"Intermezzo" by Sally Rooney

Just what I needed, right? Yet another book club in my life, lol.  (Because I clearly don't have enough to read & otherwise keep me busy, right??  lol). 

This particular book club grew out of the monthly "What Are You Reading?" subscriber threads on Anne Helen Petersen's Culture Study Substack newsletter. A couple of her readers suggested forming a book club to read & discuss some of the books we'd been chatting about there. There are actually two clubs:  one based in North America and one in Europe. 

Somehow I wound up with the Europeans! ;)  They meet once a month on Google Meet, weekday evenings their time, which is afternoon my time, but still do-able since I'm retired. ;)  I'm not sure I'll join in every month -- it will depend on the book and what else I have going on -- but if it's a book I want to read, why not take the opportunity to do it now and then have a good chat about it with other readers, right??  ;)  

The first book I'm joining them to discuss (during the first week of March) is "Intermezzo" by Sally Rooney. I haven't read Rooney's previous book before this one, "Beautiful World, Where Are You" -- yet? -- but I read (and re-read) and loved "Normal People" a few years back (and gobbled up the TV adaptation!), followed by her first novel, "Conversations With Friends" (reviewed here -- and here, after re-reading -- and here, respectively). 

"Intermezzo" is the story of two brothers, mourning the recent death of their father. There's Peter, a 32-year-old human rights lawyer, who can't quite quit his longstanding relationship with Sylvia, a literature professor who is unable to have sex with him since a car accident left her in chronic pain. (The exact nature of her injuries is unclear.)  Meanwhile, he's become a "sugar daddy" of sorts to Nina, a much-younger girl who sells racy photos of herself as a side hustle to keep the landlord at bay.   

Then there's Peter's much-younger brother Ivan, a geeky 22-year-old chess prodigy who becomes involved with 36-year-old Margaret. Margaret is separated from her abusive, alcoholic husband, wary of the age difference between her and Ivan and leery about what people might say if/when their relationship becomes public.   

The two brothers are very different -- and grief, and their different ways of dealing with it, has only emphasized the chasm that's grown between them over the years. 

I'd heard raves about this book before picking it up -- so I was a bit surprised to find it a little hard to get into.  It moves between Peter and Ivan's viewpoints (as well as Margaret's), with a clear shift in the writing style for each character. When we're inside Peter's head, the prose is staccato -- short, choppy sentences -- and it's sometimes hard to tell who he's referring to.  Ivan's sections are written in long, detailed, rambling paragraphs. He clearly has anxiety issues, and I wondered whether he was "on the spectrum," as we now say.  

Nevertheless, I stuck with it, and although I had my doubts at the outset, it ultimately won me over -- particularly in the final 1/3 or so, as the brothers begin to realize the toll that their grief has taken on them, and on their relationships, with each other and others. I started off thinking 3 stars, max.  By midway through, it was more like, okay, 3.5, rounded up to 4.  By the end:  a solid 4 stars, and I'd probably rate that last section at 4.5.  I still have a very soft spot in my heart for "Normal People" (which I rated at 4 stars), but this one ranks right up there too.  

4 stars. 

(P.S. & FYI: The steamy sex scenes that seem to be a staple of Rooney's books are also present here in abundance!)(lol!)  

This was Book #6 read to date in 2025 (and Book #3 finished in February), bringing me to 13% of my 2025 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 45 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) on track to meet my goal.  :)  You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2025 tagged as "2025 books." 

#MicroblogMondays: 50 (!) years of SNL

I watched the Saturday Night Live 50th (!!) anniversary special last night -- all 3.5 hours of it (!).  (Dh went to bed before it was over.)  I was 14 when SNL made its debut in October 1975.  I did not see that first episode, but I most certainly did start watching that fall. These days, I'm usually too tired to watch the entire show (although I sometimes stay up long enough to catch the opening sketch?) -- but where I grew up, in Manitoba, SNL started at 10:30 PM on Saturday nights (vs 11:30 here in southern Ontario).  I was at many a party or other gathering of friends in my teens and early 20s that wound up with everyone gathered around the TV set to watch the latest antics by Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Gilda Radner & co.  

