A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes

Boy, it’s great when a book that has been on my to-read list for a long time turns out to be even better than I’d hoped.

Like Madeline Miller’s Circe and The Song of Achilles (both of which I loved) A Thousand Ships is a re-telling of the Greek myths from the women’s point of view – in this case, the Trojan War. It’s both funny and heartbreaking by turns and, while it’s more modern and not as poetic as Miller’s prose, I enjoyed Haynes’ writing style.

A passage near the end of the book from Calliope, the Muse of poetry, expresses the aim of the story better than I ever could:

“…I have sung of the women, the women in the shadows. I have sung of the forgotten, the ignored, the untold. I have picked up the old stories and I have shaken them until the hidden women appear in plain sight. I have celebrated them in song because they have waited long enough…A war does not ignore half the people whose lives it touches. So why do we?”

books
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The Secret Life of Groceries by Benjamin Lorr

This book confirmed every shady thing I’ve ever heard or assumed about the grocery industry and managed to add a whole slew of new horrors to be disgusted by. Unspeakable sanitary conditions? Check. Shocking human rights abuses? Check. Utter lack of regard for the environment? Check. Bribes, payouts and laughably ineffective audits? Check. I could go on, but you get the idea.

Infuriating, depressing and recommended.

books
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Kiss Myself Goodbye by Ferdinand Mount

‘Grimly funny and superbly written, with a twist on every page,’ reads the front cover blurb by Hilary Mantel, who knows a thing or two about grim humour and superb writing. Hilary’s word is good enough for me so I ordered it and, lo and behold, she was right. This is a fascinating, funny book.

I confess I hesitated at first. A whole book about this guy’s aunt? Why should I invest more than three seconds in learning about some long-dead woman who didn’t seem to do much of anything?

Oh, but she did things, all right. Lots and lots of wild lifestyle choices involving multiple name changes, an illegitimate child, secret adoptions and bigamy, just to scratch the surface. Mount spends years digging for the truth – there is a LOT of digging to do – and skillfully places his aunt’s escapades within both her geography and the social environment of the time.

I laughed and I gasped and I learned – my three keys to a really good reading experience. Highly recommended.

books
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a baby blanket for Emily

When Charlotte said she would like to make a handmade baby blanket for her friend Emily, but just didn’t have time to do it, I (Ms Tendonitis) said, no problem, pick the yarn you want and I’ll knit it.

The good news is that knitting doesn’t hurt nearly as much as working at the computer. The bad news is that my arms were so screwed up from working at the computer that I could barely bring myself to knit.

Still, I am tough/stupid (30% tough/70% stupid) enough to persist and I got it done in the nick of time with only this lousy photo to commemorate the finished product. It was pouring rain outside and my photo stylist, Foster, was busy eating lunch so I snapped this about five minutes before Charlotte came to pick it up on her way to the baby shower.

Now to start the Christmas knitting…

crafts
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a quick afternoon jaunt

Yesterday, Foster and I were reminiscing about past road trips and trying to summon the hope that next year will be safer to travel when we decided to hop in the car and run up to Scotts Bay for a change of scene.

Did you know it’s illegal to go to Scotts Bay without stopping at the look off and taking fifty photos that are practically identical to the fifty photos you took the last time you were there? It’s true.*

Look! It’s two of my favourite men.

I don’t have the knees for Cape Split so we loitered around the trailhead, admiring the absolute silence. While Foster crept around in the undergrowth taking photos and acquiring ticks, I focused on not falling over a thirty foot high cliff onto boulders in the Bay of Fundy.

Look at these! Aren’t they pretty? They might be alder cones, but I have no idea, so don’t quote me on it.

By this point, the sun was starting to set so we went to the beach to watch.

On the way back across Wellington Dyke, the last of the sunset combined with the rising mist looked like we had stumbled across the set of a Kate Bush video.

Luckily, it was just us and there was no interpretive dancing.

*Possibly not true.

family, photos
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