meghan rose

books

really louisa may?

By on Friday, March 21, 2014

He read a long debate with the most amiable readiness and then explained it in his most lucid manner, while Meg tried to look deeply interested, to ask intelligent questions, and keep her thoughts from wandering from the state of the nation to the state of her bonnet. In her secret soul, however, she decided that politics were as bad as mathematics, and that the mission of politicians seemed to be calling each other names, but she kept these feminine ideas to herself, and when John paused, shook her head and said with what she thought diplomatic ambiguity, “Well, I really don’t see what we are coming to.”

As bad as mathematics? Oh, we’re on.

The more I read, the less I understand the love for this book. So much stuff is about finding happiness in marriage and being like a doormat to ease the lives of others around you. It fills me with rage.

Ninety percent done, according to kobo. Will likely finish today and then the complaints will cease.

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books

is reading Little Women making me a worse person?

By on Thursday, March 20, 2014

I know there are all these pop-science articles about how classics make you a better person and will clean your oven for you and do your taxes and the like, but I’m starting to really believe that reading Little Women is making me a worse person than I was previously. Case and point: I read an hour of the book yesterday while waiting for Tesfa’s craft club to finish, and then came home angry and sullen for the rest of the evening.

I don’t mind the episodic nature of the tale, but the little morals woven in throughout, the sheer goodness of the characters, how selfless they are, how kind, how nice, it just makes me want to punch someone in the head and then scream at the top of my lungs. Thankfully, I just shut myself away to assemble Tesfa’s new car seat (I am weary of buying and assembling car seats. This is the third one since Tesfa is now too small for her current car seat but does not weigh enough for a booster, so I got to shell out more money on a car seat that converts to a booster eventually, and I’m pretty sure by this point I’ve spent more on car seats than I did on diapers and clothes for Tesfa during her entire existence. Edit: My mother actually bought the second car seat and not me, so I take that back about how much I’ve spent on car seats). One might assume that it was following the ridiculous assembly instructions that made me angry, but no, I was angry before. Angry at Little Women.

I always say I want to be earnest, not as sarcastic, kinder, gentler, warmer. No ironic hipster detachment from life, but embracing it. Clearly, however, I can’t. I can’t read a sweet story. I think there is something wrong with the empathy and caring part of my brain.

My kobo tells me I am 77% of the way through. I’m afraid I’m going to murder someone before I get to the end.

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short stories

a short story a month

By on Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Due to having a lot of my stories published in the last two years and the ones that haven’t been just keep kicking around, rejection after rejection trailing behind them, I recognize the need to rebuild my short story arsenal. So I decided, in March, to write one short-story a month for 2014 (minimum). I kind of wish I’d decided this in January, as I wrote a story in February, I’m writing one in March, and January I spent on Come From Away and How To See The Faeries, so I’m already a story behind (not that I’ve finished the March story either).

So twelve stories. Seems manageable. There’s even one section of Come From Away I don’t mind. I might cut that out, pad it a bit, and use that as a short story so January wasn’t completely wasted.

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books

my failure with the nineteenth century novel

By on Monday, March 17, 2014

I am trying again. Someone I knew told me that Little Women was worth my time. And now that I have a kobo and Project Gutenberg is at my fingertips, I have no excuse not to read it. My kobo helpfully tells me I am 42% of the way through Little Women, yet it feels like I will never ever finish this book. I will, of course, just due to stubbornness and the belief that I should give classics a fair shot, but I have come to the conclusion that my three degrees in Mathematics have not properly trained me for reading what is supposed to be the apex-time of the novel. I just don’t know how I’m supposed to read these books and enjoy them.

Of course, that last sentence was probably an over-exaggeration. I thought and thought and thought and have come up with all the nineteenth century novels I have read in my life. There is a skewing towards Russian novels, since I took a course on The Great Russian Novel, and maybe I like Russian novels better because they have that weary annoyance with being alive that I somewhat identify with (the bits of Ukrainian in me peaking out).

So, here, to the best of my memory, is my list of nineteenth century novels I have read, roughly in the order I read them in:

1.

The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells: Read in middle school. Don’t remember much other than I got my copy for 25 cents at a book sale.
2.

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens: Same book sale. Same price. Read the same November. It’s great that my memory recalls I read this in November of my eighth grade year, yet I remember very little about actually reading either of these two books. That much of an impression was left. I mean, I know the story of A Christmas Carol, having seen movies and the like, but there’s nothing specific about the book that remains.
3.

