Review: Cloud Atlas

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



So, this book blew my mind. That first chapter, I wasn't too impressed. It was sort of meh, and I wondered what everyone was raving about and then it ended really abruptly and I was confused. The second chapter, still kind of meh, though it interested me that there was a connection between the two. And then by part three, I was completely and utterly hooked. It's the language, the technique, the fascinating way each connects with the other and how the things that you accept as fact turn out to be fiction, each story nestling into the other like pots in a cupboard.

Plus, a pre-apocalyptic society set in South Korea? Fuck yeah. I really need to see the movie because I can't imagine who/how/why someone read this and thought it would make a good film. I said more intelligent things about this while raving about it to a hasher I bumped into on the bus to Songtan on Saturday, but I'm overtired now and so this is what you get.



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Review: Hear the Wind Sing

Hear the Wind Sing by Haruki Murakami

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I read/heard/made up in a dream that Murakami would prefer no one read his first two books. But lately, for really no reason I can pin down, I've gotten interested in the idea of reading books by authors in order -written or published, I haven't obsessed about the details- and until now hadn't done anything with that idea.

Until I found myself bag-sitting while everyone else was running the NQR hash, under a train bridge at night with a podium someone rescued from the trash and a chair I borrowed from a hut-ajoshi, at night under a single street lamp and this is what I decided to click on in my kindle. And in spite of what I expected, considering Murakami's lack of love for this short novel, I quite enjoyed it. It had a lot of his elements: a cat, a slightly misformed character, descriptions of simple meals, music, and a sense of extreme, profound loneliness and the struggle to connect.

I won't start on them right away, but I look forward to the other three Rat books.



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Review: Erase Me

Erase Me by Margaret Atwood

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I enjoyed episode three o Positron, though not a lot happened. The set up for what will come next was great though.



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Review: Child to Soldier: Stories from Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army

Child to Soldier: Stories from Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army by Opiyo Oloya

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



The low ranking doesn't entirely feel fair, but then, this wasn't a three star read for me, not entirely. Partially I just wasn't expecting such an academic work - I thought it would be more of a narrative nonfiction read. So, the constant references to various thinkers sort of bored me. In general, I found a lot of it a wee bit boring. The section on the history of Uganda was rather on the confusing side and I thought that a lot of the parts about Acholi culture were a bit repetitive.

Where the book really shone was in the two stories of the CI (Child-Inducted) soldiers. They were really interesting. But they didn't feel entirely complete - at the end Oloya talks about how to reintegrate people who are both victims and perpetrators of the LRA, but neither of the stories at all discusses the way in which they were perpetrators. It felt rather one sided.



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Review: Shooting Monkeys in a Barrel: Ten Twisted Tales

Shooting Monkeys in a Barrel: Ten Twisted Tales by S.G. Browne

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



The comparison to Christopher Moore has to be made first. After that, we'll I think it might be more of a three star read, in terms of the language, but I loved the ideas behind all of the stories. Particularly the last one, Zombie Giggalo, because I've never been so grossed out while reading!



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Review: The Night Eternal

The Night Eternal by Guillermo del Toro

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This was pretty decent and all, but I really found it dragged. It was like I hit a point where it seemed so obvious what had to happen but there was a substantial percentage of the book still to read. And, total spoiler but the bit at the end when Eph and Zack die felt like such a cop out to me. I wanted some sort of dramatic showdown, or an after where they have to improve on their clearly fucked up selves, but nope. They just get to stare into each other's eyes and croak.

Oh, and I am now SUCH a kindle convert. It took me a wee while to get used to it, but now, I'm in. I managed to read the end of this while standing in the rain waiting for the hashers to finish trail, and I could not have held the umbrella and an actual book at the same time.



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Review: Choke Collar

Choke Collar by Margaret Atwood

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



It's interesting to get to review a story in parts like this because while the first installment was a 5* read for me, this one was only 3. It's not bad, at all, but it focuses more on building up to an interesting thing than being about interesting things. It left off on an interesting note, though, so I look forward to the next.



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Review: The Fall

The Fall by Guillermo del Toro

My rating: 0 of 5 stars



I read this book in tiny slivers - ten minutes in the cab to work in the mornings, twenty minutes during a break at work, another chunk on subways or buses before I got too tired to concentrate.

It was really good. It's been awhile since I read The Strain and it took me a bit to get into the story line again. The focus in this book was to take the world to the absolute worst case scenario, so the next one should be interesting. I assume based on the authors that this may become a movie and I think it would be really good.



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Review: I'm Starved for You

I'm Starved for You by Margaret Atwood

My rating: 0 of 5 stars



It's been ages since I've had the time to read for fun, so at work when I had a Friday with only an hour and a half of classes and nothing really to prep, I started this.

It was great. I loved the way she dropped me into the story and slowly let the world unfold, but I think I also just loved reading again. I'm glad it was short - one afternoon at work and the bus home and maybe another 15 minutes as I ate dinner and it was done.

Looking forward to the rest of the Positron series.



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Review: Basic Baltimorese III: An Illustrated Guide for Getting Around in Balamer, Murlin

Basic Baltimorese III: An Illustrated Guide for Getting Around in Balamer, Murlin by Gordon Beard

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This is cute - I got it as part of a package. Now I just need to visit Baltimore.



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Review: Nervous Conditions

Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



Holy fuck, this blew my mind.

I suppose what really got me was watching a young girl in an extremely male dominated world try to work her way through it to succeed in spite of a lot of adversity. And to watch each of the women around her try to do so too. What I really liked about the novel gets hit on in the author interview at the end, that there are no monsters in this book, each character does get to explain and be understood.

The author interview also mentions that Dangarembga finds race hard to write about. I hope she succeeds though because what was touched on in Nervous Conditions was interesting and I'd love to read more.

Read this book. Now.



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Review: Unicorns Are Jerks: a coloring book exposing the cold, hard, sparkly truth

Unicorns Are Jerks: a coloring book exposing the cold, hard, sparkly truth by Theo Nicole Lorenz

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



What more could you want?



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Review: Girls Will Be Boys Will Be Girls: A Coloring Book

Girls Will Be Boys Will Be Girls: A Coloring Book by Jacinta Bunnell

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Slightly less kid friendly than Girls Are Not Chicks.



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Review: Girls Are Not Chicks Coloring Book

Girls Are Not Chicks Coloring Book by Jacinta Bunnell

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Not as kid friendly as fun for adults, IMO.



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Review: Indian Horse

Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



They should teach this book in schools.

You know, I never would have come across this book. Living outside of Canada, if I do happen across a Canadian author among the used books, I have to have heard of them. Even if I'd picked the book up, I might not have been all that convinced by a book about hockey. And until this year Canada Reads was something I sort of vaguely recall hearing about that year I lived in Vancouver, but I knew almost nothing about it. But I can't go to a book signing and not have a book signed and here I am.

Here being awake at 5 a.m. because I decided to read just a chapter or two before bed. I couldn't stop reading this book until I'd torn through every last page. The emotional impact of this book hits you hard, from the family that was stolen from him by despair and snow, to the horror of the residential school and then to the stain of racism. And the hockey - I'm not really much of a sports person, but that hockey read like what it feels like to run.

