The Quiet Side of Passion, Alexander McCall Smith

Ian McWhinnie, The Blue Vase, 2017(?)

(November 27) Another quick devouring following right upon A Distant View of Everything, and I read this one even quicker, despite it being a good 10 to 15 per cent longer than the average Isabel Dalhousie novel.

This one does have a lot more going on than usual in an ID novel in terms of daily logistics (the hiring of an au pair and an editorial assistant), as well as in terms of the “mysteries” that beckon to Isabel. 

And this is the first time Isabel is faced with real violence while investigating a mystery -- she has received the odd threat here and there in the past, but this is the scariest so far of such encounters. The central “mystery” here is really quite criminal -- not just jealous or unkind people being jealous and unkind, but actual professionals and serious amateurs trying to bilk somebody. 

And McCall Smith cleverly echoes Isabel’s proclivities in another character who’s not as philosophical as Isabel, to interesting effect.

Enjoyed these last two books very much -- I’ve been reading or trying to read too much self-help and not enough fiction lately, I think.

A Distant View of Everything, Alexander McCall Smith

Stephen Conroy, Untitled (Self Portrait), 2005(?)

(November 23) Wow, this is the first time in years I’ve sat down and read a book in two and a half days! And looked forward to getting back to it in between readings, and was eager to read the next in the series (like I was following a Joss Whedon TV show). I had totally forgotten what that was like. (And for me Isabel is particularly addictive.)

There are at least six books recently listed on this blog that I have not yet even read at this point in time; I can’t seem to work up the dedication to finish them (despite they’re all being very short, since I was trying to be realistic about catching up). 

Then along comes wonderful Isabel Dalhousie and wonderful Alexander McCall Smith and I am reading like a fiend, ignoring the internet.

This one had the usual adorable jumping-to-conclusion-iness of Isabel Dalhousie novels, and realistically so in this case (I seem to remember complaining previously about the trope getting a little hack-y). 

Isabel and Jamie had another son!

Sometimes the reason behind an Isabel Dalhousie “mystery” is light and comic; sometimes it’s a bit dark and/or verging on criminal. This one was not terribly dark -- a lonely man tries to spark widespread dislike for someone he’s jealous of -- but it is a bit more sad than usual (and maybe not something to be left to clear up on its own??).

For the art above, I was looking for Scottish paintings of men crying, since Isabel notes at one point that she’d witnessed three separate men crying within the space of 12 hours -- Jamie, Eddie and Rob McLaren -- and five males altogether within the same time frame if her two baby sons were counted.

But then I saw these paintings of men by Stephen Conroy ... and he was born in Helensburgh, which one of the characters in the novel is also from (or has a summer home in or something)... and so it is the perfect choice. This portrait does evoke Rob McLaren’s embarrassment for me.

Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life, Héctor García and Francesc Miralles

Henri Matisse, Icarus, 1947

(March 6, 2019)  I canʼt remember where I heard of this book or what made me want to read it... I obviously went for it because it is a very short text and I have been desperate these last two years to read at least one book a month.

And I donʼt know why this took me so long, a full five months, to read... itʼs only 186 tiny pages, and itʼs the gentlest little guidebook ever.

It was a bit surprising actually -- for the plupart, it seems to be about this “ikigai” concept, being aware of your special gifts and predilections. It describes life in philosophical terms not unlike an Oprah book. It seems to be very spiritually oriented. 

But two-thirds or so of the way in, it becomes a real practical advice / guidebook, with references to all kinds of studies of longevity and what has been learned medically and scientifically about long life. Suddenly I felt like I was reading the 5:2 Diet books or Frank Lipman, etc.

The authors infantilized the seniors in Ogimi a little bit. 

Here are the Okinawa superfoods: tofu, miso, tuna, carrots, goya, kombu, cabbage, nori, onion, soy sprouts, hechima, sweet potato, peppers, sanpin-cha (jasmine tea).

I want to start drinking the jasmine green tea, and to find radio taiso exercises, and to do a sun salutation every day. But the ikigai part? ...uh, okkkkkk

10 Reasons You Feel Old and Get Fat, Frank Lipman

Lucian Freud, Sleeping by the Lion Carpet, 1995-6

(July 12, 2020) I wanted to read something by Frank Lipman because he is/was the vitamin guy for Goop and got me thinking carefully about omega-3s… and eventually about collagen. I remember liking his opinion that all you really need as supplements are omega-3s, collagen and Vitamin D.

But as I get into this book, I find itʼs about basically the same things as Sara Gottfriedʼs book Younger, which I read just four or five months ago -- eat right, sleep long, do some yoga, take this one vitamin (lol). I should have topic fatigue here. And why is Goop lining up so many duplicates among their experts? 

