Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope everyone had a wonderful long weekend full of yummy food, friends, family, and relaxation --- or at least one of the above!
 
This year's Thanksgiving was a musical one. I sang in a beautiful concert on the top of Mount Royal with the McGill Choral Society Chamber Choir. It was the same material we sang in June at Loyola (in preparation for this concert), and it was an incredible place to perform. It was a huge audience and more and more people wandered in and stayed until the end. It was also an unbelievably beautiful sunny day -- I was walking around outside in short sleeves afterwards!

 Waiting to sing.

The night before, my stepdaughter and I baked two desserts for Thanksgiving dinner: a devil’s food chocolate cake with maple icing and a pumpkin layer cheesecake.

 The fruits of our labour!

Halloween came early for my co-baker

We headed out to the Townships right after the concert, where family had kindly waited on supper for us (and delayed Thanksgiving until Monday). It was a brief trip, but I managed to  squeeze in a walk and even a few rows of knitting with my morning coffee.

We also walked some paths I'd never been on before.

A new path beckons

A mother bear with three cubs has been spotted a few times around the area, so we tried to remember to make noise.

 D. walking with a big stick

The ground beneath our feet

Ce pont n'est pas...

 ...a metaphor

We missed the peak of the fall colours, but there were still a few leaves clinging to the trees.

 Leaf-blanketed road

As always, the fallen leaves made for some irresistible piles.
 

 Mandatory frolicking

And I'd show you a picture of the turkey, but it got eaten too quickly!

One of the surprise highlights of the weekend was turning on my computer Monday night after 11 p.m. to check on something, and somehow, without planning to, starting work on a new story that had been percolating for a few days.  Sometimes 400 words take forever and sometimes they spill right out. Another thing I'm feeling grateful for this week.

20 hours in Kingston

I think I left off of my trip recounting right around when I was running to catch the train to Kingston.  I made it in the nick of time, settled into a double seat by myself, ordered a coffee and ate the rest of my yummy mushroom risotto that I'd been too nervous to eat before my library event.  Then I read (and finished!) Skim on the way there and loved it so much. I wish I'd read it years ago!  

My train was almost an hour late, which meant getting to the hotel only around 9 p.m. --- too late to catch the event I'd hoped to see and too late to try to go to dinner. Instead I headed to the hospitality suite, which I was happy to find was very hospitable indeed: lots of yummy food and welcoming writers, including Lauren B. Davis, Marcello Di Cintio, and Corey Redekop (click through read about their own festival experiences!).   Before I turned in for the night, I also got to meet Shelagh Rogers in person! And as I wrote on Facebook (pretty much immediately) afterwards, any day with two hugs from Shelagh Rogers is basically awesome.

 

A welcoming flag at the hotel

Before my event the next day, I was able to catch the "You Are What You Read" session between Alberto Manguel and David Mason. It was hands down one of the very best (or maybe just most enjoyable?) events I have ever been to at a writers festival. Maybe because it was a discussion between two fanatical book lovers and collectors (David Mason is a writer as well as a preeminent rare book dealer), it got more to the heart of what I care about than the usual discussions about writing. For one it made me feel better about my own (problematically large number of) books, as well as my sentimental attachment to them and my desire to shelve them in idiosyncratic and biographical ways. And my inability to get rid of any of them, even the ones I dislike.

Alberto Manguel talked about how he now seems to interpret the world through the lens of Alice in Wonderland --- a situation to which I keenly relate. David Mason also told the story of a family that required all of their houseguests to read The Wind in the Willows when they came to stay. He said that it wasn't a matter of what they would think of the book...but of how the book would judge them. (I love this idea.) And this was just a small sample of the kind of conversation between these passionate book lovers. 

Look who's on the poster!

 (Clearly it pays to have a good photo...)

My event with Wayne Grady on Saturday afternoon was well attended and it was nice to hear the opening of Emancipation Day in his voice. For one thing, he made it funnier in his reading than I'd gathered just from the page. 

