The attention span of a firefly in july.

Here is what happens during summer: I become intoxicated by wine spritzers, sunshine, and magazines, and I stop reading books. This year I've thrown Mad Men into the mix and honestly, I don't think I've ever been so happy. Mad Men is amazing. I want to be Peggy Olson. Actually, I may indeed be Peggy Olson already.



She embodies so many of my favourite characteristics: high achievement, self-consciousness, intelligence, bookish yet sassy style, and on-the-job drug use.

But anyway, with the exception of Diary of a Chav by Grace Dent, I have not read a single book in its entirety in about a month. Diary of a Chav is an ideal summer read, though. It's been billed by some as a modern day girl version of the Adrian Mole diaries by Sue Townsend (ARGUABLY THE GREATEST BOOKS OF ALL TIME), and I think this is an entirely fair assessment. Shiraz Bailey Wood is a hilarious heroine and any fans of fun and funny lady fiction with a hint of smarts and smarminess will adore this book. What's more, it's pretty real, which I like in a teen book. A friend of mine recently pointed out how sweet and realistic Shiraz's burgeoning relationship with Wesley Barrington Baines II is, and I agree with her. When she first meets him, she thinks he's a little pudgy and boring. And as the book progresses, she starts to see what a decent person he is (anyone who would pick up a girl running screaming from a bhaji factory and listen intently to her woeful tale of finding mouse bits in the prepackaged pakoras is indeed a gentleman, am I right?). At the same time, she starts to see just how intelligent she actually is herself, and comes to the realization that she deserves good things in life beyond hanging out in the Burger King parking lot. Things move slowly and sincerely, and I like that.

I am a little ashamed to admit that this 200-page book took me about two weeks to read, but whatever. I've got a lot of cocktail- and camping-related irons in the fire, you know?

We're having a heat wave.

It's too hot to write. The residual heat from my laptop makes my legs sweat even more than they were sweating just from the incredible intensity of walking from the kitchen to the computer. This morning at yoga, my instructor suggested we open a water park with all the perspiration on the floor. She also referenced Ferris Bueller, and once again, I was reminded of just how much I love yoga.



Anyway, this heat wave is really frying my brain these days, to the point where I can't really read more than a couple of pages without getting confused and disoriented and cranky. I can't handle any intensity of theme, emotion, or subtext. I'm reading for PLOT, PEOPLE. If you're feeling the same way, I suggest you find yourself a copy of Cum Laude by Cecily von Ziegesar. I've never read a Gossip Girl book, or watched the show, so I can't say whether her latest book, which follows a group of rich-ish college students (and the requisite milk-fed towny boy with a heart of gold and intentions as pure as the winter snow) through their first year at a faux-Ivy school in Maine, is any better or worse than that series. But I will say that I have been pleasantly surprised by the way von Ziegesar takes stereotypes, like the pot-smoking hippie dude who builds his own yurt, or the virginal, beautiful blonde from Connecticut, and makes them relatable and entertaining. And as for the plot, well MAN, I can't put this down. It's like a sexy soap opera for the upper crust. Dynasty-esque, if you will. This is beachy crack-style reading of the highest order.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go take another cold bath.

I drew a map of Canada. Oh Canada.

In light of recent events, not to mention the fact that our country seems to have gone from police-state-style chaos to fawning over an outdated, money-sucking monarch with tenuous connections to our governance structure (NOTE: this statement does not diminish my undying attraction to Prince Harry), I wasn't feeling super Canadian going into this day. To be honest, I'm not the most patriotic person at the best of times. Too many years spent in Ottawa on this, the looniest of public holidays, makes me associate it with street-side insanity, public intoxication, and personal humiliation. And yes yes, I've been in that crowd of drunken revelers myself, and I'll admit, it can be a lot of fun. Not to mention humbling: when those kids got caught peeing on the war memorial a few years ago, I couldn't help but concede that, okay, yeah, that could have been any one of us. You just get THAT CAUGHT UP IN THE SPIRIT.

That spirit is sadly dead inside me this year, though. My plan for Canada Day plan for this year includes an unplugged phone, a whole lot of yoga and the third season of Mad Men. Nevertheless, I had a moment of unbridled patriotism while listening to Jian , who played an old Spirit of the West song, Far too Canadian. I got a little weepy, and I got to thinking about the other songs that make me feel like I'm part of this great country.

