Books I read in 2015

2015 was not a banner year for reading for me. In retrospect, I should have embraced the way my reading patterns were looking early on (e-books versus paper) and adjusted accordingly. I didn't, and I ended up just reading a lot of mystery novels I'd already downloaded to my phone and not making much of a dent in my physical TBR pile. Oh well. Here is what I read by the numbers, following how I broke it down in 2014 and 2013. Not much comparative analysis is needed except to say that I read a lot less of everything. You can see what I read here on the 50 Book pledge page.

40 books

By genre

32 novels*
3 young adult
1 graphic novel
1 how-to guide
1 short-story collection
1 memoir
1 poetry collection

* 26 of the novels were straight-up mystery novels or thrillers....only six were what would usually be called literary novels.

By nation

7 Canada
2 Canada/U.S. (i.e. Canadians who live in the States, otherwise known as a distinction probably not worth making)
4 United States
3 U.K.
1 Japan

By gender

37 books by 14 women
3 books by 3 men

It turns out that almost all the books I read this year were in e-book format, either on my phone or on my Kobo. Only five of them were read on paper. This has got to be a new record for me in and of itself. But then again, this is the first year I've had an actual e-reader.

The books I flat-out enjoyed the most? Purity by Jonathan Franzen and Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. The latter I picked up with some trepidation as for a number of years I've been working on a project prominently featuring a modern-day plague, and it is always nerve-wracking when another writer publishes something that seems as though it might be similar to your own work-in-progress. But apart from featuring a plague, the works are (of course) totally different and Station Eleven is a brilliant novel you should definitely pick up if you haven't already. (It is also on the Canada Reads longlist alongside Bone and Bread...cue squee. Station Eleven is so well imagined and the writing is so clean and the book just seems to contain so much in all the best ways. Purity by Franzen also shares all those qualities.)

But the book that had the greatest (in every sense) impact on my life? The wildly popular decluttering book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. Really, I cannot say enough about this book. It has helped me get rid of bags and bags of stuff, and though I am still not anywhere close to finished, given how much stuff I started out with, it has helped me enormously and put me on the right path (I hope) to managing all the material goods that share my space.

Here's to a book-filled and even more decluttered 2016!

End of July - Montreal Tournament of Books - Goodreads CBC Books Monthly Group Read

It's the last day of July. July is usually the month I get the most writing done, but this year it has been the month I have done the most decluttering. I've gone through boxes and boxes of photos, sorted through huge files of saved papers, tossed things I thought I'd never get rid of, emptied a giant trunk I've had since childhood, and even went through a massive stack of unlabelled CDs to find out what was on them. I finally got a roll of film from 2002 developed. (I thought it was from 2001, from Belgium, but it turned out to be Newfoundland the following year.) Wasteful as it seems, I threw out all of my socks with holes in them (when was the last time I sewed a sock hole?) and managed to get all of the photos off of my old Samsung phone. Outside of the times I've moved, I have never done such a major overhaul. In The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up --- the popular book I read that has given me the push to do all this -- the author, Marie Kondo, says that it is a process that takes about six months and that you get better as it as you go. I can easily believe it -- both parts! 

There's still lots to do, though. Two other old computers to deal with and a box of 3.5 floppy disks. Tons of other stuff to go through and (I hope) purge. It's hard to reverse three decades of clutter. We'll see if I have the stamina. I know it's important to do, but it would be nice to squeeze some writing in there, too.

Oh, and did I mention we did the books?!? My husband and I finally consolidated our collections, sold off most of the doubles and triples, as well as books we thought we'd never look at again. I think we managed to purge about 500! I'm proud of us. We even agreed on how to organize them. 

Some of the books to purge

*

Librairie Paragraphe Books is running a fun showdown of books about Montreal and by Montreal authors: the Montreal Tournament of Books! Bone and Bread is up this week against Gabrielle Roy if you feel like voting! (In the first round, B & B improbably took out Leonard Cohen.)

*

The CBC Books group on Goodreads (I am mostly a lurker there, but I highly recommend it to CanLit fans) is doing Bone and Bread as its Monthly Group Read in August. 

Here is the link: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/16966091-august-15---bone-bread-by-saleema-nawaz 

There is a reading schedule posted and a discussion group to follow along and comment. I have to say through experience that this is a great way to keep up with a book you've been meaning to read! I think I'll make myself scarce so people feel free to comment as they see fit, but if you do the group readalong and have any questions about the book, feel free to post them there and through coordination with the moderator I will be sure to answer them within the month. There will also be a couple of days at the end when, free of spoiler risks, I'll be available for a dedicated Q & A thread. I'm excited!

