It takes all the running you can do...

This isn't an original; I read it on someone else's blog and I liked it:

"...it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" - Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass.

When I came across this it simply made me think about how many aspects of my life abroad require me to work twice as hard to do the same thing. For example, all the usual scripts are insufficient. Not in terms of language necessarily, but what you actually are expected to do and say in every day social activities in another culture.

But after the week I've just had...trying to finish my first article 300-500 words at a time. I think I need to be twice as productive to meet my deadline! Anyways, that's another story.

To get me through these stressful times, I need some nice light and hopefully humorous reading. A friend lent me "The Hippopotamus" by Stephen Fry. The quip on the cover says something about, "Fresh, filthy, and funny" and sista, that is no lie. Watch out for adolescent bestiality. I'm generally not a fan of books that begin with the ramblings of washed up, lewd old men. I'll admit a bias towards female protagonists, or at least younger male protagonists. Yes it's shockingly dirty, not for the sensitive reader, but harmless and cathartic in a strange way. The plot has a straightforward arch involving a cozy "visiting a country manor and solving a mystery" page turning ruse. But the sharp and ironic humour of Fry manifested in the womanizing whisky soaked failed theatre critic protagonist, is poignant only because of the honest observations about people and life that underlying the simplicity of the story. Recommended for anyone feeling blue and/or bored who doesn't mind a roll in the mud.

"I was conscious of a sensation not unlike that which overtakes you when investigating a mysterious night-time noise that denies you sleep. You stand on the stairs, heart pounding and mouth open. You proceed to eliminate the obvious; creeper tendrils tapping against the window pane; your dog, wife or child raiding the larder; floorboards creaking as the night storage heater activates itself. None of those fits the noise, so, fighting a rising panic you begin to consider the less likely causes: a mouse in it's death-throes; a bat loose in the kitchen; a child's toy left running; the cat accidentally (or deliberately) treading on the remote-control unit and rewinding the video cassette, but none of those quite explains the particular sound either and so...if you are anything like me, you trot hastily upstairs, dive back into bed and cover your face with a pillow, preferring not to know."

-you thought I would include a dirty bit? think again, I have family members reading this blog!

these are strange days

...the tax man says the university where I am doing my PhD doesn't exist. Sometimes it seems like the Canadian government thinks that nothing of any relevance to it's citizens exists outside North America. And in order for the university to be "accredited" for my tax purposes, my university must document how many Canadians have attended this institution over the last 10 years, including names, contact information, and SINs. Wow. That's A LOT of work. I suppose many of the hundreds of Canadians who have attended or currently attend my university are dual citizens or non-residents or on exchange and don't bother with Canadian taxes.

...I cannot call the number listed by the tax man with skype. I have not got a land line and my cell phone is pay as you go and hardly equiped for being put on hold with Revenue Canada.

...the front door of my building would not open yesterday. I pushed, shoved, heaving my full body weight against it thinking maybe I lost my mind and after two years of living in this building I missed something. There are these funny little knobs you have to turn sometimes, but still...Nope some drunk slammed it yet again in the night and busted it. The joy of living in a run down 60's building near campus.

...my mom has leukemia, I am entitled to a flu shot because I am a caregiver, or will be in December. Well in Canada I am entitled this week. Until yesterday, Finland overlooked this category. Someone from the consulate wrote and informed me of the change today. Either my boyfriends mother (who kindly called from Canada despite the time difference, employing her Finnish language skills and her powers of persuasion) has serious mobster connections, or there was enough of an outcry that they got organized.

...new problem. A co-worker called on my behalf today and was shut down not once but twice, on the grounds that the shot is for local people. I am a resident, not a citizen, but a resident with full rights to healthcare, I am registered in this municipality and I pay taxes, and into a pension and life insurance fund. I am also common-law with a Finnish citizen which absolutely gives me full rights. As soon as she heard "Kanadasta" she stopped listening. Time to get the boyfriend's mom to call again.

I really love so many things about living here, I have met wonderful people, have a cozy little shared office, a great situation as a doctoral student, etc. But this blog is getting bitter, bitter, bitter! Let's hope it turns around really soon!

On the bright side, I just finished some side editing for a researcher in the subject of the Scottish Enlightenment. When she publishes chapters and articles she needs a native speaker to language check. While the work can be difficult, tedious, and frustrating, I also learn a lot about the way I write, why I do what I do, how to write as an academic, and a of course acquire newfound knowledge. But what I really enjoy are the emails, the asides, the shared confidences, the little stories, and the bits of encouragement and advice from this Finnish woman I have never met. How she can listen to Scottish radio online, drink whiskey and eat shortbread (or some such thing) in her apartment here and imagine she is still in Glascow where she recently worked for a spell. The many stories of cancer in her family, the joys and frustrations of academic work, and often -academic life without work! It's the little things that get me through these strange and dark November days in these Northern parts.

Bad day, bad hair.

Whew, time goes by.

Some days are shittier than others. And today was one of them. The day wasn't going all that well to begin with work-wise or weather-wise. I don't mind the rain, I mean I am a westcoast girl. But today I had an appointment at a new hairdresser, and the rain was going to bring on fuzzy hair. And I knew I would have to endure exclamations, (I keep hearing from every hairdresser about my curly-fuzzy tendencies, and how different this is from most Finnish hair) and sit in the chair under bright lights feeling even uglier, and less stylish, and less cool than ever.

The combination of pouring rain and a hairdresser appointment resulted in me jamming winter sock clad feet into heeled knee high boots. Moisture + thick socks = excrutiating blister. I was overcompensating with the boots. They make me taller and leaner than I am. They make me feel like someone I'm not in other words. I can only handle them in small doses because I like to walk fast and it's hard to walk fast in them. And I like to feel that if I need to run away (from someone or something) I can do it. Paranoid eh? No no, it's my inner Nancy Drew. Flats are better suited.

The point of all this is that the hairdresser, did two things to make me feel crappy (besides charging waaay too much for doing almost nothing to my hair):

1. He made me feel terrible for not speaking Finnish. He spent 1.5 years living in Dublin and 5 years working on a cruise ship. I guess when he got sick of it all, he wanted to come back to the real Finland and only speak Finnish. I was sat down in a chair FAAAAR away from everyone at the front of the store in the WINDOW. Right on the sidewalk. This place is right next to the only liquor store in town. Lots of foot traffic. Anyways, it felt like they were keeping the contamination down, I was polluting the business space with my English. I don't know, he really grilled me and teased me. I found myself explaining why I haven't had time to study Finnish, and explaining that I am NOW taking a class. Why should I explain? It's my life. And I am a paying customer. I have a book I don't need to talk, just do my hair. Later in the conversation he said, "so now that your boyfriend is away you'll have to learn the words for milk and bread!" GIVE ME A BREAK. I don't speak the language, but I know a lot of things, I've lived here for two years and it's impossible if you don't know some basics. Besides, I think I can identify a loaf of leipa visually (with dots over the "a").

