My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Nineteen

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James Reaney, Colours in the Dark

I read this play late in my fourth-year undergrad experience. I was taking a course in contemporary Canadian drama. (This was the same year that Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love was produced at the Kaasa Theatre and later at the Roxy; it was also the same year that I first saw Goodnight, Desdemona... produced — see above.) Although I didn't know it at the time, Colours in the Dark was the play I had been waiting my whole undergrad career to read.

Reading contemporary Canadian plays was an eye-opening experience for me at this point. Of course I had read Shakespeare in high school and in first- and second-year university. And of course I had read modern plays in high school English, too: Twelve Angry Men, The Glass Menagerie, Death of a Salesman. You know, standard-issue drama that every "well-educated person" should have read. But reading Romeo and Juliet and Tennessee Williams is very different from reading the plays of Sharon Pollock and David Fennario. Most importantly, they write the drama of Canada, of places I have seen and lived in; and I could stage the plays in my mind (for that, I'm grateful for several years of receiving comp tickets to the Citadel and the Kaasa in my teens). Reading Blood Relations and Balconville and Leaving Home and The Donnellys excited my literary imagination in ways that previous drama units had not. (It probably didn't hurt that I was dating someone who lived and breathed the theatre, too.)

At the same time, I was immersed in my early study of Modernist poetry, which I would pursue further through my master's work. Colours in the Dark, for whatever reason, pulled Canadian drama, Modernist poetry, and my sense of place together in a dazzling way. I love this script: it's surreal and dreamy and very much of its moment — and quite Canadian. It contains stage directions that are literally impossible to enact. But I would certainly like to see a director try!

You're not likely going to read this play, but if you did, I hope you would have as eye-opening an experience of the drama of place and time as I did.

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Eighteen

Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass

I read The Golden Compass almost a decade ago at the encouragement of my young friend Kate. I loved that book and immediately read The Subtle Knife, the follow-up book in the series. I had to wait a few months before I read The Amber Spyglass, though, and I'm glad: I think it's the strongest book in the trilogy. The whole series could easily appear in my five-star list, but this book, in which Lyra and Will's missions and relationship develop fully, is certainly my favourite, the text with which I identified most immediately and completely. It changed my relationship with texts for children and young adults and led me to take courses in my doctoral preparation that I might not otherwise have taken; these have subsequently led to publishing and research directions I will likely pursue for the rest of my career.

If you haven't read the His Dark Materials trilogy, or at least seen the film The Golden Compass, I cannot begin to explain the plot of this series. Suffice to say it is an alternative-Earth fantasy for young adults, with many steampunk elements. It begins in Oxford but eventually spans the globe and other realms. The series might be read by upper elementary students, but I suspect the philosophy in the text would be meaningless to many children. For people who have begun adolescence and the process of individuation, though, the series poses important questions about the self, power and control, loyalty and friendship, and spirituality: big questions that many of us spend our adult lives contemplating. Pullman didn't intend the novels to be read only by young people, and I would definitely encourage adults to read this series. It thoughtfully explores themes of innocence and knowledge, love and sexuality, divine purpose, and much else.

And I adore the daemons! After reading the first two books in the series, I wanted a daemon, and for days after I finished The Amber Spyglass I felt incomplete without my own daemon.

If you enjoy speculative fiction and are looking for a text that will encourage you to think critically about what you know and believe, this series — and this book in particular — will make an excellent choice.

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Seventeen

Alistair Macleod, No Great Mischief

I was a graduate student doing my MA before I learned about Alistair Macleod's fiction. I am so glad I was introduced to his writing, though, because I love his short stories and, even more, his novel No Great Mischief.

No Great Mischief is a novel of Cape Breton. It's also a family saga, and a novel of separation and reunion. And, since it seems to be a theme lately, perhaps also a novel of redemption. The most famous line from this novel provides its most apt thematic summary: "All of us are better when we're loved."

This novel has won numerous awards and is the subject of publishing lore, as Douglas Gibson has told and retold the story of wresting the near-final manuscript from the author in order to see it published before Doug retired. Referring to the title itself, critics have compared the plot to the history of Canada itself. What was life-changing about this novel for me was its fusion of story, technique, and artistry. Every word is perfect; I lingered over the text, read it lovingly. As I am someone who consumes texts professionally, reading in this manner is striking and memorable. The story of love, faith, struggle, and belief in human dignity is arresting and profoundly moving. This novel may bring you to tears; it is certainly worth your time and attention. I hope you will read it.

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Sixteen

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Ann-Marie MacDonald, Goodnight, Desdemona (Good Morning, Juliet)

This book found its way to a position on my list as live theatre. I have seen this text enacted on stage three times and have re-read the script many times because it is such a pleasure. If you have any fondness for Shakespeare, this text will encourage you to rethink what you know and to reconsider what you believe. This text has special resonance for me, though, because of the time and circumstances of my discovering it.

Perhaps you know Ann-Marie MacDonald as the author of Fall on Your Knees (a novel that didn't quite make my five-star list but is very, very close). She is also an actor and a playwright — or at least, she wrote this play. Goodnight, Desdemona is the story of Constance Ledbelly, a failing academic who is on the verge of discovering the secrets to Romeo and Juliet and Othello: they weren't supposed to be tragedies but comedies, and the lead female characters weren't supposed to die. But to learn this secret, Constance must enter the texts themselves. Comedy ensues.

Goodnight, Desdemona is funny: funny enough that your core may hurt from laughing. There is great word play and tight script-writing. The text is also sharply feminist. In short, there's a lot to enjoy in the book — even more if you get to see the text on stage.

If you enjoyed Shakespeare in Love, you will enjoy Goodnight, Desdemona. It is witty and irreverent and pointed and thoughtful — qualities that make the best theatre, and that make for good reading generally.

Top 25 plays for 2012

 

Two thousand twelve has likely been the most unusual year of my life to date, and I see the year reflected clearly in my Top 25 playlist from iTunes. I find the tenacity of certain songs amusing, the appearance of new music encouraging. Some of these songs make me think of clear summer mornings on my new bicycle, others of the persistent circuits of living. And some likely seem random and inconsistent — but I never forget the power of my inner fifteen-year-old girl.

