The second book in the Cornish Trilogy, which I am confusingly reading last, because I’m just that sort of person. In a way, I feel like this book is more autobiographical than some of Davies’ other works, and it makes me wonder about the sort of life he led and what kind of things he wished he had done.

The book is ostensibly a history of the life of Francis Cornish, and it uses the normally irritating narrative device of interspersing the action with ruminations by heavenly figures, in this case an angel and a demon. Somehow, however, Davies makes it work, perhaps because the two figures aren’t overwrought and they don’t go off on rambling lectures like they so often do in books like this. Typically, when italics appear in a book, I skip over them to avoid potential irritation, but in this case I read them amenably.

Francis Cornish is what you might call a queer fish. He grows up in rural Canada, a common theme in the work of Davies, travels to Europe to study (another common theme), and then works as a painter and art critic. His painting career, however, ends after two works, for reasons you can learn about in the book, should you so desire. I wouldn’t want to spoil the plot, now.  He also comes from money, and in the end he lets the money master him, to some extent.

He’s a far from simple man, though, with dark secrets in his past which haunt him throughout his life. Nothing terribly melodramatic, of course, but just enough to make him interesting, to turn an otherwise somewhat ordinary life into a complex and rich one, and I like that sort of thing, myself. This is a book about love, and betrayal, and art, and money, and the interaction of these themes.

I greatly enjoy the way the Cornish Trilogy is laid out, with Francis Cornish himself being an overbearing but never present figure in the other two books, which form neat bookends for this one, if you read the trilogy in order. I like that his decisions and the events of his life end up influencing the lives of others, sometimes in very complicated ways, and there’s a bit of brilliant and delicious play with characters and themes in this book.

The only thing I would criticize about the book is that it’s wrapped up a bit too neatly. In the end, Cornish finds out everything, leaving no details of his life for readers to ruminate over, and tidying things up neatly in advance of his death. And that’s sort of a bummer. I’d like to think that I’ll die with a few pressing and unsolved mysteries, just to liven things up, and it’s a pity Davies didn’t allow Cornish that luxury.

Demographics

What’s Bred in the Bone, by Robertson Davies. Published 1985, 436 pages. Fiction.

On Sunday night, I found myself loosely following Oscar results, not out of any major interest in which films/people won but because I was a bit bored. When Tilda Swinton won for her work on Michael Clayton, I stumbled across an interview with Tilda Swinton, which I was going to link to, but the content “mysteriously changed” between Sunday and now. I’ve really got to start taking screen captures.

The main thrust of the interview was discussing the fact that she gained weight for the Michael Clayton role, complete with a witty headline like “Swinton eats her way to glory” or some such crap. She of course expressed delight with being able to eat whatever she wanted (have you heard of intuitive eating, Tilda? It’s pretty awesome, mainly because you can…eat whatever you want), and she went into some of her reasons for gaining weight for the role.

I was most struck by a statement that she wanted the character to “look uncomfortable in her own skin.” Because, you know, obviously fat people are uncomfortable in their own skin. Because being fat is so awful and miserable, how could you not feel uncomfortable in your own skin? And she went on to say “I wanted her to have this sort of itchy feeling about her body so her clothes were always either too tight or her underwear was too tight but her clothes actually don’t fit.” Because we fatties are known for wearing clothing that doesn’t fit.

Maybe it’s hard to explain why her statements irritated me if you aren’t fat. But can you see how they might be kind of…off putting, at the very least? Perhaps she didn’t mean it to come across this way, but I was left with a very distinctive impression: fat people are uncomfortable in their own skin, and they wear ill-fitting clothing. Maybe Swinton didn’t say it, but the implication seemed to be that fat people don’t care about themselves, let themselves go…and perhaps even expect to be loathed by society.

The article emphasized scenes where the character exercises,  “striving for something she can’t have,” because of course the sight of a fat person exercising is pathetic and laughable. Which explains why when I’m out on my bike, other cyclists avert their gazes and laugh when I pass by. Oh, wait, they don’t, they nod and smile, recognizing a fellow human being. And fat people never get anywhere when they exercise, no matter what they might think. Nope, I can exercise every day and I’ll still be fat and unhealthy and gross, because of course being fat is, you know, totally awful. As for the morbidly obese, instead of the just fat, why, they shouldn’t even bother leaving the house, let alone exercising.

Every time an actress gains weight for a role, I feel obligated to go look at the before and after pictures, since the media makes such a big fuss of it.  Take Renee Zellweger in Bridget Jones, looking in my opinion perfectly normal, although a bit puffy around the edges, like someone who gained weight too rapidly and in a dangerous way. After that film? Frighteningly thin. The publicity photos I could track down of Swinton in the film didn’t appear fat; in fact, she looked a bit thin to me.

