Tag Archives: Canada

Reading Catchup

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I’ve been reading quite a bit since the COVID thing started (although not as much as I had anticipated seeing as I have all this time available), but the pace is picking up (in between jigsaws!), and I’m planning on reading more now that school is finished and the grades are in. Phew. 

In the past few weeks, I’ve read a mix of books, a couple of them really excellent and one just meh, but all of them off the TBR. (Go me.)

The “just meh” one was “Home Life One”, the first of four volumes and a collection of newspaper columns from an English journo (?) named Alice Thomas Ellis. (See top pic.) She wrote columns on domestic life, I suppose you’d call it, and they were published in The Spectator, a British magazine that runs conservative (I think). 

I must have read someone somewhere online praising these offerings and rushed out to order it, but the columns didn’t seem to hit the same high notes for me. I think some of this was because I just worked my way through the collection, one after the other, and I now doubt the wisdom of reading the book that way since it all got pretty same-y after a while. Maybe I should remember that next time I choose a similar book. The content was also a little dated (but that’s hardly the author’s fault!) Moving on…

The good reads: a Canadian novel called “Birdie” by Tracey Lindberg (2015). Selected as a 2016 CANADA READS title, I picked this book up on a trip to Vancouver last year as one written by an aboriginal native author. This was a really good read, although it covers some heavy-duty topics as part of the plot: sexual abuse, mental illness, native rights… 

Kudos to the author, though, as this book reads smoothly and although the characters (one in particular) undergoes some hellish experiences, it’s written in a manner that it’s not too much for you as a reader (although it might be triggering for some people). Good book; off the TBR; native author about native characters: win-win-win. 

(Plus – look at the fantastic artwork on the cover: It’s a detail from Modern Girl, Traditional Mind Set by George Littlechild (2010), an author/artist of the Cree Nation, same as Lindberg.)

The other excellent read was just a cheapie bargain book from the sales shelves at B&N (when it was open), but despite the price, it was soooo good (if you like this sort of thing). I’m going to do a more thorough review in the next few days as I’d like to chat about it more in-depth, but suffice to say, I loved it. Stay tuned.

And then a good friend of mine happened to ask me to be an early reader for her second novel – which I loved. If anyone is an agent (or knows one), please let me know. I’d love to hook my writing friend up with someone who knows what they’re doing in the publishing world. Other people need to read her work – it’s good!!

And naturally – jigsaws! 😃

New summer arrivals at JOMP

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A few new titles have slid in past the goalie in the past few weeks so thought I’d give you the deets on those:

Vacationland – John Hodgeman (NF). (From a good write-up over at What’s Nonfiction? Super-good NF blog.) ETA: Read. See post review here.

Birdie -Tracey Lindberg (F) – Bought in Vancouver and by an indigenous author.

Writing without Bullshit – Josh Bernoff (NF). Bernoff was a speaker at a work conference I attended earlier this summer. Made some excellent points about professional writing/editing and I was impressed enough by what he had to say to fork over some money for his book. (That rarely happens…) ETA: Read. OK. Some good points but a little snarky.

From Holmes to Sherlock: The Story of the Men and Women who Created an Icon – Mattias Bostrom (trans. Michael Gallagher). Not quite sure where I found this title, but I’m a Sherlock fangirl so looking forward to this NF title.

Random Vancouver pics…

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Side by side contrast view of old hotel vs new one.
Fairmont Vancouver Hotel (with green roof). The old and the new co-exist happily in Vancouver.
A lovely face shot of hotel dog, a yellow Labrador.
A very sweet hotel dog who hangs out by the concierge desk at the hotel.
An example close-up of some aboriginal native art.
Example of aboriginal art at the UBC Museum of Anthropology.
Pic of random guy having lunch in the architecturally interesting rooftop garden at VPL.
Great place for a lunchtime break at the VPL (in their rooftop garden).
Pic of some more aboriginal art on the street.
Example of some First Nations art style…
Pic of trans-welcoming bathroom signs.
Sign of the inclusive times in Vancouver: welcoming all at the VPL bathrooms.
Photo of lady on Vancouver street giving her pet duck a ride on a shopping trolley.
The lady taking her duck for a walk on the streets of downtown Vancouver. Because why not? 🙂

Active outdoor Vancouver…

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View of Capilano Suspension Bridge as it crosses the chasm below. Lots of fir trees!
The Capilano Suspension Bridge, Vancouver. (Pic from park website.)