Maroon 5, "Moves Like Jagger"

Muse, "Madness"

Deadmau5, "The Veldt"

ABBA, "Summer Night City"

Lady Gaga, "Judas"

Siouxsie and the Banshees, "This Wheel's on Fire"

ABBA, "Take a Chance on Me"

Kim Wilde, "You Keep Me Hangin' On"

Jenson Interceptor, "Tiny Thing"

Amanda Palmer, "Map of Tasmania"

Florence and the Machine, "What the Water Gave Me"

Hawksley Workman, "Smoke Baby"

Nickelback, "Burn It to the Ground"

Roger Whittaker, "Kilgarry Mountain"

Jimmy Rankin, "We'll Carry On (Prelude)"

Christina Aguilera, "Dirrrty"

Milla, "Electric Sky"

ABBA, "Waterloo"

Caramell, "Caramelldansen"

Kate Bush, "Be Kind to My Mistakes"

The Doobie Brothers, "Long Train Runnin'"

The Irish Rovers, "Lord of the Dance (Live)"

Hair Soundtrack, "The Flesh Failures"

Deadmau5, "Raise Your Weapon"

Loggins and Messina, "House at Pooh Corner"

I'm resetting my iTunes play counts on January 1. Through the music I'll chart the journey through the next twelve months. Looking forward to seeing what they bring.

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Fifteen

Margaret Laurence, The Diviners

This extraordinary meta-fictional novel is one of my very favourite books ever. I adore this text! If I ever taught literature, I would teach this book; if I could think of a way to use it to teach either grammar or editing, I would teach this book. It is exquisite in its concept and execution, and I know I will read it again and again before I die.

The Diviners is the pinnacle text of Laurence's Manawaka books. It is the narrative of Morag Gunn, a writer who is attempting to tell an important story. When she is young, Morag is adopted and raised by parents scorned by the "good" people of Manawaka. She does, however, have a fleeting friendship with Jules Tonnerre, a Métis boy. As a young woman, Morag works as a local reporter; reporting on a fire drives her away from Manawaka and into university, where she falls in love with and eventually marries a professor. After several stultifying years as the wife of an academic, Morag leaves to follow her own art — and her own heart. This storyline is developed through extended flashbacks; in the present tense of the story, Morag is fighting with her own daughter, Piquette, who is becoming a young woman herself and wants to understand her family history. The resolution is not necessarily happy but represents the potential for new understanding, new beginnings.

There are so many issues in this novel: class and poverty, Canadian racism and biases, personal histories and mythologies, early feminism, an exploration of intellectualism, the artist's need for isolation and outsider status, the possibility of renewal... The writing is sharp and insightful, and the characters are rich and fascinating. The novel is also absolutely Canadian, rooted deeply in the land and place. This is literary writing at its best, inclusively so: it is high brow and conceptual while simultaneously critiquing these positions. Brilliant, just brilliant.

I cannot recommend this novel enough, yet I have met many people who haven't read it, people whose only exposure to Margaret Laurence is The Stone Angel (not one of my favourites but still a great book). The Diviners is also notorious in Canadian literature as a book that is routinely censored in Canadian high-school classrooms (especially in Ontario); as a result of its being censored, The Diviners is rumoured to be the reason Laurence stopped writing: it was her last novel. (The truth of this rumour is considerably more complicated, though, as biographies of Laurence have since revealed.)

If you want a book with the sweep of a family saga, the rough beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and a deeply personal revelation of various forms of freedom, The Diviners can't miss. I truly hope you will read and enjoy it.

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Fourteen

Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ

This novel arrives on my list by way of another of my long-standing interests: censorship. In 1988, when the film version of The Last Temptation of Christ was released, it was censored around the world. Not only did theatres refuse to show it; religious groups organized protests and violent acts were committed in an effort to silence an unconventional artistic exploration of one of the West's most significant figures. When the film finally played at the Princess theatre, of course I had to see it. I found it an overwhelmingly moving and provocative text.

So naturally I read the novel on which the film is based. Kazantzakis is well known as the author of Zorba the Greek, a text I thought I was familiar with through popular culture (and, although I have tried, I have not yet read that novel). At the time, I was an English Honours student, thoroughly immersed in the discovery of history, philosophy, and literature. The novel The Last Temptation of Christ was a profound reading experience for me. It is rapturously, gloriously written and offers a fascinatingly human alternative portrait of Jesus of Nazareth, full of doubt and sensuality. For someone raised outside of Christianity, it was — and is — a culturally defiant and life-affirming text.

One of the lines that remained with me for years is this: "There is only one woman in the world. One woman with many faces." The feminist I was at the time read this line as confirmation of the transcendent being of Woman; the feminist I am now (especially after attempting to read Zorba the Greek) is not so sure. The Last Temptation of Christ remains, however, one of the most intellectually provocative and artistically accomplished texts in my personal canon. For years, I bought copies of the novel as gifts, much as I have done with other books that have moved me deeply. I don't know how the novel struck those readers — if they even read it — but I have always hoped it would speak deeply to them about their own questioning of fate, of determinism, and of the larger cultural story. And not about religion.

It's unlikely that my experience of reading this text will encourage anyone else to read it, and there is of course a massive formal literary apparatus available to anyone who feels inclined to explore the book or its critical reception. For me, however, The Last Temptation of Christ is unquestionably a novel that changed my life, by opening my mind to a different way of reading one of the West's most significant texts. It also reinforced my commitment to freedom of expression, even for those texts I'd rather not see, hear, or understand.

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Thirteen

John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

Perhaps it's because I read it between my third and fourth years at university, when I reading a great deal about Christianity and forms of belief, that this novel was so resonant for me. The plot follows two boys, John and Owen, from their childhood to their mature lives. John is the present-day narrator, having left the United States to settle in Toronto. Owen believes he is an instrument of God, born to enact a divine purpose; while the story follows this direction, there is much else going on as well. While there are many familiar Irving-esque themes in the book, there are also some particular ideas and explorations that raise the book above Irving's earlier absurd and sometimes simply comic interests.

To be fair, I should also list The Cider House Rules as one of my five-star books, but Owen Meany reaches slightly beyond Cider House for me because of the character of Owen Meany himself. The Cider House Rules is a novel about extraordinary circumstances with a cast of unusual characters. And for that matter, I might list The Hotel New Hampshire, too, although it's not really a five-star novel despite giving me a long-standing creative motif. For me, A Prayer for Owen Meany is the story of the formation of an unusual character. If you haven't read this book and love character-driven narrative, you should really enjoy this novel.

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Twelve

Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

While I love all of this novel, what made it a five-star book for me is a line of description of Tea Cake, one of the characters the protagonist marries. It begins, "Ready with his grin." Something about this passage sticks with me even now, years after reading this novel.

