Category: Laura Tobias

Wintering

                                        

“Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through.

Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximizing scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight, but that’s where the transformation occurs.

Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible.”

Katherine May

Last weekend, I went on a yoga retreat, one focused on honouring Winter Solstice. The women running the event decided to hold the retreat in January even though Winter Solstice is the third week in December. Their reasoning? December is an extremely busy month, and early January felt more appropriate somehow. My busyness lasted well into January, so retreating at the end of that first week was the perfect fit for me.

The day was about letting go, slowing down and getting still, something that doesn’t always come easily to many of us. Katherine May talks about this in her book, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times. While I’ve only just started reading it, the book encourages us to find joy in the quiet of winter and accept life as cyclical, not linear. She writes: In winter, I want concepts to chew over in a pool of lamplight – slow, spiritual reading, a reinforcement of the soul. Winter is a time for libraries, for the muffled quiet of book stacks, and for the scent of old pages and dust.

I’m not so sure about old pages and dust, but the idea of slow, spiritual reading and libraries definitely resonates. As I write this, the wind is howling and the rain is lashing at the skylight; it’s a day to curl up inside. Writers – probably most artists when I think about it – are comfortable with solitude. I certainly am; I need it to do my work. For the last six months or so, though, I’ve been out in the world far more than usual, and it upended my natural rhythm and definitely negatively impacted my writing. So, for me, ‘wintering,’ pulling the metaphorical shades and getting back in touch with the cyclical nature of life and of my creative muse, feels appropriate.

Not everyone likes winter; I realize that. For those of you who find this season difficult, I leave you with this quote from John Geddes:

Happy New (Seven) Year

And so it begins! A new year, a fresh start, a blank calendar waiting to be filled. In my world, December’s snow has melted and spring is already on my mind, maybe because the seed catalogues are already showing up in my mailbox!

I’m looking forward to 2023. It’s a 7-year. And seven, according to a poll conducted by Alex Bellos, a mathematician and writer for The Guardian, is the world’s favorite number. That’s not much of a surprise considering the significance of the number 7 in society, culture, religion and literature.

There are seven wonders of the world. Seven days of the week, seven colors of the rainbow, seven notes on a musical scale, seven seas, and seven continents.

In Christianity, God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. The Koran speaks of seven heavens, Muslim pilgrims walk around the Kaaba in Mecca seven times, and in Buddhism, the newborn Buddha rises and takes seven steps.

In literature, Snow White ran off to live with seven dwarfs, Shakespeare described the seven ages of man, and when author Ian Fleming was looking for a code for James Bond, he didn’t go for 005 or 009; he went for 007. It sounded right.

The number seven is even important in psychology. It’s been proven that most people can easily retain seven items of information in their short-term memory. That’s why phone numbers tend to have seven digits (area codes aside).

Finally, in numerology, the number seven is considered highly auspicious. It’s associated with luck, intuition, inner wisdom and magic.

Happy New Year. Here’s to good luck and a touch of magic in 2023.

Happy Holidays

From my house to yours, have a very merry holiday season. Whether you celebrate Hannukah, Kwanzaa or Christmas (or all three!), I hope you’re surrounded by the people you love and the traditions that bring you joy. Our actual holiday will be quiet this year, but the family is descending between Christmas and New Year’s, and we’re thrilled about that. Snow is falling outside the window as I write this, shortbread is baking in the oven, and I’ll be making lemon curd to give to the neighbours this afternoon. I always make an extra jar or two for us, as my son and I love it. If you’re scrambling for a last-minute food or hostess gift, you can’t go wrong with lemon curd!

Easy Lemon Curd

½ cup butter

1 ½ cups white sugar

Grated rind of three lemons

½ cup of fresh lemon juice

6 eggs, beaten slightly

Put all ingredients in the top of a double boiler over simmering water (start with cold water). Cook, stirring constantly, over low heat until thickened, 20 – 30 minutes. Pour into half pint jars and refrigerate when cool. Consume within a month.

Buy a Book, Any Book

                                           

In December, over the last few years, I’ve recommended book titles on my blog to help people choose gifts. Because I love books – I love giving and receiving them – I always look forward to compiling the blog posts. This year, though, time and life conspired against me. My blog has been sorely neglected over the last few weeks. And here it is, December 14th, and my to-do list is longer than my arm.   

So, my only recommendation this year is to gift someone a book they will love reading.  And that might mean putting your own biases aside.

