February 2012
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Friday Fiction: Black History Month, Short Stories...
It’s Black History Month, which both gives me a break from having to come up with vaguely clever Friday Fictions and a chance to focus solely on some really amazing Black writers. Problem being, there are so many amazing books that I want to talk about : (( Good thing there are four Fridays in February : )) (Roller coaster of emotions, guys!) This week: short story...
January 2012
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The Intuitionists: Finished at Last
As suspected when I was just about twenty pages in, Whitehead has become one of my favourite living authors. His writing is so suffused with humour while still being incredibly intelligent, poignant and powerful. The comparisons to Invisible Man were really spot on. I loved how much Whitehead used racism and to a lesser extent gender inequalities to amp up...
September 2011
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Reading Now: The Intuitionist
So good! Too good? Maybe. It is distracting me from school…
January 2011
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Nabokovvvvv!!!
Today, I embark on a journey that will culminate with me becoming the preeminent Nabokovian scholar. That being, I begin my course on my long-dead (*come on Zombie-apocalypse*) boyfriend. Oh, can you even imagine having Vladimir for a boyfriend? He’d be the one that you’d try and impress by being all serious and smart and never fart in front of.
Been there, bought the nerdiest t-shirt...
September 2010
19 posts
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“‘Do this for me: never say such words to me, and let us be good...”
– Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
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Anna Karenina
What to say that hasn’t been said about this magnificent novel? Even calling it magnificent is old news. I read War and Peace a couple of years ago and loved it; but I have to say that the love I felt, feel, for War and Peace now seems trivial and limp in comparison to the overwhelming passion that Anna Karenina has inspired. There is a similarity there to be drawn between Anna and her...
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“I have frequently told you, and the holidays just past have convinced me, that...”
– The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
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The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
I had to read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark for my book club; I’m not sure I would have read it otherwise, but I’m glad that I did (mind you, it is on the Modern Library top 100 novels list and I am intent on reading 99 — I will never read Finnegan’s Wake. Never.). Very short, very sharp and very silly, I quite enjoyed it. I am not usually a fan of comic...
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BOOK ART
Now, I know that there are a lot of book lovers out there who see damaging a book, any book, in any way even in the name of art, as an excuse to cut a bitch; I am not one of those people. I think that books are like hunted animals — the entire carcass should be put to use, devoured. Giving old, previously loved books a new life and a new purpose can result in breathtaking works of art....
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Affairs of Plain Livin'
I hit the jackpot at my cottage this summer. At the cottage in one of the cabins my grandmother built two floor to ceiling, full wall bookshelves to house the thousands of books that she and my grandfather had accumulated. Just thinking about all those books makes me drool. There is the complete Time-Life library and the complete Portfolio Society library. They have Shakespeare’s,...
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“What is the meaning of life?… a simple question; one that tended to close...”
– To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
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To the Lighthouse
It may be sacrilege to call myself a) a feminist and b) an avid reader and to have just read my first ever Virginia Woolf but there it is. I finished To the Lighthouse this morning and to be honest, I found it rather weary, beautifully realized and wonderful use of language but weary. I generally don’t have a lot of patience for sincere verbosity; the kind of flowery language that takes...
August 2010
4 posts
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“Nothing growing there? All things growing there; men and beasts and fruit of the...”
– Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun
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Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun
I love Knut Hamsun. I began his canon with Mysteries (wonderful) then Hunger (hilarious and wonderful) and now I’ve just finished Growth of the Soil, the novel for which he won the Nobel Prize.
It is rare to find an epic, especially an epic set on taming the wilderness with one’s own hands that doesn’t pander in tragedy. I am so accustomed to reading sprawling epics, or any...
And Now For Something Completely Different...
Alright, so I say it’s high time I leave all this “woe is me; life sucks; I suck; boo fucking hoo” shit behind. From here on out What Fresh Hell is This will be a book/reading blog. What I’m reading, what I want to read, a rumination on books and reading.
Onward and upward, I say!
May 2010
14 posts
http://gunsarentlawful.blogspot.com/ →
Hey folks. I’ve moved my blog over to blogger so come on over and check it out!
Ch-ch-ch-changes
I moved out of my beautiful apartment today. My beautiful apartment with exposed brick, dishwasher and washer and dryer, big backyard with a big deck. My beautiful apartment that my best friend and I had decorated with peacock wallpaper, horse paint-by-numbers, and hundreds of books arranged by colour. My heart is broken.
Our lease is not up for another three and a half months and despite the...
My Mum Rocks my World
When I was in the sixth grade, I made the high jump team. There were, I think, six or seven girls and I got the last spot. This was a huge accomplishment for me because while I was generally a good athlete and made all the other teams handily, I was terrified of high jump; I had landed one too many times with the bar crushed into my lower spine.
Making the team proved to me that I could overcome...
Silly Daydreams
I want to be Meryl Streep. Meryl Streep (circa Deer Hunter) living in a Tom Waits/Nick Cave collaboration featuring Nina Hagen in a giant snow globe filled with water and sparkles.
I will eat ice cream and Indian food all the time and drink wine and micro-brews and talk about art and music and books and David Lynch. I will watch spaghetti westerns and samurai movies and Down by Law over and over...
“Storms make trees take deeper roots.”
– Dolly Parton
Breaking Bad Habits
What will I do when suicide is no longer my fallback plan? The weight of responsibility is crushing. As terrifying as it may sound and not to downplay my own anguish, the thought of ending my own life is a sanctuary of sorts. When I am low, I become absolutely fixated on my own inadequacies and so will never be able to accomplish anything. The fear of failure is greater than the fear of death.
As...
Stuff Outside the Window at 2 am
There is a man across the street standing in front of the vegetarian roti place. He is at a forty-five degree angle from the wall and not moving. It is weird and I wonder why he is there. Oh geez, I think he’s peeing. Yep, definitely peeing. And he’s moving on. Why the forty-five degree angle, though? Why wouldn’t he just face the wall? Hmm, curious. Now he’s gone and...
April 2010
14 posts
I'd Pan that River for Gold... That's What She...
Oh, my fucking god, I have fallen in love. Head over heals, goofy, can’t fall asleep, tingly love. I actually feel a little like throwing up and, what’s this, I’m smiling; there’s probably even a twinkle in my eye. Wondering who the lucky gent is? Don’t, it’s not a gent at all. Not a lucky lady, either. Now, keep in mind I’ve been depressed (am depressed?)...
Grin and Bear It
I wish I had another disease. A beatable but taxing disease; I don’t mean to trade up. Just something I could fight stoically and be praised for staying positive. If I have to struggle then I’d at least like to inspire. I want to write a funny but touching memoir all about how turning that frown upside down helped me live life to the max (in my head, to the max was said in a demolition...
“The agony of my feelings allowed me no respite; no incident occurred from which...”
– Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Catch-22
I am terrified of getting better and terrified that I won’t. I’m terrified I’m not actually depressed I’m just dramatic. Haven’t I always been a tad sensitive? And surely this paranoia business is not new. Maybe I just need a change of scenery and then all the emptiness will wash away. When I am at my lowest I am convinced that all I have to do is think positively and the fact that I can’t...
