Comment faire l'amour avec un Negre sans se fatiguer by Dany Laferriere

this book took me a long time to finish, both because it was written in french and because it was boring.

it's a novel but not really a novel, rather a philosophical work about the identity of the african-american male and the war of the sexes.

the story (what story there is) takes place in montreal. the narrator, an anonymous african-american lives in an apartment on la rue st. denis with another african american named bouba. while bouba spends his days sleeping (he often sleeps up to seventy two hours at a time) and listening to jazz or reading from the koran or from freud ("allah is great and freud is his prophet"), the anonymous narator types away at an old typewriter that he purchased at a second hand store. the type writer once belonged to chester himes--or so the dealer says--and that's why the narator purchased it. anyway, when he's not writing, he's hanging out with his casual girlfriend, named only miz litterature or having sex with her friends.

aside from being boring, the novel is at times very funny. so if you're into that kind of thing, it might be worth reading just for the sense of humour. but it's also quite bitter about the situation of the african-american and related racial issues. but i guess i can forgive the bitterness, seeing as the novel was published in 1985.

Christmas

merry christmas.

so the christmas festivities are swinging--unless you happen to be living in bc and need to fly somewhere with air canada...

so, janelle and i have had this whole week off work, which is just amazingly awesome. on monday evening we had a sandwich party at our apartment with a nice crowd. i had a weirdo sandwich and it was delicious. after eating we played a game of cranium.

on tuesday vince flew in to halifax to spend christmas holidays in cape breton with ciela's family. ciela was meeting him at the airport and we decided to go see them. so, as it turned out we met up with ciela in the parking lot and we all headed in to wait for vince together. vince was flying air canada and they lost his baggage. (no surprise there). anyways, we had lunch together at our place--leftovers from the sandwich party--and then spent the afternoon shopping. after a pizza supper, we dropped vince and ciela back at the airport (where they had left ciela's car) and vince got his luggage (which must have come on a later flight from ottawa or something).

wednesday... yesterday. christmas eve. we slept in. we did six loads of laundry (we've been procrastinating), and had a little christmas celebration at the office and exchanged a few gifts. we got joy and jane some christmasy pyjamas and a fleece throw blanket for henry. (we all chipped in for a necklace for maryann, but she got that earlier.) we got a gift certificate for a restaurant from jane and joy and a gift card to nslc from maryann. henry got us some chocolates. yummy. afterwards, janelle headed to her parent's house to help them get all ready for the dinner and i stayed home and folded laundry while watching the movie traitor. (it's pretty good.)

then we headed over to janelle's parents place for some chinese food dinner. we played games, were entertained by rowdy kids (six of them!) and had a great time! we also had a gift exchange (i got some jelly beans and janelle got a singing frog, some silly string, and a glowy thing--i'm not sure what it does.) after everyone left, janelle and i stayed behind and hung out with ma and pa swan for a while. we chatted and reclined until we were all too tired to do anything...

then janelle and i headed home around twelve thirty, ate some clementines and opened our presents. they were great and we were both pleasantly surprised. :) thank you all!

today i'm looking forward to a family christmas dinner.

Inkheart by Cornelia Funke

so, today i finished reading inkheart. i have to say, wow, what a great book.

the first chapter introduced so much suspense that i was hooked right away. it's a dark, rainy night and there's a stranger in the yard staring up at meggie's bedroom window ... (cue the suspenseful music.)

after chapter one i was slightly disappointed. the suspense didn't build up, in fact it dissipated. the plot took too long to unfold. but once the plot did unfold, it was great. and it had some awesome characters to make up for the slowly unfolding plot. my favourite characters were dustfinger and basta.

dustfinger is a sad lonely man. ever since silvertongue pulled him out of his story, he's been homesick and desperate to get back. he's got it into his head that silvertongue can put him back into his story ... but silvertongue just isn't doing it. so, pretty much everything dustfinger does is fueled by his desire to get back into his story; it's the only thing he wants. dustfinger made me really sad. i don't want to give away the ending(s) so don't read the end of this paragraph is you want to keep it a secret ... we find out that dustfinger's ending is really sad in his own story and at the end of this story, he still doesn't get back to his story but he's still desperate to get there, even though he knows he won't get a happy ending.

basta on the other hand isn't so sad to be out of his story. in fact, his whole life revolves around his evil master capricorn and basta loves him unquestioningly--like a dog loves his master. but basta is just as much a tragic character as dustfinger is, you see, capricorn doesn't love basta. capricorn doesn't even hate basta. capricorn nothings basta. capricorn wouldn't even notice if basta disappeared and never came back, he wouldn't care. but basta is devoted to capricorn nonetheless and everything he does, he does to get capricorn's approval, which he never gets. isn't that sad?

