I simply saw too much theatre in 2015 to try to boil it down to a top 5 or even a top 10. I'll just list the plays that I found something notable to enjoy, as best as I can recall in the order I attended these plays. (I'd say this covers 65% or so of the non-Shakespearean theatre I attended, though there were a few shows I really didn't care for, which I will let sink without a trace.) I've tried to include all the links to meaningful internal posts with my thoughts, but I'm sure I missed a few.
Jan.
The Other Place by Sharr White (Canadian Stage)
Feb.
The Object Lesson by Geoff Sobelle (Harbourfront)
Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre de Laclos/adapted by Christopher Hampton (Red One)
Problem Child by George F. Walker (Red Sandcastle)
March
Blithe Spirit by Noel Coward (Mirvish)
A Woman is a Secret by John Patrick Shanley (RipJaw/Storefront Theatre)
Blood Wedding by Federico Garcia Lorca (Buddies in Bad Times)
April
Travesties by Tom Stoppard (Segal Centre - Montreal)
Infinity by Hannah Moscovitch (Tarragon)
Nongogo by Athol Fugard (Canadian Stage)
Boston Marriage by David Mamet (Headstrong Collective @ Campbell House)
May
The Bigger Issue by George F. Walker (Crazy Lady/Theatre Passe Muraille)
Trudeau and the FLQ by Michael Hollingsworth (Video Cabaret)
Trudeau and Levesque by Michael Hollingsworth (Video Cabaret)
June
Top Girls by Caryl Churchill (Shaw)
Mud by Maria Fornes (Theatre Asylum)
July
The Comedy of Errors by Shakespeare (Canadian Stage - High Park)
The Physicists by Friedrich Dürrenmatt (Stratford)
887 by Robert LePage (Canadian Stage)
August
Intelligent Homosexual's Guide ... by Tony Kushner (Shaw)
The Tall Building by Jill Connell (Toronto Fringe)
Merry Wives of Windsor by Shakespeare (Toronto Fringe)
Twelfe Night by Shakespeare (Toronto Fringe)
Moby Dick by Herman Melville/adapted by David Catlin (Lookingglass - Chicago)
Sept.
We the Family by George F. Walker (Hart House)
Albertine in Five Times by Michel Tremblay (UT Drama Centre)
Possible Worlds by John Mighton (Stratford)
Oct.
Yours Forever, Marie-Lou by Michel Tremblay (Soulpepper)
Nov.
Talking Heads by Alan Bennett (Perfectly Peter @ Campbell House)
Wonder of the World by David Lindsay-Abaire (East Side Players)
Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde (George Brown)
The Castle by Howard Barker (Red One)
I did see one play in December (Tails from the City), which was an outdoor spectacle at the Evergreen Brickworks in Toronto. I took my daughter. She enjoyed it, even though we got caught up in a bit of a snowstorm, but even she agreed there was no meaningful plot, so I can't really put it up against these other plays. After some back and forth, I decided I am going to skip Red One's The Chasse-Galerie, though I might go next year if they do make this an annual event. I'm also going to skip the remount of Three Men in a Boat, since I already did see it and I need to be at least a bit smarter about money. (It was/is worth seeing once, however.)
There were a couple of rarities on the list -- not only the dusting off of Dürrenmatt's The Physicists, which I enjoyed quite a bit (possibly my favourite production at Stratford this year), but Fugard's Nongogo and Fornes's Mud. There is no question that I didn't see all that many comedies this year (aside from Shakespeare). Even Stoppard's Travesties is a mix of humour and history, though I enjoyed it very much. Probably the purest laugh-out-loud comedy of the year was Wonder of the World. Not sure about next year -- it will probably be dominated by "serious" plays, but I'll probably see the farce Boeing Boeing at Hart House in the spring.
There certainly are a few interesting things on the horizon for 2016, but I'll probably just try to port this page over and extend it to cover the second half of 2016, rather than going into great detail here. I do think I am going to cut way back at Stratford this year (only the Ibsen play for certain and possibly All My Sons if the reviews are very strong). There are actually two plays that are probably worth seeing at Shaw -- Strindberg's Dance of Death and perhaps Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession (again depending on the reviews). If this was all in Toronto, I would go to both of these and even Wilde's A Woman of No Importance, but I just do not care to travel that far. Maybe if they come up with a shuttle bus like Stratford I would consider going, but for now Shaw is off my radar. That's probably just as well, since it seems I am most attuned to independent theatre anyway, judging by what I really enjoyed over 2015.
Thursday, December 31, 2015
9th Canadian Challenge - 11th Review - Lush Dreams, Blue Exile
You might be excused for wondering why I bothered reading another book of poems by George Elliott Clarke after I had not been particularly impressed by Traverse. That's a fair question. I suppose it is the fact that I kept seeing his books when I went to the City Hall library. At any rate, I decided to read another collection, and it was Lush Dreams, Blue Exile: Fugitive Poems 1978-1993.
The first section is vaguely political, and Clarke has a few poems about the October Crisis when Trudeau sent troops into Montreal to try to stomp out the FLQ separatist movement. It is just a bit amusing to read a poet with Black Nationalist leanings contemplating this use of state power/aggression, aware that he was not being targeted or particularly at risk.
"October Crisis" is probably the best of this group. First Clarke watches the police move in (or imagines he is there watching, which is nearly the same):
All this hurt night, police clatter through rues
Constricted by their fears, and splash through glass,
Wade through sawdust doors, to handcuff lovers
And strip-search their fat, suspicious tomes,
Mistaking cubisme for communisme ...
There is something intriguing in how it was primarily intellectuals that were swept up in the arrests during the October Crisis. This occurred in France and other European cities during the 1960s, but was far less common in North America.
Back in Ottawa, there is quite a different response, where party politics (and party tribalism) outweighs any genuine outrage. (For that matter, it wasn't as if the Progressive Conservatives could afford to be seen as on the side of the FLQ!)
Now Liberals quote slick, quisling Latin
To each other in the gun-hushed Commons,
Softening, with suave, veronal accents ...
Their unapprehended insurrection.
It's very difficult for me to say where I would have fallen on the spectrum regarding the October Crisis. If I had been under 20, I definitely would have been opposed to the government's actions. I am not as sure how I would respond to armed rebellion (on the part of the FLQ) now that I have far more to lose. I would probably have been a resigned supporter of doing what was necessary to keep the peace. In any case, regardless of what one thinks about Trudeau's actions, by definition the State cannot lead an insurrection, so I think Clarke's final word of the poem is poorly chosen.
