Bibliomama

Not for my whole life, of course. I learned how to make the letters form words, make the words form sentences, and I was off to the races. I read everything I could get my hands on, which wasn't a great big amount back then, but most of it was fucking magical and blew the doors of my mind wide open.  The Faraway Tree . Narnia.  The Cricket in Times Square.  I would go to the library alone and the librarian would make me call my father to come and get me and approve my book choices (because I had blown through the kids' section and was on to adult reading). If I couldn't get it at the library, I would beg my parents to buy it for me. Once school started, I read for marks and for pleasure. In high school, I was reading a science fiction anthology in homeroom and a girl asked me which class I was reading it for. Her expression when I said I wasn't reading it for a class was uncomprehending. I did a B.A. and and M.A. in Comparative Literature. I had to read some fi

Just before Labour Day Week-end, I started on a nice little hyper-manic upward slope. Even if I didn't HAVE to be early, I popped out of bed first thing in the morning with no brain fog, I got some organizing done that I've been putting off for months, I walked the dog four times a day and never felt too tired to do one more thing in the day if it occurred to me.  Along with this, as usual, came some less awesome stuff: a sort of hardened mental glaze over my mind, obsessive thoughts that wouldn't clear for more than a few seconds at a time, and that uncomfortable sense that the air around me is crowded with screaming or crying.  Honestly, it's not the worst trade-off in the world. Going to bed every night knowing that the morning is going to be either a battle-slog out of a pit of quicksand or another dismal failure is really demoralizing. A bit of mental glitchiness isn't too high a price to pay for some time above water.  Yesterday, I suddenly felt a s

Synopsis from Goodreads:  Stanley Yelnats is under a curse. A curse that began with his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather and has since followed generations of Yelnatses. Now Stanley has been unjustly sent to a boys’ detention center, Camp Green Lake, where the boys build character by spending all day, every day digging holes exactly five feet wide and five feet deep. There is no lake at Camp Green Lake. But there are an awful lot of holes. It doesn’t take long for Stanley to realize there’s more than character improvement going on at Camp Green Lake. The boys are digging holes because the warden is looking for something. But what could be buried under a dried-up lake? Stanley tries to dig up the truth in this inventive and darkly humorous tale of crime and punishment—and redemption. This book has been on my radar for quite a while, both because I have the impression that I like Louis Sachar as an author without actually being able to name any Louis Sach

I'm restless. The kids are back in school. Eve has calmed down, although her stories of her homeroom group wandering the halls looking for their next class, complicated by incorrect timetables and sections that are closed for construction are quite entertaining. Angus has somehow ended up as the only grade ten student in an eleventh-grade fitness class - no one is quite sure how this happened. I don't know quite what to do with myself. I don't feel like working on my course. I don't feel like writing. I barely feel like reading. So right now I'm just walking. I get the kids to school, and I get Lucy leashed up, and I wander all over Barrhaven. Sometimes I stop in somewhere. Sometimes I don't. My feet hurt. My hips hurt. My back hurts. But my dog is really happy. I guess for now I'll just keep walking until I get somewhere.

I bought this book quite a while ago because I had read and loved (and reviewed , to a thundering silence, geez man) Lamb , and I found the synopsis intriguing, and ultramarine blue is one of my very favourite colours and has always seemed a little mysterious to me. . Then I put it in my stack and promptly forgot about it or passed it over for library books that were about to expire. Over the summer, I packed it every time we were going somewhere where I'd want an actual book to read - in the sun, on the beach, anywhere it wouldn't be convenient to read on my ipad. It took me all summer to finish, and it is now extensively foxed and sandy and water-swollen, and I savoured every line of it and never once wished that I had brought another book (yes, another summer has passed wherein I read no Trollope). It was magnificent. I accidentally just glanced at the praise page and now my head is crowded with the phrases of others that describe the book perfectly: "Art history i