I mentioned before that I’ve been working part-time at a bookstore. Over the last little while, customers have been buying books for gift-giving, and they sometimes ask for help. One of the first questions I generally ask is, ‘what does your recipient normally like to read?’ If that question doesn’t yield ideas, my follow-up is, ‘what are their interests? What are they passionate about?’ Sometimes that gives us something to go on. But not always. Sometimes the customer has an agenda of what they want to give. A classic or a mystery because they themselves love them. A work of historical fiction or the latest award winner because they deem them worthy of time and attention. One woman wanted to buy her grandchildren a ‘serious work of non-fiction to stimulate their minds.’ I wish I were kidding.

It reminds me a little of when my kids were growing up and reading widely. We were reprimanded on more than one occasion by teachers for ‘allowing’ our kids to read what the teachers deemed as fluff (Our daughter loved a genre fiction series and our son learned to read with graphic novels). Our decision to let our kids find their own reading path stemmed from my belief that instilling a love of reading meant letting the reader choose – even if that meant they sometimes read genre fiction – and my husband’s experience as a kid of being given a classic every Christmas and concluding that he didn’t like books. That’s no slag against classics whatsoever, but they didn’t engage him, and it wasn’t until he was a teen and discovered science fiction that he realized he liked books. He’s an avid reader today, and so are our kids. They read all over the place – fiction and non-fiction, genre and literary. They read what grabs them at that moment because they love the places books take them.

Books are, as Stephen King said, a uniquely portable bit of magic. Sometimes we need to remind ourselves that we all see magic a little differently. And that’s more than okay!

My November Reads

                                        

The leaves are falling, and my neighborhood raccoons are feasting. Because of the cold, late spring, we didn’t get many apples or pears this year, and the fig tree outside our bedroom window set fruit late. So late, in fact, that most of the fruit didn’t mature. It’s no good to us, but the raccoons love it. They show up to the feast at about 2 am, activating our motion sensor light and waking us up. It didn’t take them long to strip the tree, but that didn’t seem to matter. Our yard is now a preferred stop on their middle-of-the-night rambles. We’re contemplating disconnecting our motion sensor light. In the meantime, there’s always a book beside the bed if we’re woken up. Here’s what I’m reading this month:

We Are the Light by Matthew Quick

Grow Now by Emily Murphy

The Sugar Thief by Nancy Mauro

Books read to date in 2022: 74

The Sound of Music

                                        

On November 16, 1959, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music debuted on Broadway. As many people know, it was based on a true story – the 1949 memoir of Maria von Trapp which told the story of the von Trapp family singers from Austria. But like most adaptations of true stories, liberties were taken in the stage (and later the movie) production.

For instance, did you know:

There were 10 von Trapp children, not seven, and Marie came as a tutor for one of the children rather than as a governess for all of them. As well, Maria and Captain von Trapp were married 11 years before the family left Austria. But perhaps the most significant historical inaccuracy was the film’s climactic ending, where the family escapes to Switzerland over the Alps as the Nazis invade Austria. In reality, the family pretended they were going on vacation to Italy by train the day before the Austrian borders were closed. And once they arrived in Italy, they made plans to travel to the US.

When it comes to fictionalizing memoirs or moments in time, it’s been said that emotional truths are more important than factual ones, and that seems to be the case for the von Trapps. Family members accepted virtually all of the liberties taken in telling the fictionalized version of their stepmother’s story, except for one. They didn’t like how their father was portrayed. In the first half of the movie and stage production, the patriarch is shown as a detached and often harsh taskmaster, when in fact, he was a gentle, warmhearted parent who enjoyed the musical activities with his children.

That small quibble wasn’t enough to prevent the real Maria von Trapp from making a brief cameo appearance in the film version of The Sound of Music. If you look carefully, you can see her walking past an archway while Julie Andrews sings “I Have Confidence.”

But Is It . . .

                                               

. . . good?  

That’s the question all creatives ask themselves at one time or another. Whether we’re writing a book, painting a canvas, or creating a song, a sculpture, or even a garden, at some point, we all stop to wonder – is it good?

Readers want to know that too. Lately, I’ve been working a few days a week in the local bookstore in our little village. It’s been an interesting opportunity to learn about publishing from the book-selling side of the aisle. And something that happens regularly is customers come in and ask, ‘is this book good?’

It’s a challenging question to answer because good is difficult – I’d argue nearly impossible – to define. Must a book be an award winner to be deemed good? Must it be literary (whatever that means)? Does a likeable (or unlikeable) character make a book ‘good?’ Should a good book have lyrical prose or spare writing? Be a certain length? Have a linear plot line or one that’s more innovative? Does a good book deal with weighty subjects or sweep you away in a froth of escapism? Should it have a happy ending . . . an ambiguous ending . . . or an ending that makes you think?