While in general, Clarke comes across as an urban poet, he has a few poems where he is exploring the countryside and the people living there, acknowledging they are much closer to nature. "Hinterland" and "Homage to the Beloved Country" are probably the best two along these lines. Ironically, even though he is writing in a negative fashion, saying essentially that there is much to be found and studied in the "hinterland": Hinterland is that country / you cannot even begin / to imagine," almost all the interesting imagery in the poem are wrapped up with the urban, either full-blown cities or "sea chanty towns."
I simply think Clarke is on firmer footing when in urban contexts, and it was a relief for me when he turns his attention to Halifax in "Halifax Blues." He certainly doesn't pull any punches, painting a pretty bleak picture:
Junked cars bunch, hunch like rats; laundry,
Lynches, dangles from clothelines; streetlamps sputter,
Gutter, blow out; gross, bloated cops
Awake and pummel Lysol-scented drunks,
While God grins at scabbed girls who scour the streets
To pass pestilence to legislators.
(I wasn't particularly impressed with Halifax and particularly not the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, but I didn't hate it with such passion. I would be interested to hear if Clarke was persona non grata in the Maritimes after publishing this and a few similar poems. He's probably better off in Toronto anyway.)
While there were a few poems that stuck with me in Blue Exile (that's how I refer to this book), in general I wasn't particularly taken with this collection. I think I am basically through with reading Clarke, as I am just not on the same wave-length he is, aside from sharing a very general interest in "the urban," but most 20th Century poets are urban poets, so that in itself is no real recommendation.
The first section is vaguely political, and Clarke has a few poems about the October Crisis when Trudeau sent troops into Montreal to try to stomp out the FLQ separatist movement. It is just a bit amusing to read a poet with Black Nationalist leanings contemplating this use of state power/aggression, aware that he was not being targeted or particularly at risk.
"October Crisis" is probably the best of this group. First Clarke watches the police move in (or imagines he is there watching, which is nearly the same):
All this hurt night, police clatter through rues
Constricted by their fears, and splash through glass,
Wade through sawdust doors, to handcuff lovers
And strip-search their fat, suspicious tomes,
Mistaking cubisme for communisme ...
There is something intriguing in how it was primarily intellectuals that were swept up in the arrests during the October Crisis. This occurred in France and other European cities during the 1960s, but was far less common in North America.
Back in Ottawa, there is quite a different response, where party politics (and party tribalism) outweighs any genuine outrage. (For that matter, it wasn't as if the Progressive Conservatives could afford to be seen as on the side of the FLQ!)
Now Liberals quote slick, quisling Latin
To each other in the gun-hushed Commons,
Softening, with suave, veronal accents ...
Their unapprehended insurrection.
It's very difficult for me to say where I would have fallen on the spectrum regarding the October Crisis. If I had been under 20, I definitely would have been opposed to the government's actions. I am not as sure how I would respond to armed rebellion (on the part of the FLQ) now that I have far more to lose. I would probably have been a resigned supporter of doing what was necessary to keep the peace. In any case, regardless of what one thinks about Trudeau's actions, by definition the State cannot lead an insurrection, so I think Clarke's final word of the poem is poorly chosen.
While in general, Clarke comes across as an urban poet, he has a few poems where he is exploring the countryside and the people living there, acknowledging they are much closer to nature. "Hinterland" and "Homage to the Beloved Country" are probably the best two along these lines. Ironically, even though he is writing in a negative fashion, saying essentially that there is much to be found and studied in the "hinterland": Hinterland is that country / you cannot even begin / to imagine," almost all the interesting imagery in the poem are wrapped up with the urban, either full-blown cities or "sea chanty towns."
I simply think Clarke is on firmer footing when in urban contexts, and it was a relief for me when he turns his attention to Halifax in "Halifax Blues." He certainly doesn't pull any punches, painting a pretty bleak picture:
Junked cars bunch, hunch like rats; laundry,
Lynches, dangles from clothelines; streetlamps sputter,
Gutter, blow out; gross, bloated cops
Awake and pummel Lysol-scented drunks,
While God grins at scabbed girls who scour the streets
To pass pestilence to legislators.
(I wasn't particularly impressed with Halifax and particularly not the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, but I didn't hate it with such passion. I would be interested to hear if Clarke was persona non grata in the Maritimes after publishing this and a few similar poems. He's probably better off in Toronto anyway.)
While there were a few poems that stuck with me in Blue Exile (that's how I refer to this book), in general I wasn't particularly taken with this collection. I think I am basically through with reading Clarke, as I am just not on the same wave-length he is, aside from sharing a very general interest in "the urban," but most 20th Century poets are urban poets, so that in itself is no real recommendation.
Wednesday, December 30, 2015
Horrible teachers
This post will try to pull together a few things that have been on my mind lately. And no, despite my increasing annoyance at the elementary teacher job actions and strikes in Toronto and Vancouver, this has nothing to do with any of the teachers my children have had.
The trigger (and I use the word advisedly, since there appears to be an entire generation so delicate that they require warnings and ask in advance that their lecturers avoid "trigger words") was reading Sylvia Townsend Warner's Mr. Fortune's Maggot. In so many ways, this is an inverse of the (superior in my view) novel by J.F. Powers: Morte d'Urban. In Morte d'Urban, a smooth, urbane (and urban) priest is more or less banished to the wilderness of rural Minnesota, where he essentially rediscovers his faith and finds a new purpose ministering to his new flock. In contrast, Mr. Fortune somewhat perversely chooses to become a missionary (despite the strong misgivings of his superiors), fails miserably at it, and, incredibly, is not recalled, despite making no progress at all -- making only one partial convert in 3 years. I'm just not really feeling the payoff, since books about people failing in their careers are generally not that entertaining for me, though I might make exceptions for those where they are thwarted by external forces. I guess I just don't see Mr. Fortune rising to the level of self-consciousness where he can identify his own short-comings as a priest. (For all his failings, Fred Vincy of the novel Middlemarch at least realizes that he would make a lousy priest and he exerts himself (to some degree) to find another calling.) Anyway, Mr. Fortune has such a weak understanding of human nature that he thinks he can comfort or at least distract his young charge by teaching him abstract mathematics and starts with geometry. He, of course, is just as poor as a geometry tutor as he was/is as a priest.
