Word Things

The Second Part

2010-02-06T16:48:00.002-05:00

It's pretty obvious, but these days I'm spending a lot of time in front of a computer. And sometimes I'll link to things I like here or on Twitter, but more often than not I don't. So, I started a Tumblr to collect random images, videos, songs, text, interviews, etc. that I find online and want to share.

http://secondpart.tumblr.com

In the first entry I explained the name, which is from a Stephen Dixon story:

I named my second zine after this story. Now that we’re living in the future, I was able to find the story on Google books, 7 am on a Saturday morning when I’m up too early, a little hungover, telling myself I should get up, get dressed, take a walk in that brisk Montreal winter air and get some coffee and then just write. But, first I reread the Stephen Dixon story and remembered why I loved it so much, and why I like it even more now that I’m writing more seriously. You make such ridiculous promises to yourself as you’re writing, set the most insane expectations. And in this short, short story everything comes true. You finish your novel and the dead are resurrected.

Book Update #4

2010-01-30T22:03:00.007-05:00

Sam recently posted an entry describing what's on her writing desk. I love those kinds of lists and the moment where you look around and realize that all those things you have hanging around add up to tell a story.

It's really cold here in Montreal, the kind of cold that hurts, even if you've mastered the art of layering and have warm boots and a big fluffy down filled parka. So, I've spent most of the weekend holed up at home working on writing. And here's what my writing desk looks like right now.

(You can click on it to see a bigger version.)

I have a tiny desk in the bedroom, which is potentially nice - I could stare out a window if I wanted to. But I've never gotten comfortable there and have used it instead as a place to pile up excess books. I prefer to write at the kitchen table, where I can spread my stuff out, where I have nicer light and more breathing space.

So, what you see:
The glow of the laptop screen, of course. There's some tea to combat the cold. Printed out versions of stories for when I can't stand to look at the screen anymore. You can see a book peeking out behind the screen (I was rereading Franny and Zooey; I know, I know, how typical). And then, way in the back? There's Archer, who is normally not allowed on the table, but was trying to get my attention. So there you go, Archer, you made it into the photo.

2010-01-29T15:53:00.002-05:00

In my last year of high school we were assigned to read Catcher in the Rye for English class and it really clicked. Obviously. I was angsty; I understood. Our English teacher had transferred from another school, and on his first day told us that he liked to incorporate drama elements into his English classes. Oh lord. Even though I had loved drama as a child (little known fact about me: I took acting classes when I was in middle school!), teenage angst had upped my melodrama quotient, but erased any love of drama of the theatre variety. Our teacher parcelled out sections of the book and made each of us read them to the class. This must have been hilarious to witness: kids putting on their acting voices and reciting Caulfied monologues? Oh lord, again. I remember one boy morally objected to Salinger’s use of profanity, but had gotten assigned a particularly f-bomb laden section. He replaced them with “fudge”. Can you believe it? Holden saying “fudge you”?! Amazing.

When I think of Catcher in the Rye, I think about how it’s one of the great unifiers of books. So many people have read it: people who have only read four books in their lives because they were forced to in high school, people who morally object to cursing, students of all social classes. We read it as part of my accounting firm book club a few years ago, even. And among all these people, you either hate it or love it, get it or don’t, and I’ve had many conversations with people on both sides of the fence. There aren’t many books that you can discuss like that.

I hold the Glass family a little closer to me. I don’t want to debate their oddities with the whole world; I’d rather bask in them by myself. I read the Glass family books one summer when my father was working in Greece. My mother and I visited him when I finished school for the year. He was living in a small town in Northern Greece. I was used to the dry, brittle landscape of Athens in the summertime, not the greenery of the mountains. I would lay in the cot set up for me, the door open for a breeze, the mountains visible in the distance, listen to my walkman and read about this family, all these kids and the things they said, so different from my life. And sometimes it’s the books you read when you’re on vacation and far away from home that stick with you the most. Franny and Zooey, Nine Stories, Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters and Seymour: an Introduction, those stuck and still cling.

January has been a terrible month for deaths and I’ve felt more sorrow for Haiti, for Paul Quarrington and Kate McGarrigle’s passings from cancer, than I have for ol’ J.D, a 91 year old who has not participated in society for longer than I’ve been reading his books. I can’t help but feel guilty for focusing on him, but for someone who’s favourite genre of anything is “coming of age” I don’t know how I could not. So, rest in peace, J.D. Salinger, and thank you.

Book Update #3.5

2010-01-27T21:18:00.004-05:00

Work is busy this week and I've been exhausted at the end of the day, so progress on the stories is inching along, minutely, word by word, more in my head than on a computer screen. But, I feel focused again, which is a relief.

What I've been doing instead: Reading "Come Thou, Tortoise" by Jessica Grant, a book that has come recommended by many people and is proving to be a delight to read. I'll write more about it once I'm finished. I've been interspersing my reading of the book with John Berryman poems. I'd never read him before, despite his major role in American confessional poetry (i.e. the kind I'm a sucker for). A few weeks ago, listening to "John Allen Smyth Sails" by Okkervil River, I realized I wasn't quite sure who they were referring to. I've talked about my love for Okkervil River before, and the more I learned about John Berryman and corresponding his life to Will Sheff's lyrics, the more I started appreciating the genius of this song. Berryman committed suicide in 1972, and the song is sad, but also wry, kind of like his poems. The throwback to Sloop John B. at the end is also beautiful and hillarious. I remember seeing them play this song live, and when they were done our ears were still ringing from the last part - it was loud, joyful, resolute, screamy - and we all kind of looked at each other like, holy shit. It was good.

So, this doesn't qualify as a full book update, but it's an indication of where my brain is at these days: a little scattered, a little tired, a little pensive.

Book Update #3

2010-01-22T16:13:00.005-05:00

Another relic from my parents’ place: I found this drawing in the journal I kept when I was 19 years old and started having consistent internet access (I know, I can’t believe I used to illustrate my diary. I had so much time back then.) This could have easily been drawn today, but the picture dates itself: look at that computer! It’s so big. The screen is a massive cube.

I mention email in that comic, but these days it’s probably Twitter. Email has now become more functional – a vehicle to make plans or discuss important things rather than send or receive idle missives.

So, let’s see what Twitter has revealed about my recent writing habits:

Ok, enough with the holidays, I really need to get back to writing.
2:43 PM Jan 2nd from web

I was stern and disciplined at the beginning of the new year.

