Sunday Salon

I have been having so much fun on the Blog Calendar Advent Tour.. Bloggers are writing in from all over the world, sharing their Christmas traditions. And it's not over yet! There's another 10 wonderful days to go! However, we are leaving on our trip tomorrow night, so if I'm late with leaving comments, just wait, I will catch up.

Yes, that's right, tomorrow night I'm LEAVING ON A JET PLANE for England. *sigh* only one sleep to go! Yesterday we had our becoming a tradition Christmas get-together, with whichever family members are available. While here, my sister-in-law mentioned that Canadian Tire had a suitcase set on sale, after she saw the three sad bags we'd pulled up from the basement. So I went on the web, and there it was:


Almost enough for my books I'll be bringing back!!! Just kidding....I think....

My husband bought it last night, and now the cat is getting very upset and the kids are getting very excited and we, at last, are at the moment of truth: what exactly are we bringing, and why is there not a packing fairy? I need her!!

I will post again later, but a small child is bouncing on the chair, waiting for his turn on the computer, and I really, really, have to get some clothes near the suitcases now. I can't leave it for the last day! Packing fairy, where are you?

By the way, we had a very good Christmas meal yesterday, with ham in apple cider, new roast potatoes, two kinds of salad, steamed broccoli, and blueberry pie for dessert. Anyone for leftovers? Then we celebrated by watching the newly released Dark Knight after the kids were in bed....sadly ,our age told and all three of us adults remaining, fell asleep during it! Even me.

Middlemarch Update: Ha ha ha. You expect me to actually have READ anything this week, with the bus strike so one of my daily times for reading is taken away? I did! I did read something! However, I am only halfway through the book, and unless I have a sleepless night, it won't get done before I go, so I might be leaving it half-read. Page 319, Chapter 39. By now Dorothea is very unhappy in her marriage, Will madly in love with her, Lydgate and Rosamund are engaged, Mr Featherstone has died and left everything to a complete unknown - that was hilarious! except for Fred, who my fingers are crossed that he will stop gambling and take a decent job somewhere.

Maybe the packing fairy can come soon so I can have time to read, which in this week's Thursday meme, the question was, do you have enough time to read what you want? HA HA HA HA. As if!

My secret plan is to be up on the airplane reading, reading, reading while everyone sleeps!!! Shh, don't tell anyone. I'll let you know how the secret reading plan worked,on the other side of the pond.

Happy holiday preparations to all, and to all: READING TIME!

What do you take on a trip to read?

I'm back! By that I mean, our buses went on strike at midnight and I only take buses - neither my husband nor I drive; we had a major snowstorm yesterday and through the night, so my ride cancelled today, and I can't get to work; and the buses can only be legislated back to work by the federal government, who of course are suspended at the moment until Jan 27. What happens when things get difficult? I find my sense of humour again! Plus, I had lots of sleep - Sunday I ended sleeping for 2 hours in the afternoon - so I feel much better. All I can do is laugh, and count down the days until our trip and we are out of here!!!

Middlemarch Update: I think the excitement for our trip is reaching a crescendo because I find myself unable to concentrate on anything for long. I am still reading Middlemarch, but still have over half the book to go and am running out of time before we go. I'm on page 265, just ending Book 3. I do love it, I just can't seem to read for any length of time. I find myself thinking of what we still have to do, and mentally getting things sorted for packing - bring this, forget that, etc - and suddenly realize I'm staring at the page but not seeing it.

One of the many dilemmas facing me about what to bring is, of course, what books do I bring? So I thought I'd ask this question of you today: when you are going on a fairly long trip, what books do you bring? do you bring any? does size matter? Author? Kind of book? What do you bring with you on holiday?

So far, I have a shortlist of books I might be bringing, and my real question is, which one will make it on the airplane with me in my bag?
Susan's Shortlist
The Wood Wife - Terri Windling
In the Woods - Tara French
Mistress of the Art of Death - Ariana Franklin
Stalin's Ghost - Martin Cruz Smith

Do I bring a book that I really really want to read, that I would be devastated if my luggage got lost? I usually try to pack so that if my baggage does go missing - and this has never happened before, so it's more a 'what if' scenario - I'm not heartbroken. Or do I bring books that are easily replaceable?

