A couple of months ago I stumbled upon my dream book in a secondhand book store. Despite the name, Mrs Beeton’s Household Management isn’t my dream book because I yearn for the upper echelons of hausfrauness or anything. I discovered an older version of the book in 2008, and since then I’ve been interested by it from a historical perspective. It was the first book to present recipes in the format we know them today, rather […]
Mrs Beeton, and a recipe Read More »
Jonna filled the teakettle in the bathroom. Looking in the mirror, looking at her own face, she thought with sudden bitterness that it couldn’t go on like this, these short stories that were never finished and just went on and on getting rewritten and discarded and picked up again, all those words that got changed and changed places and I can’t remember how they were yesterday and what’s happened to them today! I’m tired! –
I know the feeling. Read More »
It seemed to happen all at once, this colour and coolness. My husband and I had patio beers with some friends on Saturday, and barbecued in our backyard with other friends on Sunday, and now this. It seems cliché to be this excited for this particular month and the season it shows off so well. But really, fall is the most Me the world ever is. I’m especially excited to experience these changes in a new
Every year it feels like the last IFOA (International Festival of Authors) was just two weeks ago. Admittedly, I got an earlier than usual start this year. Yesterday, Teri and I went to a reading and interview with Ben Lerner and Ian McEwan, and it seemed to go by in a blink. Right near the end, the two authors were asked what they were working on. I can’t remember McEwan’s exact answer, but it was along
In 2005 I had a poetry blog. It’s strange for me to think that I wrote poetry, but I did, and I used to post the (mostly unpublished) poems on my blog. That’s another thing that’s strange to me now. I recently rediscovered the blog thanks to files I’d saved years ago. Aside from the many, many poems I’d forgotten about, I found this old writer’s purpose statement of sorts: I like oldness, I like brick
A friend of mine told me that Macondo Books in Guelph was going out of business, and were having a sale this weekend. I went, not just for the sale, but to say goodbye. Maybe that sounds corny, but it’s true. I always found at least one great book every time I went there, and the environment itself was welcoming. It never smelled musty, it was bright, and there were books stacked on every possible surface, as
INTERVIEWER What was going on with your writing then? ISHIGURO At the time, people weren’t talking about books. They were talking about TV plays, fringe theater, cinema, rock music. Then I read Jerusalem the Golden by Margaret Drabble. By this time I’d begun reading the big nineteenth-century novels, so it came as an absolute revelation to me that the same techniques could be applied to tell a story of modern life. You didn’t have to
Kali, who writes one of my favourite blogs ever, nominated me to answer some questions about writing. I’ve read other writers’ answers to these questions and enjoyed discovering new perspectives and philosophies about writing, and reading about everyone’s projects. I can’t promise my own answers to these four questions will be as interesting, but I’ll give it a shot! What am I working on? At any time, you can ask me this and my answer will probably
I’ve been reading poems like mad recently, so I got excited when Teri invited me to an evening of readings hosted by her friend, poet Gillian Sze. Even getting there felt sort of poetic, visuals full of meaning. My husband and I drove down Dundas in the rain, passing through the Junction, Little Portugal, Trinity-Bellwoods. Neighbourhoods that seemed so physically and spiritually remote when I lived in Toronto. We parked in Chinatown and walked the rest
And when I say “book fair,” I don’t mean readings or lectures about books or writing or anything like that. I mean a building with multiple rooms of cheap books to buy. Basically, heaven. It started on Wednesday and Saturday was the last day, so my husband and I drove down to Brantford first thing Saturday morning. Some of the signs were great, but of course the books were the best thing. We filled a shopping
Scenes from a book fair. Read More »
