Rebecca Rosenblum's Blog, page 15

Next we take the Maritimes

My husband, the writer and lovely human Mark Sampson and I drive to the Maritimes every other summer to visit friends and family, and since we both have books out this year, we are combining it with some readings, adding up to an adorably couply little tour. We’re actually a good pairing because my book is pretty dark while his latest novel The Slip is quite funny. So it’s a well-balanced evening of entertainment!

We kick off at Tidewater Books in Sackville, New Brunswick at 7pm, June 26. Invitation here. Followed by June 29, 6:30pm at the Confederation Centre Library in Charlottetown, invitation here. We wind up in Halifax at a booksellers’ conference, but that’s not open to the public so I won’t link it here. There may be one more Nova Scotia event, so please stay tuned…

If none of that works for you, I’ll be back in New Brunswick in the fall to take part in the delightfully named Word Feast Festival in Fredericton September 22-23; I’ll also be doing some school visits in Moncton on the 25th.

If you are an eastern type person, hope to see you at one of these events…

Reading Survey

This is a survey that I made up, because I want to know. I will do absolutely nothing with the results except enjoy having them, which I will extremely. This is one of my favourite topics in casual conversation but I find people do not like being asked half a dozen questions in a row in normal conversation. Hence, the survey. I really hope you fill it out! I have done so myself, to get the ball rolling. You can just cut and paste the survey into a comment or an email or a “contact” form and send it to me (delete my answers and add yours). I hope you do!!

Note: all questions refer to books, as in, things with spines, not magazines, newspapers, or online text. Not that there’s anything wrong with those; just not what this survey is about.

When do you read books? I read on the subway to and from work during the week, and in the mornings at home on the weekend. I also if I am waiting for something, like a doctor or at the passport office, if I am travelling, or if I’m feeling too tired in the evening to write.

How do you decide what to read? Like most people I have a stack that I’m working diligently through, never finish, and feel bad about. However, I largely choose what goes in the stack myself–books by authors I know I like who have something new out, books by friends, books on subjects I’m interested in. I’m terrible about taking book recommendations and though this sounds awful, don’t really like receiving books as gifts unless the giver is REALLY SURE they know what they’re doing. I like to choose! The exception is book club–I accept the premise of bookclub and am 100% faithful about reading whatever is chosen, even if it is about how one or more of Jesus’s apostles may have been an alien.

Where do you get the books you read? All over! I buy books at launches and readings, books from indie bookstores, from big-box bookstores, and online. I also read a fair amount from the Toronto Public Library, though those are more a) research and other books I “need” as opposed to want and b) things I fear I might not like. If I turn out to be wrong about b), I buy it later. I accept book loans with pleasure and occasionally find good things on the sidewalk, but I’m happy to pay full price for books; it’s a principle!

Ebooks? Not at the moment. I had a Kobo for a while, which I quite liked, but it stopped working, so now I’m 100% print again. Even when I had the Kobo going, I largely preferred print except when I needed to carry a large or many book(s) but if the day comes when screens are how people get books, I will be fine with that.

How much do you read? I read about a book a week, but I end up with about 70 books in an average year because of vacations, really short books, etc. This year has been challenging so I expect I’ll end up under that.

Do you log what you read at all? How? I keep both a paper book diary–title, author, date finished, short note on what I thought–and maintain Goodreads. I find Goodreads useful for checking out which of my friends has read the same thing and starting a conversation, and the paper journal good for jogging my memory of what I actually read and what I thought. I should probably streamline this process somehow and start keeping it all on goodreads, but I probably won’t.

Book reviews? I love to read them and think they are an art form of their own. I don’t often act on them specifically, but if I’m still thinking about them later and/or a bunch of other mentions corroborate the recommendation, I’ll probably end up reading the book.

 

 

Good stuff

From Fred

351. The caramel sauce at Starbucks

352. camera tripods

353. listening to audio books on the tram

354. false eyelashes (on other people)

From Anne-Michelle

355. thinking the candy package is empty and then there’s one more piece.

356. sneezing when you really wanteds to sneeze.

357. mallory ortberg

358. not having to explain yourself.

359. rose wine (no accent aigus here)

From Corinna

360. toddlers’/preschoolers’ hands: pudgy with baby fat and still small, but so much more capable. And they make the most unusual gestures and hold them in the most unusual ways (a result of them still figuring out how to use their hands, I guess).