"yes, I'll be a writer, of course"

We've been doing a lot of organizing and decluttering, as well as finally combining (and maybe even thinning?) our book collections -- which is a post unto itself, really. But one of the things I came upon was an old diary I'd forgotten about.

I was obsessed with Lucy Maud Montgomery as well as very into the notion of a lockable diary, so it should have been the perfect gift except that it looks like this:

Augugh! It's so ugly! But it seems I took one stab at writing in it...although apparently only to write about other, better notebooks. This is also seemingly where I experimented with the notion of stream-of-consciousness writing as simply containing a lot of commas:

There is lots of stuff in here that makes me smile. My main thought, though, was what on earth is a Jimmy-book?? But in the middle of the night I remembered that that's what Emily Starr in Emily of New Moon calls the notebooks her Uncle Jimmy buys her. I can't remember exactly how they're described, but I pictured them as large square-ish hardcover notebooks with creamy blank paper. The red memo I mention is a little spiral notebook -- inspired by the girl detective Abby Jones in Patricia Reilly Giff's Loretta P. Sweeny, Where Are You? -- where I used to record various facts about any mysteries I managed to uncover.

End of June

I'm ignoring (for the moment) all my half-written drafts about events I've done and books I've read. A blog is about what's going on now, so here's what I've been up to:

• playing with the baby

• reading books about decluttering (maybe one day I'll even actually DO it)

• feeding the baby

• eating fudgsicles

• obsessing over the baby's sleep schedule

• marveling at the baby's cuteness 

That's about it! Some of these things take up more time than others...mostly, the last one!
 

Fiction dream and reading lunches

We all had friends come over this weekend, which is always a big help in making a place feel like more of a home. Thanks, friends! Let’s do it again sometime soon.

On Saturday, I had a small victory: I managed to sort through and empty two small containers full of randomness that had begun accumulating when we were staying with my in-laws: buttons, earrings, business cards, Sephora samples, receipts, hair elastics. To give you an indication of my pack-rat tendencies: when I was done sorting, I was left with a pile that can only be categorized as “interesting string.” 

I was also pretty happy on Saturday afternoon when we were gathered around our new table eating a late, informal lunch. My husband was sitting at one end of the table, working on his lunch along with his poems, and my stepdaughter and I were cozied up on our new banquette (i.e. a loveseat, pushed up to the side of the table), reading novels and eating soup.  Maybe it’s not a surprise that I had a moment of feeling truly grateful for my life when everyone was sitting around together quietly reading. (For the record, we also have meals where we sit at the table and talk to one another!)

It was nice to have that time to do lots of reading this weekend, and I did quite a bit of thinking about a new story and even wrote the first scene.  There was also time for a nap on Saturday, in which I somehow continued planning the story and had what seemed like a great idea involving a Saint Bernard. I don’t think the dream idea makes any sense, but I’m tempted to put a dog in, anyway.

And on Sunday, I managed to purge five items in my closet: two skirts, a dress, and two tops.  I’ve stashed them in the giveaway bag in my closet that I'm storing up for the next clothing swap.

I neglected my email and the internet in general, but that seems to be the weekend pattern these days and I’m okay with that.

It's curtains for this one

The home improvements have been continuing. On Tuesday night we put up some curtains we'd purchased on the weekend, along with the hardware to put them up. 

The first photo is at a different angle from the one below because this isn't technically a 'Before' shot, but rather a photo I took with me when shopping for the curtains in the first place. I'm great at visualizing things (even people, places, events) that don't exist, but when it comes to reality, photos are safest. 

You can see some empty boxes I'd left in the window to hide the gap between the end of the blind and the windowsill. I don't want to tell you how long those boxes have been there. (Actually, I don't want to tell you how long it took me to realize how clearly you can see right into the room from the street below through that little six-inch gap.)

Before: messy, curtainless room

After: curtains! Here they are open.

The curtains do the same thing that the new wall of pictures above the couch did instantly, which is make the tiny space feel larger by drawing the eyes up. Plus they increase the coziness factor by, like, literally a billion!

And here: closed! And with my writing table back to its usual clutter.

I've been enjoying them every time I come in and out of the room, not to mention at night and in the early morning. This little alcove where I do my writing is attached to our bedroom, and while these aren't blackout curtains, they definitely keep out a lot more light than what was seeping in before. 

Progress, bit by bit

Bit by bit, that's how things get done. This weekend I framed and hung a bunch of pictures on a previously blank wall:

I also put up a mirror that has been sitting in our powder room for weeks!

