This is my next choice, since it is due chronologically the soonest, and it is under 200 pages. It is the winner of the GG in 2005, and also it wins for being the interlibrary loan that is the closest to me...this book is borrowed from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. 

And the Governor Generals take the lead! GGs-15, Pulitzers-14. So, I should be going to sleep soon, I have a doctor's appt. tomorrow to discuss this pesky problem known as insomnia that I've been battling around for the past at least month and to get to the bottom of my persistently crimson cheeks. My mother thinks that they may be related and that I've got some kind of life-threatening illness, but as usual, I think she's overreacting...It's not like I decided to forfeit law school and piles of money to become a penniless pastry chef who likes girls...Oh wait.Hmmm...Speaking of people who lead radically bizarre lifestyles, I just finished Paul Quarrington's Whale Music. Now everyone knows I'm great with linking non-sequiters, so sit back...I'm going to link together two seemingly unrelated topics, but soon you will realize that they are indeed related! Or at least in my mind they are. Hee hee. So, I'm pretty sure there's only two people who regularly read this drivel: Kate and Keren. Kate, I'm going to make you laugh because I'm going to remind you of something funny we've discussed on multiple occasions. Keren, I'm going to make you laugh because of something humorous that happened to me and inadvertently Kate and still makes her chuckle every once in a while. So...once upon a time a sometime college student wanted to read a book by Evelyn Waugh. Why? Who the fuck knows. So, this sometime college student(i.e. me) went to the bookstore and picked up Scoop. It was proclaimed on the back of the book to be "uproariously funny." Well, I read it. Political satire it was, something like the recent film Wag the Dog, but certainly not "uproariously funny." And, we all know that I have no problem laughing at pretty much anything...this proved to be a grave disappointment in the humor department...but wait! So, Kate and I go to the bookstore talking about Evelyn Waugh and all of her books(this may or may not have been before I read Scoop, my mind is blurry from all the literature I've consumed in the past oh I don't know 25 years of my life), and how she's kind of weird and why no one talks about her in literature that much even though she appears to be relatively prolific...I pictured, too, in my brain a sort-of Agatha Christie-type meets Margaret Thatcher, but wait! Kate and I start to read backs of more of her books and realize that HOLY SHIT! EVELYN WAUGH IS A MAN! Now, who in their right mind would name a boy Evelyn? Wow, you're just signing them up for social hell. Why don't you just name the kid "Hey there, come kick the shit out of me!" So picture Kate and Em, doubled over in Barnes & Noble laughing their asses off because they realized Evelyn Waugh was a man and how no one had ever bothered to correct us before...etc. Hey it was pretty "uproariously funny" then. That's the only thing I can think of that's "uproariously funny" about Evelyn Waugh. Now, Whale Music didn't even promise to be "uproariously funny" and it was terrifically humorous. (Maybe that's what you have to do, not hype yourself up before your reader actually gets to your novel...here's a clue Evelyn...hee hee.) In fact it actually WAS "uproariously funny." I think it's based loosely on the Wilson brothers who founded the Beach Boys, but if you don't know that much about their bio, and I don't really(despite all of those hours spent binging on E! True Hollywood Story), I'll give you a better, more apt description that appeals to recent times. Picture Ozzie Osbourne. Do you see him? Wandering around his house appearing aimless but probably he has some motive that you can't figure out? He stops and looks while the apparently un-housetrained pooches he has pee all over his floor. He scratches his head. He adjusts his glasses. He perhaps wonders when exactly his once functional brain seeped out his ears. Now, imagine Ozzie writing a book from his point of view, entirely. Welcome to Whale Music. It's a hybrid of now blended with memory told from the point of a very mentally fried former rock star who's trying to create his great artistic masterpiece: a collection of songs dedicated to whales using what he believes is their style of music. It is at once sad, introspective and fucking hilarious. (God, this book project is great! I never would have read this book otherwise not even ever having heard of it before, and yet again I am astonished!) As per usual, I have some quotes that I particularly loved...mostly because they are quirky, show a bit of the book's style and because as we all know, I love words and how people manipulate them differently from one another fascinates me to no end. Here goes:
"A piano keyboard is, to me, a beautiful thing, the doorway to an orderly and rational universe. I can slip through when baffled by this sorry world we live in" (Quarrington 28).
"'And when I hear people talk like this, I get mad. I think, hey, slime bucket, if these sea gulls are so bad, why did God make so fucking many of them? Don't you think He knows what He's doing?'"
'He makes a lot of everything,' I point out. 'That may be His way of compensating for engineering and design flaws'" (Quarrington 63).
"I know all about this Jesus fellow. You are dealing with a man who is constantly on the prowl for salvation, a stupid fat tomcat climbing into holy trashcans. One night, I was seated in front of the TV, the drugs had conspired to keep my eyeballs popped open, and suddenly there was Tammy Faye Bakker exhorting me to invite Jesus into my heart. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I dropped to my knees, weeping every bit as profusely as Tammy Faye, and I invited Jesus into my heart. He peered into my heart from the stoop, decided that the place was too messy. That's the last I heard from Him" (ibid 92).
And this one is extremely apropos, given my current situation:"You have no idea, really, how big a deal bed-going is in our society. It's a sad thing when a person's normalcy is established upon the regularity with which he/she scurries under the blankies and launches into never-never land, but sad things abound. If you eat three squares a day and clock in the requisite eight hours nightly, why then, you could collect shrunken heads and no one would bat an eye" (ibid 122-123).
The last one, which I just thought was a funny saying, and might just implement into my vocabulary is Elvis Presley talking to the narrator's brother, during a memory of when they all met at Graceland:"'My, my,' chuckled Presley. 'Now don't be letting your mouth write no checks your ass can't cash'" (ibid 141).
Shit, I've got to get a move on to sleep myself...I've got to be at work early(well early for me-1 pm) to make sure I assist Kayvon in NOT destroying the sugar piece he's been working on forever, so that it can take its rightful place at the head of the walkway to the theatre. Tomorrow night's(or I guess later on this evening, since it's after 2) theatre buyout is the IACP(International Association of Culinary Professionals) dinner...It's a big one in terms of profile(not that financially huge, unfortunately), a lot of celebrity chefs are going to be there...the room will be filled with chefs, instructors, food writers, food photographers...If we weren't already on the map, we would definitely be now...and as long as we don't fuck it up, it can really boost the restaurant's reputation. I just have to make sure Kayvon's fed, his sugar is nicely heated, I do what he says, and I listen to his rambling, inserting a "yeah, uh huh" every once in a while(wink wink) and everything should be sunshine and flowers...I hope.:) Doctor's, library, work...busy busy.