The other main strand behind this post is what I consider a generational gap between Gen X and Gen Y. There was some article by a Millennial either in the Guardian or in Slate (I can't seem to retrieve it now) where as a bit of an aside the author said that it should be taken as a positive sign that Millennials cared enough about their education that they often asked to retake mid-term exams where they had done poorly. Most of the commentators below the line that addressed this aspect of the piece were a bit incredulous and hostile, and certainly in general, the reception of the piece was negative, feeling that the author had merely proved their point about how disappointing Millennials really were. Nonetheless, there was one very persistent Millennial below the line who kept asking if Boomers or Gen X'ers would like it if they were fired for one bad day at work or one botched project. Aside from the fact it is a silly comparison (getting a bad grade is not the same as being fired -- it is more like getting a bad mark towards one's annual review and this definitely does happen when someone botches a major project), it definitely reflects a very different approach to education -- that it is a continual process, that rewarding progress should matter more than absolute standards and that educators need to accommodate students with different educational needs -- and when taken to the logical extreme, that students have no meaningful accountability. I don't really hold with any of this, but this is more or less what the education lobby has been promoting in North America for a decade or two. (I'm not trying to single out educators -- every profession suffers from quite a bit of groupthink. I just happen to think that the current trend in education is a pernicious one.)
However, university professors are brought up in a different system (much more dog eat dog), and it is fair to say that teaching students is more or less an afterthought, particularly at the more prestigious schools. So it is a bit of a buzzsaw effect when students brought up through high school in a more supportive system hit university.
I probably would not have even written this post except on a shuttle bus back from the Brick Works yesterday, I overheard a young woman (probably the upper end of Gen Y) complaining about a terrible professor who would not let a friend of hers retake a mid-term. I had kind of thought it was an urban legend, but here was the embodiment of this generation's entitlement in the flesh. While she had some concrete examples of why he was a terrible professor, I still don't see why it is incumbent upon the professor to change the grading system or to offer make-up exams, unless that was clearly spelled out in the syllabus. (For example, in the class I taught, I made it clear that the students could delay handing in one assignment for a week with no questions asked, but they could only do it once. For a different course I TA'ed, it was spelled out that the lowest grade on one assignment would be dropped. I think these are examples of trying to accommodate students and understanding that not all assignments will register equally well for all students. But it is simply unfair to allow one student to get preferential treatment on a mid-term!)
I had professors I got along well with, but I simply didn't understand what they wanted on an assignment, and I accepted the poor grade. No question I was unhappy about it, but it wouldn't even have crossed my mind to complain about it. For that matter, I ran into a professor where my style of learning and his lectures didn't coincide at all, and I eventually had to withdraw from the class and retake the class with a different professor. That was certainly unfortunate, but again, I think it is one of the things one learns in college -- that not everything revolves around you and your needs. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I did try to get the "W" taken off my transcript after I passed the course the following semester, since I thought that was within the rules, but I didn't pout when I found out I had withdrawn too late.)
Given all the quirks of academia -- and all the years I was part of it -- it is actually surprising that I have not had that many terrible professors. Most were quite good. I did have some I didn't find very inspiring, but I still learned something from them. I had one statistics professor who was quite good on abstract theory, but it was only the follow-up lectures by the TA that allowed any of us to understand the practical details and thus complete the assignments and pass. (This is a case where the department took preemptive corrective actions. I might have had a more sympathetic ear for those Millennials if we had been given lectures on one thing and been tested on another.) I did have one professor of philosophy take over a course and change the entire direction -- we had to spend far more time on Hegel than was allotted, and this ended up being a disappointing course, not just because of the swerve but because I was not in sync with this professor's style.
In terms of the worst, as I think over my whole career, I only had one professor who literally dusted off old notes and gave the same lecture year after year. He was probably the third worst professor I had. The second worst was at U Michigan where a professor of religion basically insisted that we parrot back what she had lectured to us in our term papers. The very worst was a professor at U Toronto, who, in addition to expecting us to parrot back her line of thought, was actually quite sarcastic to students in the out group. Hands down she was the worst professor I ever experienced. Yet even there I didn't go and complain about the grade (though I did think it unfair) or ask to resubmit a paper. However, a few years later I did try (unsuccessfully) to sink her chances of tenure when UT contacted me, somewhat out of the blue.
I think professors and university students always have some gulf between them, but it seems to have gotten much worse in recent years. Expectations are unchecked, and a consumerist mindset has infested many of the students (and their parents!) that it is the students who are paying for a good education, which by necessity includes getting good grades. The more privileged and prestigious universities are making some headway against this tide, but the trends are not promising. While there are many days I wish I was in academia, I also read about these Millennials expecting to retake tests and negotiate their way to a better grade, and I realize I am well out of that. I'm quite sure I would be rated as an unsympathetic and unfair teacher myself with poor scores on http://www.ratemyprofessors.com, particularly on the Hotness score. It kind of boggles my mind that this is what matters nowadays.
The trigger (and I use the word advisedly, since there appears to be an entire generation so delicate that they require warnings and ask in advance that their lecturers avoid "trigger words") was reading Sylvia Townsend Warner's Mr. Fortune's Maggot. In so many ways, this is an inverse of the (superior in my view) novel by J.F. Powers: Morte d'Urban. In Morte d'Urban, a smooth, urbane (and urban) priest is more or less banished to the wilderness of rural Minnesota, where he essentially rediscovers his faith and finds a new purpose ministering to his new flock. In contrast, Mr. Fortune somewhat perversely chooses to become a missionary (despite the strong misgivings of his superiors), fails miserably at it, and, incredibly, is not recalled, despite making no progress at all -- making only one partial convert in 3 years. I'm just not really feeling the payoff, since books about people failing in their careers are generally not that entertaining for me, though I might make exceptions for those where they are thwarted by external forces. I guess I just don't see Mr. Fortune rising to the level of self-consciousness where he can identify his own short-comings as a priest. (For all his failings, Fred Vincy of the novel Middlemarch at least realizes that he would make a lousy priest and he exerts himself (to some degree) to find another calling.) Anyway, Mr. Fortune has such a weak understanding of human nature that he thinks he can comfort or at least distract his young charge by teaching him abstract mathematics and starts with geometry. He, of course, is just as poor as a geometry tutor as he was/is as a priest.
The other main strand behind this post is what I consider a generational gap between Gen X and Gen Y. There was some article by a Millennial either in the Guardian or in Slate (I can't seem to retrieve it now) where as a bit of an aside the author said that it should be taken as a positive sign that Millennials cared enough about their education that they often asked to retake mid-term exams where they had done poorly. Most of the commentators below the line that addressed this aspect of the piece were a bit incredulous and hostile, and certainly in general, the reception of the piece was negative, feeling that the author had merely proved their point about how disappointing Millennials really were. Nonetheless, there was one very persistent Millennial below the line who kept asking if Boomers or Gen X'ers would like it if they were fired for one bad day at work or one botched project. Aside from the fact it is a silly comparison (getting a bad grade is not the same as being fired -- it is more like getting a bad mark towards one's annual review and this definitely does happen when someone botches a major project), it definitely reflects a very different approach to education -- that it is a continual process, that rewarding progress should matter more than absolute standards and that educators need to accommodate students with different educational needs -- and when taken to the logical extreme, that students have no meaningful accountability. I don't really hold with any of this, but this is more or less what the education lobby has been promoting in North America for a decade or two. (I'm not trying to single out educators -- every profession suffers from quite a bit of groupthink. I just happen to think that the current trend in education is a pernicious one.)
