Book: A Spot Of Bother

A Spot Of Bother
By: Mark Haddon
Finished: Jan 3, 2009

It's pretty easy to compare A Spot Of Bother to that book by Franzen. It's the story of a tight wound family, with a patriarch who goes off kilter when faced with his own suddenly evident mortality, and seeks pharmacological help. But whereas Franzen provides The Corrections, Haddon offers the constructive criticisms (sorry, I've been thinking about that terrible joke all week). This is a family that despite being stuffy, repressed, and dysfunctional, could still make it work.

For anyone that's come face to face with the surprisingly rapid arrival of the ravages of time, going in the space of a doctor's "well..." from an invincible youth to a fragile conglomeration of barely functioning bellows and sacks held together with brittle bones in a wispy veil of skin, father George Hall's panic attacks and "it seemed like a reasonable idea at the time" reactions to disease are shockingly plausible, as are the family's reactions, ranging from recrimination to intentional blindness.

In some ways, this is a book about how family exists as a structure within society. How one generation must recede so that the next can be built on top of it, using it as a strong or shaky foundation, a chain of hand-offs stretching all the way backwards and forwards.

Pages Boxing Week Sale

People have told me I'm hard to buy for, but I don't see how that's even remotely possible.

Interactive Media

I was on the Ceeb on Sunday morning. I didn't know when it was going to be on, it's pretty weird being half awake and hearing yourself come on the radio.

Stores for Men

Book: Fargo Rock City (I didn't like jazz, I didn't like funk)

Almost a month later, I'm still slogging through Fargo Rock City. It's ok, but it's not really thrilling me. I think the problem is, the background assumption Klosterman sets up is that basically everyone likes rock n' roll. It's just the background music to our culture, the dichotomy is between punks and metal heads (and really, this is just a proxy for urban vs rural). If I'm picking a side in that fight, then I'm a punk, a 33 year old, computer programming, tea drinking, book reading, sweater wearing punk. But this book is about the tiny wars within the metal camp, and that's something that's just not that interesting to me.

Part way through the book, Chuck presents a list of his essential metal albums and how much cash money you would have to pay him to never listen to each of those albums again. In my life, I've owned exactly one of the albums on his list (Appetitie for Destruction), so we're clearly coming at this from different perspectives.

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The Bis-nass

Shit just got real in the Canadian federal parliament.

Me? I love it, I think coalition governments are great, but people in The West are screaming mad, saying this is anti-democratic, treasonous, etc.

Leaving aside the facts of the matter, that this is how a Westminster-derived parliamentary democracy works, that the parties are totally allowed to do this, and that this means that more Canadian voters will have their choice of MP in the ruling coalition, leaving that aside, I've been trying to figure out if I like this just because it gives parties I like more power, or if it's actually ok.

So I got to thinking, how would I feel if the Conservatives formed some kind of alliance with a loony right wing party just to hold a tenuous grasp on power? Then I realized that that's what we've had since 'aught-three.

So eff-you with a bear you shouty hypocrites singing the national anthem in question period like you own it, like patriotism is your cross and holy water against the vampire socialists. You won the slimmest of minority governments in an election with one of the lowest voter turnouts ever, you over-reached and you screwed up. Take it like a grown up.