You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. -Mark Twain

Ah yes, I know, the writing is slipping again. I haven’t been reading as much for the past couple of weeks; I’ve been up to other things (shenanigans if you will), one of which has been getting everything together to apply to the MA program I want into. I have, however, been buying lots of books…heh, I have a serious problem.

I finished How to Lose Friends and Alienate People by Toby Young and I must say that I liked it as much at the end as I did when I started. Young is wry and witty, all topped off with that British humour that I still sometimes don’t understand. He didn’t really “play the game” while working at Conde Nast, specifically Vanity Fair (no wonder he was fired!), but that’s a big part of what I like about him. He also seems to have read a lot of the same books as me (the Evelyn Waugh mentions continue throughout the memoir, yay!), which was nice because then I understood a lot of his references. In general, I just liked the way that he wrote about himself. He didn’t pretend that he was some great writer that was misunderstood (okay, he actually does say that, but it was sarcastic); he’s open about his faults, writes in detail about embarrassments, and is so ridiculously funny when he’s being self-deprecating. I recommend it!

Up until yesterday I was reading three (sort of four) books at the same time, but then I finished Magic Island: The Fictions of L.M. Montgomery by Elizabeth Waterston. Elizabeth is a Professor at the University of Guelph (which houses the Lucy Maud Montgomery Research Centre – see sidebar for link), and she knows so much about Maud that it’s crazy. In this book (it’s considered literary criticism) Elizabeth breaks down each of Maud’s books in chronological order, starting with Anne of Green Gables of course, and marks out how the plotlines were inspired by incidents in Maud’s own life, as well as societal and political issues. It’s really fascinating. Most people don’t know that the eight Anne books weren’t written in sequence (I’ve mentioned this before) and it’s really interesting to note how Maud’s life and depression affected the books that were inserted in the series (Anne of Windy Poplers and Anne of Ingleside). It was just neat to read about each of them in chronological order that way, so different from how they’re usually written about.

The other books I’m reading include Fishing the Sloe Black River which is a collection of short stories by Colum McCann, a book on applying for graduate school, and I am still reading Return to Treasure Island and the Search for Captain Kidd by Barry Clifford, except I’ve misplaced it (which is why I said that I was reading “sort of four” books). I have to pick out another one for the subway rides to and from work.

I would write more (like about the books I’ve been buying), but it’s about that time to leave work and I don’t feel like staying late.

A good book on your shelf is a friend that turns its back on you and remains a friend. -Author Unknown

Wow, I cannot believe that it’s been a month and a half since I last blogged! It’s kind of funny actually; things have been way crazy-busy in my life as of late, yet I’ve actually been finding more time to read (probably because I’m on the subway more often going here-there-and-everywhere).

Let’s see…I’ll begin where we last left off. I finished up Mansfield Park by Jane Austen. I don’t really know what to say about it since I’ve read it before, and Jane Austen is always amazing. I will say that I find a lot of people think that Jane Austen is old-fashioned (the number of people who think this is probably directly proportional to the number of people who think Jane is sheer awesomeness), but I don’t think Jane Austen is old-fashioned; I thinks she’s witty and intelligent, and I find that even though circumstances are different now, her plotlines still hold a strong resonance with the modern situation. I can’t rank Mansfield Park; Pride and Prejudice is my favourite, Emma is my least favourite, and all of Jane’s other writings are tied in the middle.

After Mansfield Park I read The Coffee Trader by David Liss. Liss sort of has his own unique niche-genre; he writes (for the most part) suspenseful historical fiction that revolves around the stock exchange, and commodities trading and speculation. The Coffee Trader is set in 17th-century Amsterdam, and centres on a Jewish immigrant named Miguel Lienzo. Miguel loses all of his money in a sugar scheme gone wrong, and wants to regain his position in the community. Being Jewish, in 17th-century Amsterdam, Miguel is directly under the influence and power of the Ma’amad (the Jewish governing council), and must keep his money-making scheme, and dealings with the Dutch, secret in order to not incur their wrath. Miguel becomes involved in coffee futures (coffee was a little known commodity in Europe during this period), and must lie, plot and connive in order to get what he wants. The whole complex story is way too involved to get into here (plus, I don’t want to give it away since it’s so good), but it’s quite a bit different from anything I’ve read before. The book was a little longer than I thought it needed to be, but I also think that it would have been very confusing and difficult to enjoy if Liss had shortened it and not spent the time plotting out the steps. I really did enjoy it, and look forward to reading his other books (which are on my Christmas list).