However, university professors are brought up in a different system (much more dog eat dog), and it is fair to say that teaching students is more or less an afterthought, particularly at the more prestigious schools. So it is a bit of a buzzsaw effect when students brought up through high school in a more supportive system hit university.
I probably would not have even written this post except on a shuttle bus back from the Brick Works yesterday, I overheard a young woman (probably the upper end of Gen Y) complaining about a terrible professor who would not let a friend of hers retake a mid-term. I had kind of thought it was an urban legend, but here was the embodiment of this generation's entitlement in the flesh. While she had some concrete examples of why he was a terrible professor, I still don't see why it is incumbent upon the professor to change the grading system or to offer make-up exams, unless that was clearly spelled out in the syllabus. (For example, in the class I taught, I made it clear that the students could delay handing in one assignment for a week with no questions asked, but they could only do it once. For a different course I TA'ed, it was spelled out that the lowest grade on one assignment would be dropped. I think these are examples of trying to accommodate students and understanding that not all assignments will register equally well for all students. But it is simply unfair to allow one student to get preferential treatment on a mid-term!)
I had professors I got along well with, but I simply didn't understand what they wanted on an assignment, and I accepted the poor grade. No question I was unhappy about it, but it wouldn't even have crossed my mind to complain about it. For that matter, I ran into a professor where my style of learning and his lectures didn't coincide at all, and I eventually had to withdraw from the class and retake the class with a different professor. That was certainly unfortunate, but again, I think it is one of the things one learns in college -- that not everything revolves around you and your needs. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I did try to get the "W" taken off my transcript after I passed the course the following semester, since I thought that was within the rules, but I didn't pout when I found out I had withdrawn too late.)
Given all the quirks of academia -- and all the years I was part of it -- it is actually surprising that I have not had that many terrible professors. Most were quite good. I did have some I didn't find very inspiring, but I still learned something from them. I had one statistics professor who was quite good on abstract theory, but it was only the follow-up lectures by the TA that allowed any of us to understand the practical details and thus complete the assignments and pass. (This is a case where the department took preemptive corrective actions. I might have had a more sympathetic ear for those Millennials if we had been given lectures on one thing and been tested on another.) I did have one professor of philosophy take over a course and change the entire direction -- we had to spend far more time on Hegel than was allotted, and this ended up being a disappointing course, not just because of the swerve but because I was not in sync with this professor's style.
In terms of the worst, as I think over my whole career, I only had one professor who literally dusted off old notes and gave the same lecture year after year. He was probably the third worst professor I had. The second worst was at U Michigan where a professor of religion basically insisted that we parrot back what she had lectured to us in our term papers. The very worst was a professor at U Toronto, who, in addition to expecting us to parrot back her line of thought, was actually quite sarcastic to students in the out group. Hands down she was the worst professor I ever experienced. Yet even there I didn't go and complain about the grade (though I did think it unfair) or ask to resubmit a paper. However, a few years later I did try (unsuccessfully) to sink her chances of tenure when UT contacted me, somewhat out of the blue.
I think professors and university students always have some gulf between them, but it seems to have gotten much worse in recent years. Expectations are unchecked, and a consumerist mindset has infested many of the students (and their parents!) that it is the students who are paying for a good education, which by necessity includes getting good grades. The more privileged and prestigious universities are making some headway against this tide, but the trends are not promising. While there are many days I wish I was in academia, I also read about these Millennials expecting to retake tests and negotiate their way to a better grade, and I realize I am well out of that. I'm quite sure I would be rated as an unsympathetic and unfair teacher myself with poor scores on http://www.ratemyprofessors.com, particularly on the Hotness score. It kind of boggles my mind that this is what matters nowadays.
Sunday, December 27, 2015
Best reads of 2015
While I am still working my way through George Eliot's Middlemarch -- and hope to wrap it up in the last few days of 2015 -- I can tell right now is not going to crack my top 10 or even top 20 books read in 2015. The plot is reasonably clever, but I do not care for Eliot's obtrusive narrative voice. It is somewhat easier to take than in The Mill on the Floss, which I really did not care for, but I just feel that I am constantly being told what to pay attention to in each chapter and, worse, how I should think/feel about all these events. Dickens and Trollope also share this weakness on the completely omniscient narrative voice, but somehow Eliot is continually rubbing me the wrong way. (It doesn't help that one of the characters starts out as totally feckless and spoiled, though it appears he finally get serious about choosing a career after he is disappointed in not receiving a large inheritance from his uncle. I just do not respond well to feckless characters, which was continually a problem when I was reading Barbara Comyns's novels. Perhaps I also see a bit too much of Casaubon in myself -- and don't care for the novel acting as a mirror. Not the irrational jealousy, but the unwillingness to finish large, ambitious projects, perhaps in part to avoid opening oneself up to criticism.)
At any rate, building off of my 2014 round-up post, I think I have the format down. I list the top 5 books of the year (not counting books I re-read since those aren't precisely discoveries, and I only re-read books that already rank very highly on my personal enjoyment factor). Then I round it off with other books that stood out among the dozens of books I read over the year. I link where possible to the posts that have discussed these books, either in detail or just in passing.
Top five books of 2015:
Gregor von Rezzori An Ermine in Czernopol
Ivan Vladislavic The Restless Supermarket
Albert Cossery Proud Beggars
Friedrich Dürrenmatt The Physicists (saw and read this in 2015)
Bruno Schulz The Street of Crocodiles/Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (often published together in one volume)
Franz Kafka's The Trial edges out Djuna Barnes's Nightwood for the best book reread.
Honorable mention:
Andrey Platonov Happy Moscow
Tom Stoppard Travesties (saw and read this in 2015)
Barbara Comyns The Juniper Tree
Elizabeth Taylor A View of the Harbour
Molly Keane Time After Time
Jerome K. Jerome Three Men in a Boat
Angela Carter Nights at the Circus
Irène Némirovsky David Golder
Michael Ondaatje The Cat's Table
R. K. Narayan Mr Sampath: The Printer of Malgudi
The Narayan is an interesting case as I thought a few parts felt familiar, but it wasn't until this dramatic scene towards the end where one of the minor characters goes off the deep end and tears up a movie studio that I decided I had definitely reread the book.
