At book club last night we all gushed about this slim, poetic memoir and we ran out of time before we had finished talking about the issues raised, such as:
-Work satisfaction
-Knowing when to quit
-Trust
-Clothes & self image
-Gender bias in the trades
-How we learn & the joy of learning
-Comparing our own responses to wooden things vs high tech materials
It‘s also a book brimming with gratitude & fun facts.

(Author photo by Beowulf Sheehan)

I saw this plate decorated with dandelions when I was at the Tokyo National Museum. The tagged book is currently in a stack on my nightstand. #dandelionlove

#audiogardening & #audiocooking - I‘ve been mostly in the garden this weekend. Cleared the chicory from the veggie bed (and then planted nicer things); boiled the greens in 3 changes of water; made it into pizza; roasted the roots for hot drinks.

#audiobaking. It‘s dandelion time! Dandelion blossom cake with dandelion jelly in the icing.

Vivek Shraya in technicolor!

A film noir of a tale, set mostly in the lesbian underworld of 1940s San Francisco, with small elements of magic. This has the pulse of a short story—something about its compression and attitude—yet it appears to be in Tor‘s line of novellas and, at 215 pages, has the length of of one of those old pulp novels. Whatever its category, I enjoyed it. #LGBTQ #historical #fantasy #romance

“The chalk. I like its texture, and it‘s essentially a powder, so the particles reflect light in a way that oil paint can‘t. Gives the colour wonderful depth.”
———-
That the artist uses chalk pastel medium is a core element of this story, a fact that gives me great satisfaction because it‘s my favourite art material. I‘m a novice artist, but I love playing with pastels.

I hung the clamps on the pegboard wall, let them dangle with the rest of the tools. The word comes from the ancient German word klam, which meant to press or squeeze, and the tight-closed shells of the bivalve, like hard lips locked in silence, got its name from there.

Inertia and fear and laziness, the three-headed dog that keeps us from leaving situations that have passed their expiration date, growled around me for months, the way Cerberus allowed souls to enter the realm of the dead, but allowed none of them to leave.

Once, before leaving on vacation, I copied an entire page from an Alice Munro story and left it in my typewriter, hoping that a burglar might come upon it, and mistake her words for my own. That an intruder would spend his valuable time reading, that he might be impressed by a description of a crooked face, was something that I did not question, as I believed and still do that stories can save you.
—David Sedaris (from the introduction)

The print edition of this collection contains 17 short stories by stellar authors. The #audiobook only has five, and the publisher didn‘t change the description, so that was disappointing. The audio format also doesn‘t separate each story; instead the running notes list Part 1, 2 & 3. All that aside, the five stories are excellent and each is performed with skill by a different narrator, including Sedaris. Akhil Sharma reads his own work.

I‘ve read only one paper book during my week in the Yukon (plus 3 audiobooks, plus part of a long ebook). This one is for my YA book club next week. The flags aren‘t for the great writing (it‘s mediocre, actually) but for discussion points. I recommend it for its portrayal of gender discrimination & for an immersion into the lives of Parsi immigrants from India living in Saudi Arabia. Zarin, the central character, is a complex, fascinating mess.

#beerandabook

For those of you who have been wondering, the little runt is doing ok. Well fed and snuggled into my sister‘s hoodie pocket.
#babyanimalsagain
@saresmoore @LeahBergen @squirrelbrain @KarenUK @WhatWouldJaneDo @wanderinglynn @stacybmartin

The chickens are pecking like metronomes.

I like that the street we‘re on is named after a tree, / when there are none, poplar or otherwise. I wonder if a tree / has ever been named after a street, whether that worked out.

This little piggy has had a rough go in his first 2 days of life. He‘s recuperating indoors. #everyoneLOVESbabyanimals

I haven‘t had much reading time while visiting my sister at her farm, but this audiobook has held my interest when I‘ve been mentally preparing to exit my warm bed and venture into the chill morning air. I‘m sleeping in a camper because the farmhouse is only 600 square feet.
(Above, Tammy Faye the Tamworth with her babies.)

