she told me to…

To Mother

I hope that soon, dear mother,
You and I may be
In the quiet room my fancy
Has so often made for thee, –

The pleasant, sunny chamber,
The cushioned easy-chair
The book laid for your reading,
The vase of flowers fair;

The desk beside the window
Where the sun shines warm and bright;
And there in ease and quiet
The promised book you write;

While I sit close beside you,
Content at last to see
That you can rest, dear mother,
And I can cherish thee.

Louisa May Alcott

Silly me for listening to book podcasts. They make me want to buy books!

Besides Books on the Nightstand which I love because hosts Ann and Michael are such darn nice down-to-earth people, I also tune in every week to The Sword and Laser, a fantasy/science fiction podcast hosted by Tom Merritt and Veronica Belmont. (Btw, LOVE the new website design guys and did ya have to pick such an awesome book as The Windup Girl to read next?!!!)

Between the two, I get stellar recommendations from just about every genre of book out there. And that’s how I read. The number of bookshelves I have on Goodreads continues to grow as evidence to that.

I go where inspiration strikes me, rarely if ever thinking “I just don’t like that kind of book.” Ah, wait a second… I don’t do chick lit. Honestly, if a book is pink or has a stick pencil drawing of a fashionista on the front, it turns me off.

But anyway, the point I was trying to make is that so far 99% of my books are borrowed from the library.

We go probably once a week. It has such a fantastic inviting air to it. The second floor that houses the children and young adult collection is open to air, and the kids take off up the curling Gone with the Wind-esque stairs intent on finding adventure. I take a quick stroll through the adult graphic novels, never forgetting the new fiction and nonfiction selections, usually finding very juicy tidbits to my to-read list, before heading up myself to join them.

Last visit there was a real treasure, the new biography of Louisa May Alcott. If you are a Little Women fan, you will appreciate the context into which Harriet Riesen places Louisa’s whole life, connecting real life events to her fictionalized versions. I’m only a hundred pages in and it’s been extremely insightful and readable.

So, with so much free entertainment, how to justify purchasing new books?

I have to have criteria. Here they are:

1. Favourite authors with a new book and amazing reviews… thinking of The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt which I’ve yet to pick up. Her Possession is such a favourite that the tagline for my blog comes from it.
2. Books I’m highly likely to re-read or reference… like my favourites about writing
3. Treasures that are a real part of my personal journey… too many to pick just one
4. Brand new books I can’t get used. Goodwill has amazing 1/2 off sales which where I found Mists of Avalon!
5. Graphic novels that the library doesn’t have yet… aka Buffy Season Eight
   

That’s a lot of really good excuses to buy books, but I still don’t. I load them up in my shopping cart, drool over it a bit, look to my left at the stack of books I already own there, look to my right at the  latest library stack, both piling up and crowding the computer monitor on either side, sigh a little and try to forget about how something is only $15 online at Chapters.

My hope is to one day have a beautiful home library. The living room or maybe the dining room, besides the master bedroom of course, will be wall to wall bookshelves. (Can ya tell that I’m unlikely to ever be a Kindle girl?) An oasis, a beating heart, a thinking centre for myself and my family. Expanding our minds and thoughts with every word. A great chair or two, comfy pillows, a small desk with my journal. I can think of no greater heaven.

I simply can’t decide whether to keep building now or wait just a little bit longer.

How do you get your books? And which ones do you buy?

Wish I could share this talk via actual video, but the best I can do is share the feed. Rabbi Harold Kushner visited Toronto at the end of last year to give a talk based around his latest book, Conquering Fear, Living Boldly in an Uncertain World. I really enjoyed the depth and breadth of his insight and spirituality. He covers many topics, though he starts with fear, but does not ever seem to be wandering. What he says regarding fundamentalism, fear, not being intimidated, God vs. nature and what God has in store for our lives all struck me deeply. I’ve yet to read his books, but his name keeps popping up lately and the quality of message in this talk makes me think long and hard about doing so soon.

The Rabbi’s talk was aired on a Canadian television show called Big Ideas. From their website,

“BIG IDEAS is a showcase of ideas that shape our public debates. At their best the lectures featured on the program expose us to the differing ways of defining what matters and how that affects our understanding of the world as it is and as it is likely to be… Each age has a set of questions by which it defines itself. If, 50 years from now, someone came across a list of BIG IDEAS shows, they would have a pretty good idea of what people thought about and debated in the early 2000s.”

