Pillow Fighting in our Underwear

​At least that's what our husbands think we're doing. 

Five For Friday: The Five Books

 OKAAAAY, okay. I usually save all my book stuff for the end-of-year roundup, but I was aware that it was kind of douche-y not to name the books. Also, there are five of them, so it makes a Five for Friday post! 

1. The one I hated: Death Takes Me by Cristina Rivera Garza. I'm not saying it's a bad book. Whether it was just not the book for me or it was the wrong time, I just didn't like it. I don't love when authors play with the whole fiction/non-fiction thing, making themselves a character in the book, although I know some people love it - it just seems a little cheesy to me "Oh, I found this manuscript in an ancient locked trunk" or "Oh, I'm telling this like a story but it's really all true". I am often okay with an experimental format. I probably would have been more into this when I was younger and in graduate school and more open to non-traditional literature that took work and even then left me confused. She is a celebrated author but it read to me a bit like a new writer who is excited about all these new techniques she can use. It just ended up in a whirl of detached penises and shrinking women and detectives who did psychology or maybe psychologists who investigated crimes, and I struggled to finish it.

2. The one that I didn't love as much as the hype indicated I should: Raising Hare: a Memoir by Chloe Dalton. Listen. This was perfectly lovely. I am really happy that the author had an up close and personal encounter with a natural creature during the shitstorm that was Covid. I learned some cool stuff about hares and I absolutely believe that caring for and being engaged with nature in this way is transforming.

I'm just also kind of cynical and snarky, so I was a tiny bit annoyed by how there seemed to be an implication that this has never happened to anyone in quite this way EVER BEFORE. It also seemed ever so slightly like parlaying a lovely experience into a book deal, with some places that seemed pretty padded. A magazine article would have been perfectly adequate. She also goes on quite a bit about how careful she is not to make the hare or its leverets pets, and it's true she doesn't name them or put little hats on them or whatever, but obviously she doesn't just leave them to the vagaries of actual nature either, or there would be no story. There is contact between her and the hares. She bottle-feeds a leveret and the hares 'lollop around her house' and one gives birth in her study. She intervenes to preserve their health and life - and that's great! I'm sure I would have done the same!

There's also a point beyond which you have to examine your own hypocrisy because she is suddenly fairly disparaging of farming or building practices that endanger wildlife, but I'm willing to bet she was still shopping for food at a supermarket, and well....

”If it is possible, as William Blake would have it, ‘to see a world in a grain of sand’, then perhaps we can see all nature in a hare: its simplicity and intricacy, fragility and glory, transience and beauty" - she says this as if it's brand new information when surely it is not? Anyway, most of the world lost their collective mind over how great this book was, so clearly I'm just an asshole, this we all know. 

3. The one I admired intellectually although it didn't bowl me over emotionally: Killing Stella by Marlen Haushofer. I must have read about this on the library website and requested it. It's a tiny little thing. I read it before refreshing my memory about it, and my thoughts were that it reminded me of Romantic literature in a kind of archaic way - people said things 'coldly', things were called 'repellent', people would get pale and be suffering which would make them attractive, there were sleeping powders. It reminded me of The Sorrows of Young Werther and Remembrance of Things Past. The writing style was very detached but also sketched a vivid picture of both the action and the interior lives of these people, none of whom were very likable (which is fine, it's not a thing that I require of books I like, I know some people do, zero judgment). When I finished it I looked up its provenance and discovered that it was a reprint of a 1950s book by an Austrian author, which made a lot of sense. It was tiny little thing with a lot of impact packed into its compact form. 

4. The one I really liked: Katabasis by R.F. Kuang. The writer has been on my radar for a long time, but I didn't manage to read Babel, so the only other book of hers I've read is Yellowface, which I liked but it seemed like a bit of a throwaway compared to her other books, like she had this thought and tossed it off in a weekend because she is a brilliant achievement machine, she has multiple degrees and has won numerous awards for her multitude of books and she's not even thirty, which is totally fine and doesn't at all make me feel like an utter failure at life who might as well just find an ice floe to drift away on. 

I usually roll my eyes at the "this book meets this book" descriptions of a new book, but I have to admit that "Dante's Inferno meets Susannah Clarke's Piranesi (which I also loved)" is kind of perfect in this case. 

I read most of this one while sitting on my patio in the summer - it is big but so propulsive it felt like it took no time to read. 

I loved the magic system - the chalk and the trying to distract the world for just a fleeting moment. Alice was annoying and kind of a pick-me, but that was the whole point, and her conflict about this was really, really well portrayed, I thought. Also there is a misunderstanding that leads to drawn-out bad feelings, and often I find this dumb and annoying, but here it made sense and worked for me. And the connection between hell and university? The feverish competition, the spending of all your physical and mental and emotional resources on a success that might never materialize? The worshipping of figures that sometimes turn out to be detestable fiends? Oh hell yes. Very much enjoyed. 