This is the most Ontario book I've read in years - and yet, here it is, representing the BC region in Canada Reads. Amusing, that. I will need to read the rest of Wagamese's books, as well as the other Canada Reads contenders. I've heard it said that this is the book to beat and I see that.



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Review: Say You're One of Them

Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



It wasn't until I read the afterward that I noticed that all of the stories in this book where written from the perspective of children. I'm not really sure how I missed that. And in each story, the ending is hard to take. Incredibly hard.

The first two stories surprised me with a new way of looking at a topic: I hadn't really though about a child choosing a brothel because she thinks it would be better than streetwalking or that children sold into slavery would spend so long being prepped for the journey. The third story was very short but hit me the hardest - I'm not sure if it was just the extreme youth of the narrator or that it was on the surface the least horrifying of the tales, but the emotional impact was huge. The fourth story left me hoping that things might end well right up until the last page. And the last story drove the thread of despair home. It also confused me the most, as the interactions between the children and the parents really startled me - there seemed little care/attention shown to the children throughout large parts of the narrative.

I enjoyed the Luxurious Hearses story a great deal because the details of the different tribal groups and their religions ties in with the African history book I'm studying from.



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Review: Fables, Vol. 1: Legends in Exile

Fables, Vol. 1: Legends in Exile by Bill Willingham

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



That was really fun. The whodunit was interesting, but the best part was seeing how they had intermixed all the characters and the backstory about leaving the Homelands. I want to read the rest.



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Review: The Paper Menagerie

The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I thought this was sweet and sad. It also lead to quite an interesting discussion about why this is fantasy and how fantasy and magic realism and fantasy relate to each other. I'm started it was such an award winner though. It would be fun and easy to teach, which won it a an extra star.



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Fleur Adcock: “Against Coupling”

1. What immediate differences do you notice between Adcock’s poem and Wright’s poem?

In Adcock's poem the other is male and the gaze is his - "avoid those eyes would help", "his gaze stirs", "her own eyes blur". Though both have the nature imagery, Adcock also brings in cultural references. And, in general in all of Adcock's poems in the Norton, she describes more day-to-day details - the bath, the Sunday papers in "Against Coupling" or the water, cigarette and a pee in "On the Border."

2. What do you think the title means?

A suggestion against partnered intercourse.

3. Listen to this interview with Adcock: Does she live up to or defeat your expectations? Why does either response matter?

After reading the poems included in the Norton, the interview deepened my appreciation with her playful style. Her voice in the interview seems to well match a poet who'd write about masturbation. I loved that it exasperates her to be remembered for it and I'm intrigued by a poet who takes on the theme of bad sex.

4. I won’t spoil the surprise here—check it out!



I don't at all understand this line in the lecture: "The "immoderate plea" of the image in the mirror in Wright's poem can be paralleled with the polyp-like mouth surrounded by tentacles in Adcock's wicked imagination."

1. The difference in tone and attitude in these poems is crucial: If Adcock is mocking and reductive (although the allusions to "the lady in Leeds" and the "school drama mistress" may be as compassionate and self-deprecating as they are stinging), skewering the "participating in a total experience" and emphasizing the repetitiveness with which desire, need, and ecstasy overwhelm the body and dull the mind, how would you characterize Wright's tone, mood, and attitude to the "hole in the wall?"

Wright's poem reads more as one of fear or trepidation, of a lack of knowledge. She's attempting to reject and ignore the stirrings of desire at first, and then seems resigned to them.

2. Think, too, about shifts in diction in Adcock's poem "vegetal rustle" and "trespassing tongue" versus the prosaic character of "There is much to be said ... exercise" or "fronds" undercut by the epithet "polypal." Why do you think Wright does not resort to such jarring shifts?

I think Adcock's use of diction really shifts from the more involved sexual act to describing an act that is very day-to-day, much like brushing your teeth. Wright's persona, however, is not possessed of that experience yet, perhaps, and so the diction in the poem remains more mysterious than prosaic.

3. Is Wright's poem "monologic," even if it appears to be a conversation between self and body (there's a leading question if ever I saw one!)?

Yes and no. Since the thought process is actually of the body, it can't really be separated out, but the use of the mirror allows for a dialogue.

4. Why does Adcock write her poem as if she were writing an advice column addressed to school drama mistresses and ladies in Leeds? What evidence would you use to suggest this poem is more like a letter addressed to "every woman" or indeed "a letter to the editor"?

The line "I advise you, then, to embrace it without / encumbrance", and the entire last stanza opens the poem up to a wider audience. Not only does she use you, she seems to be advocating a solution to a problem that she's made to sound common to others by including the references to the lady in Leeds and the drama school mistress.

5. What does one make of the use of the pronoun "one" rather than "I"?

The use of the term "one" was very much more common in the UK, particularly of middle class or upper class people, when I lived there. Aside from distinctly British tone it sets, I think it also serves to slightly distance the acts from "I" and to universalize them.

Judith Wright, Naked Girl and Mirror

This is not I. I had no body once-
only what served my need to laugh and run
and stare at stars and tentatively dance
on the fringe of foam and wave and sand and sun.
Eyes loved, hands reached for me, but I was gone
on my own currents, quicksilver, thistledown.
Can I be trapped at last in that soft face?

I stare at you in fear, dark brimming eyes.
Why do you watch me with that immoderate plea-
'Look under these curled lashes, recognize
that you were always here; know me-be me.'
Smooth once-hermaphrodite shoulders, too tenderly
your long slope runs, above those sudden shy
curves furred with light that spring below your space.

No, I have been betrayed. If I had known
that this girl waited between a year and a year,
I'd not have chosen her bough to dance upon.
Betrayed, by that little darkness here, and here
this swelling softness and that frightened stare
from eyes I will not answer; shut out here
from my own self, by its new body's grace-

for I am betrayed by someone lovely. Yes,
I see you are lovely, hateful naked girl.
Your lips in the mirror tremble as I refuse
to know or claim you. Let me go-let me be gone.
You are half of some other who may never come.
Why should I tend you? You are not my own;
you seek that other-he will be your home.

Yet I pity your eyes in the mirror, misted with tears;
I lean to your kiss. I must serve you; I will obey.
Some day we may love. I may miss your going, some day,
though I shall always resent your dumb and fruitful years.
Your lovers shall learn better, and bitterly too,
if their arrogance dares to think I am part of you.


1. Did this poem evoke memories of adolescence? How did it alter your remembered perceptions or help you see those memories or experiences in a new light?

It reminded me more of getting older, the idea of being betrayed by your body. IT is odd that she feels betrayed by "lovely", when I was more frustrated by what I saw as no lovely enough. But the idea of your body not being your own resonated.

2. What words or images captured your imagination or remained with you? Why?

"I have been betrayed", "shut out from my own self", "lovely, hateful naked girl" "Why should I tend you? You are not my own; / you seek that other - he will be your home.", "I must serve you; I will obey."

3. Identify your feelings at the end of the poem: sadness? celebration? fear? Then return to the poem and find evidence that confirms your (multiple) responses.

Pity and a sense that she is wrong, that she will learn to be "part of you".

1. Is the movement between past, present, and future suggestive of this difficulty?

The future section seemed to retrain the resentment and repulsion towards the body that suggests to me that the perspective is a younger, less mature one. There seems to be no reconciliation with the body that I feel would come with time.