From this link to the Big Ideas website, you can see the video or listen to the audio. We get the show in podcast form via iTunes each week. Expand your world view and have a listen. It certainly did for me.

Agatha Christie.

This book was an addition to my Women Unbound Book Challenge because I found it for $1 at Value Village and my curiosity about the author has been peeked, having never read any of her books, ever since I watched the Doctor Who episode where she is featured. Yes, that’s my second Doctor Who reference in as many posts. Sorry, big fan here!

Murder on the Orient Express is a departure for me in another way. Mysteries haven’t been a favourite genre of mine since I finished every single Nancy Drew my hometown library had in stock. Perhaps there was some burnout involved. Hard to say.

Nevertheless, Christie surprised me with a quick deft read that kept the adrenaline coursing in my veins and the eyes open over night shifts. Not an easy task.

Indeed it was a fun little book. Old style mystery writing too. Find the clues. Piece it together. No CSI computers, lasers or digital recreations here. Just a knack for observation and experience with human psychology.

Hercule Poirot is the featured detective. I hadn’t previously realized that she had her own Sherlock Holmes consistent throughout her books. He had my brain running in loops. Every time I thought I’d figured something out, I had not. Oh well, the end was sufficiently stunning that I didn’t mind being less astute than he.

However enjoyable this little jaunt, I feel no further urge to read more of Christie’s work. I get just enough murder and mayhem in my diet when we try to solve one of the stories in this book over the dinner table.

As an aside, I know I’m really really late but…

I am so proud that in 2009

I read 22 books total, not counting short stories or graphic novels
was a member of Goodreads for my first full year
met some amazing women among the Chicks on Lit group there
found more books than I can read in five years for my to-read shelf
and finally – finally! – found a book podcast i can call favourite, Books on the Nightstand.

The best of the best book selections from the year would have to be Eat Pray Love in nonfiction and Ender’s Game in fiction, though there are very close runner-ups in both categories.

Here’s to the journey of 2010!

My first book for the Women Unbound Book Challenge is done!

Confession: I finished it before Christmas, but my life is bonkers from then until now and I’m finally ready to write again. You don’t mind, right?

Especially because my reaction and appreciation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale hasn’t dimmed one bit. My reaction was very British… Brilliant.

(Anyone else notice how much the islanders say that word? Or is it just those interviewed for their work in the tv series Doctor Who?)

I feel like Atwood’s self categorized piece of “speculative fiction” was a perfect choice for the first book in the Women Unbound Reading Challenge. It deals with a future society in which women have been stripped of their rights and society as a whole organized into a caste system for the good of all mankind. Those who have — eek, perhaps this is time for a SPOILER ALERT!!! — proven fertile and able to bear children are put into service as surrogate mothers for the upper class wives who are unable to bear children. This is the theme I found most enthralling. For society had not simply removed women’s right to external entities like having money or holding a job or marrying whom she pleases. No, they went so far as to physically disassociate their sexuality from her occupation as a child-bearer or as a wife. No one was having fun in bed. No woman felt like a woman. Which is just enough of a step further in the line of discrimination against women than we are accustomed and what made this book so thought provoking.

In the story, women among the privileged elite participated in their husband’s adultery with a handmaiden, lying still and silent underneath the girl, watching the amputation – and subsequent death of herself – claim another. The handmaiden herself faired little better as an object, an womb surrounded by an invisible person hood. It was all rather appalling to picture and Atwood’s story is a slow unfolding of the details of how this society works as a whole with small tidbits and references to a political uprising that brought them to this place. The story is told from the point of view of one particular handmaiden and her struggle to understand her new place in the world, whether she likes it, whether she can live with herself and participate and believe the brainwashing or choose her own path.

I found it reprehensible that anyone might suggest that any society, particularly thinking of our own that has fought over so many years to secure legal rights and break social mores surrounding what women are and are not allowed to do, could degenerate into what is alive and well in Atwood’s world. And yet I felt like I must consider the possibilities. For to not be on watch, to not put forth my own genuine femininity and guard and treasure it, would be to open the door for repression masquerading as revolution.

The Handmaiden has to make hard choices and constantly be on watch. She has to decide whether to be a rebel and if so, what kind of rebel? She taught me to duly watch and, more importantly, be thankful, both for my own self and for, in an odd way, the men around me who have been unafraid to let my femininity become what it will.

I am really looking forward to reading more of Margaret’s work in the future. For now, I have my pile of further Women Unbound reading but I am tickled to know that Atwood is worthy of the immense persona she carries as a Canadian literary giant who just happens to be a woman.