All posts by Karen

About Karen

Karen (she/hers) is a Culinary Literacies Specialist at the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre library. When not in the kitchen, she can be found knitting, reading, and repeating.  |  Meet the team

Have You Any Guts?

Giulia EndersWhy do we say that we have stomachaches when in reality the aches happen a little further down the line? Why not “I have an intestineache”* instead? It would be a lot more accurate, for one. Though if we do that, maybe we should also specify whether it’s a small intestineache or a large one, and that would just get confusing, because are you referring to an ache in the small intestine or a small ache in the intestine (unspecified), or a small ache in the large intestine or vice versa? You get the point. Have I surpassed the number of times you can read the word “intestine” without getting a bit uneasy yet? Because while it’s fascinating stuff, the gut, I find it increasingly curious that we have maintained such an aversion to talking about these parts of our bodies and their byproducts – I’m referring primarily to feces, but of course, chyme and other such substances also make us squirm – despite how integral they are to our lives.

But that’s more food for thought** than the primary focus of this post, because I just read two delightful books on the gut and I’ve never felt more enthusiastic discussing our stomachs, intestines, and what happens to stuff that goes in and the stuff that comes (back) out (and depending on what animal you are, sometimes right back in again)! The outright bubbly enthusiasm that gushes forth from Enders & Roach in Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Underrated Organ (Enders) and Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal (Roach) is both palpable and infectious – you’re sure to rethink your views about your gut and all the bacteria that reside there, so come and take a vacation in the labyrinth that is your own gut!

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Big Library Read: Flat Broke with Two Goats

Jennifer McGahaHave you heard about Big Library Read? It’s a global eBook club that you can join using your library card via Overdrive, complete with a discussion board that remains active for a full week after the end of the book club period (this month it goes from April 2 – 16). You’ll have to sign up on BLR to comment on the discussion board, but it’s a really straightforward process to do so, and it looks like the board is quite active, too! And if you’re meeting up with friends to talk about it as well, BLR also provides a discussion guide and other complementary materials – this month there’s an exclusive interview with the author on Overdrive with the Professional Book Nerds podcast, as well as a letter from the author.

So this month, the title is Flat Broke with Two Goats by Jennifer McGaha, which is available both as an eBook as well as an audiobook. All you have to do to join in this club is sign into Overdrive using your library card and 4-digit PIN number and borrow either the eBook or the e-audiobook!

Gabriel García Márquez

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Gabriel Garcia MárquezI don’t even remember the original reason I added One Hundred Years of Solitude to my to-read list, whence I heard or read the title, but I get the feeling it’s one of those novels that everyone has sort of heard about in passing if not already read. It might help that García Márquez was a Nobel Prize winner. I almost get the feeling that even just mentioning the title gets you a sort of look from a certain crowd. Kind of like casually mentioning that you read Proust, or love Dostoevsky*, I think. Anyway, I finally read it sometime last year and the moment I finished it, I wanted to return to the beginning once more and traverse those one hundred years all over again from page one. Alas, there was a hold.

I’m not sure how to describe this beautiful novel other than that it is a world unto itself, like a drawstring bag that encloses the universe and lets only sands of it out as you read the tale. And every time I recall its cover I think of a verdant snowglobe, an entire universe about to implode upon itself then settle into a meditative state of non-being, rather than recalling the open collage of forest elements that actually constitutes the cover. My interpretation of the book of course influences my memory of the cover, just as surely as my judging of each book’s cover influences my reading of the book itself, and it’s precisely this impression that García Márquez’s** writing invokes – I suppose that’s what the genre “magical realism” refers to. How do I even begin to describe the novel? How do I describe the plot? How to tell you if you haven’t already read it, don’t already understand the sort of spell I’ve been put under by One Hundred Years of Solitude? Well I suppose I better try, now that I’ve started.

The tale follows the Buendía family, but I don’t know if that’s what I should be telling you. I want to talk rather about the style of writing, how there’s magic imbued in everyday life and how these occurrences are treated as, if not mundane, then nothing in particular to be frightened of. By all accounts, there is a lack of logic in how things happen, and yet – and yet. You’re drawn into the impossibility of the silly premise that the child born of a union between cousins should have the tail of a pig, in a world where this could actually happen, because this is a reality where mustard plasters prevent pregnancy and girls can be so beautiful as to drive all those who gaze upon her mad. Premonitions and fortunes told carry so much more weight for the inhabitants of García Márquez’s world than they might for most of ours outside of his pages, and the only way I can describe it is as though we were to float through an ocean of fog, the only thing keeping us afloat our willing suspension of disbelief – no, there’s something stronger in the air: it must be magic.

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