After some internal debate, I decided to add The Cat's Table as well. I find this a flawed novel, in the sense that Ondaatje tried too hard to overcomplicate the structure of the novel. Frankly, it would have been so much better as either a simple story of the boy on a ship headed to England, or one step removed -- the retrospective view of this trip. But the shifting back and forth in time was too precious and undermined what was well done. Still, if I prune away the elaborate structure, the remaining shipboard scenes were quite entertaining.
Looking ahead, I have quite a few shorter (250 pages or less) novels coming up, which always makes me feel particularly "productive" in crossing books off my TBR pile. Based on my current pace, in the second half of 2016, I should start hitting Tobias Smollett for the first time. I hope I can get into the right frame of mind to read him, since he is supposed to have written quite a few "rollicking" novels. (Sometimes the humor of the past doesn't quite translate to the present.) At some point after this, I should get around to rereading Bell's Waiting for the End of the World (and I'll see if it has such a big impact on me this time around -- here's hoping). The back end of the year features quite a few longer books, including Wallace's The Pale King, Murakami's 1Q84 and Thackeray's Vanity Fair. While I suspect if I stick closely to the reading list I won't quite make it to Vanity Fair in 2016, I might rearrange it to tackle it in December, as I tend to have more time off around the holidays. That's something to look forward to at any rate.
Best wishes to all for 2016!
At any rate, building off of my 2014 round-up post, I think I have the format down. I list the top 5 books of the year (not counting books I re-read since those aren't precisely discoveries, and I only re-read books that already rank very highly on my personal enjoyment factor). Then I round it off with other books that stood out among the dozens of books I read over the year. I link where possible to the posts that have discussed these books, either in detail or just in passing.
Top five books of 2015:
Gregor von Rezzori An Ermine in Czernopol
Ivan Vladislavic The Restless Supermarket
Albert Cossery Proud Beggars
Friedrich Dürrenmatt The Physicists (saw and read this in 2015)
Bruno Schulz The Street of Crocodiles/Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (often published together in one volume)
Franz Kafka's The Trial edges out Djuna Barnes's Nightwood for the best book reread.
Honorable mention:
Andrey Platonov Happy Moscow
Tom Stoppard Travesties (saw and read this in 2015)
Barbara Comyns The Juniper Tree
Elizabeth Taylor A View of the Harbour
Molly Keane Time After Time
Jerome K. Jerome Three Men in a Boat
Angela Carter Nights at the Circus
Irène Némirovsky David Golder
Michael Ondaatje The Cat's Table
R. K. Narayan Mr Sampath: The Printer of Malgudi
The Narayan is an interesting case as I thought a few parts felt familiar, but it wasn't until this dramatic scene towards the end where one of the minor characters goes off the deep end and tears up a movie studio that I decided I had definitely reread the book.
After some internal debate, I decided to add The Cat's Table as well. I find this a flawed novel, in the sense that Ondaatje tried too hard to overcomplicate the structure of the novel. Frankly, it would have been so much better as either a simple story of the boy on a ship headed to England, or one step removed -- the retrospective view of this trip. But the shifting back and forth in time was too precious and undermined what was well done. Still, if I prune away the elaborate structure, the remaining shipboard scenes were quite entertaining.
Looking ahead, I have quite a few shorter (250 pages or less) novels coming up, which always makes me feel particularly "productive" in crossing books off my TBR pile. Based on my current pace, in the second half of 2016, I should start hitting Tobias Smollett for the first time. I hope I can get into the right frame of mind to read him, since he is supposed to have written quite a few "rollicking" novels. (Sometimes the humor of the past doesn't quite translate to the present.) At some point after this, I should get around to rereading Bell's Waiting for the End of the World (and I'll see if it has such a big impact on me this time around -- here's hoping). The back end of the year features quite a few longer books, including Wallace's The Pale King, Murakami's 1Q84 and Thackeray's Vanity Fair. While I suspect if I stick closely to the reading list I won't quite make it to Vanity Fair in 2016, I might rearrange it to tackle it in December, as I tend to have more time off around the holidays. That's something to look forward to at any rate.
Best wishes to all for 2016!
The main galleries of the Cleveland Museum of Art
No question the most compelling reason to get to the Cleveland Museum of Art is to see the special exhibit, which heavily features Monet's paintings of his garden, along with other key Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings of gardens. There is just over a week left, so if you haven't already made plans, it may already be too late. I spent a bit over an hour trying to soak it all in, and it was certainly worth the trip.
I haven't spent all that much time in Cleveland, though I went a couple of times for conferences in 2001 and 2003 (both times I snuck away to the Cleveland Museum of Art) and then I went once or twice for work probably around 2008 or 2009, though I don't think I had time to get to the museum. I suspect I did not go, since the big renovation of the museum would have been happening at that time, and I certainly don't remember seeing a lot of construction activity. The main difference is that the original building had its main entrance facing a small pond. This has now become a secondary entrance and it was actually closed for the winter!
You had to walk around to the north side. (That's a bit of a shame as people will generally miss out on seeing Rodin's The Thinker in what used to be the front of the museum. It is only a small dark dot in the photo above.)
One quite important change is that the north entrance is lower, so that after you enter and go past the gift shop and the main atrium (note the long line of people trying to get tickets for the show), you start on what used to be the lower level (Medieval art and Asian art and Islamic art and even textiles).
I suspect with the new configuration, these galleries are visited slightly more often than before. On the whole this is a good thing. I knew I had very little time, however, and pretty much raced around the bottom in about 15 minutes.
I'm generally not much of a fan of Medieval art, but in honor of the season, I will post this Adoration of the Magi, which I thought was well done (if a bit out of focus).
I then went upstairs and almost immediately was confronted with a very powerful Turner painting, depicting the burning of the Houses of Parliament in 1834.
As it happened, no one at all was in the gallery with me, so I was able to soak it in (again, keeping one eye on my watch). I took a few detailed close-ups, as it is just hard to get a sense of what Turner was doing without getting close to the paintings.
While from a selfish perspective, it was nice to have the painting all to myself, I think it a shame that the AGO couldn't convince the Cleveland Museum to loan them this painting for their Turner exhibit (perhaps they didn't ask), since the companion piece from the Philadelphia Museum of Art is in the show, and putting them side by side would be really quite cool.
I like both views, but I do have to give the nod to the painting held in Philadelphia as the contrast between the fire and the on-coming dusk makes it a bit bolder. I think the composition is a bit more interesting as well. I should be able to get over to the AGO for a short visit tomorrow, and I'll try to spend a bit of time in front of this painting if the crowds aren't too bad.
Anyway, the clock was ticking, so I headed out of the original 1916 museum building into the new galleries. They were terrific with far too many paintings to detail. I'll put up a few that really caught my attention without a lot of commentary. In general, my photos came out pretty well with a few exceptions. Fortunately, most of the ones that were blurred were ones that are in the new museum handbook, which I did purchase. And indeed, many of the images are on the Cleveland Museum website, as is the case with an increasing number of museums.
