Today’s thought. If movies are anything to go by it’s no surprise that James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow are no longer married.
James Cameron (Avatar) and Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker)
February 8, 2010 · Leave a Comment
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Tagged: Avatar, James Cameron, Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker, Were they really married?
Conversations with My Mother: Ploop, Ploop Ploop, and Ploop Ploop Ploop
February 7, 2010 · Leave a Comment
Ring Ring:
Tessa: Hi Mom, How are you?
Rosie: Good. I was just going ploop ploop.
Tessa: Nice. So it’s all working down there.
Rosie: Well. No Ploop Ploop Ploops like the old days but ploop ploop twice a day is a pretty good day.
Tessa: :You still taking those hemp seeds and do they help?
Rosie: No, I go to the bakery at Loblaws and get this delicious new bread. It has little seeds in it. The baker tells me he gets up at 3:00 in the morning to bake it. He can’t bake enough of it. Everyone loves it. I just got a notice that I have to re-do my driving test.
Tessa: Oh. How do you feel about it?
Rosie: What am I going to do? I have to do it. I have a book I’m studying.
Tessa: That’s good. Is it helping?
Rosie: It puts me to sleep. I’ve been studying for a week and I’m still not done. Last time I saw some old lady, maybe she was 95, she was writing the test with the book in her lap. Can you believe that?
Tessa: I find that hard to believe.
Rosie: It’s true. 95 with the book in her lap. AND SHE PASSED.Aggie isn’t doing her test and she’s going to drive without it.
Tessa: I know mom, you’ve told me that ten times. That’s not something to admire.
Rosie: I know but still. At our age what the hell. My appetite is good Tessie so it can’t be all bad. Wooooooooowwweeee. You have no snow. What are you going to do for the Olympics? I feel so sad. Skiing on straw. How’s work?
Tessa: It’s been really busy. A little stressful.
Rosie: You’ve never handled stress well. Makes you all red in the face like when you run. My god. You look like a fat red balloon. Why do something that’s going to kill you?. I have to go. I feel a ploop. I better go work at it.
Tessa: Yeah, thanks for that mom. Talk to you tomorrow.
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Tagged: Conversations with My Mother
Mansfield Park: Jane Austen Book Review
February 2, 2010 · Leave a Comment
Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park is a wonderful study of human folly and caprice set amidst the studious manners and social hierarchy of early 19th century small town English gentry. If a novel that was written almost two hundred years ago sounds and feels like a foreign place (and believe me, it does, I mean how did they keep those castles heated for god’s sake) Austen’s keen eye for the flaws that make us human are very familiar.
Enter Fanny Price, a young beautiful morally steadfast and virtuous girl who is taken in by her wealthy uncle and his family so she can by afforded greater opportunity in life. Uncle Tom’s family, of course, by virtue of possessing both wealth and beauty, are by the measure of the time, morally and socially superior to the steadfast Fanny Price.
The Bertram daughters are cossetted and spoiled by their Aunt Norris who obsequiously panders to their every whim and folly. When (not surprisingly) the young ladies grow up to be of dubious moral fibre and bring shame on the Bertram name through their romantic misadventures and shenanigans, it becomes obvious to the outsider that wealth and beauty alone cannot sustain the moral order.
You could probably write a masters thesis (no doubt somebody has ) on the innumerable transactions that take place within the cast of characters in Mansfield Park that are designed to illuminate the slippery slope of moral turpitude. The great thing about Jane Austen’s world, is that if you make the right choices, your rightful place in love and society is assured.
Fanny for example, consistently resists the offer of marriage by Henry Crawford. She witnesses first hand his careless flirtations with the Bertram sisters and sees this as irrefutable evidence of a deeply flawed character. Regardless of his money and station in life, she can never marry him, even if it means she can attain a station in life far above anything she could ever have hoped for.
Henry, on the other hand, through this single flaw, will never find the real happiness he seeks. He can love Fanny and know that she is the best he can ever have but his vanity lead him to his ultimate downfall. He may have wealth and position, but he will never have love.
Edmund, on the other hand, who is Fanny’s cousin (and son of the wealthy uncle) doesn’t seek wealth and seeks only love. Even though he is misguided in his search for love when he falls for the charming but flighty Mary Crawford (sister to the morally bankrupt Henry) he ultimately finds redemption and real love with Fanny.
This book isn’t going to be for everyone, especially not Dave or readers of his ilk, but I thought this was a fun and interesting read. It took me some time to get used to the ornate use of language but I got used to it quite quickly and found that it gave me something even more to think about which is the changing nature of language.
My next book is contemporary but then I think I’ll take a dive into Dicken’s A Tale of Two Cities.
