Lori’s Book Nook

I have a confession to make…I’ve not read anything new for months! I’ve been re-reading all books by Lois McMaster Bujold, almost obsessively, and in the last couple of weeks, the Dark is Rising series by Susan Cooper, one of my favourite authors as a child. (They pass the test of time though, still tasty books!)

Last week, for a couple of reasons, my reading life has changed:

• I took a mid-week Greyhound trip to Vancouver, and finally picked up a Christmas book: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Finished it yesterday — very good. If you haven’t picked this one up, thinking it had something to do with 18th Century England (I did…I wasn’t too terribly enthused about what I expected to be an Austen-wannabe.), do so now. It’s unexpected and a great yarn — wide-sweeping epic-like with very intriguing characters.
• I did recently read Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain, and while I was in Vancouver, I stopped at my favourite 2ndhand bookstore there, Albion Books (Hi Dave!), and found a copy of Bourdain’s next book, A Cook’s Tour. Just finished that one this morning — again, very good. Bourdain writes food porn — his relationship to food is definitely not one of merely fuel. If he did write regular porn, it would be nice and earthy, with all the fluids and smells lovingly recorded. His descriptions of the food he eats around the world are bloody, alcohol-soaked, crud-encrusted meals of absolute delight. I dare you to read this without wanting a bowl of fresh pho and a pint of tequila.

• I have also picked up a copy of Anna Gavalda’s Ensemble, c’est tout — quite a popular French novel. Discovered while searching up a link to give you, that it has just been made into a movie with the irrepressible Audrey Tautou.

So, I’m reading new stuff again. Hopefully this will mean that I’ll be posting here more often!

Tagged by the lovely alejna, also lifted from the rather literate casa az, who happened to have a copy of the fabulous Mr. Davies on her bedside table. (Go and read their posts — lovely and literary!)

Because I’ve not updated my blog recently, and because I have a copy of Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame on my desk, here we go:

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages)
2. Open the book to page 123
3. Find the 5th sentence
4. Post the next three sentences
5. Tag 5 people

So, from the architecturally-inclined Monsieur Hugo:

“Those thousand thickset angular roofs, clinging together, nearly all composed of the same geographical elements, when seen from above, looked almost like the crystallization of a single substance. The capricious fissures formed by the streets did not cut this conglomeration of houses into slices too disproportionate. The forty-two colleges were distributed among them very equally, and were to be seen in every quarter.”

And as to tagging? I, too, will make this self-tagging — you know you want to do this!! Go ahead — make my comments delightful to read!

Ripped directly from Mattheous, who’s just started hanging around here at the Nook, who found it here.

Daniel Pennac’s

The Reader’s Bill of Rights

1. The right to not read

2. The right to skip pages

3. The right to not finish

4. The right to reread

5. The right to read anything

6. The right to escapism

7. The right to read anywhere

8. The right to browse

9. The right to read out loud

10. The right to not defend your tastes

So, have you read Moby Dick?

I haven’t, and it’s not been on my mental TBR pile either.

Now I don’t have to read it, because over at MadHaiku’s place, he’s done the reading for us, with an illustrated haiku summary to inspire you to read it, or at least see the movie!

I wonder what he’ll come up with next!

Enjoy!

Can you?

More and more the author is required to pull together much of their own marketing, and the really savvy ones will come up some really imaginative ideas — like a website. But is a really good web-presence enough to inspire you to buy a book?

Check out this one: a novel entitled Specialty Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. I had never heard of the book until I stumbled upon this brilliant website. It appears to be a mystery, with a very literary main character…and if you dig a bit, you’ll find some tasty buzz for it.

Has anyone out there read this one? I must admit I’m tempted.

Your comments?

In an earlier post, I listed the books that arrived in my mailbox to review. I’m going to list them again, but this time, with a bit of a rating, and brief “to read or not to read” comments. Feel free to argue with me, like pretty much everything else, taste in books is all relative…

Running with Swords: The Adventures and Misadventures of the Irrepressible Canadian Fencing Champion by Sherraine MacKay (Fitzhenry & Whiteside)

This one was quite lovely. Sweet, almost — if a sports bio can be that. Fencing is a sport with very little funding, and MacKay is quite funny in her stories of how training all pans out.

