Most of my time is spent reading, writing and waiting for the mail man. He arrives most days between 9 and 3 pm. I try to work in the time I’m waiting, but seconds after he leaves I’m up and at the door, checking to see what’s come in.

Today I received a rejection which invited me to send in more stuff. That was kind of nice. Nicer would be a publication I’m published in, an acceptance letter, or, let’s get really optimistic, a cheque. For poetry. Yeah, stop laughing, it happens. Rarely, sure, but it does, in fact, happen.

John Degen has a piece in the Globe about how writing isn’t free. It deals mostly with the Access Copyright case, but it could be extended to the price people want to pay for culture. Everyone wants it: music, films, books, art – but no one wants to actually, you know, pay to support the people who create it. Even to the extent of bemoaning tax dollars (various grants) going to sustain the very things that help cement our identity, fixing who we are as a people in mediums that can be experienced and shared, and…

Ok, forget it, here’s your free linkage:

• A six-year old guesses what literary classics are about based on their covers. Hilarity ensues.
• More funny: Ewan Morrison says there will be no more professional writers in the future. Oh wait, that’s not funny, that’s horrifying. See above.
• Jess Davidson reports on the Torontoist blog that a number of mini-libraries are popping up around the Beaches. I love this kind of stuff. I wish there was more of a market for it in my neighbourhood.
• Someone’s put together Rory Gilmore’s reading list from Gilmore Girls, a show that was smart and funny up until its final season. Check out the rather extensive list here, along with the comments section for corrections and additions. I heart you, Internet.
• If that’s not enough, Flavorwire has a “The Reading Lists of Your Favourite Fictional Characters,” compiled by Emily Temple. Top of the list is, of course, Ms Gilmore.
• Margaret Atwood has lent her name to an online poetry prize.
• I don’t give a fig about the Olympics, but even so, I do think it’s kind of cool that Canada has a poet-in-residence, Priscila Uppal.
• FirstShowing.net shares the first trailer for the new Life of Pi film. Though it confuses me a little. Friendship? What about, you know, the cannibalism…?
• Speaking of eats, Temple has another great list on Flavorwire where she’s rounded up a recipes from well known authors. Want to try Eggs à la Nabocoque? How about Elizabeth Bishop’s Brownies, or Emily Dickinson’s Coconut Cake? Vegetarian or no, I don’t recommend you try any of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s turkey recipes. Yikes.
• Blastr has shared four spoof labels for the popular soup company in honour of our favourite chin’s birthday. My favourite: Bruce Campbell’s Cream of Darkness.
• The Damson Dene Hotel in England’s Lake District has replaced the Gideon Bible with Twilight fan-fic. Ick.
• Speaking of bad books, Jacob Silverman blames Twitter for the decline of publishing negative reviews. Um, what?
• Lemon Hound interviewed Natalie Zina Walschots on reviewing. Good stuff.
• In turn Natalie Zina Walschots has interviewed the awesome Beth Winegarner about her interest heavy metal for Canada Arts Connect.
• Unsure how to mosh? There’s a (presumably unintentionally) hilarious eHow article to teach you “How to Mosh Different Styles.” You know, for when you’re in the “mosh zone.”
• You may need an outlet for aggression after reading Amanda Craig’s vapid piece in The Telegraph, “If Maeve Binchy had been a mother …” Rage.

No “mosh zone” nearby?⁽¹⁾ Diffuse with a picture of my cat being adorable.

There, all better now.

Footnotes:

1. Seriously, who calls it that? [↩]

I’ve never really set targets for my reading before, beyond a general expectation that I’d read at least a hundred books a year, but last year a friend pushed me to challenge myself to commit to 150. According to Goodreads I surpassed it, but according to my own count I read 135. I read twenty-seven graphic novels that I hadn’t added to the count. For the past three years, I’ve listed the graphic novels I’ve read, but not included them in the total number of books I read.

This was, admittedly, due to a foolish prejudice I’d acquired that graphic novels somehow didn’t count as “proper books”. Most of them can be read in about an hour, often they’re picture (rather than text) heavy, and though I read comics prodigiously in high school (Marvel universe FTW), I couldn’t quite convince myself to put them at the same level as the classic lit I was also reading.

I know, I know. It was snobbish and stupid. There are tons of wonderful and highly literate examples in the medium. Marjane Satrapi’s Persopolis, and Blankets by Craig Thompson, Skim, by Mariko Tamaki and Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series is rife with literary allusions, both overt and more subdued. It’s not all men wearing underwear over their spandex leotards and large breasted women bursting from their flimsy costumes. Graphic novels count. Books like Kate Beaton’s excellent collection of comics Hark! A Vagrant count.

So, for the first time I’m including comics and graphic novels in my official tally of books read. I feel like I’ve grown as a person. Continue reading »