But there are many reasons to read Their Eyes Were Watching God. The language is certainly one of them: it's dazzling. Most of the novel is presented in dialect, so acutely captured I can imagine voices speaking the story. It is a Modernist novel, although it defies the sterile and emotionless wasteland that had by the 1930s largely become the Modernist space; Their Eyes is sensual in a wide-ranging way, far beyond sex and sexuality. Their Eyes is also something of a romance, albeit involving a very complicated series of relationships, some of them bleak. Most importantly, it is the text of a black woman writer from an era that would happily have silenced her voice, and simply to read her story is to experience a world that we might never otherwise have known.

This book was not well received on its original publication; apparently the novel required feminist rediscovery and the rise of race studies in the 1980s and 1990s to find its real place in the canon (assuming, of course, that there is such a thing). Another reviewer succinctly captures my wish for this book: "Just read it. Please." Indeed.

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Eleven

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Keri Hulme, The Bone People

I read this novel in a course about popular literature and had no idea at the time that it was a prize-winning or important book. What I remember about my initial reading of this book was that it was dazzling, horrifying, and captivating.

The Bone People is the story of Kerewin, an artist who has isolated herself in a tower; Simon, a wild child with a mysterious past; and Joe, the man who is raising Simon despite troubled circumstances. The novel is about various kinds of love that persists despite brutal happenings. It is also a novel about the Maori and the power of myth, story, and language.

At the time I first read this novel, I knew almost nothing about post-colonial discourse or the resistant colonial writer. You don't need this knowledge to enjoy this novel. It is not an easy text to read; you will likely feel the pain these characters endure, and the ending will not necessarily bring resolution. But reading this novel may open our eyes to other ways of being, to other configurations of family, and to other ways of understanding the world.

An assignment I regularly ask my students to complete is an investigation of various literary prizes; I ask them to consider the value of such prizes in the configuration of the literary field, the reputation of the author (and his/her consequent Author Function), and the fortunes of the physical object of the book itself (that is, whether it sells better as a result of the award). The Bone People leaves me intrigued today with many ideas for academic writing; but here I want to convey how I much enjoyed this novel as an undergraduate. In giving me, a sheltered nineteen-year-old Canadian female, a larger, violent but magical view of life, this novel certainly changed my world.

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Ten

Janette Turner Hospital, Charades

I didn't realize how privileged I was to attend the University of Alberta in the late 1980s, when abundant Canada Council funds meant that I could attend a reading from a Canadian writer almost every week of my undergrad life. One of these readers was Janette Turner Hospital, who on that occasion read from Charades (note that the second A is pronounced AH: sha-rahdz). The passage the author read was well selected: tense, unusual, disturbing, full of strange religion and difficult family relationships. I bought the novel a short time later and devoured it, and have reread it several times since graduation. I have also read other novels by Hospital, but none has stuck with me like Charades.

The novel follows a young Australian woman named Charade Ryan, who is searching for her father. Coming from an unusual family, she is acutely aware of language and deliciously tangled in story. Her narrative is by turns erotically coy, brutal, and insightful. Its themes resonated for me at so many levels. Charades is set in Australia and Canada, and ranges from the Holocaust to classical music to theoretical physics. It is exquisitely constructed and very smart, but also emotionally shocking.

Just writing about it now, I want to dig up the book out and read it again. This is a book I give as a gift when I can find it, although it is apparently out of print at this time. If you find it used or in the library, read it. The thousand and one moments of this novel are sure to stay with you.

Oh, not again

So, it must have been a really, really, really slow news day to generate this story.

Really? The whole Habitat for Humanity thing wasn't enough? This former "alderman" felt he needed more press time? OMG.

So glad I don't live in St Albert any longer, so I don't have to be associated with the idiocy of some people who do.

 

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Nine

David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism

As the writing of my dissertation went on and on (and on and on), my focus began to shift from the English Language Arts curriculum per se to the construction of class identity through the politicization of text. One of the most important sources for my specific focus on Alberta political economy was A Brief History of Neoliberalism. If you want to understand concepts like the shrinking of the middle class, the growing gap between rich and poor, and the destruction of the so-called Nanny State, you need this book. It will help you recognize both the specific political entity that is neoliberalism and the historical and philosophical contexts that brought it into being — and that allow it to remain strong. The retrenchment of economic survival of the fittest following the systemic weakening of the welfare state is not an accident, he explains: it is a deliberate and calculated effort to protect the interests of the power elite around the world.

David Harvey is really, really smart. He doesn't just make a claim; he makes an argument, and he knows what he's talking about. He's critical. His analysis of the political economy of developed and some developing countries is acute (look Harvey up on Youtube if you want to see/hear him in action). This book, as well of some of his others, gave me both a model to describe what I perceived in my own location and had read about in other texts and the analytical tools for situating and connecting various forms of neoliberal thought. Given my theoretical orientation, the careful parsing of classical liberal, contemporary liberal, and neoliberal (and of conservative and neoconservative) is crucial. Harvey's text was, and remains, an important basis for explaining the significance of my dissertation topic.

But there's another layer to Harvey's book. Following the familiar paraphrasing of Marx, Harvey does not merely explain the world; he seeks to change it. He is not arguing for the sake of argument; he is arguing to spark, to rally, to mobilize. We are best prepared to struggle for change when we can recognize that this world is structured to benefit one group at the expense of another and that another world is possible. This perspective is perhaps the greater lesson of this book, and Harvey provides strong, global systemic analysis to support your local, specific resistance.

OK, you probably won't read this book. It's dense and difficult, and many political philosophers have moved beyond class analysis in the aftermath of George W. Bush and the War on Terror. But I promise you, this text is worth the effort you'll put into it. And just having it on your bookshelf may make you feel smarter and stronger — and may remind you that fair change is possible.

If I had my own call number

          
So there's this thing called a Dewey Decimal Quiz that will categorize you with just a few keystrokes. I like my theoretical call number — it seems rather apt! Now, what would I be in the LOC system, I wonder?


           

           

                La's Dewey Decimal Section:

                175 Ethics of recreation & leisure

                L—— V—— = 2592952583558 = 259+295+258+355+8 = 1175

               
Class:
100 Philosophy & Psychology


                Contains:
Books on metaphysics, logic, ethics and philosophy.
               


                What it says about you:
You're a careful thinker, but your life can be complicated and hard for others to understand at times.  You try to explain things and strive to express yourself.
           

            Find your Dewey Decimal Section at Spacefem.com
           

           

Want to find out your own Dewey Decimal call number? Click here   and follow the steps.