2. Does the voice in the poem know too much (or too little) about the "dumb and fruitful" future of the body that must be obeyed?

The line "I may miss your going" seems young to me, written before the body starts to get older and worn and you do, in fact, miss its going. Also the association of the lovers only with the body suggests to me that the poet isn't writing from the perspective of having had more mature relationships that involve more than the physical aspect.

In particular, the voice in the poem seems to know too little - the voice idealizes childhood as if it was only a carefree time of joy and as if the child never has any conflict between physical self and mind. Judith Wright had a daughter later and I feel that she must have been aware that childhood is not like that and that children too have complicated relationships with their bodies and their control over them. The voice also seems to be less knowledgeable about the future - "I must serve you; I will obey" suggests that the voice isn't considering the option of enjoying the experiences of the body in the future.

3. How does one explain the contradiction between a self that refuses to own its burgeoning flesh and a self that can project how its unknown lovers would react to what she has always known--she must serve and obey the body that has never been "me"?

Perhaps by objectifying her own physical self, she sees that it will be done in the future by her lovers.

4. Read this blog: http://dangerouslypoetic.com/2010/07/poetry-tears-down-walls/ . Comment on the writer’s perspective on the poem. Does it reflect your own?

The blogger's perspective is that "the walls of age crumble and I am 13 again, gazing into a mirror, raw, trembling on the cusp of womanhood." My initial reading of the poem made me more think of an body aging at a later date, of the sense that the mind still feels young, but the aches and pains separate it into an older, other. Upon rereading I was struck more by the fact that the persona's hatred seems directed at the body's loveliness and unlike the blogger, that didn't bring me back to my 13 year old self, who saw only the body's flaws. However, on a third read, I identified with the sense of being led by the body and feeling a lack of control over it that I did sense when I was 13.

Some poetic features worth noting are the sustained conceit of shadows and reflections, the alliterative effects based on both letters and sounds (stars, sand, sun, fringe, foam, currents, quicksilver), the imperfect rhyme scheme, the hidden conceit that pursues natural or creaturely imagery--foam and wave and sand and sun; currents ... thistledown; curves furred; this girl as the bough to dance upon (as the precarious foundation for her true self); fruitful--, imperatives, interrogatives (some may be rhetorical), declaratives, and subjunctives, transferred epithets such as "shy curves" and so on.

1. Why or how are these poetic features important to the meaning of the poem?

There is an interesting contract between the use of nature to express her joy in the first stanza and then her alienation from the natural processes of her own body. I found that the interrogatives and the shadows/relections made me feel that by turning herself into an object to gaze on, she sees that others will do the same.



Another of her other poems seem to contain similar mind/body division. In "Ishtar" she says "When in fear I became a woman"..."it is not my mind you are concerned with"..."You neither know nor care for the truth of my heart; / but the truth of my body has all to do with you. / You have no need of my thoughts or my hopes, / living in the realm of the absolute event."

A line from "Two Dreamtimes", "in a land I thought was mine for life", also calls this poem to mind. In both there is a contrast between how things were and how things are now, with now being worse. That line suggests to me that perhaps the worse is at least in part the result of a change to something that she thought would stay the same, stay hers for life. In "Naked Girl and Mirror" perhaps some of the resentment comes from a balking at the changes of a body - for don't we all tend to think of our body now as being who we are and the changes to it making us less like who we are?

Women's Lit

This is what the professor started with...

Ice Breaker Assignment

Which courses have you taken in any discipline that might give you a useful background for this course? Please describe these briefly because I don't know what course numbers stand for in other disciplines.

It's not an option above, but I've already graduated Queen's.

I majored in Classical Studies and took classes in Greek and Roman Epic and Greek and Roman Drama.

Are you an artist, writer, performer? How would you describe your creative energies?

I'm a teacher, which is a performer of sorts. I also blog about my travelling experiences, though that writing isn't frequent.

Have you read any of the texts on the syllabus before? Are you familiar with any of the authors on this syllabus? Where/in what context did you encounter them?

I've read Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie , Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine, a few of Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison and Jeannette Winterson's novels for fun, and taught a few of Zora Neale Hurston's short stories.

Which male modern and contemporary writers are you familiar with? Please note that I mean canonical authors.

I've recently been working my way through the Yale Open University course on the American novel since 1945, so I've read Richard Wright, Jack Kerouac, Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, Vladimir Nabokov, and J. D. Salinger recently. I've taught an 11th grade literature class covering Orwell's 1984, Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, Huxley's Lord of the Flies, Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the NIghttime. For pleasure, relatively recently, I've read some Hemingway, Joseph Conrad, Milan Kundera, Kazuo Ishiguro and David Foster Wallace (though sadly I still haven't found time for Infinite Jest.)

Why did the course description intrigue you? What are your expectations for this course? What do you want to be sure you learn from it?

In my last answer, you might have noticed that the eleventh grade literature course I taught didn't cover any female authors - though I didn't chose the syllabus myself, I did have some input into how it might be changed in the future. I'd like to have more familiarity with the female canon so that I can cover it when I teach.

Why should we become familiar with an exclusively female literary tradition? Why can't women writers just join the crowd?

I think the historic differences in women's access to education and intellectual pursuits makes the female literary tradition quite different from the male canon.

How comfortable are you with literary terminology? Name the glossary of literary terms you are most familiar with. Is your tendency to read for theme and plot and then tack on the necessary terms or do you read in and through the lens of literary terms? In other words, have these terms become the "baggage" you bring to reading? Can you identify critical methods? Do you know which features make an interpretation "feminist" or "new historicist" or "deconstructive" or "queer" or "structuralist" or "New Critical?"

I haven't taken an English course since high school, and I graduated in 1997. I read a great deal for pleasure and have gotten into the habit of reading for theme and plot first. Though I have a basic knowledge of literary terms, I am less familiar with movements within female literature.

Mention some of your favourite books/authors, films, TV shows, music, whatever. What kind of culture vulture are you?

I read a lot of literary fiction - though in the last year or so, I've been attempting to switch the focus more to the classics. I like trying to keep up with Canadian literature by reading award winners or the Canada Reads books. I recently have also been reading a lot of African and Asian writers, inspired by my travels on those continents. Because I've lived overseas, I'm not overly familiar with films or up to date on movies and music. I only recently watched The West Wing and have just started The Wire.

What would make you stand out in a crowd?

Being an expat, often my height! I place more emphasis on travel than most people I know. And I'm a runner - enough of one that I run even while on vacation.

Have you travelled much? Where? How do you think travel changes your sensibility, your sense of your place in the world? Or tell me why you like or dislike travelling.

I did an university exchange to Scotland in my third year at Queen's which infected me with the travel bug. I moved back to Edinburgh upon graduation and while in Europe did the classic backpacking around the big cities for a summer, spent three weeks in Italy, and just before I left, three months around Ireland and Scotland. I also excavated in Greece for a summer as a student. After a year back in Canada in Vancouver, I returned to the expat life, this time moving to teach English in South Korea. That was seven long years ago. I've been to twelve Asian countries so far and I like to try and visit less touristy places like North Korea, Brunei, or East Timor. More recently I spent some time visiting a friend in the Peace Corps and was able to visit both Togo and Ghana. I think that travel absolutely changes who you are, opening your eyes to things both similar and different that you never even thought to consider. It also affirms your faith in the basic goodness and friendliness of strangers and teaches you just how widespread English is as a language. I have my share of travel disaster stories, certainly, but I can't imagine a life without regularly seeing new places and meeting new people.