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Tagged: Jane Austen Mansfield Park, Mansfield Park Book Review
Lost in Mansfield Park
January 29, 2010 · Leave a Comment
If any of you are wondering if I’ve given up on my reading contest, I haven’t. But I am lost in Mansfield Park and I can’t get out. For those of you who know the book, do you remember the the part where the Bertrams, the Crawfords and the Rushtons are wandering aimlessly in the looking for love and forture or just fortune. Well, I’m wandering aimlessly in there too. My first books this year were Infidel, Elegance of the Hedgehog, and Loving Frank. Let’s face it, those are vastly different worlds than Jane’s. First there’s the language, then there’s the people, then there’s the language and THEN there’s the enchantment. Right now I feel like I am living the novel. Ask my husband and my niece. They’ll tell you. So I’m taking my time and will report soon.
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Loving Frank: Nancy Horan Book Review
January 18, 2010 · Leave a Comment
I don’t usually read historic fiction but I picked this up as a recommendation from my sister. Nancy Horan is a writer and journalist who spent most of her life in Oak Park, Illinois, where Frank Lloyd Wright had lived for many years and created a notable architectural legacy with houses created as part of his organic architectural style. As she became interested in Frank Lloyd Wright’s life she learned of his love affair with Martha (Mamah) Borthwick Cheney, the wife of one of his clients, with whom he had run off to Europe, leaving behind 8 children between the two families.
Although a great deal is known of Frank Lloyd Wright, very little was known of Mamah Cheney. Horan had done quite a bit of research with secondary resources, but she was able to more fully flesh out Mamah Borthwick’s character when several of her letters were found.
What Nancy Horan delivers is a very even handed and beautifully compelling story of the love between two people, who defy social convention so that they may be together.
Under Horan’s expert hand Mamah Borthwick comes to life as very conflicted, passionate and intellectual woman who follows her heart. A highly educated feminist who speaks several languages, she is in every way an intellectual match for the eccentric, brilliant and egotistical Frank Lloyd Wright.
While women today have many opportunities that Mameh couldn’t possibly have imagined, the feminist dilemna that frames this story is still very relevant today. How do you balance your own intellectual and emotional needs with a happy and fulfilling family life? Can you follow your emotional and intellectual dreams and be happy in family life? Is it moral and right to stay in a loveless marriage for the ’sake’ of the children? Can you be a good parent if you’re not personally fulfilled? Should children come first? These are all questions that Mameh faced each and every day of her life and which hounded her both publically in the press and privately.
Yet, she remained true to herself and to a love that she felt was one of the only authentic things in life. She struggled daily with her choices and yet you don’t imagine for one moment that she could have lived her life any other way. This is a compelling but difficult story.
The bonus in this book, is of course, that the man she has fallen in love with is Frank Lloyd Wright and the book fleshes out his character and the life and times that fuelled his vision of form. He was a difficult guy to love. Egotistical, brilliant, flamboyant, a terrible businessman who rarely paid his bills on time, selfish and driven. But he had a remarkable vision of beauty and form that changed the course of American architecture. And he also loved Mameh Borthwick with his heart and soul.
” Mamah and I have had our struggles , our differences our moments of jealous fear for our ideals of each other – they are not lacking in any close human relationship – but they served only to bind us more closely together. We were more than merely happy even when momentarily miserable…Her soul has entered mine and it shall not be lost.”
When great art and great love forms itself against convention there is a price to pay and the price is often steep. In this kind of tale, it seems to me, there is no right and wrong although society certainly does/did its fair share of condemnation. I think Mamah Borthwick made some very tough choices for which she paid dearly. But she lived a life that was authentic to herself. I thought this was a really interesting book that is as relevant to women’s issues today as it was during Mamah Borthwick’s time. Nancy Horan brought to life a remarkable man and woman and their love story.
Nancy Horan has an excellent web site that is an excellent resource for anyone wanting to know more about the characters or how the book came to be written. http://www.nancyhoran.com/
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Tagged: Loving Frank, Nancy Horan, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mamah Borthwich, Martha Borthwick Cheny
A Fraction of the Whole: Steve Toltz Book Review
January 14, 2010 · Leave a Comment
Dave’s turn: A Fraction of the Whole is narrated by Jasper Dean who tells us the story of his overanalyzing, philosophical, paranoid father, Martin and his deceased master criminal uncle, Terry. As he tells us of the events that led to his father’s demise, he recounts a boyhood of outrageous schemes and unwanted adventures.
The story starts in an Australian prison cell but travels to the cafes of Paris, through Thai jungles to strip clubs, asylums, mazes and criminal lairs. The result is a non stop diatribe- for and against- politics, family, love, relationships, religion and humanity.
