Project 366 – Week 23

155/366
it perplexes her
his enthusiasm for
these interactions

156/366
procrastinator’s
motto. if there’s one more sleep
there’s lots of time left

157/366
every time I grade
try a different strategy
with the same outcome

158/366
all papers graded!
three cheers and a tiger for
me! I have won! grr!

159/366
this bit of news that
makes you catch your breath is the
seed of a story

160/366
you work until late
consider skipping a run
are glad when you go

161/366
the sun is shining
and my tax refund arrived
what an awesome day

Project 366 – Week 22

148/366
Joan better get a
partnership out of this,
I said. And she did.

149/366
taunted by a stack
of shiny 2012 coins
need to do laundry

150/366
deciding to purge
old email is like being
sucked into a vortex

151/366
says he has 12 sons
skates 100 miles a day,
made and lost millions

152/366
visions of severed
feet dance in your head as you
dodge a pool of blood

153/366
a chat window pings
“it’s not the same without you”
there is no response.

154/366
doing yoga while
inhaling neighbor’s pot smoke
this is Vancouver

8: A Little Stranger

A Little Stranger by Kate Pullinger

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

View all my reviews

This one’s from The Book Shop in Penticton, July 2010.

I discovered Kate Pullinger when I was researching a paper. She has this digital novel, Inanimate Alice, which is super-cool and when you have some time, you should check it out (especially if you’re a teacher—it’s turned into a teaching resource for digital literacy/humanities). It’s in episodes, so you don’t need to “read” it all at once. There are four episodes complete now, but eventually there will be 10.

It turns out that Kate Pullinger also writes traditional novels. And, though she’s lived in the UK since her 20s, she’s actually from BC. Which brings me to A Little Stranger.

Fran and Nick live in London. Fran is Canadian; she met Nick at school when her family moved to England temporarily and when the rest of the family went back to Canada, she stayed. The stranger of the title is Louis, Fran and Nick’s baby son. After Louis is born, “they” (mostly Nick) decide Fran can’t work because they can’t afford childcare. Eventually she can’t take being stuck at home with the baby anymore and she snaps. She gets on a plane and flies to Las Vegas.

In Vegas, she meets Leslie, a real estate agent from Vancouver. Leslie is a high-roller who spends her vacations in Vegas gambling to numb her own pain. Leslie lets Fran, who has no money on her, stay in her room, which yes, is an unlikely real-life scenario, but this is fiction. Roll with it. When Leslie goes home, Fran goes with her. Vancouver is—or was—Fran’s home, too. It’s where her family is. Her sister, her dad, and her mom (Ireni). Each of them living in their own world, Ireni especially.

An important part of the story is Ireni’s backstory, her childhood growing up Doukhobor in the Kootenays. This is the area where Pullinger grew up, so she brings her familiarity with the region to the story. Once you learn more about Ireni, Fran’s conflictedness about motherhood becomes understandable. And I promise you Leslie’s story fits into the overall narrative as well.

I loved this book. I expect it might be a bit controversial because of the subject matter—“bad” mothers—but that’s what fiction is for, right? to explore the ‘what if’s, the things we think about, but don’t actually do.

The Real Fear isn’t Rejection

There are some great quotes in this Ray Bradbury profile:

The time we have alone, the time we have in walking, the time we have in riding a bicycle, is the most important time for a writer. Escaping from the typewriter is part of the creative process. You have to give a subconscious time to think. Real thinking always occurs on the subconscious level.

Note to self: go for a run.

If there were three of me, I could keep us all busy. Painting fulfills a need to be non-intellectual. There are times when we have to get our brains out in our fingers. After a good day of writing, I feel like I’ve been for a long hike in another world and painting helps me relax.

Don’t you just love “we have to get our brains out in our fingers”?

I worry about rejection, but not too much. The real fear isn’t rejection, but that there won’t be enough time in your life to write all the stories you have in you. So every time I put a new one in the mail, I know I’ve beaten death again.

This is going in my FEAR! article.

It’s quite wonderful to see writing treated as a legitimate occupation, not a “tedious delusion” (^TM Marge Piercy), though it may make you long for the days when a writer’s work was done when s/he put the story in the (snail) mail. lol.

June issue of Toasted Cheese

Whoops! The June 2012 issue of Toasted Cheese (TC 12:2) has been up for a week. This is why I’ll never make it in marketing 😉 Anyway, new Toasted Cheese! Go read!

Also, I wrote a review for our new section, Candle-Ends. If you think you might want to try your hand at writing a review, check out the guidelines here.

7: The King of Torts

The King of Torts by John Grisham

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

View all my reviews

Library book sale find, April 2012. It was 75 cents. I overpaid.

This book was outrageously terrible. That is all.

Oh, you want more?

Well, if you enjoy reading one-star reviews you’ll probably see comments to the effect that it was a bait-and-switch. The first three chapters or so were heading in one direction and then whoosh into the terribleness that was the rest of the book.

Basically it turns into a treatise on (mass) tort law. First, if you can’t make torts interesting, you fail! I mean, torts! That’s all the weird, wacky stuff. So, JG: #tortlawfail. Specifically, this “story” is about mass torts, you know, the kind of cases you see advertised on late night TV: “Did you take XYZ Drug?! You could be eligible for compensation! Call ABC Law Firm NOW!”

Our hero starts out as a public defender, with a gf who’s going to dump him, because he’s poor. Then he meets a Mysterious Stranger who gives him a tip and he heads out on his own, taking half his co-workers with him, and sets up shop as, well, Call ABC Law Firm NOW! So they pull in all these “clients” (i.e. the people who call their 800 number) get them a crappy settlement, take their cut and whoosh insta-riches!

In the beginning, our intrepid hero scoffs at the other mass tort lawyers’ excesses — jets, yachts, women, you know, the usual, blargh — but, of course, (blink and you’ll miss the transition), he’s soon indulging in his own excesses, despite the fact that his whole deal is based on this MYSTERIOUS STRANGER who gave him this ethically questionable tip. HELLO.

He goes blithely along as if that’s never going to come back to haunt him (right) until you know, it does. Obvs. Like duh. And all comes crashing down and he’s poor again. His friends/co-workers are all ok, because they were smart and cashed out asap. But he did not. Because our intrepid hero, he does not know how to read the writing on the wall.

Oh my god this book is so dumb.

Do not read.

The End.

Book(mark)s

Thought it was long past time for a new header. I had this idea a while back to do something with my “collection” (accumulation?) of bookmarks, but when I dumped them out of their container, I realized half of them were probably from Munro’s. Which is kind of weird, considering I haven’t lived in Victoria in years. So, good marketing, Munro’s! Not so much, all other bookstores.

Anyway, I did try the messy scattered on the table thing (my original plan), but since I had a rainbow of Munro’s bookmarks, I guess the rainbow of Books Books Books! was inevitable. Then I played around with it in Gimp. Not sure if I love it, but maybe it will grow on me.