Swinton may be “ferociously intellectual,” as one review said, but it sounds to me like she’s just as bigoted as the rest of the Hollywood community. Bummer.

Immigration myths versus reality, all neatly laid out by the Jackson Free Press.

Chemical weapons are hanging out in stockpiles. And children draw cute little posters about them. God I hate this country.

Elephants in South Africa are slated for a cull. I like elephants. This makes me sad.

Is reunification for Cyprus a possibility? That would be pretty neat.

Gazans gathered yesterday despite the rain to form a human chain. Neat photos.

Holy crap, the LA Times has a separate site just for Lost news. Sweeeet.  (Lost as in Lost, people, not as in lost. Geddit?)

A fired reporter is fighting back, claiming that women who worked for Nine Network were “treated like sex objects.”

Emma Thompson went balls to the wall with Miramax over their decision to order an up and coming  (and quite lovely to boot) actress to lose weight for a film. Go Emma!

I realize that The Book Project is starting to feel like it’s taking over, which isn’t entirely my fault, because I read rather a lot and I haven’t been feeling clever, inspired, or particularly joyous lately. I also haven’t wanted to write about much rather than the election lately, because the election is infuriating and depressing me, and I figure there’s only so much political writing you lot will swallow. At any rate, I’ll try to intersperse more non-book posts soon, I promise.

At the rate I’m going, I’ll have re-read the complete works of Robertson Davies by April, if not before. I really can’t help myself. There is a lot of stuff on order at the library, but I’ve ended up way in the back of the order queues, so it’s taking awhile. For the time being, Davies it is. This is the third book in the Cornish Trilogy, which I like reading out of order because it just feels better than way to me. The narrative flow seems more sensible reading this book in the middle, rather than at the end.

The Lyre of Orpheus plays on a number of recurring themes that Davies likes to cover. We’ve got an ambitious opera, a troubled marriage, rich people, people interacting with the rich people, art, and a healthy dose of malice and intrigue. And, of course, academics, because it follows up on the characters in The Rebel Angels.

It’s intriguing to me that in both the Cornish and the Depford Trilogies, we have an arts trust which hands out substantial amounts of money with the goal of furthering the arts, and in both cases the money finances the production of a new opera. Davies apparently had a bit of a soft spot for the stage, and in fact wrote several plays. And in both cases we also see the ways in which money corrupts and softens people, which makes Davies a man after my own heart.

I also note that many of his British characters have a decidedly jokey cast, almost stereotypical, and sometimes I detect a faint Canadian sneer in their direction from Davies. We won’t get into his treatment of Americans for the time being, as it might upset your delicate sensibilities. But it is interesting for me to read books by Canadian authors, because I think that most Americans kind of ignore Canada, the lurking land to the North, perhaps at our own cost, and it’s nice to be steeped in Canadian-centric content now and then.

I think that the Cornish trilogy might be the finest work from Davies, and I suspect that others might agree. It’s nothing less than brilliant, with a splendid array of characters, scenes, and events. Good times for all. Look soon for What’s Bred in the Bone, which I’m almost done with, thanks to the rainy weather.

Demographics:

The Lyre of Orpheus, by Robertson Davies. Published 1988, 472 pages. Fiction.

Catherine Bennet debunks the myth that traveling to former war zones is somehow noble or commendable.

Thinking differently has yielded a new approach to the treatment of schizophrenia.

Class war is erupting in Nashville.  Gentrification will be coming soon to a street near you, if it’s not there already, but at what cost?

Is Obama being marketed as a product, rather than a candidate? Perhaps.

French researchers claim that meat from cloned animals is not identical to that of conventionally produced animals, not least because of the high incident of birth defects.

The little blue pill may keep your pecker up, but apparently it damages fertility. Oh, sweet justice.

There’s a profile in the Washington Post today of a an AH-1 Super Cobra pilot…who happens to be a woman. The article is by Kristin Henderson, who wrote a simpering book about “American families on the home front,” but you shouldn’t hold that against it.

My reaction to this article was mixed. It was definitely interesting to read about a female Marine, as women are relatively rare in the Marines, and I like that Henderson drew attention to the fact that women are still restricted from working in combat positions. And I loved the opener to the article, talking about a classic example of sexism, where a man expresses disbelief that a woman could pilot an attack helicopter. She also did a fairly good job talking about the changing role of women in the military, and how attitudes towards female servicemembers are changing. And I commend her for profiling the change in approach to military training, which focuses on training killers; Henderson really did her homework, and I like that in a journalist.

But then she also made the assumption that women have a hard time in the military because they want to have children, which I found rather irksome. Why wouldn’t men have a hard time in the military because they have children? Don’t fathers suffer every bit as much as mothers when they are deployed far from home and forced to leave their children behind? Why assume that everyone wants to have children, or that the desires of male soldiers are less important than female soldiers? I’m so tired of hearing that argument trotted out in pretty much any discussion of ladies in the military.