"Baby Beluga in the deep blue sea..." Oh my lovely sister, what a story I think of about you when ever I hear that song. I have until the 31st to finish this! Aaaahhhh! GG winner in 1989. 

Well, it's now a dead heat: 14-Governor Generals, 14-Pulitzers. The weight is definitely going to be shifting over to the GG's for a while, though, since I'm sitting on far more of those from the Seattle Public Library than Pulitzers...So, I just finished Alice Munro's Dance of the Happy Shades...actually I finished it yesterday(Monday), but I didn't have time to make a posting since I had my employee party for work tonight. What a bizarre yet fun evening...I spent hours hanging out with people who I hardly ever see outside of work! I think we did fairly well on the bowling...I was impressed with myself and my teammates called me "The Dark Horse," but I also heard that people were cheating when they gave their scores to the woman in charge, so who knows what will happen. I met one of my friend's/co-worker's girlfriend, who was rad...we spent forever talking about the symbolic nature of cannibalism and how Hannibal Lector is one of the sexiest characters in all of literature and film...he is, I'm not kidding...I must figure out a way to make a female/lesbian version of him for a short story or something...She also knew about snooker and got excited when I told her my parents have a table and also knew about my parents' strange espresso machine(which we just found out is super rare)...a kindred spirit. I also got a chance to talk more with Bryan's wife(who finished CIA a few monthes before me), she was super cool too. Anyway, back to the book... ALICE MUNRO. She is an author that I must confess I've done a fair amount of running away from. I'm not exactly sure why, probably in part because she's one of the Canadian greats, according to those who are "in the know" and I have mixed feelings about two of the other "greats" Margaret Ondaatje as I like to call them...I feel when I read those two that I'm "supposed" to like them. I hate it when I'm "supposed" to like something...Cream cheese, Bjork and having sex with boys all fall into a category like that...I really want to like them, I just don't. Now, I do like Margaret Ondaatje(wink wink) all right but not as much as I feel I'm "supposed" to, though I must admit, it's probably due to Canadian literary society pressure to like them that I feel I must rebel or something. I read a short story by Alice Munro for my Poetics class at McGill, and wasn't really feeling it. It was oh-kay, and I just never felt an overwhelming desire to read her. Well, someone obviously likes her quite a bit, she's won the GG three times for collections of her short stories. So, if anything, I'm FORCED to read her. Well, I was very pleasantly surprised. She IS a pretty good short story writer. Sometimes I found her stories to be a bit tedious(maybe her descriptions didn't grab me or something, but my brain wandered a bit), but there were a few in this collection that I quite enjoyed. I particularly liked the title story, which was actually the last story in the collection, which had a great, albeit it short quote: "people who believe in miracles do not make much fuss when they actually encounter one" (Munro 223). I also liked "The Peace of Utrecht," in which a woman goes back to "release" her sister from the shackles of caring for a mother who is now deceased. A great quote from that is "Is this the last function of old women, beyond making rag rugs and giving us five-dollar bills--making sure the haunts we have contracted for are with us, not one gone without" (Munro 209)?
"Red Dress--1946" reminded me a lot of myself as a young adolescent and my insecurities towards others, including my shyness in social situations. It had a possible lesbian scenario occur, but it was shot down before it could be consummated at all, which was slightly disappointing, but I reminded myself this book was first published in 1968 and Alice Munro, though a good writer, is also considered by many to be mainstream and even today, lesbians still aren't mainstream. I also liked the story "The Office," which made that The Doors song flash through my brain "People are strange, when you're a stranger..." because the antagonist in that was FUCKED up.