6 out of 10 (but I’m not a sports enthusiast…)

*   *   *

The Rage: Reflections on Risk by Steve De Maio (Rocky Mountain Books)

De Maio is a raging ego-maniac. And a jerk that can’t write. If I see/read the word ‘chortled’ again in my life, it will be too soon — he used it in almost every essay/story, and I think 3 times in one. Oh, not in the pieces where he’s playing the ugly Canadian in South America — those were appalling bits of so-called storytelling…if you like stories of tourists laden with extreme sport gear haggling over pennies for taxi fares in developing countries, yelling “You cheat me!” then by all means, pick up this book.

-2 out of 10 

*   *   *

Mental Traps: a Field Guide to the Stupid Mistakes that can Ruin Your Life by Andre Kukla (Doubleday Canada)

A neat book, written in an archaic style to mimic early ‘Field Guides’ — it is an interesting look at the mental ‘flora’ that can keep us down. I found it to be quite Epicurean, promoting a do-what-you-want attitude, as long as it does no harm, brings pleasure, and doesn’t waste your time.

6 out of 10 

Zed by Elizabeth McClung (Arsenal Pulp Press)

I blogged about this one. Great novel. Great character. Get this book and read it.

9 out of 10

 *   *   *

Mallory by Margaret Gunning (Turnstone Press)

Good novel…interesting turns, great title character. I almost wished it were thicker, just to get more of the characters…but would it have been the same? No, probably not.

8 out of 10

*   *   *

Certainty: a novel by Madeline Thien (McClelland & Stewart)

A delicious book when I read it, but when it came time to write the review, I couldn’t wrap my head around what it was actually about. A visitor to my illustrious blog left a link to her review of it, so check it out.

7.5 out of 10 

 *   *   *

The Best Way You Know How by Christine Pountney (Penguin)

Vaguely experimental in style — no quotes for the conversations, all written in the present tense, some weird weird weird long-winded similes (“…and the best man comes running over, the flaps of his jacket billowing to reveal the shiny beige lining like the pages of an open book left out to flutter in the breeze on a summer porch by a child who’s rushed down to the lake to plunge into the water and drown.”). I was intrigued to keep reading, but in the end I felt a little cheated.

3.5 out of 10 

*   *   *

Gotta Find Me an Angel: A Novel by Brenda Brooks (Raincoast)

Fun premise, great characters, honest dialogue, wonderful descriptive moments…this is one to pick up. The author is a poet, and there are moments that you can really tell. The characters happen to be lesbians, even the ghost, if you’re tired of the ubiquitous hetero fare.

9 out of 10 

Keep in mind, a rating of 10 out of 10 is really hard to come by.

As the New Year approaches, some people like to think of ways to better their lives, and to some, that means reducing clutter.

But to declutter books — is that really something a book lover wants to do? No, I don’t think so…but the reality is that sometimes we may have to do it.

Over at 43Folders is a post about this very topic, with a link to the original source, a question and long series of rather good answers at Ask Metafilter on “Advice for clearing literary clutter” — although, for me, the asker loses some credibility for even thinking of the phrase “literary clutter”!

What do you think, O Loyal Reader? Is there such a thing as ‘literary clutter’? What does it look like to you? What do you do about it?

Or, as is the point, what are you planning on doing in the New Year to clear some space on your bookshelves (to make room for new books in 2008)?

I’m not a hit hound by any means, but I do check them, just to see. And the most popular page on this blog is the space where we were discussing The Fifth Business.

Okay, so it’s not popular by some standards, but on my little blog, it continuously tops my hit chart with between 3 & 29 hits per day. And search terms like:

• essay on the women in fifth business
• fifth business ezboard
• women in fifth business
• fifth business mrs.dempster, paul
• fifth business robertson davies reborn
• Fifth Business devil Liesl
• robertson davies fifth business
• Fifth Business name meanings
• sex love in fifth business essay
• psychology in fifth business
• ramsay guilt fifth business

And those are only today and yesterday.