How many languages do you speak, write, understand? What was it like to learn a language other than your own? Are you conscious of your monolingualism / bilingualism / multilingualism? In what way?

I have a smattering of languages outside of English. Certainly, my Korean has become very functional, though I'd be hard pressed to have an interesting conversation. I've taken classes in Italian in advance of a trip there and I studied French, Latin and Ancient Greek. In my travels I've picked up a lot of very basic 10-30 word vocabularies in the languages of the countries I've been in. I'm not very good at learning languages at all, which I suspect is very good for my students for whom i'ts a second language. Korean is incredibly difficult, certainly, and I have a lot of respect for my students' ability to switch so effortlessly between two such different systems.

Where do you get your news of the world from? Be more specific than "the internet." Do you keep abreast of current events rarely, occasionally, regularly? Why do current events bore or interest you?

In Korea, I didn't have a TV. For some reason, I've never really gotten into reading the news on the internet. English language newspapers in Korea are either poor in quality or extremely expensive, so I've gotten out of the habit of staying particularly informed in an up-to-date manner, though I will occasionally spend the rather ridiculous amount of money that The Economist costs overseas. It's gone so far that I've had frantic emails and phone calls about the situation with North Korea from Canadians before finding out what was happening in my own backyard. I do read a fair amount of non-fiction about world events, so I'm not entirely ignorant, just really far behind. The big exception is American elections. So far it is my experience that every country is fascinated by an American election, so I've always ended up well versed in politics every four years.

Which historical event might be said to be your first memory of something that was not personal but nevertheless shaped who you are? Is there a historical or political or cultural memory that is crucial to your parents or grandparents and that they strive to keep alive in the family? Why do you think they want to do so? You may also connect this event or memory to your sex/gender/transgender, sexuality, racialization, differently-abled status. Please note I am deliberately not asking for personal/private information.

I recall well both the fall of the Berlin Wall and Tiananmen Square and I suspect those incidents and my interest in them may have been my first serious understanding of the diversity of the world beyond Canada's borders - and how much I wanted to go out and experience it. My family is of the Bristish stock long in Canada variety and it was interesting upon moving to the UK to see that some of the odd family traditions that we thought of as being British were no longer at all familiar to the British - one small example would be coddled eggs. The only person I met in the UK who'd even heard of using a coddler to make what is essentially just a soft-boiled egg with extra dishes to wash was my then boyfriend's grandmother, who had served as a maid in a "big house". My step-grandfather spoke often of the places he travelled to during the war and was always my biggest supporter in terms of choosing an expat lifestyle or travelling solo in countries that others considered too dangerous for a woman. He thought it was fantastic that I was off backpacking around Cambodia or through Sumatra on my own. I always very much sensed that he wished his opportunities for adventure hadn't been tied to warfare and then curtailed by the family's financial circumstances.

Which adjective/epithet describes you best (pick more than one if you like): passionate, skeptical, militant, belong to the school of "none of the above," curious, cosmopolitan, empathetic, contradictory, ambivalent, conscience-stricken, detached observer, guilt is my default mode, liberal, radical, conservative, subversive, hate labels, prefer mosaics to melting pots, cynical, indifferent, sentimental, "don't fuck me up with peace and love." Please note I have left out "ironic!" Or sum yourself up in your own words.

I suppose adventurous describes me best - there is nothing I like better than a new place, a new food, a new experience. I have a fair amount of determination - my main goal for 2013 is to finally run my first marathon after a year of idleness brought on by injury. It's not the idea of crossing the finish line, though, that is the goal. In fact, completing my first half marathon was a fairly anti-climatic experience. It wasn't the race day I was proud of, so much as the training I'd stuck to in order to get there. Liberal, I suspect most would tag me as. South Korea has an interesting mix of expats: in the English speaking community we're either teachers or American military personnel. As a runner, I spend a lot of time with military members, both officers and enlisted. Most of them would consider me a flaming liberal, though I think in fact that my experiences hanging out with a largely conservative crowd have broadened my opinions. I'm not sure I'd say I'm that much less liberal than in my university days, but I have certainly come to appreciate hanging out in the grey area in the middle on a regular basis.

Review: Watchmen

Watchmen by Alan Moore

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I've only read a handful of graphic novels (Maus, Persepolis, Pyongyang) and have long intended to read something more comic-y. The Big Bang episode inspired me to finally do it and this is what I had on hand.

At first I felt like I'd been dropped into the middle of a story I didn't understand. But once I got into it, the pieces started making sense and it does all come together at the end. It's very smart, this comic. The gore factor was impressive too, with the raft of corpses and the immediacy of the blood.

It certainly wasn't a fast, easy read as I'd been expecting. And I didn't love it, though by the end I liked it well enough. And the various forms of media interspersed in the comics - the memos and letters and book excerpts were interesting too.



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MY BOOKISH LIFE

1. What book is on your nightstand right now? On my physical nightstand, The Human Stain by Philip Roth, Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson Whirl Away by Russell Wangersky, Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese and my Kindle. But I'm not yet reading any of those - the books I'm actually reading are actually IN the bed - 101 Letters to A Prime Minister by Yann Martel and The Watchmen by Alan Moore. The textbooks are beside the bed, in a pile.

2. When and where do you like to read? Just as I wake up and go to sleep, in bed. Also coffee shops, public transit, and while waiting in line-ups.

3. What was the last truly great book you read? Do you remember the last time you said to someone, “You absolutely must read this book”? Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy. It blew my mind. If you know anyone with cancer, or you have it yourself, it really is such an important read. The last book before that was Intuition by Allegra Goodman.

4. Do you consider yourself a fiction or a nonfiction person? Fiction, I suppose. I do love nonfiction, but I seem to read less of it overall.

5. What book had the greatest impact on you? What book made you want to write? (Or wish you could be a writer, if you don’t write already.) I still have a vague memory of reading a book about a mouse in first grade, sitting at my desk. Since then, it's really hard to name one book in particular, as books have played such a huge role in my life that several have impacted me at various times of my life. I read The Brothers Karamazov in 10th grade and they were probably the first really adult books I'd read. And then The Handmaid's Tale by Atwood was the first time I'd ever enjoyed reading a book in school. In university, reading The Whole Woman by Germaine Greer turned me into a feminist. Since, books have had impacts when they dovetailed with my life, whether the book was in and of itself all that great.

6. If you could require the leader of your country to read one book, what would it be? (Please tell us your country of residence and its current leader.) Stephen Harper appears to be a man unlikely to respond to reading suggestions by the Canadian public. There's an infamous possible quote about the Guinness Book of World Records being his favourite book and the suggestion that he wants to write a book about hockey. Perhaps he'd enjoy Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese then.

7. What’s your preferred reading experience? Do you prefer a book that makes you laugh or makes you cry? One that teaches you something or one that distracts you? Yes. All of that.