Glory of the Eighties

(I've been such a busy bee, working working working and editing editing editing. Will get back to posting my five-star books soon. In the meantime, here's something that's been tumbling around in my head.)

So it would seem that the Eighties are another long decade. Somehow the Seventies contracted, allowing the Eighties to begin in late 1978 or early 1979; the Nineties graciously reciprocated by allowing the Eighties to continue until the release of Nevermind in late 1991. In much the way that we refer to "the Sixties" to evoke the period from the Summer of Love to the break-up of the Beatles, today's young writers and editors refer to the Eighties to evoke the period of crass consumerism, allegedly bad fashion, neon colours, and big hair. Hmm, that sounds pretty familiar to — well, to the life we live today — and maybe that's why so many people now find the Eighties so evocative. The Eighties may offer a touchstone to help us understand what we're going through in the 2010s. That's kind of glorious, right?

Or maybe just depressing. That whole thing about history repeating itself... Hmm.

Then again, I kinda liked the hair...

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Eight

Jeff Gailus, The Grizzly Manifesto: In Defence of the Great Bear

If you know me at all, you know I have a fascination with bears. Jeff Gailus' book makes an intellectually fierce and personally impassioned argument for paying attention to the fate of the grizzly bear. For its topic alone, the book would have my attention; but for its insights, its argumentation, and its voice, it has a position as one of my five-star books.

Bears are culturally fascinating because of their intelligence, their strength, and their behaviours; and the grizzly, with its huge range and towering stature, is a mythic creature living in our midst. Unfortunately, living in the midst of modern humans has set the grizzly on its downfall: most of what we read about grizzlies today has to do with attacks on humans, deaths of bears on railway tracks, or lotteries for hunting permits. Grizzlies in Canada are in peril, and Gailus' book explains why. Interestingly, he offers a trans-national perspective for bear management, suggesting provocatively that — gasp! — the United States may, in Yellowstone Park, at least, be doing a better job than Canada in managing its grizzlies and other large carnivores. Given that the bears' natural range extends from the Arctic tundra to far south of the forty-ninth parallel and that the bears don't notice national boundaries, we must start thinking internationally if we hope to keep grizzly populations viable.

But there is the pivotal point: do we have the will to keep these large carnivores alive when our continued social wealth depends on moving increasingly into the bears' remaining habitats? If we examine Alberta headlines from the last ten years, we might conclude the answer is no. Gailus provides a strong reason for that answer to be yes.

This slim book should be required reading for both environmentalists and policy-makers. If you live in Alberta or British Columbia; if you visit Canada's mountain parks; if you care about the fate of North American ecosystems, read this book and discover how you are implicated in the death of grizzlies and how you can change the fate of the grizzlies that remain. I promise you, this book is worth your time.

Saturday's Playlist

"The going water and the gone..." This is the way the world revealed itself to me on a warm weekend night.

1. Melissa Etheridge, "Angels Would Fall"

2. Tori Amos, "Happy Phantom"

3. Stevie Nicks, "Edge of Seventeen"

4. Kim Wilde, "You Keep Me Hangin' On"

5. Oh Susanna, "You'll Always Be"

6. Eurythmics, "Sex Crime"

7. Tears for Fears, "Mad World"

8. Lady Gaga, "Poker Face"

9. Hawksley Workman, "Smoke Baby"

10. Robbie Robertson, "Somewhere Down the Crazy River"

11. U2, "With or Without You"

12. Aerosmith, "Remember (Walking in the Sand)"

13. U2, "Hawkmoon 269"

14. Suzanne Vega, "Marlene on the Wall"

15. Kate Bush, "Leave It Open"

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Seven

Garret Freymann-Weyr, Stay with Me

There is absolutely no reason this book should be one of my favourites. It's a YA novel about an exceptionally privileged daughter of an exceptional family, the kind of people I would not know in my real life. But this book is written sensitively and beautifully, and tackles issues not commonly discussed in this genre.

After Leila's sister kills herself, Leila tries to heal from the loss. Her healing is complicated by the unique way she perceives the world because of a learning disability. Leila eventually begins a relationship with someone significantly older than herself, a troubling decision for some people around her (and for many readers). Through this journey, she discovers more about who she is, why people leave us, why love matters, and how she can go on. I found it a poignant, touching story.

Garret Freymann-Weyr writes YA novels about subjects and from perspectives that most of us don't consider; I think this point is one of the reasons I like Stay with Me. Another reviewer describes the book as "challenging, strange, intelligent" and these words too explain why I was so deeply moved by it. This book may sneak up on you; trust it, let it reveal itself to you, and you may enjoy the experience as much as I did.

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Six

Timothy Findley, Famous Last Words

One of my favourite Canadian writers. A character imagined by an important Modernist poet. Combine the two and you have a fascinating and beautiful literary thriller about World War Two, the British Crown, and fascism. This is how history might have been, and the idea is chilling.

I read this novel between my third and fourth years of university. At that point, I was just beginning my serious study of Modernist poetry and knew little of Ezra Pound. Earlier that year I had read Not Wanted on the Voyage, after another student gave a presentation on it in one of our seminars. (That subsequently became one of my mother's favourite books.) Suddenly I was on a Timothy Findley roll, reading everything of Findley's I could get my hands on. Famous Last Words stands out for me, though, for its powerful images and curious imagining.

Some of Findley's work is overblown. Some of his novels are profoundly bleak. I didn't really care for The Wars, and there is one novel of Findley's that I still haven't read. (And I should acknowledge really enjoying his short fiction and his memoirs.) But this novel (along with The Piano-Man's Daughter, which should also be on this list) worked perfectly for me.

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Five

Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction

It was with the reading of this book that I grew up intellectually.

Terry Eagleton is an astonishing critic. An inspired Marxist and breath-taking intellectual, he writes incisively and clearly about literature — text — as it affects our lived reality. You may think literature doesn't affect your lived reality. You are wrong, and Terry Eagleton will explain why — definitively, authoritatively.

The discipline of English — the realm that has held my conscious attention for nearly thirty years, and likely much longer than that at an unconscious level — is a construct. Prior to the late nineteenth century, the idea of seriously studying English — the poor man's classics — was laughable. Within a few decades — and here I paraphrase Eagleton — the idea of not studying English was laughable. What the construction of English as a discipline has meant, and what emerges from the way that discipline understands and talks about texts, affects our political economy in far-reaching, profound ways that I am still discovering. A lifetime of potential scholarship has sprung, in part, from this book.