And for the love of Pete, why choke that schlock about women being “naturally nurturing” down the throats of readers? And to say that “radical feminists” disapprove of women in the military because we’re “naturally nurturing”? Excuse me while I violently vomit. And Henderson was eager to point out that many of the women in the military serve as nurses and in other medical positions; traditionally “nurturing” roles, although if you actually know any nurses, you know that nurses are some of the toughest and most amazing people on Earth, bar none.

As a feminist, I believe that all positions in the military should be open to women who want to occupy them, and that to restrict women from direct combat positions is offensive, and pointless. And in a lot of ways, I have to applaud the military for its steps towards racial and gender integration, maybe not necessarily among the top brass, but on the ground. Many soldiers I’ve met and seen profiled in interviews say that the gender of their companions doesn’t matter, their fitness for duty does. Among the enlisted, people are extremely race, gender, and class blind, and I think that’s pretty neat.

I’m not really a fan of war, and I would love to see the military disbanded or repurposed to fulfill domestic needs; many European countries, for example, use their militaries to serve their countries in various ways, from assisting in disasters to building bridges. But as long as we’re going to have a military, I think that anyone who wants to join should be able to. I’m rather disappointed, therefore, with the slant this article took, making it seem like women wouldn’t succeed as career military, and suggesting that our delicate sensibilities might be overwhelmed by the actuality of war. It seemed at war with itself at times, as she suggested in one paragraph that women in the military were no less prone to PTSD than men, and in the next that women would not renew their contracts because they wanted to stay at home and bake pies with their former military buddies.

I mean I realize I’m in the minority here, but I would rather fight insurgents than baby sit, although given my druthers I’d prefer neither.

Oh, historical fiction. After such a rich recent diet of Robertson Davies, I’m afraid this book gave my brain a bit of indigestion, much as occurs when one submits the stomach to questionable food from roadside stands when one is in a hurry. It wasn’t bad, precisely, it just wasn’t terribly engaging, and it didn’t fill me with a deep interest in the way that some historical fiction does, which is a pity, because I am rather fond of historical fiction. It’s one of my secret pleasures.

At any rate, this book felt extremely familiar to me, and I think that the author may have owed some of her work to others. Either that or I’ve read the book before and it was so unmemorable that I forgot. It hinted at Year of Wonders,  only it wasn’t quite as good, and there was an unbearably cutesy little device of interspersing entries from the personal journal of one of the characters between the chapters.

This sort of thing is done, of course, to show the readers the character’s descent into madness or other such nonsense, and we’re supposed to ooh and awe at its cleverness and brilliance. Unfortunately, as often happens, the trick fell flat, and I was left instead with a bored and slightly bitter taste. I think that madness is better shown in action than it is in journal entries, but perhaps I’m just a cynic. At any rate, as a narrative device, it left me unimpressed.

Not only was this a historical novel, it was a historical novel about science. Now, I happen to find the history of science rather interesting, and I’ve read some good fictional treatments of it, but this wasn’t one of them. I’ve noticed lately that I like less and less books, a phenomenon my father often complains about as well, and I think that’s why both of us tend to re-read things a lot, rather than picking up new books. At least when you read something you’ve already read, you know what to expect, and you can count on it to be good. As my father is fond of saying, life is really too short to read bad books.

Clark’s previous work, which I haven’t read, was highly acclaimed, and I gather it was a historical fiction piece as well, set in the sewers of Victorian London.

Given this book, I think that perhaps Clark should have stayed there.

Demographics:

The Nature of Monsters, by Clare Clark. Published 2007, 382 pages. Fiction.

My big project over the last few days has been making yoghurt, thanks in part to some heated yoghurt related discussions on CUSS and Other Rants. I was going to make cheese this weekend too, but I don’t really need cheese just yet, so maybe next weekend. Unless I can come up with some amazing uses for cheese. Anyway, prepare for cheese, is the point I am trying to make.

Anyway, people seem to think that yoghurt is hard to make, filled with mystique and difficulty. It’s not, and I made it even more easy by borrowing my father’s yoghurt maker, because while I like being a bad-ass and making stuff at home, I am also lazy. And it’s cold, making it hard to maintain proper temperatures for incubating yoghurt.

So, here’s how you make yoghurt:

Step one: heat a quart of milk to around 180 degrees Fahrenheit (82 Celsius), to sterilize it. I used pasteurized but not homogenized milk, which is what I would recommend if you cannot obtain raw milk. You can use any kind of milk; I of course advocate for organic full-fat cow, sheep, or goat, but you can use camel, mare, human, whatever you can get your hands on, at any fat percentage. Heat it in a stainless steel pot, if you can, and use a metal spoon to stir it as it heats. If you don’t have a thermometer, you can heat the milk until it starts to foam.