Throughout the story we are witness to Jasper’s constant struggle with his relationship with his father. Not knowing from one moment to the next if he loves, hates or is going to murder him. And although we get the sense that he wants to leave (after Jasper reads, in one of his fathers many journals, that he is thought of as nothing more than a premature reincarnation of his father) to form his own identity, there is the constant inner struggle of how, or in fact if he truly wants to. I thought this was an interesting insight that explores the sometimes tumultuous relationships we sometimes can have with our own parents.
I found Steve Toltz’s writing style, philosophical ramblings and play on words more enjoyable than the story itself, which can get a little flat at times. I found myself re-reading and underlining (then suddenly realizing I had borrowed the book) certain brilliant and hilarious observations on our existence. This book has made me really think about my own life and world around it and has made me want to read more philosophy. I feel when a book has this affect it has done it’s job. I look forward to Toltz’s next writing.
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Tagged: A Fraction of the Whole Book review, Man Booker nominee Steve Toltz, Steve Toltz
Copyright “Ten Terrific Questions”
January 13, 2010 · 2 Comments
I wrote a blog post about a Quirks and Quarks question challenge in which I mentioned “Ten Terrific Questions” except Ididn’t use the word ‘terrific’ I used the word that indicates the same thing but starts with “b” and ends in ‘t’. $5 Tim Horton’s certificate for the first person who figures out the forbidden word.
The owner of this trademarked phrase ‘Ten You BLANK Questions” Dede Bonner very kindly asked me to cease and desist from using the “Ten BLANK Question” phrase because she owns the copyright.
I don’t know anything about copyright at all, so far be it for me to argue the legalities of ownership over entire phrases of the English language, but apparently you can do this. It’s interesting because I didn’t use the phrase as a title but simply within the context of a sentence. Seems redonkulous to me but hey, I took down the post. Anyone know anything about this?
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Tagged: copyright on phrases and langage
Skate Sharpening Took Up Valuable Reading Time
January 12, 2010 · Leave a Comment
Where have the days gone when Diane used to sharpen my skates for me? Woe is me. Tonight I must read like the devil to maintain momentum. I need a nice short book next to keep my numbers high! I’m finding Loving Frank a little dry after The Elegance of the Hedgehog but interesting enough to keep me reading. I’ve decided to add some Dutch, French and Spanish books into the mix just to keep the reading list diverse and my brain nimble!
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Infidel: Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Book Review
January 11, 2010 · Leave a Comment
I hadn’t intended to read Infidel. It was a book on a way to another book and also I am rarely able to make my way through non-fiction. This book, however, was an exception in spite of the fact that I didn’t find the writing to be that great. Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s life story, on the other hand, is interesting and so foreign to any life story I know that once I picked it up, I couldn’t put it down.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is perhaps better known as the outspoken Dutch parliamentarian and women’s rights activist who collaborated on a film with Theo Van Gogh that highlighted the abuses of Islam against Muslim women. Van Gogh was murdered and found with a note pinned to his chest saying Ali would be next.
Infidel is a memoir of her life growing up in Somalia and Kenya where she was regularly beaten by her mother, abandoned by her father and eventually promised in marriage to a man she didn’t know. She escaped to Holland where she sought refugee status, worked as a translator in abortion and women’s clinics and ultimately went to university to study politics.
It is through her ‘awakening’ in Holland to western values of equality, government, marriage, self-determination and women’s rights and her work in the clinics that drives her to fight for the rights, particularly of immigrant women in Holland. She is shocked when she learns of the sexual excision of young girls and honour deaths in her newly adopted country. But her desire to open dialogue on these issues spawns a hostility that forces her to live under guard 24 hours a day under threat of death.
This is one of those books that rips you out of your western centric comfort zone and forces you to see that the world is an entirely different place for many people but particularly for many women the world over. She obviously has a very strong view on arranged marriage, the role of women within Islam and the ability for Islam to adapt to allow women an equal role and self-determination. I don’t know enough about this part of the world to exercise any kind of opinion but I can say that the dynamics in her life story are overwhelmingly paternalistic. The quality of your life depends on the good will of almost everyone around you.
That she managed to break the mold and re-invent herself as a feminist and atheist seems shocking to me given her background. She talks about the influence of reading romance novels at a young age. She would often compare her girlfriend’s experiences with marriage to these fantasies and was determined to seek a different kind of life for herself.
I think she is a brave woman. She has guts, stamina and a burning drive to make the world a better place for women.The book, for me, was a bit depressing though. If nothing else it underlined the enormous chasm between the West and Islam and given the world’s circumstances it makes me feel less hopeful that a bridge can be created between these worlds. Maybe this is a simple view but towards the end of the book when she essentially had to leave Holland because of her public outspokeness, I felt outraged and sad (maybe sadder than usual) about the crappy world we live in.
Next book: Loving Frank
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Tagged: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel
