This is a US campaign, but I’ll leave out the Bush-directed stuff and join in anyway.

Choice of all kinds is critical to our free existence as adults.

I do not think I would have had an abortion if I had become pregnant accidentally. My biological clock went off when I was about 18, so while the timing might’ve sucked, I would’ve been happy enough to make it work out somehow.

But my own decision-making processes are completely irrelevant. It’s nobody else’s business; these personal decisions are exactly that — personal.

Abortion needs to be available. Really available, not just in the next province over, or 300km down the road — available and accessible, so women can get abortions early on, while it’s safest. On a related note, Plan B should be available without a prescription, as it is now in Canada (yay), and you shouldn’t need to be 18 to get it. It’s critical that women of all ages be able to control our own bodies or we are reduced to some infantilized state incompatible with democracy.

(graphic courtesy toothpaste for dinner)

I gotta say, nothing made me more pro-choice than being (deliberately!) pregnant. Nobody should be forced to go through that against her will. Nobody.

Your body, your choice.

By Stephen Gould

Fascinating stuff here. Stephen Gould is more often known for his natural history books aimed at casual readers (Bully for Brontosaurus and the like) — but this is not a book aimed at the general public. Wonderful Life is an exploration of the extraordinarily old, very different forms of life discovered in British Columbia’s Burgess Shale. It’s not light reading; he ventures quite deeply into evolutionary biology in both theory and practice.

Since it was written others have come forward with alternate theories for the Burgess Shale, but that hardly matters. It’s the sense of chance and fragility inherent in evolutionary processes and theory (real evolutionary theory, not the half-assed, half-understood stuff that so often appears in print) that’s this book’s lasting message.

Whoah, someone really has her cranky pants on this weekend, and they must be chafing her, too.

Anyone want to borrow a really foul-tempered five-year-old? She likes sleepovers! And she doesn’t eat much!

…Actually I suspect she’s getting sick, poor mite. We had her in bed at ten to seven last night with no protesting and she still has bags under her eyes.

By Atul Gawande

Gawande succeeds at conveying the art that is medicine (that is much of science, really), the combination of knowledge, past experience and plain old gut feeling that goes into any decision. It’s worth reading just to get a better understanding of how people learn to be doctors — information which might be a little startling if you don’t already have a pretty good idea about it, or at least strong suspicions.

Complications is a combination of anecdote, self-reflection and critical commentary, and it works. Worth a read.

by Pete McCarthy

McCarthy’s Eighth Rule of Travel is that you should never pass a bar with your name on it. So for that among other more complex reasons, off he goes to Ireland.

Everyone else seems to find this book much funnier than I did. That’s not to say it isn’t funny — it has some hilarious set-pieces and observations — but it’s inconsistent. McCarthy moves between travelogue, commentary on the less savory effects of tourism, and musings on ancestry and place; the result gives a good picture of Ireland, to be sure, but it feels uneven.

Nonetheless his Rules of Travel are worth remembering, particularly No. 1, On Arrival, Buy a Local Paper and Go For a Drink, and No. 17: Never Try and Score Dope from Hasidic Jews While Under the Impression They’re Rastafarians.

By Guy Gavriel Kay

Guy Gavriel Kay’s writing gets a little purple in spots and the drama can tend to melodrama. He’s good at both character and storyline creation, though, so his books are fun despite the occasional soppy spots.

The Summer Tree is the first book in the Fionavar Tapestry trilogy, which is an alternate-reality re-telling of the Camelot story. Hmm, that makes it sound dippier than it is. It’s nicely done. And anyone who went to U of T might enjoy the Toronto bits.

Courtesy of xkcd:

By Neil Stephenson

Who can resist a book starring a character named Hiro Protagonist?

I’m normally kind of meh on Neal Stephenson. Some of his other books, while they have wonderfully imagined alternate realities, are a little low on plot. Not a problem here. It moves. The characters are fun. The Mafia control pizza delivery. What else can I say?

So Maddy’s kindergarten has a new “borrow a book” program, in which a book comes home in a little plastic bag and we’re supposed to help her point to letters, find patterns and basically admire the pretty colours and stuff while we read it to her over and over until she’s memorized it. Once they’ve “read” (their term, not mine) the book, the parents are supposed to fill out a little form and she can then trade the book in for a new one. Five books = 1 sticker prize or some other incentive.

I left Maddy’s book with her while I showered this morning. She read it to me easily when I came out (including words like Umbrella and Elephant), so I handed her the little little form to fill out by herself. “Date, title, who I read to, comment. Ok mama!”

Her comment, in sparkly pink gel pen: “ET WUS TOO ESSI”*

Um, yes! And I am glad she wrote it and not me!

I hope her teacher has stocked up on stickers.

*: It was too easy

By Sylvanus P. Thompson

I once had a logic professor, the rumpled/ bespectacled/ round/ beaming English type, who announced in the first class of the term “it is my job to make logic as pleasant as possible.” This book (which was first published in 1910 — I notice it’s recently been updated and modernized, which is kind of a shame) is the equivalent of that little speech, but for calculus.

The full title is Calculus Made Easy: Being a very-simplest introduction to those beautiful methods of reckoning which are generally called by the terrifying names of the Differential Calculus and the Integral Calculus. Sylvanus P. Thompson — and who can resist a name like that — takes a very clear, gentle, first-principles approach to explaining calculus. He does in spots sacrifice accuracy to get his point across, but isn’t that always the case with intro-level texts?

My copy of this book got both my Dad and I through first-year university calculus. It’s a nice counterpart to whatever the official text is, since Thompson comes at ideas from a different angle. Very useful.

Edited by Lynn Crosbie

I love Lynn Crosbie; she writes excellent book reviews that icily savage books she hates. Mostly I agree with her so they’re fun reading. No suckup, she. But as a book editor she could be a meaner: the word “uneven” features in a number of reviews of this book and I can’t disagree with that. It came to mind mostly because Gigi the Galaxy Girl‘s included story For the Love of a Good Toaster may be the seminal (as it were) mention of the lesbian/toaster-oven meme, even though the story’s main protagonist is in fact a blender. It also includes the previously-mentioned Barbara Gowdy necrophilia story We So Seldom Look on Love, obviously deeply peculiar in a unique way.

The collection is… harsh, for the lack of a better word. It certainly is neither passive (such a common complaint about women’s writing on this topic) nor heterosexist (a common complaint about most such collections), so there’s that. But it’s not cozy reading; this isn’t one for a curled-up-by-the-fireside read. Graphic artist Julie Doucette (Dirty Plotte, etc.) has a piece in here, as does Roberta Gregory’s Bitchy Bitch.

A much smoother? calmer? — something like that — suitable for fireside reading, anyway — collection by women writers is Touching Fire. I’ll put a sample poem from that collection below.

More…

by Salman Rushdie

I often find Salman Rushdie hard reading — he writes in images more than he writes in words, to my mind — but it’s a technique that works to great effect in Haroun and the Sea of Stories. I re-read it recently, debating whether it should go into the Read To Five-Year-Old Kid pile. The answer is yes.

To borrow from one of the Amazon reviews:

It’s almost as if Rushdie has invented a new form, the meta-fable. Rather than retreating under the famous death threats, Rushdie reiterates the importance of literature, stressing not just the good of stories “that aren’t even true” but persuading us that these stories convey the truth. As Haroun realizes, “He knew what he knew: that the real world was full of magic, so magical worlds could easily be real.”

Adults will enjoy the meta-story, but for kids, it’s a great fairy tale, with lots of action, imaginative characters and a bunch of fun characters.

Ooo, she got mad when we out-cheated her….

M to D: You’re It!
(chase ensues, D rather hindered by several heavy bags of groceries)
M: T.O!
D, deciding to play the game her way: No, only metal poles with signs on them are T.O.
M: This rock is T.O. just for me.
D: That’s cheating! You’re cheating again!
M: Mama, you’re It!
Me: (also staggering under the weight of groceries) We’re almost home — you two better run!
(M & D run)
D has a sudden burst of brilliance: Guess what? Mommy secretly made me It. (touches M) You’re It! Haha! T.O.!
M, furious: NOOOOOOOOO! THERE IS NO SECRET IT! YOU’RE WRECKING MY GAME!

by Vikram Vij & Meeru Dhalwala

This is our current favourite cookbook. My Mom bought it for us right when it came out, because Vij is our favourite restaurant in Vancouver and she knew we’d love it.

The great thing about these recipes is that they are, for the most part, cheap to make. We had to stock up on a bunch of spices we didn’t previously keep around, but they were all the kind that come in big plastic pouches for about 79 cents. Then we were set.

Two things to watch out for. The recipes are HUGE — the ones we’ve made would easily serve eight, and needed some mighty big pots. And a few have instructions that end with “…and then simmer for four hours,” so they’re no good for making on a whim.

A couple to start with: the Vij Family Chicken Curry is quickly becoming a house favourite. It doesn’t take all that much longer than a Patak’s curry does, assuming you’ve already made or bought some garam masala. The Tomato-Ginger Soup is likewise excellent and pretty quick to make (I cheat and use a tin of pureed tomatoes instead of fresh ones).