Anyway -- although the books recommend almost the same health protocols, and offer you two-week or however-many-week programs guaranteed to revitalize you or reset your biological age -- Sara is very much into how your actual cells will change under the microscope and how you will have different chemical results when tested for various conditions, while Frank is very much into making you feeeeeeel good. It's all about you feeling young again (and slim). He also encourages people to customize his various recommendations to suit their own bodies, believing each individual is their own best doctor, which is appealing.

I guess there is a slightly different focus -- she is a genetic researcher, and he is a naturopath, lol.

But, again, in terms of living according to a protocol, just as I'm never going to try to go to bed early for Sara, I wonʼt be trying to go to bed early for Frank. My circadian rhythms will never be top-notch.

I do admire the careful thinking that went into these protocols, though. And you canʼt help picking up a few good habits each time you read one of these guides. Maybe.

The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror, Mallory Ortberg

John Lawson, Little Miss Muffet, 1860s

(June 9, 2020) I loved The Toast so much that I bought this book to support the author (now Daniel M. Lavery), the Toastʼs co-founder with Nicole Cliffe. The Toast was restoringly feminist but I loved it most of all for Laveryʼs art history pieces, like “Orpheus Rescuing Eurydice From the Underworld, in Order of Rescuing” and “Western Art History: 500 Years of Women Ignoring Men” -- always so clever and cheerfully satirical, always so profoundly insightful about human psychology.

I expected The Merry Spinster would be clever because, yes, it is odd that we like to entertain children with the grisliest stories, like about being eaten by wolves, poisoned by witches, kidnapped by beast/men, etc. I assumed Lavery would do much the same thing with these archetypes that he did with classic paintings, and with literature in Texts From Jane Eyre -- highlight the weirdness of human behaviour by anachronizing everything.

And he did do that a little bit, but this collection was not really about taking the piss out of old standards -- it was more about showing exactly what the horrors of everyday life are, and how the victims just endure them.

Like, there are people turning into swans for extended periods, or being made to eat, sleep and sit with a frog 24/7, or falling in love with nonhumans, but the real horrors are the ways in which people are manipulating one another, failing one another, refusing to face reality, taking advantage of othersʼ kindness, etc., etc.... all just really normal everyday nasty things that go on all the time in real life.

So itʼs like reading a bunch of short stories that have slightly surreal settings but which are more about the mundane betrayals, prejudices and bad faith we have all seen or suffered from, and therefore are a bit depressing.

I found it a bit of a chore to read the first few (longer) stories, actually.

But Lavery really has a talent for mimicking the style / the vibe / the tone of any given genre...really recreates the fairy-tale feeling here... and then that is undercut to humorous effect by the anachronisms, just as in the art-history pieces and Texts from Jane Eyre.

[lovesick son]: “She came back to ask me to return her comb, which I had under my pillow, and which I could not give her. For if she does not marry me, I will die, and I wish to be buried with it. Then she asked, if I would not return the comb, if I would not change my mind and live with her under the sea, and I told her I could not, but begged her to visit my grave when I perished from the wanting of her."
[grim, witchy mother]: “You two are never at a loss for conversation, at least."

lol

Mrs. Simcoe's Diary, Elizabeth Simcoe

Elizabeth Simcoe, Niagara Falls, Ontario, July 30, 1792 

(December 20, 2019) I started reading this because it was short, and it felt like “a good thing to do,ˮ to read up on the early organization of Upper Canada, kind of a duty read, but hopefully quick and dirty.

And then I took forever to get into it .... mostly because I knew I would always be able to renew it at the library... as with The History of Gardens, nobody was going to be putting such a run on Mrs. Simcoeʼs Diary that I would have trouble keeping it (but people did request it once or twice over the past year and a half... no one ever requested The History of Gardens for the two and a half years I had it).

But then I finally did read a long stretch of it... and I realized that Simcoe was journeying down the same path that I have driven every six months for the past almost 40 years... it struck me first that I had a lot in common with her experience when she was in Quebec City in midwinter and was gobsmacked by how warm people kept their houses and ballrooms... she was always commenting on being too warm indoors in the middle of sub-zero weather... and I thought, guess what, 225 years later Quebeckers are still keeping their homes superhot in the winter, way hotter than we ever did in Ontario (and my parents were very fond of being warm).

