Annotations

Hello, Internet! How've you been? I've been distracted. There's just not enough time in the world.

I've been busy, kinda. And sick, some. Mostly I'm just tired.

I had this other little project on for a while — Bookdrum. Have you heard about Bookdrum? It's a depository of multimedia annotations on hundreds of novels. Bookdrum's set up to integrate images, music, maps, video, etc, so it can provide a richer experience than straight-up text summaries. I was invited to participate, and it seemed like a good idea and one novel immediately came to mind, so I jumped on the opportunity to mark it up. Has anyone contributed to this project?

I don't get why it's a drum. Perhaps definition 5d of Merriam-Webster comes closest: "a disk-shaped magazine for an automatic weapon." Nothing else much seems to fit as well as this, although its hard to attribute a shape to web-space.

Anyway, I worked on annotating (for lack of a better way to describe it) The Razor's Edge, by W Somerset Maugham, a book that I feel peculiarly bonded to. And a marvelous experience it was.

I realize how much I accept as given, when I read, being too lazy to understand it. For example, vocabulary. One component of the book profile is a glossary. This made me consider, as I read, whether I fully knew what was being stated. So much of my comprehension depends on context, and it's quite humbling to identify all that you don't know with certainty. But now I can tell you all about the dresses Isabel wore, and where Elliott got his shirts, and how Larry's interest in the mystics is foreshadowed in his reading William James's Principles of Psychology, and what paintings Louisa had on her walls. And the scenes are richer for it, and the characters loaded with meaning. Maugham is a bloody genius, and so underrated. Though I suppose I might say this of any author I put to a similar degree of scrutiny.

(I notice that no one took on High Fidelity, and I think it would be a blast to work on all those musical references!)

Well, right; I knew of this project before Christmas, but then there was Christmas, what with the shopping and drinking and travelling, and then catching up on work, and then I had to go to Cuba. Fortunately, the Bookdrum people extended their deadline, because then I was sick for a whole weekend, and I had something else to do. But then I worked really, really hard on it for about a week and a half. And I was pretty proud of it. Only I'm still not done! And I haven't bothered to do much about it this last month. Where does the time go?

Another crunch at work. And this vicious cold that won't go away (how can so much mucus even fit inside my head?).

J-F was away for over a week, so that meant not being able to say would you mind picking up the kid tonight cuz I'm running a bit late at work, or do you think you could walk the kid to school this morning cuz I really need to just sit here and drink my coffee for a few more minutes. And for some reason, I don't quite understand why, it meant undertaking projects that involved a deeper level of involvement, like finally opening that kit she got for her birthday and making sand drawings, or shopping for vegetables and prepping them and chop, chop, chopping them to make potato salad like mom's, which may not sound like a big deal, but with a 7-year-old it's a day long feat to boil the carrots, and chop the radishes and the pickles and the this and the that and finally to have a meal of it. Plus the need to revisit some Doctor Who episodes. All of which meant quiet was a scarce commodity, so when it came, I wrapped it up and took it to bed with me.

Ah, to curl up in bed with a book instead of the laptop. And in this way I devoured that Fred Vargas book and then The Girl Who Played with Fire. And then I found much-needed stillness in The Winter Vault, about which I have a whole lot to say yet.

Did you follow Canada Reads? Some years are better than others, and this was a good year. I actually hadn't read any of this years's contenders, but was rooting for Nikolski based on what little knew of it, and Yay! it won! Thanks to the fine folks at CBC, and for whatever contest it was that I entered, I know have a full set of this year's featured books. I've already started Nikolski, and lo and behold! it's the name of a place, not a person!

Helena's doing great, by the way. She had a read-a-thon at school today, which entailed the wearing of pyjamas and the bringing of slippers and pillows and bears and the building of forts. And some reading too. I left for work feeling very jealous. I've been a bit negligent, I realize, in guiding her reading. She's much more comfortable in French than in English, but she's steeped in English books at home. So I don't want to force the English, and I'd like to encourage the French, but I'm ill-equipped to do so. I spent half an hour at lunch looking at French primary readers and didn't do so well at understanding them. If you have any suggestions for French books suitable for first or second graders, let me know. (Apart for Roch Carrier's Le Chandail.)

The other evening Helena told me she thought we ought to be listening to music. Rock and roll, she suggested. So I put on The Clash, and we danced. Then The Clash brought out their horn section, and Helena brought out her air trombone, and I thought, rock 'n' roll, baby!

Something made her cry tonight. I don't remember what it was — nothing serious, which is why I chided her gently for crying at all, and she said the most interesting thing. "But it's not me that's crying; the crying happens all be itself."

I should go to bed. I haven't been sleeping well. Last night I dreamed I was taking care of my sister's cat at her place across town, although in reality she has no cat and lives miles further away than across town. I kinda stayed at her place for a few days, and forgot all about my own cat at my own home, and when I remembered, I felt awfully guilty, and then I carried Rosie around with me everywhere, even to work, only she kept shrinking. Someone offered me a ride home, and we made a couple stops, but then I freaked out because it was 6:30 and I'd totally forgotten I was supposed to pick the kid up at school.

Are everyone's dreams like this? I mean, banal yet stressful. I don't generally remember my dreams, so when I do, I spend way to much time thinking about the phenomenon.

OK, that's it, I'm really going to bed now. Maybe I'll manage to read a couple pages before my eyes fall shut.

G'night, Internet. I'll write more soon.