After finishing up The Coffee Trader, I felt that I needed some non-fiction so I decided on False Impressions: The Hunt for Big-Time Art Fakes by Thomas Hoving. Hoving is the former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and has some great stories, but dude (and I love him) he’s got a huge ego! His ego however is a major part of the reason that I find him so enjoyable to read. Hoving styles himself a fakebuster, and in this book he recounts how he started in his career, the fakes and con artists that he’s encountered, and how museum politics affect the world of art forgery. I just love Hoving; the fact that he uses words like “chicanery” makes me love him even more! Hoving is definitely not a born writer; he has a tendency to jump around a bit whenever something pops into his head, but all of his stories are so interesting! I also have another book by him, Making the Mummies Dance, that I have to read; it’s sort of a memoir about his time at the Met.

Now onto my traditional Christmas reading! I didn’t read Dickens’ Christmas Books this year, because I just wasn’t in the mood, but I fed my yearning with three others. First off was The Christmas Tree, authored by Julie Salamon and illustrated by Jill Weber. It’s a cute little tale about finding the Christmas tree for Rockefeller Center, and the special relationship that a nun, Sister Anthony, has with her Norway Spruce (which is eventually picked to be the Rockefeller tree). It is a very sentimental story, I really like it, but it doesn’t have a lot of real substance; the pictures are cute though!

No Christmas would be complete without a little Lucy Maud Montgomery! Every year I read Christmas with Anne and other Holiday Stories, which is a collection of Maud’s holiday themed stories and holiday chapters from the Anne books. There are two chapters taken from Anne books (one from Anne of Green Gables and one from Anne of Windy Poplars), the rest of the stories are ones that Maud had published in turn-of-the-century magazines. My favourites are “Aunt Cyrilla’s Christmas Basket” and “The Josephs’ Christmas”. These stories (I know it sounds cheesy) fill me with warmth, and happiness, and just pure bliss! I love Maud, I love Maud!

My last Christmas-themed read for the season was Maeve Binchy’s This Year It Will Be Different and Other Stories. Maeve Binchy is great; I haven’t talked about her books here yet, because she’s only released one book since I started blogging and I haven’t read it yet. I’ve read everything that she’s written, except for Silver Wedding (only because I bought it, but the pages were all screwed up and I haven’t found another copy yet). Maeve Binchy’s stories and books are always about people and situations that could be real, but she writes in such a wry and witty manner that even mundane daily details become amazingly interesting!

I started reading Measuring the World: A Novel by Daniel Kehlmann (translated from the German) and found it intensely boring from the beginning. I tired to get through it, I really did, but just couldn’t. I’ve put it back on the bookshelf for now, and maybe I’ll try it again someday. Maybe it’s better in German.

After that boringness, I decided on Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; Marquez is never boring! I just finished it yesterday, and it was fabulous. I know that I’m reading him in translation, so I can only imagine how poetic it would be to read him in Spanish; everything he writes is so wretchedly beautiful that I don’t really know what to say. It’s more of a feeling that I get when I read, it’s nearly impossible to put into words, but it’s as if Marquez knows something I don’t or has seen something beyond beauty that I will never see. I loved this book (even more than I loved Love in the Time of Cholera, and that’s saying something!); I know I’ll read it again.

I’ve been shuffling along through Return to Treasure Island and the Search for Captain Kidd by Barry Clifford (with Paul Perry). It’s one of those books that I can only read when a certain mood strikes, so I grab it whenever it does. Clifford is an archaeologist and he’s pretty famous in the marine archaeology community for his devotion to finding shipwrecks. He is best-known for finding the wreck of Black Sam Bellamy’s Whydah (Black Sam was a pirate), and the Whydah is the only shipwreck discovered that has been conclusively identified as a pirate ship. In Return to Treasure Island, Clifford and his team go in search of the burnt and sunk remains of Captain Kidd’s The Adventure Galley. Clifford and his co-writer Perry also give a thorough background history on the islands themselves, how Kidd came to be a pirate, and how his story inspired Stevenson’s Treasure Island. So far, so good.