I'm going to a country where most of the books I love to read are published anyway, so I don't really have to bring many. I will be buying books in England, this is not even a question, and my husband is just pleading that our luggage isn't overweight by too much on the trip back. So, my real question I end up posing to myself is, do I bring many books with us? I need 2 or 3, just as a safety blanket in case I can't get to Charing Cross Road right away. My in-laws do not have any novels, only a few cookbooks and bird-watching books. The idea of being caught somewhere with some time available for reading, and not having a book to hand, gives me the chills. That would not be a holiday! I'd be more stressed without a book to read, than I would be by bringing too many and not reading any of them!

So if you see me gazing out into space and I'm not catching a quick nap, I'm musing on what to pack. Thus, the trials of life in Ottawa today (strike, suspended government, a foot of snow) recede into the background. 5 sleeps until we leave for England!

I also confess here, Gentle Reader, that I love to travel. I like airports, and train stations, and bus stations, cars packed to the top of the interior with luggage and supplies, cruise liners, anything that goes somewhere. Going someplace different, seeing new things, and revisiting family and friends in far away places - there is magic in travelling, the potential for anything to happen, wonder and surprise. I am so excited by the idea of getting out of Ottawa!! And then, that we are going to England, which I love
as much as I love Canada,and have family and friends waiting for us over there - I almost cannot wait for this trip to start! Postings here might be a bit scarce in the next few days as we get ready, but I will be back, as often as I can, and also while we are in England. I have a plan, but it all depends on my in-laws computer, so I won't say anything yet. I will try to keep getting to the Advent Blog Tour as often as I can also. I am really enjoying this advent tour, it is wonderful to meet so many new bloggers and from different countries, and see all the different ways we greet the holidays.

And I will post again before we go. I can't leave you hanging with the question of what books I might be bringing with me!!! So please do let me know how you approach books and travelling, dear Gentle Reader. I hereby confess that I do bring too many books with me, and I can't recall any trip I have ever taken where I read ALL the books I brought. Only a few times do I recall wondering why I pack so many,though!

Mini-vacation - and England

I'm back! I ran out of time last week before we left, to post and say I was taking a mini-vacation to our favourite place in Canada: Picton, Ontario, on the world's largest fresh-water island, and the Sandbanks National Park. The best beaches and water for swimming in Canada, if not much of the Northern Hemisphere. So, last Thursday we left on the train, and where we went had no computer, no telephone, a radio, and a tv with 3 channels and no working dvd player. It was heaven. It was bliss. My sister-in-law's cottage overlooks the Bay of Quinte and is on the water's edge, so every morning we could go down to the dock and be near water. I'm not sure what it is about water that calms me, but it does. The cottage we stayed at is not in Picton (town of 4,000 people) itself, but out in the countryside of the island, so we had little traffic, little noise, only a row of mixed cottages and homes in a row overlooking the water. I know I'm lucky to live by Britannia Park here in Ottawa, and can escape there as often as I can. After a while though, I have to leave the city. I need a change of scenery to refresh myself, to feel rejuvenated. Actually, I need time to read, to feel rejuvenated, and that's all the time!!! Leaving the city, traveling, also helps wake me up. I have always enjoyed going somewhere, and Picton is our destination of choice. My sister-in-law and niece live there, so luckily we have a place to stay, and great family to visit, and we have a wonderful time. This time was the same, we had a very good visit, and the children came away wanting to go back as soon as possible. They survived without tv, vcr, and X-box! And since I didn't want much noise, we wanted to hear silence and the water on the shore and the wind in the trees, we rarely had the radio on. I could, at the quietest times, get a sense of the quieter rhythms of the earth that it is so difficult to hear in the city. That sense of eternal time, of being in a more gentle pace, of hearing the space between the waves, of the motion of the earth - that is what I found this time, as I do every time I visit there. So I didn't get much reading done, but I found what I had been missing, and I think the less frequent posts in May, June and July were showing how out of tune I was getting with myself.

However, I did visit the only bookstore in Picton!! Of course I did! And luckily a thunderstorm was overhead so no one complained about the time spent there! I only found two books to come home with me: In the Electric Mist With Confederate Dead by James Lee Burke, and Sylvia Townsend Warner's In the Kingdom of Elfin. Both are books I have been looking for. I could have bought a few more, but my husband was watching books for the kids pile up - they each had chosen one and we'd found a box of stickers for the trip home - so I had to think about luggage and restrained myself.