Rewriting a story that's 3 yrs old. I find myself grasping at the old story, but I've gotta kill that darling to really make it work. RIP.
4:00 PM Jan 10th from web

The stories I’m having the most difficulty with these days are the ones that are older and need to be rewritten. The new stories are fresh enough that I can play with them without getting bored. An old story, on the other hand, one that’s gone through various revisions already, is a different beast. An older beast, one that’s a little creaky, a little reluctant to change. I find myself gutting paragraphs and story lines I felt very strongly about at one point. It’s kind of vicious.

Listening to The National too much and feeling annoyingly swoony. Swooniness isn't good for writing. In fact, swooniness = bad writing.
9:41 PM Jan 19th from web

This can sum up the state of my writing this week. I don’t know what it is – I made minimal plans so that I could stay home and write in the evenings, but I kept finding myself getting distracted by, say, laundry or vacuuming the dust collected underneath the sofa cushions (wha?) or, as noted above, by listening to music that inspires sappiness, which unfortunately doesn’t translate into good, robust writing.
So, I spend a lot of my self-imposed writing time procrastinating. I’m trying to reconcile that procrastination goes hand in hand with a healthy writing life, and if not a healthy life, then at least a normal one. We all do this. I can see you through the computer screen reading this blog entry instead of doing the writing you were supposed to do. Caught you!

I’m trying to comfort myself with the fact that procrastination is not simply avoiding writing. Rather, I’m giving my subconscious the space to figure things out on its own. I know this works because it happens to me at work. I will be trying to resolve an accounting issue and eventually my head will start to hurt from thinking about it so much. I’ll go home for the evening, get on with the rest of my life, and when I get to work the next morning, the answer appears as if by magic. But it’s not magic, it was the little monkeys in the back of my brain chugging along while I made dinner and tried to work on my book. This happens less so with my writing because I don’t think I detach from writing life the way I detach from work. I don’t necessarily give my brain the space to breathe. Maybe?

Ann M. Martin vs. Judy Blume

2010-01-17T22:03:00.003-05:00

I have always been a "fan", the kind of person who listens to the same song over and over, who will read entire bibliographies in a three month span, who will write fan letters, mail them off and hope for a response. I've learned that not everyone is like this. These days I indulge in the first two activities, but not so much the last. I don’t remember the last time I wrote a fan letter. Does one write fan letters anymore? I imagine that these days pre-teen girls write emails to the Jonas Brothers or send Myspace messages instead. There is probably a better chance of getting an @ reply on Twitter than there is of getting a letter that requires an envelope and postage. As a child I spent a significant chunk of time writing to my celebrity idols, researching their addresses in the back pages of Teen Beat. I wrote to Kirk Cameron and when I considered the chances of actually hearing from him, I hedged my bets and also wrote to Tracey Gold and requested a signed photo from the entire Growing Pains cast, which would be almost as good as getting an autograph from Kirk alone. I wrote to Alyssa Milano and asked her about her prom and I wrote to Tiffany a few times as well. What was it like touring with the New Kids anyway? I never heard back from any of these celebrities, not even a printed glossy headshot, and I’m sure I remembered to include a SASE. I don’t blame them; they were busy getting sucked into the Hollywood machine or finding their version of God. But, let me tell you who I did hear from: authors.

I was equally devoted to the writers of my favourite books as I was to the actors in my weeknight syndicated sitcoms. You couldn’t find authors’ addresses in teen mags, but you could find their publishers at the front of their books. I wonder what I wrote to these people. Something chatty, I think, like writing to an absent cousin or long distance lover. I picked up cues from Beverly Cleary’s Dear Mr. Henshaw, figured I could spill my guts about my life and my problems. I wanted to be a writer too. Do you have any tips? I asked.

My parents are packrats of the highest order and I’ve inherited this trait, except I’m lucky that they live in a big a house in the suburbs of Toronto where I can store my crap forever and ever and continue giving the illusion that I live in a carefully curated home in Montreal. One of my favourite things about visiting my parents is digging through these endless piles of papers, incredulous at the stuff I used to think and keep. This past weekend I opened a box in my old desk and found something wonderful: responses from two of my favourite authors when I was ten years old, Judy Blume and Ann M. Martin.

1990. I was in the fifth grade. I was going through a phase where I was shedding my less cool friends for the more popular kids. I was an asshole, forgive me. But I was reading the Baby Sitter’s Club and practicing personalities the way I practiced handwriting.

Found in an old notebook, me trying out each of the baby sitter’s handwriting. Stacey’s writing, with the i’s dotted with hearts and slanted s’s and e’s appealed to me most, followed by Mary Ann’s flowy cursive.

I stole my favourite characteristics from each of the girls: I got a perm, but it gave me a triangle shaped head rather than the look of a New York sophisticate. I wore a black and white leopard print dress with fringe to class pictures. Claudia Kishi would approve. I was kind of Asian exotic like her, maybe? But I wanted to be a good student too, and nice, like Mary Ann. Nah, I just wanted her boyfriend, Logan. Either way, I paid close attention. I read Judy Blume a bit differently – she wrote about stuff I didn’t talk about out loud. At the time we weren’t quite open about things like wanting to have bigger breasts or getting our periods. We joked about it, whispered it at sleepovers, but we didn’t reveal how crucial it was. Margaret, on the other hand, was so brazen about these quiet desires. And friend politics were discussed perfectly in “Just As Long As We’re Together”. I understood. I wrote to Judy and Ann and one day I got replies from them.

JUDY BLUME vs. ANN M. MARTIN

You can click on the photos to read the letters:

Ann M. Martin

The form letter: On first glance, Ann’s letter looks genuine. It’s printed on a dot matrix, like she typed it up at her desk and then printed it out for me. Dear Teri, it begins, thank you so much for your letter! But, as you read on, it screams fanletter_template.doc. She told me she was born in 1955. At the time it made her 34 years old and she lived in New York City , unmarried, with a cat. She flipped through Name Your Baby books for name ideas, and her first book, Bummer Summer, took 3 years to write. Sure, great.

Judy’s letter came a few months letter when I was in the thick of grade six, March 1991. She didn’t hide the fact that her fans got the same letter. It was pre-printed, her picture with a copyright mark in tiny print along the side. Hi: she starts. She anticipates her questions. “Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself” is my most autobiographical book. Okay.

The brush-off: Ann hides it in a P.S. at the end of the letter (“As much as I love hearing from you, I must tell you that I just don’t have time to answer those letters.”) She included a photo of herself wearing a smart looking sweater and fake pearls, buried in a pile of letters.

Okay, okay, we get it, Ann, you get a lot of fanmail.

Once again, Judy was more direct. After some pleasantries, she says in the second sentence: I wish I could write to you individually but then I’d never have the time to finish another book.

The personal touches: Ann signed her letter. See the smudge? 10 year old Teri was skeptical enough to lick her finger and test out the veracity of the pen ink. It was real. That was cool. But you know what was even cooler? I sent a story to Judy – I don’t remember what story it was, but I do remember including fiction – and look, Judy acknowledged it!

