3(ish) links

1. For those of you who have a public library card from BC, BC Libraries Cooperative: Libraries 2 Go, is a great place to get ebooks and audiobooks. In your pajamas.

I listened to the audio version of The Healing by Jonathan Odell whilst sewing, and you should too. Or read the ebook version.

2. If you're a nerd and you read the bible, you might be interested in the online Interlinear Bible by Bible Hub. It's great for looking up the original Hebrew and Greek words, which are sometimes more nuanced than their one word equivalent in an English translation.

3. Learn the very basic crochet stitches in less than 8 minutes with this youtube video! There are a million videos out there. I like this one because she uses the proper crochet terminology and talks about the abbreviations for the stitches too, which is helpful/essential for using a pattern. Also, it's super short and uncomplicated.

Bookin' It: The Sudden Weight of Snow

Author: Laisha Rosnau

1 sentence summary: The Sudden Weight of Snow by Laisha Rosnau is about coming of age in a small town, where everyone has a pretty solid idea of how you're supposed to behave and who you're supposed to be.

Setting: The made up town of Sawmill Creek, BC 

Main Character: Harper, aged 17

Themes: family, coming of age, place, societal expectations, female friendships, first love, grief

What I loved:

Rosnau really gets what it's like to grow up in a small, resource dependant community, where gender roles are rarely challenged and good behaviour is the backbone of the community. The story is told from the first person perspective of Harper, who has a few qualms about the 'natural order' of things in her hometown.  If you have ever been a teenage girl in a small resource dependent town, this story is about that town. 

 Harper is incredibly endearing. She's smart--maybe smarter than is realistic in an average teenage girl. But I'm an idealist, so that's pretty important to me. She's not entirely sure who she wants to be, but she's certain it's not the person that she's supposed to be. She's a rebel, but not a mindless one--she doesn't act out just for the sake of acting out. The boundaries of acceptability are pretty narrow, and she just wants a little room to be different without being an outcast. 

It's really hard to do this book justice. It was funny and so very sad in some parts. I have read it more than five times--no lie. Ok, I wrote a chapter of my thesis on it, so I had to read it over and over again. But, I never got sick of it. In fact, I chose my thesis topic based on this book, because I knew that if I was going to get married to any book and spend my life with it, it had to be this book. 

Swears: yes

Sex: yes

Gore: no

Drugs and Alcohol: yes

Read it if you liked:  A Complicated Kindness: A Novel by Miriam Toews, or The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Monkey Beach by Eden Robinson, The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

3(ish) Links

1. This colour palette generator - Just insert the URL of a pic, and it will break it down into a colour palette. How magical is that! It's not always entirely accurate, but it's always fun.

2. Daniel Radcliffe Rapping Blackalicious's "Alphabet Aerobics". Nuf said.  

3. If you're looking for something good to read, check out the 2014 Giller Prize Shortlist--you're bound to find one (or six) new books to read. My top pick: Miriam Toews's All my Puny Sorrows, which would be on my list whether it was up for a Giller or not, because she's my number one favourite author 

(I wrote an entire chapter about her novel, A Complicated Kindness in my MA thesis!)

Bookin' It: Where the Moon Isn't by Nathan Filer

Author: Nathan Filer

1 sentence summary: Where the Moon Isn't: A Novel chronicles a young man's grief over the loss of his brother while he learns to cope with the onset of schizophrenia.

Setting: Modern day Bristol, England

Main Character: Matthew Homes, age 18, and his illness.

Themes: grief, family, mental illness, coming of age, writing and storytelling

What I loved:

Filer does a fantastic job of evoking a sense of empathy. The story is told from the first person perspective of Matthew Homes, and the fact that he has schizophrenia has a huge impact on that perspective.  I think that the reason the first person POV is so important in this novel is because it allows the reader to imagine what it would be like to see the world as someone with schizophrenia might see it--to imagine the frustrations and the triumphs of everyday life, when managing your mind is a full-time job.

"I should say that I am not a nice person" is the perfect first sentence for this novel, because a large part of Matt's struggle is with the impact of his illness on his loved ones. There are times when he is truly mean and downright selfish, and the fact that it's hard for his family and friends to be around him is not lost on him. "Mental illness" he says "turns people inwards . . . It keeps us forever trapped by the pain of our own minds" (277).

Everyone has their battles, to be sure. I think that the gut-wrenching thing about mental illness is that the thing you're struggling against isn't external. You can't can't necessarily point towards a villain or circumstance outside of yourself. At one point, a care worker at Matt's mental health facility tells him the he is is own worst enemy, something that is painfully obvious to him: "Of course I'm my own worst enemy. That's the whole problem" (231).

Ugh, I expended like 250 ml of tears. That said, Filer leaves room for humor and suspense, and even if you're not passionate about the heavy themes, it is a really great story.

Swears: yes

Sex: no

Gore: no

Drugs and Alcohol: yes

Read it if you liked: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, Theft by Peter Carey, A Complicated Kindness: A Novel by Miriam Toews, or The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.

Bookin' It: Ferris Beach by Jill McCorkle

While I was on Vacation, I really took a bite out of my reading list (which is less of a list, and more of a goal to read at least 12 novels this year). Ferris Beach was one of my vacation reads, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a coming of age novel, which is my jam. Funny, how I never get sick of the genre.

