top 9 of 2015

44.
a measly 44 books read this year.


is it the quality of what's on offer that's making me read less?


I can admire the skill of an author - their style, the honesty of their characters, or the way they expertly construct an unreliable narrator - so in those fields, these were the standouts:
the imperfectionists
the dinner


but I read to find those life changing moments...stuff that enters you and will never leave. this year those books were harded to find:
syllabus
are you my mother?


and so I can't name another 5 books to complete this list of 9

my life in books: a semi review

YA - tally: 3

 

the unlikely hero of room 13B by teresa totten

a john green wannabe with the characters who are deeply & tragically in love and the use of full names (I suspect to fill the pages up quicker without adding actual plot). the layer of OCD was a good addition to teen angst but the point of the Catholicism eluded me. my biggest complaint was laying the blame squarely at the mother's feet and the sheer inconsideration of buying your mom and step mom the exact same present. that would (figuratively) kill any mom out there; your mother is not an interchangeable figure like this novel leads you to believe.

 

brian's return by gary paulsen

this author did 'hatchet' so it's no surprise that this was a great little book about survival that the boys just ate up. the epilogue is fascinating too - turns out much of what he's written has happened to him, and he is a modern day henry david Thoreau


twisted by laurie hales anderson

another disappointment from hales anderson. PLUS I had read it before and could only barely remember the plot points (and I'd only remember them AFTER I read it again, with an 'oh yeah, I forgot that...) is it possible that an author only has one good book in them (Speak) and no other? was I just in the right place at the right time (or the right audience?) I think this is my fourth book of hers and my 3rd disappointment...

 

graphic novels - tally: 5 

 

march book one by john lewis

supposed to be a trilogy. so far it's so-so. I'm learning stuff about the civil rights movement and that's good. not sure it's a self-aggrandizing effort from a politician or a proper piece of history. i'll read the rest and assess.

 

re-gifters by mike carey

I was expecting something more from the author of Unwritten but this was a typical, contrived high school movie. it wasn't bad, but it wasn't particularly good either.

 

fun home by alison bechdel

I could have sworn I read this before but found no record in this blog so I read it. again, as it turns out (alright, the last quarter was new to me. but, as I reread it - and marvelled - I remembered that I DID have to return it to the library and I choose NOT to rush through it because it merited my full attention and it would be a gift to reread it)

this artist is an intellectual and a masterful author. I haven't read such a wonderful graphic novel since blankets by craig thompson. each of the chapter could stand on it's own as a story, or a theme, and be fleshed into an entire book. it's the sparseness, the things that aren't said with words, but are in the drawings, that make this a large book even though it's a mere 230 pages


the watchmen by alan moore & dave gibbons

my second reading - reread because of another book club. still amazed me - especially how they could carry 2 stories in alternating frames that kept the same theme. reminded me of when coronation street does a good 2 story build ups, alternating the stories but continuing to build the tension, even when that first story is on pause.... but this graphic novel does it more precisely, frame by frame rather than scene by scene. more than ever I wonder how the writer and the illustrator collaborate


are you my mother? by alison bechdel

another literarily dense offering from bechdel, who I now hear has turned her first book, 'fun home,' into a musical that's winning all the New York awards. I think this book might be even better, structurally. each chapter opens with a dream that is expanded in that chapter, going forward or back in her timeline to make that theme's point. in fact, I think each chapter could work on it's own.  her stuff is worth owning, and rereading, and using it as a jump-off point to start your own psychoanalysis.

novels - tally: 7

 

the girl who was saturday night by heather o'neill

wow, this girl can write: 'there was a man sitting on one of the chairs, wearing a tiger costume. the head of the tiger was sitting on the chair next to him. both he and the tiger head were looking straight ahead, as if they had had an argument and weren't speaking.'

our hair ruined all the photographs of us as childen. no matter what the setting, even if it was our own birthday party, we looked like Gypsies at some internment camp in Eastern Europe...we looked like the type of people that had driven our car five thousand miles with a refridgerator on top of it.

the black cat johann was purring like it had engine trouble. his tail kept reaching round like an arm scooping up all the poker chips off the table.

... white Pomeranian that had a face like a chewed-up toothbrush. the small dog was sitting in the part of the grocery cart where you ordinarily put a baby. he dog was trembling with excitement, wanting to hop up, like he was  waiting to add a detail to your anecdote.

 

sweetland by michael crummey

this is why I go to bookclub - I enjoyed this book about disassembling a tiny newfoundland fishing village and it's stubborn patriarch. and I liked that it wasn't all 'henry david thoreau' (or even gary paulsen come to think of it) and the guy cannot survive alone, be it the weather, the weevils, the madness of having no human company. but going to bookclub made me realize that every tiny possible death that happened, did happen. and that he never made it off those rocks with his dead grandson in his arms.

