etc.

Action Chicks: New Images of Tough Women in Popular Culture, Sherrie A. Inness

One of the things I love most about academia is that there is always at least a handful of academics pouring their efforts and grant dollars into researching the bizarre and obscure interests of oddballs like me. That is not to say, however, that this book fits into either the bizarre or obscure categories, since pop culture feminist theory is about as mainstream as, well, pop culture, but it is to say that this book is just one of the half-dozen or so that I have piled on my nightstand that appealed to me on some fundamental level. Some of the other books in this pile? One about reading interactive narratives and another about people who live in abandoned subway tunnels. Have I told you, lately, how much I love working in an academic library?

The other thing about academic research is that it’s pretty easy to fall prey to a shiny new book about an obsure topic that ends up being some sort of lacklustre rewrite of a PhD thesis. Not so with this book! In this collection, authors tackle the usual suspects like Xena, Lara Croft, Buffy (yes, Buffy!), Dark Angel, Barbie, and Sidney Bristow, as well as the Powerpuff Girls, Carmella Soprano, Aeryn Sun (Farscape), and Emma Peel (yes, Emma Peel!). And while this collection certainly has enough depiction-of-women-in-pop-culture scrutiny for your average undergrad paper, there’s also a lot of solid exegesis on gender roles and what it means to be a “tough chick” within a predominantly male paradigm. Worth a cover-to-cover read.

Dress your Family in Corduroy and Denim, David Sedaris
Audiobook, 2004

I would do well to remember to not listen to David Sedaris in the car. Apart from looking like a raving lunatic to the drivers around me, I can’t imagine that maintaining highway speeds, laughing uncontrollably, and wiping streaming tears from my cheeks is the safest possible way to get myself to and from work. David Sedaris makes me want to be a writer of comedy, and while I am happy to be a writer of any sort, comedy has never been at the very top of my genre list. He also makes me wish I was a better raconteur, a skill I have an infinite appreciation of, but grievously lack. In this collection, he tackles more Sedaris-family wacky contrariness, as well as a number of other topics (hunting, paedophilia, St. Nicholas) you probably wouldn’t find in your average stand-up routine. Really, you can’t expect me to explain how funny (and astute, and quick-witted, and linguistically deft) this man is, just go listen to this book.

The Gryphon, Alexandria, and The Morning Star, Nick Bantock

More tactile loveliness! This second trilogy picks up where the first left of, continuing the story of Griffin and Sabine through the correspondence of Matthew and Isabelle, with whom Griffin and Sabine are mystically and inextricably linked. While I didn’t enjoy these three books nearly as much as the first three (it felt, at times, like a bit of a con; like Bantock knew he was on to a good thing and was determined to milk it for all its worth), I still took trite delight out of reading the postcards and pulling letters out of envelopes! Is this a new literary genre? Is anyone else writing books like these? I shall seek them out and read every last one!

The other impact the six volumes have had on me (positive or other remains to be seen) is that they have rekindled my longstanding urge to make my own postcards. I have a bit of a fascination with this wierd little form of ephemera, and I had meant to make postcards as Christmas greetings this year, but I ran out of time and had to resort to boxed greetings once again. Next year, then.

The Griffin and Sabine Trilogy, Nick Bantock

If you like postcards, stamps, mail art, and beautiful correspondence, you will love these books (the trilogy: Griffin & Sabine, Sabine’s Notebook, and The Golden Mean). Griffin is a postcard designer in London, and Sabine is a nature and stamp illustrator in the South Pacific, and these three books chronicle their extraordinary correspondence in the most delightfully tactile volumes I think I’ve ever held. There is romance, intrigue, and just plain voyeurism at times (you’re not just reading their mail, you’re literally plucking letters from envelopes that are attached to the pages of the books — delightful!), and I’m now hopelessly in love with these two and am, at the moment, taking my time with the second trilogy (The Gryphon, Alexandria, and The Morning Star). I don’t want it to end.

Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood

Look at me, all crazy with the reading. Although this one is a re-read so won’t be on the annual index, if I ever get to it.

