1 - holiday plans are the same as everyday plans: reading
2 - Helen Humphreys; Miriam Toews; Ali Smith
3 - Door of Solitude and Almonds

Any of my followers can consider themselves tagged 😊
#wondrouswednesday

You know how other books come to mind & enrich your current read? I‘m only 20 minutes into Louise Erdrich‘s latest & already I‘ve got Les Murray‘s boys stealing a corpse, Caitlin Doughty‘s description of natural burials & Amy Leblanc‘s protagonist with her surreptitious ring of keys crowding around my brain.
I‘m enjoying the experience so much more than my previous audiobook (Dial A for Aunties). Erdrich herself narrates in a calm, sure voice.

These homeland brolgas casually walked into any house without fear, gently prancing off the ground with spread wings, and stealing food they plucked straight from the kitchen table in a casual leap. No one cared less about what brolgas did as creatures that belonged there, with every right to have a bit of food—and who would harm a brolga anyway?
(Internet photo of a brolga)

Two-and-half hours into this audiobook and I‘m still not feeling it. I guess I‘m not in the mood for farcical fluff.

Two storylines: one is from the viewpoint of a cottonmouth in another world, where animals can take human form; the other is here on earth, perhaps a little in the future, where an asexual young woman is collecting the stories of her Lipan Apache foremothers. The two worlds are connected, of course, so Oli the snake & Nina the human are able to help each other when the need arises. A charming YA adventure tale. #Indigenous #LGBTQ

Mother Nature? Hah! Who knows how many hearts she could rip out? She never got tired of it. Who knows where on earth you would find your heart again? People on the road called her Mother Catastrophe of flood, fire, drought and blizzard. These were the four seasons, which she threw around the world whenever she liked.

Our Lesbian+ book club will be meeting this weekend to hash out our lineup for the coming year. I‘ve prepared my list of possibilities: https://lindypratch.blogspot.com/2021/12/lesbian-book-club-in-2022-so-many.html?...

It wasn‘t that the sisters were coyotes. I‘m not the kind of small-minded fellow to buy into stereotypes like: “all coyotes are tricksters.”

Another recipe from Dorie‘s Cookies: Double-Buckwheat Double-Chocolate Cookies

In 2015 a technology company in San Francisco launched a recruiting campaign that featured photos of its workers, including an engineer named Isis Wenger. Some people thought the photos were fake; they said Isis was too pretty to be a real engineer.

A number of authors were invited to share their best books of 2021 in The Guardian. Wole Soyinka started off by talking about himself: “I sometimes suspect that I was actually found abandoned in a tree, adopted and raised as a family secret.” Which struck me because I‘m reading the tagged book by Alexis Wright and it starts off with an abandoned girl found in a tree. (Looking forward to Soyinka‘s pick too: Elif Shafak.)

#Audiowalk: Got my booster shot today. I bundled up before heading out into a windchill of -26 C, with my headphones under the layers and my phone in an inner pocket to keep it protected from the weather.

It had always amused her that journalists covering the government were called “correspondents,” as though it were some foreign land. But now she saw why. It was a country within a country, with its own rules of behaviour. Its own gravity and stifling atmosphere. Its own shifting borders and boundaries.

I spotted this on the Hits to Go (1 week loan) shelf at the library and grabbed it on a whim. I opened it yesterday morning & read a chapter just to see what it was like. Then another chapter. By the end of the day, I had read 300 pages. If you‘re looking for an high stakes thriller with middle-aged women as protagonists, this is it. If you‘re already a Louise Penny fan, there‘s even a little of Three Pines in it.

A feel-good Christmas ghost story set in contemporary Edmonton, mid-pandemic. Rags to riches, multiple points of view, multiple ghosts. Charles Dickens would probably approve. I certainly did. #Audiobook read by Jennifer Wigmore. #Canadian #ShadowGiller2022

The cover of Chatelaine had the Prime Minister‘s wife, who had beaten the virus, and a teaser about Christmas baking secrets. Below that: CAN AN AFFAIR BE HEALTHY? It was a monumentally stupid question. If Karen had learned anything from movies, tv series & book club novels in the past 20 years, it was that having an affair ruined everything. It was the relationship equivalent of sugary drinks, potato chips & bulk baked donuts.

