A story is not like a road to follow

I was pleased to hear that Alice Monroe, a Canadian author, won the Nobel Prize in Literature yesterday! Coincidentally, I read " The Moons of Jupiter", a book of short stories written by her, over the summer and liked it so much that I'm reading it again. I foresee that I'll read it yet again - the third time paying more attention to the grammar, her sentence structure - the mechanics of writing. Then it will be a trip to the bookstore for something else by her.

I love short stories, especially ones that are about the human condition. They don't have to have much going on in them, but are best if they delve into character. I think it takes a particularly skilled author to write a good short story as every word counts - there is no room for superfluous language.

I have a dream that through the rereading of her stories I will somehow become imbibed with a grain of her talent. A girl can dream...

We had a really cool sunset last night while we were eating supper. It looked almost other worldly.

Carm couldn't join me on our walk this morning, so since the dogs have been somewhat bad (squirrels are everywhere), I put them on their prong collars. Immediately their behaviour changed and were fun to walk again. We stopped to talk to a few people, so I explained the benefits of these ugly collars - the main one being that they get a correction at exactly moment that they pull, and every single time, consistently. FYI - if we are just standing around talking, they do sometimes lean into the collar so it mustn't be that uncomfortable.

I had the pleasure of a visit from Jo Ellen and Don this afternoon. We sat around and enjoyed the sun, the views, and each others company. Oh yeah – October 11th and a high of 21. Wowzers!

 

“A story is not like a road to follow … it's more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows. And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished. You can go back again and again, and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time. It also has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you.” ~ Alice Munro