Good, I’d argue, is subjective. For instance, I don’t like to eat anything custard-related, so no matter how well-prepared, I’d never find a crème Brule or a Spanish flan ‘good.’ One of my friends strongly dislikes yellow, so any garden with a lot of yellow isn’t good for her. Art – books – are different, you say? I don’t think so. Good, by definition, is open to individual taste, and even that can vary depending on timing and circumstances.

As an example, I always enjoy books by Lianne Moriarty. Yet a few years ago, when my dad was hospitalized, and I was dealing with multiple weighty issues around that, I had to put her novel Nine Perfect Strangers down. It’s a thriller with ten points of view, and it’s dark. I didn’t have the concentration to follow ten characters and a good read for me then was something more uplifting. Conversely, I’m not usually a fan of gothic or vampire novels, nor do I like New Orleans as a setting (I don’t know why), but years ago, I ripped through Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles series and loved it. I don’t know if the novels would hold up for me today, but back then, I called them a good read.  

One of the definitions of good, as stated by The Cambridge Dictionary, is ‘being of a kind that is pleasing or enjoyable.’ For me, as a writer, that means being satisfied or pleased with what I produce and knowing it’s the best I can do at that moment. For me, as a reader, it means immersing myself in a story or narrative that enriches my life in some way, regardless of the techniques it uses to do that.

Good, in the end, is a feeling that’s hard to measure or define. But feeling is the keyword there. And in the words of Paul Sweeney, “You know you’ve read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you’ve said goodbye to a friend.” 

I Read Canadian

 Tomorrow, Wednesday, November 2nd, is I Read Canadian Day. This national day is geared toward raising awareness and celebrating the richness, diversity and breadth of Canadian literature. Though the day is heavily geared toward celebrating Canadian books for young people, all Canadians are challenged to ‘Read Canadian’ for 15 minutes and to share their experience at their library, in their schools, at home with their families, or on social media. Leading by example is a great way to get young people to read. So here are a few titles for adult book lovers written by Canadian authors.

The Maid by Nita Prose

The Vanished Days by Susanna Kearsley

The Lost Kings by Tyrell Johnson

A Season on Vancouver Island by Bill Arnott

Fayne by Ann-Marie MacDonald

Looking for Jane by Heather Marshall

Mindful of Murder by Susan Juby

The Witches of Moonshyne Manor by Bianca Marais

Happy reading!

My October Reads

We’ve had an unusually warm fall here on the west coast and a dry one too. My hometown of Victoria, a few hours south of us, has experienced the driest 90-day period since records began in 1898. While most of us have loved the endless summer weather (some have taken to calling it Augtober), virtually everyone also recognizes that rain is badly needed. Water levels are so low that salmon have had trouble spawning in some areas, and western red cedars and Douglas firs are also stressed. Thankfully, rain is forecast for Friday. I’m looking forward to it, not only for the environmental relief it will provide but for the opportunity to get out of the garden and into my reading corner. So here’s what I’m reading this month.

The Kitchen Front by Jennifer Ryan

The Last Good Funeral of the Year by Ed O’Loughlin

Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan

Books read to date in 2022: 67

An Ode to October

 I am, for the most part, a spring and summer person. The gardener in me craves sunshine and warmth. That said, fall and winter are restful and rejuvenating, and with more time to read and cocoon, I appreciate them for different reasons. And I especially love October. The beauty of the changing leaves against a brilliant blue sky . . . the crisp fall air . . . the chance to pull out those cozy sweaters that have been tucked away . . . and pumpkins! Lots and lots of pumpkins (though I’ll pass on the pumpkin-flavoured lattes, thank you very much).

October is also a significant month from a literary point of view. Oscar Wilde was born this month, and so were Eugene O’Neill, Dylan Thomas, Anne Tyler, and Zadie Smith.  Frank Herbert and R.L. Stine. Nora Roberts, Michael Lewis, and Wally Lamb.  Doris Lessing and Ursula K. Le Guin.  Emma Donoghue. I could go on, but you get the idea.

Many bestselling literary characters came to life in October too. On October 2nd, 1950, Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the rest of the Peanuts crew first appeared, thanks to creator Charles M. Schulz. Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne made its debut in October, as did Paddington Bear by Michael Bond. Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was published in October, and so was Moby Dick by Herman Melville, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemmingway.  More recent October releases include The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult and The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles.

October definitely has a long-standing literary leaning. No wonder it’s an excellent month to pull up a chair, light the fire and open a good book.