Step two: allow the milk to cool to between 105-110 degrees (41-43 degrees Celsius). If you lack a thermometer, splash a little on your wrist to check the temperature like you do when heating milk in a bottle for infants or checking the temperature of bath water, if you lack children as a frame of reference.

Step three: add two tablespoons of a plain yoghurt with live cultures. I use Nancy’s, but you don’t have to. The important thing is the “live cultures” on the label. You can also buy plain old yoghurt cultures in some health food stores. Whisk well. Some people like to make a slurry of a little bit milk and yoghurt in a separate bowl and then pour the slurry into the big pot. I don’t.

Step four: incubate! If you have a yoghurt maker, pour the mixture into the cups, close the yoghurt maker, turn it on, and forget about it. If you don’t, you can incubate the yoghurt in the oven, using the pilot light for warmth or periodically turning the oven on (with the yoghurt out!), allowing it to warm. Try not to jostle the yoghurt.  You’re going for105-122 degrees (41-49 Celsius, incidentally).

Incubation can take 8-14 hours. As the yoghurt incubates, it will thicken. The longer you allow it to incubate, the thicker and more tangy it will get. I like me some tangy yoghurt. After it’s incubated, the yoghurt is ready to eat, and it should be refrigerated.

Here’s where the optional step comes in: straining. I really like Greek-style yoghurt, which is traditionally strained. To strain yoghurt, you need to place a colander over a bowl or pot or something, and then line the colander with cheesecloth which has been folded over. Or a clean lightweight cotton rag. Whatever. Pour the yoghurt into the colander and allow it to hang out for a few hours. An amazing amount of liquid will collect below while your yoghurt gets thick, creamy, and fucking delicious.

See, making yoghurt isn’t so hard! You can re-use yoghurt from this batch a couple of times for starter, although you should periodically buy new yoghurt for fresh, happy cultures. As always when making cultured dairy products, if your yoghurt looks funny, smells weird, or just doesn’t feel right, toss it. Better safe than sorry.

This book keeps getting recommended to me, and I finally managed to find a slip of paper with the title on it and order it from the library. My recommenders turned out to be right, as it’s a pretty awesome book.

World War Z, for those of you who haven’t heard of it, is an oral history of the Zombie World War, collected Studs Terkel style and presented in several chunks covering various aspects of the Great Panic, the war, and the people who made decisions and were involved in the war on the front lines.  Brooks travels all over the world in search of people to interview, ranging from industrialists who capitalized on the early panic to the captains of submarines.

It holds up pretty well as what it’s supposed to be, except that a lot of interviews read like the same person, because, er, the entire book is written by one person, perhaps? A couple of weird little catch phrases kept turning up in people who weren’t related to each other, and had no good reason to repeat those phrases, and the wording was often suspiciously similar. Hey, it’s hard to write characters, let alone this many, don’t get me wrong, I just think the book could have been edited a bit better to eliminate this problem.

Also, a lot of the interviews were a little bit too expository, feeling a bit stiff and unrealistic. And some of them were especially annoying because the author set up foreshadowing a bit too neatly, feeding his characters lines such as “after what happened to me,” and making them evasive about things in the beginning of an interview and suddenly wildly talkative about them. As a result, some of the book felt extremely artificial to me.

For what it is, it’s a pretty good book, and if you happen to know someone who is obsessed with zombies, they might really dig it. I will admit to some interest in the zombie community, so I got a kick out of it, at least.

Demographics:

World War Z, by Max Brooks. Published 2006, 342 pages. Fiction.

Another Inspector Montalbano, lagging at the gate because I had to order it, since our library didn’t have it. Surprisingly, considering how recent it is, this copy was pretty thrashed, with softened, greasy pages and a worn cover. I think that people don’t treat detective novels with as much respect as they do other books, treating them more like throwaway conveniences than literature. Pity.

This novel was especially interesting because it’s one of the few that didn’t have some sort of current events slant. It was about a simple kidnapping, and it was actually fairly straightforward; I was kind of disappointed when I seized on the plot twist almost immediately, and I was able to pretty neatly predict the ending. I hate it when that happens while reading a detective novel. It feels like I’ve been cheated of something.

I still maintain that I loathe Livia. I don’t understand why the Inspector keeps running around with her. There are so many more excellent women that he could be dating, and in this book Camilleri stressed her dislike of food. As someone who is rather fond of food, I can’t fathom being in a relationship with someone who isn’t, let alone a dreadful cook. I tried it once and it didn’t work out very well.

There are a few books in Italian that haven’t been translated yet. I can’t help but hope that in one of them, Livia finally gets the boot. Maybe I should learn Italian to find out, just in case Sarterelli stops translating them for some reason.

Demographics:

The Patience of the Spider, by Andrea Camilleri. Translated by Stephen Sartarelli. Published 2007, 244 pages. Fiction.