8. What were your favorite books as a child? Do you have a favorite character or hero from one of those books? Is there one book you wish all children would read? Little House on the Prarie, Anne of Green Gables, Ramona Quimby. And any book where the main character somehow time travelled back into the past - I was obsessed with those. The Wrinkle in Time series. And then, at the end of my childhood reading, the Pern series by Anne McCaffrey. I still reread those regularly. They're like a literary blankie.

9. Disappointing, overrated, just not good: What book did you feel as if you were supposed to like, and didn’t? Do you remember the last book you put down without finishing? Disappointing - Beloved by Toni Morrison. Overrated - Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Hardy. They stick out as the books I hate that I feel I maybe shouldn't. The last book I couldn't put down was The Crying of Lot 49 by Pynchon. I didn't expect to love it as much as I did, but it was a total romp.

10. Do you remember the last book someone personally recommended that you read and enjoyed? Who recommended you read it and what convinced you to pick it up? People, outside of Bookish, seldom recommend books to me. But over the past couple of years, there have been a few. A friend has sent me some vampire books to take my mind off other things and both times, that worked really well. I was sent Sappho's Leap by Erica Jong by a friend and really enjoyed that; same for Intuition by Allegra Goodman. Ru by Kim Thuy was recommended to me by an older French woman on a bus in Vietnam (that and travelling as much as I could while I was young.) An ex had me read the 2001: A Space Odyssey series, which got me back into sci-fi.

11. What’s the one book you wish someone else would write? A book about an expat that I could really related to, I suppose. I tend to use literature sometimes to help me think through my issues, so if it could also cover debates about being child free or dealing with single life or... I suppose I could write that book.

12. If you could meet any writer, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you want to know and what would you do with them? Mary Shelley, perhaps. I'd like to wander around Europe with her and hear all the gossip. She sounds fun.

13. What do you plan to read next? Textbooks, textbooks and more textbooks. At least African history, women's lit, and chilren's lit are interesting.

14. Do you like genre literature? Any particular favorites? What’s your favorite literary genre? Any guilty pleasures? I suppose I would say that my favourite genre is literary fiction. I really do enjoy sci-fi and would like to expand more into some fantasy. I like historical fiction, though I often consider it a bit of a lighter read. And my guilty pleasure is the vamp porn.

15. Where do you get your books? For my Kindle, online. I'm fond of Gutenberg. In Korea, there are two bookstores in Itaewon - one a used bookstore that has been there forever, and the other half new/half used. Here in Canada, I'm a big Indigo fan, partially because it's my go-to meet up point with my mom.

16. What are your reading habits? Do you read paper or electronic books? Do you take notes? Have you ever written to an author? I only recently started reading more on my Kindle. I think I'll always mix and match. I take notes when I study, but seldom when I read, though I will sometimes dogear the pages and go back to copy down quotes. I don't think I've ever read to a single author, in spite of a love of Dear Mr. Henshaw as a kid.

17. If you could bring only three books to a desert island, which would you pack? Infinite Jest for length. A multi-volume Anne McCaffrey for comfort. And a survival guide.

18. If you could be any character from literature, who would it be? Is there an immortal character so rich she can spend all her time reading? Perhaps Mary Kingsley - she was a real person and wrote about travelling in West Africa in 1893.

19. Do you have a publishing pet peeve? I don't like books deckle-edged books. And I don't know when mass market paperbacks suddenly got a bit taller, but I'm not fond of that either.

20. If you had to select books for your “Ideal Bookshelf” which titles would you choose? (Maximum 10 books.) Well, they'd be half read and half unread. I'd want all the continents to be represented, and at least a third nonfiction, and a good gender balance. A few shortish, a few chunksters. I'd want them to range in publication date and cover at least a few genres. But to actually narrow it down to 10 books - impossible. I take more than ten books with me on a short, week long vacation after all!

2012 - The Year of Sabbatical

1. What did you do in 2012 that you'd never done before? Visited new countries - including 2 Muslim countries, had a multiple orgasm thingy (hard to describe how it was different, but it was), went to my first Interhash, saw orangutans and Komodo Dragons, took a sabbatical.

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I can't recall making any, but the complete fail on the running front is one. My goals for next year are to acquire two teachables (so, 4.5 university classes in History and English) so as to apply for Teacher's College and to run a marathon, or at least a half, and hopefully The DMZ Peace Marathon in the fall.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? Lots.

4. Did anyone close to you die? All three of my remaining grandparents. A cousin much younger than myself. A hasher in Iraq.

5. What countries did you visit? Malaysia, Indonesia, East Timor, Singapore, Brunei, Vietnam, Canada.

6. What would you like to have in 2013 that you lacked in 2012? More running. Academic challenge. A more fulfilling job.

7. What dates from 2012 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? April 24th, I left on the first leg of my trip. Sept 29th, Sean left for his TDY and it was the last time I saw him.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Travelling by myself in places many wouldn't.

9. What was your biggest failure? I failed to visit all 13 of the countries I wanted to, I failed to maintain a regular running routine, Sean and I failed to figure out wtf is going on with us.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Same old.

11. What was the best thing you bought? A sparkly skirt to run in.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration? So many people. Sean often. My friends Dom & Timber. Hashers, especially the one I stayed with in Brunei and all the strangers who picked me up and got me to the runs.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? At the beginning of the year, The Pen, but he has started to reform. Perhaps Tim. Occasionally me.

14. Where did most of your money go? Travelling and postage stamps.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? Travelling. Bebe. Thanksgiving at home.

16. What song will always remind you of 2012? Chicken Fried by the Zac Brown Band.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? Both
b) thinner or fatter? Fatter
c) richer or poorer? Poorer

18. What do you wish you'd done more of? Running, travelling, sex, having serious discussions while sober.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of? Fighting. Worrying.

20. How will you be spending Christmas? CANADA!!! For the first time in 12 years.

21. Did you fall in love in 2012? Yes.

22. How many one-night stands? None! Me! None!!!

23. What was your favorite TV program? The Newsroom

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year? No

25. What was the best book you read? Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy and likely Lolita, but I'm only about 1/4 into it.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery? Childish Gambino (or was that the end of last year?) and A. C. Newman's soundtrack for Souvenir of Canada.

27. What did you want and get? Travelling.

28. What did you want and not get? More solid ground for a relationship, those last 5 countries, a lottery win

29. What was your favorite film of this year? All the scary ones with the cuddling with the man and the puppy.

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? 34, I was in Korea, I'm sure I was drinking with the hashers, but it's not standing out in my memory just now.

31.What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? Running, health, more puppy time.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2012? Anything that passed the sniff test and was the least wrinkled when out of the backpack.

33. What kept you sane? Friends, bebe, vamp porn books.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? The chick from In Plain Sight.

35. What political issue stirred you the most? the American election

36. Who did you miss? All the people at some point or another. Ben, every single damn day.

37. Who was the best new person you met? Sean (we'll count him, because the month of December last year we met but I didn't really know him), Bebe, Dominique (but again, I did know her before, but not like I do now), helpful hashers around the world.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2012. It sucks hard to find, a year after running a half marathon, that you can only just pull off 5k, but today is always a good day for running and building up distance again. And that the strangers of the world are on balance lovely and helpful and friendly and kind.