As undergraduates in Honours English, we were required to take a fourth-year seminar in literary theory. For many of us, this course was a slog. Week after week after dreary week, we met to discuss yet another theorist, yet another theory; for many of my classmates — and for me at the time — this seminar was simply a requirement to fulfill. Looking back, though, I recognize how important literary theory has been to my academic work and even to my professional work. Today I am grateful I took that seminar, and even moreso that I discovered Literary Theory: An Introduction a few years later. Its twenty-fifth–anniversary edition was published a few years ago, so others too must feel it is a significant book.

With my doctorate finally completed, I can point to this book as one that truly changed my life.

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Four

Roddy Doyle, A Star Called Henry

Do most people remember the circumstances of their first time reading a book that changed their lives? I read this one on a houseboat vacation in northern Saskatchewan, and despite the spectacular scenery and astonishing late-summer weather, I was captivated by this book.

A Star Called Henry is a phenomenally engaging retelling of recent Irish history, narrated by one of the most outrageous and compelling characters in modern fiction. I adore Henry Smart! Absolutely larger than life, he is a prodigious liar, a smashing ladies' man, a dubious hero, and the owner of an unforgettable narrative style. Once you've met Henry, you will never forget him — and you may fall in love with him.

Some of my favourite literature endures for me because of the characters. As they do for many people, memorable characters — like Samuel Hamilton in East of Eden or Amanda Ziller in Another Roadside Attraction — feel real to me, like people I've known. Henry Smart is someone I'd likely be terrified to meet but would love to know. He is surrounded by other quirky and fierce personalities that make him shine all the brighter. And this book has even more: romance, adventure, tragedy, history... It is a rollicking novel that will make you laugh aloud and may move you to tears.

This book changed my life with its reach, its shimmer, and its point of view. It inspired me to remember my love of reading, writing, and learning. And perhaps to ride my bicycle more often.

If you enjoy A Star Called Henry, there are two more books featuring Henry Smart: Oh, Play That Thing! and The Dead Republic (another book I loved, although it didn't make my five-star list). I hope you'll read them all.

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Three

Judy Blume, Tiger Eyes

It seems that most girls of my generation read at least one Judy Blume novel. Tiger Eyes wasn't the most popular choice, though; Forever... generally was, with its explicit language, discussion of sexuality, and sometimes-comical references to anatomy. (Of course, there was also Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret. But that's a different story...) And while Forever... is, for its own many reasons, an important novel, Tiger Eyes really changed my adolescent life.

Tiger Eyes is the story of Davey, whose father is murdered during a corner-store robbery. Her mother moves the family to New Mexico, where Davey tries to reintegrate into school and "normal" life. She starts spending time in the nearby canyon, where she meets Wolf, a young Hispanic man; she also starts volunteering in a hospital, where she meets a variety of patients. With these relationships, Davey begins to work through the grief, anger, and guilt surrounding her father's killing.

This is absolutely a young-adult novel: it deals extensively with issues of identity, sexuality, and individuation. It also persists for me in ways that other Blume books did not. The setting in Los Alamos allows the author to contrast Davey's personal emotional realm with the larger issues associated with nuclear weapons and the military–industrial complex. However, it is Davey's outsider status that I responded to most, and in particular I drew hope from her fraught relationship with Wolf. The tiger's eye stone at the centre of that relationship became a poignant, personal symbol for me.

There is much about this book that is forgettable. Some of the family by-play is quite silly relative to the introspection of Davey's moments in the canyon, and some of the themes are too much of the moment (e.g., the slogan "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle"). But for me, being able to identify with the general experience of alienation and grief (even through very different circumstances) was important to getting through some difficult moments of growing up. I hope everyone who needed books to help them through growing up found a book like this one.

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Two

 

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

Those of you who know me well know that I normally read only hand-picked, highly recommended Speculative Fiction. For whatever reason, very little under the umbrella of this genre appeals to me. The Handmaid's Tale, however, is a speculative fiction that I would recommend to anyone. And, regrettably, as the years go by, elements of Atwood's imagined world are realized in our own world more and more frequently.

The brief plot summary is this: much of the United States, now called Gilead, has been taken over by extreme Christian fundamentalists. Women's rights (along with the rights of non-whites, gays and lesbians, and other people identified as undesirables by the leaders of Gilead) have been quashed, and a caste system has emerged among women, due to widespread infertility as a result of environmental toxins. The story of the regime change is told by a handmaid now named Offred; through her telling we learn about what led to the change, how life continues under the new regime, and what potential exists for resistance under fanatical rulers. The novel is exquisitely written, rich with word play and images that linger.

I read this book in my first year of university. I bought it one Saturday afternoon, started reading it as soon as I got home, and did not move from my seat until I finished it about ten hours later. It was completely transfixing, particularly for a reader who did know many of the conventions of the genre.

Then again, the genre is to some degree irrelevant in this text. There are feminist themes; there is political critique; there are questions about religion and ritual; there are questions about the construction of class, order, and power. But most importantly, Atwood was a poet before she turned to novel-writing, and language play — serious work in this dystopian world — forms the core of the text. This book opened my sixteen-year-old eyes to the potential of contemporary fiction; by the following year, I had changed my faculty and major, and started on the trajectory that has brought me to today.

I have re-read this book several times, and it always impresses and frightens me. An essential text in my personal canon.

***

Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

Some fifteen years after first reading The Handmaid's Tale, I read The Blind Assassin. This is a densely layered story within a story within a story. Once again, I read this text very quickly, although not completely in one sitting, as the structure of my life no longer permits such luxuries. It is, however, transfixing to peel back the layers of this telling and observe how intricately structured and clever it is.

What does it mean to write? Whose truth is true? How do we go on when what we believe is revealed to be a lie? These are some of the questions raised by this novel, told in retrospective pieces by Iris, now an elderly woman. Her life has been marked by fame and loss, power and intrigue; at the end of her life, she has decided to set her story straight, thereby overturning decades of "knowing" and the comfort of conformity. Like many of Atwood's strong woman characters, Iris is complicated, contrary, sometimes cruel, sometimes disturbing. And then there is the book at the centre of the novel, the science fiction text "The Blind Assassin." From the question of what it means to write, we are also invited to ask what it means to read. The art of creation is never innocent, and it is particularly troubled in this intersection of texts, lives, and lives-as-texts.

I believe I respond to this book particularly because of the period it evokes — I still love the Modernists! But there is so much going on in this text: mystery, betrayal, love, violence, courage, and, as always, Atwood's sumptuous writing. The book rewards re-reading, and as I write this about I'm thinking of reading the book again. While it is a very different experience from that of reading The Handmaid's Tale, The Blind Assassin will captivate, frustrate, and unsettle you. The feeling of this book remains with me. I hope you will experience it, too!

