No time to write, so you get a list

I've been reading a lot lately, but I don't have time to blog about it at the moment, so I'll just list the books I've read lately and blog about them later:

• Elizabeth Smart: By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
• Northrop Frye: The Great Code
• Northrop Frye: Anatomy of Criticism
• John Ayre: Northrop Frye
  
• Donna Hay: Off the Shelf
• Steven Pratt: Superfoods Rx
• Steven Pratt: Superfoods Healthstyle
• Al Gore: An Inconvenient Truth

As you can see, most of the reading has been for my thesis, but when I've got time, I'll tell you about it. It's quite interesting.

Charlotte Gray- Mrs. King: The Life & Times of Isabel Mackenzie King; Sisters in the Wilderness: The Lives of Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill

I decided to do a double post for these ones, as they are both by Charlotte Gray, and both are histories of major women in Canadian history. As I stated when I wrote about Reluctant Genius, I really quite enjoy Charlotte Gray's biographies. Canadian history, as all of my international students last summer assured me, is really boring and dull. I'm not sure how much I agree with that, but I do enjoy leaning about it through the lives of interesting people more than I enjoy reading history books. Reading about women is even better, for their experiences are ones that often get forgotten in the writing of history.

I was especially interested in reading Sisters in the Wilderness because of how central Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill are to my field of work, which is modern Canadian poetry. The Bush Garden, Northrop Frye's collection of essays about Canadian art, which I believe was the last book that I blogged about, takes its title from the writings of Moodie. Margaret Atwood uses the two extensively as characters in her poetry, and the whole trope of the threatening and inhuman Canadian landscape throughout Canadian literature essentially begins with them. I often find myself reading Anne Wilkinson's "green order," her attempts to create a green world which she then transforms into, as her way of speaking against Moodie and Parr Traill's visions of the Canadian landscape and her way of humanizing it. Aside from all of that, I wanted to know more about what exactly they did experience when they, two cultivated English ladies, arrived in a Canada that was essentially untouched by humanity. I can't imagine what I would do if I had to go through what they did--giving birth alone in a log cabin, living on potatoes for the whole winter, not being able to clothe or properly educate your children--but Gray makes it vividly imaginable. It also fascinates me that neither Moodie or Parr Traill allowed the hardships of their lives to diminish the need that they felt to write. I'm considering trying to formulate a PhD dissertation around the subject of motherhood and writing in Canada, and these two are the prime example of the ways in which it can be done.

Mrs. King I picked up because I was enjoying Gray so much that I wanted to continue reading her. I vaguely remembered hearing something about William Lyon Mackenzie King's Oedipal complex when I was in school, but that was about all I knew about Mrs. King. Let me tell you--this woman was quite something. Her father was William Lyon Mackenzie, the famous rebel, her husband was useless, and her son was the Prime Minister of Canada. Out of all of these men, she was the type to attach herself to the one who could do the most for her; hence, her strange relationship with her son. From the letters that they exchanged, F.R. Scott and Dennis Lee's poems about Mackenzie King sound about accurate; she used to show him her underwear for his approval, and I don't know how much times have changed, but from today's perspective, that's just strange. It was quite an interesting book though, and I'm definitely going to find more by Gray, as reading her is an enjoyable way to learn.

Northrop Frye- The Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination

A book for my thesis; one of the first that I've posted on here, although I've already read quite a few. This one is a collection of Frye's writings about Canadian literature and art. It contains his reviews of poetry for the "Letters in Canada" series for the University of Toronto Quarterly (very useful to me, as he reviews Anne Wilkinson's collections in 1951 and 1955), as well as a number of seminal essays on Canadian literature, including his "Conclusion" to Carl Klinck's The Literary History of Canada, and Preface to an Uncollected Anthology, where he imagines that, without the constraints of money or copyright, he has collected the ultimate anthology of Canadian poetry and is writing the introduction to it. I love this book because it is about my beloved Canada and my beloved Canadian writing, and because Frye's love for the art of his homeland shines through loud and clear. I know and love the work that he's talking about, and it's such a treat, in this day and age where Canadian content is legislated, rather than celebrated, to hear that love coming from someone as great as Frye, however long ago he wrote it.

Bill Bryson- A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail

As you will know if you have read my post on Troublesome Words, I adore Bill Bryson. He is probably the funniest writer that I have ever read, and I tend to get stared at when I read his books, because I look a little nutty laughing hysterically to myself. One of my fondest memories is sitting in the landing sitting-room at the Blomidon Inn in Wolfville, NS, drinking champagne and reading Bryson. Come to think of it, I think I was actually reading this book. Being a bit of a book addict, I try not to buy too many books (I'm up to six or seven bookshelves full), but I own every book that Bryson has written because I know that I'll read them over and over.

A Walk in the Woods is Bryson's account of his somewhat misguided decision to walk the whole of the Appalachian Trail, from Maine to Georgia, in order to reacquaint himself with America after twenty or so years living in England. Although there is no definitive answer to how long the AT really is, it is certainly over 2,000 miles, and must of that is through mountains and tough terrain. If you've ever seen a photo of Bryson (here's one if you haven't), you'll know that he's not exactly the most fit and athletic person around. He's kind of portly, in a jolly way, and not the kind of granola-munching MECer that you'd think would tackle a thru-hike on the AT. However, off he went with a college friend Katz, and the results are hilarious.