A couple of observations from last night:  

• I was taken aback by the airing of a 1978 short SNL film, "Don't Look Back in Anger," -- introduced by 88-year-old Garrett Morris (!) -- featuring John Belushi as an older version of himself, visiting his former co-stars -- in the cemetery (!). "I'm the last one," he says -- before proceeding, at the end, to dance on their graves (!).  
• Kind of chilling, especially considering that he was actually the first one of them to die, at age 33 in 1982 -- and that all the rest of them, other than Gilda Radner, are still around, 50 years later.  
• (I may have seen it before, but if I did, it's been a while, because I certainly did not remember it!) 
• I was especially touched at the very end, as the cast crowded onto the stage, to see that someone was holding a large black-and-white photo of Gilda Radner aloft.  (I later learned it was her co-stars Jane Curtin & Larraine Newman -- there's a photo of then circulating on social media.)  Gilda was childless-not-by-choice, and died in 1989 at the far-too-young age of 42 of cancer, after trying to have a child with her husband, Gene Wilder. A quote from her memoir, "It's Always Something," appears on the right hand of this blog page, and I wrote a post about her back in 2012 ("It's always something...").  
• Related:  I loved this recent (gift-linked) post from the Atlantic:" Do It for Gilda." (Subhead:  "The too-short life of a comedy genius is a reminder to the rest of us to make good use of the time we are given.")
• The evening started off with 83-year-old Paul Simon singing "Homeward Bound" with young Sabrina Carpenter, and ended off with 82-year-old Paul McCartney (who else??) and his band doing the closing medley from "Abbey Road" -- "Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End." Which says (of course): "And in the end/The love you take/Is equal to the love you make."  
• Yes, neither man's voice is what it once was -- but it's not about their voices. It's about them, the music, the memories, and what they have meant to us all for so many years.  I saw more than one person on social media commenting that they were moved to tears by McCartney's opening line ("Once there was a way to get back homeward")... especially in the context of our turbulent times.  
• Cherish these guys, while they're still here with us. 
• I saw Paul McCartney with my sister in Winnipeg in September 2018, and posted about it here. 

Did you watch?  What did you think? Highlights?  Personal SNL memories?  

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here. 

