I concede

Dear Mr. Hage:

I will not be reading De Niro's Game. I hope you're not too disappointed. I know you won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and I hear the prize for that is €100,000, so maybe that will help salve the wound if not absolutely everyone can tackle your book.

I really did try to read it, twice. But then I had this conversation:

Me: I'm trying to read it, again, so I can give your copy back sometime this century. I'm finding it very... male.

Carl: It is very male.

Me: The main character is difficult to like.

Carl: Yes, he's unlikeable. But you really get to see how living in a place like Beirut changes you into something else.

And after that bleak conversation, I decided not to bother. I hereby concede that living in Beirut would change me.

Best of luck with your career,
Tanya

Funny stuff

Check out these clever "ads from the future" hanging in the Copenhagen airport. I found them on the Good blog.

Apparently I write YA books because I still think like I'm in high school. And I'm okay with that.

A couple years ago at an awards gala, I sat beside a highly successful writer who had flown in for the occasion, apparently from the land of I-am-obscenely-famous. He was... let me use my Grandmother's words... much too big for his britches. In fact, if his britches were a size small, he was an extra large. He spent all of his time leaning back in his chair, his feet sprawled out in front of him, expostulation on book tours and the difficulties of dealing with publicists and the fatiguing nature of air travel.

And then he started in on blogs. And lamented that he hadn't worn his T-shirt that said, "I don't want to read your blog."

There were about eight other writers at his table and he hadn't asked if anyone blogged before he began on this topic, so I'm guessing I wasn't the only one quietly watching him and thinking, "I bet you didn't have a single date in high school." Because really, with social skills like that, you'd better hope that your books skyrocket to the top of the charts and you never have to earn your living as a bartender.

This touching scene has come back to me because... could this be true?... Is Margaret Atwood really blogging? And is she blogging about apparently nothing, just like the rest of us blog? Okay, maybe she has her staff blog for her, but still. This really does appear to be a Margaret Atwood blog. And if she had been at that awards ceremony, Mr. Britches, her line-up would have been WAY longer than yours.

Cracked the cover

I've done it. I've finally opened De Niro's Game. And I was right! There are bombs in the first sentence. But, it was all quite gripping anyway...

Cover blahs

I always love the comments -- both kind and snarky -- at Jacket Whys. This latest post talked about the overwhelming brownness of one particular cover, and it struck me that that's why I was having so much trouble picking up either of the two books on my bedside table: cover turn-off.

I've even read The Wife Tree before. And I know I liked it. But look at this depressing starkness:



How is that going to cheer my December?

And the other book waiting for me is De Niro's Game, which my friend Carl lent to me, oh, approximately forever ago. Now I realize why I haven't cracked the cover. Just look at it. It's practically dripping blood. It's reminding me of the time Min tricked me into seeing Blade by telling me it was a love story.



What I really need is a novel with a nice sunrise on the cover. Some spring flowers. A tropical beach. It's time to write to Santa. Or, better yet, to Mrs. Claus.

More on lists...

Rachelle Delaney posted her Top 10 list in response to my Top 10, and on her list... breakfast cereal.

Now, breakfast cereal is one of three things that, during my cash-strapped UVic era (and my cash-strapped post-UVic era), I swore I would one day buy weekly. The other two things were hardcover books and shirts. (Let's admit that I've never had particularly lofty goals. Except for that small matter of a Governor General's Award.)

Now, the appeal of my post-grad list has faded a little. Mostly, I work from home. There are only so many shirts I can wear to amuse myself. For a while, I considered working in a tennis outfit, just because they look fun, but really... those things are chilly. So, I rotate my small stock of shirts.

Hardcover books? Beautiful. And heavy as heck, thus hard on the wrists when reading in bed or in the bath. Also, a pain to store afterwards.

Breakfast cereal is still the most appealing of the three. But I'm trying to feed my kids healthy, whole-grain- and fruit-infused breakfasts and somehow I get sucked into eating them myself instead of the Honey Nut. It is wonderful as a midnight snack, though...

[cue Sound of Music tunes here]

When traveling in Greece (13 years ago -- ack!) my friend Adam came up with a list of his ten favorite things in the world. They weren't big things, no lottery winnings or sports cars. The ones I remember were "grey T-shirts" and "olives."

I can't think of everything on my list at the time, but I do remember it featured "breakfast." That one is here to stay.

My revised and updated list:
1. Breakfast
2. Brand new notebooks
3. Colored paperclips
4. Chocolate Arts truffles
5. Swimming in lakes
6. Secret rooms
7. Cheese
8. Foghorns
9. Marmots
10. Roll-top desks

What are the top items on your list?

Astronomy 101

In the world of self-imposed deadlines, I assigned one chapter to be written during December. Seems reasonable, right? I'm already behind, and it's only the 3rd.

Min says that he has time off soon, and that will help. But I'm thinking... family members are wonderful in oh-so-many ways, but they are the black holes of writing time.

Ouch!

You know that feeling when you've just stubbed your toe and it doesn't hurt yet, but you've already clenched your abs and pulled your foot into the air because you know that the nerves have fired and, any nanosecond now, the pain is going to explode in your brain?

If you could slow that down by, oh, a trillion times or so, it would be the exact feeling between submitting a piece and receiving the rejection.

Angst angst

Lately, I've been thinking about how much I hated young adult books when I was a young adult. It always bothered me that there were anorexia-focussed books and boyfriend-focussed books and teen pregnancy-focussed books but none that captured the reality of being a teen.

Reality, as in, one friend has anorexia and another is getting beaten up by her no-good boyfriend and another's boyfriend is drunk all the time and another friend thinks she's pregnant but then the waitress she knows gets her a pregnancy test and it turns out she's not, and the two guys on steroids are fighting at the house party while another friend gets thrown through the window and someone slipped acid in another friend's drink and now she thinks the tree roots are attacking her and you have somehow managed to get yourself stranded at the gravel pits with only a girl you vaguely know and her drunk boyfriend who offers you a ride home and that doesn't seem like the best option and your dad did give that speech about how you can always call, no questions asked, but there's a distinct lack of phones at the gravel pit so you may as well take the ride, but get dropped off at a different friend's house instead of your own house and then get to watch her throw up in her kitchen sink.

That's the kind of book I pledged I would write. One that really reflected small-town teen life.

The problem: it's impossible. You can't fit even a single day of teen angst into a young adult novel. The readers would all end up as confused and lost as they were at 15 in real life.

Still, I feel as if I'm betraying my young adult self by not making the attempt...

On the dark side of the read

I finished Having Faith in the Polar Girls' Prison this weekend, fully in love with the main character. It was much less heartbreaking than I feared. One of those books that ends too soon, and you wind up reading the acknowledgements, the author bio, and the illustration credit on the back flap, just because you can't quite bear to put the book down yet. (Does that happen to anyone other than me?)

During my neurotic aprés-read, I came across the following quote From Bill Gaston on the back cover:

"If ever I need a guide on the dark side of the moon, I want it to be Cathleen With."

Isn't that a wonderful compliment?

Happy BND!

It's Buy Nothing Day. Thank God I sent Min to buy milk yesterday. And shush, I know my computer is on. But my lights are off, okay? And if you see me at lunch, pretend it's someone else. Because a girl's gotta eat. But I'm definitely not buying any Snow White figurines. Definitely.

(Check out Amazero. Funny stuff.)