But then the Simcoes proceeded down the St. Lawrence and it was like a tick-off of all the geographical points I have come to feel like old friends after going by them 160 times... the ile of Montreal... Mrs. Simcoe rode out to “La Chineˮ one day to see the rapids but her only comment was “the roads were very badˮ... then the Simcoes travelled down the St. Lawrence... they passed Gananoque, Cornwall, Kingston, all the usual suspects one by one, stayed in York (Toronto) for a while, then made it down to Niagara, my old stomping grounds, where Mrs. S. refers to many landmarks I recognize... and they lived in Navy Hall, which I remember well... and they would go up to visit Queenston, Fort Erie and Chippewa, just like we do 200 years later... and at the end there is also a lot of description of the area I live in now, which to them was “the head of the lake,ˮ and where Cootes Paradise was already named and didnʼt seem to Mrs. S. to be as swampy as usual marshes.

Anyway, it was so interesting to get Mrs. S.ʼs impressions of all these places so long ago... and to think of how they were travelling and living in the wilderness here... and to think George Washington was alive and causing trouble in the States, and Marie Antoinette was executed while they were here... It was all a bit disorienting... when I learned Canadian history it was presented in total isolation... it felt like Canada was separate and very young, and the rest of the world was very old... and that is partially true but Canada obviously has some history too.

Even more striking than the foreshadowing of my own life and geography was Mrs. S.ʼs fortitude... she came over here in a wooden boat in the fucking 1790s to begin with, then when they got here, the Simcoes lived in tents and huts basically... often sitting around outside under “a bowerˮ in the middle of winter. They had tons of servants and a battalion at their service, but it was still a very primitive way of living and they just bore it. Very few complaints of hardship.

They brought with them only two of their children, the two youngest, and then Mrs. S. had another one while she was here! That daughter survived only a year and a half or so, but the shortness of her life doesnʼt appear to have been related to primitive conditions.

I really have to admire Mrs. S.... what she went through, and the talents she had... amazing.... 225 years ago!

And so many things so completely unfamiliar in the way people lived back then.

A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, Eckhart Tolle

Lawren Harris, Morning Lake Superior, 1921

(November 11) I really liked this book… it inspired me… in ways different from the Abraham-Hicks philosophy, although it seems to mesh with A-H stuff quite nicely. In fact, it made me think that A-H is offering the paint-by-numbers model of attaining joy in the present, in order to attract and convert the greatest numbers. Eckhart Tolle shows you what that fucking ego is doing and so it is a more intellectual but probably more thorough approach, but it is so hard to maintain. My ego is huge and mighty, and it is my ego that is saying this now.

Anyway, I liked this book so much I bought it… I feel I need to reread it many times.

Younger: A Breakthrough Program to Reset Your Genes, Reverse Aging, and Turn Back the Clock 10 Years, Sara Gottfried

W.T. Benda, Cover of Life Magazine September 1923

(September 23, 2019) Iʼm pretty sure I heard of this book or this author through Goop -- I didnʼt make a note of it, but when I look up Sara Gottfried these 15 months later, a lot of the results direct you back to a Goop podcast or article about her -- particularly about her first claim to fame, the hormone-balancing protocol. Sheʼs been interviewed and cited many times over there.

Anyway -- itʼs a great book, in that it delivers an interesting premise and a galvanizing promise. ‟Dr. Sara,” as she likes to style herself, is convinced that most people can stave off the worst aspects of aging by following her health protocol, and the protocol is fairly easy and straightforward to follow... itʼs almost exactly what we were taught in Health in elementary school -- eat good foods, sleep a lot, play outside, brush your teeth, and so on... even the moral equivalents of ‟do your homework” and ‟go to church”: now they are ‟keep your mind engaged,” ‟honour your spiritual life.”

Dr. Sara presents all the supporting science to show that you can shorten or lengthen or ‟whatever” your telomeres, and affect all kinds of chemical processes in your body that accelerate aging or lead to ill health, all in terms that are understandable to the layperson. It is so cheering to learn that so much of what we dread about getting old is avoidable, and even reversible!

Her most encouraging refrain is that we are not at the sum total of our genes -- we inherit some unalterable stuff through our genes, but we are not at the mercy of our genetic heritage: most things are affected by environment / nurture.

So when I was first reading this, 15 months ago, the protocol felt easy to do and so rewarding, so I thought I would try to follow it closely, but now, coming back to it and getting into the detailed daily requirements, I find many inconveniences and realize itʼs unlikely that I will be able to follow it to the T. I do some of the basics of it already -- food, sleep, exercise, mental activity...

But Dr. Sara would like you to be in bed by 10 or 11 every night and up at 7 every day, and this is not going to happen for me; this is not what I retired for. Iʼm also going to be bad at the requirement to three times a day brush your teeth with an electric toothbrush and floss. Nor am I going to make bone broth every week, or avoid gluten, or get a sauna every few days, or take all the supplements she recommends, etc.