361. The smell of lily of the valley

362. When you can smell wisteria from up the street

363. The backs of Toronto’s older brick houses. Such lovely streetscapes in alleyways

364. Basil. The smell. The taste.

365. Cake

366. Walking on grass in bare feet

367. Toronto

368. Good hugs

369. The rocks and minerals section of the ROM

370. Supersoft kid leather

371. Round stones

372. When strange cats on the street let you pet them

From Colette

373. Bird song (or is it ‘birdsong’?)

374. periwinkle (word and bloom).

From Craig

375. The first scoop of yogurt from a freshly opened container.

376. A song coming on your mp3 player that is the exact b.p.m. at which you are jogging.

From Julie

377. Girls’ weekend

378. Going to the spa

379. Traveling

380. Reading on the deck

381. Yoga

382. Laughing

383. Camping

384. Hiking

385. Going to bed early

386. Going out to eat

387. Online shopping

388. Swimming

389. Learning new things

390. Organizing

391. Walking

392. Being near the water

393. Going to the beach

394. Being barefoot

395. Singing in the car

396. Sunshine

397. Watching Netflix

398. Thunder and lightning storms

399. Dogs

400. Ice cream

401. Vacation days

402. Getting up early

403. Coffee

404. Summertime

405. Fall leaves

406. Drive-through parking spots

And me again…

407. Aziz Ansari

408. flossing

409. cats’ toes

410. really good book club discussions

411. salt

412. bathtubs

413. lilacs

414. a well-arranged centrepiece

415. hotels

416. being dirty from gardening

Amazon First Novel Awards

Guys, it has been really really great being an Amazon.ca First Novel Award finalist. The teams from The Walrus, Amazon, and Penguin Random House have made the experience feel really special and fun, but what has been best has been reading the books. I figured a judge (the very impressive Tanis MacDonald) who liked my book a lot would also like other books I would like, and I was right. Since the nominees were announced, I’ve read The Break by Katherena Vermette, and half of and assorted other luminaries. It was delightful to hang out and enjoy dinner and talk to people about all these amazing books without any big announcement at the end of the evening.

That’s tonight, of course, and while I have no worries at all–I know without a doubt that a fantastic book will win tonight, and I can’t feel sad when that happens–I am sorry to see this lovely time end. It is very nice to celebrate books and very nice to have my own book celebrated, and I feel very very lucky indeed.

I still like things; how about you?

So much going on, and not enough hours in the day, but

331. Sleeping until I just wake up because I’m not tired anymore

332. When a stranger overhears my joke and laughs

333. Overhearing a stranger tell a good joke

334. Black beans

335. Flipping channels and randomly hitting something I actually want to see that has only just started

336. The sugar crystals at the top of the maple syrup bottle

337. When they throw in a few samples at Sephora

338. Sephora

339. The smell of strawberries in season (out-of-season/imported strawberries don’t have a smell, have you noticed that?)

340. The smell of lilacs

341. Running into a friend on a crowded street in a big city

342. Kitty feet

343. The smell of grass-clippings mixed with the smell of gas from a lawn-mower

344. Getting a nacho with so much cheese on it

345. When the neighbours stop being noisy exactly when I want to go to sleep

346. Said the Whale

347. The thrill of the passed-appetizers hunt

348. Unexpected money, even a tiny bit

349. Coupons

350. Shoppers Optimum points

Hometown proud: Get Lit and the Glanbrook Gazette

Way back when I was a teen, I used to read the Generation X column by Jamie Tennant in the Hamilton Spectator. We was one of the very few cool people I had located in my immediate surroundings, though we never met in that period, and I really liked the column. I thought someday perhaps I could be cool too and then I would know cool people who wrote newspaper columns and perhaps even become one of them. I was really disappointed when the column ended in 1994, and just utterly delighted when Jamie reappeared on my radar this year as a different kind of cool person, a novelist and literary journalist for the show Get Lit on CFMU in Hamilton. He interviewed me when I was in Hamilton last month and it broadcast last week–if you weren’t in Hamilton to hear it, you can listen as a podcast anytime. It was really a great interview not only because of my teenage admiration but because of the close reading and thoughtful questions Jamie brought to the table (microphone). So much fun!

I also got interviewed by the extremely local paper for the little town I am from, The Glanbrook Gazette, which was also delightful. It’s owned by Sachem now, but is still for and about the teeny community I’m from. So charmed to be mentioned there.

And not really related to the hometown stuff, but just another thing of mine to come out lately is my 49th Shelf list of Good Books for Hard Times, which is of some of the funny books I read while I was writing So Much Love. SML was a long hard project and it was good to read some more light-hearted things while I was doing it, every now and again. Might be a good list to pick up if you, too, feel like a project is getting to be a bit too dark for you.

And hey, happy long weekend!