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part One

I am a devoted fan of LibraryThing (LT). Other people check their Facebooks daily; I check LT. I have more than three thousand books listed on LT at present, with more added every week. If you love books, LT is a great place to catalogue them, talk about them, learn about them, and share them with others.

On my LT profile, I've explained how I rate books, noting that a five-star book is one that "changed my life." So I've decided, as a writing exercise, to discuss the twenty-nine books (to date) that I've rated at five stars. Over the coming weeks, I will post a brief and personal book talk for each of the titles on my five-star list. I am posting them in alphabetical order by author last name, not in chronological order of reading.

As a disclaimer, I would note that my list is, not unexpectedly, idiosyncratic and strongly Canadian. I'm certainly interested to know what you think about these books, too, and if you haven't read some of them, I strongly encourage you to do so.

Happy reading!

***

Carmen Aguirre, Something Fierce

I am delighted to have read this book long before it was the Canada Reads 2012 winner. I learned about this book from hearing a tiny excerpt from Aguirre's play, The Refugee Hotel, on CBC. A short time later, I read a review of Something Fierce and ordered the book immediately (despite that the review was negative). I am so glad I read this book; reading it was a transformative experience.

Something Fierce is a memoir of resisting the Pinochet military dictatorship, told through the eyes of a child and young woman. Aguirre is the daughter of Chilean revolutionaries and eventually worked for the resistance herself. Her story is astonishing. She describes what her family went through to escape Chile, how her family members and friends were tortured for their beliefs, how her family lived in exile for years, how she attempted to live as a "typical" teen, her work in the resistance, and how she decided to continue the fight for social justice in South America and in Canada.

You may not agree with her politics (I do), but Aguirre writes with such passion, integrity, and courage that it is impossible not to be moved by her book. The people are real; some of their stories are heart breaking. The telling reveals how violence, treachery, and injustice work in ways both large and subtle. Yet moments of terror, paranoia, frustration, and anguish are relieved by moments of humour, beauty, and joy. The ending is not happy, but it is hopeful. This book may change the way you think about all we in Canada take for granted. I hope you will read it.

And by the way, the published script of The Refugee Hotel is also very good.

Lest we remember

I love this article on the federal Conservative government's sense of history.

Thank goodness there are still a few sensible journalists on the Hill.

L

Ten days to go!

Here's what I am ruminating over.

Celtic Cross:

Significator: Queen of Cups

Theme of reading: 8 Swords: "damned if you do; damned if you don't"

Crosses (for or against): 10 Swords: "the worst has been done"

The future: 7 Swords: "be on your guard" (thievery)

The foundation: Justice: "excesses have consequences"

What precedes it: 1 Pentacles: "effort for prosperity"

What is to come: 1 Swords: "the mind awakening for new challenges"

Immediacy (effect on significator): High Priestess: "take time to listen to inner voice"

Context: Page of Cups: "matters of the heart"

Hopes and fears: Sun: "day in the sun"

Outcome of the reading: 6 Cups: "a known joy"

Hmm.

But not for me

So, if I needed another reason not to vote Tory in the upcoming election, here it is.

This story announces that the Tories can promise $650 million to certain Calgary universities, but not to Edmonton universities.

Huh. I guess we're already too smart up in here in Edmonton. Certainly too smart to vote PC again, anyway.

Anything else you'd like to do to shoot yourself in the foot, Ms Redford?

The Rest Is Silence

...hmm.

In other news, it's done. Before midnight on the date of the deadline. Off to defence with fingers crossed.

L

Have You Bleached Your Underarms Today?

B often reminds me that we live in a highly decadent society on the edge of decay. As a socialist, however, I try to maintain a more hopeful outlook, believing in some remnant of the social good and humankind's historical fumbling toward progress.

That remnant hope became just a little more tattered last night when I watched an advertisement for deodorant that masks the signs of underarm discoloration. Seriously.

Admittedly, we live a society that believes in bleaching teeth and other ... parts ... of the anatomy, lest these parts be socially or intimately offensive. And we believe that surgery can correct cosmetic issues with faces, breasts, bottoms, and other regions.

But underarms? Seriously?!?

Perhaps one's underarms do in fact become discoloured over time. So what? Must humans be infinitely perfect? Must we appear as ageless and timeless at fifty as we did as newborns?

Apparently the people who sell deodorant feel we don't have enough social concerns: now we must also worry about (in addition to revealing that our healthy, functioning bodies sweat) underarm discoloration. Of course. We need another rhetorically constructed socio-physical anxiety. Toe cleavage and unibrows and cankles and cellulite and curly/straight hair just don't move us sufficiently today, I guess.

After seeing this ad, I have to say that I agree with B. If a multinational corporation feels it should invest its advertising revenues in the made-up issue of underarm discolouring, then this society really is on the downward slope.

L

Now that's a review!

As I was explaining to my book-editing students the other day, Canadian book-reviewing practices are quite anemic, mostly because most well-known writers and reviewers know each other (or have friends who know each other), have encountered each other on panels and juries, or are afraid of burning bridges on someone they may work with in the future. Thus we end up with terribly pabulum-like reviews much of the time.

But this review of a film shows us what's really possible. An excellent review — and a movie to avoid, I suspect!

L

Karma...

... has got a mean left hook.

Gob-smacked,
L

Stats, Damn Stats, and Lies

According to a recent study of 1,000 Alberta men, some men still believe it's OK to hit a woman if she makes a man angry enough, and quite a few more think that by acting or dressing in a certain way, a woman is inviting rape.

Srsly. I think the sands of time are running backward. Is it 2012 or 1962?

See one article on this study here (click on the word "here" for the link).

Sigh and sigh again.
L

Bugs Bunny understands

The Winter 2012 term has been, so far, quite unpleasant. To put it in perspective, I'll use the words of Bugs Bunny (here illustrating the rhetorical scheme of apophasis): "I won't say it hasn't been a pleasure, because it hasn't."

Here's to an improvement after Reading Week. Or, failing that, here's to a lot of drinking ahead.

L

Nouns and verbs

Somewhere in the twisted jungle of my mind, the children's song "No More Monkeys Jumping on the Bed!" morphed into "No More Monsters Lying in the Bed!". Huh. Apparently someone had a disturbed childhood.

L

Metrical patterns are cool!

These are the final nine lines from a sestina. Who doesn't adore poetry?

