Then We Came to the End

I'm halfway through Joshua Ferris' Then We Came to the End and so far I am really enjoying it. I think it's the only book I've ever read that employed the plural first person ("we"), and while it takes a little getting used to, it works quite well with the subject matter (office life). There is one section that is in the third person, and although this could have been clunky, I found it entirely appropriate.

It's hard to explain what the novel is about; mostly it's about the intricacies of office relationships--friendships, rivalries, romances, personal traumas. On the surface it can read as quite fluffy and inconsequential, but the author does actually address surprisingly big issues like mortality, loneliness, what makes for a meaningful life, bullying and groupthink.

I'd recommend it for anyone looking for a pretty easy summer read that is just unusual enough not to feel like brain candy.

marking; procrastinating; The Book of Negroes; The Torso

I am supposed to be marking; therefore, of course, I am finding many other urgent and compelling things to do. In addition to marking the occasional essay, I have spent a lot of time cleaning up my desk, knitting things for my nephew to be, and researching swine flu so that I can ramp up my anxiety levels to super-high.

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I finished reading this year's Canada Reads pick, The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill. Well, actually, I listened to the unabridged audiobook which was broadcast on CBC and then archived on the Between the Covers podcast. Very gripping stuff--the story pulls you along but it is also well-researched and contains a lot of historical detail. I sort of wish I had read the book, but the audiobook was very well narrated and above all, convenient while I was travelling; I went to Vancouver for professional development last week and then the morning after I returned I had to do a 4.5 hour drive out to a community program. I was grateful to be able to listen to 10 chapters on the way there and back, which kept me from falling into a coma and driving into the ditch.

I read a piece by the author about how he had to change the title for the US publication of the book. Instead of The Book of Negroes (which is also the name of a real, historical document), it's called Someone Knows My Name. SO generic. Hill says, "At first, I was irritated, but gradually I've come to make my peace with the new title," but honestly, could the publisher not have picked a better alternative?

I'm not sure what my book group is reading next, but this was a good pick. We did a quick tally of the books we've read since December and realized that they've all been downers. I like dramatic stuff as much as anyone, but since September we've read about

• war, torture, poverty and exile from Ethiopia
  
• poverty, abuse, and murder in the Maritimes
  
• war, poverty, Nazis and collaborators during WWII in France
  
• war, poverty, starvation and Nazis during the siege of Leningrad
  
• kidnapping, slavery, rape, and murder in Africa and the US colonies.

I suggested we read Angela's Ashes for a little levity.

Our librarian friend is going to make an executive decision and choose a book for us from the book club sets at the public library. I'll be interested to see what she chooses.

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At the moment, I'm reading The Torso by Helene Tursten--it's the second in her Detective Inspector Irene Huss series. It's translated from the Swedish, and it loses nothing in translation but is a nice shift for me from the British mysteries I normally read. I find that a well-written mystery provides a lot of opportunity for meaningful social and cultural commentary. I realize I'm not really getting away from the heavy, depressing stuff here--and it's fairly gruesome, I mean just look at the title--but it's well-written and I don't have to think too hard. That suits me fine because I need to conserve my mental energy for reading student essays.

they thought God had left the museum for good

I'm reading The Madonnas of Leningrad right now; it's about a woman's memories of hiding from the Nazis in the Hermitage during the siege of Leningrad.

When we were at the Krakow film festival, there was a Russian filmmaker who had spliced together footage from the recently released archival reels of the siege. It was all images, little if any dialogue. It was really arresting, just one stark black and white image of suffering after another.

Last night I was reading a passage in the book where the main character and her colleagues (she's a docent at the Hermitage) are working around the clock to pack up all the artwork so it can be shipped out to safety, when I suddenly remembered the lyrics to an old Tragically Hip song, "Scared":

you're in Russia
and more than a million works of art
are whisked out to the woods
when the Nazis
find the whole place dark
they'd think God's
left the museum for good

I've listened to that song many times before, but I never realized what those lines were about until I read that passage.

reading The Flying Troutmans

I was the world's worst guardian of children. I was like the neighbourhood cat lady, but with kids. They were filthy, broken, and eating themselves, and soon they would feed on my old corpse.

From Miriam Toews' The Flying Troutmans