, being the recipient of many chest-glances. I had this strange mix of what is with all these creepy perverts at 7:30 am and still got it, baby. As I have said many times before: life is a tapestry.

It wasn’t until I got back to my car and caught a glimpse at my reflection in the window when I remembered what tee I had pulled on that morning.

Well. That explained that.

It is widely believed that dogs react to the energy of the household and take on personality aspects of the owners, and I think that has been very true in my case with both Rex and Barkley. Those aspects do not, however, overpower their inherent nature, as evidenced by the fact that when opportunity strikes, they become killing machines disguised as fuzzy cutesters.

And for me, there is no overcoming my natural nerdy tendencies, particularly when it comes to announcing such tendencies to the world, and completely forgetting such announcements.

Weekly Reading

Speaking of (book) nerdy tendencies, I had a couple of interesting and thought-provoking reads this week. I have a lot to say, so buckle up!

Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story. About her best friend, the author of this memoir wrote: “It was that she felt, in certain ways, fatigued by our friendship. I was always in the midst of some dramatic transformation…I was always poised at the threshold of some major change, or reeling in its aftermath. She said ‘It gets exhausting.’” I feel like that summarizes my experience reading this book – which, I will hasten to add, is absolutely gorgeously written and completely compelling. But it is kind of exhausting and I feel like if I was this woman’s friend, I would feel similarly fatigued. The author is a sober alcoholic who essentially transfers her neediness and addictive behaviour to the care of her infant daughter. I mean, I feel for this child. I cannot imagine what her life is going to be like in the future. Anyway, the author separates from her husband, who, by the way, is a widower and still grieving his first wife and really, THIS IS A BAD IDEA. They were in couples therapy when they decided I know, let’s have a baby to fix this marriage, which, no no no no no. Surprise surprise, the marriage is in shambles, and the author rails against custody for him, not because he isn’t a caring father – he has a child from his first marriage who is mentioned only as a passing fact once – but because she doesn’t want her baby to be away from her. She doesn’t want her baby to have two homes. The description of her marriage reminds me of my theory that relationships between two creatives are usually doomed. I’m sure the blame goes both ways, there are two sides to every story and her ex does sound like a dreadful, angry man. But also? His first wife just died of cancer and he was writing a book about the experience while he was married to this author. SO MUCH TO UNPACK. Anyway, post-separation she very quickly becomes involved with a man who doesn’t believe in monogamy, but she can CHANGE HIM. Well, until he gives her chlamydia. Here is the PSA I will put into the world: girls, you will never change him. People are who they are, do not go into a relationship thinking well, I can fix that. It’s not fair to either party. This is such a chaotic memoir but who wants to read about a dull life? I couldn’t put this down, honestly, so well done, I guess? I applaud the author for her vulnerability and also her self-awareness. It takes a lot of bravery to paint such an unflattering portrait of oneself.

A History of Burning. CANADIAN AUTHOR ALERT! Wow, this is an absolutely incredible epic story of a family, spanning 1898 in India to 1992 in Canada. The family starts with a teenage boy living in poverty in India; he is promised a job and a better life, and ends up, unknowingly, getting on a rickety boat heading to what is now Kenya to build the railroad. He realizes the terrible things he needs to do just to survive and to find that better life, and he does them. He ends up in Uganda, where his family lives for seven decades before being ousted by Idi Amin’s rule. There they go to Canada, which ends up not to be the promised land for “their kind,” but they work to build that better life and community. It is devastatingly sad, heart-pumpingly terrifying, and incredibly touching story. It is so well done, so thoughtful, so perceptive, so eye-opening. There is a very interesting literary device: each chapter is told from the point of view of a different character, in the third person close, until about 2/3 of the way through the book, in which it switches to first person for one character only. This line near the end summarizes everything: “They left to keep their family whole, something their ancestors had understood. But this time, it was their choice…How sometimes, holding on required letting go.” Chills!

Speaking of letting go and nature versus nurture, this weekend I listened to a podcast about, of all things, Finding Nemo. It has been many, many years since I have seen that movie, but it was interesting to hear the discourse about parenting styles and anxious overparenting. I listened to this podcast just after I had been subjected to a very tiresome conversation about being a parent of adult children, and as I listened I couldn’t stop considering it. I think I have completely morphed, parenting-wise, into Crush the turtle. There was a Dory quote discussed a lot in the podcast: If nothing ever happens to him, then nothing will ever happen to him and here I am, quoting words of wisdom from a cartoon fish.

On that note, I hope you all have a wonderful week in which lovely things happen to all of you. xo

Long and Winding Road

Posted on by

I was walking with a friend downtown toward my favourite bookstore when I recognized a woman passing us. Isn’t it funny that when you see a person out of context, it can take a moment to place them? Usually for me it’s someone I see from the dog park or the walking path; the person and I will recognize each other, take a brief moment of silence to figure out from where, and then comment on how strange it is to see each other without our respective fuzzy companions.

But this lovely woman that I saw sauntering down the street with her son was not from the dog walking circuit; rather, she was the woman who does my body sugaring. Again, it took me a moment to realize where do I know her from but as soon as I did I smiled, waved, and said hi. She returned my salutation in a friendly way, but didn’t stop. I thought no more about it until this past week, when I had an appointment.