Set in the lower left corner of Canada, British Columbia’s flagship city of Vancouver seems to have the best of everything in its location: close to the Pacific Ocean, close to mountains, plenty of green, easy to get to (good to and from airport transportation), friendly people… Plus, the locals tell us that it’s pretty moderate, despite being so north: medium summer and medium winter… (unlike Toronto, according to a couple of people, where temps are really hot in summer and really cold in winter. Is this true?)

Situated as it is on the west coast, Vancouver is also full of outdoor active choices, and the SuperHero and I wanted to make the most of some of these whilst we were there. Of course, limited time and finances meant that we couldn’t do everything, but after researching, it looked like the two things not to miss were both achievable and super-fun.

Our first outdoor adventure was a quick trip to the northern part of Vancouver and its surroundings to visit the Capilano Suspension Bridge Park. Set in the Canadian rainforest (which I hadn’t realized that Canada has), this national park features a lovely old cable bridge (which really sways) and a treetop wooden track which allows you to see the rainforest from high up in the canopy. (What a great idea.)

Birds-eye view of the wooden suspended path that takes you through the rainforest canopy at Capilano Bridge Park.
Part of the treetop wooden path that gives a birds-eye view of the canopy. (Pic from park website.)

I wasn’t really expecting that exciting a ride from the cable suspension bridge, but you know what? It’s actually much cooler than I had anticipated so poo on me for thinking that.

The bridge spans a large gorge (I think is the right term?) and is wide enough for two fairly typical height-weight appropriate people (or one rather large person). It’s built using cables so the bridge actually sways in the wind and wobbles from side to side, so you’ll probably need to grab the handrails at time to steady yourself and the view is outstanding. (Not recommended for perhaps very old or unsteady folks…)

Once you reach the other side of the cable bridge (which is the first thing to do when you enter the place) and have survived the overly-dramatic groups of teenaged girls walking across (:-)), then you get to go on the Treetop Adventure experience (which is the wooden track high up in the tree canopy that gives you a super-great view of life as a bird/squirrel). It’s sounds very plain-Jane, but is in fact a really nice experience as you get to look down and around from an unfamiliar view. (Plus – it’s so green!!)

And then towards the end of the trail, there’s a big climb up some stairs to reach a glass overhang than gives you a view of the rocky chasm right beneath you. Honestly. If you get the chance to see this place, it’s worth the effort to get there.

(And – what is really helpful is that the place provides a free shuttle from downtown Vancouver by the harbor so you can just jump on to that and get there really easily and cheaply.) Totes enjoyable.

Pic of bike-rider view of coastal bike path that hugs edge of Stanley Park.
The bike path that hugs the coastal edge of Stanley Park – fantastic!

The next day was also a super-fun outdoor experience when we rented assisted bikes (i.e. bikes with a little motor attached) and rode the wide and well-maintained bike path that takes you from, again, the downtown harbor to the nearby Stanley Park, a huge outdoor park place which juts out into the ocean with a well-designed bike/roller-blade path (separate from the walking path) to follow that hugs the coast.

(Note: You might want to take a light jacket with you since, due to the off-shore winds, the temp can get quite a bit lower than it is downtown. We could have used one each…)

The park is a lovely ride and has occasional stops for a quick coffee or similar, and the views are simply amazing. The bike rental place provided a lock, helmets and a map, and then it’s up to you. (Bike rental places are pretty easy to find, so no shortage of those.) Since we opted for the motor-assisted bikes, it wasn’t strenuous and kept it fun. We had a great time, to be honest. Worth doing and pretty affordable since the only thing you pay for is the actual bike rental, and our ride took about 2.5 hours in total.

After that, we hung out at the harbor for a bite to eat and to watch the cool sea planes land on the water, and then it was back to the hotel.