2. He combed through my hair and said, "So when did you first notice grey hairs?" WHAT? I had no idea. I laughed it off and said, oh really, are there a lot. No there's just some he said. Well, I'm turning thirty in about 6 months, I said. Okay, I guess my regular sainted hairdresser (actually colourist) in Canada has never mentioned it to me because she's a lovely lovely lady. Sigh. ALWAYS choose a hairdresser older than yourself. Just slightly.

Lemon Out.

Strange and startling

oh I am fickle. It's been so long since I blogged here. I was swayed by popular opinion, blogging to please friends and family with a sappy travel blog on the side. I miss dishing freely, and I really miss sharing (and bitching about) my public library experiences. And keeping track of what I read... I have read so many books since March that I have now completely forgotten. Just because daily life has slowed down and I sit mostly alone in an office of Nordic university doesn't mean I can't keep blogging. I promise to try harder. I know it's good for my soul.

And my soul needs what is good for it right now because these have been difficult times. Mom is sick, parents are divorcing, there was no one else to come home and help during her second round of treatment. Life is frail but it is also absurd, so that's what I will try to keep writing about.

A few months ago I posted a blog entry with a university blog that is supposed to be both fun and academic (ha ha ha ha) and just today noticed that someone commented on my entry, which I signed with my full name. The comment was short and sweet but the pseudonym said much more to me. Does anyone know who Barney Snaith is? Fictional character of my school girl fantasies? Any L.M. Montgomery lovers out there? Very few people in the world know what that name means to me. Perhaps only one or two or maybe three...Either way, a voice from my past decided to use a meaningful pseudonym to comment on my writing ability on a public -work related blog. It was respectful but also strange and startling. I think they wanted me to know who they are, or at least to narrow it down.

At sea in the doctor's office

After listening to my explanation the doctor swiveled his chair around and opened google. And if that weren't enough of a surprise, he followed the first hit straight to wikipedia. Dear dear little man with shoulder length greasy grey hair with a blue and white tight striped t-shirt on underneath his open labcoat. It had seen better days (the labcoat and the sailor shirt).

My medical issue wasn't complicated, I just needed to find out about silica cream, the supposed cure-all for people like me who produce massive amounts of scar tissue from tiny cuts. I waited patiently while he read through half an article on the mineral silica on wikipedia. I felt like stepping in...pointing out some useful medical sources. I love wikipedia as much as the next girl, but I don't go there for medical information. Finally the dear doctor called the pharmacy, holding the phone aside a minute to ask me if silica is a local cream...I was not sure what he meant. So I replied that it is a mineral...not a brand...so it should be available everwhere. On reflection, I think he was probably asking if it should be applied locally, on the skin. Yeesh.

I'm going to have to read this one again in order to do it justice. It has so many elements that I enjoyed: some mystery, some romantic intrique, both blunt and poetic prose, a cast of well-developed and slightly lost characters, an unique context(Yellowknife & small town radio)...read it!



Another Canadian novel - how lucky am I? And I found it at a flea market at the university - four books for three euros. Best deal ever considering the bookstore stocks only paper back bodice rippers and mysteries for 12-16 euros. I very nearly put it down. I picked it up and read "On a Canadian air force base in the early 1960's the McCarthy family is leading a post-war dream" - eww, the 60's? I started watching Mad Men last week when it debuted over here and barely lasted the episode. That was not a good era for women. This book though captivated and I could not put it down all weekend despite the migraine inducing small type (what is wrong with me, I missed half a day of work recovering)Part childhood memoir, part cold war thriller (mild), part crime/mystery novel and rather patriotic...got me thinking with one character's supposition that the worst kind of Canadian patriotism is anti-Americanism. Makes sense, doesn't say much to define your country by what your country is not. And yet it is so easy (and tempting) to do. Part Four seemed to loose momentum and the dreamy story telling quality that drew me in...but satisfying just the same. And to be honest, I'm rarely satisfied with the ending of a good book, it seems the characters should keep living their lives on the pages...

"When you look closely, however, you can see that they all have the thing in their eye. The result of an accident or a gift. Perhaps God dropped each of them on the head before they were born. Light seems to reflect at an odd angle from their irises - the visible effect, possibly, of information that, having entered the brain obliquely, exits the eye at a corresponding tilt. Something, at some point, smote or stroked them. Each lives in genial terror of being found out and exposed as a fraud. Each is fuelled by a combustible blend of exuberance and self-loathing, informed by a mix of savvy and gullibility. None was cool in high school. Denizens of the great in-between of belonging and not belonging; dwellers in the cracks of sidewalks; stateless citizens of the world; strangers among us, familiar to all. Comedians. These are Madeleine's people."

"The man who whined reappeared from time to time, but she kept him separate from her dad. It never occurred to her that the woman who criticized was anyone other than her mother."

PS- Jaralyn, I think you would like this one...

Two solid reads...

The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

It moved so slowly, it nearly stopped. For a mystery that is. But I kept on reading because the author created such an interesting world, and imaginary Jewish Alaska. The description of a neighbourhood, "Shvartsn-Yam" in the Sitka Sound:

"The swingers and the vacationers gave way to a population of upper-lowlifes, Russian immigrants, a smattering of ultra-orthodox Jews, and a bunch of bohemian professionals who like the atmosphere of ruined festivity that lingers in the neighbourhood like a strand of tinsel on the branch of a bare tree."

Another taste...

"The Dnyeper stairwell reeks of sea air, cabbage, cold cement. When he gets to the top, he lights a papiros to reward himself for industry and stands on the Taytsh-Shemets doormat, keeping the mezuzah company. He has one lung coughed up and the other on its way when Ester-Malke Taytsh-Shemets opens the door. She holds a home pregnancy test stick with a bead, on its business end, of what must be urine. When she notices Landsman noticing it, she coolly makes it disappear into a pocket of her bathrobe."

This tale centres on a disallusioned detective (a drunk as well) living in a flop hotel estranged from his wife, who has recently become his boss. His sidekick is Berko a towering aboriginal turned Jew. The District of Sitka was created sixty years ago following the horrors of the Holocaust and the 1948 collapse of Israel - in this version of history this Jewish territory is about to revert to Alaskan control, this period of transition will leave a lot of people without residence permits. There is a dark, end times feel to the mystery, a fight against giving up in both the protagonist and the society in general. Nicely described in the book jacket, "at once a gripping whodunit, a love story, a homage to 1940's noir, and an exploration of the mysteries of exile and redemption"...Richly atmospheric, the sounds and the smells of damp and dark permeate the pages.




Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

A few moments of doubt during the first few pages, oh no, another "The Mysterious Incident of the Dog in the Night" another precocious uber smart child protagonist, but by the end of chapter one, a few tears had trickled down my cheek. I guess I was suprised, and that is what happens when you borrow a book from a friend and fail to bother reading the jacket. I kept reading, not because I wanted to find out what would happen (that part of the "quest" seemed a bit cliche) but because the narrative stirred me. It reminded me of how September 11th effected individuals, and what really happened afterwards. How did people pick up the pieces and carry on? And in this story, how does a child carry on?

