books and baptist wine...

for having spent as much time and energy on people as i have, i still don't get them.

anger, love, jealousy, rebellion, apathy, disgust, frustration... there's a whole range of human emotions. we all experience all of them. but still we don't understand each other. it's bizarre, and i never get used to it.

that goes double for teenaged girls who think they've got the world on a string.

so i've read another book. it's getting ridiculous. i am going to run out of books soon. although most of the ones i've been reading lately have been in preparation for Canada Reads. I finished Lullabies for Little Criminals on the weekend. It was really thought-provoking. it put me in a funk just before i finished, and while the ending itself alleviated some of the funk, i was left thinking.

so to clear my head, i read a book of short stories called Natasha and other stories. It got water damaged when the ice coating the inside of my office window melted in the weird little heat wave we've been having for a couple of days (plus 1 yesterday!!). Anyway, it was a quick read - started and finished yesterday during my half-day off school (warm weather usually brings insane winds in winter here). It didn't really dent me though. Sort of a 'yeah, ok, that was interesting. next?' kind of way. It seemed fairly obviously autobiographical, about a (russian jewish) kid moves with his family from Latvia during the Soviet years. Very about Jewishness, very about immigrant stories, very about Toronto. Used to be reading about southern Ontario made me a bit homesick... but not this time, though i could hear, see and smell exactly what he was describing.

Still to read on the Canada Reads list: Stanely Park, The Song of Kahunsha, and Children of My Heart (Ces Enfants de ma vie). I have to order the last two, still. Stanely Park is next on the chopping block. I am most excited about Gabrielle Roy's book, Children, because I think I read an excerpt way back when i was in school.