Loved your story! she scrawled at the bottom of the form letter. And the writing matches the printed signature so she must have written it herself. If Judy Blume “loved” my story, maybe I had a chance of writing better stories, stories that would be loved by other people.

So, in the fan letter department Judy edged out Ann. Also, Ann’s envelope came with a little note from the post office: Postage Due: 10 cents. What a scatterbrained Claudia move! Luckily the post office waived the 10 cents and I got my letter regardless.

THE BITTER TRUTH

I will be honest, at the time these letters disappointed me. I remember the excitement of an envelope in the mail followed up by a feeling of “that’s it?” The problem with being a fan is that you will invariably be let down: your idol will never love you as much as you love them. How can they? They haven’t listened to your songs for an hour straight; they haven’t copied passages of your writing into their own notebooks. You will be disappointed until you grow older and learn that the best thing about being a fan is how having a deep engagement with a piece of art – whether it’s a song or a serial novel about a group of girls starting a slave-labour wage baby sitting club – gives your life a secret, lovely depth, how cultivating an inner life populated with fictional characters will stave off loneliness for an awfully long time. Twenty years later (seriously? twenty?), I’m thoroughly tickled by these responses from Ms. Martin and Ms. Blume, pleased that someone on their staff printed off a letter for some kid in suburban Toronto and dropped it in the mailbox.

But I don’t write fan letters anymore because I know better.

(I will, however, probably blog about you or friend you on Twitter. Old habits die hard.)

2010-01-14T21:56:00.006-05:00

2010 is shaping up to be an interesting year. The book, for instance, and, in more recent developments, Andrew and I are going to be in Greece between May 2 – September 13. (I know! We're psyched!) We’ve been talking about going to Greece for an extended period of time for the past three years, but only seriously started considering it last year. Job situations aligned and, more importantly, we decided that if we were ever going to do this, why not do it now. That’s what savings are for, right?

Why Greece? Because we actually have a place to live in Athens. Both of my parents immigrated to Toronto in the seventies, my father from Greece and my mother from the Philippines. Their families stayed in Greece or the Philippines and as a result I have a small family in Canada (just the three of us since I don’t have any siblings), but a larger family abroad. And one of the perks of having family in far flung places is that you always have a place to stay. No one is currently living in the apartment in Athens, so we’re going to take it over for four and a half months, a teeny one bedroom on the fourth floor of a building near the centre of Athens. It has a big balcony, an ancient, loud refrigerator and the same furniture my father had when he was a child.

I’ve spent a lot of time in Greece, but not for that long, and not as an adult (jeez, I guess I’m an adult now.) (That was an accidental reference to The Pursuit of Happiness). My Greek is passable, but I hope to improve it while I’m there. Andrew has managed to learn the alphabet, but a few months in the country will expand his vocabulary. What we really want to do while we’re there is concentrate on some of our own projects. I started working full time immediately after I graduated in 2002 – I’m curious about what kind of writing I can do with a large chunk of uninterrupted time. Andrew is going to focus on another photography project. We’ll travel as well, but for the most part we would like to stick close to Athens or within Greece and really get to know it. Greece is an interesting place right now – and by “interesting” I don’t mean “good”. Its national debt is at crippling levels and there have been rumours of bailouts, even talks of expelling it from the EU. Greece was in the news last year for the mass riots that occurred when a police officer shot a student. In short, the glory that came with the 2004 Olympics has dimmed. I’ve dealt with more than my fair share of infamous Greek bureaucracy myself and it’s infuriating (maybe one day I’ll tell you about the ordeal I recently had trying to renew my passport), but there’s also so much beauty in that country and I want to really immerse myself in it.

Anyway, you’ll hear a lot more about this in May once we’re actually out of the country, but we just finished booking our non-refundable tickets so it feels irreversible now, like, we’re really, really doing this! And I’m excited.

Book Update #2

2010-01-10T19:13:00.003-05:00

As I mentioned in my last update, my manuscript is due on March 1st. After that I will be working with an editor. When I think about it rationally, I have plenty of time. The bulk of the manuscript is essentially finished - I have 13 stories at various stages. Some of them have already been published, so I can set those aside. Others have been workshopped, read by friends, and have generally been knocking around my brain for enough time that I'm fairly comfortable with them and the rewrites I need to do. The remaining stories are very new, a little raw, written in the past 6 months, as recent as three weeks ago. But as long as the bones are there, I have enough time to work through them. Right?

One of my challenges is firming up a writing schedule. In the past few years my day job has ranged from consisting of soul crushing hours to, more recently, normal ones with certain busy periods. I remember the feeling of starting to work regular hours: I suddenly had so much time! It was amazing that I could come home, cook an actual dinner, work on writing or see friends on a weeknight. I would get so much writing done, I told myself. And I did get more writing done, but because I was never a write every day kind of person, not as much as I had initially hoped. So, in order to rework my internal writing wiring, I've been setting deadlines for myself, assigning different days of the week to stories or tasks, and it's working, I think. I'll um, let you know.

I've also been reading "The Best American Short Stories 2009", edited by Alice Sebold. Soraya gave it to me for Christmas and it came at a time when I was thinking about what made stories work. I know thought has been put into the ordering of stories in the collection, but I prefer to treat best of anthologies as Magic 8 balls or tarot cards. I read stories randomly, trusting that it will lead me in the right direction. I know it's kind of new age-y, but this actually works. I mean, I know it's because a good story will always be a pleasure to read, but seriously, guys, sometimes it's uncanny. I read Victoria Lancelotta's "The Anniversary Trip", a story about a married couple that travels to Paris with the husband's mother, when I was rewriting a story about a couple that takes a significant trip of their own. I read Adam Johnson's "Hurricanes Anonymous" when I was fretting about voice, and man, the voice in that story really rings out. I had so much luck with the 2009 collection that I dug out the 2006 anthology, which I had on my bookshelves and, judging by the uncracked spine, barely touched.

It's my kind of hocus pocus.

Book Update #1

2010-01-03T11:20:00.002-05:00

I haven't written about something I got really excited about towards the end of 2009, mostly because it felt more like a 2010 event. Now that we've begun the new year, I thought it would be a good time to start writing about it here: in fall 2010, Invisible Publishing will be publishing my first book, a collection of short stories. I'm really excited about this, grateful to be able to share some of my writing with the world in a format that I love so dearly: a book.