A bunch of furniture we’d purchased over the holidays was delivered (now we have CHAIRS around our dining room table! AND a coffee table which isn’t just the piano bench dragged back and forth between piano and couch). Tables might not sound thrilling, but they really are when you’ve gone without for six months.

We also had the opportunity to go see the Habs playing the Blackhawks…

and the Habs won!

Am I lucky or what?

There were a few projects I didn’t get to, but headway was made on a few: curtains and curtain rod purchased for our bedroom, if not yet installed, and a story outlined – if not yet finished. I also dug into The Little Friend (Donna Tartt's second novel) and watched a little TV but not too much (Girls is back!). And here's another great link about why reading novels is good for you...(it boosts brain function for days). All the more reason to carve out some reading time in your week if you're not doing this already!

Things that happened this weekend

Things that happened this weekend:

* On Thursday, the professional restoration people came to take our books and a few other sundries away for cleaning.  I don’t want to tell you how many boxes it took to cart away all our books, but between the books and just a few pieces of furniture, it filled a whole medium-sized moving truck.

* On Friday, my husband shifted the rubble in the kitchen in order to gain access to the cabinets, rescuing what could be saved.  Most of the dishes in the tipped-over dishwasher weren’t even smashed (miracle)!  But the soot in the kitchen was particularly bad…even through the cabinet doors, everything has been covered with a thick and sticky layer of soot that has turned everything a brownish-grey.  This is perhaps most alarming when it comes to my yellow KitchenAid mixer and Le Creuset cookware.  I suspect “Inferno Grey” would not be a popular choice in their rainbow of colour options.  I’m really hoping the soot will shift without major repeated interventions on my part. 

A sooty cupboard, half-emptied. (The platter on

the bottom used to be a light turquoise, like the 

circle in the middle of it where another bowl was resting.)

A lifted-up coaster leaves a white pattern in the

living room soot (somewhat less severe).

* On Friday night, we went to the Sens-Habs playoff game.  And we (Montreal) won!  But it was a real treat for me to see my hometown Ottawa Sens play, too, and it was a very welcome respite from our dirty, stressful week.  (Of last night's game, let us say nothing.)

Youppi was hanging out right 

next to us for a while. 

* On Saturday, we moved out all the stuff we are hoping to clean ourselves (i.e. all of the clothes and most of the kitchen stuff)…which filled up a whole uHaul van and then some.  Ugh.

No less than three sets of firefighters dropped by on Saturday to do walk-throughs as we were packing and moving.  I suppose they take every opportunity they have to see the remnants of a real fire.  I felt pretty pleased with myself for asking the first group of about seven guys if they wanted to help, and on their way out, they each helped --- as per my rapid opportunistic instructions: “This!” “And This!” “And This!” --- to carry all the heaviest items down the fire escape for us. 

Over the course of Saturday night and all day Sunday, I also did about eight loads of our smoky laundry, including a few sinkfuls of handwashing, which has made less of a dent than one would hope in our total combined wardrobes.  But we’re getting there. 

Sadly, reading and writing has fallen so far by the wayside amidst all this upheaval that I am almost despairing of ever picking them back up – except one of the few things I have managed to gain over the years is the ability to (at least temporarily!) stave off this kind of despair.  I have too many things I’m excited about not to start writing again soon, but now is not the time to feel bad about it.  (Right?)

2012 round-up, part one

So much happened this year that I wanted to write about it.  Looking through my photos, I was overwhelmed by just how MUCH happened.  In a way, I'm not surprised, looking back over these blog entries, to read me writing over and over again about how busy I felt.  I'm also not surprised by the long stretches of silence.  Blogging definitely fell by the wayside for part of the year. 

I remember the energy and enthusiasm I was feeling last January.   I was full of ideas and eager to get started, but I knew I still had to finally start editing my novel based on the notes I'd received on January 20th.  But I was postponing.  And the day I vowed to finally start (right here on the blog!) I ended up falling and breaking my wrist.  

It hurt a lot, and I wish it hadn't happened, but one of the upsides was the way I discovered (though, really, I already knew) how much I could rely on my boyfriend (now husband).  He took care of me when I needed it, and even when I resisted it, and when I was probably less than 100% delightful to be around. 

I spent most of my birthday at the orthopedic clinic, where I think I ended up crying because I really needed to get a form filled out to send to HR to accommodate my time off of work.  (Eventually, I did manage to get the form, in one of many subsequent visits.)   

Cast, cake, and candles.

A Scrivening weekend

Well, I didn’t leave the apartment this weekend, which is either a triumph or a failure – depending which way you look at it.  

A rainbow from a couple of weekends ago...when I did leave the apartment.