39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

Well it's funny how it's the little things in life that mean the most
Not where you live, what you drive or the price tag on your clothes
There's no dollar sign on a piece of mind, this I've come to know
So if you agree, have a drink with me
Raise you glasses for a toast

To a little bit of chicken fried
Cold beer on a Friday night
A pair of jeans that fit just right
And the radio on

I like to see the sun rise
See the love in my woman's eyes
Feel the touch of a precious child
And know a mother's love

Review: Franny and Zooey

Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



"Anybody over sixteen without an ulcer's a goddam spy."

A few years ago I taught Catcher in the Rye and I hated it. Holden annoyed me from beginning to end, which I don't recall being the case when I read the book as a teen. I didn't go into this expecting to like it much, and I didn't. But I disliked it so much more than I expected.

I hated Franny. Hated everything she said, hated her problem, hated her religious bullshit. But Zooey, him I didn't mind so much. I still thought he talked a lot of bullshit, but it didn't annoy me quite as much as the Franny/Holden style.

The thing with the mother and Zooey having a 50 page conversation in the bathroom just kinda weirds me out. And wow, did people smoke a lot in every conceivable location.

Funniest part: ""That's the spirit! Make it chicken broth or nothing. That's putting the ole foot down. If she's determined to have a nervous breakdown, the least we can do is see that she doesn't have it in peace."



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Review: On the Road

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Their enthusiasm for travelling was compelling, but it's impossible to ignore the horrible way they treated their children and the women in their lives. Dean's insanity was depressing, as was his lack of concern for Sal in Mexico.



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Review: Legend Of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle

Legend Of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Well, that was boring. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow seems to involve more descriptions of food and countryside that scares and Rip Van Winkle seems to lack any point except that wives can be horrible.



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Review: The Pigeon

The Pigeon by Patrick Süskind

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This was really good. It's a novella about how one thing suddenly sets off a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. It starts with a pigeon and there's an entire day of flukey bad luck and waves of hate of everything that is finally ended by a rainstorm.

I've had those days.



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Review: The Pigeon

The Pigeon by Patrick Süskind

My rating: 4 of 5 stars







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Review: The Crying of Lot 49

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



That was just awesome. It's all a conspiracy! At the post office! And that was the oddest sex scene ever, followed by the odd idea of sex in a closet on occasion. That was such a fun romp - though I suppose I don't really have much idea through what exactly.

However back in 2009 I wrote a blog entry all about buying this book and here it is:

How I buy books always strikes me as quite bizarre. More so lately, as I seem to go in when a bit buzzed - post-hashing or post-Cinco de Mayo. Since, for whatever reason, I haven't been in the mood to blog about books I've read, instead I'm going to blog about books I've bought.

Post-hashing I went in and spontaneously bought four used Kathy Reichs books. Fair enough, I've read one of her Brennan books and very much liked it, but I decided to spend that $20 in about ten seconds. I grabbed a couple of chick lit books for when I want pure escapism and two Olivia Manning books ($2 each, very old Penguins) since I liked the first part of the Balkan Trilogy so much. I grabbed a used copy of The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga (I've heard about it, though I'm not sure where) - which turns out to be the next book club pick, so that's handy. Amalee by Dar Williams I bought simply because I like her music (and yes, I too wonder if that means that she can write). Then I grabbed three books that are by authors I know and have liked: Stars of the New Curfew by Ben Okri (as a bonus, it was only $3), American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld, and The Sopranos by Alan Warner.

Post-Cinco de Mayo I ordered the rest of Kathy Reichs' books, having become quickly addicted, and picked up one book based on its cover and another on its spine. First the cover - personally, I think that judging a book by its cover is often fairly effective. After all, a fair amount of money is spent on choosing covers and sending particular messages. Though I suppose it wasn't the cover that caused me to buy it, so much as the fact that it's an old Penguin Modern Classics book. There's something about the 1950s Penguin look that I like - in fact, I've sort of pondered getting the penguin tattooed on me somewhere (I really want a tattoo, but I really want it to be the right tattoo, so it's taking me ages to decide.) Anyway, basically I now own a copy of Voss by Patrick White. I've never heard of this book, but according to the blurb on the back, it's about crossing the Australian continent for the first time - which dovetails nicely with all the explorers I'm learning about while teaching social studies. Then there was the book that I bought because of its spine. I recently read The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera and my copy is an Olive Edition with a very distinctive, striped red-and-white spine. I saw a blue version while I was browsing and I was curious. When it turned out to be a Michael Chabon novel with nothing on the back but a review from Playboy, I couldn't resist. After all, how odd is that? Hopefully The Mysteries of Pittsburgh will be worth the $14.



The one thing that both trips have resulted in is books that I read about in two other books I've read recently: How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster and The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby. Both of the books were great - Foster starts his off by stating that when lecturing his students "a moment occurs in this exchange between professor and student when each of us adopts a look. My look says, 'What, you don't get it?' Theirs says, 'We don't get it. And we think you are making it up.'" That is exactly what I though while sitting through endlessly boring English classes back in high school - though when left to my own devices, I could sometimes find symbolism or patterns. Possibly I was just being my normal resistant-to-authority self. In more recent years, I've often been struck by just how much novels resemble each other or play off of each other. Even random connections, like the fact that the same painting (The Raft of Medusa, Theodore Gericault) was mentioned in The Optimists by Andrew Miller and Fatal Voyage by Kathy Reichs, strike me as fairly fascinating. Hornby's book wasn't just a great book about reading; it was also hilarious. I think if I met him in the pub for a pint I'd very much like him. He reads a lot of stuff that I do, aside from all the football reading, granted. And I don't quite share his lack of love for literary novels. However, who else would write, "So tell your kids not to smoke, but it's only fair to warn them of the downside, too: that they will therefore never get the chance to offer the greatest living writer in America [Kurt Vonnegat] a light."

These two books have led to several more books. Nick Hornby read a biography of Richard Yates and that combined with my recent viewing of Revolutionary Road convinced me to buy The Easter Parade. Anne Tyler's Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant apparently was the book that inspired Hornby to write and I managed to find a $3 copy. Hornby described Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson as an "extraordinary, yearning mystical work about the dead and how they haunt the living" and combined with numerous recommendations, I could no longer resist. As a result of Foster's book, I've acquired a copy of Nabakov's Lolita, which I really ought to have read by now, and The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, which I am slightly embarrassed to admit that I had never heard of before.



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Secret Santa Part One

Review: The Betrayal of Africa

The Betrayal of Africa by Gerald Caplan

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



That was a great little overview of what's going on in Africa and why, with a helpful list of sources at the back.



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Review: Lost in the Funhouse

Lost in the Funhouse by John Barth

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



A book that begins by suggesting we are all God's ejaculate and brings to mind thoughts of Odysseus and running is my kind of book. I liked the way Barth was talking about writing as he wrote and I loved all the Ancient Greek references. There were definitely bits I didn't really get, but overall, I'm really happy to have discovered Barth.



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Review: The Walking Dead, Vol. 1: Days Gone Bye

The Walking Dead, Vol. 1: Days Gone Bye by Robert Kirkman

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



It was good - since I'm watching the show, there weren't really many surprises and I generally spent my time comparing the characters to their TV counterparts. I find the blam blam scenes of them shooting the zombies boring though.