Nine year old Oscar Schell wonders if his dad was a jumper. He has a book of "things that happened to me" under his bed with strange and wonderful images cut from magazines (and this is incorporated in the novel) and one is of a man falling from one of the twin towers. When looking around in his parents closet he finds a vase and inside the vase there is a key inside an envelope which says "Black" written in his father's handwriting. At one point in the story he wanders into an art supply store to find out if they have that pen...the pen was red. The shopkeeper notes that usually people write a colour in the exact colour when testing pens on the pads they keep there. He looks and sure enough, all sorts of scribbles and doodles are ont the pads but a great many people write the colour of the pen they are testing. Or their name. This is when he see's his fathers name scribbled on a test pad, soon he finds it all over the store. His father died over a year before. Little moments where someone remembers or realizes that the past is still present, that reminders are everywhere are one aspect of how the novel grapples with the concept of time. Time of death, times before, times after, and how they intersect. I highly recommend this book.

I have a visual memory

Well no time to write, just time to read. I have my first paper presentation ever this week and I'm madly busy but the one thing that makes it all fade away is a good book. Whether it's a light mystery or something a little darker. I enjoyed all of these books, found in English at my local library. At the end of term all the foreign student's finally return their books and it's a buffet of new fiction (well relatively new...as good as it gets here) and I can't turn it down no matter how busy I am.

44 Scotland Street

Reading this book was like drinking a cup of hot cocoa in a cozy warm kitchen while the rain pitter patters outside. Sigh. I drank up the sequal (which wasn't quite as lovely) and I check daily for the 3rd in the series - the triquel?? Daily? Yes, daily. I have a neat little research room in the university library due to an office shortage in the department in which I'm studying, so each day on my way to the stairwell I swing by the 2 rows of English fiction. I could easily put a hold on it, but I rather find it just when I need it.

McCall Smith wrote this novel in installments for the newspaper (so I think this is why it moves along a little faster with a bit more oooomph than the Ladies Detective Series) - and believe it or not, some of the characters are real people as themselves, or under different names, in the city of Edinburgh. In his own words -

"What I have tried to do in 44 Scotland Street is to say something about life in Edinburgh which will strike readers as being recognizable about this extraordinary city and yet at the same time be a bit of light-hearted fiction. I think that one can write about amusing subjects and still remain within the realm of serious fiction. It is observing the minor ways of people that one can still see very clearly the moral dilemmas of our time. One task of fiction is to remind us of the virtues- of love and forgiveness, for example - and these can be portrayed just as well in an ongoing story of everyday life as they can on a more ambitious and more leisurely canvas."
Well put. These days I'm surrounded by quite a bit of posturing under the guise of knowledge sharing, although, I can't say I wasn't forewarned about this, so it's lovely to consider the worth of the simple things we enjoy, that they are not insignificant in the greater scheme of things.

Divisadaro by Michael Ondaatje

I loved Anil's Ghost, so I knew I would love Divisadaro. The tale begins in Northern California during the 1970's - a man loses his wife during the birth of their first child and ends up raising three children. How? A woman dies during labour the same day as his wife and he offers to takes this baby as well. He has also taken in Coop, sole survival of the brutal slaying of his family on a neighbouring plot. Claire, Anna and Coop are intimate with loss, and on the cusp of passion and adulthood when a tragic accident and a forbidden love splinter the family. The story finds Claire in San Francisco, Coop gambling in Nevada and Anna writing in France, and yet there is an unbreakable bond between them. Poetic, atmospheric and full of the dark and the light this is a beautiful book. Peopled with characters who know hardship, ruin, self-destruction, beauty, and how to find one's own unique way in the world.

"I came to France, in the 34th year of my life, to research the life and works of Lucien Segura. I had flown to Orly, my friend Branka had met my plane, and we drove through the darkening outskirts, passing the smaller peripheral towns that were like blinks of light as we travelled south. We had not seen each other in over a year, and now we were catching up, talking all the way. Branka had packed a hamper of fruit, bread, and cheese, and we ate most of it, and drank from a constantly refilled glass of red wine that we shared."

- sounds nice, but what, they were drinking and driving? ah, fiction.

"There was now not a single lite streetlamp in the villages we passed, just our headlights veering and sweeping along the two-lane roads. We were alone in the world, in nameless and unseen country. I love such journeying at night. You have most of your life strapped to your back. Music on the radio comes faint and intermittent. You are wordless at last. Your friend's hand on your knee to make sure you are not drifting away. The black hedges coax you on."

"

Timbuktu

Timbuktu by Paul Aster

I have to admidt that I skimmed a great deal of the first half. The rantings of a the dog's companion and lifelong love, a homeless man, were just too monotonous and familiar for those of us who have worked in public libraries. This book truly took flight for me in the last few chapters. This is sometimes the case when one enjoys the prose but not the topic.

"Paula loved the house but she didn't love Dick. This had become manifestly clear to Mr. Bones, and although Polly herself didn't know it yet, it wouldn't be long before the truth finally came crashing down on top of her. That was why she needed Mr. Bones, and because he loved her more than nay other living person in the world, he was glad to serve as her confidant and sounding board. There was no one else to fill this role for her, and even though he was a mere dog who could neither counsel her nor answer her questions, his simple presence as an ally was enough to giver her the courage to take certain steps she might not have taken otherwise."

Lives of Girls and Women

Lives of Girls and Women: A Novel by Alice Munro

I am ashamed that this if the first time I have read Alice Munro - one of the great Canadian authors of our time - what kind of librarian am I? To my defence, I'm not usually interested in short story collections, just when it gets interesting, the story ends! Lives of Girls and Women is her only novel and one which draws on her childhood in Ontario during the 1940's. For those of you who do not like historical fiction, don't let this deter you if you enjoy coming of age novels. There is something tantalating and delicious about turning each page awaiting the inevitable first experiences with "sex, birth and death" and even more so when it is so realitically portrayed, as in this semi-autobiographical novel. When I began this novel, I truly thought my grandmother might enjoy it having been raised on a farm in Manitoba, but after a few pages I realized that there was a darkness that wouldn't agree with her. Munro is shockingly candid in portraying people for all their faults, deceptions, and desires.

Del Jordan is the daughter of a silver martin farmer a mother who takes boarders and goes door to door selling encyclopedias to make ends meet. Stories weave in and out...a neighbour who gains a wife to an advertisement in the paper for a woman with one child seeking a housekeeping position "matrimony if suited" and finds himself married at the train station on arrival with tragic consequences. Del's first love almost drowns her for the sake of baptizing her into a marriageable state...Del's own pursuit of religion, sneaking into the Anglican church and unsuccessfully seeking God despite her agnostic mother's disapproval. These are good tales that share a place and a time where a girl felt compelled to follow a certain path. Del choses her own way, not without experiencing the way it might have been and then suddenly awaking as though from a dream.