Alice Munro, like Richards, who I also just read, is a great observer of people. I guess that's what makes the great ones great. One of the first stories ("The Shining Houses")I read in the collection just had a passage that hit the nail on the head for me...I've thought that way, felt that way...the story itself was oh-kay, but the observation was dead on. "Oh, wasn't it strange, how in your imagination, when you stood up for something, your voice rang, people started, abashed; but in real life they all smiled in a rather special way and you saw that what you had really done was serve yourself up as a conversational delight for the next coffee party" (Munro 28). A woman who makes a comment like that is definitely in my favor. I still feel like I'm "supposed" to like Alice Munro, but lo! and behold! I actually do.:)

Now reading...Well, I guess I'll finally give Alice Munro a shot...this was her first book of short stories that she published, winner of the GG in 1968. 

Mmmm...I've put in Joni Mitchell's Hits to listen to while I write this...Her voice and the melancholy it implies with all her songs, especially "The River" and "Urge for Going," coursed through my head while I was reading David Adams Richards' Nights Below Station Street. I looked up Joni Mitchell's bio to see if she had grown up in New Brunswick...She did not, she grew up in Saskatchewan. Richards' book was fabulous...very different from Salverson's which I just read, but not so much in some ways. Salverson's was an epic work about people and their struggles over many years, this novel is about people just as they are in the moment. Richards' prose is very stark and simplistic, but in a deceiving sort of way. There are no big words here, no flowery passages, just descriptions of people living their lives in their own way. And, these ARE people, like you and me, not romantic characters fighting lofty philosophical imaginary battles with their souls. The characters in Nights live in trailers or small houses they keep up themselves, they work hard, they don't know what to expect from their lives, they need sustenance both in terms of food and emotions: love, acceptance. They are dependent on each other as much or as little as they want to be, and when struggling with their inner selves, they come to realize this...and if at first it is frightening to them, the actual admittance is almost a relief.
My favorite quote from this book is this: "An object falls, it has no idea where it will land, but at every moment of its descent it is exactly where it is supposed to be" (Richards 220).
Some reviewers claimed that Richards depicted the people of New Brunswick very well, even using true sorts of speech patterns. I don't know about that since I have never been to New Brunswick, but I do feel Richards depicted people in general well, in a wonderfully honest and true way. I looked on Amazon.ca to read customer reviews of this book and one person said that they had to read the book for school and that they were from the same town as the book took place; that the characters in the book were nothing like the people in his/her town. The town must have been overtaken by pod people or something, because I grew up in a small town in the U.S. (and it's not like the U.S. is Mars or anything), and I can see something of all the characters in people who still live in my hometown. Now I live in a moderately sized city and I can still see some of these character traits in the people I know.
People are people are people...I've realized this as I've aged(and I know I know, I'm not that old), and though they are all different, they are all the same. I find too, that the books I read now, that I love, are simply about the human race, our relationships, and basically how we just survive...Wait, I think that sums up all of literature! Coincidence? I think perhaps not;).
Shakespeare did say it best: "What a piece of work is man!"
Well, after all that stream of consciousness thinking, I'm off to clean, fill my head with more novels, write some poems, and basically become the Lady of Shalott as I work on a tapestry for my mom and watch some episodes of LOST. I should get out for a little bit, but my house has everything I need: books, television, music, computer...Maybe I'll treat myself to some dinner later. A brain is not fed on words alone, I suppose. GGs-13, Pulitzers-14.