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Review: Lolita

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I bought a copy of Lolita when I lived in Seoul. Four or five people borrowed it and no one finished it. They all disliked it.

I liked Lolita quite a lot but it's taken forever to read it. I've contemplated that it could be because I read it on my kindle and I sort of wonder if I read slower on it. I've thought it might just be the book because after the first section when the wife dies a lot of the tension leaves the narrative and I had a bit of a sense that I was just waiting for the relationship to end. I enjoyed the travelling sections well enough until Lolita's departure. From there I got quite bored, though that death scene is something else.



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Review: Cheerleaders: The New Evil (Fear Street Superchiller, #7)

Cheerleaders: The New Evil (Fear Street Superchiller, #7) by R.L. Stine

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Killer cheerleaders? A main character named Corky?

It might have been three stars if they hadn't lied to me about killer Santa there. I was hoping he'd be a big part of the story.



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Review: The New Year's Party

The New Year's Party by R.L. Stine

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



It's 2 am and the house is so quiet I could be alone. I hate to admit it but that scared me a little. Yes, I'm a giant wimp.



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Review: The Sentimentalists

The Sentimentalists by Johanna Skibsrud

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Petra sent me an unexpected american thanksgiving present! I've wanted to read this for awhile.

So, I had the weirdest reading experience - the first part of the narration I thought was by a dude - right up until the narrator finds her boyfriend sleeping with another woman. And my mind still tried to assume that it was a bisexual man cheating. Looking back, I don't see anything that made me assume a male narrator, except perhaps knowing that at some point the book was about the Vietnam War. It might have been that there are two kids, and one is the sister Helen, so perhaps I just assumed boy + girl makes sense (in my family we were totally gender balanced in my generation, even cousins.) Who knows.

I liked the book overall - but I wasn't surprised to read that Skibsrud also publishes poetry and I'm not sure I liked the poetic prose as much as I often do. I also went in expecting Vietnam War and you don't even get to that aspect of the book until halfway through. And the symbols - the boat that never sails, the submerged town - they seemed a bit too obvious to me.

And forevermore, I think I'm going to have a harder time picturing books set during the Vietnam war. They all seem to include an element about how oppressive the heat and rain are, and I LOVE the heat of Vietnam. LOVE. And while not fond of the rain, I've now done 7 years in that part of the world with a monsoon, and before that Vancouver and Scotland, so rain, meh.



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Things Better Not Remembered

Well, the worst souvenir is easy - clearly it was the gastro-intestinal thing I picked up in Ghana. The Imodium package may tell you that you shouldn't take it for three weeks straight, but it seemed an easier idea than attempting local doctors in Togo.

The Things They Can't Sell

I left my home country right after university. For over a decade, I've slowly pruned down the things I thought I *had* to have from home to pretty much nothing. An ideal vending machine would have my mom's cooking, my dad's wisdom, my siblings' jokes, and my nieces laughter.

Worth the Wait

My friend told me about the spectacle of market day in the tiny village in the mountains where she worked as a Peace Corps volunteer. I hopped on a plane in Asia, stopped over in Italy and flew to Ghana, then spent two solid days in bush taxis. Worth it.

25 Shades of Grey - Hogtown Analversery

here's the weekend story: Interment of ashes - odd thing to go to. Doesn't take long. Lunch was nice. Then went and read in the Indigo before heading to the hash. Nice trail around Yonge and Eglinton, lots of singing, drunk, got hit on by man and woman. Slept in, wandered down to hotel (where I crashed with someone, so yay! free hotel room!), got our jackets/pint glasses, started drinking beer. Changed into tacky dresses and were bused to the CN Tower. went up to Church on Church gay bar and hashers danced around with tranny. Hashed over to the Duke, interesting evening in seedy bar on Queen. Walked home, made McDonald's girl sell me a cheeseburger on foot in the drive-through, burnt my nipple while flashing someone my tits and smoking at the same time, very late bedtime. Woke up, not hungover but so dehydrated. Buses to trail were and hour late. Trail was near old landfill site. Two jello shot stops, one chocolate pudding shot stop, two beer checks. Keg broke a window in the bus. Crossed a river - discovered it was a false trail - crossed back. Final giant hill, then hotdogs and long, trafficy bus ride back. Changed to S&M gear, went to the legion. Dinner, more beer, smoked far too much weed. Strippers at party upstairs - and I got invited. Crashed out before hotel room crawl. Up early for hangover hash - nice walk around The Beaches, Caesars, sandwiches from Subway. Half asleep, but had to get myself to Yorkdale - an hour of public transit, right as everyone else in the city was trying to take their kids to the Santa Claus Parade. Drove home. Now trying to rehydrate and avoid all socializing.

Beginning

I grew up spending my summers at a cottage on an island. Watching the sun rise over the water, the shadows of the trees on the water, eating toast and waiting for the day's first swim. The sun rising over water always reminds me of those childhood mornings.

Mind Like A Sieve

I've forgotten plenty of things - batteries, a towel, flashlights, deodorant (in a country where it's not common), even the American money I had been instructed to bring to North Korea, but really, the only serious thing to forget is your sense of humour (and perhaps your passport/Visa card.)

When I was in university, I applied for an exchange program that it seemed likely I wouldn't get into. I did, and that was what started it. I moved across an ocean and I never looked back. Once I graduated, I continued to move across the oceans: first to Edinburgh, Scotland and then a brief stop in Vancouver before heading over to Seoul, Korea. Being an expat has been such an amazing experience. I've met so many people who I might never have become friends with had I stayed at home, I've seen so much of the world on my vacations, and I've learned so much about other cultures, which has, in turn, deepened my understanding of my own. The biggest drawback to being an expat is how many other expat friends you make. Because expats, by their natures, don't stay still. They move, and when they do, they move to far flung destinations. They take a part of your heart with them because with family so far away, they become your family. I'd love to have the chance to fly to Europe right now. Three of my closest friends are now within short train rides of each other and a dozen other very good friends are there too. All I need is that ticket to Germany and I'd have the chance to see people who have been along for the wild ride that has been my life and reminisce - and make new amazing memories to boot. Because the thing is that the worst thing about being an expat is also one of the best things about being an expat. I have friends all over the world, in all kinds of incredible places.

Review: Wise Blood

Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



3 stars? 3.5 stars? 4 stars? I don't know, because I feel like I have no idea what the hell was going on in this book, but I liked it, I think. Maybe.

WTF was up with the gorilla costume? A policeman seriously pushes a car over a cliff? Did he really believe the whole time, or not? Why did he feel unclean? Why did the girl want to sleep with him and how old was she? Who the hell blinds themselves with lime? Or steals a mummified tiny person?

I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT.



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Pimp My Ride?

Living in a small town, without a license; my only option is my legs. Thankfully, I love to run. Because I'm a Hash House harriette, I do it in style. Sports kilts, sparkly skirts - you name it, I'll wear it. (With a warm hat, because it is Canada.)

Local Legends

Touring around Scotland, the tour guide enjoyed teasing us. He had us dunking our heads into ice-cold waterfalls to protect ourselves from faeries on the Isle of Skye and feeding pieces of bread to hairy coos in the Highlands from our mouths. And then there was the rare haggis sightings.

