Could this be love?

I Think I Love You - Allison Pearson (Alfred A. Knopf, 2011, advance reader's edition)


I had quite the crush on NPH (I mean, obviously) in his Doogie Howser days. And I seem to remember several months of adoration for Christian Slater. But my teen passion was for an athlete, which somehow felt much different (to me) than loving a teen heartthrob. I jealously guarded my love for Paul Kariya, and didn't have to share him with the other hoards of teen girls.

But then, I could still identify with Petra and her girlfriends, and the way they felt about David Cassidy. That feeling that somehow he was reaching out directly to you, even as - in their case, at least - it was about the connections you make with the girls around you as well.

Anyway, so Petra has a new best friend, and they hover on the orbit of one of those stereotypical queen bees, who existed even in Wales of the 1970s, it turns out. Their bond: Cassidy, who helps them weather the storms of adolescence. The greatest storm though, arises from their misadventures trying to see him in concert.  At the same time, young college grad Bill turns out to *be* David Cassidy, or rather to channel his voice for one of those teeny-bopper magazines. This is hugely embarrassing, and yet it's his life.

Fast forward a quarter-century. Petra is mourning her mother, her failed marriage, and her inability to protect her teen daughter from the hurts that plagued her. But then she finds a lost letter, and a chance to go back in time, and maybe let her teenage self have the experience of a lifetime.

It's not just a love story between a man and a woman, or a man and millions of girls. It's also about love between friends, the complications of familial love, and the ways we tie ourselves in knots trying to be the "right" thing for the ones we love. I didn't know what to expect when I picked this up, but it was warm and comforting. A good find.

The People's History of the Fastest Game on Ice

Hockey: A People's History - Michael McKinley (McClelland & Stewart, 2006)

So, the blog title is kinda lazy, but I'm going with it.

This monster tome is the coffee table companion to what I believe was a CBC miniseries about 5 years back. It's about 9x12 and weighs in at.... a bunch of pounds (kilos?), and is chock full of pictures and sidebars. Including some amazing ones from early in Canadian hockey history and of a shockingly sweet 13 y.o. Wayne Gretzky.

The book is a little like if a Ken Burns documentary got shoved into a book. It makes strange segues, and fades to sepia a bit. Which is probably all the case b/c it was a documentary shoved into a book. But such fantastic stories. Girls using their skirts to help hide the puck as they deked around a defender, dudes whose names are on trophies being actual people. Getting drunk and trading a player for $1million for example. Or forcing everyone on your team to enlist during WWII.

It took me weeks to get through this thing - lots of lapses in concentration and intervening life and whatnot. But experiencing it over time, in bits and pieces, was sort of the way to go. How better to go through >100 years of one's favorite sport, especially as interwoven into the history of a country?

I'd like to mention the severe lack of Paul Kariya, but I guess that's to be expected. *I* know that he was a crucial part of the 2002 Olympic team, and that'll have to be good enough. :)

Re-discoveries, Obasan

In twelfth grade, I took the AP exam in English Language. It included a reading passage about a young girl getting on a train with her grandmother, and the accompanying preparations and observations. What made it spectacular was that it was not a voluntary trip - they were Japanese-Canadian, and being relocated to the interior.

This wasn't my first encounter with the internment of North Americans of Japanese descent during WWII; I had read Farewell to Manzanar in middle school. Perhaps more importantly, I was "in love" with Paul Kariya, whose father had been born in a Canadian internment camp.

The passage was gorgeous, and the topic was one that interested me, so I made a note of the novel - Obasan, by Joy Kogawa. That summer, during a drive to Vancouver, I read the book. And while I have yet to meet Paul, I did two projects on the Japanese internment camps while in college.

But I digress. The thing to know about Kogawa is that she writes lyrical, evocative prose. Opening at random, I find the following:

The handwriting in blue-black ink is firm and regular in the first few pages, but is a rapid scrawl later on. I feel like a burglar as I read, breaking into a private house only to discover it's my childhood house filled with corners and rooms I've never seen.

Or another:

I stand beside her and over the redness of my body she scrubs vigorously, like an eraser over a dirty page. The dead skin collects in little rolls and falls off into the water. She exclaims at the rolls.

And it builds to a painful, yet still poetic, crescendo. Lovely, just lovely.