This is the book I'm reading now, GG winner in 1988. 

GG's-12! Pulitzers-14! So, I finished The Dark Weaver Tuesday afternoon in an oblivion of frantic reading because it was good, but because it's also due at the library today and I have several other books piled up on my end table that need to be attacked. I must say that all in all it was a very decent read, yet another of these award-winners that I probably never would have picked up on my own(especially since it has been out-of-print for years!), but was glad I did. It did make me ponder a few things, though...What makes an author start threads of story but decide to discontinue them? Why, in the case of a saga does one choose to follow a certain character's path over another? In The Dark Weaver, Salverson develops a storyline that includes the possibility of two middle-aged people thwarted in young love a chance to rekindle what was never lost, but that storyline is tossed aside to focus instead on the progeny of one of the characters and their interactions with another prominent family in the area. The young people's story is interesting as well, and fills out at least the second half of the book, but I would have liked to see two older people finally find happiness...There is implication on the author's part that this will happen, due to tragedy that opens doors for this tentative couple, but it is only as an aside while revealing another plot angle. Hmmm...the ending was also slightly confusing, which I will talk about because I'm pretty sure that no one who reads this will ever read The Dark Weaver unless they choose to pursue a similar project to mine. I wasn't sure if Greta, the female protagonist actually died in the end, or was massively scarred, etc. The nurses give her terribly worrisome looks when she awakens after the bombing, but it didn't seem clear to me whether or not she was alive...News is given to Manfred that she has been in a horrible accident, but I'm not entirely sure that they reveal whether or not she is dead. I think that perhaps he perceives she is dead, and then in a Romeo and Juliet sort of way perishes himself, because he cannot live without her...That is so romantic, but stupid as hell if she was still alive...Oh well. And to end that way! With no afterthought or closure from other characters...I, as a reader, would have loved to find out what all the other characters which I had learned to care about and relate to for the other 400-some pages, thought about the situation and where they were at. But, as it appears with most novels, the reader is dropped into these people's lives just as quickly as she is whisked out of it. Well, another day, another novel.:)

Lake Winnipeg, Manitoba. 

Here are some quotes from The Dark Weaver that I've thought to be particularly good. I'm more than halfway through now, and will probably finish up today...I'm a quote fiend, hoarding them like a squirrel saving nuts for winter. Hey, you never know when you'll need them, right?
"Perhaps the majesty of a human soul can only be measured by its conquest of sorrows and tribulations" (Salverson 171).
"For this erstwhile charwoman incurable gossip and sly schemer showed a grasp of foreign affairs, of statecraft and political history, as astonishing as it was dangerous to the sanctities of tyranny. Certainly such enlightenment boded an eventual ill day of reckoning for those in any country who tirelessly sought to suppress, and hounded and forced into exile thousands like her. Poor blind fools! Tin gods by happy accident, they had foolishly forgotten who raised them up, fed and feted them and made sacred tradition of their pitiful vanities. In their stupidity of manufactured pride they had forgotten that the people who shouted hail! hail! as they drove by their stinking hovels had created them, and might as quickly unmake them. For the final victory is never really to the strong, who sit in the sun for a day or a century. But to the timeless people whose changing ideals priests and potentates typify, uphold for a brief while, then degrade, dishonour and betray. Victory, and dominion over the earth, are to the people, who create all things, suffer and survive all things, and, at long last like the locust, swarm in God's wrath to devour their oppressors" (Salverson 253)!
"The real trouble with human judgement is it invariably falls after the event. Often enough what seems dire tragedy, if left to the balancing laws of the spiritual universe, turns out to be a genuine blessing, or at least of vast benefit to the progress of the individual or the race" (Salverson 271).
This book is really good in an epic sort of way, reminding me slightly of Gone With the Wind(though that book was FABULOUS, and I'm not as fond of this one, how could anything replace GWTW!) combined with Giants in the Earth (which I never finished, but liked while I was reading it)...sometimes the prose is rather dragging, but the characters are just romantic/dramatic enough to keep it interesting...She makes time pass so quickly however, I can't always figure out exactly how much time has gone by...God is Salverson's Dark Weaver, a much more omnipresent and damning figure than just time itself(her God reminds me more of an Old Testament God, not necessarily very uplifting or forgiving), but we'll see. Perhaps the book will end without everyone being miserable in dead-end lives...I do so love happy or at least possibly happy endings...:)

This is a picture of the Northern Lights(aurora borealis)as seen in Manitoba, the setting for The Dark Weaver. 