Les Misérables by Victor Hugo: Okay – I read an abridged version of this in translation. It was still four hundred pages long and I was twelve, so that’s got to count for something. I read most of it outside on the grass while waiting for my sister’s gymnastic classes to finish. There was a pool there to dip my feet into. It was a rather lonely summer. I think I remember a lot of this, shortened, book though. I should read a full version and see how much I actually do remember.
4.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë: I remember being more impressed that I could understand the bits of French in the novel. Book was okay I guess. Didn’t really understand the allure of Mr. Rochester.
5.

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens: I read like a third of this in Grade Ten English. By I read, I should say The class read. My teacher was very much about a Dickensian surgical strike saying we didn’t have the time to read all of A Tale of Two Cities, only the points most salient to the plot with the lookalikes and I guess something about knitting?
6.

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: Read for OAC English. I got a bad mark (probably a B or something; I was that sort of student that thought anything less that A+ was a bad mark) on an opinion piece because I said I didn’t really understand exactly what Kurtz did wrong? He got chummy with the natives and that seemed to shock everyone’s Victorian sensibilities, but other than that? Apparently to a high school English teacher, that kinda denotes complete lack of understanding because, and I remember this clearly, written at the top of my page in purple ink was You need to re-read this book because you have missed the point. I guess this also just sneaks in as well, being published in 1899.
7.

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins: This was the book that told me that maybe nineteenth century novels and I were not to be. I liked it until near the ending when the (highlight to see spoiler) spooky secret society as the real villains. In true nineties (1990s that is) style: gag me with a spoon. This book is forever entwined with the summer I worked at Nortel and reading it on the long, round-about bus ride from Nortel Carling to Barrhaven. Three buses and an hour. Driving from my parents’ house to Nortel Carling takes ten minutes. This was not OC Transpo’s finest hour.
8., 9.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll: Okay, these books I actually like a fair deal. All the silly nonsense. But I don’t really know if they can be considered having the same weightiness as say Dickens or Doestoevsky.

10.

The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper: I do not remember anything about this book. Daniel Day-Lewis was in the movie though. I saw the movie on a plane. Come to think of it, I think the person who talked to me about Little Women also likes either this book or this movie.

11.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain: Read on the bench of the Barrhaven Mall while waiting for my piano lessons with Tom Pechloff to begin. Again, not much stuck.

12.

Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol: Ah, now we are getting into my ancestral compatriots! But firstly, how sad is it that this Dead Souls is fourth on the list when you search for Dead Souls on Librarything? Ian Rankin’s Dead Souls is number one. Really? This makes me make that grrrrr sound I make when I’m frustrated with something over which I have no control whatsoever (frequently heard on airplanes or with family members).

Anyways, I like this book. I really like this book. It’s so bizarre and Gogol went mad and starved himself to death while trying to finish the trilogy and something inside me emo-nods and says I totally relate to that.
13.

Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov: This Russian novel I do not like so much. I fell asleep while reading this book, in a cold room, in the middle of the day.
14.

Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev: A Russian novel I don’t remember much about. I’m guessing there’s a father and a son. I think they go to England?
15.

The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky: I remember the ending of The Idiot, but I think what I think is the beginning of The Idiot is actually the beginning of Demons, which I was reading at the same time but didn’t finish.
16.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoi: A wonderful story, unfortunately interjected with Tolstoi spew.
17.

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Well, this is just the greatest novel ever written. You can’t really say anything other than that. I spent all of May 2002 reading this book and pretty much doing nothing else, ignoring my stupid computer science course I had to take in order to get my undergraduate pure math degree. I learned a lot more from this book than I ever did about Java.
18.

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoi: Any long-time follower of my blog already knows my views on War and Peace (specifically, Tolstoi spew). I surprised myself my enjoying the war parts more than the peace parts, in prime contradiction to Anastasia Krupnik’s mom in one of the Anastasia books, but I can’t remember which one.

19.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: Another failure. Sorry Rebecca who loves this book. I feel bad I don’t love it too. This was the first book I read on my kobo, so we’ll always have that.
20.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: I liked this one! Yay for me! But this book isn’t actually about the nineteenth century, so maybe that’s why I liked it. It’s about the 1640s.
21.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott: Not done this yet, but not loving it either. I have a feeling this makes me heartless.

I think that’s it (although I’ll probably hit publish and remember like twenty other nineteenth century books I’ve read). So what’s the total? Let’s see:

So, is that an acceptable attempt at the nineteenth century novel? A poor one? English-lit geeks, help me out.

I want to enjoy classics, but then I try and get frustrated and my brain rebels. Perhaps I need to be older and calmer and less angry with things. Perhaps I need to mellow out to enjoy stories that aren’t post-modern and stories where marriage and riches are the ultimate goal. Comedies of manners. I don’t know. I give myself pep talks but I just can’t get excited about nineteenth century novels the way I get excited about contemporary ones.