He looked up “Azhi Dahaka.” It took him a few tries to get the spelling right, but there it was.
A three-headed dragon of destruction and terror, born of lies and spawned to wreak havoc on the world. A serpent tyrant whose appearance ushered in chaos.

There have been a few signs that this book was rushed to print: repeated sentences, typos, but nothing major.

… they walked through the vast entrance hall, gawking at what would have been splendid had it been an actual palace and not a monument to overcompensation.

[I‘m wondering about the distinction in that sentence. 🤔]

…neither side wanted to hit the button, knowing it could lead to reprisals that could wipe out the human race. It kept each from behaving badly. That was the theory.
What it in fact created wasn‘t a balance of terror, but a perpetual state of terror.

#audiobaking
Classic Jammers from Dorie‘s Cookies, under construction.

I couldn‘t resist trying one of Dorie Greenspan‘s recipes for cookies made in muffin tins. This one is called Classic Jammers.

Hmm. The White House has a famous desk called the Resolute. I‘m learning trivia from this novel.

When I saw Ai Weiwei‘s ancient vases covered in paint in a museum, I scratched my head & wondered if he was nuts. Conceptual art is like that. Reading his memoir illuminated much: what an amazing, fascinating life he has lived until now! The world-famous artist is a born contrarian who uses his creative energy to battle human rights abuses in China. I look at his work (online) with new understanding. #Audiobook read by David Shih.

Self-censorship amounts to self-abasement, and timidity is the road to despair. People asked me, How do you dare say those things on your blog? My answer was, If I don‘t say them, it will put me in an even more dangerous situation. But if I say them, change might occur. To speak is better than not to speak. If everyone spoke, the society would have transformed itself long ago. ↘️

A state security agent […] presented me with a packet of beef jerky, a carton of tea, and a live, giant salamander—a rare creature that I had never seen before in my life—along with a set of tips on how to cook it. I remember only the first line of the instructions, that you need to nail it to a chopping board & then cut it into pieces. We did not do this, and kept the salamander as a pet.

The true story of principled resistance undertaken by two middle-aged lesbians, Frenchwomen living on Jersey, after the Channel Islands were occupied by German troops during WWII. They risked imprisonment and death by secretly distributing creative bits of literature designed to undermine the commitment of German soldiers to the war. It‘s a compelling and inspiring account of nonviolent political action. #LGBTQ

Empathy always requires seeing others—even enemies—as part of oneself and connected to one‘s own fate rather than as radically different. It breaks down the barriers between self and other, linking everyone‘s wellbeing in an understanding of a common human condition.

China executes more people than any other country. It accounts for more than half the executions in the world.

Things have to follow a set procedure in China. No matter how you argue your case, an individual has no right to challenge authority and humiliation is often presented as an honour that you are fortunate to receive.

—To conventional culture, art should be a nail in the eye. A spike in the flesh. Gravel in the shoe. The reason why art cannot be ignored is that it destabilizes that which seems settled and secure.
—Don‘t try to dream other people‘s dreams.

(Examples of advice Weiwei has given to young artists)

Throughout occupied Europe and in Germany, members of resistance movements knew that the written word was essential to the fight against Hitler. Jewish groups maintained underground newspapers to sustain their communities, including 47 such periodicals in Nazi-controlled Warsaw.

But a poem, story or photograph could have a profound psychological effect on its audience, because it could change how people looked at the world, provoking them to think. The result would be revolutionary. Lucy called it the “indirect effect.”

“I believe that colonialism is morally wrong, on the same moral level as theft, burglary and murder, that colonialism is business—a rather unsavoury kind of business—with a camouflage of heroism and adventure. And moreover, now that I know what it is like to be colonized, I have strong personal feelings against it.” —Suzanne Malherbe, during the German occupation of Jersey during WWII

Father accepted his lot stoically. As he put it, earlier in life he had no idea who cleaned toilets for him, and so it wasn‘t unreasonable to expect him to now do cleaning for others.