The audience was very warm, and the questions were interesting. The very first gentleman who stood up, though, seemed to have a question about why the "races" included in the event were non-white ones...but it was hard to tell what he was really asking as everyone immediately went to cut him off. I was interested in responding (or at least finding out what it was that he was going to say), but I wasn't given the opportunity. The general feeling in the room was one of alarm and expected offence, and although it is certainly possible that he was about to steer the conversation into terrible waters, I didn't actually get that sense from him. Oh well. 

After the event, I was lucky enough to meet my author patrons (two representatives from a Montreal firm who had contributed to the festival by sponsoring an author.) They were two lovely gentlemen, and I hope I can get a hold of the photos we took and post them here with everyone's permission. Even before we were introduced, I had noticed them in the audience -- giving me good vibes! I am always looking for friendly faces in a listening crowd and it is so much appreciated when I find some.

One of my favourite things at the festival was the Poem of the Day provided by my former Freehand-mate and Writersfest Writer-in-Residence Jeanette Lynes. Here's one from Sunday. I snapped a pic after my event and book signing when I ran out to spend an hour on Princess St. before catching the train home. 

Fresh poetry from Jeanette Lynes

Kingston: short but sweet and very fun! Next up, Victoria and Vancouver!

Friday and what I crave

This week has gone by so quickly I can scarcely believe it’s Friday already.

I’m craving two things simultaneously: 

• A relaxing weekend in my sweatpants, spending quality time with my knitting and with the PVR and everything that’s been taping over the past month.

• Some time to work on the new novel, which lately, does not seem at all horrible and for which I have had a few interesting new ideas. I have an admittedly completely unrealistic fantasy of finishing it within a year, which really could happen if I just managed to spend some time working on it every day.  NB: this kind of self-delusion is the kind of propulsion necessary to produce a novel.

I’ve been feeling that change-of-season sense of creativity, of possibility. I want to listen to new music, read new authors, make something, do something.  But first…a nap. As soon as I get home please.

Oh! And last Sunday we finally made it out to the last day of Mosaicultures, an incredible exhibit on at the Botanical Gardens of Montreal. If you haven’t been yet, you should go…and I can say this now because they have extended it by a week! It’s on until this Sunday. Here's a photo before my phone died....I'll share some more when I get the photos off of my husband's phone. This was one of the smaller installations -- some were truly amazing.

24 hours in Toronto

I'm becoming an expert on the 24-hour trip to Toronto. Top tips: take taxis, wear flat shoes, and call ahead to place your lunch/dinner orders if eating out. This will all save time and stress and let you squeeze the most out of every minute. 

This trip was less crazy than my book launch trip to TO, but it still went by in a whirl. I flew in via Porter at 8 p.m. after a full day of work, got to the hotel a little before 9 p.m., then ordered supper up to my room and started revisiting the notes I'd made for my library talk.

The next morning, I stopped by the House of Anansi offices (always a treat!) and met the new fiction editor at Anansi (a lovely woman who offered me free books...which, given the overflowing state of my apartment, is not unlike offering crack to an addict), left gleeful with a copy of Skim and Hellgoing, the new Lynn Coady (yay yay yay), had a lovely lunch with L, my new publicist, and headed to the Deer Park branch of the Toronto Public Library.

I was nervous that I wouldn't have enough to say...and also nervous that I had too much to say, or that what I'd planned to talk about would be boring (I think readers and writers often have different concerns and preoccupations when it comes to books), but everyone who attended was lovely and made me feel very welcome. Many of them had already read Bone & Bread and had interesting comments and questions.

I was very excited to meet one of them in particular: Catherine Bush's mom! I gushed here previously about getting to meet Catherine at Eden Mills, and I was so happy she asked her lovely mother to stop by and say hello.  (Her mom even rescued me before the reading by helping me locate a key to this very puzzling washroom.)

I usually get uptight about following the directives of signs, 

but this one I was quite happy to ignore completely.

