Annie Dillard, For the Time Being. 1999.

I'm a big fan of Dillard's writing. She has the most amazing ability to contemplate a moment, an image, a fact, and to then use it to talk about what it means to live. She can stretch metaphors--without making the reader incredulous--to talk about just what it is that she's thinking about. For the Time Being is no exception. Indeed, even if you've never read anything else by Dillard, I think you should read this book.

This book is mostly about life. Dillard weaves together stories about births--both healthy and those of children with some horrifying congenital problems--and deaths, and life. She ponders the Earth, and Teilhard de Chardin's study of it, along with her own. In the weft there is Kabbalah, and in the warp, stories of the Sufi mystics. All along, Dillard uses numbers--"It took only a few typhoon waves to drown 138,000 Bangledeshi on April 30, 1991." (109)--to talk about people, but succeeds in her aim: to reject the general case. To celebrate the incredible special-ness that is a life. To celebrate the joy that is life.

Along the way, she thinks about theodicy, and offers her own way of making sense of the tragedies of life. I'll not ruin her thoughts by attempting to condense them; instead, I encourage you to read her book.

She's worth your time.

Elmore Leonard, The Big Bounce. © 1969.

Leonard writes good crime novels. This one was first. Short, concise, and cleverly plotted, it keeps moving but does not fall into the trap of believing that frenetic is better. Jack Ryan (and reading this now, I couldn't but think of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan) is a small-time burglar, who gets mixed up with Nancy--a charming young woman interested in getting kicks in whatever way she feels like. Life gets interesting; people act stupidly. It's only the fourth Leonard I've read, but I feel willing to say that it's a typical Leonard novel--enjoyable, pleasant, all too soon done, and not something to which I could return.

William Kotzwinkle, Jewel of the Moon.

An unremarkable collection of short stories that betrays no understanding of life, humanity, and the social whatsoever on the part of the author. From tales that suffer from the attractions to the overly exotic and to Orientalism at its worst, to patronizing tales of the mundane to weak attempts at writing of the uplifting rejection of an established order, Kotzwinkle's book isn't worth the short amount of time it takes to read.

Stuart McLean, Vinyl Cafe Diaries
More light fun from Mr. McLean; enjoyable and frothy, and hard to put down. Check out the Penguin- based blog for the book, also by Stuart. [Can one listen and not call him by first name? Really?]

I've been a Vinyl Cafe fan for quite a space now. It all started because I was dating a woman I'll call S--. Her dad had been to a Vinyl Cafe concert, and since it had been quite close to his birthday, when Stuart asked the audience for birthday people, one could hear S--'s dad's voice. So naturally, we had to listen to the broadcast of that concert. Not really tough; S-- and I were in the habit of listening to CBC on Saturday mornings anyway, to hear Dead Dog, so we just switch from one CBC to another that morning. The stories sucked me in.

I can't say that I started listening regularly until a space after that, well after S-- and I had parted ways. But Stuart's storytelling, whenever I heard it, would make me think "Gee, I really need to make an effort to listen to that."
Eventually, I did. Sunday afternoons, I'd bolt out of church to my car, and listen to it on the drive home. I'd dash into the house--normally during a song, having sat in my car with only the radio on for a minute or two, till an appropriate juncture--where my parents would be listening to it. I'd miss very little. Now, this arrangement works, but it's a bit anti-social, since I'd like to chat with the folks at church for a space, most Sundays. And what to do if there's football on? Clearly, the answer was a switch to Saturdays. Get up early enough to have just finished reading The Globe and Mail as ten o'clock rolled around. Take the crossword and my tea, and sit in the living room, listening to Stuart. This works quite nicely.

I've come to enjoy Stuart's eclectic taste in music more and more (Which is not to say that I like everything he plays; that'd just make me sycophantic. No, I've just come to recognise that most everything he plays is at least somewhat interesting.). But what keeps me coming back are the stories.

Having said that, then, it seems readily apparent that I'd enjoy the Vinyl Cafe Diaries; after all, I've heard most of these stories on the radio a time or two before. Sure 'nuff. And one can hear Stuart's voice, telling them, too, if one is a regular listener to the show. The very pauses are built into the writing. Be careful to use your own voice, should you read any aloud.