No matter what may come
give me this: that all this time I stood here
ignored to death and loved you while you let
every chance go; say your glances at me
suggested almost anything but love;
say I know you cried in bed, poor you.

Believe in love. You know that I am here
to let you loose. Here is my flesh for you
who may abide with me till kingdom come.

— Miller Williams, "Love in the Cathedral"

(In case you don't get it, read the final word of each line for the poem's integral message.)

iTunes' Big Surprise

Although I live in a culture obsessed with size, it would seem that bigness is a limited song-writing concept. Or at least it is in my iTunes library, which features only the following "big" titles:

"Big Bang Baby" (Emm Gryner covering Stone Temple Pilots)
"Big Big Love" (k.d. lang)
"Big Bird in a Small Cage" (Patrick Watson)
"Big Boned Gal" (k.d. lang)
"Big Bottom" (Egg covering Spinal Tap)
"The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine" (Simon and Garfunkel)
"Big Fun" (Inner City)
"Big League" (Tom Cochrane and Red Rider)
"Big Log" (Robert Plant)
"Big Love" (Fleetwood Mac)
"Big River" (Rosanne Cash)
"Big Shot" (Billy Joel)
"The Big Sky" (Kate Bush)
"Big Stripey Lie" (Kate Bush)
"Big Time" (Peter Gabriel)
"Big Wheel" (Tori Amos)
"Big Yellow Taxi" (Joni Mitchall)
... and the comparative "Bigger Man" (Tom Cochrane) and superlative "Biggest Part of Me" (Ambrosia).

Interestingly, for the sake of comparison, I own only the following:

"Small Blue Thing" (Suzanne Vega)
"A Small Dose" (Minstrels on Speed)
"Small Illusion" (Jorane)
"Small Town" (John Mellencamp)
"Smalltown Boy" (Bronsky Beat")

and

"Tiny Angels" (Roger Whittaker)
"Tiny Dancer" (Elton John)
"Tiny Grief Song" (Sinead O'Connor)
"Tiny Thing" (Jensen Interceptor).

Unexpected. But now I've discovered more title themes to consider...

Here's to Sunday!
L

204

Have begun 2012 with the aim of continuing to count the books I read. Week one has been fabulous: a book a day.

How does she do it?!?

The secret is volume.

No, no, the secret is variety. I read poetry, drama, young-adult novels, and mysteries in addition to all that serious scholarly stuff.

OK, but 200+ books in a year means an average of four a week.

Yup.

When you're an insomniac, you have a lot of time for reading.

Happy new year, one and all!

L
(204 is the number of books I read in 2011; it does not include most of the graphic novels or any of the children's picture books)

Quite Quarrelsome

It's been months since I've posted. Too much else to write, I suppose. In the absence of a real post, here's a placeholder.

Top 25 Most Played Songs on my Desktop iTunes

1. "Dirrrty" — Christina Aguilera
2. "Map of Tasmania" – Amanda Palmer
3. "Tiny Thing" — Jenson Interceptor
4. "Feel It Again" — Honeymoon Suite
5. "Firecracker" — Frazey Ford
6. "Gold Guns Girls" — Metric
7. "I Did It for Love" — Harlequin
8. "TikTok" — Ke$ha
9. "Burning Bridge" — Kate Bush
10. "Hidin' from Love" — Bryan Adams
11. "Pour ton sourire" — Jorane
12. "Girls with Guns" — Tommy Shaw
13. "Black on Black" — Dalbello
14. "Caramelldansen" — Caramell
15. "Evacuate the Dance Floor" — Cascada
16. "Silver Blue" — Roxette
17. "When I Get You Alone" — Thicke
18. "Whiskey in the Jar" — The Limeliters
19. "The Adventure" — Angels and Airwaves
20. "What the Water Gave Me" — Florence + the Machine
21. "Superstitious Feeling" — Harlequin
22. "Hazy Shade of Winter" — The Bangles
23. "Just Dance" — Lady Gaga
24. "How Do I Make You" — Linda Ronstadt
25. "Summer Breeze" — Seals and Crofts

Despite that I reset my play counts a couple of years ago, I see some continuity in my listening habits.

Currently, I'm listening over and over (on streaming audio) to "Snowed in at Wheeler Street" from the forthcoming Kate Bush album 50 Words for Snow — can't wait for the disc to arrive!

Poetry finds us

Back to school: week two. Sometimes, ironically, words are what sustains me.

Raise an unexpected glass to long, cold winters
and sweet, hot summers and the beautiful confusion
of the times in between.
To the unexpected drenching rain that leaves you soaking
wet and smiling breathless.

— Taylor Mali from "Silver-Lined Heart"

White Daisy Days

... quickly heading for another one of those autumns. You know, I already know how this one turns out. Couldn't we do something else instead?

Sigh.

L

The Radio in My Head

You can't hear it, but I'm listening to Heather Nova's South album over and over and over again. Great summer music!

Trudging toward the conclusion,
L

OMG, Another Sequel

A review of Sisterhood Everlasting: A Novel by Ann Brashares, published by Random House, 2011

After reading Ann Brashares' first novel for adults, the dreadful The Last Summer (of You and Me), I told myself I would not read her work again. Last week, when I saw Brashares has published a new volume in the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series, I relented, thinking I would enjoy a light summer novel. My mistake.

The characters of the Sisterhood are now twenty-nine years old. Once again, as in the earlier books in the series, they have lost touch with one another. Carmen is an actress based in New York. Lena teaches art in Rhode Island. Bridget remains restless after years of doing nothing in San Francisco. At last Tibby initiates a get-together in Greece, where a death occurs. The plot then focusses on grieving for and reassembling the Sisterhood.

There are so many things wrong with Sisterhood Everlasting that reviewing the book seems almost futile. The protagonists (sections are narrated from various characters' perspectives) are still as vapid and self-absorbed as they were as teens — apparently they all failed to mature in the decade since their last book together. Other characters appear only to advance the plot. Eric, Brian, Effie, Jones, Eudoxia, and various walk-ons are flat, wooden, undeveloped, and sadly uninteresting. Unlike many other writers, Brashares rarely digresses to provide back story for the people Carmen, Lena, and Bridget interact with or to flesh out the details of the Sisterhood's world. Her narrative camera follows strictly her main characters, reducing the story to something like paper dolls marching across various cardboard backdrops. As writing technique, it's unsatisfying.