"There was a house in Jubilee with three prostitutes in it....On sunny days the two younger women would sometimes come out and sit in canvas chairs. They wore print dresses and slippers; their white legs were bare. One of them was reading Star Weekly...Naomi said that this one's name was Peggy....I wished I had seen more of this Peggy thant the soft, mouse-brown nest of curls above the paper; I wish I had seen her face. I did expect something- a foul shimmer of corruption, some emanation like marsh gas. I was suprised, in a way, that she would read a paper, that the words would mean the same things to her, presumably, that they meant to the rest of us, that she ate and drank like a human still. I though of her as having gone right beyond human fuctioning into a condition of perfect depravity, at the opposite pole from sainthood but similarly isolated, unknowable. What appeared to be ordinariness here- Star Weekly, dotted curtains looped back, geraniums growing hopefully out of tin cans in the whorehouse window, seemed to me deliberate and tantalizing deception - the skin of everyday appearances stretched over such shamelessness, such consuming explosions of lust."

And a quote I quite like as it relates to multi-modality, a concept I'm looking at with my research right now...

"Believe me," he said, " I wish you luck in your life."

"Then he did the only special thing he ever did for me. With those things in his hands, he rose on his toes like a dancer, like a plump ballerina. This action, accompanied by his delicate smile, appeared to be a joke not shared with me so much as displayed for me, and it seemed also to have a concise meaning, a stylized meaning- to be a letter, or a whole word, in an alphabet I did not know."

"People's wishes, and their other offerings, were what I took then naturally, a little distractedly, as if they were never anything more than my due."

"Yes," I said, instead of thank you.

Consolation

Consolation by Michael Redhill

"Didn't those men and women, whose names we have all but lost, wander home in the evening to their hearths and speak of their future here? We are only faintly aware of the city they lived in - it is just an intimation, a movement in the corner of the eye. Of that city which must have stunk of horses and offal and pine oils and roasted fowl, of that air that rang with the cries of newsboys and the sounds of boots on hollow walkways and hooves on stone."

The Royal British Columbia Museum takes me back in time like no other museum has ever managed. I just returned from a week in England trolling through the British Museum, the Victoria Albert, the Museum of Natural History, the National Gallery...and never have I felt transported into history as I have at that lovely museum that I first visited in the fifth grade. There is a room, a re-creation of a kitchen from the days of yore, a breeze (from a fan) blows the curtain and the scent of cinnamon from a cooling (fake) pie, and the clatter of wagons and horse hooves is piped in. You lean over the wooden railing, willing yourself to become part of the room and breathe it all in. All your senses are there, you are almost there. This passage from Redhill's novel Consolation does the same for me. Through out this novel he evokes time and place and emotion convincingly and with such clarity.

"He only wanted to drowse a little in his life, as most people did, and carry along as if he'd gotten lost in the forest for a while, where the sounds of animals were too distinct for comfort and the scents too strong, and then the sounds of horses came piping in through the boughs. The wish was for home and the wish was a weakness."

Other Notable Reads of Late:



The Road by Cormac McCarthy
A page turner that lives up to all the reviews, but too much for me. The story was shocking in it's stark depiction of a father- son relationship in a post-apocalyptic world. I draw the line at stories of cannibalism. Of course I ended up reading it during the Christmas season! I had a narrow window of opportunity and I was loaned the book.



Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
I finally read a Picoult book and can see for myself how gripping they are. Her topics have always scared me off, along with her cult like popularity among women. This one had resonance in light of the recent school shooting here so I picked it up. It was a strong story. I guess it always comes down to that, you can't beat storytelling even when other things like writing style get in the way.



Purple Hibiscus by Chimanda Ngozi Adichie
Couldn't put it down, the characters are so rich and marvellous and stories of tyrannical religious parents always intrigue me (I don't know why because they bare no resemblance to my own childhood). Set in Nigeria it is a coming of age story that you really will enjoy. Highly recommended!

Echoes

The Echo Maker by Richard Powers

A young man swerves off a straight country road and into a coma. Three sets of tire tracks and an anonymous note on the table next to his hospital bed are all that remains to tangibly tell the tale. Human drama interplays with nature, set against the backdrop of an influx of migrating cranes in small town Nebraska. A thoughtful and lyrical examination of consciousness and the power of the brain to deceive and conceive reality. The novel is peppered with tales of the brain's foolery, patients recovering from trauma who do not recognize their own body parts, or are unable to recognize faces, or cannot form new memories.

"Back in the waiting room, she witnesses eight middle-aged men in flannel standing in a ring, their eyes slow scanning the floor. A murmur issued from them, wind teasing the lonely screens of a farmhouse. The sound rose and fell in waves. It took her a moment to realize: a prayer circle, for another victim who'd come in just after Mark. A makeshift Pentecostal service, covering anything that scalpels, drugs and lasers couldn't. The gift of tongues descended on the circle of men, like small talk at a family reunion. Home was the place you never escape, even in a nightmare."

Nominated for a Pulitzer in 2007 and Winner of the National Book Award in 2006, this novel captivated me for several days. I kept thinking of my friend, a newly graduated Occupational Therapist who has been working on the various units of a busy downtown hospital. The brain is a mysterious thing and how difficult it must be to assess and work with those who have experienced such life altering trauma. My one criticism, is that each central character spirals into their own self absorbed reality, where even the most selfless act achieves a narcissistic goal. Their respective grasps on reality seem tenuous at best. Perhaps this is the point.

I may as well quickly mention two other books I've been meaning to return to the library! I had planned on attending my meditation class this afternoon, however it has been rescheduled. I recently learned that there are allegations that this type of yoga meditation is in fact linked to a cult. Wonderful. No, No. Listening to tinkly Indian music, sitting until your ass aches, trying not to think, and being reduced to a near sleeping like state does not a cult make.

P.G Wodehouse. Comforting read in the manner of Agatha Christie with more chirades and chuckles. Suprising little quips about life and love. A clever narrative voice. Strong female characters, though sometimes they are perhaps a simple mockery...considering the era, plays on gender or? I really should look it up.

"I can't stand brave men," said Jane, "it makes them so independent. I could only love a man who would depend on me in everything. Sometimes, when I have been roughing it out in the jungle," she went on rather wistfully, "I have had my dreams of some gentle clinging man who would put is hand in mine and tell me his poor little troubles and let me pet and comfort him and bring the smiles back to his face. I'm beginning to want to settle down. After all there are other things for a woman to do in this life besides travelling and big-game hunting. I should like to go to Parliament. And, if I did that I should practically have to marry. I mean, I should have to have a man look after the social end of life and arrange parties and receptions and so on and sit ornamentally at the head of my table. I can't imagine anything jollier than marriage under conditions like that. When I come back a bit done up after a long sitting at the House, he would mix me a whiskey and soda and read poetry to me or prattle on about all the things he had been doing during the day....Why it would be ideal!"