So what nineteenth century novel should I read next that will cause me to fall in love with the whole genre? Internet, please advise me.

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books fiction writing

where I get my ideas

By on Friday, March 14, 2014

Isn’t that the question that gets lobbed out to writers at public speaking events? I remember having a book about being a writer (which my maternal grandparents gave to me in an uncharacteristic show of support for talents. To give you an idea of my grandparents, a few weeks ago my maternal grandmother said that my five year old daughter had a good, slim figure, so, yeah, um, okay) and that was pretty much the entire book Where do writers get their ideas.

So in case you’ve ever wondered where I get my ideas, here is an example. I read a book about a lifeboat. I am now writing a story about …. wait for it … a lifeboat.

There you go. You can all marvel at the intricacies of the meghan mind. Pretty much how I read a book about faeries and then decided to write a story about faeries.

In any case, my lifeboat story will likely be short and have fewer characters. I got confused with the number of characters in the lifeboat story I just read. Also, my story will probably not be that good. But it’s the thought that counts, as long as the thought doesn’t involve too much outright, blatant theft from the book I just finished.

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fiction writing

what’s your fave?

By on Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Geoff recently read the first 120-odd pages of my faerie story. He was, well, he had some positive things to say, but also a lot of non-positive things to say too.

You don’t think it’s really good? Like one of the best things I’ve written? I asked him.

He looked at me like I was insane. No he said. Not at all.

Hmmmmmmm. This is not good. I actually like my faerie story. I mean, there are lots of problems still, but I like writing it and I like seeing what’s going to happen and I care about the characters.

So what stories do you like I ask Geoff.

I actually like Come From Away Geoff says. And Darién Gap.

I made a noise that denotes annoyance at Geoff.

What he said. I like what I like.

But why can’t you like what I like I replied.

So there’s that. Geoff doesn’t like the faerie story as much as I do and I think that he has rose-tinted memories of the mess that Come From Away slopped itself into. Plus I don’t know what to do. For all my liking of my faerie story, I don’t really feel like fixing the problems in it right now – the word Geoff used was convoluted and the word he used before convoluted was unnecessarily. I’m reluctant to start anything new since all my new ideas are open-ended and I already have two sprawling, incomplete stories mocking me. I’d say I had a whole island-of-misfit-toys story thing going on, except then I remembered that at the end of that show, all those toys found homes and people who loved them. So I can’t even get my pop-culture metaphors rights. I just want to think of a brief, short-story idea, like my psychic idea last month, or the story I wrote about cows way back in the fall. Instead, I guess I’ll just read a bunch of books and hope there are some ideas I can steal from them. Or maybe I’ll just write some random words down and then link them together with prepositions to see what happens.

Usually every two months I get down about my writing, and then little good things, little pushes, happen. It’s the two month mark right now since the last push. Am I going to have to rely on my own shoddy belief-in-self to get me through? Perish the thought.

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Uncategorized

committing

By on Monday, March 10, 2014

I may have finally committed to our move to New Brunswick: I made a dental appointment with the dentist in town.

This is big news. I’ve had the same dentist (in Ottawa) since I was seven. I sort of just thought that every six months, I’d fly back to Ottawa and keep visiting him, the way I did through undergrad and graduate school and the Calgary wilderness years (that still feels very much like it didn’t actually happen). Then, when I was living in Ottawa again, it made sense. Now, when Tesfa hadn’t seen a dentist in eighteen months, it made less sense.

So now I have a dentist in town. I have committed to this little corner of New Brunswick. Off to try and commit to my stories to fix them up now.

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this month I ...

February 2014

By on Thursday, March 6, 2014

I read the following books:

Thoughts:

  • The Closed Circle: This is, of course, the sequel to one of my favourite books and a book I’ve read before, although the first time I tried reading it, I tried reading it before I read The Rotters’ Club and the little message in the front, probably tongue and cheek, probably wry British humour, instead feels arrogant – talking about how like there’d be any reason you’d forgotten what happened in the previous book, the implication being that the previous book is so great that one couldn’t forget what happened. Issue is, the previous book is great. Still, I hate the little forward telling me so.

  • Savage Love: Recommended as “fucking brilliant” by someone who passed on my work and I can see why if he thought this was fucking brilliant why he passed one me because we’re totally opposite styles. I guess I’m just not a post-modern, non sequitur style person, although I did write a post-modern type story immediately after finishing this collection to submit for the Bronwen Wallace award (no chance of winning, but good to have goals). I can see how technically good the stories are, how well-crafted and theoretically brilliant they are, but in actual fact, I just didn’t like them much at all. And whenever I do start to like a story – the last one in the collection for example – it does a sharp turn and I end up annoyed again by the end.

