Thérèse Neelands

from the book straight to the blog

Gentlemen and Players. Joanne Harris.

Phew. This book is pure genius. It’s murder mystery totally un-Agatha Christie-style. In fact, it’s so witty and kinda humourous in the beginning that you barely notice it’s a murder mystery at all, until it starts to get dark, and then it gets pretty dark.

The characters are so well realized that you forget you’re reading a work of fiction. You get to know them really well. You think you get to know them really well, and then realize you didn’t at all.

And that’s the whole point of the book, really. The theme. If someone tells you “this is an apple” and it looks like an apple, you’ll easily believe it’s an apple. To quote:

“It was staring at you in the face, sir”, I said. “And all the time you never saw it. Never even guessed.”

Well bloody hell, I never guessed. I thought I had it figured out, and couldn’t figure out why there were so many pages left.

Cheers to you, Joanne Harris. Cheers to you, you bloody genius.

Wedge, and Andrew's bum

About a week ago, I coined Maggie “Wedge”. This is because when Andrew is on the couch, Maggie will wedge herself in between it and Andrew’s bum, no matter how tight the space.

I thought I was pretty funny. Wedge. Ha. Wedge.

Then I started reading Come, Thou Tortoise and Oddly’s pet mouse is also named Wedge.

I love when my life mingles with books.

Here are some more pictures of Wedge and Andrew’s bum.

I’ve had this draft for awhile, and haven’t had a chance to finish it, but I got sick of seeing my previous post, so here we go…

I think it may have been the first time in my life that I’ve given up on a book. I’ve definitely put a book back on the shelf after the first few pages of disliking it, but rarely, if ever, have I been half way through and said forget it.

Which is what I did with The Enchantress of Florence, Salmon Rusdie. Amidst the hmming and hawing I thought “But it’s Rushide!! Isn’t Rushdie supposed to be, like, a guaranteed good read??” I would carry the thing around in my purse (as I do every book) and never have the will to pull it out. I would clamber on the train after a day’s work and feel the weight of it there, and decide to read an ad about erectile dysfunction instead.

Finally, in my mind’s eye, I saw my mother in-law wagging her finger at me. “Don’t you dare force yourself to read a book! There are far too many good books in the world you’d be missing out on!

With a heavy heart, I returned Rushdie to the shelf.

Once bitten twice shy. Normally one who prides herself on being able to judge a book by its cover, I was now completely out of confidence. Finally, after caressing every book in the store, I came across the $20.00 table. Hardcover, The Angel’s Game, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, author of The Shadow of The Wind, the best book ever, and one I had been waiting to come out in paperback in what seemed like forever. (It was a toss between The Year of The Flood  and the aforementioned, but don’t tell Margaret. I can hardly believe it myself). I walked out with The Angel’s Game.

The Angel's Game, Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Excellent! Best of all I love the writing. Dramatic and atmospheric and a definite page turner.

The Book Of Lost Things, by John Connelly

Postmodern take on Fairy Tales and Fables? Sort of. But it goes further than that. David is a boy coming of age during the war who retreats into a world of his own imagination as a way of dealing with the distress of the death of his mother, his father’s new wife, and his new half brother. Fairy Tales and Folk Tales become building blocks in the creation of his new world. The tales become slightly twisted as David composes them in his imagination. Sometimes horrific and definitely gruesome, this book isn’t really for children, although children might enjoy it for different reasons (there’s irony in there).

It’s interesting to think of Fairy Tales and Fables (as Connelly suggests) as not just life-lessons for children, but life lessons to aide the transition from childhood to adulthood. To start an awareness of the reality of a world full of pain, suffering and loss and how to overcome these challenges. Sexual awakening is also part of it, and there are stories like Sleeping Beauty which is quite literal in that aspect – in earlier versions, Sleeping Beauty is raped while she is asleep, and wakes up with the birth of her baby.

Some stories are just plain puzzling like The Three Billy Goats Gruff . I’m not sure what the lesson to be learned is here, but I remember it being a particular favourite when I was a kid. Perhaps part of the fascination was that I just didn’t get it then either.