Vancouverites: thank you for a lovely and welcoming visit! We’ll be back. I’m curious how you guys handle winter! 🙂

Pic of five large painted totem poles in front of small patch of forest. Varying heights and designs.
Some of the authentic totem poles throughout Stanley Park.

Bookish Vancouver highlights…

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A panoramic view of Vancouver's harbor and the sea planes.
Panoramic view of Vancouver Harbor downtown.

As is my tendency, I walked around Vancouver during my recent visit looking at the city through a bookish lens: always fun to do, and found some fascinating (and impressive) literary hangouts.

I’m always up for a visit to a local independent bookstore, and a quick search online yielded the nugget that the Indigo bookstore was quite close by, and although it’s not that well sign-posted externally (so easy to miss), it’s a treasure trove of literary loveliness inside the actual store.

View of inside Indigo bookshop.

It’s a well-lit haven of all things to do with the written word, including books (with a special focus on Canadian authors/lit which I found very helpful), but also a pretty well-stocked supply of other authors, big and small, and the usual selection of book-shop extras such as blank journals and other stationary accessories. (These were lovely though, so I’m not knocking it at all.)

I had entered with the intention of buying a title by a Canadian First Nation/aboriginal author, but when I asked an associate, she pointed me to the tiniest display of Canada-related books. I was confused as to the small choice since this place is one of the premier bookshops in Vancouver, so I looked at the selection and then looked up and there, before me stood a whole WALL of Canadian authors/books which had a much larger selection.

After pondering why I hadn’t been pointed to this huge display of possible reads, I mooched over to see what they had – such riches by authors new-to-me and old, but since luggage space was at a premium on this trip, I ended up buying just one book. (They did however have a sale on Moleskin notebooks – sales are rare! – so I ended up buying one of them for 20 percent off. (Seriously – there are never sales for Moleskin journals and notebooks. Never (at least in my experience).)

Pic of written welcome statement to !ndigo bookshop in Vancouver.

(Since Canada uses dollars (except they’re Canadian dollars – of course), I kept forgetting to translate prices to U.S. dollars so at first, everything seems sooo expensive, but when I finally remembered to do the exchange rate, things were actually pretty good prices. Sigh. I was such a tourist.)

External view of Vancouver Public Library. (Looks like a variation of the Roman colluseum.)

Another free afternoon later in the week yielded a happy visit to the Vancouver Public Library (VPL) which is, to put it mildly, a FANTASTIC space for readers. Seriously. It’s one of the most modern and biggest libraries that I have ever visited. Floor after floor of literature and numerous other community services (even a musical instrument lending collection (should you need a banjo or a flute, for example).)

The VPL was amazing on each floor (and there were nine floors!). They had writers-in-residence positions (along with a focused Indigenous Writer position), they had so much light and space for its patrons, and get this magical option: they had a roof-top garden available for everyone. This wasn’t just an afterthought as well: it was landscaped with trees and plants, provided shade and tables and chairs (along with benches) and the view was stupendous: you were almost sky-high with all the notable surrounding architecture, some of which buildings also had roof-top spaces for their tenants. I’d never seen anything like it. Even better, it was free and available for anyone in the community.

View of fantabulous rooftop garden available at VPL.
Rooftop garden at the Vancouver Public Library. Be still, my heart. (View from rooftop garden in below.)

(Curiously, Vancouver is a very clean city. I didn’t see that many trashcans so I’m not sure where Vancouverites put their rubbish, but perhaps this is sorted out by the commonly available and comprehensive recycling cans? Not sure.)

In case you’re still wondering, I really enjoyed Vancouver!

(For more info about my Vancouver experience, try this post.)

View from one perspective of the VPL rooftop garden. (Pic of close-by residential building with gardens and balconies on high stories.)
Image of display of VPL's musical instrument lending collection...
The musical instrument lending library display…

Oh Canada…

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Canadian flag fridge magnets on display in shop.

Earlier in the year, I happened to be very lucky to learn that work would be amenable to funding my attendance at a professional conference to be held in Vancouver. (Canada? Yes please.) After jumping through the required administrative hoops, I soon found myself in a plane seat heading for the Great North. Good stuff.

The actual conference occurred for the first half of the week, and then I opted to stay a few more days to meet up with the Superhero and see what we could experience in the metropolis of Vancouver. So much to choose!