Review: Eternal Kiss of Darkness

Eternal Kiss of Darkness by Jeaniene Frost

My rating: 1 of 5 stars



This was better than the other Jeaniene Frost I read, largely because there were no British characters for her to mess the slang up with. But there were still a few places where a phrase was so weird it pulled me right out of the plot. And those are some BAD sex scenes.



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Local Legends

The best local legend I've heard is the Korean tales of fan death. Apparently if you turn on a fan inside a room with all the windows and doors closed, the fan can suck all the oxygen out of the room and kill you.

Travel Advice

Always follow the noise. Whether it was an unexpected parade of giant puppets in Barcelona or a drum festival in Korea, this piece of advice from an old friend has never failed me. It's a big, noisy world out there.

Review: The Good Companions

The Good Companions by J.B. Priestley

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I FOUND IT! I read this book back in Scotland, or maybe even before during university and I could never recall what it was or who it was by, except the fact that it was about a theater group in England. And now because of a Flavorwire article about Roald Dahl's Matilda and the books she read, I know what it was. Mystery solved.



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Local Festivities

There is a festival every weekend in Korea; the best advice was always to follow the noise. But my favourite festival will always be HiSeoul. I did all kinds of things at HiSeoul over the years, but most notably this past year it was the host of my first half-marathon.

Kombe! Cheers! Salut! Prost! Sláinte!

I arrived in Bukit Lawang with an evening to kill before trekking to see orangutans. Another traveller suggested we check out the market, where we found a bottle of something for $2. We bought one and went to the hotel to experiment. It turns out it was best on ice.

It's All Going to the Birds

When I moved to Scotland, there were endless postcards of puffins. After two years, I finally got out to Shetland to see some - and I couldn't believe how small they were! A year later I saw more on Vancouver Island, near Tofino. They are such cute birds!

Local Ingenuity

The bush taxi concept is clever. A guy with a car waits until it fills with at least 6 passengers and heads out. A van that might normally seat 14 can hold at least double that - and children, chickens and goats don't count. It's slow, but you get there.

Farewell the Day

When I was in Vietnam over the summer, I went on a day trip to see the My Son ruins and met a fascinating Australian. We sat in a restaurant for hours, solving the problems of the world over beers and great food and a gorgeous view of the river.

Silly Packing

Last year for Christmas a group of friends banded together to buy me a Kindle. I read incessantly. Starting in April I was backpacking around SE Asia for three months - and yet, in addition to the Kindle I still took at least 10 books. Perhaps I can't be taught.

"On the beach, you can live in bliss." Dennis Wilson

I grew up with a cottage on an island with a tiny beach, so I thought beaches bored me. Then I started working in Korea and on a week long vacation went to Boracay and discovered just how wonderful beaches could be. The beauty, the relaxation, the massages. Wonderful.

Review: Autobiography of a Face

Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



This book is incredible.

About a hundred pages into the book, for no particular reason, I read the afterword by Ann Patchett. She talked about the author's frustration with the book being read purely as a cancer autobiography, because she had crafted it to be a work of art that said something timeless and not cancer specific about truth and beauty. And she accomplished that, brilliantly. She also said some very important things about cancer.

Forget pink and moustaches and ribbons. If you want to raise cancer awareness, go read this book and tell everyone you know to read it too.



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An Ideal Meal

The best food I've ever put into my mouth before noon was a $1 bowl of assam laksa in Penang. I'd been wandering pre-breakfast and was starving as I walked up to a crowded stand down near the clan jetties. That sour tang to a spicy fish soup is heaven.

Lost In Translation

My friends warned me about British slang - I knew not to say I was wearing a fanny-pack or my pants had gotten wet in the rain. They hadn't warned me that several common drinking terms would come across as sexual - double fisting and breaking the seal. That's me.

Review: First Drop of Crimson

First Drop of Crimson by Jeaniene Frost

My rating: 1 of 5 stars



Look, when I go slumming into my vampires/faerie/zombie porn, I still have standards. This book was rather poorly written and the attempts at British slang/dialogue were laughable.



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Review: Get A Life

Get A Life by Nadine Gordimer

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



This is the second Nadine Gordimer I've read, the first being [b:The House Gun|118827|The House Gun|Nadine Gordimer|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1347751446s/118827.jpg|503675]. With both, my early impression was that I hated her writing style. The House Gun eventually drew me into the story far enough that I didn't care that I found the style a bit off. Unfortunately with Get A LIfe that never did happen. There were the odd moments that I got into it, but they were not consistent enough.



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Review: Lark and Termite

Lark and Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I bought this book because it had a connection to Korea - and that was the part I liked the best. Of the other two narrators, I enjoyed Lark's story but didn't really like Termite's. It felt like a lot of repeated information with only a few interesting slivers added. I really hated the line Lola is the cat at the end. I would prefer to work for that sort of insight on my own, then be baldly told it.



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Review: Embraced By The Light

Embraced By The Light by Betty J. Eadie

My rating: 1 of 5 stars



A friend went out of her way to give me this book. For all that I admit to be slightly annoyed that someone who knew I was an atheist would give me a book about Jesus, I felt compelled to read it since she ordered it for me (and lets be honest, it's short.)

It annoyed me from the start. The acknowledgements where she thanks her husband for eating tv dinners while she wrote, the forward written by a doctor stressing a need for a return to spirituality, that the author had gone through native American boarding schools designed to eliminate a certain sort of spirituality.

Ultimately it just came across to me as silly. It's all the best things that the author could imagine, put in a magical world. To start with, her imagination is pretty dull if that's her idea of utopia. It was like reading someone's account of heir alien abduction, or like reading some sort of sci-fi. Flatland and Gulliver's Travells both came to mind as I flew through it. A lot of it was very good-hearted, with all its talk of love and kindness, but it was mixed in with so much silly that I had a hard time taking even the ideas I agreed with seriously.

One good thing will come out of reading this. I'll message the friend who gave it to me. If nothing else, her love and kindness towards me is deeply touching and it's been far too long since we've spoken.



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Review: Ru: A Novel

Ru: A Novel by Kim Thúy

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I woke up at 5 a.m. this morning and savoured the quiet by reading this book in around two hours. It's lovely - the use of language, the way the tiny slivers of life wander back and forth between past and present and future. It recalled my trip to Vietnam and the experience of being back in Canada. Fantastic little book. I really hope it wins the Giller (and I now really hope to read the rest of the nominees, in the hopes that they are also this good.)



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Review: Djibouti: A Novel

Djibouti: A Novel by Elmore Leonard

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



The tone of this book was hard for me to get into, particularly the dialogue. I rather liked the insight into the Somali pirates and African terror networks. The documentarian took me awhile to warm up to, but I did by the end. My first Leonard - perhaps not my last.



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Ode To Autumn by John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cell.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,---
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir, the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Review: Jennifer Government

Jennifer Government by Max Barry

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



A comic dystopia? Yes, please. Considering the slowly incubating cold, this was the perfect read. Amusing, interesting, nice and light.

That may be 3 stars, but it's not a meh 3 stars, but a fun and fluffy and worth reading sort of 3 stars.



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