I can't help but read this as a mockery of the things men used to expect of marriage from women. Ha. As if anyone needs that.



First published in the U.S. in 1949 this is a classic written by one of the major Finnish writers of the 20th century: Mika Waltari. The tale of Sinu, a doctor from birth to death during a time of religious and political strife (the latter part of the 18th dynasty of the New Kingdom, 1386-1293 B.C.E.). This doctor become disillusioned with humanity and scornful of war. These themes had resonance during World War II when it was conceived and helped propel it to acclaim. An epic read and a bit of a struggle for myself to reach the end...I tend to have a hard time reading books that end in the later years of someone's life...you know how it will end. Shocking in it's gore at times...the work of embalmers, soldiers, brain surgery, temple priests...These were bloody times. I just noticed on Wikipedia that this novel was first published in Finnish in 1945 and in 1949 an abridged English edition was published. Oh dear, my copy was abridged?

Strawberry Fields

Strawberry Fields: A Novel by Marina Lewycka

This was my little splurge for the 30 hour trip back. However, I ended up reading a tattered '80's paperback family saga that my grandmother passed along. I never can focus on anything serious when I'm flying. Lewyka won great acclaim for her previous work, A Short History of Tractors in the Ukraine (nominated for the Orange and Booker Awards) - That is the book that I indeed wished to purchase a few days before my departure. But this was her only title in stock. This tale focuses on the lives of a group of migrant workers in England from Eastern Europe, China and Africa as they flee a bad situation. Some fall by the wayside, recruited into jobs by corrupt middlemen that sound too good to be true... middlemen that hold the passports of the women they sell into prostitution. Sounds serious? Well, those stories are merely mentioned and the stories become central are the ones with more hope and elements of stubborn pride, redemption, humour and a touch of romance.

One character reflects after the horror of working in the filth and gore of a chicken factory...

"Is he freer here in the West today than he was in Poland in the years of communism, when all he dreamed about was freedom, without even knowing what it was? Is he really any freer than those chickens in the barn, packed here in this small stinking room with five strangers, submitting meekly to a daily horror that has already become routine? Tormentor and tormented, they are all just damned creatures in hell. There must be a song in this."

And later on the same page, we touch base with another character and the tone changes entirely:

"Yola was in a foul mood. She had discovered that morning, don't ask how, that the Slovak women who shared their hotel room had no pubic hair. How could this be permitted? Presumably they were not born this way, but acquired it in the natural course of things, and had taken steps to remove it. There are many bad things that can be said about communism, but one thing is for certain, in communist times women did not abuse their pubic hair in this way - a practice that is unnatural, unsightly, undignified, and, without being to specific, potentially dangerous."

The characters are rich and believable in all their messiness. The story itself may be a bit unevenly paced and sometimes stretches the believable. But the essential humanity and struggle of diverse people all seeking something far from home strikes a chord. All sides of human nature, the selfish and the selfless, the romantic and the vulgar, Lewyka spins a good yarn.

Settling In

It's been a tumultuous first few weeks back. The Supple Scientist and I have been waiting for all sorts of news...conferences, resident permits, research proposals. Big stuff that will define the next few months.

Upon arrival I began filling my days with little projects and errands and baking (yes, BAKING - that is NOT me) Of course the baking was born of homesickness. Finding food is a monumental task for me, a picky semi-vegetarian, at the best of times...but add to that a teeny tiny oven, limited crockery, and food package ingredient lists, nutritional info. and directions for use in a foreign language...I'm not complaining, these are just the challenges. Not to mention my recipe books are in imperial and my measuring cups/oven is in metric and so baking and cooking involves more math than it reasonably should! I began yearning for something...the next thing I knew I busy baking mom's apple crisp. Ahhh, the aroma of cinnamon and a warm crumbly bite of home. I took a step back and said, "It's only been three weeks since you left the cloistered realm of mom, dad, brothers, grandma (the coolest woman in the world) and best friends...go easy on yourself. Curl up with a good book and count your blessings. The pet bunny made it here and that's a very major blessing. She's an EU citizen now. There are benefits to that for her future travel! So while the following list may seem to be comprised of several negative incidents and one positive, these are just the things that I found interesting enough to relate. Many good things happen each day. Rest assured.

In my first 3 weeks back:

• A young boy held up a (very realistic) toy semi-automatic and fired it at me repeatedly as I was jogging down the street towards him. It made a popping noise that startled me badly. He continued to "shoot" me all the way down the street with a frightening blank expression on his face.


• One evening we heard thumping on the roof outside our windows. I walked to the window and pulled the curtain open and before me was a naked man prancing around holding a bottle of beer. Our neighbour.


• We called the police for the first time. At 3 am one night, I awoke to loud shouting and pounding in the hall. Someone was kicking one of the doors in our hall. These two men were also screaming. I wish I knew what they were saying. It was frightening not knowing the situation. The next day we got an apology note. From. Our. Neighbour. (I had bad neighbours in Canada, why not here? Although, once upon a time I had a lovely senior lady next door who watered my plants for me whenever I went out of town and chatted up anyone who knocked on my door).


• I attended an English Comedy night. The Finnish comedians were great (except for the one that did all the punch lines in Finnish). The show featured an extremely crude guest comedian from Canada. I have never been so embarrassed to be Canadian. Enough said.


• I listened to my first sermon from a female pastor. Actually, my first sermon from a Finnish pastor. Actually, my first Lutheran sermon. Rock on.

The Poisonwood Bible by Barabara Kingsolver

Four girls and a mother accompany father preacher (a tyrant) into the great unsaved Belgian Congo in 1959. Told in five distinct female voices that you may love and loathe in turn. Favorite quotes:

"Tall and straight I may appear, but I will always be Ada inside. A crooked little person trying to tell the truth. The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes."

"Everything you're sure is right can be wrong in another place. Especially here."

"Culture is a slingshot moved by the force of it's past. When the strap lets go, what flies forward will not be family planning, it will be the small, hard head of a child. Overpopulation has deforested three-quarters of Africa, yielding drought, famine, and the probable extinction of all animals most loved by children and zoos. The competition for resources intensifies, and burgeoning tribes try to kill each other. For every life saved by vaccination or food relief, one is lost to starvation or war. Poor Africa. No other nation has endured such an unspeakably bizarre combination of foreign thievery and foreign goodwill."


It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini

A story about a teenage boy who is clinically depressed and checks himself into a psych ward one suicidal evening. I skimmed through much of the first half and curiosity led me onwards. There have always been people in my life with clinical depression. I have known people who have made "a stay," "a visit," who have disappeared for a little while...It was the process of healing and the exploration of friendship and finding anchors in a turbulent life that kept me reading. Immensely satisfying. Tears in your eyes satisfying.