OK, now I’m hungry.

by Diana Gabaldon

Oh, this is fun stuff. There’s nothing highbrow or pretentious about Diana Gabaldon’s stuff, it’s just good, light, gripping historical fun. There’s a time every once in a while when I spend an awful lot of time for a few consecutive days sitting about waiting in doctor’s offices, and these are perfect books for that sort of thing. That’s not meant to be negative or insulting at all; Gabaldon’s books are wonderfully entertaining. As with Patrick O’Brian’s books, once you’re a hundred pages into the first one you may as well just buy the rest and save yourself the bother of picking them up one at a time. Fortunately Outlander is the first of a six-book (so far) series, vs. O’Brian’s twenty-one, so it’s a good bit cheaper to indulge.

Who cares if you wait ninety minutes to see the doctor when you’ve got one of these books in your bag? Once I even let someone go ahead of me just so I could finish a chapter.

by Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman is a wonderful writer. He makes English bend to his clever whims in ways that make me terribly jealous. But for a seemingly nice guy ( you can read his journal here) he’s awfully cavalier with his protagonists, and he comes up with some elegantly creepy ideas.

Stardust, though, is a fairy tale for adults. It’s a good first exploration into Gaiman, with all the elegance of his fabulous imagination but with somewhat less eccentricity than, say, his (excellent) short story collections and with somewhat less darkness than his graphic novels. I don’t actually have a copy right now… I think I gave mine to someone who needed airplane reading or something… books so often want to travel. I’ll pick up another sometime, though; it’s that good.

A conversation recounted to me from the walk home yesterday:

M: Tag! You’re It!
(a few seconds later)
M: Tag again! You’re It!
D: No way! You just touched me, so you made yourself It! Haha!
M: No, you’re just more It.
(runs away)
(D chases, gets kind of close)
M: T.O.! [time-out]
D: Tag is the simplest possible two-person game, and you’re cheating!
M: I don’t want to play anymore.
(pause)
M: But you’re still It.

I’m not going to say it out loud so I won’t jinx it, but it looks like we have a new daycare arrangement starting in February.

It’s a home-based daycare quite close to our house, with kids all from one school, a cook, and two utterly calm and happy dogs to play with. In the late afternoons they head over to the gym at the church just around the corner from our house for some running around and games and stuff like that. Their kid:staff ratios are half what they are elsewhere and the staff have been there forever. They take co-op students too so there’s a good combination of freshness and experience.

The owner is cheerful, open, great with kids (or with Maddy, anyway), and talkative. By her anecdotes she is clearly intolerant of snottiness, disrespect and/or condescension from parents, which is great because we don’t want to have to deal with those folks either and if I start to behave that way I want a good sharp verbal smack. I know exactly the type of parent she was talking about — they’re the ones that annoy me at school dropoffs.

We’ll see how it goes, but all three of us felt it was a huge improvement. Maddy wanted to start there immediately despite being mildly scared of the dogs.

It’s more expensive, of course, but that’s life. They’re also much more flexible. The cost differential will be less of an issue once Maddy starts Grade 1 in September and needs many fewer hours of care. (For Toronto parents: the preschool-to-kindergarten daycare transition only saves maybe $50-$100 a month. It’s the kindergarten-to-grade-school transition that provides serious relief.)

Now I’m arguing with the old daycare, naturally. They feel three weeks notice of withdrawal is inadequate and would like “the next full month”, i.e., seven weeks notice. Arrant nonsense. I called them this morning and if the spot isn’t filled by now I’ll fall off my chair in surprise.

by Steven D. Levitt with Stephen J. Dubner

I wasn’t terribly impressed with this book. But then, economics of any sort rarely impresses me; what’s the use of something with next-to-no predictive value? Economists are forever assuming away anything that doesn’t work with their theories. As a scientist I found the whole subject appalling when I took economics in grad school — and I was even MORE appalled when I did very very well in the course.

And so goes this book: near the beginning he talks briefly about correlation vs. causation, but he then pretty much ignores that extremely critical distinction for the rest of the book. Typical economist, despite his assertions otherwise.

In addition, it could’ve used more editing. I found it quite repetitive.

Read it for fun if you like. It’s good to see an economist at least attempting to think about things outside their usual range of topics. But please take it with a great huge grain of salt.

edited by Andrea J. Buchanan

My sister bought this book for me for Christmas — it had been hanging about on my Amazon wishlist being neglected for some time, so it was wonderful to have it turn up as a surprise!

It’s a well-done collection. The writers are a diverse bunch, and they write about birthing daughters, adopting daughters, even not having a daughter.

They cover some of the usual issues (Barbie, dealing with all that pink, eating disorders) and some I hadn’t seen before: How do you explain your three plastic surgeries while simultaneously trying to teach body acceptance? Why is the daughter of two rather butch lesbians such a fashionista, and should they wear lipstick to please her? It covers the light and the dark, the fluffy and the heavy, sometimes all in the same piece.

There’s a companion volume also edited by Andi Buchanan, It’s a Boy! Women Writers on Raising Sons which I may pick up as well.