The process of publishing a book is kind of mysterious to me. Despite my love of books, I've never bothered to learn more about the industry, although I have gathered some peripheral knowledge here and there with the advent of publishing blogs. I mean, I cut my writing teeth with zines, so when I think about things like layout and printing, I think first of gluesticks and photocopiers. Publishing a book with a press is new territory for me. I've worked with editors before, but never for anything over 30,000 words, so I'm curious to experience that relationship. I'm looking forward to seeing how cover art and book design is chosen, how books are sold to stores, how one goes about promoting a book. And I thought some of you may be interested in this as well, or at least interested in this process filtered through my perspective. This is also for my own benefit: I've been a compulsive self-documenter since I started my first diary in the third grade.

So, I'll start at the beginning.

Invisible is a small Canadian press . The mandate on their website is simple and good, and something I can stand firmly behind: "Invisible Publishing is committed to working with writers who might not ordinarily be published and distributed commercially. We work exclusively with emerging and under-published authors to produce entertaining, affordable, print-based art. We believe that books are meant to be enjoyed by everyone and that sharing our stories is important. In an effort to ensure that books never become a luxury, we do all that we can to make our books more accessible." Books they've published that I've enjoyed include Anna Quon's Migration Songs and Stacey May Fowles' Fear of Fighting and in the spring they're publishing an anthology of Jeff Miller's Ghost Pine, and you may recall that I had an essay included in The Art of Trespassing, which was edited by Anna Leventhal and published by Invisible.

When asked about writing, I will give the typical answer and say that I've been writing my whole life (i.e. that Nancy Drew ripoff I wrote in Grade 5 about a girl detective named Tracy Maguire, the weird "novel" I wrote in the eighth grade where one of the characters is HIV positive and, I don't know, someone murdered someone somewhere, maybe the HIV positive character did it?, the time I tried to recreate the entire script for Clue, ignoring the fact that for the movie to have been made, a script was probably written for it, etc.). But I began seriously writing in 2005, and since then I have amassed quite a few stories, most of them embarrassing and not at all as funny to tell you about as that novel I wrote in the eighth grade. But in the past 2 years I had pared my writing down, felt more confident about my "voice" and wrote newer, better (to me) stories. I felt I had enough to create a cohesive collection. Because of the previous relationship I had had with Invisible from the anthology, at the beginning of 2009 I emailed them some of my stories, a CV, and asked if they would be interested in doing a book.

As things in the writing world go, time passes. La la la. You keep writing, you get rejection letters and emails, sometimes you get acceptances, you waste a lot of time on Twitter instead of writing, you plan a wedding. You know, life goes on. I heard from Invisible again in July saying that they were interested and that if I had more to show them, as well as any other information that they thought would be useful, to send it to them. I did, and then more time passed, and we spoke again in October and then in November and they confirmed that they were indeed interested in publishing a collection of short stories. This past December while I was on the East Coast, I met up with Robbie MacGregor of Invisible for lunch in Halifax and officially signed the contract.

My manuscript is due on March 1st, and I'm still working on it. I'll write more about the writing process and the work I have to do until then in subsequent posts, but if you have any questions or are curious about anything relating to this, by all means let me know.

So, um, yay! A book!

To books in 2010!

2010-01-01T11:29:00.003-05:00

Over the past 2 weeks, Andrew and I have logged about 4000 kilometres. We started in Montreal and visited various points in the Maritimes (Moncton, Halifax, but mostly Cape Breton where we spent Christmas) and then made a last minute decision to visit dear friends in New York City, driving through Maine (which always feels like the wilder, more remote cousin of Vermont to me) and Connecticut. In Cape Breton, we spent a lot of time doing what you're supposed to do at Christmas: eating. And I relaxed too, and breathed in a lot of clean, country air, and I read Ghosts by Cesar Aira, a novella set in Argentina. It's the holiday season in that book too, New Year's Eve actually, and a Chilean family is living in a construction site that will eventually be luxury condos. Ghosts live in the building too, and they fly around naked and covered in dust and do things like chill bottles of wine for the humans and invite the oldest daughter to a party at midnight. I also started reading Charles Portis' Dog of the South, and it's an amazing thing, this book, funny and strange, all these details about characters who get into the weirdest situations (another man has stolen not only Ray's wife, but also his credit card and car, and Ray sets out to track down the two lovebirds in Mexico), an aimless, sparkling road novel.

Once we left Nova Scotia, there wasn't as much time to get absorbed in a novel, but whenever I go to New York City I make sure to visit The Strand, the bookstore famous for having over 18 miles of books. The Strand is overwhelming and always packed with so many people and there is something about seeing so many books that sometimes makes me wonder what the point is of ever bringing another book into the world because they're all there already, shoved into talls shelves or piled on tables, and the prices! The discounts! But that feeling is fleeting and I will amble through and pick up books, put them down, pick up others and usually try to cap the amount I buy at 4 or 5. This trip I emerged with 2666 by Roberto Bolano, another Aira novella, Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace and a copy of Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem which I've read, but decided I wanted to own. These books, along with books I got for Christmas (Ovid's Metamorphoses, Virgil's Aeneid, 2009 Best Short Stories) and a book of essays about photography that I purchased at the Aperture Foundation gallery make up my reading list for the next few months.

I'm excited to read more books in 2010, to discover something that will make me feel feverish and excited or simply understood, that quiet, humming content you get when you read the right thing at the right time. Screw being overwhelmed by books at The Strand - we need all of those books, and more of them, because there are too many moments in our lifetimes and everyone else's lifetimes that should be documented or reflected or heightened.

Top 10 Favourite Things About 2009

2009-12-13T21:52:00.007-05:00

1. My favourite books read in 2009 were Lorrie Moore's "A Gate at the Stairs" and Roberto Bolano's "The Savage Detectives". I read many good things this year, but those are the ones that stuck with me the most.

2. One of my favourite reading memories was the morning of my thirtieth birthday. That weekend Andrew and I had been in Toronto for my bridal shower at my parents' house, and then we took a long detour back to Montreal through New York. We stopped in Ithaca for the night and the next morning, my birthday, I woke up absurdly early and read Karen Solie's "Pigeon". It was quiet and sunny and peaceful.

3. The two readings I did in 2009 were so fun. I wrote about the reading at the TZL already. The reading at Le Pick Up was also fun and probably the oddest setting for a reading that I've ever done. Depanneur Le Pick Up is not just a dep by name - it's really a dep, with shelves of cereal and toilet paper and fridges full of beer and pop. But, it's a little different because you'll also find things like vegepate and soy milk, and there's a zine rack by the door, and the lunch counter serves pulled pork sandwiches (real pork and vegan equivalent). It was set up so that the reading was done in the back corner, next to the ATM machine, in front of a few shelves of tampons, near the fridges.

