I came across this wonderful little video of book-related obsession. It’s called (appropriately) The Awe-inspiring Craftsmanship and Stupefying Beauty of Bookmaking. I particularly love the shot with the baby sitting beside the engraving blocks… now that’s dedication!

Make sure you keep watching until the binding and sewing begins. It’s an amazing process.

Thoughts upon checking yesterday’s 50 Poisonous Questions progress:

Thought 1: Wow, this is great. I wrote a lot more than I thought.

Thought 2: There seem to be a lot of mass deaths in this chapter. I wonder if that will be a problem?

I spent an evening last week at Vancouver Kidsbooks, celebrating with Kari Winters and Christina Leist as they launched On My Walk. It’s a highly adorable romp through Vancouver — rain shower included.

You can see my pictures at the CWILL BC site (although I should probably tell you now that my photography skills are pitiful).

Congratulations Kari and Christina!

My mom brought me her copy of Julie and Julia, which I read over the weekend. (Min walked in the house while my whole family was sitting in the living room, reading our separate books. My poor husband looked like he’d accidentally transported onto an alien planet, where no one knew about video games.)

I know the book is supposed to be light entertainment, but it got me thinking about obsessions, and their side benefits. This woman’s obsessive cooking got her a food column, a book, and a movie deal!

I don’t think I can follow in her footsteps, though. I could blame the two kids and the grandma currently taking up space in my house and my head. Or I could blame my husband, who would be significantly less understanding of maggots in the dish rack.

Mostly, I think my own lack of obsessiveness would hold me back. Let’s be honest… I wouldn’t have made it through a day of cooking organ meats, let alone twelve months. My exercise goals change weekly, I’m working on three different books at once, and I’m reading one literary novel and one detective mystery. I’m just not the single-minded type.

I AM working on the 10,000 hours of practice, though, as per Malcolm Gladwell’s The Outliers. And maybe that’s where Julie’s obsession took her… in only 365 days.

The CWILL BC meeting last night was relocated from a meeting room to a media room, which meant we all sat in rows of plush theatre seats.

It also prompted the question… where did you sit in school?

I sat in the front row last night because I was in charge of taking notes. In school, I was more of a sit-in-the-middle-and-pray-to-blend-in sort of kid. Kari Winters sat in the back for the meeting, but insisted it was because the light was better back there. And most of the illustrators I know fit — in my mind at least — firmly among the back-row denizens. Maybe where they could doodle uninterrupted.

So, am I right? Where did you sit in school?

I love serendipitous blog posts.

Last week, I followed a post about the letters of Blanche Howard and Carol Shields with a blog post about Norma Charles. And then, the next morning, I found Norma Charles’s name in one of Blanche Howard’s letters.

See? Serendipitous.

I e-mailed to tell Norma, because really, how cool is it to have your name mentioned in a letter to Carol Shields? Then Norma, who is very cool herself (and, incidentally, is the keynote speaker at Hycroft this Tuesday), e-mailed something along the lines of, “Oh yes, I know Blanche and Carol, and we had many dinners in Paris together.” Well, not really the dinners in Paris part, but still.

All of this leaves me thinking, some of my friends should get busy getting famous. And then they should write letters to each other and mention my name.

Mom: There’s a new book on your shelf, that I didn’t even know you were writing!

Me: What book?

Mom: The one with the black cover.

Me: Mom, that’s in German. It’s a translation.

Mom: Well, that explains the weird title.

I sent off my first submission for the on-line writing workshop the other day, and I discovered a hitherto unrealized law of the universe:

When you are about to submit a piece of writing, and you glance at it one last time, the first page will instantly, automatically disintegrate into complete dreck, that you are embarrassed to have written. This law applies equally no matter how many times you have rewritten the introduction.

Ah, well. I pressed “send” anyway. We’ll see how it goes…

Norma Charles gave me (or my daughter, rather) a copy of Fuzzy Wuzzy a couple weeks ago. It’s an early chapter book about a curly-haired girl who is taunted by the rapping neighborhood bully.

That’s all I know of the story, because we haven’t gotten past chapter three. For some reason, both my son and daughter are fascinated by the bully, Mean Old Miley, and Ruby’s reactions to him. We’ve reread chapters one through three, again and again!

And yesterday, I happened upon my daughter pretending to be Ruby while my son hid in the “bushes,” waiting to jump out as Mean Old Miley. Not sure what Norma would make of this game…

I’m on the final pages of A Memoir of Friendship, the letters of Carol Shields and Blanche Howard, and I’ve found it enthralling. This is the first time I’ve read a collection of real-life letters. I’m going to do more of it — it’s such an intimate view of the writer.

From a novel, you might glean information on an author’s values or opinions, but you don’t actually know what type of person she is. Whether she invites her great-aunt over for tea, or whether she kicks stray kittens. (Carol Shields and Blanche Howard would both fit firmly into the first category.)

Once finished with this book, I have two resolutions. To reread A Celibate Season, and to read more letters.