And at the end of the story:

Ned Vizzini spend five days in adult psychiatric in the Methodist Hospital, Park Slope, Brooklyn 11/29/04- 12/3/04. Ned wrote this 12/10/04 - 1/6/05.

Awesome.

Coastal Moments

The patter of rain, wood smoke hanging in the air, the perpetual sound of a whistling neighbour and the resounding chorus of neighbourhood dogs when a bear crashes through the underbrush. Where else can I jog along a dusty road as pick up truck roars past, every kind of colour, a hand shoots out the window and waves? Flowers for sale for five dollars at an unmanned roadside stand. Glorious colours waving in the wind. I leave money in a small wooden box for produce on Reid Road where they have the juiciest tomatoes, the springiest salad mix and the crunchiest zucchini.

Nights at the beach with a campfire made of driftwood. The waves washing the shore and the twinkling lights of the island surprisingly sharp on the horizon. Other folks down the beach drunkenly wander over to inquire about a missing Basset Hound. The police visit our group later on, surprised that our hands conceal only Tim Hortons cups of hot chocolate. I watched a meteor shower that night and roasted wieners and marshmallows.

I hiked in the forest, sat atop bluffs, swam in the ocean, breathed in the scent of horse... I had many glasses of wine with good friends. I am sad that my visit draws to a close but what a wonderful visit it has been.

City living

I'm back in the city in order to do some research at the university and catch up with friends. Oh yes, and I have a FIVE DAY wedding to attend. It will be a lot of fun! This is city is so beautiful and it's wonderful to be back, but after the quiet life in our sleepy university town abroad, and the peaceful rural life of my parent's place the last few weeks...the city is darker than I remember. Sunshine, a fresh breeze off the water, soaring mountains framing the horizon...and yet there is so much need here.

After being away a little while, the street presence of the homeless and needy seems oppressive. I forgot what it was like, and also I left before the weather got warm. Shopping cart homes abound and weathered men meet in parks and on sidewalks. Today I watched a transient man and his partner clean out their backpacks on the sidewalk, tossing Q-tips and food wrappers on the pavement. Everyone else at the bus stop averted their eyes. The city strike continues, the garbage and cigarette butts litter the sea wall and the grass grows longer hiding syringes in parks across the city. I took the bus down East Hastings to go to the PNE (the fair) a few evenings ago and we passed through the worst areas of the downtown Eastside. Swarms of the homeless and drug addicted flowed across the sidewalks and streets as the bus frequently braked. Dealer stood on corners. Police unlucky enough to pull foot patrol waded through masses of humanity, gesturing for people to move away from store entrances. Hundreds of people. Where does anyone begin? An angry wheel chair bound addict strapped himself in across from me, and a prostitute fingering her bags and screeching into her cell sat across the aisle. I fingered my necklace nervously, wondering why I chose to wear the small diamond pendant, the diamond from my great aunts engagement ring, reset as a graduation gift. And my only valuable possession. When I got off at the PNE, so did the man in the wheelchair, track marks running up his arm. He took off his baseball cap and began his panhandling at the gates.

I recently sold my car. Got to fund the return airfare! And so I am experiencing my favorite city via transit. And what a different city you see. Sitting on the seabus one night, enjoying the short 15 minute trip across the water towards the glittering city lights, I was disturbed. Behind me sat a man. He looked perfectly normal, even carried a briefcase. But he could not stop screaming. His tightly clasped hands gripped his face, containing his wailing as best as possible. Occasionally he strode around, sitting back down to resume in a hoarse voice. Schizophrenic? Possibly. Everywhere it seems the mentally disturbed have been left to fend for themselves. And they take transit. And when it can't get any stranger, someone will do something marvelous. Late for a doctor appointment across town, I discovered too late that my change would only cover one zone of travel rather than two. The driver threatened to kick me off the bus as I rifled through my purse becoming flushed as tears welled in my eyes. It was all too much. As we lurched around a corner and I prepared to get off the bus and miss my appointment, a woman stood up and called out, "Do you need another dollar?" And the day was saved. I did spend the rest of the ride wondering if I could offer her alternate compensation. A stick of gum? A book mark? I will definitely pay it forward.

Anyways, back to my trip to the PNE story...Moments later, I was seated on the grass inside the gates after paying my $15 dollar entrance fee. Sitting on a blanket with my brother and his friends on a beautiful summers evening, listening to Emerson Drive. A grinning cowboy fiddles his way across the stage and a wave of jean clad girls scream in appreciation. I snicker along with my brother at the various antics of this Canadian country band. We're not really country. But we're having a good time. It feels good to be in Canada. And I don't take the bus home.

Meandering, Monotonous or Moving?

The Last Summer (of You & Me) by Ann Brashares
Summer reading. A meandering coming of age romance. A delightful and frustrating foray into the unnecessarily complicated lives of three adolescents. I had to read this first adult novel by the author of the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants.

A Long Way Gone: memoirs of a boy soldier by Ishmael Beah

This tale should be told. This story is important. However, I found the prose to be monotonous and robotic. I was not moved. It read like a UNICEF advert.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Another reality made so real. Characters so believable. And this is an even harder task in world so far removed from our own daily existence. Afghanistan? Sound depressing. It is not. It is a life affirming tale of loss and survival and hope in a torn region that starts with the individual. A tale of perseverance. I can't wait for the next Hosseini novel.

My reviews are short, but so is my time at home. When I return to Scandinavia, I will get back to posting regularily. There is just so much life to live right now!

Two Summer Reads

The Diana Chronicles by Tina Brown.

A much more even handed examination of the life and times of Diana. Stories about all the Royals help complete the tale...actions and words begin to make sense and the complexity of her legacy is revealed. I have only read one other Diana bio- Andrew Morton's - much more salacious and scathing. Things that no one needs to know, really. Looking at Charles and all the Royals in a more sympathetic light, while still depicting the challenges that Diana faced. There are no excuses offered for the behaviour described...multifaceted people...no one is all angel or all devil. It does make for a fascinating read - take it to the beach! (though if you're like me, you'll walk around hiding the cover!!)

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides.

I bookmarked a dozen pages to add the excerpts to this blog. But it was due quite suddenly, only in my grasp for two weeks. What a storyteller!! What a topic. Fascinating. I read the first 80 pages in bed one night. It kept me up quite late a number of nights. A good meaty length, slicing through thick layers of geography, time, evolution, medicine, and family - all to explore the incident of a gene mutation - the incident of a hermaphrodite. Perhaps I will add to this later...one of the most satisfying novels I've read this year.

Mysteries and such...