Some of them are totally cliche, like A Case of You by Joni Mitchell, or The Canadian Railroad Trilogy by Gordon Lightfoot (aka the song that I can't put on any road mix because I would have to pull the car over to tear up as soon as it came on). Some of them aren't even by Canadians, like I Wish I Was the Moon by Neko Case (although I guess she gets honourary status). It's the national anthem for staring up at the sky, which we seem to do a lot of around here.



Some get stuck in my head for days, in the nicest possible way, like Stompin' Tom's The Hockey Song (although Turkey Rhubarb's version, with Paul Fralick on lead vocals, totally outshines the original). Some are pure summer sunshine, like Plaskett and Sam Roberts, while some bring me back to frigid snowy nights, huddled by a fire, drifting off to sleep.



Some remind me of being far, far away, missing the land that I love.



And some bring me right back home again.



Happy Canada Day, folks.

Where have all the flowers gone.

1. While I may grouse a whole lot about hating my profession and nearly everyone in it and threatening to leave it all behind to become a reiki practitioner, every once in awhile the universe offers me a little nugget to remind me that you can take the gal out of the library but you definitely can't take the library out of the gal. Like this morning, when the Library of Congress released its annual list of recordings to be preserved for cultural posterity. This year's list is pretty killer: it includes The Band, REM, Loretta Lynn, the original cast recording of Gypsy, battle sounds from Guam, the Staples Singers, and Tupac. Fucking TUPAC, man! How much do I wish I'd been part of that selection committee? Answer: SO much.

2. Hearing Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie alongside someone from Antiflag discussing the state of protest music on the Current this morning reminded me yet again why I love the CBC so damned much.

3. It also reminded me why I love Arlo Gurthrie enough to name my cat after him. I think they share an equally random and whimsical sense of humour. And possibly a snaggletooth.



4. If you'll excuse me, I'm off to watch Christopher Plummer chew the scenery at Stratford.

5. I don't go to the theatre much, but whenever I do, I wish that someone would LITERALLY chew the scenery, and I hope that someday I see that happen.

6. Are these the thoughts that someone on the eve of her 30th birthday should be having? Probably not, but hopefully yes.

I do.

As usual, now that I am back home with the parents', I have very little to report. Instead of reading, I spent most of my days making jam, falling asleep in lawn chairs, trying to ride a bike, and helping the neighbour children pick the cherries out of their black cherry ice cream. Thanks to the magic of cable, I have also become completely obsessed with wedding-themed reality programming. Have any of you ever watched Rich Bride, Poor Bride? This is a completely horrifying show. I guess the horror level depends mostly upon the couple being profiled in a given episode, but the one I watched the other night gave me heart palpitations. Unable to agree on ANYTHING for their wedding, the bride and groom opted to hold two separate events on two days, necessitating three dresses for the bride and two for each bridesmaid, not to mention a miniature pony dressed in pink feathers and a cape (I am not joking) to greet the guests outside the hall. They were more than thirty thousand dollars over budget. THIRTY THOUSAND DOLLARS. As someone who has a hard time shelling out more than five dollars for a new pair of underpants, this show is several solar systems outside my frame of reference.

I guess I'm just baffled by the whole concept of a huge wedding with, like, choreographed dance numbers for the bridal party (although I still watch this damned video when I need a little pick me up, as much as it embarrasses me to admit it), and I also feel a little bit sorry for the subjects on the show, who are clearly being set up to look like complete nincompoops who fight over things like ice sculptures and fondant figurines. On second thought, I have a sneaking suspicion that anyone who would sign up to appear on television during what is arguably a very vulnerable period for any nascent partnership is probably fairly alright with having their emotional baggage on display, but that doesn't make my jaw drop any less. As a friend once said, weddings represent the coming together of two people and the complete spiritual undoing of about a hundred other involved parties. She hit the nail on the head, and also defined very perfectly what I masochistically love about weddings: love and celebration run right alongside chaos and pain. It's like all my favourite feelings together in one place. There's something appealing about a hot mess, you know?

And in lieu of a coherent conclusion, here's a feel-good love song to start your day.



Oh, and this. Which totally makes me cry. Every hell damn ass time.

Old man, take a look at my life.

