So I found a real life friend as crazy about books as I am. Almost. We definitely agree that the best thing to do with your coffee break is read. The second best thing is looking over at what the other is reading. One day she passes this book on to me. She says that she didn’t like it, a total dud. “But read it,” she says, “I want to know what you think of it.”

It was Carson McCuller’s The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

What kind of recommendation is that?! More enigma than anything, her words spurred me to look further, if only for the sake of our tenuous bookie friendship. Turns out that it was an Oprah’s Book Club Selection in 2004. Many reviews on amazon were on the positive side, while reviews on Goodreads were fewer but no less glowing. Only one friend on GR had read it, but because Carson is southern and it was set there as well, the scales were tipped in its favour. Still can’t resist reading about home.

It is a simple story, following five individuals through an important moment of their personal life quest.

You may be thinking, “Quest? Quest! I thought this was a modern novel, not medieval?” (Suddenly my brain is all Monty-Python-ish, but I”ll try hard to abstain.)

I mean quest in the “We each have a mission in life” way, something inseparable from our identity that seems bigger than life and most important of all – to us. Its current moves through the big and small decisions we make, each event and coincidence of our lives, a great big neon sign giving meaning to our daily seemingly commonplace lives. It is part of what defines us as well as what separates us from others. This is the quest for our characters.

“I want – I want – I want – was all that she could think about – but just what this real want was she did not know.”

Hunter is a touching story of five misfits trying to make their way in a small southern town. Surprisingly raw, it is at once sad then jubilant, despairing and incredibly real.

The introduction to the characters takes longer than a fast paced bestseller, so you have to wait until you’ve met and know the situations of Mick, Jake, Biff and Dr. Copeland before you decide this isn’t the book for you. I’m so glad I did for shortly after that, my enthusiasm grew with every page and it became a page-turner, one I ached for and counted the minutes until break for.

When I did finish, I returned to my chargrined friend a veritable overflowing well of information, desperate to talk over the themes, characters, plot – less they engulf me whole..

As I started to gush, she nodded. She responded with acknowledgments and affirmations to my every word. All my hopes of winning her over with my intellectual observations were dashed. I wanted to beg her to talk, but she couldn’t and didn’t want to. She just nodded. It was infuriating how much she kept nodding! Her heart had heard everything that mine did, but the message had failed to relay to her brain. It was not the message for her. Or maybe not the right time.

How ironic, a book about loneliness and those that feel they are alone in the world, leaves me feeling alone with my thoughts and inspirations after reading it.

I identified most with Dr. Copeland, adored the metaphor associated with Mick – so perfect for the daughter of an innkeeper, a wise association on the author’s part for any other child might have been too young for it to be believable – and greatly appreciated hearing a deaf person as narrator and the beautiful descriptions of two deaf “speaking” to one another. (I work with and care for Deaf people every day.)

“Singer raised his hands timidly and began to speak. His strong, skilled fingers shaped the signs with loving precision. He spoke of… old memories, the cat that had died, the store, the place where he lived.The designs of his hands shaped faster and faster.”

Is your imagination teased? I’ll give you more. Mick is now amongst my favourite literary characters. I was so worried for her, but she took a deep breathe. I wished so badly that I could have been her own personal cheerleader, in the room, at the cafe, someone that she could actually hear.

“She wished there was some place where she could go to hum it out loud. Some kind of music was too private to sing in a house cram fall of people. It was funny, too, how lonesome a person could be in a crowded house.”

I’d say more but fear to give too much away. The light of heart need not apply. This is not easy reading or quick, but it is deep and strong and true. A profound meditation for anyone who feels like they are all alone.

Share this post!

Today I finished reading Neil Gaiman’s American Gods for the second time, back to back, read and re-read. It’s one of only a handful of books that I’ve ever given that much of my life.

Many thanks to @HarperCollinsCa for offering me a copy of this book so that I could participate in the One Book, One Twitter movement this summer.

In case you missed #1b1t – Keep your eyes peeled for future reads! – here’s how it worked: Everyone on Twitter who was interested in a worldwide book club voted on a book to be read. Book choices were narrowed down and voted on, book chosen and reading schedule laid out, then hashtags for the book itself and each chapter in it were determined. People were to tweet and reply and have a book group type conversation using the main hashtag for general musings and the chapter tags for thoughts relevant to that chapter. Voila, instant filtering created to prevent spoilers, allowing everyone to read at their own pace. (It was a really awesome experience!)

I signed up without hesitation.  Beyond the appeal of using Twitter for a book club – genius! – Gaiman’s fantasy entertains like no other. It feels derivative of nothing and is only itself, totally new creative imaginings. The fantasy genre  has copycatting as an unfortunate and common flaw on its shelves. Everyone wants to be the next Tolkien.

But Gaiman is unique. For me, he has consistently made the hero’s journey from small town to the larger world and all the lessons that go along seem entirely new each time he puts pen to paper. Neverwhere and The Graveyard Book did so, one in underground London and the other in a New England graveyard

This time around, in American Gods, Gaiman impressed me by penning yet another amazing story but with even better amusement park thrills and taking his macabre style to the next level, writing a distinctly smart and adult fantasy novel.

American Gods is a literal road trip through small-town America – complete with constant weather updates that would make CNN proud and bank clocks alternately displaying the time then the local temperature – as well as a figurative one, illuminating the soul of a country and the fight over who shall rule it. And yet it is Shadow’s story, our narrator and main character, a young man with too much past for his age, whisked off onto that thing which at first seems innocent but is really larger than life. It is his defining moment.