Another torrentially rainy day and our apartment is humid with damp clothes strung from every available surface. Two weeks of laundry in one go and a very small drying room - yes I had to touch other people's underwear today (oh how I miss the warm tumbling sounds of an electric dryer). Well, not much to report on the LitheLibrarian front - been working away at some booklists on a volunteer basis. Boy do I miss the quirky world of public library reference...all the interesting people and all the strange conversations that I used to overhear. I rarely overhear conversations in English these days, and when I do they are of the more mundane variety. I am always amazed at how easily I get by speaking English everywhere I go. I feel quite guilty and really sympathize for all those immigrants that don't speak such a global language.

Friday, I rented a DVD for the first time. The clerk was a teenage girl, pleased to try out her English and pretty darn good (despite the self-depreciating remarks everyone makes, people are always excellent around here!) - of course I wasn't in the database, so it was necessary to giver her my boyfriends name. Silly me, apparently I can't even pronounce his last name properly. The way we say it back home means a whole 'nother name over here. Round one - nothing. Round two- tried saying it the Finnish way- nothing. Round three- attempted to spell it, was given a piece of paper to write it down- nothing. Roung four - remembered the dots over the "o" (both of them) that apparently change the whole thing! Anyways, I guess something I should learn, especially if I plan on taking this last name myself someday.

The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney

I read this novel in the hectic days before my trip. I didn't blog about it before, but as I would rate it one of the best books of the year. I picked it up of the new fiction shelf and it had a much nicer cover than the one above (yes, covers influence me, don't they influence you just a little?) Also, once upon a time, a school principal called the class I was so lucky to teach - "a pack of wolves" - for some reason, the fascination with the species remains. Various elements were intriguing - a murder, a mystery of a sort, historical fiction, set in Canada, fur traders, first nations, strong female characters, romance (male-female and male-male)... how could I resist? And I was not disapointed, it was lyrical, literary and utterly captivating. It's currently climbing the ranks on Amazon. By the way, Stef Penney is British and has never visited Canada. This was her first novel and I can't wait for the next...here's an excerpt I found online:

It is a Thursday morning in mid-November, about two weeks after that meeting in the store. I walk down the road from our house in a dreadful temper, planning my lecture carefully. More than likely I rehearse it aloud -- one of many strange habits that are all too easy to pick up in the backwoods. The road -- actually little more than a series of ruts worn by hooves and wheels -- follows the river where it plunges down a series of shallow falls. Under the birches patches of moss gleam emerald in the sunlight. Fallen leaves, crystallised by the night's frost, crackle under my feet, whispering of the coming winter. The sky is an achingly clear blue. I walk quickly in my anger, head high. It probably makes me look cheerful.

Jammet's cabin sits away from the riverbank in a patch of weeds that passes for a garden. The unpeeled log walls have faded over the years until the whole thing looks grey and woolly, more like a living growth than a building. It is something from a bygone age: the door is buckskin stretched over a wooden frame, the windows glazed with oiled parchment. In winter he must freeze. It's not a place where the women of Dove River often call, and I haven't been here myself for months, but right now I have run out of places to look.There is no smoke signal of life inside, but the door stands ajar; the buckskin stained from earthy hands. I call out, then knock on the wall. There is no reply, so I peer inside, and when my eyes have adjusted to the dimness I see Jammet, at home and, true to form, asleep on his bed at this time in the morning. I nearly walk away then, thinking there is no point waking him, but frustration makes me persevere. I haven't come all this way for nothing.

Heir to the Glimmering World by Cynthia Ozick.

It opens dark and mysterious as an aimless girl with no qualifications or skills seeks a job to take her away. She is an orphan who has lost an awful father and lives with a relation, a young man who doesn't see her as the woman she desires him to see. His new girlfriend is a hard Communist activist, and wants her out. Meanders in a poetic way but never reaches any astonishing climax. Almost baffles me how it can really be viewed as a novel...how did this one get published quite like it was. The characters are wonderful and it is written with skill...but it seems incomplete. Still an enjoyable read.

Death du Jour by Kathy Reichs.

Read it when I was feeling a little seasick during our cruise from Helsinki to Stockholm. Laying in my cabin with my small window (facing the life preserver but offering a glimpse of the sea). Good for this kind of thing. Couldn't put it down. I do admire a female detective! The gore was a bit much at times. I don't usually read this type of novel but as it takes place in Quebec in part, I made an exception. There were also some implausible aspects...some inconsistancies - time to get a better editor. Geesh.

Kindness revisited...

Contrary to my previous posting, I will be able to read On Chesil Beach while in Finland. The children's librarian that I volunteer with very kindly made a simple phone call and the book is on it's way, despite my blundering. I simply must get a grasp on this language when I return in the fall!

Kindness is everywhere I turn, here in Finland. I've been very lucky. I've met all sorts of helpful and generous folk.

I've also met a few characters. It's a small place. The other evening I went jogging on my own. I went to a local hill (which has a look-out tower and a playing field perched on top) and is wooded. Trails intersect and encircle the entire area, so if you pass a person jogging once, you are bound to pass them a dozen times. When I returned home to my partner, I informed him that I was checked out quite a few times on my run. I was being cruel, just trying to inject him with a motivator for joining me on the occasional evening jaunt. "Oh, by who?" he asked. "Um, some really serious runner, and Italian maybe, in short shorts," I replied. "Oh, that's the same guy that was checking you out at the grocery store when we were shopping a few weeks ago, his name is ---." As an afterthought he added, "He's a real horn-dog."

Oh, okay. Well, anyways before I get too full of myself.

Anyhow, the interpersonal weirdness just keeps on coming. In my first week here, we met a sprightly blonde German girl that dutifully showed up at every gathering where a certain friend of ours was bound to be. I was new, lonely, and eager to make new acquaintances. I tried to engage her in conversation a few times and really didn't get very far. She just wasn't interested in making friends...her gaze kept being averted. Let's call her "Tiffy" - because that's the kind of name she has. When the apple of her eye left town for an internship, Mr. Apple, I thought we wouldn't hear from her any longer. This was true, until two weeks ago. She ran into my partner while out shopping. Twice. Consequently we have been sent a text message to join her and friends for drinks, as she will being going away for three weeks. Well, I really haven't seen her in two months, so I don't know about this three week thing. Does she think that Mr. Apple is back, and he'll be coming along with us? Oh well, regardless of the motivators I will head out and take one more stab at friendship. Sometimes it is exhausting being in a country were all the people you socialize with are new acquaintances. I miss the lack of effort it took to hang around with old comfortable friends!

By the way, Tiffy has a watch that trains her. It has a programmed training schedule and gets her out the door and furthermore, if her heart rate is below target, it commands her to run faster. No wonder she's got such a great figure. I need one of those.


Image from Mati Rose, a Californian artist.

Some things transcend language...

I've had my fair share of language gaffs since I arrived here. At a conference workshop, I tried to help out by bringing over some extra chairs for a discussion, and I brought over a chair that said RIKKI. Lets just say that I discovered the hard way that rikki means broken. I've gone in doors that said OUT and out of doors that said IN and I've tried to open doors to buildings that are closed. It can be a little bit like experiencing the world as an illiterate!

