I can’t believe he ended up with Lulu.
- Full, in depth editing of Book One of faerie story, currently scheduled for the week of July 19th. That week is faerie week. Monday, Tuesday will be reading out loud and correcting in pencil, Wednesday finishing up day, then Thursday, Friday making corrections in the computer file. Bleeding into the next week will be plotting Book Two.
- Wolf Children: Chapter One is, well, it exists. I have plans for Chapters Two, Three, and Four. Two is digging (in the first person). Three is stolen from The Dancer Upstairs (in the third person). Chapter Four is bad mothering (in the second person). Chapter Five is somehow tied back in to Chapter One in a way that does not exist even in abstract yet. Sigh.
- I think lists that only have two things are sort of pathetic. I mean, why make a list if there are only two things. Even only having one thing, one can view that as like a meta-deconstruction of a list, but two things in a list, just seems lazy. So this is my third point, to have three.
Hopefully, also, much reading.
Whenever I (frequently) feel like I’m not great at parenting, I should remember that Tesfa couldn’t wait until tomorrow to go to the bookstore to pick out her yay-I-finished-grade-one present and insisted that we go today.
Also migraine. So here is my migraine whine: whine.
Wolf Children is (d)evolving. Right now it stands (at least in my head) as a series of interconnected stories that will (maybe) (someday) make up a novella.
But I don’t know if I like that? It’s sort of a cheat — like why can’t I just make it a novel rather than making it novel-length? I did like the way it worked in The Madonnas of Echo Park, but I felt cheated by the form in the The Juliet Stories, where we spiraled out from the parts I was reading the novel for to stuff I cared less about.
Do I hate connected short stories? Ugggg. I don’t know anything any more. I should go study actuarial science and stop with all this free-form open fiction nonsense. Read non-fiction textbooks about macroeconomic policy and Nordic politics and subcontinental linguistics and become even more antisocial than I already am.
Geoff has read my first chapter of the unending slog of Wolf Children story. He says it is worth writing a second chapter.
So now I have some work to do, considering it took my six months to get the first chapter done.
Ever since stumbling upon the Katamari comic book on Netgalley, I go through their comics section every few months to see if there’s anything else that’ll grab me. Last time I was browsing through, there was Unicorn on a Roll by Dana Simpson, a kids’ comic, but I thought, why not? I can read it to my kid. She likes comics. She likes unicorns. And I like stories with female protagonists that I can read to her. Besides, I think they had the first book in the Scholastic flyer so I figured it couldn’t be awful (although since it seems like 75% of the books lately have been Lego Star Wars Vs Chimera character dictionaries, so maybe I’m giving too much weight to being included in a Scholastic flyer).
In preparation (yes, I am lame enough that I prep for reading books), I got the first unicorn book out of the library. I read it to my kid and was fairly meh. Phoebe seemed like a run-of-the-mill Disney channel brat, whiny and self-entitled (the introduction said that this was supposed to make her real or relatable or something). It isn’t like I’m a fan of the bland Jack and Annie squeaky clean characters either, but something about Phoebe rubbed me the wrong way. Marigold (the unicorn) too. So with trepidation, we moved on to Unicorn on a Roll.
And…it wasn’t half bad. Maybe exposure to Phoebe and Marigold dulled my initial distaste, or maybe they are just less irritating this time round. Whereas the first book made me cringe, the second was enjoyable, even a bit cute in parts. I love the dad playing video games. Made me wish that we had a console (well, we do have a dusty PS2 whose controllers, the last time I played for five minutes, set off the arthritis in my knuckles so I haven’t played since).
Since this is marketed as a kids’ book, I asked my kid to give me a review. So if you’d rather read her (prompted) review than mine, here it is:
Q: What is the story about? It’s about a little girl and a unicorn.
Q: Tell me two things that you remember from the story: 1. The went to a unicorn party. 2. There was a play but the day of the play Phoebe was sick and couldn’t go.
Q: What are some adjectives that describe the book?: funny, colourful, interesting.
Q: Rate this book: Five out of five stars.
So there you have it.
Unicorn on a Roll by Dana Simpson went on sale May 26, 2015.
I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Likely because I don’t know where any of my shit is.
One day I opened by email to a message thanking me for agreeing to review Bent by Teri Louise Kelly. I looked around my give-me-free-books sites (librarything, goodreads, netgalley), but I’m pretty sure I never requested this book to review. Oh well. I’m never going to turn down a free book — like the time I got an M.G. Vassanji book randomly in the mail. That was pretty nice.
Okay, but Teri Louise Kelly is no M.G. Vassanji. We have here a rambling and meandering treatise on gender, transgender, drugs, life, writing, poetry, Australia, more drugs, drinking, vomit, first person POV, second person POV, etc., etc., etc. Most of the philosophical component is roughly equivalent to that guy you knew in high school who totally understood Nietzsche and spent a lot of time talking about reality while getting stoned. The gender thoughts are about as deep and very essentialized (girls like makeup, boys like sports!) although there is some glimmer of depth nearer to the end when Teri seems to get away from trying to be one gender or the other, and becomes, in eir words, undefinable. But that’s a long road (or read) to get there. Like like Teri trying on different aspects of different genders, this book tries on a bunch of roles: memoir, theory, fiction, experiment, manifesto. Maybe Teri is satisfied with the gender construct e’s built for eirself, but Bent doesn’t really come up with anything satisfying. It’s like reading Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal without the depth, and even a sprinkling of pithy bon-mots can’t elevate Bent to where it needs to be to be truly transcendent.