The Book of Lost Things has got me in a Fairy Tales/Folk Tales kick, and I’ve dug out some of my most treasured books when I was little. These were my building blocks in developing a love for stories and pictures.

This one is double sided.

Stories from Hans Anderson

And the other side…

Stories from Grimm

Stories from Hans Anderson

Stories from Grimm

This next book was loved so much by all four of us girls that the cover is missing. In fact, I don’t remember this book having a cover at all, but such are the pitfalls of being the youngest. Interesting note – inside the cover is written over white-out “To Anne-Marie, from Mum & Dad. For doing well in school!”. I have the sneaking suspicion this was actually meant for Stef.

Young Years, 1971 edition, Back Cover

It’s big and heavy, containing a long list of nursery rhymes, nursery stories, fables, fairy tales, and poetry.

Beauty and The Beast, Young Years, edition 1971

Fables, Young Years, 1971

Yesterday I went to She Said Boom!, as I was dangerously close to finishing The Book of Lost Things. This is what I got:

English Fairy Tales and Legends by Rosalind Kerven

It has some illustrations by Arthur Rackham. Like The Book of Lost Things, there are notes and sources at the back.

The Princess and The Fool, Kent

The pages are as thick as cardstock, with a soft, paper jacket. Each story is from a different county.

The Devil's Bargain, Lancashire

The Wicked Witch, London

I also bought Salmon Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence, which I am very anxious to start.

The Enchantress of Florence, by Salmon Rushdie

This one, although not really of Fairy Tales, contains poems and short stories. It was once my mother’s when she was a kid.

Lucie Attwell's Annual

Lucie Atwell's Annual

There’s no copyright, but it looks like it may be from the 40s.

And now, I just got word, I think, that Nikolski (previous post) has just won the Canada Reads 2010 debate! I’m heading over to the CBC!

Nikolski, a novel by Nicolas Dickner

…and I finished the book.

I am now highly caffeinated, and deliciously taken away. It’s Sunday morning, the dawn of my weekend, and since the dogs push me out of the house very early in the day, I was able to brew up a bodum of dark coffee and settle under the covers with my new book, “Nikolski”.

Recommended by Stef (read her review here), this book is pure magic. It’s an English translation from the Québecois born Nicolas Dickner. It’s about three people, leading separate but slightly connected lives. It’s about ‘getting up and going’, travel, maps, searching, self discovery, chance, coincidence, Canada, and much more. The language is always a surprise. Dramatic, witty, well-informed.

The book design is scrumptious – just take a look at the cover. But inside is just as good. The pages are velvety soft, and smell fresh and bright like an unopened magazine. I love the wide margins on the outsides of the page, with pagination shifted a quarter of the way down and to the side. At the start of each part is a spread simply adorned with the year to date, and an illustration of a fish.

Inside "Nikolski", a novel by Nicolas Dickner

Join the debate on CBC Radio One for Canada Reads 2010. Nikolski is one of the five books chosen for debate between five panelists backing up their favourite Canadian read. I’m hoping Nikolski comes out a winner.

Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris

Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris is filled with food. I’ve never read (gasp!) Chocolat (yet!), but I imagine that it was also filled with food, although of the sweeter kind. Five Quarters starts out sweet, then almost half way, gets dark and then darker and then a little mysterious. It’s about pleasure and repression. About family feuds past and present, innocence and experience, guilt, lies, and bold, fiesty hearts.

The writing is the best part. It’s simple but sumptuous and very real. And goes deliciously well with a stack of home made chocolate chip walnut cookies.

Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies (not to be eaten with lemons)

Cappucino by Ella's Uncle, where the proprietress bakes delicious things right in front of you, and makes delicious designs on the surface of your cup of joe. Book by new fav. author Nino Ricci

Yesterday morning I woke up early in preparation. To plan my day for The Word on the Street Festival, I pour over the schedule on their website. Steph calls me at 10:00AM to advise on what not to miss etc. Margaret Atwood at 3:00. Nino Ricci at 1:30, Anthony De Sa, and so on. ) I rely on Steph for book advice. You can ask her about any random author, and without missing a beat, she’ll tell you every book he’s written, where you can get it on sale, and any random minutiae about his life).