I had another bad library experience -I stood at the circulation desk trying to comprehend why my holds went to a different branch (after all, I used the English version of the catalogue!) The circulation staff talked amongst themselves, gesturing towards me as the line grew, avoiding eye contact, and generally looking quite irritated. I wish I could speak the language, I am trying, and I don't want to seem like an arrogant North American. I don't expect people to speak English at all, but I find that most people do, and get accustomed to that. I begin to hope that one person on staff at any given institution will comprehend me to some degree. I kept apologizing and shrugging, we don't have a car and I can't imagine trekking to somewhere else to get a book from a library, I asked if I could cancel it. Looks of irritation soon appeared and I was asked to move away from the desk. I was pointed towards a reference desk, where I met a librarian that did not speak English and found myself standing there bewildered as Mika tried to explain. The situation seems hopeless and I've given up on reading Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach until I get home. I know I will now be eternally sympathetic to foreigners and new Canadians when I'm back home working on reference some day. I think I have always been courteous, but now I see how a smile can go such a long way when someone is bewildered. Kindness transcends language.

Another thing that transcends language is drunkenness! I had the wonderful opportunity to join the staff on the Mobile Library Bus this week. The bus driver, did not speak a word of English. By pointing to book titles, gesturing, and writing numbers down, and by showing me his wallet, he managed to convey that he had two children and that his son, only fifteen years old is 185 cm tall and plays basketball. His daughter is 25 and has a 2 year old child. Pretty good eh?

At the last stop of the night, we were a bit weary (I have no excuse because I was simply observing - all reference and circulation transactions were in Finnish) when a woman got onto the bus wearing the unmistakable odor of liquor. I guess that's the problem with pulling a library bus up in front of someones house on a summer evening. She tied her dog up outside and it was carrying on barking relentlessly in piercing tones. Every now and then she shouted out the door at it. After she left, the librarian and bus driver burst into laughter, waving their arms and saying "Pheewwww!" and the bus driver mimicked glugging out of a bottle. Yup!

Anyways, it was lovely to see how the book bus works. Kids with bike helmets in hand were the number one customer. It was great to see how the bus can serve children in their own neighbourhood as they showed up at the right time, waiting to return books and pick up their holds. One girl picked up a slew of Manga while we held on to a pile of James Bond novels for a boy. The librarian knew many of her regulars and walked the length of the bus helping patrons find books. She had a keen sense of what people needed, and took time to refresh the fiction that was available while we were stopped. The shelves are very tightly packed, both to make the most materials available and to reduce flying objects while driving! They keep a tight collection of fiction, non-fiction (from sushi to gardening) and children's materials (including kids DVD's but not adults). The materials are quite fresh and new and are housed separately from the regular collection in the basement of the library.

I wish we had a mobile library bus at home. Sigh. On the road...

A Little Piece of Paris and some sterner stuff...

Fatima's Good Fortune by Joanne & Gerry Dryansky.


This was a quirky lovely little book that made me laugh out loud, and long for escape into its sunny pages. Yes sunny. Don't usually long for that. Okay, I do sometimes.

The most extraordinary descriptions of human interactions with very personable animals. Pets I would love to have:

"As if Durand's glance had cued her, the dog, the Countess's ancient Labrador, Emma, strolled in from the hallway, rolling her hips, and began to sniff suspiciously at Monsier Durand's zippered half-boots. The dog trailed a faintly unpleasant smell, resembling the odor of a cellar. Durand hiked his trouser leg nervously and Emma's saliva wet his hairless leg above a low sock. Her teeth grazed his skin. Time, he thought grimly to get back in the literal elevator."

Another scene...

"Cacohouete looked at him in a strange silence when he walked in."

"Don't say it!" Suget shouted at the bird. "Or I'll fillet you like a fish."

"Cacohouete kept mum and turned his back and let go a bit of bird-do. Suget took it as an insult and threw his raincoat over the cage. Perhaps, to be fair, the bird had merely shown that it was terrified, and perhaps on the other hand, if someone who knew bird expressions were looking at Cacahoute full in the face from the other side of the cage, he would have seen a look of sympathy. This from Cacahoute for the first time."

Where does the story start?

"It was the twenty-seventh of August, and rain had been falling on Paris for several days on end. As if in winter, the Eiffel Tower was amputated above the hips by fog. The swollen Seine was splashing the boots of the stone Zouave below le Pont de l'Alma and covering the gangways of the rising houseboats. In the blurred city, on streets that smelled of wood fires lit in yellow-windowed living rooms, the cobbles were all that glistened." And here we meet Rachida, the sister of Fatima, the Tusanian hotel maid who finds herself in France, despite her accursed and life long bad luck...and so the tale begins...




The Known World by Edward P. Jones


I've been meaning to read this one for a while, the 2004 Pulitzer Prize winner, but the opening paragraph deterred me. Serious stuff, best saved for another day when I am made of sterner stuff. Amidst the extreme, and I do mean extreme, busy-ness of my previous children's librarian life (all my own doing, too many things going on, too many jobs, too many people to please, too many activities and involvements) I often grabbed a book on Friday evenings downstairs from the adult department on ending my shift, looking for something straightforward and enjoyable. A light diversion. Now that I'm far from home with more time for reading, I am finally reading some things I should really read. I finding great rewards within the pages! I am currently reading Salman Rushdie's Shalimar the Clown. I am completely immersed, unable to put it aside, a great storyteller indeed and beyond any blog entry review!


The tale opens with Moses, the formidable overseer of the other slaves at a plantation surprisingly owned by another black man. This paradox of slavery and ownership runs through out the tale. This man, Henry Townsend promptly dies, leaving his widow Caldonia to grapple with her role. I did not enjoy the opening, or this character Moses. I did not enjoy how shallow and lifeless Caldonia was in this tale. This was a tale about many people populating a particular time and place however, and we were not to dwell on one woman's story. Intricate layers of family and generation unravel and a beautiful symmetry unfolds and the story reaches it's somewhat violent but inevitable culmination. I loved the detail and care taken, the gift of foresight the author offered at ever turn with every character. A glimpse into the future of the narrative, for this example comes early on, years before it actually occurs...


"Louis, over time, would learn how not to let the eye beome his destiny, for people in that part of Virginia thought a traveling eye a sign of an inattentive and dishonest man. By the time he became friends with Caldonia and Calvin, her brother, at Fern Elston's tiny academy for free Negro children just behind her parlor, Louis would be able to tell the moment when the eye was wandering off just by the look on a person's face. He would blink and the eye would come back. This mean looking full and long into soemone's eyes, and people came to see that as a sign of a man who cared about what was being said. He became an honest man in many people's eyes, honest enough for Caldonia Townsend to say yes when he asked her to marry him. "I never thought I was worthy of you," he said, thinking of the dead Henry, when he asked her to marry him. She said, "We are all worthy of one another."