One of the first places that we visited (and actually, this was pre-conference as I’d also arrived a bit early) was the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Vancouver doesn’t support Uber or Lyft so we were forced to either pay for a taxi (big bucks) or figure the journey out old-school by public transportation (meaning mostly buses). (No biggie but did take us by surprise a bit.)

Luckily, it was pretty ok to figure out bus schedules and pick-up places etc., but it still took quite a long time to actually get to the UBC campus. In the end, it was so worth it as the university has a gorgeous location full of plenty of trees, public art and close to the sea. (What a treat for this person.)

Close-up pic of a wooden piece of art showing First Nation's symbols and colors (from University of British Columbia-Museum of Anthropology).

The actual museum itself was modern and well organized, so kudos to those folks. The most interesting section (and the one where we spent the most time) ended up being the Great Hall section where it was focused on the local First Nation people’s experience in the region. This included totem poles which were fascinating!

I happen to live in West Texas and Native American tribes were common throughout our region, but these were Plains tribes who commonly moved around and also did not have access to plenty of forest for totem poles so the poles were a new thing for me.

One thing that I hadn’t realized about totem poles is that there were usually several poles outside the dwellings of prominent people in the tribe’s community. I learned that these important houses would have two totem poles outside their front entrances, so although I think it’s inaccurate to report that each village was a forest of totem poles, there were definitely more than just one (which is what I had originally thought).

Each totem pole is carved with significant symbols that tell a story related to the family or individual outside whose house these poles would stand, and when I saw the poles in the museum standing in this awesome display area, they looked very majestic. They were huge – much taller and more sturdy than I had thought, but then that would make total sense as I think the Vancouver-area tribes weren’t that nomadic (at least compared with the West Texas tribes.) (Plus the no-trees thing which is significant around these here parts, pardner.)

This was a fascinating area to explore as it was all very new for me, and I loved it. The museum also focused on aboriginal/First Nations artists as well, so we were introduced to such luminaries as Bill Reid, a modern First Nations artist whose work was solid, beautiful and meditative in a way with strong connections with the natural world. (And slightly randomly, the place also had big collections of ceramics…Not sure of this connection with anthropology but there you go… ?)

Pic of sculpture, The Birth of Man by artist Bill Reid. Wooden carving.
Sculpture by Bill Reid: “The Birth of Mankind”. (At the UBC.)

So, after walking through the museum, we had a bite to eat at the small museum cafe (great food, btw) before we visited the nearby Nitobe Memorial Garden, a 2.5 acre Japanese garden also on the UBC campus and about a five-minute walk from the museum. This was gorgeous: incredibly green (so many different shades of green!) and serene, with a lovely winding path over bridges and around the different park spaces.

Before my trip, I hadn’t really put it together in my mind how geographically close Vancouver actually is for visitors and immigrants from many of the various Asian countries, but of course it is. (It’s actually closer to these countries than LA since the land sticks out a little bit around Vancouver.) Thus, there were absolutely tons of overlap between the different cultures and how they existed in Vancouver. (Another cultural layer to uncover for us!)

More to come, but don’t want to overstay my welcome with you with all this travel news. Suffice to say, we had a fab time. 🙂

Photo of serene Japanese garden, the Nitobe Japanese Garden, with stone wedding lamps, a small bridge and lots of trees and plants.
A view in Nitobe Memorial Gardens in Vancouver. Worth a visit!

More Canadian trip posts:

(If you’re not sure, I loved Vancouver. And Toronto… Planning on heading east for the next trip up north. Watch out, Quebec and co. 😉 )

Summer Catch-Up: Flower beds and books (of course!)

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So I’m at the beginning of summer break (woohoo) which is a great gift for faculty. All the graduates have gone off to explore their worlds and I have a space until the beginning of July to hang out and do stuff (or not, as the case may be). I wish I could share this with you all though.

So, what exactly have I been doing? Well. Let’s see…

I have redone the two flower beds in front of the house. This included removing every single river stone from each bed, planting some annuals in front and filling some gaps in the boxhedge, and then I’m now putting each of those river stones back in place. (Phew. A huge job for me, but it will look good when it’s done. See photos below for updates on progress.)