I turned the corner and came to the gallery with the painting I was really looking for: Max Beckmann's The Last Duty of Perseus. I don't really understand the painting, but it is definitely powerful if a bit too gruesome. (I actually wasn't that sad not to have the kids with me as I couldn't really have taken much time in front of this painting with them around.)
At this point, the collection started turning towards surrealism and then the abstract expressionists. While there were several important works here, I was most drawn to the Stuart Davis,* with its pop sensibilities creeping into abstraction, and the Guston, which is arguably a pop work. (I probably wouldn't have been too upset if either of these paintings had gone back into storage, though I was certainly glad to see them. I would have been quite upset, however, if the Beckmann wasn't on view.)
It was probably just as well that part of Japanese art galleries were closed for renovation, and I kept moving around the ring to reach Indian art. I took a minute to snap this photo of Ganesha (the god of travellers). Who knows if that gave me just enough karma to catch my Greyhound bus out of Cleveland...
However, I knew I was living on borrowed time by the time I reached the American galleries back in the 1916 building. In fact, most of these photos are blurred, but a few ones turned out reasonably well (both by Childe Hassam incidentally).
Then it was really and truly time to go, so I ran into the gift shop, retrieved my bag and set out onto the mean streets of Cleveland, hoping to find a cab to take me back downtown. I certainly wouldn't be averse to returning to Cleveland and checking out the museum again, but I hope it will be in a few years when I can rent a car (probably driving the whole family there), so I don't end up in such a jam again.
* While researching something else, I learned that the Stuart Davis is the earlier study for a larger painting (33% bigger but otherwise almost identical) in the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. I've been meaning to get down one of these days, and I'll try to make sure it is on view when I do.
I haven't spent all that much time in Cleveland, though I went a couple of times for conferences in 2001 and 2003 (both times I snuck away to the Cleveland Museum of Art) and then I went once or twice for work probably around 2008 or 2009, though I don't think I had time to get to the museum. I suspect I did not go, since the big renovation of the museum would have been happening at that time, and I certainly don't remember seeing a lot of construction activity. The main difference is that the original building had its main entrance facing a small pond. This has now become a secondary entrance and it was actually closed for the winter!
You had to walk around to the north side. (That's a bit of a shame as people will generally miss out on seeing Rodin's The Thinker in what used to be the front of the museum. It is only a small dark dot in the photo above.)
One quite important change is that the north entrance is lower, so that after you enter and go past the gift shop and the main atrium (note the long line of people trying to get tickets for the show), you start on what used to be the lower level (Medieval art and Asian art and Islamic art and even textiles).
I suspect with the new configuration, these galleries are visited slightly more often than before. On the whole this is a good thing. I knew I had very little time, however, and pretty much raced around the bottom in about 15 minutes.
I'm generally not much of a fan of Medieval art, but in honor of the season, I will post this Adoration of the Magi, which I thought was well done (if a bit out of focus).
 |
| Giovanni di Paolo, The Adoration of the Magi, ca. 1442 |
I then went upstairs and almost immediately was confronted with a very powerful Turner painting, depicting the burning of the Houses of Parliament in 1834.
 |
| J. M. W. Turner, The Burning of the House of Lords and Commons, 16th October, 1834, 1834-35 |
As it happened, no one at all was in the gallery with me, so I was able to soak it in (again, keeping one eye on my watch). I took a few detailed close-ups, as it is just hard to get a sense of what Turner was doing without getting close to the paintings.
While from a selfish perspective, it was nice to have the painting all to myself, I think it a shame that the AGO couldn't convince the Cleveland Museum to loan them this painting for their Turner exhibit (perhaps they didn't ask), since the companion piece from the Philadelphia Museum of Art is in the show, and putting them side by side would be really quite cool.
 |
| J. M. W. Turner, The Burning of the House of Lords and Commons, 16th October, 1834, 1834-35 |
I like both views, but I do have to give the nod to the painting held in Philadelphia as the contrast between the fire and the on-coming dusk makes it a bit bolder. I think the composition is a bit more interesting as well. I should be able to get over to the AGO for a short visit tomorrow, and I'll try to spend a bit of time in front of this painting if the crowds aren't too bad.
Anyway, the clock was ticking, so I headed out of the original 1916 museum building into the new galleries. They were terrific with far too many paintings to detail. I'll put up a few that really caught my attention without a lot of commentary. In general, my photos came out pretty well with a few exceptions. Fortunately, most of the ones that were blurred were ones that are in the new museum handbook, which I did purchase. And indeed, many of the images are on the Cleveland Museum website, as is the case with an increasing number of museums.
 |
| Georges Braque, Guitar and Bottle of Marc on a Table, 1930 |
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| Paul Cezanne, Mount Sainte-Victoire, ca. 1904 |
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| Vincent van Gogh, The Large Plane Trees, 1889 |
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| Andre Derain, The Houses of Parliament from Westminster Bridge, 1906 |
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| Pablo Picasso, The Harem, 1906 |
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| Pierre Bonnard, Café Terrace, 1898 |
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| Edouard Vuillard, Café Wepler, 1908-12 |
I turned the corner and came to the gallery with the painting I was really looking for: Max Beckmann's The Last Duty of Perseus. I don't really understand the painting, but it is definitely powerful if a bit too gruesome. (I actually wasn't that sad not to have the kids with me as I couldn't really have taken much time in front of this painting with them around.)
 |
| Max Beckmann, The Last Duty of Perseus, 1949 |
At this point, the collection started turning towards surrealism and then the abstract expressionists. While there were several important works here, I was most drawn to the Stuart Davis,* with its pop sensibilities creeping into abstraction, and the Guston, which is arguably a pop work. (I probably wouldn't have been too upset if either of these paintings had gone back into storage, though I was certainly glad to see them. I would have been quite upset, however, if the Beckmann wasn't on view.)
 |
| Philip Guston, Tour, 1969 |
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| Stuart Davis, Composition Concrete, 1957-60 |
It was probably just as well that part of Japanese art galleries were closed for renovation, and I kept moving around the ring to reach Indian art. I took a minute to snap this photo of Ganesha (the god of travellers). Who knows if that gave me just enough karma to catch my Greyhound bus out of Cleveland...
However, I knew I was living on borrowed time by the time I reached the American galleries back in the 1916 building. In fact, most of these photos are blurred, but a few ones turned out reasonably well (both by Childe Hassam incidentally).
 |
| Childe Hassam, Fifth Avenue, 1919 |
 |
| Childe Hassam, Fifth Avenue Nocturne, ca. 1895 |
Then it was really and truly time to go, so I ran into the gift shop, retrieved my bag and set out onto the mean streets of Cleveland, hoping to find a cab to take me back downtown. I certainly wouldn't be averse to returning to Cleveland and checking out the museum again, but I hope it will be in a few years when I can rent a car (probably driving the whole family there), so I don't end up in such a jam again.