I tackled my messy room, and I am now officially someone who rotates summer and winter clothing in her closet.   With a few exceptions, all my dresses and summery tops are packed into a Rubbermaid bin and relegated to the top shelf.  I also have an ever-expanding tote bag full of clothes to bring to the next clothing swap I attend.

I also installed Scrivener on my computer – originally purchased as a gift for my now-husband over a year ago, but enough time has elapsed I thought I could safely take advantage of the extra downloads without compromising the initial gift intention.   (Actually, when I bought it for him, I didn’t even have a Mac…and the Windows version didn’t exist, though I think it does now.)  I spent Sunday reading the first half of a friend’s amazing novel MS and doing the recommended (but very long) Scrivener tutorial whenever I could find snatches of time (in between some food poisoning…ugh…) --- and it is totally mind-boggling what this program can do from a fiction point of view.  It has features for screenwriting, poetry, and miscellaneous projects, but it was designed with novels in mind.  And it is actually alarming to contemplate how much time I might have saved on my novel if I’d been working inside this program, although of course I can’t say for sure. 

I loaded up a couple of in-progress projects, just to see how I like it and how useful it turns out to be.  I’ll keep you posted and write more about its features later, if it turns out to become as essential as I suspect it might. 

I missed blogging Halloween (or rather, I'm not sure how comfortable anyone might be with me posting pics of them in their costumes!), so instead I'll leave you with my winning entry in my work's "Horror Dessert" contest.  And yes, that's the Provigo receipt from the cake right there in the picture. 

(I won't.)

In defense of clutter

One of the most eloquent defenses of clutter I have ever read is posted here on Michael Redhill’s site.  

It occurs to me that this is one of a few unsung bonuses to being a writer: taking one’s foibles and elevating them to a state which is not only defensible, but actually inherently better than whatever the prevailing social norm happens to be (in this case, a tidy, minimalist…and therefore possibly even uninteresting…or uncaring!...aesthetic). 

He makes an excellent point about people who are in favour of clutter --- or clutteri as he calls them (I’m not crazy about the term….I’m sure we can do better than this…clutteratus?  Then it could be clutterati in the plural) --- requiring a house or a flat.  Small apartments are not our natural habitats.  These, according to Redhill, put us at risk of ending up on a reality show.

I don’t think my husband is a clutteri – he’s what Redhill calls an orderer, really, but he certainly has enough stuff to qualify as one.  But I think we’re safe from TLC unless someone introduces a show called Book Hoarders. 

Pictured above: the weekend, wherein I clutter up somewhere else with some of the books required for two days away from home.  

Using things up

As part of my efforts to declutter, I’m going to write about my small triumphs and strategies and ordeals. Read no further unless you are fighting a similar battle…or don’t mind hearing about it.

If you are a woman in your twenties or thirties, chances are that you have a cupboard full of lotions, soaps, shower gels, bath oils,and sundry other cleansing products. Most of these probably came to you as gifts -some wanted, some unwanted – though some others may have been purchased on a drugstore whim, or acquired as a sample when purchasing some oh-so-necessary other product. Those necessities, the things one actually uses…well, those get used up right away and never delegated to the back shelf in the cupboard Where Toiletries Go to Die.

I recently cleaned out the cupboards in my bathroom (a tall order considering the size of the cupboards, which are high enough that I have to climb on top of the washer and dryer to reach the upper row), and though there was a fair number of straight-to-garbage products (see above re: toiletries dying), there was also enough left over to clean and primp and scent me for what I suspect may be a full two years. (Perhaps I exaggerate. But I doubt it.)

So now next to the tub, there are three overturned bottles of lotion. (Given that they are pump dispensers, this is no easy balancing act on the tile floor.) Two have been coaxed to give up their remaining, previously unpumpable goods and have already been completely finished and recycled. When these next ones are finished, there are still yet-unopened lotions lurking in a neat row in the cupboard. These, too, will get used, somehow. Don’t be surprised if you come over and I ask you how you feel about the scent of jasmine…

I’m lucky I live alone and there is no-one to complain about these odds and ends balanced around the bathroom. On the edge of the sink, there’s another emptying pump of antibacterial hand soap. It doesn’t look pretty, and it feels and looks like the height of parsimony. But it isn’t only thrift. I don’t want to take for granted what I have, nor do I want to waste anything. The packaging on everything makes me queasy. (I know, I know, it’s recyclable…but how recyclable? How much energy and waste goes into the recycling process itself? I need to look into this.)

I want to be free of so many of the things cluttering my apartment, but I’m a pack rat. Sometimes I have to do things the hard way when it comes to letting go. But the idea is that once everything is gone, I’m going to be oh-so-careful about what else comes in. Here’s hoping.