Kate's Bookcase

Death Comes to Pemberley - P. D. James

2012-02-05T19:11:00.003-05:00

I have wanted to read this book ever since I heard about it. I love P. D. James' books. I love Jane Austen's books. Therefore a P. D. James written sequel to Pride and Prejudice must be right up my alley!

As an aside, it seems as though Pride and Prejudice spin-offs have become an industry of their own. I was in a bookstore in Minneapolis with a friend back in December, and we lost count of the P&P sequels, fan fiction, and other various and assorted spin-offs. Other than an unfortunate encounter with P&P&Zombies, this is my first experience with this quickly expanding genre. I suspect that the popularity of the movie versions may have something to do with this trend (I myself am a fan of the 1995 BBC version, but not so much the more recent one with Kiera Knightly).

It was a pretty easy read, but I came away from it with mixed feelings. Parts of it really felt like they were written by Jane Austen herself, with her distinctive voice and sense of humour. But parts of it read very much like a P. D. James mystery. The overall effect was very much a patchwork of the two styles - I never knew what to expect at the start of each chapter (or even each paragraph at times).

The mystery itself, and the solution were a bit predictable. I had guessed most of the ending by part way through the book. But isn't that the fun of a mystery - trying to guess the end, and seeing if you are right?

It was fun visiting with all of the characters from Pride and Prejudice again, and meeting some new characters. I thought that P. D. James stayed very true to the original characters. And it was fun spotting characters from other Austen novels. Mr. and Mrs. Knightly make a cameo appearance, as does the friend of Mrs. Knightly (née Emma Woodhouse), Mrs. Martin (née Harriet Smith). And James has Mr. Wickham working for a time as the secretary to Sir Walter Elliot, meeting up with his daughters.

So an in-between review of this one. If you are a Jane Austen fan, you will either enjoy the time spent with old friends; or you will be horrified at the liberties taken with the original. If you are not familiar with the original story of Pride and Prejudice, but are a fan of P. D. James or gentle mysteries, you will probably enjoy this one. But if you don't know Pride and Prejudice and aren't a mystery fan, you probably won't turn to this book anyways!

Shadow in Hawthorn Bay - Janet Lunn

2012-01-30T21:41:00.004-05:00

Here is my 4th Canadian re-read for the Canadian Book Challenge over at The Book Mine Set. Is it cheating that I've picked a YA novel this time around and finished it in under 24 hours?

Book: Shadow in Hawthorn Bay by Janet Lunn. It is interesting to note that my copy is so old that the publisher has been out of business for 20 years, and forget trying to find a website for them advertised anywhere on the book. It is labeled as a First Edition from 1986. My physical copy of this book is beautiful - thick paper, and beautiful artw

ork on the first page of each chapter.

First Read: Probably not too long after it was published - I suspect that it was a birthday present from my parents either that year of the next. I read it in the summer time when I was probably 10 years old or so, and just truly falling in love with books and reading. I went camping for the week with one of my friends from Girl Guides and her family. I was the kid that always got homesick even if I was away for just one night, so I made sure that I packed books that I thought would keep me distracted. That week saw me read and fall in love not only with this book, but with another one of my life-long favourites, Emily of New Moon (by L. M. Montgomery).

Original Impression: I fell in love with this book the first time I read it, and continued to re-read it regularly through the years. It fell out of frequent rotation when I started university, but I still come back to it on occasion. It was written as a follow-up to her better-known book The Root Cellar. I have read her other historical YA novels and love to see how the same families that she created keep popping up through history, but this book has always been my favourite of hers.

Current Impression: I still love this book. The characters seem so real to me. The story is beautiful - a hit of mystery and the paranormal, a quiet romance, and very real human emotions throughout.

It is historical fiction, which I loved reading when I was growing up, and still enjoy reading. The story is of Mairi, a 15-year old girl in the Scottish Highlands in 1815 with the Second Sight (interesting to note that Emily, the other heroine from that camping trip also has the Second Sight...), who hears her cousin and best friend calling her from Upper Canada, the other side of the ocean. Mairi leaves her family, and the land she loves, and the only life she knows to travel across that ocean, only to discover that her cousin has died and the rest of her family has left to travel back to Scotland. She is then faced with the dilemma of what to do and how to survive.