* While researching something else, I learned that the Stuart Davis is the earlier study for a larger painting (33% bigger but otherwise almost identical) in the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. I've been meaning to get down one of these days, and I'll try to make sure it is on view when I do.
Saturday, December 26, 2015
Albright-Knox -- what's on view
As I already related, I was so disappointed that they didn't have the Max Beckmann on display at the Albright-Knox. I saw it in on tour in Milwaukee, but should have seen this painting at least twice (had we made it back in July 2014 but were derailed by a combination of an excessive line-up at the border and truly terrible Google directions). Personally, I think they should have reinstalled it after it was returned. Perhaps it will be reinstalled in the front of the museum and perhaps not. I probably will not return unless I am sure it is back on view or there is some other incredibly compelling reason for me to go.
Within the Monet exhibit proper, the curators were mostly showing off their own collection but skewed towards the Impressionists and the early phase of post-Impressionism (roughly Gauguin to Kandinsky). This particular painting struck me as only middling in quality (not so dissimilar from the art warehouses that sell paintings tossed off by the hundreds).
However, I did like the bottom right corner of the painting, which had a bit of an Impressionistic flair.
I'm sure this is just pure fancy on my part, as the odds that he would have seen and or been inspired by this seem infinitesimal, but the simplified forms and color scheme of the Raffaelli reminds me just a bit of early Stuart Davis, particularly this painting.
This painting is not in the Albright-Knox -- and I have a second beef with them for not reinstalling the Stuart Davis that they do own either! It happens to be in the Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University. I probably visited the museum on our trip through the Ivies back in the mid-80s, but I certainly can't recall if I saw this at the time. I've pretty much decided to travel to the Stuart Davis exhibit at the Whitney this summer and/or at the National Gallery in early 2017. I'd say the odds are quite good this will be lent to the exhibit, but if not, I suppose a road trip to Ithaca is not out of the question, but there would have to be some other reason to visit Cornell than just to see one painting!
Perhaps my favorite painting that they had reinstalled was this one by Giorgio de Chirico.
While it is very hard to make out, it appears that the box car is hitched up to (and perhaps is being pulled by) some kind of animal hidden in the shadows. The train proper (practically a de Chirico trademark) is incredibly small, but it can be seen in the distance.
In terms of completely new (to me) paintings, I thought these two were interesting, combining hints of cubism with figurative painting.
Of the two, I liked the hammock painting a bit better. I wouldn't call it a wasted visit, but it didn't really live up to my expectations. On the other hand, the main purpose of the trip (to get to Cleveland) met and somewhat exceeded my expectations, so I suppose it all evened out. (Now had I been stuck in Cleveland an extra day due to my own foolishness, I might be thinking about the trip in a very different light.) I'll discuss the Cleveland Museum of Art in the next post.
Within the Monet exhibit proper, the curators were mostly showing off their own collection but skewed towards the Impressionists and the early phase of post-Impressionism (roughly Gauguin to Kandinsky). This particular painting struck me as only middling in quality (not so dissimilar from the art warehouses that sell paintings tossed off by the hundreds).
 |
| Jean-Francois Raffaelli, La Porte St. Denis, ca. 1909 |
However, I did like the bottom right corner of the painting, which had a bit of an Impressionistic flair.
I'm sure this is just pure fancy on my part, as the odds that he would have seen and or been inspired by this seem infinitesimal, but the simplified forms and color scheme of the Raffaelli reminds me just a bit of early Stuart Davis, particularly this painting.
 |
| Stuart Davis, Place des Vosges, No. 2, 1928 |
This painting is not in the Albright-Knox -- and I have a second beef with them for not reinstalling the Stuart Davis that they do own either! It happens to be in the Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University. I probably visited the museum on our trip through the Ivies back in the mid-80s, but I certainly can't recall if I saw this at the time. I've pretty much decided to travel to the Stuart Davis exhibit at the Whitney this summer and/or at the National Gallery in early 2017. I'd say the odds are quite good this will be lent to the exhibit, but if not, I suppose a road trip to Ithaca is not out of the question, but there would have to be some other reason to visit Cornell than just to see one painting!
Perhaps my favorite painting that they had reinstalled was this one by Giorgio de Chirico.
 |
| Giorgio de Chirico, The Anguish of Departure, 1913-14 |
While it is very hard to make out, it appears that the box car is hitched up to (and perhaps is being pulled by) some kind of animal hidden in the shadows. The train proper (practically a de Chirico trademark) is incredibly small, but it can be seen in the distance.
In terms of completely new (to me) paintings, I thought these two were interesting, combining hints of cubism with figurative painting.
 |
| Roger de La Fresnaye, Marie Ressort, ca. 1912-13 |
 |
| Albert Gleizes, L'homme au hamac (Man in a Hammock), 1913 |
Of the two, I liked the hammock painting a bit better. I wouldn't call it a wasted visit, but it didn't really live up to my expectations. On the other hand, the main purpose of the trip (to get to Cleveland) met and somewhat exceeded my expectations, so I suppose it all evened out. (Now had I been stuck in Cleveland an extra day due to my own foolishness, I might be thinking about the trip in a very different light.) I'll discuss the Cleveland Museum of Art in the next post.
Christmas Interlude
I wouldn't say this has been exactly a relaxing Christmas, but I do feel I got around to quite a few things that I really wanted to get done.
I took care of the stockings fairly early on Christmas Eve, but then fell asleep and had to finish wrapping from about 3 am onwards. Fortunately, the kids no longer run downstairs at the crack of dawn. I heard my son walking around and 7 or 7:30, but he didn't actually come down, and my daughter slept in (I guess that is a side-benefit of her no longer believing in Santa). Still, I was quite surprised that they didn't really make it down until just before 9 am.
It was definitely a smaller number of presents this year, though partly because they are getting other things, like the skates and skating lessons and so on. I had to replace a laptop for my wife, and I would have been perfectly happy leaving it under the tree, but she wanted it as soon as it arrived...
My daughter started to get quite upset, since the one thing she had wanted was a thesaurus. (Kids these days...) There was one present left, and she didn't even want to open it. Of course, that was a dictionary and a thesaurus from the grandparents, so she was happy after all.