Flower bed #1 (after all stones pulled out). Ready for planting annuals and putting stones back.
Flower bed #2: halfway through the process (now completed).

I’ve also been reading, naturally, so seeing as it’s summer (and the living is easy :-)), I thought I’d just do some reviewlettes to keep caught up with the titles.

I had a fun read of R.C. Sheriff’s Greengates (1936), a domestic mid-century novel about an English couple who have to (re-) find themselves after the husband retires. Nothing too deep and meaningful, but just a good solid read. Just right after the end of the semester…  

I had a lovely peruse through a coffee table book on modern interior design and yearned for some of these rooms. (Unfortunately, I don’t happen to have one zillion dollars at the moment, but when I do… Yes.)

Called Interiors: Inside the American Home and edited by Marc Kristal (I think), these were not your average American home. No sirree bob. It was more along the level of perhaps the Kardashians, but it was still enjoyable to look at how the designs were for the rooms, and learn more about my own style. I can still pull the pieces of design that I really like and integrate it into my own home, yes?  

In the mood for short stories, preferably speculative fiction and by a POC, I went looking for some more Nalo Hopkinson and came from with the library edition of Mojo: Conjure Stories, an anthology edited by Hopkinson. This is a collection of short stories written by a variety of authors across the globe, but all POC and written through the lens of Caribbean and AfAm magic. (Magic is a little bit of a stretch for me to read, but the majority of these stories were fine… Only a few didn’t make the cut, in my opinion, but that’s to be expected with an anthology.)

Overall, this was a fun read so I’m open to reading more along those lines in the future.

And now I’m choosing my next read. Which one, which one… ? (Plus – finishing the flower beds!)

Oh, and plus this: I’m off to Canada in a couple of weeks for a conference, so been reading about Vancouver (where I’ll be)… Cool beans.

Bye Bye Summer…

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toronto5

Well, somehow the end of summer has arrived, and I am now immersed in the annual ritual of going back to school. I had a great summer, and now I’m looking forward to a lovely autumn. My favorite month – bliss.

It also means that (hopefully) we are on the downside of moving to cooler temperatures, but it will still be a while yet. It was close to 100 degrees outside yesterday, so I’m very thankful that I happen to work in an office with air conditioning.

August turned out to be a busy and fun month. I finished up teaching the writing class I was handling as a summer class, and then I met up with my lovely mum and sister up in Toronto (one of my favorite cities now). Had great fun and walked our little legs off. Now I’m trying to find another time to visit all the other things that we didn’t get to see in our last visit… Did love Toronto though.

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Niagara Falls (from the Canadian side of things.)

After that trip, we had time to wash our clothes and do a jigsaw puzzle with my mum who stayed with me a few days post-Toronto. Good fun, as always.

Mexico

My lovely mum loves jigsaws as much as I do…

Then, the Superhero and I went for a long weekend to sit on one of the lovely beaches in Mexico. We stayed at an all-inclusive resort so it was worry-free, apart from deciding what we wanted to eat and drink at intervals! (Very nice.)

mexico1

Pretty nice view… 🙂

Now it’s back to school. I have two classes I’m teaching now: both writing-intensive (which means grading-intensive for me), but as I love words and writing, I’m excited about getting to know this batch of college students. Lots of smiling faces right now. 🙂

Reading – I’ve been doing that, but I’ll save that for another post. Just wanted to pop in here and let you know that I’m alive. I’ve just been out there living a busy life!

Hope your summers were stupendous as well.

Toronto

Us playing with the mirrors on top of the   CN Tower. 

Catch-Up…

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catch_up

It’s been a while since there’s been a general catch-up post on life, and so here’s a bit of what I’ve been up to.

The Summer of Liz continues at a really enjoyable pace. The first summer session at the university where I work was filled with a demanding (but rewarding) completion of a writing class. I was taking it for professional development, and it was really well taught which meant that I learned a lot from it. It was a lot of work, so I was a bit relieved when it finished. (Glad I did it though.)

This second summer session is keeping me pretty occupado, but this time I’m on the other side of the desk and teaching which I really enjoy. (It was fun, I must admit, taking the part of a student for a few weeks. I’ll definitely repeat that experience again at some point.)