But when someone‘s gone and you‘re the primary keeper of his memory—letting go would be a kind of murder, wouldn‘t it? I had so much love for him, even if it was a complicated love, and where is all that love supposed to go? He was gone, so it couldn‘t change, it couldn‘t turn to indifference. I was stuck with all that love.

(Internet photo)

Wow! I let myself sink into this and feel all the emotions of the AIDS crisis in 1980s Chicago and its aftereffects in contemporary Paris. It‘s got the ingredients I like: believable characterization; vivid settings; queer content; the art world; social commentary—and it‘s deserving of its many awards & accolades. #Audiobook performed by Michael Crouch. #LGBT

We went back and forth like this, each of us expressing our side of the matter, and to my surprise, I was suddenly engaged in a pitched battle of politeness, those kindly but ferocious skirmishes that are so common in our country, each side trying to polite the other into submission. I prefer these sorties to the open arguments that happen in the United States.

(Posing: Ryan, my friend who‘s trans, and Travis, in his Cree dance regalia.)

I‘m waiting to board a flight to Whitehorse, where I will be hanging out on my sister‘s farm for a week. This is one of the audiobooks I‘ve downloaded for my trip. It looks like a promising assortment of stories and authors… if they‘re good enough for Sedaris, they are probably good enough for me. 🎧🛫

I bailed on an earlier novel by Reid (The 7 Husbands…) so I was surprised by how much I liked this & by its stunning characterization! The mocumentary format & interview intimacy works really well in full cast #audiobook; there are 21 performers including Jennifer Beals as Daisy Jones. It‘s about a fictitious 70s band but with so many parallels to Fleetwood Mac that I took breaks to listen to Landslide and Rhiannon. Rock on!

I thought love was this thing that was supposed to tear you in two and leave you heartbroken and make your heart race in the worst way. I thought love was bombs and tears and blood. I did not know that it was supposed to make you lighter, not heavier. I didn‘t know it was supposed to take only the kind of work that makes you softer. I thought love was war. I didn‘t know it was supposed to… I didn‘t know it was supposed to be peace.

It‘s heartening to see how the passion & optimism of real-life tv host Rachel Maddow might inspire a high school lesbian going through hard times. “Holy cable news networks. I‘d said the L word to her.” (Love.) Also heartening: being queer is never the issue. An epistolary novel with zippy lines like: “I have driven well past the borders of overshare city a million times by now.” Engaging #audiobook narration is by Khristine Hvam. #LGBTQ #YA

Riding public transit home from work, totally absorbed in meal planning: that‘s why I love this #manga series about a gay Tokyo couple in their 40s. Much of the book is devoted to either grocery shopping, eating or step-by-step cooking. Even less happens in volume 2 than the first, but we do get some backstory on how Shiro and Kenji met. My only complaint is weird recipe #translation, like “1/3 oz of butter” instead of 2 teaspoons. #LGBTQ #Comics

I didn‘t get a good shot of my grip on the knife because I was using my other hand to take the photo, but I was taught to hold the nakiri (Japanese vegetable knife) between thumb and forefinger on the blade and my middle finger curled under the tang. There are many illustrations of Shiro holding his knife, always with one finger extended over the back of the blade. Do any of you hold your knife this way?

😆🥬

I like Shiro‘s creativity in the kitchen, inventing recipes and menus on the fly.

“My faith doesn‘t always help me,” said the reverend, “but my reason sometimes does. I think of us as creatures who are fated to interpret. We question everything. I believe it‘s our fundamental nature to question. As such, how could our Lord be anything but unknowable?”

Some poets, like Eliot or Pound, took enormous pride in belonging to a noble tradition. Take the glorious past away from Eliot and you‘d have poems too dry to read. The same if you took God from Blake, Nature from Wordsworth, or Death from Emily Dickinson. Every poet has a fount from which their work springs.