4. I stuffed three seasons of Mad Men into one year and as a result feel more in control of my career and wardrobe.

5. I bought an Iphone after I unceremoniously dumped a bottle of Vitamin Water on my Ipod and couldn't stomach the thought of music-less commute to work. Instead of spending money on another Ipod, I decided to consolidate my phone and mp3 player into one device. It was probably my favourite purchase of 2009. I also now understand the appeal of e-readers. I'm definitely not in the market for something like a Kindle (I don't need any more electronic devices), but it's nice to have certain books loaded on my Iphone to read when the book I have in my bag isn't cutting it.

6. I quit my job and started a new one, and it felt good.

7. The songs I listened to the most did not come out in 2009, but I listened to The National a lot, and Neko Case ("Middle Cyclone" was a 2009 release!), the Pixies and Julie Doiron (especially "I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day" and, recently, the folky side project Daniel, Fred and Julie).

8. Cafe Comme Chez Soi was my favourite brunch find of 2009, followed by The Sparrow. Boite Gourmande wins for consistency, reliability and lots of good sunshine.

9. Istanbul was strange and beautiful. We walked everywhere and I stopped and petted nearly every stray kitten we passed (many). I got pummelled in a steamy Turkish bath. We drank a lot of tea. We took a ferry to Asia. Michael Jackson died and we watched many MJ videos in our hotel room. We sat on the roof of the hotel at night and listened to prayer calls from all of the mosques surrounding us. I should've bought more scarves, but it was hot and I didn't have enough foresight. We ate a lot of food.

10. Getting married was so much fun, but intense too. We gathered people we loved and went to Greece and did things like rode scooters around the island and went swimming in blue salty water and drank lots of weak white wine and ordered Greek salads. On our wedding day it rained, but then it stopped, and my girlfriends did my makeup and my hair and made sure I looked pretty, and I cried a lot, and Andrew and I danced to "Northern Sky" by Nick Drake, and the bottom of my dress was muddy from the rain, and my mother accidentally locked us up on the roof, and Andrew and I read each other poems we wrote for our vows and they were embarrassing and personal and so full of love, and wow, yeah, it was intense.

So, 2009: an intense, full year. A great year. But I'm ready for 2010 to start and I have big plans for this upcoming new year. I'm excited to share them with you.

2009-12-02T21:29:00.008-05:00

So after The Odyssey, I wasn't kidding about reading something less epic. Instead of launching into another novel, I've been reading short stories, selections from various books, dipping in and out as I please. It's a bit of a refresher course: sometimes I just need to be reminded how stories work. I've been revisiting many of my stories and I sometimes get lost in them, wondering, does this need to be longer? Or shorter? Is this interesting? This is SO not interesting. How do I make it better? One evening I stood in front of my bookshelf and pulled some of my favourite collections off the shelf. Curiously, in the pile of books I had selected the authors were overwhelmingly female. I love the dudes of course (those classic C-men: Chekhov, Cheever, Carver), but when I think about the stories I am most influenced by, they happen to be written by women.

Sometimes I think it would be fun to make a mix tape-like list of some of my favourite stories. If you could amass a series of stories to give to a friend, what would you include? When I'm working on my own stories, I'm inspired by the following:
"Heaven" Mary Gaitskill (from "Bad Behaviour")
"Terrific Mother" Lorrie Moore (from "Birds of America")
"Sister Crazy" Emma Richler (from "Sister Crazy")
"Diegesis (World of a Fiction)" Masha Tupitsyn (from "Beauty Talk & Monsters") "When We Were Nearly Young" Mavis Gallant (from "In Transit")**
"Bread" Rebecca Brown (from "What Keeps Me Here")
"Nipple of Paradise" Lisa Moore (from "Degrees of Nakedness")
These are from books that are sitting next to my computer - I'm leaving out a lot. But, still, seeing these stories in a list makes me realize that they all have the same kind of themes (motherhood, sisterhood, coming-of-age-girl-style). It's no surprise that these are the ones I'm gravitating to most these days since many of my stories deal with the same themes.

** After writing the list above, I got to thinking about this particular Gallant story and why I liked it so much. At first it seems like a wisp of a story, a short collection of musings about the narrator's life at a specific point in her life. It's personal, but detached. But it's the kind of story that sticks with you - maybe it's the way it ends abruptly? The way the narrator and her "friends" seem so gripped with fear? Wanting to find some analysis, I stumbled upon The Journal of the Short Story in English. It's an academic journal that discusses the short story and it appears that they've put the full text of their back issues online. This appeals to my thwarted English major side. This essay, "Genre transgression and auto/biography in Mavis Gallant's "When we were nearly young"", confirms why this story is so weighty. There's a lot going on.

2009-12-02T20:39:00.003-05:00

I haven't updated what I've been reading for a long time, mostly because it took me forever to read "The Odyssey". I read the epic poem in high school when I took Saturday morning Greek school. We were somehow supposed to understand the ancient Greek version, but considering that I had only recently mastered the alphabet, some verb tenses and basic vocabulary, I just borrowed an English translation from the library and followed along (this just reminded me that my Greek OAC exam was the day after my high school prom. I remember sitting at that desk at Burnamthorpe Collegiate and pulling stray bobby pins out of my hair). I filed the book away in the back of my head, and then didn't really think about it until a month or two ago when I went to the John William Waterhouse exhibit that's currently on display at the Musee des Beaux Arts. Waterhouse does those dreamy, pre-Raphaelite paintings - you recognize them as soon as you see them, pale ladies with long flowing hair, lots of lush nature scenes, etc. I wasn't particularly interested in going to the exhibit, but Andrew and I have memberships to the museum and were feeling guilty about not taking advantage of them. Once I was there I became absorbed in the paintings and was especially taken with those devoted to the Odyssey. For instance, "Ulysses and the Sirens", where Odysseus (or Ulysses) orders his crew to cover their ears so that they won't be tempted by the Sirens, who are depicted as ridiculous/frightening birds with female heads. I had forgotten this detail from the story. When you read something so sprawling, you end up forgetting a lot. I remembered Penelope continuously weaving and unweaving her shroud and Odysseus challenging his wife's suitors to an archery competition, but I forgot about many of Odysseus' crazy adventures, like his encounter with the cannibal that ate his crew mates one by one or his stay on Circe's island (where she turned the men into a bunch of pigs - ha!).

So, the exhibit inspired me to read The Odyssey again, but this time I read one of those modern translations (it was a good translation, but I've now returned the book to the library and can't seem to find the author online). It's probably a cop out, but I knew I would be distracted by the epic poem format, and I wanted to revel in the pure story, all those gods and godesses and betrayals and backstory, so I stuck with prose. It took me awhile to read through all 24 books and I'm already forgetting many details about it, but this time I took notes along the way. It was such a pleasure to read, although now I'm ready for something a little less epic.