Best of all, I heard a loon call twice on this trip. The first time I could hardly believe it, as it has been years since I last heard one in the wild. Then it came again, yesterday morning, and I saw it diving for fish out beyond the dock. I tried to get a picture, but of course, in the way of the wild, as soon as I got my camera out it vanished. For those of you who don't know, loons are only heard in the wild, on lakes, here in Canada, and they usually call before it rains. Sure enough, we had rain - and another thunderstorm - last night.

So, I'm back. And, as the header suggests.....England is next. We're going at Christmas! so all my bloggers in the UK, if you are going to be around London over the holidays, drop me a line, I'd love to meet you. I'll be on Charing Cross Road as often as I can!! (Rhinoa, Ann, Bride, Geraniumcat, Mariel, this is particularly meant for you) We're going mid-December, in time for the Christmas rush, and coming home in early January. My daughter cries once a week because we aren't there yet; her birthday is Dec 24 so she gets to have her birthday there with her grandparents and she can't wait! My mother-in-law is crossing the days off the calendar; she can't wait! All this is to say, we couldn't take a longer vacation in Picton because most of our holidays are being used for Christmas instead. So this really was a mini-vacation, to get us through to then!!

Before I go, I want to ask a question: for all of you out there who read to relax, do you find that if you don't have time to read on a vacation, that something is missing? Do you miss reading if you don't have the time, when on vacation? Do you take too many books on holiday? Or plan to buy a book wherever you are? I always take too many books, and I always buy some when on vacation. The best vacation for me includes time to read. Vacations have to, since that is the best part of my day, every day: reading. That's when I know all is right with my world, that I have time to read.

Happy reading tonight! Now, I'm going to go read while there are a few hours left on this mini-vacation.....

The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald

This is a deceptively small book, at 156 pages, because each word is chosen carefully and the finish packs a wallop. The Bookshop is the story of Florence Green, who wants to open a bookshop in Hardborough in East Anglia, and what happens when she does. You would think the writing would be sparse, but it isn't. It is writing that is economical - no word is wasted, and yet there is lovely description, though spare. Ms Fitzgeralds' concern is people, and in this tiny book -scarcely a novel size that we are accustomed to - she captures the essence of each character precisely, delightfully. As I long to someday open my own bookstore, I read this novel eagerly, to see what befell the characters. I can't reveal more without revealing the outcome, which i have sworn not to do on this blog! - so while The Bookshop did not turn out as I expected, at the end, it captured something more than just the characters. It ended up being a book about small villages in England, and the way of life in those villages. Having lived for a year in England, and encountered some very eccentric characters from the countryside (as well as in York) - there is nothing like working retail to encounter the best and worst of people! - this book brought back to me the feel of England. The book is set in 1959-1960, before I was born, but the tempo of time in the countryside and small villages moves more slowly than in the rest of England and the world, and this tiny book caught this feeling, this atmosphere perfectly.

All the characters, as mentioned before, are wonderfully captured, and best of all - because I do love them - the bookshop is in an ancient house that is haunted by a poltergeist. How can anyone resist a story about a bookshop with a ghost? The ghost does not play a key role, by the way, it is part of the scenery in a sense - everyone in the village knows about the ghost, and when various people encounter its results (flung tools, books, etc), they shrug it off. There is one memorable scene of the haunting, but other than Florence and Christine her 11-year-old help sitting through it, nothing much is made of it. No ghost-hunters are called in, nor police nor doctors. It just goes with the house the bookshop is in.

Since I worked in one of the older buildings in York - in the city centre which houses the oldest buildings - built in the 14th century, we had our own resident ghost, so I can vouch that there are places in England that do have their own residents! though I experienced nothing like the episode in The Bookshop! And yet, it is not a ghost story, it is a story about opening the bookshop. If you are looking for a delightful, quick read, with eccentric characters (and Violet is far more scary than the ghost, and malevolent) and books, then this is the book for you. Oh, and Lolita makes an appearance, in case you thought this was a boring book. I can't say I loved this book, but I did enjoy it. It was well worth reading.