Barnacle Love, Anthony De Sa

I caught Anthony De Sa at 12:15 (winner 2009 Giller for Barnacle Love) and totally fell in love. (he wears Blundstones and swears by his Mac). I haven’t read Barnacle Love yet, but when it first came out, immediately wanted to covet it because of the gorgeous cover. (I can totally judge a book by its cover, by the way). Definitely my next read.

The Origin of Species, Nino Ricci

I heard Nino Ricci read from his latest book The Origin of Species (Govener General Literary Awards) for the second time. I first heard him when Steph and I went to this Literary Author Reading Book Bonanza at Hart House last spring. Ricci is smart. And has big black eyebrows that frame his face, which I also like. Hearing him speak, I knew his book would be a good influence for my painting, and I picked up a beautiful copy on my way home at a second hand book store (She Said Boom, on College St.) for $10.00. I am now half way through and can’t stop. I even woke up at 6:30AM on my day off and tucked myself in for a good few hours of reading while the wind and the rain howled outside. Mmmm. (Along with peppermint ginger tea, I’m getting a cold).

Margaret Atwood was brilliant, as usual. Sprightly, energetic, hilarious, impish, and ridiculous in her giant, red sketchers. Elenor Wachtel from CBCs Writer’s In Company was the host, and the whole thing went cross-Canada with Halifax and Vancouver connected on screens flanking the stage. She read a short excerpt from her latest novel The Year In The Flood (not a sequel or prequel to Oryx and Crake, but a simultaneous one, experienced from a girl’s perspective, as opposed to Jimmy’s.) I must admit, I got a little bit emotional when she trotted on stage – her dedication to a writing life, the arts, and politics makes me overwhelmed with gratitude. Atwood has been, for many, many years, my most favourite author and person.

The View From Out Here was a panel discussion between Dionne Brand, Camilla Gibb, Nino Ricci (sigh!) and Jane Urquhart. Urquhart was totally on fire and kept interrupting everyone, but since what she had to say was pretty intelligent, I didn’t mind, although Ricci looked a little irked at one point.

I arrived home pretty exhausted and overwhelmed and inspired. And also a little delirious from not having eaten all day.

Work in Progress

Above is a work in progress, an experiment. I’m sketching some things, sticking them under my projector, blowing things up, scaling things down, and sort of collaging as I go along. I like the process which is freeing in that I never know what’s going to happen next, but restrictive in that I’m staying within specific perimeters which gives me a lot less to worry about.

P.S. Seems I can’t create a link in a caption for an image, so check out Ella’s Uncle on Dundas St.

'Eat, Pray, Love' by Elizabeth Gilbert

Una Buona Forchetta. That used to be me. Una buona forchetta means ‘a good fork’, or ‘a good eater’. I’ve always been una buona forchetta, despite my tiny little bones and tiny little chicken legs (the stick part of the chicken leg, not the juicy thigh or drumstick, even). When I was a little kid, my big sister would sit beside me at the dinner table and stare at the mound of food on my plate. Then her big eyes would travel up to my scrawny elbows and then to my face which was busy getting right down to it, to the meal at hand. Then she would say, “You know, you don’t have to eat all that”. And I would say, while happily savoring, “Ya, I know”, and lick my plate.

I love food. I love real, Italian food. Whenever I’m hungry, I have waking dreams of sitting in an Italian restaurant in Rome, luxuriously eating and drinking wine for four hours over good conversation. I think the Italians have got it right. When I hear mothers complain about slaving away in the kitchen for hours and the family sits down at the table, gulps, and dashes, I want to cry.

But lately, I haven’t been able to eat. I haven’t been able to savor. Indeed, I have lost my apetite. Every time I’m hungry, I sit down to a delicious meal in anticipation. Now this will be it, I say. I will relish this, it will be satisfying, my heart and my stomach will be content and my plate empty. I take two bites, and I’m full, and I can’t taste a thing.