(Katabasis is a Greek word that means 'descent into the underworld', and opinions about how to pronounce it seem to vary, with 'Ka-TA-ba-sis' maybe pulling slightly ahead, but 'Ka-ta-BA-sis' also not being completely wrong.)

5. The one I loved: The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones. I discovered SGJ in 2015 and have scooped up everything that comes across my radar ever since. When my friend Nat  (HI NAT) requested The Only Good Indian on my recommendation and then of course couldn't remember why it came up, she was expecting a book on residential schools and instead got this - 'violent, vengeful horror', which fortunately she liked. He writes horror that has a strong underpinning of social criticism, related to colonialism, systemic racism and generational trauma - but around this he constructs well-crafted and really frightening, really effective stories. 

When Nat said in our book bingo group that she was reading this one because Obama had it on his summer reading list, I jokily but huffily reminded her that I discovered the author and recommended it to her years before, and said Obama has a lot going for him, he could let me have this. Somewhat amusingly, then, I found the first 80 pages or so a bit of a slog. But once I slipped into the deeply-carved ruts of it, I couldn't look away. 

His books and short stories are scary, yes. They have some bleak humour sometimes. They are also often very sad. The vampire trope can be used so many ways, and here the central tragedy of Good Stab being transformed is that it separates him from his tribe in a way that can't be repaired. The self-loathing and despair of the Lutheran pastor who is told the story by Good Stab in drawn-out spates, is deeply felt also. This book illustrates the way the forming of a country is nearly always tangled inextricably with appalling incidents and weak justifications. This one has really stayed with me. 

So there you go. I would say one, two, three, four and five stars respectively but that would be fudging it a little. I liked Raising Hare just fine, just thought the praise was a little overly effusive. So probably one, three, three and a half, four, and four and a half (I didn't love the framing device for TBHH). Have a great weekend! 

Of Note

 A friend sent me the New York Times Book Review "100 Notable Books of 2025" article this morning (not sure if it's paywalled, sorry). I always experience a funny blend of feelings when I see the headline of one of these. Primarily excitement: I love a good list, and I like counting how many books of those mentioned I have read and putting others on hold. There's an undertone of trepidation, because invariably there are many, many books that I not only haven't read, I haven't even heard of them - and I don't consider myself someone who is completely ignorant of the book world. And then there is the merest soupcon of weariness and derision - the tiniest bit, really - because who has done the choosing, and what are the precise criteria, and what does 'notable' actually mean (at least they didn't call it the BEST books of 2025). Obviously there's an element of subjectivity. I always end up concluding that maybe I am just a basic reading bitch, and that's FINE. 

I had read five, which is laughably few and yet is more than in some years. One of them I hated, one of them I thought was over-hyped, one I loved, one I really liked, and one was strange and I admired it. I am currently reading two more, and one I just had to return because it was too overdue.

Honestly, I didn't find a lot to raise my eyebrows at in the list. It seemed like a pretty good mix of fiction, non-fiction, genre, current issues and biographies of significant personalities. I had a good number of them on hold already thanks to Sarah (HI SARAH). I put like twenty more on hold, just as I was getting ready to wind up my 'year of putting all the physical books on hold' experiment, thanks a lot New York Times Book Review.

It was Scholastic Book Fair week at two of my libraries, which is always a heady mix of excitement and chaos. I had two amazing parent volunteers to help at one school, which was great because we didn't think we'd end up having to use the card machine but one parent came in and two teachers and it took me a stupid long time to get it working - tech hates me. But we did a brisk business and the kids were happy.

One major shock was that the posters - which have been five dollars each since time immemorial - jumped to SIX dollars in 2023, and are now SEVEN dollars each. That's a hundred and forty percent jump in TWO YEARS (I think, math's not really my thing). One of the kids repeated this incredulously and I said "I KNOW. This is all on Scholastic, and we completely agree that it is (thinking: I can't say bullshit, I can't say bullshit) NOT COOL." 

Pics of the Week

 My friend Holly used to be just My Friend Kerry's friend Holly, who I heard about many times and always thought wistfully that it would be amazing to actually meet her. Then I DID actually meet her and now she is MY FRIEND HOLLY and she's amazing beyond description. She has three sons and a demanding job and plays soccer multiple times a week and buys carloads of carrots and tampons for charity and takes care of her sick friends' aging parents (seriously, on multiple different occasions) and in addition to all this once drove across town to give me an Advent calendar when she found out I didn't have one (this is in my forties, to be clear). She also has the highest, sweetest voice and yet curses like a sailor, and when we were throwing axes the head axe-throwing teacher lady said "I really enjoy when you swear". 