L. suggested we take a picture -- I'd been too shy 

to ask Catherine for a photo together!

Then I had a fantastic though somewhat rushed visit to the brand new David Bowie exhibit at the AGO (so many amazing things to see and hear...and pretty much all the memorabilia you could imagine). I could easily have spent more than twice as long. 

A shot from outside as there was no photography allowed inside the exhibit.

Toronto looking pretty.

When I finally got to the train station (I literally ran from the cab to the gate), everyone was already boarding. But I made it! 

Tuesday Tuesday

I've been feeling the urge to blog, but without much to report except for various adventures on the internet. I've been laying low, reading and catching up (or trying) on emails, and preparing for a couple of events this weekend: a reading at the Deer Park branch of the Toronto Public Library on Friday and a discussion with Wayne Grady on Saturday in Kingston as part of the Kingston Writersfest.

That's right, I am doing an event with the only ever simultaneous dual Giller longlistee (for fiction and translation) Wayne Grady (!!!). So please do stop by if you'll be in Kingston...or just buy a train ticket and come to Kingston for the Writersfest, which has a ton of events I wish I could attend, too. (I'm there for less than 24 hours, but I hope to squeeze in at least one event around my own.) 

Wayne Grady and I are billed to talk about "Writing Through Race," which promises to be a very interesting discussion. (If you've read Emancipation Day, you'll know why.)  When it comes to Bone & Bread, it's not a subject I've really been asked about at all (or thought about, to tell you the truth), so I'm curious as to where the conversation will lead us.

And around the internet:

* I really like this NYT article on Elizabeth Gilbert, and one of these days I will actually get around to reading one of her books since it seems I get excited every time I read something about her. In this article, I like the way she talks about her readers (and about the implied attitude that male readers are more valuable or important than female readers), as well as the descriptions of her writing attic with winding shelves and hidden compartments. Also, it seems like she has actually populated the town where she lives in New Jersey full of her friends and in, at least one case, her favourite restaurant. That's kind of awesome. 

These are the relevant paragraphs about her readers:

The only time I saw Gilbert lose her equanimity, in fact, was discussing her fans. She detests the mind-set that certain readers are more desirable than others. “It’s the worst kind of arrogance. Shouldn’t the idea be that we want people to read, period? Isn’t it an honor if somebody chooses our books at all, whatever her background, whatever her education, whatever her level of perceived literary credentials?” She recalls meeting a woman in a Tulsa Barnes & Noble — “probably 65 years old, looked like an aging country singer with sad eyes” — who told her “Eat, Pray, Love” was the first book she’d read in her life, and she now understood why people read. “So if that’s the kind of reader I’m not supposed to want, well, Jesus Christ. Give me a few thousand more of those!”

Now that people have started telling her that “The Signature of All Things” will attract “a different level of reader,” she can’t help hearing the implicit slight in this praise: “You might be lucky enough to get out of your ghetto, now that you’ve found a better grade of readers, meaning male readers. I want to say: ‘Go [expletive] yourself! You have no idea who the women are who read my books, and if I have to choose between them and you, I’m choosing them.’ ”

*Also, this piece by Kerry Clare about her two different experiences of motherhood is one of the best things I've read on the internet this week. 

*Aaaaand if you find yourself as mesmerized by breakdancing as I am, you will probably enjoy watching this 6-year-old break dancer named B-girl Terra, who is now Britain's youngest breakdancing champion.

Eden Mills!

What a weekend!

A celebration to justify four exclamation marks!!!! 

   
I was really thrilled to be a last-minute addition to this year's Eden Mills Writers' Festival. I'd attended the festival a few years ago, and it has held a special place in my heart ever since. 

The first night was an outdoor dinner in a gorgeous backyard with a magnum of champagne, Wellington's beer, the lovely cake above (which was even more delicious than it looks and upon which Leon Rooke pronounced the most amazing and booming benediction), and getting to sing Four Strong Winds around the campfire before boarding a school bus with the other writers heading back to the hotel in Guelph. (That's the abbreviated version.)