 

the imperfectionists by tom ranchman

my favorite type of book - short stories that are linked in some way (in this case, through a newspaper publisher). the characters are wonderfully fleshed out and I found at least 2 of them freshly drawn but immediately recognizable. how can these people not have been on page before? anyhow, so enjoyable (and so slim), that it can be finished in one lovely afternoon.  but I stopped myself from doing that - because I wanted it to last...


the girl on the train by Paula Hawkins

a page turner that had a ridiculous ending. when I closed the back cover, my reaction was: meh. blackout drunks that can function (walk, talk, navigate)?  and bringing other people into the husband's lies that could easily corroborate them (or not) wouldn't have happened. and, as a fellow bookclub member said: you knew who was the killer as soon as the third narrator showed up 1/3rd through the book (which is late for a narrator, and could only be for one purpose). so I'm glad I read this, since it's such a summer phenomenon, but it wasn't anywhere as good as Gone Girl.

 

the bear by claire cameron

I recently had a chat with a fellow bookclubber who told me she HATED literary fiction, and I was, like: what ISN'T literary fiction (after all, she was a book reader, so what did she read?), and she said it was everything that was a genre: romance, suspense, sci-fi, fantasy, etc. 

so now I can recognize that this book was a genre book - suspense. it's a tale of 2 kids surviving a bear attack that kills their parents and the hook is supposed to be that the older of the two, the 5yo, is the narrator. this is my first complaint: she wasn't a consistent child - naming the coleman cooler like a friend but sophisticated enough to view her parent's marriage troubles; having a wide vocabulary when it suited the prose, but losing it just as conveniently. I also disliked a few of the side plots - the parent's trial separation, and the girl's obsession with Barbie. lastly, the therapist treating the girl after she gets back to civilization wouldn't have been so quick to interpret the child's drawing; they are trained for goodness sakes!

who do you think you are? by alice munro

I was curious to re-read this book as an adult, or I mean precisely, an adult mother of teenage children. I remembered the stories being youth centered, meanwhile, they were not (did I only focus on the young one due to my age back then? or did I confuse it with Margaret Laurence books, like "bird in the house"?) And I remembered the mother/stepmother as hated by myself and the protagonist, but not so - rose has room in herself for much more layered emotions, including admiration and compassion. but the biggest surprise was finding, within it's pages, a story I had vividly remembered and retold many times in my life only to be NOT as I remembered. in my youth and innocence, I saw the protagonist as a victim of an action. with my matured viewpoint, I could see she had a more complicit role.

 

did you ever have a family by bill clegg

meh. it was interesting to read - a great start with a desire to see the mystery unfold. but it did so at too slow a pace, and without enough reward when the ending became clear

 

memoirs & anthologies & non-fiction - tally: 5

 

coming ashore by catherine gildiner

the third and final memoir in her series. I still loved the first one the best, but the first half of this book was quite funny in its own right. interestingly enough, if you just read this one, you'd wonder why someone deigned her life worthy of a memoir - it's not terribly exciting or pressing - but I imagine there was a clamor for her first 2 books to continue.

 

parenting: illustrated with crappy pictures by amber dusick

got this one entirely because of the title. turns out it's another blogger cum author but I didn't take it too seriously, read it breezily like a blog, and had quite a few belly laughs over it. (note to self: never listen to a book on tape from a blogger turned author. their niche really is that small feeling of you-and-I. and books on tape are read as if to an audience) 

 

talking with owls about diabetes by david sedaris

it's sedaris, need I say more?

 

no regrets: 101 fabulous things to do before you're too old, married, or pregnant by sarah ivens

yup, I'm too old for this title but I read it anyhow. or skimmed it because it was god awful. even the things that had turned out horribly for her - like getting a Brazilian - was still enthusiastically recommended. smacks of inexperienced youth that was programmed to follow any patriarchal, marketing technique. yuck. not to mention, she's a little full of herself and her youth to think these 101 things can only be done before 30 (ie: before the old, married, pregnant part). as pepper said, she made her journal entries be the goal: live my life or you'll be missing out. ppttttt.

fierce pajamas: an anthology of humor writing from the New York Times edited by david remnick & henry finder

some hit, some miss. but some that hit were incredibly funny: shout-out to George Kaufman for 'annoy kaufman, inc' and Robert Benchley's 'it's fun to be fooled...it's more fun to know' and - believe it or not - woody allen's 'the kugelmass episode'

dinner at kelsey's, then a drive to see the Christmas lights

scouts

 

how bosco wears his shoes...

...into the ground

time for a new pair -
he chose smurf blue converse

Annie

pepper's performances were dec 8th and 10th




on the 8th, we went as a family




on the 10th, karen came for dinner and drove pepper for curtain call,


then mom, di, janette, holli (and I) saw the show.

jazz band

the day before this, fierce played with the jazz band at the Fergus santa claus parade - complete with sousaphone (sorry I didn't take a pic of that!)
and now it's a performance for the families with fierce on piano, and tuba

movember

yikes!


it's November, so it's Movember and Rob's got an excuse to turn into Guy Fawkes.