Recently I've developed a bit of a thing for crochety old men. On paper, I mean. It started with a complete obsession with Studs Terkel, compounded by my discovery that Harvey Pekar had edited a really wicked comic book version based on the original transcripts. From there I moved on to listen to a bunch of Terkel's interviews, collected on Voices of our Time and owned by my library (and probably yours). A friend of mine described Studs Terkel as "the man Ira Glass wishes he could be." For any non-NPR-listeners, you can probably replace Ira Glass's name with Peter Gzowski for an apt analogy (although then you would probably argue that Gzowski truly IS Terkel's Canadian counterpart, AND HOW!, and then you could up and die of embarrassment at what a huge radio nerd you are.). He's a man generally interested in the human condition and the human story, and he seems to draw the most amazing truths out of his subjects. I've written before about a couple of my favourite passages from Working, and here is another gem.

“Perhaps it is this specter that most haunts working men and women: the planned obsolescence of people that is of a piece with the planned obsolescence of the things they make. Or sell.”

Insight! Horrifying, panic-inducing insight!

Anyway, my Terkel-philia waned a little this weekend, when the audio version of his book Coming of Age: The Story of Our Century by Those Who Lived It got me so drowsy I almost drove into a ditch alongside Highway 38. I hate to undercut the importance of oral history and undercutting everything I've already said, but listening to this book was a little like being trapped on an elevator with Abe Simpson. So I cut my losses and moved on.

My second old man turned out to be Kurt Vonnegut, a man who has wandered in and out of my reading life for nearly as long as I've been holding books. Again, I've written before about my complicated relationship with him, but I'm happy to report that, if only for today, Kurt and I are back on. Maybe it's just the magic of Rip Torn's dulcet voice reading Vonnegut's words to me. I think that's exactly what it is, in fact. Rip Torn is finally giving a pitch-perfect voice to the words in my memory, and he is pulling it off. I'd go so far as to say this recording is the cure for the drive-home-Monday blues. Vonnegut's cranky words in this compilation of miscellaneous non-fiction from his later years should make you cry with abject grief about the state of humanity, but out of Torn's mouth, the words will make you laugh harder than you've laughed in a long time. Get thee to the library, and check out Armageddon in Retrospect, read for you by Don Geiss. You won't regret it.

And now, a tangential video-finale.

A word devoid of meaning.

It's Friday, which, since I have to work on Saturday this week, is a statement that has lost its relevance. Yesterday morning at the end of my yoga practice, my teacher said, "Back when I was in undergrad, Thursday was the new Friday. So I hope you live your Thursday like it's a Friday today." A lovely notion, but seeing as how I can't even live my FRIDAYS like they're Fridays, it was lost on me. Moreover, when I was in undergrad, Wednesday was the new Friday. Clearly in Toronto we were a little bit ahead of the curve.

Anyway, the one thing we can all agree on is that we're at the week's end. I have a lot to do this fakest of fake weekends. In between a much deserved haircut, a lot of half-assed hours clocked at the reference desk, and taking self-portraits of me and my cat, I also intend to do a little bit of actual, non-magazine reading. Here's my to-do list.

1. The Bedwetter by Sarah Silverman. I started this last night (once I'd gotten through my priority-reading, a feature article on Ellen Degeneres in Shape Magazine. I know. In my defense, it was written by Jennifer Weiner, and therefore counts as literary non-fiction.). It is really, really funny and poignant. Colour me surprised. I've only seen a few snippets of Sarah Silverman on TV and on the internet, and her humour isn't exactly my cup of tea, but she makes a really excellent memoirist. From now on I am only reading autobiographies that feature accounts of taking too much acid and forgetting how to drive.

2. The Widower's Tale by Julia Glass. Working in libraries has maybe three perks, and one of these is access to publishers' reading copies. I love Julia Glass, and am constantly thrusting her books at everyone around me (it you haven't read Three Junes or The Whole World Over yet, I don't want to talk to you again until you've finished them), and this new one isn't out until September. You might say I'm travelling INTO THE FUTURE.

3. Crooked Little Heart by Anne Lamott. I just finished her latest, Imperfect Birds, which was, like all her novels, one of those books where you want to slow down your reading and make it last forever. She's got such a knack for characters, mothers and daughters and the hard love that comes with being a family. Her descriptions of Northern California make me want to jump in my car and drive. Her unassuming and surprisingly unannoying thoughts on faith and love and compassion make me want to devote myself to spirituality. And halfway through, I realized that these were the same characters that populated her earlier works, Crooked Little Heart and Rosie, so now I need to go back and visit some old friends in an older time.

4. Lonely: Learning to Live with Solitude by Emily White. Because sometimes you just want a book that you can read and just nod enthusiastically in agreement at everything therein, you know? Also, what an adorable cover!

TGIF, y'all.