Odds & ends: Canadian edition

• I had to change the title of a recent post ("Dodged that...")(although the original is still evident in the post's URL...!). (Admittedly, I could have chosen a better title to begin with...!  But headline-writing was never my forte in journalism school or at work, lol.)  I was horrified to check my comments the morning after I posted, only to find a spam comment offering guns for sale (!!).  It was written in Spanish (!), but I got the gist of it (and deleted it immediately). (For one thing -- handguns are illegal in Canada.)  
• I got a letter in the mail from Service Canada recently. Wasn't sure why, until I opened it and started reading -- and got the giggles. I recently celebrated my 64th (!) birthday, and the letter was informing me that my Old Age Security payments will begin in February 2026, one year from now, i.e., the month following my 65th (gulp!) birthday. I guess that makes me officially old??  (Almost, anyway...!)  
• I WAS expecting to get a letter/notification -- dh got one before HE turned 65, a few years ago -- but I thought it would come later in the year.  
• I have ZERO interest in the Super Bowl, and I wasn't really paying attention while dh watched. But I did catch a few of the ads. ;)   We don't get to see many of the (in)famous U.S. ads here, because of Canadian content regulations -- the broadcasters substitute ads for Canadian companies instead, even if you're watching a channel/network from the U.S. (Although we can view most of the U.S. ads on YouTube and elsewhere online, of course.)  I must say Canadian companies have really stepped up their game -- there were some really good ads from them this year (and a few questionable ones...!).  A few notables: 
• Doritos (which is, of course, an American product, by an American company) did an ad obviously specifically produced for the Canadian market, poking fun at the Canadian penchant for saying "sorry."  (Personally, I'm not sure whether I like it -- but, nice try!)   
• There was an ad for Rogers (telecomm company) starring Keanu Reeves (! -- he is, of course, a Toronto boy!).  (Couldn't find a clip for that one, though.) 
• There was a hilarious Crown Royal ad starring Dave Grohl. (I think that's an old one, though?) 
• And there was an ad for Tim Hortons (coffee/doughnut shop chain, founded by and named for a hockey player -- how Canadian can you get, right? --although it's now owned by a Brazilian conglomerate)(!!), set to the tune of Stompin' Tom Connors's much-beloved anthem "The Hockey Song" -- but instead of "oh, the good old hockey game," they were singing "oh, the good old football game." 
• I was HORRIFIED:  "For an AMERICAN FOOTBALL GAME?? WTAF, Timmies?? (Where was this ad when the Grey Cup was on??)"  
• Then I saw the ad a second time -- and realized:  instead of "Oh, the good old hockey game/It's the best game you can name/And the best game you can name/Is the good old hockey game" the words were now "Oh, the good old football game/It's the second-best game you can name..."  The frame at the end reads "Sorry not sorry. (We're Canadian.)" (Inside Canadian joke there.)  
• I did have to chuckle at that. (Although I do think you could have made it third-best -- there  IS the Grey Cup, after all...!)  
• Needless to say, we Canadians are just a LITTLE sensitive when it comes to Americans co-opting our culture at the moment...!  
• The YouTube clip of the song I linked to is a live performance Stompin' Tom gave, near the end of his life, on a 2012 episode of the Conan O'Brien show shot here in Toronto in front of a cheering, standing crowd. (I have to admit, I got a little misty-eyed!)  
• Here's another great clip of Tom performing the song at the 1999 closing game at Maple Leaf Gardens (before the Leafs moved to the new Air Canada Centre, now called the Scotiabank Arena).  The song gets played at every Leafs home game. 
• In a slight twist, the province of Ontario (where I live) ran an ad on U.S. networks during the game, touting our longstanding relationship, which Yahoo News Canada described as the "most politely aggressive Super Bowl ad."  (This ad/Similar ads have already been playing frequently on network TV, including CNN, for the past few weeks.) 
• In a similar vein -- I was amused, earlier in the month -- following certain-- ahem -- statements about my country from the new U.S. president -- to open the Kobo.com/ca/en home page (for ebooks) and discover a raft of new featured categories that include: 
• eBooks made in Canada: The True North strong and well-read – show your true patriot love and dive into a homegrown read.
• Finished Onyx Storm? Try these Canadian authors next:  Find your next Canadian read full of romance, magic, and fantastical creatures.
• Top Canadian eBook Pick (there were several of these) 
• Best Canadian eBooks of the Month
• Homegrown stories with glowing hearts: Learn about the experiences of being Black and Canadian.
• New Canadian authors we can't wait to read
• Made in Canada: Audiobooks by Canadian authors.

You might expect to find something like this in/around early July, i.e., Canada Day -- but February??  My reaction ranged from amused -- people think Canadians aren't patriotic?? -- to slightly annoyed at this blatant corporate attempt to cash in on the current surge of patriotism.  Although I guess if people are looking for more Canadian authors to read...! 

#MicroblogMondays: Meet Petunia!

Petunia. ❤

Meet Petunia! -- my childhood piggy bank. :)  

Petunia was actually my second piggy bank. My first one, sadly, was broken not long after I got it. The following Christmas (I think?), when I was about 6 or 7 years old (late 1960s), both my sister & I received identical new china piggy banks from Santa Claus. (Although -- did my sister's have blue hair while mine was pink?? Hmmm, must ask her next time we talk...) Mine sat on the top of my dresser until I left home, and eventually wound up in one of the dresser drawers. 

I've been thinking I should take her home for YEARS now, if I wanted to keep it (which I did). First I wanted to make sure that she really WAS mine (and not my sister's).  She assured me she had hers at her house. Second, I tried to remove the rubber plug on the bottom -- which was cracked, and now rattling around inside her tummy -- but after almost (gulp) 60 years (!), the rubber had turned hard as a rock! so it was impossible to remove (and I was afraid I'd break Petunia if I tried too hard). So I decided to just leave it in there. (Unfortunately, no money inside!  lol)  

I also procrastinated because I was a little leery about taking something so old & fragile in my suitcase -- she already had a few cracks in her -- so my sister's partner brought me some bubble wrap. I wrapped her in that, and then in a plastic bag (so that, in case she did break en route home, I wouldn't open my suitcase to find shards of broken china all over the place...!). Then I wrapped THAT up in a couple of soft sweaters and buried it in the depths of my suitcase.

Happily, she survived the trip!  and has now taken up residence in my china cabinet.  :)  She makes me smile every time I look at her. ❤ I know I can't keep EVERYTHING from my childhood, but this meant something to me, and I'm glad I still have it -- and have it here now.  