So the next weeks will be busy in the mornings with teaching, prepping for class, and grading, and then that leaves the afternoons mostly free to play. I do have a work-related conference to attend in Dallas this weekend, but I love this event so I’m looking forward to it. I always learn a lot when I go and feel energized when I return. Lucky me, I know.

Since, as I mentioned yesterday, my mum is coming out to visit, I’ve been preparing for a trip we’re doing (with my sister as well), this one to take us to Toronto. I’ve never been to Canada, so I’m pretty psyched to see how life is up there.

One thing that I know for certain is that it will be cooler than West Texas, thank goodness. I checked the weather in Toronto the other day, and it was a rather nice high 70s. (High 70s is high for some places, I know, but when we’ve been averaging 100 degrees most day, hanging out in such an amenable climate will be lovely, especially when I’m with the fam.)

(Quick question: Is Toronto humid? I’ll have to find out.)

We’re up north for a few days, then my mum goes with my sister to visit in CA, and then she comes to stay with me here. Then, when she leaves Texas to go home, I have a couple of days to hang out, and then the SuperHero and I are off down south to sit on a beach in Mexico for a bit. The goal: to do not much except enjoy the place where we’re staying and chill out. (Oh, and a bit of reading, no doubt.)

And, then, when we return from Mexico, it’ll be almost time for back to school for the fall semester, and then it’s back to business again.

I’m starting to plan some of my books to read when I’m traveling, and in Canada, I’m going to visit a bookstore (or five) with the aim of buying some titles by indigenous authors. If you have any titles/authors that you recommend, I’m starting a list so please let me know your thoughts.

In the meantime, it’s teaching, grading, hanging out, and going to the gym. Not a bad way to live at all.  🙂

Story-Wallah: Short Fiction from South Asian Writers – Shyam Selvadurai (ed.) (2005)

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book416After having fully immersed myself in authors and writing by African-American writers during February, I thought it would be fun to continue reading other POC authors and writings from around the world, so browsing through the TBR shelves (go me!), I came across this title and thought it would fit the bill perfectly.

I’m not sure where I ended up hearing about this title, but the stickers on the book lend credence to the fact that it’s probably used as a textbook in a world literature class somewhere or other, and regardless, this was great fun to read.

As the whole book title reads, Story-Wallah: A Celebration of South Asian Fiction, this was an anthology of writings and authors from Southern Asia and featured a wide range of writers from the well-known (such as Salman Rushdie and Zadie Smith) to the slightly less well-known (at least to me). They were all originally written in English (I think) and all fiction, and the range of the short stories was quite astounding. I loved it. It was like eating candy in a pick-n-mix as you (I) never really knew what was coming once I’d finished a story. There wasn’t a bad one in the whole anthology, and I adored almost every page that I read.

As Shyam Selvadurai writes in his introduction, “The stories jostle up against each other . . . The effect is a marvelous cacophony that reminds me of . . . one of those South Asian bazaars, a bargaining, carnival-like milieu. The goods on sale in this instance being stories hawked by story-traders: story-wallahs.”

Edited by Selvadurai, it’s a perfect read for a monkey mind (comme moi right now), and I thoroughly enjoyed almost every story, even taking notes of a few favorite authors to dig into at a later date as their included short stories were so strong.

Authors ranged from locales across the Southern Asia diaspora, from Sri Lanka, India, Great Britain, USA, Trinidad, Fiji and others, and explored (as GoodReads says) universal themes of identify, culture and home. I fairly gobbled this read down, and am going to keep it on the shelves for another read at another time. Yes, it was that good.

Naturally, some authors were more favorite than others (as is typical in a wide-sweeping anthology), and I made notes to make sure that I track down more work by Salman Rushdie, Monica Ali, Zadie Smith, Farida Karodia, Hanif Kureishi, and Shani Mootoo, but there are loads more from which to choose.

It’s a big book (>400 pages), but it’s extremely readable and I thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing. Highly recommended in almost every metric. 🙂

southern-asia

(Above) – This is what is generally accepted as Southern Asia, but the book travels more widely than this…