the most annoying character, hands down, is mortimer--or silvertongue. mortimer is a book doctor who accidentally discovers his magical ability to pull things out of stories. it's kind of sad that when he pulls basta, capricorn, and dustfinger out of one story his wife and two cats disappear into it to replace them. after this happens, he's so afraid of it happening again that he never reads aloud ever again. that's pretty much the most annoying thing in the world, right there. dustfinger constantly hounds mortimer to read him back into the story but mortimer won't even try because he's afraid of what might happen. also, he never tells meggie what's going on because he's afraid ... of what? i'm not sure. maybe he thinks she can't take it? that's annoying because whether or not she can take it, she's going to be right in the middle of it within one or two pages so why send her into it totally ignorant? anyways, mortimer is always pretty much paralyzed by fear and that just makes me totally lose interest in him. i don't mind characters who are afraid because fear is understandable but when that fear paralyzes them ... that's annoying.

that being said, the book is awesome!! read it! it's got fascinating characters. it's got maddening characters ... like mortola. ugh! i couldn't stand her! and it's got such endearing characters like farid and fenoglio. don't wait until the movie comes out, buy the book and read it! it'll make you laugh and cry and you'll love it.

The Witches by Roald Dahl

Ok, Roald Dahl is fast becoming one of my favourite children's authors, ranking right up there with whoever wrote Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang (I guess that was Mordecai Richler) and Patricia MacLachlan. Who are triple-tied for first place. (J.R.R. Tolkein and C.S. Lewis are tied for second place.)

The Witches is hilarious. It's got a feisty little Norweigan grandmother who smokes fat black cigars. It's got an extraordinarily clever little boy who actually likes being a mouse. It's got really creepy witches who turn children into frogs, pheasants, fish, and phmice. In short, it's a delightful book that will provide hours of suspense and hilarity for anyone. I guess now I can forgive Roal Dahl for writing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Janelle Made the Dean's List!!!

Janelle is on the Dean's list at MSVU for 2007-2008 because of her outstanding academic records! Yay! :) The university even sent her a pin that says "MSVU Scholar."

Also, Janelle made it home safely from Cape Breton, despite the poor weather. She did have to stay until early afternoon though and didn't make it home until four thirty ish. It was quite the weekend. We had rain all day Sunday and most of the night. In the early morning on Monday, the rain turned to freezing rain and later snow. We woke up on Monday to a nice layer of icy snow everywhere. Schools all across Nova Scotia were closed. Also, large chunks of the city had no power. Fortunately, we never lost power. Today it's warming up again, and the snow is supposed to be all melted by the end of the week. Bummer. I'm hoping we get permanent snow before Christmas, but it's not likely.

Privateer

so i recently discovered the video game privateer and i am somewhat addicted.

what happened was that i found vega strike (which comes with my distribution of ubuntu); vega strike is a remake of privateer, but it's not complete yet, so many of the features don't work. i was disappointed because there was a lot of awesome features to vega strike. so when i found out that it was a remake, i went looking for the original and found that privateer was an abandonware game and was available for download and compatible with my distribution of ubuntu. so i downloaded it.

the premise is that you get your own spaceship. that's it. you can do anything you want with it. you can be a trader and trade goods all over the galaxy, you can be a pirate and shoot down merchants and steal their wares, you can be a mercenary and fight against pirates or enemy marauders, or you can be a bounty hunter and search for rogues and pirates or you can be all four at once. as you make money, you can upgrade your ship or trade it in for a different one. so it's pretty addictive.

so if i haven't been posting much lately, it's probably because i've been playing privateer. you can find the download at http://priv.solsector.net/ :)

Four

A) Four places that I go to over and over: the halifax gospel hall, the super store, my building (because i work in it, so i go all over in my building over and over), the washroom.

B) Four People who e-mail me regularly: mom. janelle. peter ramsey. ashleigh brilliant. (the last two because i am on their mailing lists).

C) Four of my favorite places to eat: subway, the fireside, east side mario's, and home. but especially at home.

D) Four places I would rather be right now: on a pirate ship (preferably as captain ... but i'd take pretty much anything else); on my own starship; backpacking across canada (well, maybe not right, right now because it's winter, but if it was summer i'd like to be doing that); just a few inches to the right.

E) Four people I think will respond: mom, janelle, ummm.... maybe ciela? maybe vince?