What struck me this time was how descriptive this book is. I hadn't noticed before the contrasting descriptions of the Scottish Highlands with Upper Canada as it was 200 years ago. I was born and lived the first 18 years of my life just north of where this book is set, in what is now known as Prince

Edward County (or "The County" for those of us from the area!). It is hard to imagine the open farm lands of today described as being "dark with forest." Mairi's journey west from Montreal towards Kingston is described as "giant pines rising a hundred feet and more into the air, their trunks over six feet across, their branches starting only thirty or forty feet from the ground and meeting high above the rough road." I guess those early settlers did their work well clearing the land, because no hints of that forest remain today.

The emotions remain real throughout this book, and even though I have read it countless times before, I stil

l caught myself tearing up at the end. This book will definitely stay in my re-reading rotation, any time I need an easy yet engaging read.

Reading the Bible Again for the First Time - Marcus Borg

2012-01-29T19:23:00.003-05:00

This is the next book that I've read for the Lay Worship Leader course that I am taking.

The subtitle of this book indicates the audience that this book is written for - "Taking the Bible Seriously but not Literally". If you are a fundamentalist who reads the Bible literally, this book is not for you. (I should probably tread carefully here, since this is a major source of division amongst Christians, as I have experienced in my own life.)

The lens through which to read the Bible presented in this book is a metaphorical reading, which made perfect sense to me. After all, Jesus taught in parables, which are essentially metaphors. As the author states early in the book, "metaphors can be profoundly true, even through they are not literally true. Metaphor is poetry plus, not factuality minus. That is, metaphor is not less than fact, but more. Some things are best expressed in metaphorical language; others can be expressed only in metaphorical language."

I really appreciated the author's clarity of thought and language in this book. What disappointed me was that in trying to cover the whole Bible in 300 pages, some things were bound to get left behind (pun partially intended for anyone who gets it!). There is a whole chapter dedicated to the first 2 chapters of Genesis; and another chapter to Revelation. And yet the 4 gospels are crammed into one chapter; the prophets (another 21 books of the Bible) are given another chapter; and several books (e.g. Psalms, the non-Pauline epistles) are skipped over completely. I guess I have unrealistic expectations - if as much attention was given to the whole Bible as was given to the first 2 chapters of Genesis, the book would have been too long for all but the most dedicated readers! But still, I felt cheated.

But don't get me wrong - overall, I did like this book, and agreed with most of what was in it. There was particular attention paid to the themes of social justice that run through the Bible as a whole; and anyone who knows me (or is a regular reader of this blog) will know that social justice is something that I am passionate about. To quote the author in the epilogue of this book, "(t)he God of the Bible is full of compassion and passionate about justice."

I have always enjoyed reading the Prophets, and this book helped me realize why. It also made me long for prophets in our own time - people equally passionate for God and for social justice; and who are willing to break with convention to get their message across.

I figure that I'm on track with my required reading, with one book left to read before the next session at the end of March. I'm going to take another fiction break now, and get through some titles on my "for fun" TBR list. I've booked a week off work in February, and am planning a "stay-cation" with nothing but books, music, and the gym in my schedule!

Barbara Kingsolver - The Bean Trees and Pigs in Heaven

2012-01-14T17:42:00.004-05:00

I first read The Bean Trees several years ago when I was living in Tanzania and would read any book that came my way if it was written in English. If it hadn't been for that, I probably wouldn't have picked it up, since I had previously read and strongly disliked Barbara Kingsolver's better-known book, The Poisonwood Bible. But I'm glad that I did pick up and read The Bean Trees because I absolutely loved it.

It features a cast of very likeable characters; it touches on some serious topics (child abuse, human rights violation and so-called "illegal" immigration, human trafficking) while maintaining a light tone and a sense of humour. I found myself especially drawn to Taylor, the main character, for her spunk, her innocence, and her determination to do what she feels is right. And Turtle, the child that she adopts - who wouldn't love her?

