It's been a while...

Now I hear you saying to yourself, "Gosh, it's a little early in the term for you to be complaining about being SO busy" or something like that. (After all, no-one's THAT busy...) Sigh. The last few weeks have indeed been hectic, but also positive. I absolutely terrified myself on the Labour Day weekend climbing on wet rocks at Kootenay Plains. I am teaching a full load and also taking a course toward my eventual doctorate. I have been reading like a maniac, trying to get in a few extra narrative joys before the term takes hold, and have been decorating the house with books from four — count them, FOUR — library systems. Ta-dah!

So here are a few news bits and a fresh review. I'll try to think of something more insightful to write about soon. — L


Canadian sales of alcoholic beverages per capita, 15 years and over
• Newfoundland and Labrador: $733.80
• Prince Edward Island: $573.60
• Nova Scotia: $613.00
• New Brunswick: $551.70
• Quebec: $682.10
• Ontario: $601.70
• Manitoba: $530.10
• Saskatchewan: $524.00
• Alberta: $615.80
• British Columbia: $631.90
• Yukon: $1,035.20
• Northwest Territories and Nunavut: $858.90


A lightbulb comes on!
Replacing even one 60-watt incandescent bulb with a 15-watt compact fluorescent light in each of Canada's 12 million households could save up to $73 million a year in energy costs. It would also reduce GHG emissions by approximately 397,000 tonnes — the equivalent of taking more than 66,000 cars off the road each year!


And no, there are no F-ing postcards
This brite is apparently for real! See the full story by Toby Harnden here.

For the conservative inhabitants of a settlement called F***ing in rural Upper Austria near Salzburg that comprises just 32 houses (population: 104), the English meaning of their village's name is just one giant headache. One night, all four road signs on its approaches were stolen by tourists. Since records began, there has been no crime there - apart from the perennial theft of what officials call "street furniture". Now, the authorities are fighting back. The signs have been set in concrete bases and Kommandant Schmidtberger, the local police chief, hints at clandestine operations to combat what he calls "foreign criminals" disturbing the alpine order.


Review: Teach Me by R.A. Nelson
Teach Me wants to be a better book than it is. In this awkward coming-of-age story, brilliant 17-year-old Carolina (or Nine, as she's called) falls in love with her 30-something poetry teacher, Mr Mann (she refers to him by his first name at only a few points in the story). Their relationship is, of course, doomed, and the novel traces Nine's journey back from a broken heart. Unfortunately, this journey is unrealistic and renders absurd what is otherwise a passionate story of hard love.

The first 100 pages or so are cast in beautiful, sensitive prose, dense with cosmic imagery and told with authentic emotion. At about this point, however, the telling changes and becomes revenge fantasy of the highest order. (At several points I expected the section to end with "And then I woke up.") Nine stalks her ex-lover, steals from him, vandalizes his apartment, even attempts to shoot him (with blue paint pellets). Her thinking becomes cripplingly unstable and her fury quickly begins to hurt everyone around her. The story climaxes with an unbelievable chase scene in which Mann is forced to rescue Nine and her best friend, Schuyler, from drowning. In the hospital, Nine confronts Mann, who explains his reasons for behaving as he has. Although his explanation will make sense to an older reader, it will sound ludicrously hollow to the YA audience this novel was intended for. Yet in the last pages of the novel the author regains the lyricism of her opening, and the book ends surprisingly gently, with a sense of grace and finality.

This novel feels unsure of its audience. It is relentless for YA, including some scenes of graphic sexuality, but it is also just naïve enough to fail as mainstream adult fiction. Much of the writing is sumptuous, and the motif of Emily Dickenson poetry is scalpel-like in its precise underscoring of the action. But the middle of the novel feels stretched and unreal, as though the author was pushing her character to realize the fantasies of women scorned; given what we learn about her early in the novel, Nine simply wouldn't perform some of the acts her author imagines her undertaking. And as a self-proclaimed observer, Nine is remarkably blind to a critical detail about the marriage she tries to derail, a detail that a close reader could not miss and might even have predicted. The harmonious, if tense, resolution of the novel also feels inauthentic, as if the author is trying to follow the conventions of YA despite that the story resists a happy ending. As Nine herself observes, "Something has closed inside me. It will always be there, but it's closed." Despite its many strengths, the novel ultimately fails, too problematic to be mainstream fiction and perhaps too raw and discordant to be YA. That's a shame, actually, because I had high hopes for this book.


And the iPod says...
...As the sun is setting you'll be betting
I'll be getting through
I'll find a payphone babe
And take some time to talk to you... — "Smoke Baby," Hawksley Workman


Thought for the Day
Only in grammar can you be more than perfect. — William Safire