Then it was the big day, where hundreds of writers and booksellers and booklovers descended upon the beautiful town of Eden Mills. 

The lovely stone mill.

Stunning scenery around town

Lilypads galore

One of the highlights of the weekend was finally meeting Amanda Leduc and Allegra Young in person, aka the Bare it for Books girls. And I saw the (amazing!) calendar, too... but more about that later.

I wish I had taken off my sunglasses! But I was too giddy to think straight.

Then, after a quick wander up and down, we went to check out the beautiful venue for the "Young Writers to Watch" event. It was the same place I'd read the last time I was there, and as pretty as I remembered.

Scoping out our reading site, pre-event

My absolutely brilliant reading buddies, Grace O'Connell and Iain Reid.

The lovely Jael Richardson tweeted this photo of me reading!

I especially like the photographic evidence of people actually in attendance.

I was happy our set was first, as it meant I could relax and enjoy the rest of the day. The only downside was that two of the writers I was most looking forward to hearing, Catherine Bush and Wayne Johnston, were each reading in separate sets at the same time. (This happened again later, when everyone was forced to choose between Miranda Hill/Tamas Dobozy/Emma Donoghue and Andrew Pyper/Linwood Barclay/Ailsa Kay and Michael Winter/Joseph Boyden/Colin McAdam.)  Talk about hard choices!

Along with spending time with my fellow "young writers to watch," some of the major highlights of the weekend included meeting and hanging out with David Bergen, as well as getting to meet Catherine Bush, whose books I have loved. Regrets: not tracking down Wayne Johnston and Emma Donahue to meet them and get books signed. I neglected to realize that the Toronto-area authors could and would pop out at any time to drive home. I also really enjoyed meeting some Twitter folks (readers and writers), as well as some very kind readers and listeners who came to talk to me after our event.

So, to conclude: meeting readers and other writers and hanging out with one's literary idols --- pretty awesome!  Plus there was pie:

Pie!

The Arcade Fire/Reflektors show!

One of the members of Arcade Fire was kind enough to put me on the guest list for Salsatheque last night. Excited does not begin to describe my state of mind yesterday! I've seen them play at least half a dozen times since 2004, in every kind of venue, (including a pre-show in St. Michael's church basement before the release of Neon Bible), and I have never, ever been disappointed.

9/9 9 p.m.

Waiting in line with the special wristband

Inside, everyone had conformed to the mandatory dress code of "formal wear or a costume," so it was a little bit like walking into that masquerade party in Eyes Wide Shut...but way less creepy. Everyone looked cool and weird and fabulous. The bobble-head versions of the band from the Corbijn video were mingling with the crowd, too, which added to the surreal vibe.

The venue, a downtown salsa club, started to make sense when I saw the reflective ceiling and walls around the dance floor. 

Two minutes before 9 p.m....waiting for the show to start.

The band played for around an hour, all new stuff, and it sounded amazing. They started with "Reflektor." A lot of the music was danceable in the way that Arcade Fire songs always have been, but it did not all (or even mostly) sound like the single. There was plenty of guitar. I loved a lot of the songs and I can't wait to hear them again. In one of the ones I really liked, Win sang (I think) "Am I cruel enough to be normal?"  (A line that definitely resonates with me.)

Here's a more detailed recap of the set, via Stereogum.

For part of the night, Win was wearing a mask.

Depending where you were standing, it was easier 

to watch them on the ceiling. A reflection of a reflection...

After the band was done playing, there was a super fun dance party for a couple of hours.

Dancing with Win Butler (I swear)

After awhile, an iPhone-shaped pinata appeared on the dance floor, and Win took turns putting his mask on people and getting them to smack it.  (I scored a pack of Popeye cigarettes and a Tootsie roll once it broke open...yesssss.)

Click here to actually watch the video.

Then we just kept dancing the night away. Thanks to Arcade Fire for an incredible evening!