I knew that there was a sequel, but had never read it; however on a trip down to the US back in December, I managed to pick up copies of both The Bean Trees and the sequel, Pigs in Heaven.

Re-reading The Bean Trees, it was just as good as I remembered it; though there were parts of the plot that I had forgotten, or remembered differently than they were.

Pigs in Heaven starts 2 years after the end of The Bean Trees; and it picks up on the one tread at the end of The Bean Trees that had disturbed me (SPOILER ALERT if you haven't read The Bean Trees) - the irregular nature of Turtle's legal adoption.

The conflict at the centre of Pigs in Heaven have to do with the adoption of a Cherokee child by a white mother. Who is the better person to raise a child - her tribe or the outsider with whom she has formed an attachment? There is lots of emotion in this book (as there was in The Bean Trees), and both books are so gripping that I had trouble putting them down. Along the way to the resolution of the primary conflict, other issues are addressed - the injustice of the cycle of poverty, racism, the history of the Cherokee people (of which I knew very little of before reading this book), and feminism, just to name a few. But the humour is always there, even when Taylor hits rock bottom and begins to question herself.

Taylor and Turtle are still the same likeable and engaging characters; Taylor's mother Alice has a bigger role in this book; some of the characters from The Bean Trees make an appearance (Lou Ann and Mattie - though I would have loved to have found out what happened to Estevan and Esperanza, the Guatemalan refugees); and there are a whole new cast of characters to get to know. Both of these books seem to have achieved the perfect balance of plot and characters.

I'm not going to spoil the ending by revealing it here; but I just want to say that it was satisfying. I would love to have another book featuring Taylor and Turtle, to find out what happens next; but I am also happy to leave it at that, knowing that things are going to work out for everyone.

I'm so glad that I discovered these books, because if it had been dependent on my reading of The Poisonwood Bible, I would have never picked up another book by Barbara Kingsolver. As it is, I read and loved her non-fiction book describing her family's effort to eat locally for a year - Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. And since Pigs in Heaven lived up to my memories of The Bean Trees, I will probably look up more of her fiction now.

Remedial Christianity - Paul Alan Laughlin

2012-01-08T17:03:00.002-05:00

This is the second "required reading" for the Lay Worship Leader course that I am currently taking. I have already submitted my formal response; but thought that I would just jot down a few of my thoughts on this book in a more informal format here.

This book was written as a textbook for a college religion course, and it reads very much like a textbook. There are chapters on the bible, the historical Jesus, the Christ of faith, sin, salvation, and the history of the church. As the cover implies, there is some humour inserted throughout, in the form of cartoons, some sarcasm, and by the pointing out of irony. It was well written, and over all is much more approachable than many textbooks that I read in my university years.

There wasn't much new for me in this book. I self-identify as a Liberal Christian, and this book is written from that perspective. I can see, however, that a person with Fundamentalist beliefs might be very upset at some of the things written in this book.

My biggest complaint with this book is actually expressed in the subtitle. The full name of this book is Remedial Christianity: What Every Believer Should Know about the Faith, but Probably Doesn't. There was actually not much in this book that I didn't already know, and I found that the author's tone was quite condescending at times.

But overall, it was an enjoyable read; though I'm glad that I was reading it over the holidays when I had more time to concentrate on it. It wouldn't make good bedtime reading! A more enjoyable read for sure, than the last book I read for this course. I'm taking a bit of a fiction break now before tackling the next required reading - watch for another post later this week!

Favourite Books of 2011

2012-01-01T12:24:00.002-05:00

In keeping with tradition, I have compiled a list of my best reads from the past year. Same rules as always - I must have read the book for my first time in 2011 (i.e. no re-reads); though it doesn't matter when the book was written/published. Any genre counts - fiction, non-fiction, poetry, graphic novel, kid-lit.

So here goes, in a not-quite-random order. I have linked the books to my original reviews.

1. Le Petit Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry) - I'm not counting this as a re-read, since it was my first time reading it in the original French.

