This past weekend in Halifax marked the opening of the European movie made from Steig Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a book I thought to be both interesting and well written when I read it a couple of months ago. Although, largely because of the violence, I’d originally decided to defer succumbing to the two remaining volumes in the trilogy, the truth is that I went on to burn through them like wildfire and am now really keen to see how effectively the content translates into film. Since Sasha has just begun another job in the city, our time together will once again be fraught with outdoor practicalities so I imagine we’ll probably pass on our frequent weekend matinees and just rent the DVD at a later, more convenient time. I am no stranger to delayed gratification.

Here in the country, with proximity only to a smallish Blockbuster, anyone with tastes veering beyond the latest box office hit finds the local pickings very lean. We do have a wonderful film society, though and we maintain a membership with Zip.ca, both of which make a broader cinema culture more accessible.              

The other thing that ups the intellectual ante on rural life is the possession of an iPod Touch, a device I  don’t think I could live in the country without. Although for me useage began with music and the convenience of having something to listen to while waiting for car repairs or using the treadmill at the gym, I soon discovered the richness and diversity of podcasts, and after that, the amazing phenomenon known as iTunes U. With the ability to download courses from many universities, it’s possible for a person to think, learn and grow intellectually even down here on the farm. An excellent blog that helps sort through the various options can be viewed by clicking here.

The last component to my cerebral well-being is listening to audio books, a habit to which I often turn when battling insomnia or working out of doors. A lot of offerings are downloadable for free from sites such as LibriVox and Project Guttenburg, but for a great collection of contemporary works or for those still under copyright, I love audible.com, where my inexpensive subscription allows me to download one book every month.

In fact, I just listened to a chapter of War and Peace (the whole of which is sixty hours long in audio) while mucking out the barn. Depending on how well a person keeps up with all the names, you really can’t beat an experience like that, and since I am married to a Russian, it hasn't been too awfully hard for me. Think of all the work I'll be able to get done before it ends.

Despite the likelihood that they will probably not be kept, New Years Resolutions, at least a few of them, get made around here too. I will watch what I eat, stick with a regular gym schedule,  take a yoga class, join a book club, plant a garden. He will write every day, spend more time in contemplation, keep up with the fencing, do some careful exercise for his bad knee. As a unit, we will entertain more often, see more movies, drive into Halifax more regularly, and get back into the habit of making our own wine. And so on.

In a joint effort to spend less time consuming mindless re-runs and other forms of junk television, we have recently committed to at least an hour each evening of quiet reading in front of the fire. For me this comes complete with a lap throw and at least one cat sitting like a tea cozy on the arm of the couch, near enough that I can just make out the sound of her purr. It’s a Norman Rockwell picture that may or may not last until spring.

My large holiday novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by the late Steig Larsson, is drawing to a close and I’m still not quite sure what to make of it. A posthumous international sensation, according to the reviews, it was the first in a trilogy of thrillers written by the Swedish novelist before his sudden death at the age of 50 in 2004. I chose it after reading about Larsson’s career as a journalist, his lifelong fight against racism and right wing extremism, and his creation of a female protagonist, Lisbeth Salander (the girl with the tattoo) who cut very much across the usual grain. She’s a very angry, very punk computer hacker, for one thing.

The book is intellectually complex, tightly plotted and violent in the extreme. The investigative partnership that eventually forms between the male protagonist, Mikael Blomquist, a journalist, and Lisbeth Salander is like none other in the genre. The glimpses into Swedish life and Swedish law are fascinating, but there are so many gruesome crimes perpetrated against women and sometimes animals that the reader literally gets a chill, despite the correct political agenda.

Will I read the second volume, The Girl Who Played with Fire? Probably. But not until I’ve put something else in between. This might be a good time to return to the Picasso biographies or the Susan Sontag journals, where any ‘violences’ are not nearly so overt and the subject matter is somewhat closer to home. Sometimes a thriller can get too "thrilling" even for me.

The world outside my windows is a winter wonderland, the kind of landscape that cries out for boots, warm hats, scarves and mittens and the exhilaration of a long walk in the snow. Now past is my favourite part of every year,  when all the  Christmas hubbub and heavy eating are over and there are still a few precious days  that can be devoted to doing exactly what one pleases before the routine of normal life begins anew. 

Today reality sets in. For me this entails some domestic paperwork and the resumption of the legal research that earns me my living. Now that the Land Registry System in the province exists to a large extent online, I am fortunate to be able to work at home,  from a jumbled desk in proximity to my own coffeepot. Unless I have to concentrate deeply, the CBC provides the soundtrack to my work. 

This morning too we drove into Bridgewater to the annual book sale at Sagor’s Bookstore which is, believe it or not, one of the reasons we moved to this area in the first place. Run for over twenty years by Ron Topp and Susan Goodwin, it is one of the South Shore’s greatest treasures, a surviving independent  book shop of incredible variety and relevance in the era of the big chain store. 

The store was full of customers, browsing and chatting and careening cheerfully toward the cash. Since we missed the beginning of the sale, having chosen to remain cocooned here on the farm, the choicest selections had largely been scooped up already by others, but I did come home with  “Cezanne’s Quarry,”  described on its cover as “an elegant murder mystery” based on the premise that the painter, Paul Cezanne, might have committed a murder. Because my purchase was based on a fondness for art historical content and not on any reviews, this may or may not have been a wise choice.

To complete the return to reality was also a reappearance at the gym. Although we live in a small rural hamlet we are fortunate to hold memberships in a state-of- the-art fitness facility in a village some eleven kilometres down the road. Donated by the late lumber magnate whose family mill is the locus of employment in the area, it is well used yet somehow almost always empty when we appear to sweat and moan. This gives the experience a certain luxury unheard of at other facilities in the town.

Now exhausted, with a hot cup of Earl Gray, I plan on cracking the covers of my new book.

It was a perfect New Years day. The snow that began to fall in the early morning continued throughout the day and well into the night. We ate croissants and French scrambled eggs for breakfast, with mimosas and our own home made preserves. In the afternoon, following a ritual we have observed for almost twenty years, we watched Casablanca by the fireplace and sipped prosecco from the lovely stemmed glasses that are so impractical in our everyday life. We also followed Roger Ebert’s commentary on the film and it reminded me again that this should probably be the year that I find the discipline to study the history of cinema and not just think about doing it. I’d like to join a book club too and spend more time in the company of like minded others.

In the small rural community in which we reside, there are no like minded others. Two former urbanites who came to Nova Scotia from elsewhere, we are doomed to be eternally other, ‘come-from-aways,’ outsiders who are never quite going to fit in. As a couple. we are too eccentric, too well schooled, too left wing, too exotic in our tastes, too shy, and too closely bonded to find a comfortable  place in village life. Although I respect so many of the members and appreciate the good work they do, I am not the Women’s Institute type.

We enter this year quietly and with more political frustration than personal joy. The Canadian government, for the second time in recent history, has prorogued our parliament in a shameful attempt to forestall further inquiry into the situation of the Afghan detainees. It is difficult to contain the anger engendered by such blatant contempt for the electorate and more difficult still to think of productive ways in which to channel it.


As I write this, the snow is falling again in what is now predicted to be the "real" storm. I am going to spend the day reading fiction.