The frequency started once school started. With all this traffic, I’ve only had 2 of these students stay and comment. (Am I wrong in assuming they’re students?) In my day, I would have been searching card catalogues, and journals, hoping for a tidbit. Now, they comb the Internet for their research. I wonder if any of our comments here have been cited in a paper somewhere?

The mind boggles.

But I was thinking of you all on Friday, when I found a delightful treasure in my local secondhand bookstore: Robertson Davies: An Appreciation, edited by Elspeth Cameron. A book of essays collected and published in 1991.

For your delectation then, are some of the ideas thrown out by different commentators as Davies’ books were coming out:

• Dunstan is the Hero
• Dunstan in the Saint, not Mrs. Dempster
• Father Blazon is the Fifth Business

So, reading these essays has been quite fun, and now I have to go back and read the damn books again! Ideas that I want to look into myself.

Okay, so you’re writing an essay and you Google your way to this post. I won’t leave you empty-handed, so here are some things to explore further:

• Pay close attention to the audience in all three books.
• Do some research on St. Dunstan.
• All 3 books begin and end in the same places, geographically. (And one of Davies’ next books is called What’s Bred in the Bone.)

And do some research in a good library, not looking for the quick answer on the Internet.

Much has been written about the late, great Douglas Adams. The Hitchhiker series (yes, geeks, I am aware that it’s a trilogy in umpteen parts…) with their rather random sense of humour. The Dirk Gently books which always reminded me a bit of Thorne Smith (1892-1934) books.

But, there will always be a little place in my heart for The Meaning of Liff — here’s one of my favourite entries:

PELUTHO (n.)
A South American ball game. The balls are whacked against a brick wall with a stout wooden bat until the prisoner confesses.

And here it is online, in its entirety. Gotta love the Internet!

Back to Thorne Smith, because he was just a weird and wonderful writer, and yes, Dirk Gently reminded me of him. Here’s an except from the beginning of my favourite of his books, The Nightlife of the Gods (available in its entirety online as well, with others):

CHAPTER 1

CRITICIZING AN EXPLOSION

THE small family group gathered in the library was only conventionally alarmed by the sound of a violent explosion—a singularly self-centred sort of explosion.

‘Well, thank God, that’s over,’ said Mrs Alice Pollard Lambert, swathing her sentence in a sigh intended to convey an impression of hard-pressed fortitude.

With bleak eyes she surveyed the fragments of a shattered vase. Its disastrous dive from the piano as a result of the shock had had in it something of the mad deliberation of a suicide’s plunge. Its hideous days were over now, and Mrs Lambert was dimly aware of another little familiar something having been withdrawn from her life.

‘I hope to high heaven this last one satisfies him for this spring at least,’ was the petulant comment of Alfred, the male annexe of Alice.

‘I’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting,’ came a thin disembodied voice from a dark corner. ‘Night and day I’ve been waiting and expecting—’

‘And hoping and praying, no doubt, Grandpa,’ interrupted Daphne, idly considering a run in her stocking and wondering what she was going to do about it, if anything, and when would be the least boring time to do it if she did, which she doubted.

A while back I wrote about dictionaries, as all bookish bloggers are wont to do (aren’t they?). I really enjoy having dictionaries, knowing they are there for when I need them.

I like them in person, hard and weighty tomes. I enjoy contemplating what they represent — the unfathomable hours of labour by word enthusiasts, the preserving of ever-changing nuance, the slanting of opinion, even the dictating of form and sound.

I have physical dictionaries, dictionaries on my computer, and links to numerous language resources in my bookmarks.

And of course, there are the thesauri, word lists, menus, reverse dictionaries…ooh! I could go on forever!

But then, there are the visual dictionaries. The online Visual Thesaurus used to be something free, but now you have to pay. I’ve never been able to justify it, as I would not use it as intended, I would just follow the visual trails for hours, ignoring the original need for a synonym.

Today I stumbled upon another online dictionary: Merriam-Webster’s Visual Dictionary.  Probably more nouns than you’ll ever possibly need, but just in case you needed to know the name of the doohickey on a whatchamacallit, now you can just look for it.