I’ve been away from my computer for the last couple of weeks - it hasn’t been a great time for reading, but I have a couple to tell you about…
I finished Larry’s Party by Carol Shields. I read The Stone Diaries about ten years ago, and loved it. This is another of her explorations of an ‘ordinary’ person’s life which turns out to be extraordinary when it is examined. The first two chapters, I needed to push myself through - the rest of the book just flowed beautifully. I was also taken with the way in which she told the story - I hope I’m not giving too much away when I say that labyrinths become an important part of Larry’s life, and the narrative form takes on a labyrinthine quality as she curves back and forth in time. Highly recommended; I can’t wait to read The Republic of Love, which is the only other one of her books that I own.
I also read Schumann by Tim Dowley, part of the Illustrated Lives of Great Composers series. I don’t know why, precisely, I just saw it on the shelf at the Public Library and grabbed it. Musical Biography can be a tricky business - there’s a fine balance to be struck between just telling the story of someone’s life and delving into analysis of their music. This was almost purely biography, which was exactly what I was after at the time - I blasted through this in a couple of days.
I’m currently about fifteen pages into Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay, and I’m enjoying it very much. I’m glad to see him depart from his current pattern of alternative history - it isn’t that I haven’t enjoyed the last 6 books of his, it’s just he’s becoming too formulaic for my tastes. I’ll let you know what I think in a few days.
It hasn’t been a great time for reading around here - I’ve been playing with the kids (most enjoyable!), eating and drinking too much with my wife (most enjoyable!) and hanging around with my in-laws (not as enjoyable). We’ve seen wonderful performances of “The Wizard of Oz”, “The Sound of Music” and “The Nutcracker”, as well as a Toronto Raptors’ game, all of which were great, but they do cut into the reading time. I also broke my glasses in the midst of all this - I can’t read as well with the (old prescription) back-up pair, and my piano glasses are meant to focus and magnify things that are 36" away. Then yesterday, I broke my back-up pair while rough-housing with a friend of my son’s. I hit the 1 hour glasses place first thing this morning, and it all feels much better.
Another annoyance in the Ministry at the moment is we seem to be missing a box of books. We cleared out the storage unit and shelved everything in The Studio the last weekend in August, 2009, after having just about everything in boxes for a year and a bit. I was actually thinking of reading some Robertson Davies before I settled on the Carol Shields, and would have read some, except we don’t seem to have any anymore. Then I thought of re-reading some Timothy Findlay, and I couldn’t find those books. Looking upward, the Margaret Atwood isn’t in the 'A’s, either. I’m hoping there is a large box, mislabelled and full of Can Lit in with the stuff in the basement; the other possibility is that they ended up going to a friend’s church’s rummage sale or being given to the Cystic Fibrosis foundation. It’s especially odd, though, because all three of those authors get filed alphabetically in with everybody else, and (Thank Og!) I’m not just missing A, & D - F. I cling to the faint hope that there is a box that says ‘Small Electronics’ that conceals the Deptford Trilogy…