Did you have a piggy bank when you were growing up? 

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here. 

"The Mermaid of Black Conch" by Monique Roffey

"The Mermaid of Black Conch" by Monique Roffey will be the April pick for my Childless Collective Nomo Book Club. Fantasy/mythology/etc. are generally not my thing, so this is not something I would have likely chosen to read on my own.   

April is still several weeks away, but I was trying to decide which book to read next, and opened this one on my e-reader, just to see how long it was and adjust the typeface size to my liking. Before I knew it, I had read an entire chapter, and before the evening was over, I was already through the first 100 pages.  ;)  I finished it in three days (with a few interruptions).        

The story is set primarily in 1976 on a small Caribbean island, and told from the viewpoints of several different characters.  David is out in his small boat, fishing and playing his guitar, when he spots a mermaid watching him (!). Soon, he is coming to visit her and play music for her every day -- until she is caught and reeled in by two American fishermen, who are gleeful at the prospect of the huge sums of money they will get for her.  David comes to her rescue and hides her in his home, intending to return her to the sea -- but before he can do that, she begins to transform back into the human woman she once was. Her name is Aycayia.

Of course, this leads to all sorts of complications, as David falls in love with Aycayia, and more and more people learn his secret...  including his nosy neighbour, Priscilla;  Miss Arcadia Rain, a white woman whose family has owned most of the island for more than 100 years; and Arcadia's young son, Reggie, who is deaf (and whose absent father is David's uncle, Life), and who forms a special friendship with Aycayia.  

This was a fast, lyrical read. Parts of it are written in Caribbean dialect, which might take some getting used to!  There's a cinematic quality to the book:  I could see it like a movie in my head. (And was reminded of other mermaid/sea creature-themed movies I've seen -- "Splash" with Tom Hanks & Daryl Hannah, "The Shape of Water" with Sally Hawkins -- and even "Beach Blanket Bingo" from my childhood,  lol.) 

As I said, it's not my usual kind of reading, but I wound up enjoying this very much (although "enjoy" doesn't seem like quite the right word). It surprised me and touched me.  The way Aycayia was (mis)treated, by both men and women (not all of them, but...), made me sad.  :(   I had tears in my eyes near the end. 

4.5 stars on StoryGraph, rounded down to 4 for Goodreads.  

This was Book #5 read to date in 2025 (and Book #2 finished in February), bringing me to 11% of my 2025 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 45 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 1 book ahead of schedule to meet my goal.  :)  You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2025 tagged as "2025 books." 

"The Mad Women's Ball" by Victoria Mas

My Childless Collective Nomo Book Club will be reading and discussing "The Mad Women's Ball" by Victoria Mas (translated from the original French by Frank Wynne) in March.  

The book is based in fact (!), set at Paris's Salpetriere asylum  in 1885. Some of the women who live there are truly mentally ill -- but many are simply "difficult" -- committed by husbands and families who are regard them as a problem, don't know what to do with them, and are anxious to be rid of them. 

They are hidden away and mostly forgotten by respectable society, with two exceptions:  the regular lectures by Dr. Charcot (a real-life figure), who performs public demonstrations of hypnotism on the patients in front of enthralled (male) audiences -- and the annual Lenten Mad Women's Ball, when the patients are allowed to dress up in costumes and mingle with the citizens of Paris, who have been invited to come gawk at them.  

The main story focuses on two women at the Salpetriere: matron Genevieve, who has shunned religion in favour of science and thrown herself into her work since the death of her beloved younger sister; and rebellious teenager Eugenie, whose family committed her when she told her grandmother that she can see the spirits of dead people. She's determined to escape and find other people who believe as she does (she knows they exist;  she visited a spiritualist bookstore) -- but how?  

This was a relatively short, quick read, with a story that builds steadily to the climactic event:  the Mad Women's Ball.  While it's not a book I would have likely picked up on my own, it was interesting (especially since Salpetriere was a real place, and the plot is loosely based on a true story!), and I enjoyed the characters (some of the secondary ones in particular -- young, naive, abused Louise;  Therese, the former prostitute, who knits shawls for the other patients;  and Eugenie's brother Theophile, who can't shake the guilt he feels for his role in having his sister committed). Still, I felt a certain emotional distance from it all. I'm wondering if the fact that it was translated from the French had something to do with that? 