And I feel bad for Teri’s kids, not because of Teri’s experimentation with gender, but because e seems to walk away from them without compunction. Obviously, it isn’t Teri’s place to say how eir kids feel, but the flippancy with which Teri discusses eir disinterest in eir kids speaks to the way the book lacks an emotional core. It makes Teri seem selfish. It makes Teri less relatable. If there’d been some sort of self-awareness or critique of eir own actions, then maybe it could be understandable, but treating one’s decision to abandon one’s family as glib and inconsequential in eir path to become the undefinable person she is, is unconscionable.
Also, you know what’s boring, let me tell you about this dream I had last night boring: pages and pages of reading about someone getting pissed or high or wasted again and again and again. Other people’s altered consciousness stories are boring. I wish the editors had cut most of the drugged out bits (as well as invested in a proof-reader to catch a bunch of little grammar and punctuation errors throughout).
I don’t know. Maybe I’m not the right person to review this book. I have no set philosophy on gender. In an hour, I can go from a liberal feminist interpretation of gender to a radical feminist one to a post-modern interpretation to anarchic. I’m muddled. Bent didn’t unmuddle me, but that was hardly its aim. Bent reminds me of some conversations I had with autoethnographers a while ago where the importance is the student’s writing of their own story, rather than necessarily the content or the style in which the student writes. I could see studiers of gender analysing Bent for background or colour, but I can’t really say it succeeds as a mainstream memoir. But, then again, maybe that isn’t the point.
I received a copy free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
And so June begins – traditionally the month of Geoff attending conference after conference and me trying to parent in a way that isn’t me yelling and then turning on Netflix. So, instead of getting all stressed out about all the work I am not doing, I’m going to treat this month as a reading month: for work, I will read. I will read lots and lots of different types of books and then steal as much as I can from them. I also made secret pudding and put it in the back of the fridge where Tesfa can’t see it and I will eat all the secret pudding myself. I feel books and secret pudding (butterscotch!) might make this month less fraught.
Big A++++ to all actual single parents out there. All day everyday; I can’t imagine.
I read:
Not as much as usual due to the behemoth of 2666.
Thoughts:
- The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins: This and Viviane last month, both I figured out the mystery only a few pages in. Boo. I know it should make me feel clever, but it does not make me feel clever even one tiny little bit.
- The Thickety by J.A. White: Such a good spooky kids’ book. It scared Geoff but Tesfa was okay with it.
- A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L’Engle: I have similar feelings about this book as I did with Harriet the Spy last year, i.e. a book having a female protagonist does not imply a feminist book. Meg’s constant hysterics (and purposefully I am using the word hysterics to describe her) with all the males knowing more than her and Calvin’s job to hold her hand and look after her fill me with righteous feminist rage. So I stick out my tongue although I suppose Meg is good at math, so I guess she can have one cookie, but nothing more. Plus the book is so random that it could give The Amazing World of Gumball a run for its money. Further (yet similar) thoughts by someone else here.
- What Boys Like by Amy Jones: One of my favourite Can-con story collections. A re-read.
- 2666 by Roberto Bolaño: First time in a long time that I was reading a book that I didn’t want to end. It’s like a whole universe in there. Then, once finished, I was still famished and rather than wanting to savour the story, I wanted to pick up a book right away and continue reading (maybe even reading 2666 again). I think you could read this book forever.
- When Everything Feels Like The Movies by Raziel Reid: I can see why Ru won Canada Reads, as it’s a less objectionable choice, but it’s also a conventional choice. This book is unconventional, so maybe that means it isn’t Canadian enough. Still let’s remember, Bear won a Governor’s General award way back in the 1970s and that’s a book about a woman in a sexual relationship with an honest-to-goodness bear, so maybe it is a perfect Canadian book. So When Everything Feels Like The Movies will make it into the canon eventually. Maybe even soon.
- Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of the Somerset Sisters by Lesley M.M. Blume: I really wanted to love this book but children’s books set in New York have to live up to From The Mixed Up Files and this one just doesn’t. Tesfa enjoyed it, but I found the portrayals, especially in the Morocco and India sections, heavy handed and unnecessarily stereotyped.
- A Useless Man by Sait Faik Abasıyanık: Reviewed earlier this month.
- The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro: Oh my goodness, how inane the conversations are. The characters all speak like how an eleven year old would write a Game of Thrones fanfic. I’m starting to think I don’t actually like reading Kazuo Ishiguro. I loved The Remains of the Day (but I read it in high school, so maybe that negates my recommendation of it), I thought Never Let Me Go was okay, I loathed When We Were Orphans and got annoyed at The Unconsoled. And now this, a big fat meh. Maybe I’m just not a fan.
Favourite book of the month:
My new universe to lose myself in.
Most promising book on the wishlist:
It’s about a female mathematician!
I watched: (and there is more than usual because of being on vacation with a television)
Thoughts:
- The first row of cartoons: So kids cartoons are all dadesque now? Nothing makes sense. NOTHING!
- Secrets and Lies: Another mystery I figured out near the beginning. And man, being poor in Australia must suck, what with having a house with a pool and a guest cottage and two cars and super nice furniture and a big open kitchen. *rolls eyes*
- Game of Thrones: I didn’t bother with the rape episode though.
- Futurama: In bad parenting move of the year, my six year old is now obsessed wtih Futurama. This really is a bad parenting move. I’ve got to wean her off it and back to something more appropriate. I feel like an even worse parent than normal now.
I wrote: Wolf Children Part One and typing up. Faerie story. Submitted some short stories to journals and slushed out some more. Taking a slush break as the collection is currently on exclusive right now, so yay!