“That was 1950. Seemed that year that the only way  that winter would end was is somebody hammered a stake through it’s heart.”

It really excites me to finally read a fantstical tale by a genre author that I know will one day be read as a classic in university programs. There must be so much more to look forward to, so much not yet written, if we’ve only just discovered the potential of fantasy. And yet, is it new… or something of the old world, a lesson forgotten and remembered again? Quite the common theme.

Hours and hours could be spend mulling over the mythology in this book. I wish I had known more before reading it as many of the innuendos, descriptions and hints were lost upon my half educated neurons, but the novel still works. And works so very well. What the reader does get and know and catch and connect is enough. The story is there and you feel triumphant for piecing together what you do know. The rest sits in memory and mystery with hope for later reveal. You won’t be disappointed. All manner of characters, the ghastly, grotesque and pitiful, become endearing friends that you will miss. Oh, and you will google the names of gods.

“Nobody ever believed in Paul Bunyan. He came staggering out of a New York ad agency in 1910 and filled the nation’s myth stomach with empty calories.”

It is a who-dunnit, an essay wrapped in an adventure about who Americans really worship, written with imagery that whips your hair as you breeze throught it’s pages.  Do me a favour and read this book slowly. Savour its lines. Heartbreakingly beautiful. So alive.

“…and the crash of the breakers on the beach of skulls was not loud enough to drown that whisper.”

I’m so glad I gave it a re-read. Picked up some essential points that I had missed because I read too fast, noticed lots of breadcrumbs leading to the conclusion if only you have the eyes to see, and – like Shadow – feel that it sunk in deeply. An experience I try to call forward as I know it’s in me but can’t catch the details the more I attempt to grasp for them. But it’s definitely a real part of me.

“Perhaps its a hard thing to say, but joy and sorrow are like milk and cookies. That’s hows well they go together.”

ps. Sometime shortly after my first read-through, a HUGE blackbird landed on a low branch of the maple in my backyard. He looked like a raven, and I smiled, wanting so badly to re-enact the scene on page 158. Who, indeed, had come to visit?

p.s.s. Try the book for yourself. You can start reading it for free here!

Share this post!

and can prove it!

Have you seen this neat new addition to Goodreads? They keep stats on how many books you read per year for ya. No more having to tag books with the year you read them. It’s a dream.

Click the above link to see how I doubled my reading in my 2nd year of using Goodreads and look to do the same this year. It still doesn’t feel like I’m reading enough. There are so many wonderful titles sitting on my nightstand unloved and many more tempting me from the bookshelf and Goodreads Book Clubs. One of the fantasy groups has decided to read Sailing to Sarantium by Guy Gavriel Kay and that’s only been sitting unread pretty much since I’ve been married. Which then reminds me that his new work Under Heaven tempts me every time I enter Chapters.

Still I’m delighted to see the record of what I’ve read over the course of a year and know that my library, knowledge and imagination continue their adventure.

To find your own stats, visit your “my books” page. In the menu to the left, all the way at the bottom under all of your bookshelves, you’ll see “Stats.” Click to be simulataneously amazed and oh so proud of yourself!

In other good news, there’s new widget functionality from Goodreads…

The “custom widget” has had more options added to it. Show off your tags, the cover, the author, your rating, the choices are now pretty much endless. I’ve been using the “my books” widget so far but am now playing around with the new version.

New book group widgets are also available. Yes, that’s right, you can put a Chicks on Lit widget on your website!

See, here’s an example, one of the newer book blogs from Chicks on Lit members has one in their sidebar: visit The Broke and the Bookish to see it in action. I love their tagline of “will read for food.”

Good day, everyone.

ps. Courtesy of Twitter – as everything is these days – I learned through Indie Store Finder that there are no independent booksellers in our city. Only ones in the large metropolis south of us. Isn’t that sad? I can name four second-hand bookshops in town without thinking very hard about it, but for new books, it’s the big box store or the web. Do you have a favourite bookstore?

Share this post!

Ding dong!

The doorbell rang unexpectedly for the first time on Sunday.

From our vantage in the kitchen, the husband and I could see two short-haired shadows on the other side of the door. We shouted for our son to come upstairs as we said hello and breathed an inner sigh of relief that the mountain had come to Mohammed. So far, we’d seen few children in the neighborhood, but suspected – rightly as was now evident – that they were playing hide and seek with us.

“Hello, how are you?” we greet two young boys, our first official visitors. “Seely will be here in a sec…”

(let’s play the game where I call my kids Seely and Temperance. Got the 5th season of Bones on the brain.)

As they finish removing their bicycle helmets – what good boys! – they manage to give me the shock of my life…

“We were looking for Temperance.”

ps. It all ended well in a soccer game at the local park. Seely went with.

Share this post!

maybe you’re thinking i’ve flipped and become a photo blogger. not really.

i’m just a little crazy when it comes to taking pictures of my flowers. and this year instead of snapping the blooms, I decided to capture them unopened.

you can’t tell in the photos, but these irises were in pots ready for transplanting to our new home. i was thrilled that they were blooming at all and yet there were more elegant blooms than ever.

they now have a happy home under my weeping mulberry tree, awaiting the quiet winter to bloom again another year.

ps. you can see the photos better on Picasa’s site. just click any of them and you’ll be there in two shakes.

Share this post!