2009-11-18T21:07:00.002-05:00

I have a short story in the latest issue of carte blanche, the Quebec Writers Federation online literary magazine. Here's a description of what's in Issue 10:

An investigation into murder and racism in Farmington, New Mexico by Emilie Karrick Surrusco
A tour of the "Seven Wards" with poet Buxton Wells
An interview with Myrna Kostash on the origins of creative nonfiction
And "Having Fun with Autobiography" by Dustin Harbin

Plus:
photography by Steven Beckly;
graphic fiction by Francis Raven;
nonfiction by Tilya Gallay Helfield;
poetry from William Burton, Kara Dorris, Aaron Kreuter, Barb Lundy, Nancy Mackenzie, and Drew Winchur; and
fiction from William Robinson, Matt D. B. Wilcox, Teri Vlassopoulos, Pauline Clift, and carte blanche Quebec Prize finalist, Melissa A. Thompson.

The issue also includes the winner of the 2009 carte blanche Quebec prize for the poem "Changing Winter Tires" by Julie Mahfood, who I met through a QWF workshop 2 years ago - congratulations, Julie! The story in this issue is the one I workshopped in that very class, actually.

Upcoming Events

2009-11-15T18:46:00.003-05:00

In chronological order:

1) For those of you in Montreal, I'm going to be doing a reading this Thursday November 19, 2009 at Depanneur Le Pick Up (7032 Waverly). It's me and Sean Michaels, who writes one of the most magical music blogs on the Internet, Said the Gramophone. I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to read yet, but please come by if you're in the area. It starts at 7. I wonder if the Pick Up will be serving pulled pork sandwiches? I hope so. Thanks to Jeff for asking me to read!

2) I can't believe I haven't talked about CJAM here. CJAM stands for Clinique Juridiques des Artistes de Montreal, and I've been volunteering with them for the past few months as their treasurer. CJAM is this amazing initiative spearheaded by Keith Serry and Olivier Plessis, two law students at McGill, to get a free, accessible legal clinic open for arts-related issues. Imagine you're an emerging writer or painter or filmmaker and you're given a contract - you probably don't have the money to spend on a lawyer, right? CJAM hopes to bridge that gap by initially offering workshops on law-related issues and having a legal information service. At Pop Montreal a few weeks ago, CJAM hosted a workshop with a tax lawyer. I mean, it's not the most glamorous subject matter, but it's important for people to know their rights, and to have access to do so. There's a team of 11 of us (plus some lovely volunteers) working to get the clinic off the ground and, guys, it's a lot of work. Everyone is balancing school + jobs + family with their CJAM tasks, but we're really psyched about how it's going to turn out.

We're going to launch the first stage of the 2009 workshop schedule and the legal information service with a special event at Le Cagibi (5490 St-Laurent) on Friday November 27, 2009. The doors will open at 6:30pm and the event starts at 7pm. Patrick Pleau, Chasing Bright Lights and Athena Holmes will perform, and there will be music by musicfirm. The tickets are $7 and all proceeds go to supporting the artists and CJAM. If you're interested in a ticket, please let me know - Cagibi will fill up fast and I know it will be a great night.

You can read more about CJAM and the event over here: http://cjam.info.

2009-11-08T21:30:00.006-05:00

1) I was in Toronto last weekend and did an afternoon reading at the Toronto Zine Library. Hallowzine featured a bunch of great zine writers, like Alex Wrekk (Brainscan), Jeff Miller (Ghost Pine), Chris Landry (Kiss Off) and Suzanne Sutherland (My Bad). I felt a little sheepish reading at a zine reading considering that "Cement, Flour, Saints" is now 2 years old and is not going to be reprinted, but I seized the opportunity to read "We Should Make Things", the essay about zines that I wrote for the Shameless anthology. It was great reading it to a group of people steeped in zine culture. They knew what I meant when I talked about long-armed staplers and glueing stamps. I've only done a handful of readings, but this was my favourite, I think. The vibe in the library was warm and cozy, the audience was engaged and it was a wonderful way to spend a few hours on Halloween afternoon. Super big thanks to Amy for being an adorable MC and for inviting me to read.

Setting up for the reading - Chris is stringing up pumpkin lights, Amy is in kitty-cat ears and Suzanne has a beard on. Just your typical Halloween day reading.

Here I am reading. I didn't wear a costume, but I did wear all black for the occasion.

2) Soon after working my way through those Cavafy poems, I happened across a flyer for "Cavafy: Passions and Ancient Days", a one-man reading/play by Yannis Simonides that was going to be performed at Montreal's Hellenic Community Center. I reserved the night for myself and went this past Friday. It's been awhile since I've been to a Greek community event. When I was growing up, my father was heavily involved in the community and I spent many childhood evenings in auditoriums like the one I was in on Friday. It felt the same: the old ladies with their haispray-stiffened hairdo's, that blend of Greek and English, the vague smell of coffee from the coffee makers in the back of the room.

Simonides' performance was an homage to Cavafy, and jumped from biographical facts about the poet, Simonides' own reflections on his work and influence, and then to Cavafy himself, reciting poems. It was surprisingly seamless: Simonides was wondeful at switching between the two roles of himself, the playright, and Cavafy, that famous Alexandrian poet. Cavafy was such an interesting, complex person and Simonides touched on everything that made him who he was: his eccentricness, his homosexuality, his sense of Hellenism (Cavafy always insisted that he was a Hellene more than a Greek, and that if he was a Greek, he was an Asian Greek), his love of Alexandria, his work life (30 years as a government clerk in the irrigation department!). The show was billed as a bilingual reading, but other than the poems which were first read in Greek before being translated, it was in English, to the dismay of some people in the audience. The woman next to me poked me once after I'd laughed at a joke and asked me if I understood what was going on. I said yes, and then she sniffed, "This is like a university course." I guess not everyone was as impressed as I was.

