What a doozy. Is there anything worse than trying to plow through a book you don't enjoy? Yes, trying to plow through it on a tight deadline. I finished it on Saturday night.
I felt bad. I picked a lousy read and got three girls to come out in the sub-arctic temperatures to my house to talk about it. To make it up to them I made a cheeseball and rolled it in Cloddhoppers.
Everyone agreed that the book was a stinker. Me, I've slipped in my reading discipline but I consider Amara, Kerry and Erin to be well-read people. Kerry is a published poet and she wondered how Beginner's Greek got to print. But it seems we are alone in our evaluation of the book:
"Pure Pleasure Plus Wit: The arch and romantic read of any season, James Collins'Beginner's Greek makes you half-believe in miracles. With his triteness detector in high gear and his sights trained on social hypocrisy, Collins spins a chance encounter on an airplane (shy guy meets his dream girl) into a perfectly calibrated comedy of missed opportunities and muddled loves." (O Magazine 2008)
"unabashedly romantic" (New Yorker )
"A witty romantic comedy." (People Magazine )
"A satire of modern love that will charm both sexes equally" (Vanity Fair )
Admittedly, I have a hard time with satire so I thought maybe it was just me not getting the humour of the story, but again, nobody else seemed to pick up on it.
After a collective shaking of heads we all took a plate of snacks and I served up something to wash them down with. Amara took me up on my offer of some flavoured coffee and I decided to join her in a cup.
It was eight o'clock on a Sunday night. My body is not very familiar with caffeine. I don't drink Coke, or any soft drinks for that matter, and I take my Starbucks heavy on the milk and syrup with a splash of espresso as a once-in-a-while treat in the mornings or afternoons. I crawled into my warm, soft bed later that night, closed my eyes and willed my brain to please shut up as I tossed and turned my way into exhaustion. I know I slept eventually because I woke up from a crazy dream, checked my clock and saw that it was 4:45 am, exactly one hour before wake-up time, rendering any further snoozing futile.
I didn't exactly have my A-game with me today at work. At lunch it was like the girls were talking to me via satellite. Someone would say something to me and it would first take me a second to realize she was talking to me, and then another second to process that she was making a joke and respond appropriately.
When I got home I called my mom while I prepared a plate of food. It occurs to me now that I talk to my mom almost everyday. I used to be baffled by people who said they talked to their moms everyday. What could they possibly have to say on a daily basis? Zoom forward a few years and now my most frequently dialed number is filed under Mom and Dad in my address book. Book Clubs, cheeseballs, daily chats with mom, you know what comes next right? Afghans and multiple cats. Hello, I'm your crazy Aunt Shirley.
After eating I layered up again and headed to the gym. I didn't feel like doing the aerobics class today and, after recently relocating both Nan (my iPod) and her charger, I figured I would give the treadmill a shot. I've never been on a treadmill before so I had no idea what settings would be appropriate. Speed? Five miles an hour? Whoa! My heart rate soared to 190 beats. I knocked it down to three but then I just felt like I was walking with pep so I bumped it back up to four. I was still walking but with a bit more vigor. My heart rate seemed to be in the right zone though so I figured that was all that really mattered.
I started to sweat a bit and I could feel my face get flushed. God I am loving this gym thing right now. It feels so good to get hot and sweaty these days when it is minus a million outside. Sitting at home it seems that all the knitted afghans in the world can't keep the chill off.
After 30 minutes I didn't really know how to get off the treadmill so I pressed the red STOP button. That worked. My feet still moved the tread but quickly slowed and then stopped. I stepped off the machine and found that my feet had forgotten how to walk without a moving belt beneath them. I stumbled a little but regained most of my control. My arms were still kind of into it though and I accidentally swatted a girl on the bum as I passed her at the water fountain. I avoided eye contact with her when we met later at the sinks.
The next book club meeting won't be until February. We will probably choose our book in January. Between then and now I am going to try to do some reading in the Young Adult genre. This is my favourite genre and the area I'd like to work in as a writer. Kerry, the poet and fellow book club member suggested that I join the Manitoba Writer's Guild and apply for their mentorship program. Submissions are taken in October so it is my goal to get some share-worthy work done between now and then and hopefully get accepted. It seems pretty competitive, they only take five mentees each year, but even if I don't get accepted and matched up at least I'll have done some work and committed myself to my craft. The alternative plan is to take up knitting afghans...
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