"There she weaves..." 

'Oh the horror! The horror!'
I've read books before that have been scary...The Silence of the Lambs I had to blow through because I was frightened of the serial killer Clarisse Starling is after...I also had similar trouble with Ellis' American Psycho; I had nightmares for days afterwards about nail guns...but this book, The Dark Weaver incites a whole new kind of terror: the terrifying possibility that this book may fall apart in my hands while I'm reading it! The exterior cover is peeling away to reveal the spine and the binding is broken, revealing bald spots on the spine...Oh, I have to handle it so gingerly, I feel like I should be looking at it through glass, or that I should swaddle it in a t-shirt when I put it in my purse. But, then there's that wonderful old book smell that I can't get enough of...it's like the smell of cinnamon rolls or fried food or I don't know, it's just lovely...I want to bury my nose in it and breathe and breathe and breathe...:)
I'm through Book I...and I found out who the "Dark Weaver" is, it's time, ticking away slowly or rapidly, depending on who you are...Ironically, the characters, so far, do share some sort of similarities with "The Lady of Shalott," many of them are also "trapped" in a prison however much of their own making, due to marriage, lack of money or poor life choices. What I also think is a little too ironic(thank you Alanis), is the fact that many of the books I have read that take place in the prairies(esp. the Canadian prairies) express a feeling of being trapped and almost hopelessness, when strangely enough the prairies are such "wide open spaces." Hmmm...I wonder why that is. GG's-11, Pulitzers-14.

A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose...not! 

This blog is supposed to help me keep track of my "book project," the mammoth romp through Canadian and American literature that I started almost 2 monthes ago. I'm trying to read all of the Governor General(lit. prize in Canada) and the Pulitzer prize winners that have been awarded for fiction since each prize's inception. Over the 25 years of my life I've read a few, but there are still so many more to go. I'm keeping a running count as I get ever closer to the completion of a goal that has no immediate end. Librarians, beware...I am your best friend and your worst nightmare.:) The reactions I've gotten thus far, when I tell people of my goal, are funny...most people, when I tell them I'm a pastry chef say "Wow, that's cool!" Then, I tell them I'm gay. They say "Huh. Okay, that's cool too." Then I tell them I'm trying to read all the GG's and Pulitzers and they say "WHAT THE FUCK WOULD YOU WANT TO DO THAT FOR? THAT'S A LOT OF FUCKING BOOKS!"
I'm currently reading The Dark Weaver by Laura G. Salverson, it won the Governor General in 1937, the 2nd novel to do so(GG started in 1936, Pulitzer in 1918, in case you were wondering). I'm not too far into it, so there's not much to report thus far re: plot. Funnily enough, when I first looked this book up, I conjured up the image of Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott" when he writes "there she weaves by night and day/A magic web with colors gay./She has heard a whisper say,/A curse is on her if she stay/To look down to Camelot." There already appears to be a "weaver" in the story(hence the title, methinks:)), but this book is about settlers in the Canadian West, not a woman trapped in a tower...:)
One of the neat things about this book is where it comes from. The project has forced me to borrow books through the Seattle Public Library from other places (interlibrary loan). So far I've read books that have come from California, Idaho and southern WA state. This book comes all the way from Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. What's cool about that? My dad explained to me, when I was young, the story behind the song "Ohio" by Crosby, Stills & Nash; it's about the students that got killed during Vietnam protests at Kent State. I never think of that school unless I hear that song...though why would I, I guess. To get a book from there, of all places, was kind of freaky...Well, I need to get back to it, and hit the sack...Current count: GGs-11, Pulitzers-14.

I guess soon we're approaching his actual birthday and Dairy Queen does as good a job at celebrating as anyone...:) This was supposed to be a trial run on the picture thang, but since he was supposed to have been born sometime this month(according to Mid-East weather patterns), I'm just a bit early...for once I'm early for someone's birthday. Heh.