In China, no matter what choice you make when you come to a crossroads in life, it is hard to avoid becoming politic‘s plaything.

In the early days of the cultural revolution, almost every day, or every night, there were directives from Chairman Mao to transmit. The company‘s copy clerk would write them down word by word and line by line as they were read out over the telephone. These messages served a function similar to Donald Trump‘s late night tweets while in office. They were the direct communication of a leader‘s thoughts to his devoted followers.

I owe the fact that I am alive today to a swan. But anyhow, my story of luck is only a part of the concinnity of dead stories tossed by the sides of roads and gathering dust.

Blame it on Dorie Greenspan. I‘ve given away many cookies since I started trying recipes from her cookie book, and I‘ve resorted to making half-batches, but still there are many cookies in this house and so I am forced to eat them for breakfast.

These were the initials LS and SM, with the middle letter of their names shared. In this simple configuration, Lucy showed just how closely they were joined. Pronounced phonetically, the letters create the phrase “elles s‘aiment” (“they love each other”).
[Lucy Schwob + Suzanne Malherbe #LGBTQ]

Barren women, ejected from society, become criminal outlaws in order to survive, but there‘s a serious undertone to this Wild West adventure. If you like your social politics (feminist, sexuality, gender identity, race and reproductive rights) delivered in an alternate history 19th-century western, this novel is for you. #LGBTQ

Word spread online of the locations of simultaneous Jasmine Revolution rallies in China‘s major cities at 2 pm on Feb 20. No sooner had the news begun to spread than the characters for jasmine were blocked on the internet in China, & even the character for flower became a sensitive word. On Chinese language websites it was impossible to input sentences that included the word tomorrow or today. Florists were not allowed to sell jasmine blossoms.

The work involved in making a single sunflower seed was no less complicated than the making of other ceramics, with more than 20 steps in the production process. Surely such a project can be done on such a large scale only in today‘s China, where it‘s possible to hire 1600 skilled artisans to work on a project with their own hands, all at the same time.
(Internet photo of Ai Weiwei‘s sunflower seeds at the Tate Modern)

I know how living under a false name depletes the storehouse of the heart.

Calgary Wordfest‘s final event featured two cookbook authors. Dorie Greenspan talked about surprising people by chopping chocolate into pieces instead of buying chips: the different sizes make every bite of a cookie different. Also, you can use the chocolate you like best. Julie Van Rosendaal talked about Buttergate, the news story she broke after investigating why butter was not softening at room temperature.

Part 3 of my long list of November highlights is now on my blog. This one has a focus on queer authors: https://lindypratch.blogspot.com/2021/12/best-lgbtq-books-in-november.html

At 25, Kimiko Tobimatsu was diagnosed with mucinous breast cancer. This comic-format memoir documents her experience navigating the medical system in Canada as a queer woman of mixed ethnicity. Attitudes towards traditional markers of femininity, the emphasis on maintaining a positive outlook, and on work ethic while incapacitated by illness are just some of the issues thoughtfully explored. Art by Keet Geniza is a perfect complement. #LGBTQ

There‘s not a lot of writing out there on cancer and disability. Maybe because for those of us who are now cancer-free, the ongoing symptoms are after-effects (of surgery, radiation, meds), not the result of disease still being present. Or maybe it‘s because the mainstream cancer narrative is about overcoming adversity, not about experiencing ongoing disability.

Is anyone else besides @KathyR reading the 2021 Advent Calendar? I won‘t spoil the surprise of opening the first story booklet, but here‘s what the set looks like.

Day one of my Short Story Advent Calendar. Alberto Manguel anthologized the 2021 collection, choosing stories from 25 different countries. In the introduction, he writes: “For absurd commercial reasons, publishers have decided that short stories don‘t sell. They don‘t sell, they tell us, blind to Poe, Kipling, Chekhov, Katherine Mansfield, Maupassant, Ernest Hemingway, Isak Dinesen, Alice Munro.” I am excited to get started!