Although they are staring down thirty, the members of the Sisterhood still act like girls. Carmen and Bridget are unwilling to commit to, or break up with, the men in their lives (with whom they have sophomoric, simplistic relationships), and Lena has not moved beyond Kostos, her long-ago summer love. Only Tibby has set down roots — in Australia — and only unintentionally. These spoiled, privileged girls flit around the globe carelessly, apparently without having to worry about work, bills or rent, other friends and family, or the larger world. As in her previous work for adult readers, Brashares treats sexuality coyly, off stage — an ironic choice, given the plot. Characters' emotional arcs are self-centred and adolescent; apparently for Brashares, adulthood doesn't arrive until one's thirties. None of these characters are likable as women in their late twenties, and the story of their coming together again is stupidly implausible. (And haven't any of these characters heard of Facebook?)

The novel concludes, as have all previous books in the series, with the Sisterhood's renewed commitment to love one another and themselves. Brashares has also introduced at least two plot points that will keep the series alive. For some readers that may be good news, but this book is my last journey with the Sisterhood. The hackneyed prose, the overburdened sentimentality, and the Oprah-style affirmations are simply too cloying for my taste.

The novel is ostensibly intended for adults but reveals the genealogy of a weak strain of YA books. It is formulaic, superficial, and trite. It is also likely to be a summer 2011 bestseller, as the readers of the original Traveling Pants books may follow the author into chick-lit lite. Even as beach reading, Sisterhood Everlasting is a throwaway effort, not worth your time.

When is a contract not a contract?

For the last few days, Premier Ed Stelmach has been blaming teachers — and the Alberta Teachers' Association in particular — for the coming layoffs in schools. According to Stelmach, it is teachers' fault that the government is unable to fund schools appropriately; he is quoted in the Edmonton Journal this morning saying that this year's contractual increase is "'unachievable' for a government struggling financially." Clearly, Mr Stelmach hopes the electorate has a very short memory.

Mr Stelmach's tactics are the worst form of political deceit. The contractual increase is an artifact of the contract that Mr Stelmach initiated in the early days of his leadership. The ATA didn't seek the contract; rather, the government approached the ATA with a deal that would guarantee the province five years of labour peace in education. It was the province, too, that offered the terms tying salary to cost of living; the province also agreed to cover the teachers' unfunded pension liability in exchange for a five-year deal.

In retrospect, such generosity was surely too good to be true. The ATA should have predicted that the government would fail to honour the terms of its agreement. The Alberta government doesn't honour its citizens; why would it honour a contract?

But for Mr Stelmach to blame teachers themselves for the state of the Alberta economy — arguably still the strongest economy in Canada despite the recession — is particularly galling. Mr Stelmach is supposed to be the leader — is supposed to set the agenda for the province. It is by his government's choice that we "cannot afford" basic social rights like health care and education. Perhaps if Mr Stelmach had had the guts to demand an appropriate royalty rate on behalf of the citizens of Alberta, we could "afford" to pay for schools and hospitals. Or perhaps if the Alberta government didn't subsidize tar sands development as richly as it does, sufficient funds could be allocated to citizens' needs — rather than corporations' needs.

Blaming teachers for a mess of the government's own making — for a contract for which Mr Stelmach himself is directly responsible — is flagrantly dishonest. In doing so, Premier Stelmach dishonours himself, his office, and the citizens of Alberta.

Excellent book title!

This is the best book title I've seen in ages:

Hold Me Closer, Necromancer by Lish McBride.

Apparently a YA novel; sounds like urban fantasy perhaps. Will have to check this out — all based on the title.

Thus, the moral of today's story is that a good title sells books. (Or at least encourages readers to take books out of the library.)

Fondly remembered and deeply missed

"He was a bright man who made bad puns and verbal quips, injected trivia, big words and foreign phrases into his teaching, joked about popular culture, politics, the world around us. No one like this had entered my orbit before, and I was transfixed by both his intelligence and his obvious love for his profession." — from an assignment for EDSE 504, July 2006

There are no words.

L

How Social Media Will Contribute to the Erasure of History

Have you ever looked up one of your favourite musicians or actors on Wikipedia? Was that person ever involved in any sort of criminal activity (for instance, spousal battering)? If so, chances are the celebrity's PR people are actively monitoring the Internet to ensure that any references to that criminal activity, whether proved in court or not, are absent.

Say you were a relatively important Seventies folk-rock singer. Say you were involved in the 1980s with a beautiful, talented, well-known actress. Say your relationship ended and subsequently allegations of domestic assault arose. Could it be possible that you, formerly important musician, have enough resources to sue the allegations out of existence, and to ensure that these allegations (now "retracted") stay extinguished? Even to the point of ensuring that your PR handlers tell journalists foolishly seeking to interview you NOT to raise "The Thing"?

Well, ha, Mr Formerly Famous Musician. Ha. I may like your music, but you personally just may be a waste of skin as a human being.

The Insomnia Defence

The Best Health blog reports today that "A study done by business school professors and published in the Academy of Management Journal that looked at the behaviour [of] sleep-deprived students and nurses found that those who lacked sufficient shut-eye increased bad behaviour such as rudeness, inappropriate responses and even stealing."

This explains a great deal, I think!

Sleepy and surly,
L

Outraged, again

According to an article in this morning's Edmonton Journal, Helena Guergis' abrupt dismissal from the federal cabinet and Conservative Party of Canada last year was "an employee–employer relationship" issue.

Strange, that. This is Canada, where MPs serve not at the pleasure of the prime minister but at the will of the Canadian public.

Perhaps the prime minister in question forgot that point.

According to the article, Guergis' error was that "she didn't come clean with her employer," according to the private detective who made the allegations against Guergis.

There was no reason I would have voted for the CPC anyway, but this item adds to the mountain of evidence condemning the Harper government as secretive, petty, and autocratic.

An MP is accountable to the people of her constituency. The people employ her — or fire her. The prime minister's heavy-handed tactics in this matter, based on vague and still-unproved allegations, compromised Canadian democracy.

But then that's hardly unusual for this administration, is it?

It's been a bad week, Mr Harper. I hope the next two are even worse.

Looking forward to the day Harper is no longer in power,
L

Politics: No thinking allowed

So CBC reports that Stephen Harper is pledging to eliminate the deficit a year earlier than planned: here

How? Magic!

Seriously, if he could eliminate the deficit a year earlier than planned — a deficit HIS government created and a debt-elimination timetable that HIS budget introduced — then why didn't HIS government do so this year?

Makes me wonder. But then I read this.

Oh. That's the magic. Huh.

L

What my FB status should be...

... is "so tired of the bullsh*t". Hrmph.