The one thing that I would like to say about them is that they're in an odd sort of category to themselves. They are short and ephemeral, here and then gone, but despite their ephemerality, moments stick in your mind, and you'll laugh at times far removed from reading when you recall things that happen to poor hapless Dave and his family.

Three quotations, then, to end off with, all from one of my favourite stories in the book, "Book Club" (132-48).

The funny:
"I found it totally unbelieveable," said Alison Morin. She crossed her legs and picked up her coffee cup. "A cheese would never behave like that in post-revolutionary France." (141)

The serious, proving that Stuart gets books:
She came across a paperback copy of Black Like Me. How could she have forgotten this book? It had changed the way she saw the world. She couldn't believe that she had abandoned it to a cardboard box in her basement. She opened another box and then another. Sitting on the floor with these old friends around, she felt a wave of guilt. She had to get them back on the shelves again. She couldn't leave them locked in the basement like political prisoners. She might not have the time to read any of them, but at least they would be in sight--at least she could touch them, take one down from time to time and flip through it. Just knowing she could do that felt good. (145)

The personally meaningful, to all teachers:
"It's more than just a story," she said. "It's a metaphor. Do you know what a metaphor is?"
Sam had no idea what a metaphor was. "Of course," he said, "We took it in math."

Diane Johnson, L'Affaire
Some more good pulp; some more recovery of my brain.

A wealthy (& quite nice) American, abroad in France, attempting self-improvement, offers her assistance to a family, following a skiing accident. Now, this is Diane Johnson of Le Divorce (also some quite good pulp; better indeed, in my mind, than this outing) fame, so what happens is all suitably amusing & complicated--the new wife, in a coma; the children of the brain-dead husband, legitimate and not; the scheming & the troubles--and therein we have our plot.

This is a pleasant book. Light, and fluffy, its only serious matter is the usual, for a Johnson novel: the differences between les Americaines and the French. One blurb on the back cover says that "If one were to cross Jane Austen and Henry James, the result would be Diane Johnson"; I reassure you all, be not afeard, because of such a remark. It's not quite at that level. It's fun.

Vous vous amuserez.

I thought that I’d celebrate finishing reading Ulysses by reading some relaxing stuff. What’s more relaxing than a crime novel or four? Mer had two on her shelves, and kindly agreed to loan me the middle two on the list below. HPL was kind enough to loan me the other two. Ahh, public libraries make me happy.

Kathy Reichs

Deja Dead

Death du Jour

Fatal Voyage

Grave Secrets

So. Yes, clearly good enough for me to read all four. I think that the nice generic "you" that is anyone who might read this website would enjoy them, too. Let’s remember that as I state my only problem with them.

A writer of mysteries, of stories about crime, naturally has to withhold certain information as she relays her stories. What should be withheld? Well, whodunit, most of the time. How. Why. These are things for which—even if we, reading the story, figure them out—we read. But not details. Not what the characters see, hear, smell. And, in first person narrations, not what the character concludes. If a character figures something out, ending the chapter and telling us in the next, while cheesy, is fine in my book. It’s a commercial-break cliffhanger, to use televisionic terms. But if a character figures something out, and doesn’t share it with us till the end of the book? Or substantially later in it? No. That’s overly manipulative, on the part of the writer. It’s an ineffective and annoying way of attempting to create suspense.

The really annoying part is that Reichs proves that she doesn’t need to resort to such tactics. But she does, anyway. Maybe she’ll outgrow it?
Well, I’ll still read her books over Cornwell’s.

So. I doubt I’ll read these books again. The only mysteries that I’ll continue to return to are those solved by Mr. Holmes. Some things are worth rereading.

Yes I have yes I finished it yes

For form's sake: 18. "Penelope." I'm done reading it.
No question, Ulysses is a brilliant book. Stunning. I need to think about it a bit before I say more, and explain why I'll not be rereading it any time soon.

17. "Ithaca."

16. "Eumaeus."

Ulysses, 15. "Circe."
My friend Mark said that he thinks "Circe" is the funniest thing he's ever read. I'm inclined to agree.

The stage direction at 15.4091-92 is gorgeous: "(Arabesquing wearily they weave a pattern on the floor, weaving, unweaving, curtseying, twirling, simply swirling.)"

I think I love it so because it captures the dance while speaking to Joyce's intricate dance of charactes and ideas that simply swirl throughout the book, but nowhere until now as much as now, in "Circe."