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.

Steal this idea

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.

Partly because of your love for yoghurt

It has only recently occurred to me that I can search for writers on Youtube the same way I search for musicians or television or movie clips or whatever. Here is a video of Frank O’Hara reciting one of the loveliest poems ever, Having a Coke With You.

I’ve never been very good with following television shows and have been staying away from Mad Men, but then I found this:

Jon Hamm/Don Draper reciting the last part of O’Hara’s heartbreaking I-am-getting-over-heartbreak poem “Mayakovsky”:

Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.

The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.

Ok, I really need to watch this show.