  • Accusation: Catherine Bush wrote one of my all-time favourite books and she’s hardly prolific and this book has Ethiopia in it, so everything was coming up Milhouse! This isn’t as great a book as The Rules of Engagement, but it’s still pretty good and full of little details of things that I’d forgotten I knew (such as second-hand stores being called Opportunity Shops in Australia) and another one of the nails in the coffin of Come From Away because I’ll never get all the tiny details as right as this book does.

  • Sexing the Cherry: I always like Jeanette Winterson (and since I keep talking about favourites, my favourite Jeannette Winterson is Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal) but man, you have to read every single word. Her books require focus. This book is only 140 pages long and it still took me four or five days to get through.

  • Tampa: Why is the font so large? To trick me in thinking this book is far longer than it should be? This is a novella-length idea stttreeeecccchhhheddddddd uncomfortably into a novel. Why does it take until after the half-way point of this novel for something other than predatory and pornographically detailed statuatory rape to happen? I know all happy stories are the same, but I’m done with reading about rapists and Nazis and pedophiles and looking-for-humanity-in-everyone. I think somewhere along the line we’ve started to confuse complex with repugnant. Being a horrible person doesn’t make anyone particularly more interesting. This book underlines that quite well, probably not on purpose.

  • Juanita Wildrose: My True Life: A friend lent this to me, saying It’s weird, so you’ll probably like it. I’m going to choose to take that as a compliment. I never know how to rate experimental novels. They’re like the far-end of the bell curve, not enough to compare them with. I did appreciate the poetry here was not italicized. After reading one of the Tolkien books (the second one? I don’t know) in one day at a very long sporting event I was dragged to as a child, I tend to ignore any poetry in italics, assuming it is (a) not very good, and (b) not relevant to the actual plot.

Best book:

og

Tesfa and I read this last month too, and likely will read it in March, possibly April, possibly all future months. I change the few lines about Cowboys and Indians to being about Spies (the book is from the 1960s so I can’t expect too much) and then we’re good to go.

Edit: Now, on further consideration, I wonder if my favourite book of the month wasn’t:

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This is a tough call.

Most promising book I put on my wishlist:

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Sleeping is not my strength. I read books about other people’s trials with sleep and feel a little better about life.

I watched:

Thoughts:

  • 30 Rock: Sometimes it says “xciting jazz music” in the intro, which I’d like to think is some sort of secret message I just haven’t figured out yet.

  • Room 237: Some people have a lot more time on their hands then I do. It reminded me of all the people who bend-over backwards to figure out secrets in House of Leaves where I am like Eh, it’s just a thing I watched and then move on.

  • The Magic Schoolbus: I’d forgotten, from my babysitting days, how annoying the theme song was.

  • The Croods: I feel rather bait-and-switchy on this one. The movie starts off with narration from Eep, the female teenager, then drops that and the story morphs into more about her father and Guy while Eep becomes a secondary character just mooning after some boy she doesn’t even really know.

  • Breaking Bad: Another one where I’m starting to feel that the line between complex and repugnant has been smudged out. When I first started watching this show, it stressed me out so badly because the tension was so well played and now, in the dying end of the final season, I’m just annoyed with everyone involved. Some of it, I know, is personal distaste, having dealt with many “brilliant” men who use their intelligence as a shield to be assholes (I think most women in STEM fields and/or academia have run into their fair share of men like that), but at this point, Walt is the least interesting person on the show, yet it’s still about him and I don’t care about him. He’s an asshole and I read a spoiler so I know what happens, yet I keep watching because I’m a sucker for completing things and it’s nice to have something to do with Geoff in the evenings before Tesfa goes to bed.

  • Arthur: This is one of those shows where most of the kids act really bratty and I hate shows like that. We only watched one episode and Tesfa didn’t seem to care for it either, thankfully.

  • Community, Parks and Recreation: Watched these with my parents. My dad usually watches TVO and The Food Network. My mom watches Duck Dynasty and Storage Wars. I do not think they will be letting me pick what we are watching on television together again.

I wrote: Much faerie story, both longhand and typing. I wrote a short story about a psychic in a building I used to pass by on the bus in Calgary. Come From Away falters more. I thought I’d be sad about that, but I’m not. It’s just gone.

Nothing new published. One rejection letter, actually maybe two because I can’t remember whether it came at the end of January or beginning of February. I don’t have too many stories out there for consideration right now. Need to start rewriting and/or starting some new ones.

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