A novel interrupted

I've been reading the Fat Cyclist blog for a long time now - it's one of the really appealing and well-written big endurance sport blogs (and "Fatty" a.k.a. Elden was instigator of the 100 miles of nowhere insanity). It is a funny and wide-ranging blog that began in part because Elden's wife Susan was battling advanced metastatic cancer; as well as chronicling endurance sport as coping strategy, the blog's raison d'etre includes fund-raising for cancer-related causes.

Susan died some years ago just before completing a novel that Elden has now published. I was keen to read it anyway out of a sense of loyalty (buying an author's book is good, but reading it is perhaps as much or more appreciated?), and I'm also happy to report that it's a really lovely young-adult urban fantasy novel of a sort I particularly enjoy. It reminded me a little of Robin McKinley's Sunshine, a book I have read at least half-a-dozen times, but it's also fresh and original in terms of voice, storytelling and worldbuilding; if you like that kind of book as much as I do, then consider purchasing a copy of Susan Nelson's The Forgotten Gift for yourself.

Swim lit

From Leanne Shapton's Swimming Studies:

When I read in an obituary that Cy Twombly's father was a prominent swim coach, I start to see Twombly's paintings as thrashing laps, as polygraphs, as pulse rate.  I wonder if I'm drawn to his work because he might have had an athletic habit he metabolized then rejected.

Devoured Shapton's book this morning in a single sitting (well, actually two sittings, with a short walk from one location to another); it is odd, off-kilter, but in a way that's suited to its subject, loss and the relationship between past and present selves.  NB I made a conscious decision to buy it on Kindle, as I wanted to read it as soon as I could lay my hands on it and I knew I'd be out of the country on pub date, but this is one to buy in hard copy, as the watercolors (and appealing photographs of bathing suit collection!) do not show up well on the small gray screen of the Kindle.  I had a pang that I won't be able to put this book into Wendy's hands, as the Nepean Sportsplex makes several appearances, including in a watercolor!

I am somewhat off-kilter myself today, as the date for receiving editorial comments has been pushed back, and with it my final deadline; I was really hoping to be well and truly done with the wretched creature by the end of the day tomorrow, but it is no longer an option!  Unsettled without proper work tasks.  Haven't brought real other work with me, barring one or two minor things (i.e. reader's report on a journal article or two), as I am still waiting for second report on the style book and the other article I'm working on notionally this month needs a lot of library books that I didn't want to cart down here on spec.  Not really in situation for 'vacation,' though, either, with this hanging over me, and curiously slow internet connection today is further contributing to the feeling that I am on the verge of exploding.  Exercise and projected Middlemarch reread will have to tide me over....

Read the other night: Sheila Heti's intriguing and often comically Socratic How Should a Person Be?; it is a sort of companion piece to The Chairs Are Where The People Go, which I think I found more intensely engaging.  Both volumes are recommended on the grounds that they are not really like anything else and they will stick with you.

Bonus links: Roland Barthes on Cy Twombly; my top five book recommendations for the swim-obsessed.

An update

I am all at sixes and sevens!

On Monday, we went to the Technosport annual team banquet. Wendy was posthumously given the team's award for coaching excellence, and we heard many testimonials to the extent of her contribution to the team; we also saw the presentation of the inaugural Wendy Buckner Award, for most improved athlete, to a friend and teammate Wendy cared about a great deal.

On Wednesday, the memorial celebration of Wendy's life was held at Pinecrest: it was a large and moving gathering of family and friends.

Meanwhile, Wendy's cat Onyx a.k.a. The Boarder is settling in at Iain and Deb's place.

I've been reading bits and pieces around the edges. I was still finishing Anna Karenina last week; I cannot say that I like it as much as I do War and Peace, I find the central trio of characters much less attractive and interesting than their counterparts in the earlier novel. My favorite parts were the horse race (shades of Dick Francis!) and the hunting scenes: but say what you like, these novels are extraordinarily immersive and transporting ... even suitable for reading on a plane!

Desperate situations call for desperate remedies: I went and spent a lot of dollars at Books & Books before we left Cayman. It is not good value for money or, really, suitable for travel, as I read this sort of book much too quickly, but I could not resist Robert Crais's The First Rule. Our route was Cayman-Tampa, Tampa-Philadelphia, Philadelphia-Ottawa, and basically I have to thank Crais for making the second leg of the trip pass in the blink of an eye; it was certainly the most relaxing couple hours I have had in the last week and a half.

(Oh, and I read Joshilyn Jackson's Backseat Saints the week before also - very good, very gripping.)

Then I took up another new purchase, Elizabeth George's This Body of Death; she is no longer a favorite of mine, but her books are lengthy and readable and thus suitable for travel. Fortunately I have no need to say anything else since Maxine has made all of the observations I would have wanted to note!

And then an appealing but to me ultimately unsatisfactory novel called A Madness of Angels: too much under the sign of Neverwhere/Harry Dresden, too much lovingness of description of a fashion that feels a bit self-satisfied rather than really furthering the purposes of the story. But it whiled away an hour or two.

I've had hardly any time to read since arriving in Ottawa, and no time or opportunity to exercise; without these two refuges, I do not do very well, so I am hoping to get back into some sort of exercise routine and reclaim a bit of evening reading time over the next few days. We will stay in Ottawa through the end of next weekend; I was scheduled to fly from Cayman to New York on Wednesday the 14th, but it may be that I'll instead fly from Ottawa to New York or Philadelphia, stay the week visiting family and friends and get myself back to Cayman on the 18th or 19th instead. I will wait to see how things unfold before booking anything.

(Picture courtesy of Afsaneh.)

Bills of mortality

From Will Slauter's Society of Fellows talk on reading and writing the plague.