So I suppose that if I donʼt follow the protocol to the T, I wonʼt get the optimum results... but I donʼt mind: that is an already healthy thing about me: I never stress about meeting goals, lol.

The Wisdom of Sundays: Life-Changing Insights From Super Soul Conversations, Oprah Winfrey

Vix Harris, Oprah Queen, 2016

(April 20) Thank you, Oprah, for creating a Coles Notes compendium of all the spiritual thinkers you have brought to prominence. 

 This lady really knows what the people want. 

 Smallest of complaints: the design of the book, while tasteful, makes it difficult to read sometimes, with all the coloured papers and with text overlaid on art. Sometimes there was not enough contrast between the typeface and the background, and there was too much italic (which makes good contrast even more vital). 

I was interested to pursue more about Jill Bolte Taylor, who lost her ego through a stroke. 

Sister Joan Chittister’s parakeet story made me cry. 

Overall, the book made me want to listen more.

The Seat of the Soul, Gary Zukav

Georges de La Tour, Magdalen with the Smoking Flame, ca. 1640

(July 21) I tend to measure these psychological / woo-woo books against Abraham-Hicks thinking, because theirs is the most consistent explanation of the meaning of life I've come across. 

So I was worried when Zukav showed signs of being Christian-centric: Jesus is always one of his first examples of an enlightened point of view, and, though he mixes in Buddha, Gandhi and a few other spiritual leaders very conscientiously, you can sense that Christianity is a strong force for him. 

But in the end I would say that Zukav’s point of view is perfectly at one with anything the A-H people try to say; he’s just a little more moralistic about it all…he's like the OCD version of A-H, very specific and regimental, very detail-oriented. But I feel like he comes out to the same thing…. let your inner guide guide you, do the right thing because the karma from it is so rewarding, enjoy life the way you were designed to, be kind.

The Miracle Carb Diet: Make Calories and Fat Disappear -- With Fiber!, Tanya Zuckerbrot

Mondongo, Cotton thread on wood panel, 2006

(March 7) I heard of this “way of eating” through Brooklyn Blonde, started following the Tanya Zuckerbrot and F-Factor accounts on Instagram, and got hooked by the concept… I had had some success with the 5:2 diet but this seemed to be healthier and more sustainable…  This title is the only book by TZ available at the library, so I got it, but The F-Factor Diet, the book she mentions the most on her Instagram, is actually the older of her two publications (the Miracle Carb one is more up to date, apparently).

It was good, worth the read (done in an afternoon… I did not read all the recipes word for word, and that’s a big section of the book)… and even though I have been following the Instagram accounts for a while, I learned a lot of details I would not have picked up otherwise. The book is very repetitive, as are the Instagrams, but to me that’s a good sign… it means they don’t fool around with speculation or correction.

I would buy the book if I could get it for under $10… the recipes looked good and the four “stages” TZ recommends for a would-be dieter are distinct.

For now, I am just going to try to add 30 grams of fibre to my daily diet.

Courage Is Contagious: And Other Reasons to Be Grateful for Michelle Obama, ed. Nicholas Haramis

Michelle Obama illustration by Rob Biddulph based on portrait by Ethan Miller (2009?)

(February 7) I picked this up because I was seeing it bruited about on social media and, more importantly, noticing that it was very short… useful when I am trying to get the blog back on schedule.

And of course I liked this because it is a series of tributes to Michelle Obama, whom I already hero-worship. It was nice to have all her talents laid out formally, though, by celebrities.

I don’t recall whether the book takes any pains to explain why this title in particular was chosen, but it wasn’t because there were a lot of stories about other people's spines being stiffened, as per the Billy Graham quote (which, unfortunately, is about the influence of a brave man), but maybe that quote is just a byword in the States for brave people, and Michelle Obama is certainly one of those.

Each of the contributors praises MO profusely and all of them mention her big endeavors (that damn garden especially -- reading about it repeatedly made me wonder more intensely about the actual impact, which is never documented here) as well as her private style.

What was interesting was how each essay addressed the task… how some writers started out with a story about themselves while others started out with an image of MO, or of some improvement she made.

Overall, it seemed to be on the small side as tributes go… and what was really noticeable was the constant reference to Donald Trump and Trumpian things. He is the background to everything now, after a scant year in power… that is way too much influence to have, especially when he’s so regrettable.

When you feel like the book came out more as another rant against Donald Trump than as a sincere tribute to an amazing First Lady, something’s wrong.