The Reading Pile

The other day, I was talking with a fellow English student at work. We were talking about how we read, how much we read, and why we read. We both realized that we usually read at least 50 books a year. This apparently puts us in the top something percent of readers in the world, but I suppose we have an unfair advantage in being English students. Like workers in a Siberian gulag, we are forced to do it. Personally, this semester I was assigned 16 books; so far I've read fourteen. But it was in the personal arena that we both realized how similar we were. We weren't monogamists, and in fact were more like serial kink enthusiasts. There was the book that was easily portable, and went into the backpack. And then there was the respectable book you had been "reading" for so long you were ashamed to bring it out of the house. This is not to be confused with the book that's too big to lug around, and is read before bed. So, in the interests of science, here's a look at my current reading pile, and the various phenotypes represented therein. Compare and contrast with your own.

And so the random links for today are literature-themed:
Forgotten Bookmarks. I once found a letter from the Netherlands, in Dutch, in a copy of the French Lieutenant's Woman.
From the McGill Daily, a write-up on the Scott Pilgrim series. Mr. Weisler works at my job, and I can assure you he is a most excellent person as well as a good writer.
Anthony Lane on Beckett's letters.
Lizzie Skurnick on why a web critic should mourn for print journalism.

Huey Long? I didn't feel a thing!

Sometimes I think I'm one of those people whose humour is actually just a series of inside jokes... with themself. See, yesterday I had brought my computer to class to try and work on an essay, which usually just means I end up scrolling through New Yorker articles while obsessively refreshing Facebook. The article I was reading at the time- George Packer's "Populism and Paranoia"- referenced Huey Long, one of those historical people who, like Benjamin Disraeli, I know is very important, although I cannot conclusively say why. So, this leads me to the Wikipedia article on Huey Long, which leads to a snort from my seatmate, Sam. He's surprised that, of all the things a person could be reading about in class, I'm reading about Huey Long. And that makes me laugh.

So, I've tried telling this story to about five people now, and nobody gets why I think it's funny. I'm not sure if it's because the name Huey Long is inherently funny, assasination or not, or because two people can have a weird bonding moment over a dead Louisiana politician. Or maybe I'm just amused that so much human interaction is mediated by the Internet. Either way, nobody's laughing but me. Maybe it's time to work in a double entendre with Long's name...

What I Did On My Ottawa Vacation

Sorry this took so long to go up. If this was real life, and I really had to write a report for school, I would make up for my tardiness by handing this in bound by a classy duotang and with an illustrated title page. Well, just imagine a picture of the Parliament Buildings and the Museum of Civilization (neither of which I went to) with "My Ottawa Vacation" in the classiest of fonts: Curlz! Or maybe you don't have to imagine it!


But what did I really do on my Ottawa vacation? Well, I saw my brother for the first time in almost a year, for one thing. It was strange- we hadn't seen each other in so long, but we didn't talk about that. Or give a Cliff's Notes version of what we had been up to. instead we settled into our usual routine of good-natured banter and teasing. I don't think my brother would have been so calm if he wasn't freshly in love. The whole thing's awfully cute from her bangs to my brother's plan that they'll live in his garrett for a month. Yes, my brother lives in a garrett. Vincent Van Gogh would find it small. If he wasn't hepped up on goofballs. Or absinthe. Whatever, I'm no art historian.

His roommates could sustain a sitcom, at least. There's the tall Philosophy M.A., who acts like Michael Cera and blow dries his air. I argued about homoeroticism vs. hyper masculinity for a while, since he (incorrectly in my view) believes that for the former to exist there must be some kind of intentionality on the part of the creator. I'm not sure if Commando is an able rebuttal or not. Then there's Vanessa, whose current boyfriend I met before her and who teaches locking at a dance studio. She would sing about my fishnets every time she saw me in a skirt. The last character has a name that should have prepared him for a life of porn stardom, but had decided to dedicated himself to campus activism instead. Unsurprisingly, he is vegan. They all treat my brother like some kind of den daddy, which is hilarious to watch. If your the little sister he has, at one time, shot in the face with a BB gun.

Oh, and things were done, of course. My brother is much cooler than I am, which means he knows all of the fun things to do in town. Like Time Kode on Friday, which is an almost-scenester gathering, but far enough from the beaten path that most of the bullshit is cleared out. And, reader, I danced. I danced because there was a protective layer of bad dancers around me, and the music was very good and very loud, and because I was wearing an extra-large hoodie. Oh, and there was a random movie with Sun Ra in it being projected, so maybe he was working his crazy mojo on me. The next day we met up with my cousin and his lovely wife R. I've been half in love with R since my cousin married her. She seems to know everyone, and have done everything, except for the things she's learning to do now. She also knows all of the good thrift and vintage shops, which is what we did. And all of the tony home furnishing stores. Some of those chairs- the leather, the line- were enough to make you house proud. And reject Ikea as the Swedish anti-christ.

Then it was dinner, and a movie. I was debating between Pontypool and I Love You, Man. I like to suppport Canadian film as much as the next person, especially when it involves zombies, but I also have a deep, deep need for glossy entertainment. So, I chose I love You, Man. To which I say: eh. I didn't regret any of the ticket price, but it really wasn't worth a penny more. It coasted a lot on the charm of Paul Rudd and Jason Segal, but anything that pulls off a running joke about Anwar Sadat (and a dog with an uncanny resemblence) is not entirely worthless. My brother *hated* it though, although perhaps it was less because it was boring and more because it might be uncomfortably familiar. This was discussed over brunch the next morning at the Manx, as my brother's best friend charmed some tea out of the waitress. I pushed my omelette around and wondered if I hadn't crossed some invisble line of authenticity by getting one with goat cheese and roasted peppers. I could have concluded this on the bus back to Montreal, after but I read. So I wouldn't miss my brother, or my family back in Guelph, or wonder soppily if I would ever wear a tatoo as well as my he does.