So not only did she invite a bunch of us to sit in her loge at the National Arts Centre for Un-Silent Night: an Epic Holiday Singalong, but...

She also came dressed as Slutty Mrs. Claus

Today I ran a buying day for the Scholastic Book Fair at my morning school and a viewing day at my afternoon school. My niece Charlotte was texting me from the UK, and wishes me luck on the book fair and then offered sympathy when I was venting after a particularly challenging class had come rampaging through. She sent me this for if any more classes gave me grief.

I have the best friends AND relatives. 

An Un-Monday Tuesday

 Considering that my two main scheduled events were a doctor's appointment and flu and Covid shots, I had kind of a spectacular day. I went to bed early last night and got a pretty good sleep. The doctor's appointment was early and she was on time. I was a little nervous, but not hugely because I really like my doctor and she has a really good record for listening and trying stuff. I had a couple of things I wanted to ask about and they were both addressed really well, and I remembered to ask her for a new prescription for the orthotics I need to order, which meant I won't have to call and wait on the phone for an hour.

Adulting FTW

I also got smiled at by four old men in the waiting room. And I was walking out of the building and remembered that I had left my nice black cardigan on the chair in the doctor's office, exactly like I thought I was probably going to do when I hung it there, and as I turned around to go back, an assistant was walking out with it to find me.

My doctor's office has moved fairly recently - this was my first visit to the new office - and the new one is close to the main mall we always go to when we mall, which is not that often. But I ordered new Docs, thinking they were exactly the same style and size as the ones I have, and they were not, and I needed to return them. I judged that I had just enough time to get to the mall, return the boots, grab a couple of Christmas shopping things, and get to my vaccine appointment.

Returning the boots was quick and easy. Eve asked for pajama pants for Christmas and Victoria's Secret had a forty percent off everything sale, so I got her a really nice pair. I also got some Twisted Peppermint foaming soap for the powder room because I am behind on Tiny Secret Festive Season. Then grabbed a gift card for the child I'm shopping for in the community giving group.

I was on time almost to the minute for when I needed to leave for my vaccine appointment, but I really wanted a Mango Hurricane. I decided to throw caution to the winds and assume that they would still take me if I was a few minutes late - this is really, really unlike me. And because all the guardrails were off, I said "can I please have a small Mango Hurricane - actually, screw it, can I please have a large Mango Hurricane" - the lovely teenaged girl must have thought "oh, you're a wild woman."

So here I am, bopping through the mall, with my Booster Juice and my Bath and Body Works Christmas soap, like the whitest white girl who ever white girled. I got to my appointment five minutes late, and of course this only meant I had to wait a few minutes less than I would have. The pharmacist said I could do two in one arm or one in each, and I told him to just put them both in my left. The Covid shot went in fine and then the flu shot went in and I gasped and might have said what the fuck, and he burst out laughing and said ha ha, that's why I do the other one first. 

I wandered around the store for my required ten-minute wait, and picked up some Advil, some makeup, some chocolate and a couple of frozen pizzas. I went to the counter with a teetering pile, and the woman said "are we doing a bag?" and I said "no, I believe in myself!"

And she gave me nothing. Nothing! She broke the unbroken string of people treating me like a delightful gift in their day! 

Not gonna lie, it was a bit of a blow. I did not let it harsh my buzz.

Bits and Bobs

 I'm trying really hard not to use post titles like "I Think I Can, I Think I Can" or "Crawling to the Finish Line", because I know I'll go back to past Novembers and find the exact same post titles. Does anyone feel like they're finishing strong? I've felt pretty good from a blogging perspective this month this year, but I am running on fumes at this point.

I am also still reeling from Engie revealing that her library makes people go to a desk and show their card to an actual person to retrieve their holds. What? Why? At my library it's a few rows of shelves in the middle of the main room, and you just find your label - the first four letters of your last name and the last four letters of your library card - and take your books. The machine won't let you check out books that are on hold for someone else so that's not a concern - wait, Engie, do you have to go to a real person to check OUT your books too? Doesn't that just unnecessarily make more work for the library staff? Okay, obviously it's fine, I just really like to dart in and out of the library without anyone seeing or commenting on my pile of holds that can barely fit in my arm-span. What's it like for the rest of you? Am I making too big a thing out of this? It's quite possible I am.

