Happy 50th, Lolita

One Thousand Buildings of Paris

This book features the full range of Parisian architecture. The photographs are accompanied by text that provides a history of the building as well as a neighbourhood context. I'm surprised at how many of the buildings I recognize. There's even a connection to Willowbank , the National Historic Site where I work. Loreena McKennitt, the incredibly gifted Canadian musician, recently donated a beautiful antique harp to Willowbank. It was crafted by Sebastien Erard whose Paris workshop circa 1821-1878 at 13-15 Rue de Mail is featured in this book. It was here that he invented the piano with double escapement, the harp with double pedals and the mechanical harpsichord. This address also served as his home where he welcomed musicians such as Franz Liszt, who lived there periodically when in Paris. I believe that the harp at Willowbank is older and was made in London. Nonetheless I was pleasantly surprised to see Erard mentioned.

The Da Vinci Code

I actually debated whether to post a review of this book, not wanting anyone to know that I'd read it. But I did read it and what's the point of feeling shame? This is how I came to read it: I showed some pictures of Paris to a girl working with me this summer and she decided I had to read the Da Vinci Code because it described the places I'd visited in Paris. And she was right, descriptions of the Louvre and other Paris locations took me right back there. My long-suffering husband grabbed it first and read it in an afternoon - it took me two days (the pacing is frenetic). This is not an intellectual effort, despite the author's pretensions, but I suspect that this is the closest many of its readers will ever come to experiencing a scholarly work. The plot is thin and strains credibility, the characters are equally lean cliches. I'm no expert but I suspect that the doctrines Brown puts forth, i.e. the worship of the feminine and his bastardized version of Gnosticism, are dubious at best. The book starts with a murder and becomes a search for the Holy Grail which turns out to be the tomb of Mary Magdalene and the secret documents entombed there. An incredible amount of action is packed into just one night and a day as the characters flit around Paris and its environs, fly to England, flit about London and points north, are repeatedly held at gunpoint, tour museums, banks and old churches etc.. Personally I think the timeframe is unrealistic, although perhaps they are travelling in a Tardis - a theory no more preposterous than others put forth in this novel. And it is just a novel, not a great one but a page turner, nonetheless. What is sad is that the author has sold this poorly researched fabrication as fact to a public of millions who are only too willing to buy into the latest conspiracy theory. The movie might be good though.

Liberals under my bed

You think this book is scary? I've actually had Liberals in my bed.

Memoir spawns lawsuit, movie

I can only wonder what took the Turcotte family so long to take action. I took Burroughs' description of the family with a grain of salt - too outrageous to be true but, nonetheless, entertaining. I'll follow this story with interest. Maybe Theresa will write her own "biography" and slander Burroughs. I'd buy that book.

In The Language of Love

The author uses 100 words from a turn-of-the-century word association test as chapter titles and from these free-associates a life. Joanna is a woman much like me and, I suspect, many others. The novel focuses on the banal in that peculiar Canadian way that creates a comforting familiarity that resonates within the reader. We are introduced to Joanna's parents with whom she has a very complicated relationship, her lovers, one of whom she hurts, another who breaks her heart and the third who becomes her husband and with whom she has a son. These relationships epitomize the teeter-totter manoeuvering that goes into balancing "the dialectic of faith and fear which will turn you inside out eventually and then you will know how to begin." This book was like a guilty little treat for me as I stole the time to read it when I should have been doing other, more productive things. Last year I read "Our Lady Of the Lost and Found" and enjoyed that enormously as well.

Ruth Reichl's New Book

One of the first cookbooks I ever bought was "mmmmm" by Ruth Reichl. I've ditched all the other cookbooks I had back then; I still have this one and use it often but it's showing the use I've given it over the years (sort of like my poor old body). I'd love to buy a new copy (and get a new body) but haven't been able to find one. I've read her autobiographical works and enjoyed them and happen to think that Gourmet is much improved since she took the helm (although I know that many disagree). Here's the Amazon bit:

Ruth Reichl's Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise has something for everyone. Whether you enjoy her reviews from her restaurant critic days, her two remarkable memoirs, Tender at the Bone and Comfort Me with Apples, or if you are a foodie fan of Gourmet magazine, you will love Garlic and Sapphires. Reichl dishes dirt on fame and working for The New York Times and manages to mix in a few life lessons as well.

First Amendment Project

Vanity publishing? Can't write but want to see your name in print? You don't have to commit some heinous crime, just bid on ebay and support The First Amendment Project at the same time. Does anyone else think this is a little crass?

Bad Analogies

worst analogies ever written in a high school essay
He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

Breast and Get High

Are you offended yet? Well apparently lots of Americans are - make that southern Americans. Have they not watched prime time tv lately? That's enough to make me blush and I consider myself to be pretty hardcore, especially after a glass of wine or two.

Need Help With That Book Report?

Book-A-Minute Classics
Great Expectations
By Charles Dickens
Ultra-Condensed by Conrad Jacoby

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Pip
I'm Pip. I'm poor.
(Lots of THINGS happen.)

Pip
My life didn't matter, because I'm still poor and alone.

THE END

You Can Say a Lot in 100 words

Welcome to 100 Words
This is an inspiring website. I think I'll try to write 100 words that will encapsulate the human condition. Yeah, right.

Bulwer -Lytton

2005 Results
I wish I could write like this!

Mrs. Dalloway

Mrs. Dalloway
It took me almost as long to read this novel as it took Virginia Woolf to write it, I had to re-read passages just for the enjoyment of the words. I read it when I was young and didn't get it; it appealed to me much more upon second reading. Of course it's a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, upper-class politician's wife, who is having a party that evening. It's about choices, roads not taken and lost possibilities. There's the parallel story of shell-shocked WW1 vet, Septimus Smith, who kills himself on the same day. Word of his death insinuates its way into the party and ruins Clarissa's perfect evening.The novel portrays the shallowness of upper-class English society. The first time I thought it was very old-fashioned; this time I was surprised at how modern it is with its stream of consciousness style. No need to say more.

Common Errors in English

Grammar
In actual fact "adviser" and "advisor" are equally acceptable spellings. I also discovered that "in actual fact" is an unnecessarily complicated way of saying "actually".

Rex Libris, Defender of the Dewey Decimal System

Rex Libris
Here I come to save the day, that means that Rex Libris is on the way! Overdue library book? Beware the wrath of Rex Libris, librarian slash bounty hunter. Rex Libris is a black and white comic book about:

the incomparable Rex Libris, Head Librarian at Middleton Public Library, and his unending struggle against the forces of ignorance and darkness. With the aid of an ancient god who lives beneath the library branch, Rex travels to the farthest reaches of the galaxy in search of overdue books. He must confront incredible foes, such as powerful alien warlords who refuse to pay their late fees. Wearing his super thick bottle glasses, and armed with an arsenal of high technology weapons, he strikes fear into recalcitrant borrowers, and can take on virtually any foe from zombies to renegade public-domain literary characters with aplomb.