So, I left Ottawa without hitting any major tourist spot, not even the cat shelter. And I love my cats. But maybe that's the best way to see Ottawa, if you're a Canadian. Stay away from the tourist traps and you won't feel like a stock player in CanadaTown. And you might have a better chance of seeing my awesome brother.

Capital Bound

I'll be in Ottawa this weekend, visiting my esteemed (and unfortunately be-mulleted) brother. I haven't seen him for almost a year, since he went on a crazy adventure that took him from Ottawa to Korea, to Victoria, and then back again. Before I went, though, I just wanted to prove that the Monkey socks did get finished. I wore them yesterday, and they were perfectly fine socks. Although they made me hungry for cotton candy every time I looked at them.

The Collector (With Apologies to John Fowles)

You know where this poster would look amazing? In my life.

I have the collector's compulsion to both uniformity and completion. This is an unfortunate characteristic currently at odds with the economic climate and my line of credit. It's worst with books. Intellectually, I know that that injunction not to judge a book but its cover has some merit, or else it wouldn't be so annoyingly clichéd. So, whether it comes in a brittle and dog-eared Signet Classic from the used book store, or behind a delightfully revolting and anatomically perfect Charles Burns cover, the provenance of my copy of The Jungle shouldn't matter. But, it does! Knowledge can be bought cheaply, I guess, but pleasure takes more coin. aAd feels better. So, I want to buy the Burns, and hopefully will before it's out of print. But then I'll want the Seth-covered Portable Dorothy Parker, the Ware-designed Candide, and the Spiegelman-drawn New York Trilogy to match. A uniform set! Almost complete.

I managed to buy most of Graham Greene's novels in their old Vintage covers before they were re-designed. But, as much as The Heart of the Matter has given me, it still bothers me that it's Penguin cover looks ugly and ungainly next to the sleek Vintages. And it bothers me still more that I'm missing so many volumes I'll probably now never track down.

So, the only thing left to comfort the wounded collector in me is the Penguin Gothic Reds series. 10 delightful covers, 10 hilariously oversimmered books. The Haunted Hotel comes highly recommended, particularly if you're a big fan of decapitation and Victorian home decor. And they're recent publications, so I have a much better chance of getting them all. Because anything else but the bile and blue cover of The Dunwich Horror would just be a load of tentacles.

The World's Mildest Gossip

You know what? The only thing that sucks more than mild gossip, is mild salsa. Get some chili peppers all up in that, or you just have diced tomatoes with delusions of grandeur. Anyway the mild gossip of the day, or week as it were, would be an ex-TA of mine may be, or probably not, flirting with me at my fine place of employment on Monday. I am too intrigued by the possibility to let it go. I saw him wondering around, and called out his name. We ended up talking about his real area of study and funny Cultural Studies papers I have handed in. I'm sure the divide between his actual thoughts during his conversation and my picture of them ran something like this:

ex-T.A.: Oh, thank God. A student of mine who doesn't view me as a potential obstacle or stepping stone to law school. I will talk to her in order to feel valued again.

My version: Dear, sweet, Protagitron. You look so damn attractive holding that Yale University Press catalogue as you create records, pushing your glorious curls behind one ear. Run away with me, and we will fight the twin enemies of the Code of Conduct and poorly edited essays... together.

Okay, so I'm not quite so pathetic in real life. And yet, I find myself uncharacteristically tempted- although I'm sure the interest is entirely one-sided, even failure would provide an interesting coda to my university career...

Early Bird Gets The Yarn

I am supposed to teach ten people how to knit tonight. Or tomorrow morning. How do you count 1AM? The Fine Arts Council, or McGill, or whoever controls the Byzantine room booking and insurance situation at my institution of high learning, decided the best night for an all-nighter would be Thursday night. I decided signing my group up to hold a workshop was a good idea. 1AM makes a lot of things bad ideas, and not only when ordering food. Out of a mysterious window on St. Laurent. I'll let you know how it goes.

Otherwise, I've been keeping myself busy, but not in any sort of bloggable way. Although the sink is being recalcitrant again. Stay tuned for Volume Two: A SINK TOO FAR.

Sink v. Protagitron

So, either I'm PMSing or I'm having a psychotic break. Or maybe it's my deep, deep sense at shame over how I spent my Saturday night. While others were out in Montreal enjoying Nuit Blanche, I was locked in a pitched battle with my sink. It was my wits and the chemical contents of my apartment against the most stubborn drain in all of Quebec. Too late to go buy Drano, I decided- the drain having destroyed my last faint glimmer of sanity - to follow the directions on the back of a box of baking soda. For drains it detailed a complicated multi-step process. Toss 3 table spoons of soda down the train, then a 1/2 cup of vinegar. Stopper the drain for fifteen minutes, and then- and this is the best part- pour boiling water down the drain until the bubbles stop. So, you've got to keep a kettle going the whole time.

It will work, but only after you've done it a few times, and run out of white vinegar and resorted to apple cider vinegar. And plunging. Lots and lots of plunging. I felt a certain sense of satisfaction when the water started to sluggishly drain, only mitigated somewhat by the knowledge that I had spent a few hours of a perfectly cromulent Saturday either mainlining Homer or battling household plumbing.

So, if you've made it this far through my pipe wows, amuse yourself with a few links:
Learn! What's the deal with AIG.
Relive! The most glorious moments of Stallone.
Be Confused! Or Delighted! At birds with human hands.
Sniffle! At the Kiwi Bird.