..and we're only halfway done the month

battle archery

finally using up our wagjag

this was so much fun - we're going to gift the dufaults at Christmas with a full family battle!

bosco bubbles

 

b'day with the crew

tyler, christian, kyle, logan

bosco cut up that cake into 5 massive pieces...

obviously, no one's stomach was as big as their eyes

heard today

after picking on an on-the-go lunch at Super Burger:

rob:
  how's that milkshake, fierce?
fierce:
  it brings all the boys to the yard

committed

many years ago, I read an anthology of stories written by men about marriage. there was one in particular that stayed with me. I have turned it over in my mind, and brought it up in conversation many times since. finally I've been able to find this out-of-print book and reread this story that meant so much to me.

so, here's a few things that immediately come to mind:

• I added details that didn't exist at all, using a net as the metaphor of a marriage growing with the couple as time progresses. the author never said net, he said vessel.
• I remembered (correctly) the author stating he used his parents marriage as a template and it was the first time I thought about our own lack of templates, and how maybe the lack of role models may have helped our marriage since we had fewer unspoken, and unrecognized, expectations
•  I remember, at the time of reading, recognizing the truth of your spouse's family becoming as important and loved as your nuclear family. it's a gift of marriage that no one really speaks about, or maybe I thought it was simply lip service: stay married long enough and the blood boundary dissolves entirely. it's a message that I heard clearly when, at a friend's mother's funeral, I overheard my friend's husband tell another friend that marrying into this family was the best thing that ever happened to him.
• my takeaway, that a marriage continues to grow to fit in children and career and conversations, and even the deaths of loved ones was still the main message of the story but perhaps I saw the death component as something that 'proved' both the idea of in-laws becoming your real family and the way a marriage grows bigger to fit whatever comes at it. this time, I read it with the sadness of inevitably that this vessel will fill with this sombre weight; death comes for us all.
• I remembered that when I first read the story, it was the first time it occurred to me that my worries and fears about my loved ones would only increase as I aged, and my loved ones aged, and more were born into the world.  it was the exact thought that went through my head after rob came home to tell me someone had died and, in the moments between confirmation that it wasn't my mother but before the person's name was revealed, I saw a crowd of people in my mind - all precious and loved and suddenly vulnerable. and I realized, both recognizing and remembering this story, that a dozen new people had been added to my loved ones list.  i had no way to guarantee their safety, and the depth of my worry would continue to widen.

 I loved the story then. and I still think it's an honest piece of writing with much value in rereading. It's short enough and I'm tempted to write the whole thing out in this blog, but I'm certain that would be breaking copyright law. the author is Colin Harrison and the piece is called Incision.

CNE

it was a 'kids free' day so we headed to the CNE for our usual indulgence with auntie adele...
here's what we sampled:
chicken waffle on a stick - coated with hot sauce, maple syrup, and icing sugar, this was quite the plunge for the first sample of the day. the sweet and hot went surprisingly well together but the chicken was dark and sub-par
fried rice puddling balls with custard dipping sauce - they smelled like fresh, warm donuts and tasted good even to someone who doesn't care for rice pudding (me!). pepper's favorite
poutine - not an especially adventurous thing to 'try', it was the first time the kids had true cheese curds. my complaint is that curds don't truly melt the way cheese will, but that didn't stop anyone from globbling them down. bosco's choice.
S & M burger - love the play on words as this is really a spaghetti and meatballs burger. took a long time to make (turns out it's actually the only thing freshly made from scratch at the CNE) i was too timid to try it as rob opted for the 'kinky' version, ie: hot
fried cheesecake - weird to eat something that is meant to be cold. dipped in chocolate, it was more like a solid ice cream. fine enough, but i won't have it again.
chocolate brownie milkshake - surprisingly light and delicate flavour for something that says cheesecake in it. my fave of the day.
bacon wrapped grilled cheese - i expected the bacon to disappoint me with it's chewiness but it wasn't that bad...it was crammed with cheese though, which spilled out everywhere. this place that the longest lines, hands down.
onion blossom - they looked really good, but for me, the onion wasn't soft enough. it was the only item we sampled that we didn't finish

spirit award

no surprise there. 
nice guys may finish (3rd) last, but nice guys enjoy the game and each other.  and it shows.

a new summertime activity for pepper...

drawing all over herself

canada's wonderland with the cousins...

gave pepper some food, some money, bus tickets and a park ticket, and off she went - finding rohan first at the front gate, the rest of them later


colleen sent me this photo - thanks colleen!

home again

he survived :)
he didn't take too many pics but he's home now.


leader rob byce took this photo after during the final camp take-down



and below are some of the badges fierce traded for

beach hooping

pepper took some pics of me - looking pretty rad, if i do say so myself :)

visit to aunt allie's

oi!
that was some murky pond!

fierce leaves for Japan

up early to catch that plane...


as tall as a man, and ready to take on the world

i think you are starting to get annoyed by my documenting everything