It was so nice to see you the other day, she said to me before explaining that if she recognizes a client on the street, she never, ever greets them unless they greet her first. Especially if they are with someone, she said, because you never know, maybe they don’t want their companion to KNOW.

I appreciated her discretion, but I also thought Know what? That they remove body hair?

A few months ago one of my sons told me that it wasn’t until junior high that he realized that girls also had hair on their legs. Until he saw a unshaven female classmate in shorts, which he observed in surprised silence, he never realized that girls had body hair. I typically think that I am a good mother and that I have been a strong female role model for my boys, and then I learn something like this.

Well. In my defense, it never once occurred to me to subject my young sons to the details of my shower and hair removal routine. Life, as we always say, is a journey, and the roads to enlightenment are long and winding.

Also long and winding are the random chin hairs I find myself plucking on the daily. One of the upsides of aging is that my chin hairs are almost exclusively white now. I say this is an upside, but honestly it is a bit of a mixed blessing. On the one hand they are much less visible than the exuberant black hairs that would come out to play while I was in my thirties, but on the other hand, even with my Daylight Magnifying Mirror they are harder to spot due to that same invisibility, which means that I only see them when they are nearly a centimeter long. I worry I’m going to start to resemble ZZ Top one day, and I won’t have noticed. On that note, recently I was surprised to discover, via my friend Stephany (HI STEPHANY) that many of my blog friends do not have or use tweezers. Without my tweezers, the aforementioned situation would be out of control, not to mention that I would look like a cross between Bert from Sesame Street, Martin Scorsese, and Magnum PI.

We are all different, of course, and some of us are a bit more hirsute than others, it seems. And as much as I’d like the liberation that would come with being one of those low-maintenance, free-to-be-you-and-me women who eschews hair removal, well, I’ll never be that woman. If ever I am in a coma, I am going to need one of you to come and do some plucking for me.

Weekly Reading

The inadvertent theme this week is learning about history through novels!

Brooklyn. This book, about a young Irish woman who immigrates to Brooklyn and then meets and falls in love with an Italian man has so many elements that I love: 1950s New York, descriptions of Irish rooming houses and tenements, an interesting female protagonist. It should be a home run for me but wow, it is a SLOW moving, quiet book. And I love slow-moving, quiet books. I don’t even need a plot to be happy. But even for me, this is a slow book. I tend to love a slow book if the writing is very beautiful, but the writing is extremely matter-of-fact and prosaic. I didn’t dislike this book; it gave me some interesting scenarios to ponder, and it’s also nice and short, so that kind of makes up for the incredibly slow pace. It’s been made into a movie and I kind of wondered…how? My friends Elise and Ariana (HI ELISE HI ARIANA) assured me that it is a beautiful movie with a simple love story, and I see that the star is an actress who I deeply admire, so maybe I’ll watch it. I am going to read the second one – Long Island – even though almost nothing happened in the first, because now I’m invested.

Kairos. This book won the International Booker Prize, and I can see why. It’s really powerful and moving, and it is written in a very unique style. That unique style, I admit, took me a few chapters to get into it. It’s a bit tricky at first – whole paragraphs that are one long sentence, no punctuation indicating dialogue, and dialogue of both characters crammed together in one sentence with no indication on how they are separated. So it’s a bit hard to follow at first but then I found the flow! It deals with a 19 year old woman entering into an affair with – wait for it – a 53 year old married man. To add to the ick factor, the married man is also a writer, and I’m going to ask you to please imagine me saying this in George Costanza’s voice: “Oh, we can’t disturb the DELICATE GEN-I-US.” Clearly the relationship is toxic but it becomes even more so as the story goes on, at one point becoming actually insane. What makes this story really interesting, though, is that it takes place in East Berlin in 1986, and continues on until German Reunification. The relationship and the political landscape are filled with parallels and there are a lot of metaphors and symbolism going on here, so if you like that – I love it! – you’ll love this book. It’s pretty fascinating; it is a time in history I remember, but vaguely, so I read this along with looking up a lot of places, maps, and timelines.

I hope you are all having a wonderful Labour Day weekend! I was living my best life on Friday when my husband and I, along with friends, went to an outdoor concert at a winery. Wine, friends, music, dancing? Sign me up! You know it’s been a good night when you wake up the next morning with a sore throat from singing and sore feet from dancing barefoot in the grass. Saturday, my son moved himself to university; I have worked hard to instill a sense of independence and competence in my children, and so while it was a bit strange not to see his room or help him move, it was also kind of nice to expend zero effort and know that he is also living his best life. Sunday morning my husband and I went for a bike ride. Typically my riding partner is my son, but he has been otherwise engaged, and so my husband has accompanied me for the past two weeks. Here’s a little peek into our marriage: he has an e-bike, I do not, I take six cardio workouts a week, he does not. So I feel that we are more or less equally matched, woman versus machine. However! Here is a word of warning: if you let the guy with the e-bike choose the route, there might be a LOT of uphill. His preference is to go up, up, up into the orchards, and my preference is to go flatter, by the creek. We are taking turns choosing the route, is what I’m saying. Anyway, it’s been a fun weekend, and now here we are, in September. Happy September, friends! xo