No book is entirely true or entirely false. That‘s why I prefer fiction. It‘s open about being mixed. It encourages you to use your instincts and find your own way. So, let‘s say that anything that makes it into a book—any kind of book—is speculation. Some of it‘s useful. Some of it‘s entertaining. And some of it‘s too drab to be either.

“I‘ve always thought thistles wonderful for the come-hither / go-away-ness of them, furiously flirting with bees while daring anyone else to touch them.”

[Illustrations scattered throughout this novel are by Linda Watson. You can also see the texture of the paper stock: Coach House makes lovely books.]

It‘s a sweet gay romance in #graphicnovel format, but I am not a fan of romance in general, so it was other attributes that kept me interested. What I loved most is the believable characterization, capturing the uncertainty and confusion of life after high school, and the weight of parental expectations. I also love the beautiful inkwash art, and all the yummy scenes of baking. #LGBTQ #YA #comics

I've been compiling Tim Hortons references in my reading again. Fourth blog post on this topic, featuring four more books (for a total of 22 so far). Check it out here: https://lindypratch.blogspot.com/2019/05/tim-hortons-in-canlit-take-4.html

I live amidst trees. Not pretty trees but ugly evergreens that would really benefit from shedding their needles and getting new ones in the spring. The people here in Westing bother me too because they are kinda like the trees: we‘d all be better off if we burst into flames like a phoenix and got up stark naked out of the ashes with soft fluffy feathers.

I love cute gay comics about cooking. See also: Check, Please! and What Did You Eat Yesterday?

She herself did not like the idea of people trampling on sacred ground looking for God to solve their problems, as if the Lord were a garage for the soul.

The summer after high school … what‘s a young gay man in a small town going to do with his life?

“But Ansel Adams‘ work is arid. I prefer landscapes that are intimate, photos that make you feel something strange is about to happen. Or something strange just happened and you‘re dealing with the ghost of it.” -André Alexis, Days by Moonlight

Concurrent reads, talking about photography. I like this. ?

(Photo by Ansel Adams, from internet)

In her hand was a drink that tasted, she said, like suntan lotion over ice.

“the world is a wonder, but the portions are small” —Rebecca Hazelton, Slash Fiction

In the afternoon, the clouds clear & they go down to see the cherry blossoms. The air is pink-tinted by the invasion of blooms. They are carried along by the crowd, their elbows pinned to their sides by the other long-weekend tourists, nobody able to stop the wash of bodies. A teenager leaps into the air & grabs at a branch. There are gasps of horror as he falls to the ground in a shower of petals.
“Thug!” someone says. “Don‘t you have parents?”

It looks like pink popcorn.

“It‘s Nana‘s old recipe book!”

[Happy sigh] People who cook and knit to relax… I think I‘m going to like this story. #knittersofLitsy

It‘s with plants like this that I feel the land‘s desire for joy, its willingness to play with us, to frustrate, to fool, to delight, to leave perplexed.

I‘m guessing that many of you already know how great this collection is, because I‘ve seen Andersen‘s cartoons on Litsy a lot. Humour is medicine. It triggers the release of serotonin and endorphins, lowers stress, lifts our mood, helps put problems into perspective, and improves our physical health. We all need to laugh. Littens, keep on posting funny things, ok?

A lot of recipes caught my interest, as you can see. The recipe header notes are warm and usually mention specific varieties of fruits and vegetables, so I learned a lot in that regard, plus lots of little tips like tasting a fruit galette partway through baking to see if it needs more sugar. The gardening information is of greatest use to those in California. Signature ingredient: herbs. “If you plant only one thing, plant some herbs.” #cookbook

You can never know anyone‘s marriage but your own. And even then, you‘ll only know half of it.

(Photo: my parents, 1958)

Left to his own devices, he‘d be listening to The Smiths, which wouldn‘t have helped a thing. And if it turned out he only had a few years to live, shouldn‘t he be listening to Beethoven?