After I finished Of Love and Other Demons last night, I grabbed Toby Young’s memoir How to Lose Friends and Alienate People off my shelf. I’ve heard some really good things about it and got it used, so I figured I’d give it a shot. He’s hooked me already: he mentioned Evelyn Waugh twice, Woodward and Bernstein, and the Whaleship Essex all within the prologue and first ten pages. So far he’s a man after my own heart, if he wasn’t my Mother’s age…anyways; I think it’s going to be a good one!

Okay, I’m done for now (and out of [metaphorically-speaking] breath). Merry Christmas/Hanukkah/Festivas/whatever-holiday-you-do-or-do-not-want-to-celebrate to everyone!

What is an imagination for if not to enable you to peep at life through other people's eyes? -L.M. Montgomery

I was adding some links over on the side, and realized that most of my favourite websites have to do with Lucy Maud Montgomery. I knows (and yes, the "s" on the end is there on purpose) I am a little LMM obsessed, but it's an entirely different kind of obsession than I have with other authors. I love Charlotte Bronte, I have a girl-crush on Jane Austen, Gregory Maguire makes me smile, and Evelyn Waugh makes my laugh (cynically). But Maud, oh Maud, now SHE has my heart. So this little entry-0-good-times will be all about Maud (right after I mention that I only have about 50 pages left to go of The English Patient, more tomorrow when I'm done).

This year marks 100 years since the publication of Anne of Green Gables, and as such there are tons of celebrations, lectures, and conferences going on. This was the first of Maud's books that I read. When I was about 11, my Grandmother let me go through a box of books she had bought. Inside I found this book, this portal to happiness unknown, I had never heard of it before. I was a little leery at first, because I had never read any books marketed towards my age group (I was reading Jeffrey Archer at 7, oh Mum!), but when I began to read something inside of me clicked and I was hooked forever.

Over the next few years, I gobbled up any of Maud's books that I could get my hands on. We were poor, and buying new books was considered a luxury. I often took them out of the library, or managed to find them at a used bookstore. This is where most of my small allowance went, and I still have those old, beaten-up copies to this day. When I was 15 I got my first "real" job at a bookstore, and with the discount I received, I managed to get all of the novels, the short story collections, and few other Maud-related items (such as The Alpine Path). Now, when I have the money, I'm amassing Maud's journals, biographies,and anything else I can. I've even got a few early editions, such as a first edition of A Tangled Web, a 1917 edition of Anne of Avonlea, and the first American edition of Anne of Ingleside. I have multiple editions of almost every book. I even have my Mum's copy of Pat of Silverbush from the 1960's, which I'm almost 10o% sure she never read, but she kept it for sentimental reasons.

There is something about all of those books that feels like home. Something in the pages that sparks imagination, and hope, and love, and something I can't even describe. A feeling of peace, a feeling that I belong. Maud knew. Maud still knows, and always has the answers.

It was dangerously exciting for me when I found out we were related (albeit distantly) through two lines of my family. It's hurts me when someone criticizes her books (although I know everyone can't feel the way I do), or calls them juvenile. I'm trying to make the-Jen read them all, I gave her a bunch of extra copies I had (sometimes I get a little over-zealous) and bought her a bunch for her birthday. I want to share them with her, to see if she is of "the race who knows Joseph", to see if she understands. I don't think she'll feel just the way I do, but I know she'll get it.

People have asked me who I think I'm most like. I don't think I'm an Anne, definitely not a Sara or a Marigold. I think I'm most like Emily with a dash of Valancy thrown in, spiced up with a bit of Pat and Jane. Maud was an Emily too. It would be too hard to pick a favourite book, impossible actually, but I don't think my favourites are the most common either. I faithfully love The Blue Castle, Kilmeny of the Orchard makes me believe, the Pat books feel homey and comfortable, the Anne books are always there as a beacon, and Emily will always be there as a reflection. They are who I am.

"He stuck his head in on purpose but the rest of him fell in zacksidentally." -Davy, Anne of Avonlea

"Almost all of the evil in the world has it's origins in the fact that some one is afraid of something." -John Foster, The Blue Castle

"I don't crochet, woman! Is one contemptible doily going to blast a man's reputation forever?" -Cyrus Taylor, Anne of Windy Poplars