Bryson is, as well as being interested in travel and language, very into science (another one of my favourite books is his A Short History of Nearly Everything, which I'm going to have to reread and review soon, I am so evangelical about it) and so not only is A Walk in the Woods about hiking, it is also about the landscape and natural environment of the places that he hiked through. I love Bryson's meshing of information and fun, and of course, his knack for gut-busting turns of phrase. Needless to say, as you might guess from the photo and my description of him, Bryson and Katz didn't actually walk the entire AT, but they gave it the college try, and their efforts are some of the best reading that I can recommend. And if you're up for something longer, pick up A Short History. His depictions of the great men of science are wonderfully irreverent, and never will you find natural history so enthralling and funny.

Donna Hay- New Food Fast

Donna Hay is beyond fantastic, in so many ways. My mother tells this story of seeing her on CityLine (if you've ever lived in Toronto and watched TV in the morning or have a mother who did, you've seen this show), and she's on there, cooking and chatting up a storm, with a big rip in her sweater. Totally doesn't care. She's just a mom who wants to cook good food for her family that looks and tastes great, and that's exactly what her books and magazine are about.

This book, New Food Fast, is a godsend even for me, who only has one (albeit always very hungry) fiance to feed, and not two or three kids. Our deal is that I cook most nights and he does the dishes, and so although I sometimes find having to come up with the ideas for meals every night (this I mind more than the actual cooking of them), I don't have to do dishes, which I'm grateful for. But when I come home from work or school at 6:30, and Jonathan is already hungry, I need to find something that I make that is quick, tasty, and uses ingredients that I've already got. And in comes Donna Hay. The book is divided into chapters on meals that take about 10 minutes, about 20 minutes, and about 30 minutes. 10 minutes! How can you go wrong? And her ideas are delicious. How about Pasta with Smoked Salmon and Dill Sauce, Pasta with Scallops and Lemon Butter (drool), or Miso Soup with Chicken and Noodles? All in 10 minutes. None of her recipes has a ton of ingredients, they're all easy to make, and Hay is obviously as interested in variety and nutrition as she is in speed of preparation.

The other best thing about this book is the photography. Donna Hay has used the same food photographer for all of her books: Petrina Tinslay. Her photos are so gorgeous- fresh, colourful, simple, and absolutely delicious looking. I could just look at the photos and ignore the recipes and still think this book was a treat. I definitely need to work on building my collection of Donna Hay books, because one is definitely not enough.

Ellen Degeneres- The Funny Thing Is...

I felt like a laugh when I was at the library last, so I picked this one up. It's a hard book to describe, as funny as it is; I would probably call it a stand-up comedy routine on paper. Question, just as an aside--why is it called stand-up comedy? Was there ever such a thing as sit-down comedy?

Back to the book, Ellen is a funny person, and her writing captures her personality pretty well. The book is funny at times and just silly at others, but it was an enjoyable read, as I enjoy Ellen on TV and as a comic. Just a hint though- the whole thing functions much better when you read it in your head in Ellen's voice, rather than your own. For a few quick laughs instead of watching TV, this book is a good way to go.

Charlotte Gray- Reluctant Genius: The Passionate Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bell

Right off the bat, I need to say that this is a book that I have been wanting to read for ages, I've been so looking forward to it, and when I did finally get it from the library, I read it in four hours. And it's really long! Yes, I read quickly, but this was one of those books that I couldn't put down.

Charlotte Gray decided that the existing body of Alexander Graham Bell biographies was lacking (there are already quite a few), and so she decided to write one that took into account the special relationship that he had with his wife, Mabel. Gray is a thorough researcher and a great writer, and her biography is a treat. She spent extensive time at the family archives in Baddeck, NS (about five hours from here), where the Bells spent every summer for many years at their summer mansion, and she created a fascinating and incredibly appealing portrait of Bell and his family.

Alexander Graham Bell was a bit of a strange man; he was excitable, eccentric, a little obsessive-compulsive, full of big ideas, but unable to transition them to the world of patents and commercial usefulness. His wife, on the other hand, was steady, sturdy, organized, and very much in love with her husband. She was also deaf, and met Bell when he was a teacher for the hearing impaired (a passion that he had for his whole life, which I didn't know. But that's the point of reading biographies!) She kept him from becoming a crazy hermit and helped him to be the successful man the he was, and he helped her to live completely in the hearing world and not be marginalized as a lot of deaf people were at the time; in fact, she never learned any form of sign language, but functioned solely by lip reading.

The mixture in Gray's biography of Alexander Graham Bell as a family man and a husband and also as a scientist is fascinating. You feel like you learn a lot about both Bell as a scientist and as a person, which I think is the perfect balance. I really enjoyed this book, and I loved that it was written by a Canadian and was largely about places that I've been and live near (Bell spent part of his early 20s in Brantford, ON, and considered Baddeck his true home.) More than that, I love that this book is enjoyable as it is informative. I'm going to have to find some more of Gray's biographies soon.