So, the first time I tried reading this book, I was unsuccessful. That didn’t sit well with me since there aren’t many books that I start and don’t finish, so when I saw it on the new audiobooks list in the library catalog, I grabbed it and gave it another go. I read it to the very end this time, and almost found myself wishing I hadn’t bothered. Much of the same criticism as the first time around, which I won’t belabour, so go read the first review if you really want to know what I think (hint: it isn’t positive).

A Million Little Pieces, James Frey

This is a difficult book to read, even if you aren’t easily turned off by bodily excretions, other sundry expurgations, and general physical torment. James Frey enters a treatment centre at the age of 23, after a decade of alcohol and drug abuse, and is essentially told that another dose of crack or another alcoholic binge would kill him. The book recounts his experiences during the recovery process, the people he befriends, his ailing relationship with his parents, and his new relationship with a fellow addict. As difficult as it is to criticize a memoir for underplaying some key elements, I found myself looking for a little less shock-factor and a little more fleshing-out of things like backstory, context and motivation. Apart from that, it’s a good read, if only as a cautionary tale. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

Life of Pi, Yann Martel

This might just be my favourite book of 2004 (read in 2004, that is. It was published in 2002 and won the Booker Prize that year), and that really doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that I’ve hardly read at all this year (compared to previous years; watch for the paltry roundup of 2004 reading coming any day now). The book received a whole lot of press the year it was published, so I won’t get into recapping the basic premise, because you’ve probably heard it all before. Suffice to say that Pi Patel is a charming, imaginative, thoroughly absorbing, and eminently untrustworthy narrator who has a sharp mind, keen inner life, and fascinating philosophical ideas and ideals. This book left me hungry for a sequel.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, Lynne Truss.

Try this: go to your local library or nearest bookstore, pick up this book, turn to a random page and read a couple of paragraphs (read an example or two while you’re there). If you’re not clutching your sides and howling riotously OR thinking about that one other grammar stickler you know and how you wish he/she were there to share the truth and hilarity with (for me, it’s my whole family), you might as well just put the book down and forget I said anything. If ever there was a book written for a niche market, this is it. And who knew this niche was so sizeable?

Not only does this book call upon some hysterical grammatical injustices, it sets the record straight on a lot of style guide stuff, like: periods (erm, full stops, that is) outside or inside quotation marks, plurals of plural surnames, effective comma use, dangling apostrophes, and a whole slew of other punctuation goodies (preview them, & test your level of sticklerness here). If you’re not already slack-jawed with awe and anticipation, move on; if you are, run, don’t walk, and get a hold of this gem.

Knitting for Anarchists, Anna Zilboorg. Published September 2002

Perhaps unfairly, I had exceedingly high expectations for this book. When I stumbled upon the record for it in my public library’s catalogue, I was thrown. A book about knitting and anarchy? Why, it must have been written just for me! As you have probably already guessed, expectations were not met. This book is less about knitting for anarchists than it is about knitting for people who have tried to follow the canon of established knitting rules and conventions and simply didn’t like it (quite different from anarchy, that). There is a lot of how-to information in the first half of the book (remarkably lacking in illustration), and much of it is in the “this is how other knitting books tell you to do this, but you can also do it like this if you’d like” vein, which was interesting and refreshing (I particularly appreciated the part where Zilboorg says — and I’m paraphrasing — “don’t like weaving in ends? Don’t bother! Who’s going to see the wrong side of your sweater anyway?” To which I respond, hip huzzah!). Ultimately I think I was expecting something quite different from this book (not a peep about free form knitting!), which is part of the reason why it doesn’t work for me. But expectations aside, when most of the knitting instruction and patterns disappoint you, there just isn’t enough left to redeem it.

Dude, Where’s my Country?, Michael Moore
Unabridged audiobook 2003

I don’t think I’d do a Michael Moore on audio again. It might have been OK if Michael was doing the reading, because this narrator botched some of the irony, which ruined things for me a fair bit.

Anyway. In Dude, Where’s my Country?, Moore picks up where he left off in Stupid White Men — more about George, more about the Saudi ruling family, more about Iraq, and a bit more about The Big Corporations. I’m glad there’s someone writing these sorts of books, someone with as much vitriol as Moore anyway. I think it’s a good thing that “political humour” stays at the top of the bestseller lists for so long because that means mass amounts of people are reading it. And that can only be a good thing.