I tried to relax for a bit and called relatively a bit later in the day. Then I went downstairs to deal with my present (to myself). I had bought one more bookcase to try to make the chaos downstairs a bit more manageable. It took a while to put it together, in part because it is so space constrained that I had to move a bunch of boxes just to get the room to put the pieces down. Then I reversed a piece (just like I did with the desk). I was going to try to just live with it, but it actually would have made attaching the back difficult if not impossible. So I undid a few parts and managed to put it right. I had to be extra careful so that I didn't tear out any of the screws or dowels. Then it took another few hours to go through the boxes and pull out the books I wanted. I still am missing a few, but I have so many to read that I am not going to worry about them. I'll try to clear out a shelf or so each year, and in a few years I'll be ready to go exploring for the lost books.
That took much of the day, so I spent a bit more time with the kids. (I had meant to teach them how to play backgammon, but perhaps tomorrow...) Then I decided to try to move the sewing machine downstairs to see if I can get done with the first set of curtains and maybe a stuffed toy for some visitors we are hosting tomorrow. If this goes well, I will say I more or less have my touch back, and I can attempt the curtains and then the skirt and pajamas that I want to make.
And I decided I wanted to do some holiday baking. I bought the ingredients for cream cheese cookies, molasses cookies (and/or ginger snaps) and something special I have in mind (pumpkin bars on a graham cracker crust). Maybe next year I will be up for the sugar cookies that you roll out and cut into shapes. I did that with the kids one year in Vancouver but just didn't feel up to it this time around. In fact, given the late hour -- and the fact that I don't want to burn down the kitchen just to make holiday cookies, I stuck with the cream cheese cookies. They came out pretty well. I should have time to attempt one of the other two recipes tomorrow morning before our guests arrive, but for now it is definitely time for a cat nap. It has been a long day for Santa's helper...
Coda:
We haven't entertained a lot of guests in a long time, and it was maybe a bit overwhelming. After about 2 hours, they said another friend was dropping by, and I gently suggested we meet her at a nearby coffee shop, and we talked there for another 90 minutes before the kids looked totally exhausted.
Anyway, the cream cheese cookies were a minor hit.
I simply did not have time to get to the other cookies while the guest were here. Or rather I had started them, but between the shortening not being soft enough and the brown sugar being rock hard, I wasn't making much progress with the dough.
Curiously, letting it set out while we all got caught up softened it to the point I was able to finish all the mixing fairly easily after the guests left. I wouldn't say the dough looked that appetizing, but the rolled up cookies looked pretty good (I was making ginger snaps with my daughter).
However, I think the recipe had the wrong mix of flour to shortening, since the cookies spread out into a kind of Jabba the Hutt cookie that completely covered the baking sheet.*
Broken back up into smaller pieces, it tastes ok, but not as good as I would have hoped.
I've gotten some advice from the cookie doctor (my dad) to see if the remaining dough can be salvaged, but I suspect this is just going to go into the bin as a failed experiment.
* I'm taking my son to the new Star Wars movie on Monday, so it is sort of on my mind at the moment.
I took care of the stockings fairly early on Christmas Eve, but then fell asleep and had to finish wrapping from about 3 am onwards. Fortunately, the kids no longer run downstairs at the crack of dawn. I heard my son walking around and 7 or 7:30, but he didn't actually come down, and my daughter slept in (I guess that is a side-benefit of her no longer believing in Santa). Still, I was quite surprised that they didn't really make it down until just before 9 am.
It was definitely a smaller number of presents this year, though partly because they are getting other things, like the skates and skating lessons and so on. I had to replace a laptop for my wife, and I would have been perfectly happy leaving it under the tree, but she wanted it as soon as it arrived...
My daughter started to get quite upset, since the one thing she had wanted was a thesaurus. (Kids these days...) There was one present left, and she didn't even want to open it. Of course, that was a dictionary and a thesaurus from the grandparents, so she was happy after all.
I tried to relax for a bit and called relatively a bit later in the day. Then I went downstairs to deal with my present (to myself). I had bought one more bookcase to try to make the chaos downstairs a bit more manageable. It took a while to put it together, in part because it is so space constrained that I had to move a bunch of boxes just to get the room to put the pieces down. Then I reversed a piece (just like I did with the desk). I was going to try to just live with it, but it actually would have made attaching the back difficult if not impossible. So I undid a few parts and managed to put it right. I had to be extra careful so that I didn't tear out any of the screws or dowels. Then it took another few hours to go through the boxes and pull out the books I wanted. I still am missing a few, but I have so many to read that I am not going to worry about them. I'll try to clear out a shelf or so each year, and in a few years I'll be ready to go exploring for the lost books.
That took much of the day, so I spent a bit more time with the kids. (I had meant to teach them how to play backgammon, but perhaps tomorrow...) Then I decided to try to move the sewing machine downstairs to see if I can get done with the first set of curtains and maybe a stuffed toy for some visitors we are hosting tomorrow. If this goes well, I will say I more or less have my touch back, and I can attempt the curtains and then the skirt and pajamas that I want to make.
And I decided I wanted to do some holiday baking. I bought the ingredients for cream cheese cookies, molasses cookies (and/or ginger snaps) and something special I have in mind (pumpkin bars on a graham cracker crust). Maybe next year I will be up for the sugar cookies that you roll out and cut into shapes. I did that with the kids one year in Vancouver but just didn't feel up to it this time around. In fact, given the late hour -- and the fact that I don't want to burn down the kitchen just to make holiday cookies, I stuck with the cream cheese cookies. They came out pretty well. I should have time to attempt one of the other two recipes tomorrow morning before our guests arrive, but for now it is definitely time for a cat nap. It has been a long day for Santa's helper...
Coda:
We haven't entertained a lot of guests in a long time, and it was maybe a bit overwhelming. After about 2 hours, they said another friend was dropping by, and I gently suggested we meet her at a nearby coffee shop, and we talked there for another 90 minutes before the kids looked totally exhausted.
Anyway, the cream cheese cookies were a minor hit.
I simply did not have time to get to the other cookies while the guest were here. Or rather I had started them, but between the shortening not being soft enough and the brown sugar being rock hard, I wasn't making much progress with the dough.
Curiously, letting it set out while we all got caught up softened it to the point I was able to finish all the mixing fairly easily after the guests left. I wouldn't say the dough looked that appetizing, but the rolled up cookies looked pretty good (I was making ginger snaps with my daughter).
However, I think the recipe had the wrong mix of flour to shortening, since the cookies spread out into a kind of Jabba the Hutt cookie that completely covered the baking sheet.*
Broken back up into smaller pieces, it tastes ok, but not as good as I would have hoped.
I've gotten some advice from the cookie doctor (my dad) to see if the remaining dough can be salvaged, but I suspect this is just going to go into the bin as a failed experiment.
* I'm taking my son to the new Star Wars movie on Monday, so it is sort of on my mind at the moment.
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