From nowhere

It's a disconcerting feeling to watch the blue arrow leave the road, the only road, on the GPS, watch the road drop out of the bottom of the screen, and know that you are that blue arrow, with no point of reference, moving, or not moving, across a vast plane of nothing, a screen that looks like it's waiting for images to load, a landscape that's waiting for civilization to tame it.

We stayed not long. Armies of insects laid in wait for us. Helena complained of the itching and I lifted the hair off her neck to inspect the damage. I had to stifle my horror at the trails of blood from the dozens of bites, trying not to alarm her.

The fish weren't biting at all.

Then it rained; it stormed. I slept, and read.

********

I finished The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Stieg Larsson). I'm still puzzled by the decision to use this title for the translation over something more literally accurate (something like "Men Who Hate Women"); a marketing decision, no doubt, but curious that the English-speaking world should be deemed to have a unique sensibility in this regard.

It's a most interesting experience to have read this alongside part 4 of Bolaño's 2666, because really, they're both about men hating women, making the point about a certain kind of woman, foreign or transient, socioeconomically disadvantaged, psychologically predisposed to victimization — someone marginalized so that no one much notices her absence, any investigation would be half-hearted, no one much cares. This is our horrific reality (see Pickton).

********

The kitten came with us. It seems a good idea to accustom her to car travel at young age. She travels well.

Helena has renamed the kitten. Her name is now Action.

Summer reading issue

I've never really planned my summer reading before, but then, my child has never finished a school year before, so it happens that we're all of us going to take off some time together, and much of that time will be spent simply hanging out, some of it in town, and some of it at the cottage, and "hanging out" means I should have a couple books on hand, particularly since "hanging out" to J-F means fishing, and we all know I'm happier with a book in my hand not catching any fish than having a fishing rod in my hand and not catching any fish, and I just bought a chair for my "garden" (where "garden" means stone courtyard with a couple pots, a couple baskets) that has armrests large enough to sit a drink on, and a footrest, all of which adds up to it being a perfect chair to while away the summer in, reading. I really am unreasonably excited about this chair, and the prospect of reading in it, but oh well, and notice how I've barely mentioned the kid; I guess I expect her to occupy herself.

The Angel's Game, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. I've essentially finished reading this ARC already, and will write more about it in a couple days. I fully expected this to drift into my "summer" reading, but I couldn't put it down, and, well, now it's done. (I thought Shadow of the Wind was grossly overrated. This novel, on the other hand, I enjoyed immensely.)

2666, by Roberto Bolaño. I'm trying to pace myself. I loved part 1, but I couldn't stop there. This put me ahead of the schedule for the reading group I'd happened upon. But while I subsequently ate up parts 2 and 3, I want also to consider them thoughtfully. I started on part 4, but as fate would have it, I was in no mood to read about gruesome murder details that day in the métro. So I've set it aside until I find a clearer mental space and the time to be able to write about it as I go.

The Sun over Breda, by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. The further swashbuckling adventures of Captain Alatriste! I let out an involuntary exclamation of joy when I came across this at the bookstore last week. Obviously it was meant to be, meant for me, and meant for me now.

Brighton Rock, by Graham Greene. Being that everything I know about Brighton I learned form Patrick Hamilton, I thought I should broaden my education. Not that I'm particularly interested in learning more about Brighton. But I read an excerpt a while back, and was thoroughly wowed.

The Man in the Brown Suit, by Agatha Christie. Which remarkably I'd never read — I read dozens of Christie novels during my adolescence, but evidently not all — and I've been wanting to read ever since I saw that Doctor Who episode. Plus, I love the packaging.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson. Everyone who's read it, raves about it, including a coworker for whom I'll be using this as a test book, to gauge whether her taste in books is reliably compatible with mine or not. I had a hard time figuring out what trilogy exactly she was so crazy for, as the title of the first book in French is Les hommes qui n'aimaient pas les femmes (nothing about a tattoo there).

(I ordered these last three — Greene, Christie, Larsson — from Amazon. It's tough economic times: Gone are the days when "ship when entire order is ready" meant they'd probably send you the bulk of your order straight away anyway. This makes me nervous, as the order is awaiting the release of the Larsson in paperback, and estimated package delivery is a day into my vacation time, and I kind of have to convince the family that we really ought to stick around town for a day or two before we trek off into the wilderness, to ensure that I have books with which to trek off.)

Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace. Because it's the Infinite Summer! Which sounds way more promising than that infinite winter when I didn't manage to finish it! And! I'll be covering the same geographic territory while I revisit the same literary territory! Like it's fated!

(Interesting reading related to DFW: About designing the inside of a DFW book.)

There's not a chance (is there?) that I'll get through this list before I have to show my face at work again; but I'm racing through pages lately, and set to cross titles off the list before even my vacation officially begins. I am prepared to steal back the copy of Spook Country (William Gibson) I picked up for J-F if I have to. And provided I'm on home ground when the pile runs out, there's the Nelson Algren I've been meaning to get to...

There's a good list of paperbacks in time for summer in this weekend's Montreal Gazette, a couple of which I vouch for (Petite Anglaise, by Catherine Sanderson, and The Painter of Battles, by Arturo Pérez-Reverte, although this one isn't exactly light reading), and a couple more which greatly interest me.

I also like the list in The Telegraph. (You'll find 2666 and A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book, which I can't recommend highly enough, therein.)

What are you reading this summer?