When Angus was in a growth spurt, more than once he gallumphed up the stairs and bounced off both walls to the point that he knocked pictures off. I found this simultaneously infuriating and amusing. Today I chucked a giant package of Costco toilet paper onto the stairs and knocked off the Eve of those pictures where the letters are made out of objects found in the world - like this except mine was from a craft show and I'm a little crestfallen that you can get them on Amazon now - and the frame cracked. Matt has already repaired it once and thinks he can repair it again. Embarrassing, though - I don't even have a growth spurt to blame it on. Well, not one I want to admit to. 

What is Dubai chocolate and why is it suddenly everywhere?

I know habits are very hard to break. I have several habits I have tried to break and have either not successfully broken or have found really really really difficult to break. There are two that were much easier than I expected them to be. The first one was leaving only one space after a period instead of two. I was finally convinced that since I was no longer typing with a manual typewriter there was no reason for the second space. I though it was going to take forever to learn the change. It wasn't hard at all. The other one was not scrolling on my phone in bed when I wake up anymore. I have a weird relationship with sleep and I really never wake up feeling rested, and a few months or a couple of years back I started looking at my phone thinking it might be a nice way to wake up gradually ("oof", Eve winced when I told her this, "rookie mistake.") It was not. It was just an earlier start to doom-scrolling, and my hands would go numb, and I would be even more frustrated with myself by the time I got up. So I decided to stop and just... did. I still scroll more than I would like, but at least I've pushed it later in the day?

Two down, four hundred and ninety thousand to go.

Someone named Julie2343 who sounds like she should be a bot but is not suggested I read The Correspondent on my post about sending postcards - just finished it! I love a good epistolary novel. I love the word epistolary. I don't love the word epistle, though. Not sure if it's the way it sounds or my religious trauma. I'm tired. 

Raise a Reader? You Can Try

In the summer I had dinner with a friend I was extremely close with in grad school, touched base with when I got to Ottawa, and then fell out of touch with and hadn't seen since Eve was about four, so, a long time. It was amazing - actually never mind, I'll do a whole post on that later. But she has two daughters and neither of them are readers and she said she had kind of a hard time with it until one of them had to say cool it, you're making me feel bad and it's not going to change anything.

I'm not sure how I would have felt if neither of my kids was a reader. I know it's a big part of my personality. I loved children's books and had a collection before I even had kids, and reading to them every day was really fun. Eve moved smoothly into chapter books and is definitely what you would consider a reader. With Angus I read one entire Percy Jackson book with him, and it was great, but after Diary of a Wimpy Kid his reading fell off and it didn't really bother me. During one camping trip a few years ago he pilfered my stack of books and took one and since then has been asking me to give him books for Christmas. I think he still only reads a lot on vacation, but that's fine. Would it have bothered me if neither of them read? I honestly don't know.

I am constantly getting frustrated with myself for not being able to lay hands on old pictures - I started organizing all of them last year and then put the mess away for Christmas and then got horrifically depressed in January and here we are again. Anyway, years ago I took a picture at brunch of Angus leaned over a Harry Potter book intently while absently stabbing at pancakes with his other hand and sent it to his grade three teacher saying 'job well done!' I mentioned this to someone a few weeks later and he said indignantly "she SHOWED THE WHOLE CLASS", but he hadn't mentioned it before then so it can't have scarred him that badly. 

I did love the way Eve and her friends talked about our book-stuffed house. I took Eve and a friend to meet the teacher night in middle school because the other mom was busy, and the friend said to their English teacher "their house has books EVERYWHERE. Eve goes into her mom's room and asks for a book and she just GRABS one out of a pile!" She left out that there are so many books there's no room for anything else to be put away properly, so also a win. 

Eve and I like a lot of the same books, and sharing books with her has been kind of magical. We buddy read some of her books in undergrad, I never have trouble finding books to give her for Christmas, and now she recommends books to me, which is a bit trippy. I gave her my old ipad last year and she got into borrowing library ebooks and loved it because then she could turn off her lights except for the little fairy lights and read in the dark and be cozy. 

We both love Miriam Toews, and she has had the weirdest good luck with finding used Toews books on sale at new bookstores. This is the latest one - is it not just stupidly beautiful? It looks like her lamp and the Coach purse I got her for her birthday last year. 

Last week she told me she was going to put a real actual paper book on hold (I guess she wants to be more like Sarah too) and then sent me this picture. We were on Facetime and I said it gave me a tiny bit of a weird feeling seeing her last name, which is different from mine, on the label. 

I'm also a bit jealous that she has an A name so will also be right at the beginning of the holds, rather than an M name which is always, always on the bottom shelf. Have you tried picking up seven books from the bottom shelf? It is inelegant, to say the least. ALSO Also, it's an Olga Tokarczuk book that she is now reading before me. Is that even allowed?