The book was made into a well-received French movie (available for streaming on Amazon Prime), which had its premiere at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) -- written, directed by and starring Melanie Laurent as Genevieve.  I haven't seen it myself, but I suspect it might make a good movie, perhaps (for once!) even better than the book!  

3.5 stars on StoryGraph, rounded down to 3 on Goodreads (after some internal debate).  

This was Book #4 read to date in 2025 (and Book #1 finished in February), bringing me to 9% of my 2025 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 45 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) on track to meet my goal.  :)  You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2025 tagged as "2025 books." 

#MicroblogMondays: The REAL breakfast of champions?? ;)

After my Baba (paternal grandmother) died, when he was 82 years old, my Dido (grandfather) made his own porridge every morning for breakfast, until he was no longer able to live on the farm with my uncle. (He was well into his 90s when that happened.  He had a stroke and died in 1988 at age 96.)  His longevity and general good health convinced my mom & I there there must be something to it (lol)*, and so we starting making oatmeal for breakfast too. 

That was more than 40 years ago (during the year, post-journalism school/pre-marriage, when I lived at home with my parents and worked for the local weekly newspaper). My parents got their first microwave oven around that same time, which made making oatmeal a whole lot easier -- and less messy!  

While Mom has since abandoned oatmeal for Cheerios, I've continued to have oatmeal for breakfast most mornings since then. I use Quaker large-flake rolled oats (the yellow label bag -- at least, it's yellow here in Canada) -- about 1/3 of a cup of oats (and sometimes a bit more -- and sometimes a spoonful of oat bran, for added fibre) into a bowl with 2/3 of a cup of water. (Maybe a little less -- I like my oatmeal fairly thick, and if you use too much water, it's liable to overflow the bowl while it's cooking.) Microwave on high for 3 minutes. I like to top mine with brown sugar & cinnamon, and some milk. 

Oatmeal is a good source of fibre, which helps reduce cholesterol (a primary concern for dh & me lately).  The less processed the oats, the better.  (The instant oatmeal that comes in individual packages, often with added flavouring, is generally considered the worst.)  The large-flake oats that I use are pretty good, but the best, nutritionally speaking, are steel-cut oats. According to WebMD, "Steel-cut oats and rolled oats have about the same nutrition, but steel-cut oats have a bit more fiber. They also have a lower glycemic index and take longer to digest, keeping you full longer."  

A lot of people have been singing the praises of steel-cut oats to me lately, so I decided to give them a try. I bought a container of them and cooked up a batch one morning recently, in a pot on the stovetop. The directions on the package also provided microwave instructions -- but it would still make two portions, not just one, and there were still multiple steps involved. I figured if I was going to be making multiple portions, I might as well make the larger recipe and then have more to refrigerate or freeze for future breakfasts! -- so, stovetop it was! 

Cooking up a pot full of steel-cut oats.
About 4 portions. 

The instructions said to bring the water to a boil and let the oats cook for (at least) 20 minutes. I left the pot cooking for almost half an hour -- and the mixture was still not as thick as I would have liked -- but I was getting hungry!  lol  I scooped out a portion into a bowl, and put the rest into a container and into the refrigerator. It keeps there for several days. (You can also freeze it in individual portion scoops.)  I would scoop a portion out of the container -- now quite thick! -- put it into a bowl and mash it up a little, add just a splash of milk (or water), and heat it up in the microwave on high for about two minutes total. (I removed the bowl after one minute, stirred things up a bit and then put it back in for another minute.)  Add more milk and whatever toppings you like.  

I concluded that I will probably cook up a batch now & then, just to use up the container I bought -- but I think I will mostly stick to my large-flake oats. It's a little less fussy to cook, and I still like the texture better (although I might be able to improve that for the steel-cut oats with a little more experimenting). 

How about you? What do you usually have for breakfast? Have you ever tried steel-cut oats? (Any tips for me?) 

* (Genetics probably played a role in Dido's longevity as well! -- at least one and possibly more of his siblings lived to be more than 100 years old!  Five of Dido's 10 children are gone now;  my one aunt died as a baby in the 1930s from an illness that's now treatable with antibiotics, and one uncle died at age 89, but the other three all lived into their 90s. The other 5 currently range in age from 77 to 93!) 

(Of course, it could also have been the glass of rye whisky he had with his dinner every night??  lol)  

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.