2009-09-26T19:14:00.005-04:00

Doris #26 - Cindy Crabb: Today was one of those days, those simple, perfect ones. The weather was beautiful: Indian summer, a little cool, but still warm enough to eat breakfast on a picnic table in the sun. Andrew and I went to the market and bought eggplants and coloured peppers and avocadoes and the man in Tortilleria Maya spoke to me in Spanish, and then we went downtown to the Antiquarian book fair at Concordia and I bought a book called "Science and Psychical Phenomena" and then we went and sat at a sunny table at Reservoir and drank beer and ate fries and then, AND THEN, when we walked down Duluth there was a strange puppet show going on in the window of a cafe. We stood with the small crowd and watched a vaguely demented show about a girl who ate everything, starting with cupcakes and cookies and then moving on to cats and bicycles. And as she kept eating her belly (a balloon) started getting bigger and bigger and bigger until it exploded in a big pop and everyone laughed except for the one child in the audience who burst into tears. Her father hugged her and laughed and explained that it was okay and it was really very adorable. And throughout the day I would sneak peaks at the zine I had purchased that morning, the latest issue of Doris and this is one paragraph I particularly loved: but i think hope is like a crush. not the resigned hope, like - i hope things get better - but the hope that feels like suspended disbelief. where spaces open up and everything is possible again, and you're pushed to adventure, pushed out of your regular boxes, pushed to show off, to be the person you want to be the most, working hard to show your best sides, your secret scars your hidden dreams. And I think that's how I'm feeling these days, hopeful. It's a worthy feeling to aspire to. What I did today has nothing to do with the zine, but the zine was a part of the day, you know? It made it better. Doris always seems to have that effect.

You can order Doris straight from Cindy or from Paper Trail distro. If you're in Montreal you can pick it up from the zine rack at Le Pick Up (7032 Waverly), which is run by Jeff Miller of Ghost Pine fame. He has a great selection of zines. While you're there you can also get a pulled pork sandwich or a really great breakfast bagel.

2009-09-20T20:32:00.003-04:00

A Gate at the Stairs – Lorrie Moore: There has been so much buzz about this book that there’s hardly anything left to write about it. Everything I'd say has already been phrased perfectly and published.

For example:

Here’s Jonathan Lethem doing the gushing that I don’t have to do anymore, plus it’s totally legitimate because he’s all "published novelist" and "New York Times reviewer" and I’m just some half-hearted quasi-blogger who’s only published a handful of stories and essays in magazines hardly anyone will read. Thanks, Jon: ...Moore may be, exactly, the most irresistible contemporary American writer: brainy, humane, unpretentious and warm; seemingly effortlessly lyrical; Lily-Tomlin-funny.

Or here’s Lisa Moore elaborating on how well Lorrie Moore does that funny-sad thing I love so much (Bonus: one of my favourite writers discussing another favourite writer! And they have the same last name!): Language in Moore's stories and novels is reversible, like those clever garments that can be worn inside out, or outside in; she shows that language can point at itself and at the same time expose – always unsentimentally – human pain and hope, vulnerability and strength, what's funny, and what's not funny and how everything, eventually, is both.

Getting down to the details of the book itself, it's about a 20 year old girl, Tassie, who starts nannying the newly adopted mixed-race baby of a married couple in her college town. Along the way she meets her boyfriend in her Intro to Suffism class, watches as her brother graduates high school and enlists in the army, and plays her bass. In one of the more perfect details, Tassie talks about how she's figured out how to play Sleater Kinney songs on her bass. “Huh,” I thought when I read it. “Funny!” But, Carrie Brownstein’s reaction was even better: Reading my own band name within the book's pages was like having a movie character turn toward you, say your name and confer with you on the plot. It was a personalized fortune cookie. It was having a park named after you without first having to die.

And here's Lorrie Moore herself on why she decided to use Tassie as the filter for this story: Here’s the thing about being 20 years old. It’s actually the universal age of passion. It’s the age at which nature and form come together and your individual passion achieves its final shape and expression. When, later in life, when you’re older, you feel furious, it’s the fury of a 20-year-old. When you fall in love, it’s the love of a 20-year-old. It’s articulate, it’s visceral, it’s platonic. It’s the pure form of the emotion. When you observe the hypocrisies and injustices of the world, and feel shocked and betrayed by them, you’re actually being 20 again. And yet, you’re just shy of being able to drink. How perfectly completed, and thwarted, at the same time.

I didn't expect the novel to go the way it did, and I didn't expect to feel so gutted by it. I admittedly felt a bit emotionally manipulated (here's a blog entry that has some criticisms I agree with) but the writing was so good and Tassie was such a great character - nerdy and earnest, trying so hard to do the right thing, but still fucking up the way 20 year olds do - the perfect kind of heartbreaking.

My favourite thing I've read this year.

2009-09-17T21:18:00.002-04:00

Ladies and Gentleman, the Bible! - Jonathan Goldstein: To tell you the truth, I was a little worried about this book. I love Wiretap and I had enjoyed listening to little snippets from the book on the show. I even went to Goldstein's Jian Gomeshi interview at Blue Met and laughed a lot. But I was worried that the book would feel too gimmicky, that the jokes would be too predictable, that making fun of the bible was best handled via deadpan monologues on radio shows. But, no. The thing about this book is that it’s not just poking fun at the inherent silliness of religious stories, it’s also pointing out that they are good stories, that the characters are interesting and complex. And it’s funny; the jokes are good. So, yes, no disappointment here.

Holding Still For As Long As Possible - Zoe Whittall: I was looking forward to this book enough to splurge on the spendier hardcover version while visiting Toronto a few weeks ago. My mother accidentally ran the lawn mower over the telephone cable lines and we didn't have phone or Internet for a portion of the weekend, which meant that I began reading almost immediately. The book is told from the perspective of three main characters and the story knit them together with enough foreshadowing to keep me tense as I approached the ending. I perhaps enjoyed the lead up more than the inevitable conclusion, but overall I loved the book and thought it was a great, solid follow up to "Bottle Rocket Hearts". And as a former Torontonian, I loved seeing references to my hometown, ones I hadn't seen in books before, like The Beaver or The Red Room.

On not just writing what you know

2009-08-31T22:03:00.005-04:00

Selected Poems - C.P. Cavafy: On my way to Istanbul, I picked up a copy of Constantine P. Cavafy's Selected Poems at the Athens airport. Cavafy is one of modern Greece's most celebrated poets. Whether he's writing about Hellenic historical events or homosexuality, his poems have a kind of cool, elegant detachment, kind of like the marble statues you might find in an archaeological museum. The thing about Cavafy is that he didn't live a Rimbaud-esque tortured poet existence. He worked for 30 years at the Ministry of Public Works, and spent a large portion of his life living with members of his family. So, his body of work didn't necessarily follow that creative writing standby of "writing what you know". In fact, this is from the introduction to the book: In an early ars poetica he wrote that the notion that a writer derives most profit from "personal experience is undoubtedly a sound one; but were it strictly observed it would limit termendously literary production". Thanks for that reminder, Constantine.

I was also struck by the poem below - it's a kind of warning for our over-sharing generation, all our blogs and twitter and flickr and facebook chatter (guilty on all counts).

As Much As You Can
If you cannot fashion your life as you would like,
endeavour to do this at least,
as much as can: do not trivialize it
through too much contact with the world,
through too much activity and chatter.