I know what this is. It’s called ‘Stress’. But it’s not the Stress that I’m stressing about, it’s the inability to enjoy a meal that’s got me worried and a bit out of wack. This morning, after a cozy read in bed during a thunderstorm, I thought, what could be a better idea than cooking up a plate of soft, silky, pale yellow scrambled eggs? (With a couple slices of tomatoes, a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkle of salt and pepper, toast, and lots of butter, of course. Oh, and a mug of rich, dark coffee). I took my time with the eggs, as one is supposed to. Eggs are un-born babies and need to be treated delicately in any form of cooking.  Folding, stiring, with the lightest of touches. I turned them on to my plate, and licked my fingers. I slowly brought the fork to my mouth, and sighed. Now these eggs, I said, are LOVE. They were delicious.

Two bites more, and I was done. Sigh.

I am currently reading ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ for the second time. I figure it will help me remember how to de-stress, stretch, meditate, find my place again, and enjoy a meal. Elizabeth Gilbert has now taken me to Rome, and I am eating up the words, if not my scrambled eggs. For now, she is reminding me to take care of myself.

I’m now half way through Seven Days In The Art World and finding I like it less and less. The facts are interesting, but like Barber’s review said, there’s a lot of useless, pukey stuff like staring at the bubbles in a glass of Moet and eating lots of raw fish. Thornton seems to be really taken in with wealth and glamour and name-dropping and macho posturing and self-aggrandizing. It’s definitly a one sided view of the art world, and not crossing all areas, like I was hoping it would. Nevertheless, like I said it’s an engaging read, in the same way that People magazine or something is. It’s interesting for me to get a look at the wealthy side of art and the art market, but if I wanted straight facts, I’m sure I could probably find something else that talks less about Gucci.

I’ve had my eye on this book for awhile at Pages and finally bought it last week.

Sarah Thornton takes you through seven days in the art world, starting at a Christies’s auction in New York, to an MFA crit class at CalArts in L.A., The Turner Prize at the Tate Modern, to the New York offices at Artforum International, then to a studio visit of Takashi Murakami and to a finale at the Venice Biennial. I’m starting the book with a certain amount of skepticism. It has great potential to be highly pretentious, to cause the hairs on my neck to stand, or my eyes to roll, and the like.

Today I’m at the crit. Sarah decides at one point to probe the art jargon she hears on campus and corners a group of students in a hallway. “Criticality”, she asks, what up with that??  “…It shouldn’t be confused with being harsh or hostile, because you can be unthinkably negative…”, says one photographer. “…It’s a deep inquiry so as to expose a dialectic…”, says another. Charles Gaines emerges from his office. “Criticality is a strategy for the production of knowledge”, he says. “Our view, is that art should interrogate the social and cultural ideas of its time.” And to sum it up exactly…”Criticality is the code word for a model of art-making that foregrounds research and analysis rather than instincts and intuition.

But my favourite discussion was on the word “creativity“. My favourite because after having worked in the advertising industry for a few years where “creativity” goes right along side “fresh“, and indeed makes my hair rise and my eyes roll, this excerpt was particularly amusing:

Creativity. The students wrinkled their noses in disgust. “Creative is definitely a dirty word,” sneered one of them. “You would not want to say it in Post-Studio (their crit class). People would gag! it’s almost as embarressing as beautiful or sublime or masterpiece.” For these students, creativity was a “lovey-dovey cliche used by people who are not professionally involved with art”. It was an “essentialist” notion that related to that false hero called a genius.

Seven Days In The Art World, Sarah Thornton

While “criticality” is a favourite in the art world, in advertising offices, “creative” is their specialty. It is used as a noun, an adjective and an adverb, all rolled into one and it drives me crazy. And the person who is a creative, is viewed as very much that essentialist notion that is related to The Hero and The Genius.

And another  amusing advertising/artist parallel:

…the prevailing belief is that any artist who fails to display some conceptual rigor is little more than a pretender, illustrator, or designer.

Anyway, it’s engaging, if anything. Here’s Annalyn Swan’s praise:

…look at the machinations and manipulations of today’s art world. And what machinations they are, from the behind the scenes drama of a Christie’s auction to the empire building of such artist-celebrities as Takashi Murakami, with his multiple studios in multiple countires, to that ultimate art group-grope, the Venice Biennale, all limned here in fascinating detail. A great read.

And here’s what the Telegraph has to say….

And finally, Sarah Thornton herself…