F) Four TV shows I watch: ugly betty, lipstick jungle, futurama, and the clone wars. mostly ugly betty though. i think i've seen all the futurama episodes and they're boring the second time around ... and i only watch lipstick jungle with janelle.

The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears

The most positive thing I can say about this book is that it is very well written. The writing style is magnificent and it is easy and even pleasurable to read. Mengestu's writing is poetic.

Also, the book comes very well recommended by both the New York Times Book Review and by Khaled Hosseini (author of The Kite Runner). It also made the "Notable Book of the Year" list in the New York Times Book Review.

The novel is about an Ethiopian immigrant named Sepha Stephanos who is trying to survive in the city of Washington D.C.. He owns a small store and lives in a low-rent apartment across the street in a run down part of the city. His two friends, Kenneth and Joseph (both also African immigrants) sporadically keep him company at his store where they share drinks and play a game where they quiz each other on the details of coups and bloodbaths and tyrannical dictators in Africa. He also makes friend with a neighbour, Judith and her daughter Naomi. Judith is one of the first white people to move into the predominantly black neighbourhood. Naomi is half black because her father was a black man from Mauritania.

That being said, I found the plot to be rather tedious. It doesn't progress; that's okay, the novel is mainly character driven. What can I say about the main character? Well, I sometimes felt sympathy for him but I was mostly annoyed at him. I kept waiting for one of the other characters to shake him by the shoulders and yell at him: "Sepha! Get over yourself!"

He immigrated to the United States after his father was murdered by a revolutionary militia during the Red Terror in Ethiopia during the 1970s. That's not the worst part--he was murdered because the militiamen found flyers in his house advertising anti-revolutionary meetings being held at a secret location; the flyers actually belonged to Sepha, who was spared because his father refused to say who the flyers belonged to. Okay, that's pretty scarring and I can imagine the emotional damage caused by such trauma. So now I seem like a black-hearted tool for wanting to tell him to get over himself.

Let me explain myself. When Sepha first comes to Washington D.C., he lives with his Uncle Berhane, who also fled to the United States during the revolution. In Ethiopia, Berhane was a wealthy bureaucrat but in Washington D.C. he drives a taxi and works late into the evening at menial jobs. Uncle Berhane is one of the most admirable characters in the novel. (Read it, you'll agree with me.) Sepha sleeps on Berhane's couch. His main goal is to go back to Ethiopia. What does he plan to do when he gets back? It's not clear. He just wants to go back. Uncle Berhane gets him a job as a bellhop at the Capitol Hotel. It's hard work, but it pays exceptionally well. While he works there, Sepha meets Kenneth and Joseph who are also bellhops. The three become lifelong friends. Later, Uncle Berhane convinces Sepha to go to University. So, Sepha enrolls into an engineering program at a local university. But he doesn't finish. He drops out. And quits his job at the Capitol Hotel. To go back to Ethiopia? No. He buys a small grocery store in a run down neighbourhood with a small business bank loan and moves into an apartment across the street. At first he is enthusiastic but gradually, he neglects his store more and more until it fails to make any profit. Then he wallows in self-pity because the store is doing poorly. He sleeps with prostitutes, spends odd evenings drinking with Kenneth and Joseph while they either argue about poetry, politics, business, economics, or their personal lives. If they're not arguing, they're playing a game where they make each other guess the details surrounding various African dictatorships. His life at this point is characterized by inaction. He does nothing to save his store or better himself. He gets up and opens his store, or sleeps in and keeps his store closed until he feels like getting up and walking across the street and opening the store. Some days, he stays home all day doing very little, if anything. And the store across the street slowly dies.

When Judith moves to his neighbourhood and makes friends with him, he bonds easily with her daughter Naomi. Romance begins to bud between Judith and Sepha. Judith and Naomi offer him a chance to become someone. At first, his enthusiasm is renewed. He cleans out the store and redecorates it, he starts to keep regular hours again. But then he lets his insecurities get offended by just about everything Judith is and does, then he alternately pushes her away and runs away from her. He refuses to be honest with her while acknowledging to himself the damage he is doing both to himself and their relationship, but he refuses to let go of his insecurities. Then he feels sorry for himself that things aren't working out with Judith and goes back to neglecting his store. At this point it's something like twenty years since he has moved to Washington and he is no closer to going back to Ethiopia, although he's always talking about it when he's with Kenneth and Joseph.

Okay, maybe I'm being a little hard on Sepha. I do feel sypathy for him. But, to me, if the novel shows anything, it shows how destructive self-pity can be and that's about all I've got to say.