Do not trivialize your life by parading it,
running around displaying it
in the daily stupidity
of cliques and gatherings
until it becomes like a tiresome guest.

Twilight

2009-08-18T21:56:00.004-04:00

I kind of missed the Harry Potter boat. I read the first book on a flight to Greece a few years ago and ended up feeling cheated. It didn’t seem clever or cute; I had been expecting more. I’ve been told many times that the books get subsequently better and I believe this, but ugh, all those books and pages – I know it’s an easy read, but I just never felt like committing myself to the series just to be up to date with the cultural zeitgeist. And then I read the His Dark Materials trilogy two Christmases ago and loved it so much. It gave me what I had been looking for in HP - magic, good writing, complex themes, sweeping adventures. I cried when certain characters died and cheered when things worked out. The ending was surreal and dreamy and perfect. I didn’t feel that way, or even get an inkling of that feeling with Harry Potter, so eh, maybe I’ll read the series one day, right after I finish “War and Peace” and “Remembrance of Things Past”.

This is how I felt about the whole Twilight series too – I was just going to let it pass. I had picked up enough pop culture references to get the gist of what it was about and to decide that I didn’t feel like reading it (Human-vampire romance! Robert Pattinson is really hot! etc). But then I saw the book at a friend’s house and couldn’t resist. At the time I was trying to read “Infinite Jest” as part of the Infinite Summer challenge and needed a break - I wanted something page-turny and easy. I tore through “Twilight” kind of breathlessly and in spite of myself. I devoured "New Moon" immediately afterwards. I sheepishly wrote to my friend and asked her to bring the last two books when I saw her next. I consumed the entire series within 2 weeks, cumulatively more pages than "Infinite Jest" but requiring 99% less brainpower to digest. (And I still haven't cracked the first 15% of Infinite Jest. I suck.)

Stephenie Meyer is a bad writer, but she writes the way a teenager first writes, all melodrama and brooding, so I wasn't so distracted by it - I was familiar with that type of writing. She's good with plot, although isn't so good at filling in the details (which might explain why there is so much Twilight fanfic; it's practically begging for it). As a whole, "Twilight" was the best - it had romance, an awkward, angsty, lovestruck underdog teenaged girl, hot vampires with skin that sparkled in the sun like diamonds, frantic cross country travel and unequivocally evil vampires. It worked. "New Moon" was supposed to further Bella's relationship with her main squeeze werewolf, but I failed to see why she fell for him so hard so fast. And then things started to get kind of unhinged. "Eclipse" was basically thin plot and lots of backstory (which paves the way nicely for plenty of prequels, other possible movies, etc). And then the final book, "Breaking Dawn" was just so off-the-wall it was almost embarassing. Because of its pure wackiness it was my favourite - vampire pregnancies, vampire sex, weird vampires from all over the world, werewolves falling in love with babies, humans learning forbidden secrets. It was VC Andrewish in its perversity, but without any incest. So much fun!

So, yeah, it was a fun read and I ultimately enjoyed reading it. And now I will move on to Proust or something.

Kind of full circle

2009-08-10T21:54:00.005-04:00

When I was making zines, I used to send them off to magazines like Exclaim or Broken Pencil and weeks later I would eagerly scan the magazines to see if I was mentioned in them at all. This was before the Internet, so I wouldn't have any inkling about a review until it was in print in my hands. You'll find a few reviews for "melt the snow" in the Broken Pencil online archives (on mts #11, "I think I'd like to sit in my pyjamas on a rainy Sunday afternoon listening to Belle & Sebastian, reading Melt the Snow and that would be the closest I'd ever get to being Teri." Ha, that was so me at age 20!) When I was 18, one of the most exciting things that happened to me was coming home one day to a letter from Hal Niedzviecki asking to reprint a story from mts, the one about me crashing my car. It's still online, in all of its awkward teenaged glory.

So, I was happy to hear that my essay from She's Shameless was going to be the featured excerpt for Broken Pencil #44, the DIY issue. You can read part of it online (although the formatting is a little wonky?) and the rest in the magazine (or in the book, of course). I even quote that car crash story in the essay, full circle-like.

Steal this idea

2009-08-09T19:53:00.006-04:00

One of my favourite parts about getting married was planning the wedding favours, the little lootbags guests get to bring home. We weren't sure what we were going to do at first, and so I clicked through my favourite wedding blogs (i.e. Indie Bride, Off Beat Bride, and my all-time favourite, A Practical Wedding) for ideas. Nothing really seemed to fit, but the sites always reminded me that weddings should be about what you and partner love, what you want to do, and not what the Wedding Industrial Complex thinks you should do.

We finally made a few decisions. For the majority of the guests we distributed the traditional Greek koufeta (sugared almonds wrapped up in the prettiest of lace and cloth) and to represent Canada, Andrew and I brought a box of maple-leaf shaped maple sugar candies from Jean Talon Market. For our best friends, the ones who travelled from all over to celebrate with us in Greece, we wanted to give something special.

Andrew and I love books. We own a lot of them. They accounted for the heaviest boxes we had to move last fall and part of the reason we cursed our “stuff” and how all our “stuff” was keeping us down, man. But, in the end, if we had to get rid of “stuff”, the books would be among the last to go. Many of our friends also love books and Andrew and I thought it would be fun to show our gratitude to them in book form. So, Andrew designed bookplates and we bought them each a book. Buying books was more difficult than I expected because we wanted to get them something that they would genuinely enjoy reading and that would be a solid addition to their library. Something that reflected that we knew them and what they liked. Something practical, keeping in mind that some people would be travelling over the next few weeks, while others had long flights home ahead of them. There were multiple trips to bookstores around Montreal, some debates, a few returns, but I think we got them right. And it was so fun to gather our friends together after the ceremony and hand out the presents.

Bookplates designed by Andrew and then printed on sticky paper to put in the books.

Handing out books

Panayiotis and Marieme looking at one of the books.

Tassos psyched to open his book.

Look at everyone's smiles! I love it. If you're getting married any time soon, feel free to steal this idea.

2009-08-09T18:04:00.003-04:00

Guys, I'm Anansi's Reader of the Month for August! I mainly talk about how I don't like e-books. You can also, see a picture of my face and my weirdly flat hair. House of Anansi is probably my favourite Canadian publisher, so I was psyched to do this quick q&a with Book Madam extraordinaire, Julie Wilson (speaking of which, have you been reading Seen Reading's last few entries?).

I have to add that the only compelling argument I've read for electronic books has been this entry about the Kindle by Lindsey a few weeks ago . I'm not going to be adding a Kindle to my wish list anytime soon, but it did make me think, "ok, I get it; I can see the appeal".