The novel chronicles Katherine (Kitty) Burns's coming of age in early 1970's North Carolina. Growing up for Kitty is kind of like waking up from a series of daydreams. The people that she idealizes often fail her miserably, while others surprise her with genuine kindness. The author, Jill McCorkle once said of her writing: "I like to populate with stereotypes . . . because I know there's a good chance that as soon as these people start walking and talking and thinking that they will step beyond the boundaries" (cited in Bennet, 9), and I think this strategy is part of what makes Ferris Beach both enjoyable and thought provoking.

The story takes place during a transitional period in Kitty's old-school Southern neighborhood, where the introduction of "split-levels" and an influx of new neighbors challenges inhabitants that are striving to perform with the decorum and polite reserve of a particular social class. The new neighbors (particularly Kitty's new best friend's mother) often behave in ways that shake up the current order, and this dynamic has a profound effect on the development of Kitty's teenage identity. Throughout the course of the novel, Kitty's ideals and fantasies give way to a reality that alternates grim and triumphant (kind of like, well, reality).

Top 3 Favorite Things About Ferris Beach 

1. The main character. One of the things I love about her is that she isn't boy crazy. She has a handle on her relationships with guys. She has a say in her relationships with guys. I mean, she's got a case of the teenage insecurities, but it doesn't make her desperate, and she's pretty deliberate about what she gets into. I admire that. I wish I was like that as a teen!
2. The sad-factor. There's heaps of sad stuff. There are troubling class issues. Good and bad folks die. People get hurt. I really do value having my heart broken vicariously in fiction-town.
3. The emphasis on the relationship between individual development and place. It's what I wrote my thesis on, and while I was so over it for the last year or two, this book made it fascinating again!

Reading Heaps

Remember that time I started posting my goals for my 32ndyear? Well, the deadline to apply for the Artisans of the North craft fair has come and gone, and I totally did not get on that. I have not been working on my Hebrew at all. Not even a bit. I have been working on getting back into running shape though. And I’ve been reading heaps.

In May, I read The Caretaker by Ranjit Singh. In June, I read Gifts by Ursula K. Le Guin. And so far this month I’ve devoured Voices (also by Ursula K. Le Guin), Daughters Who Walk this Path by Yejide Kilanko, and The Attack by Yasmina Khadra.

They’ve all had their strong-points (some more than others), but so far my top favourite has been Daughters Who Walk the Path because it explores a lot of really heavy issues like ethnic discrimination, gender discrimination, rape culture, and political engagement without oversimplifying. And ‘cause women-to-woman relationships (sisters, moms, aunts, and friends) constitute a major theme in the book—something I’m 100% a fan of all the time.

Now I’m moving onto A Long Way Down, by Nick Hornby, before the movie comes to our little local theatre.

Still Reading

So, I discovered this cool new thing called the public library . . .

For some reason, when I started my undergrad (10 years ago?) I decided I needed to own every single book that I wanted to read. Consequently, I have a lot of books. A fair amount of them remain unread. True story. But thanks to the influence of my level-headed and practical friends in Quesnel, I've started to get my public library on. 

My book selection method is to choose way more books--all at once--than I can possibly read before the due date. Then I renew them once or twice, and finally return them all, having maybe read one of them. This is the current stack (plus a couple borrowed, two owned, and a kindle). Where to begin!?

Have you read any of these books? Where should I start? What are you reading right now? I mean, you're reading my blog right now. But currently, do you have a marker in a book somewhere?

Also (unrelated to public libraries, but related to books), I'm trying to teach myself to read the bible in Hebrew. So far I have memorized the first two verses of Genesis and I recite them in my head over and over again when I'm driving. I'm fairly certain there are more efficient ways to learn to read in another language but they probably aren't as fun.

All Sorts (of Top Notch from Last Week)

Last week was well above decent in the overall scheme of things. I handed in the very final final copy of my thesis, paid my library fines, and tied up all the loose ends at the University. Now I don't have to feel bad about punctuating my sentences improperly anymore.

 I finished a book that I didn't really like that much, so I won't tell you the title. But I felt pretty good about powering through.

I put my hair in a high ponytail/bun. It has been YEARS since I was able to do that. Sometimes (often) I just get the urge to cut it, and I can't help myself. But I've obviously been developing super-powers of self-control, and this picture is evidence. This picture is also of Cottonwood river (backdrop for glorious messy bun).

And so is the one below. Because it was hot enough to go hang out at the river all day long on Wednesday. IN SEPTEMBER. That's something to celebrate in this (relatively northern) neck of the woods. 

P.S. I can't align this little blurb to the right. It insists on being centered. I hate it, and it's killing me. 

These are totally unrelated to the river, but they are very much related to last week being above decent. I made these all by myself yesterday for games night. Yup. Games night. Me and my bffs play Settlers of Catan every Sunday and gorge on our favourite foods. That's pretty cool, right?

And then, I spent the last half hour of the week digging into Thirst by Shree Ghatage. It's going to take all my newfound superpowers of self-control to not just chuck all my tasks for the day and read. 

How 'bout you? Have you read this book? Kidding. How was your week? And also, have you read this book? And won't you be my neighbor?