2. Compassion and Solidarity (Gregory Baum) - for it's ability to change the way I look at the world.

3. The Best Laid Plans (Terry Fallis) - for sheer, laugh-out-loud humour!

4. Alone in the Classroom (Elizabeth Hay) - for the beauty of the storytelling.

5. Drawn into the Mystery of Jesus through the Gospel of John (Jean Vanier) - for a combination of beautiful writing and a profound message.

6. Cool Water (Dianne Warren) - for it's ability to evoke a sense of place.

7. Skim (Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki) - for taking me back to high school.

8. In Praise of Slow (Carl Honoré) - for validating my own opinion

9. The Beggar's Garden (Michael Christie) - for re-instating my love of short stories.

10. After Tehran (Marina Nemat) - for her courage in telling her story.

And if I may do so, I would like to give honourable mention to Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harries, for pure, guilty pleasure!

A few random observations on my reading in the past year:

I hit a real reading slump in January and February. I was re-reading old favourites, and not blogging, which put my post-count way down for the year.
My top 10 list is very balanced this year - 4 non-fiction; 1 short-story collection; 1 graphic novel; 3 English novels; and 1 French novel!
I suspect that giving up fiction for Lent pushed up my non-fiction count for the year (but that was one of my goals at this time last year).
Still lots of Canadian authors on my top 10 list!
In July, I decided to participate in the 5th Canadian Book Challenge at The Book Mine Set (my 3rd year participating); but to increase the challenge (and to give me an excuse to re-read old books), I decided that I would attempt to re-read and review 13 Canadian Books. 6 months in, and I've only managed to re-read 3, so I'm going to have to push myself to finish the challenge this year. I guess that is the point of a challenge!

So here's to happy reading in 2012!

The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje

2011-12-30T14:51:00.002-05:00

This is my 3rd Canadian re-read for the 5th Canadian Book Challenge over at The Book Mine Set. I'm falling a bit behind schedule if I want to finish 13 by the end of June!

Book: The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje. I'm not sure that I like this cover - mine has Kip (the sapper) scaling a mud wall.

First Read: Autumn 1995. I remember finishing this book in the middle of a university Calculus tutorial, and not wanting the book to end, so flipping back to the first page and immediately starting over again.

Original Impressions: I loved this book so much, that I have called it one of my favourite books of all time. What sticks in my mind from the original back-to-back readings were snippets of plot, some very strong images (e.g. a plane coming down in the Sahara desert), but mostly the beautiful language. I approached this re-read with some trepidation; as I was hoping, but not sure (based on Ondaatje's more recent books) that I would still love it so much.

Current Impression: I needn't have worried. I still love this book. It is still written with beautiful language. It is still peopled with strong characters. It is still a memorable book, and my favourite of all of Ondaatje's books that I have read.

I love Michael Ondaatje's poetry; and I think that his earlier novels (The English Patient, and In the Skin of a Lion) best capture the poetic language. This has somehow been lost in his more recent novels (Anil's Ghost, Divisadero, The Cat's Table). His ability to convey so much imagery in so few words is incredible and heartbreaking at the same time. As I was reading this time through, there were some phrases and sentences that caught my attention and triggered memories of my original readings - I hadn't realized that they stuck with my subconscious.

"'Do they have moondials? Has anyone invented one? Perhaps every architect preparing a villa hides a moondial for thieves, like a necessary tithe.'"

"'Could you fall in love with her if she wasn't smarter than you? I mean, she may not be smarter than you. But isn't it important for you to think she is smarter than you in order to fall in love?'"

"I was in her arms. I had pushed the sleeve of her shirt up to the shoulder so I could see her vaccination scar. I love this, I said. This pale aureole on her arm. I see the instrument scratch and then punch the serum within her and then release itself, free of her skin, years ago, when she was nine years old, in a school gymnasium."

"'I shall have to learn how to miss you.'"

There is a very limited cast of characters central to this book. There are 4 of them, in a villa in Italy, in the summer of 1945 in the closing days of the 2nd world war. All 4 are hurting due to the war. Hana is a nurse who has lost her father, all of the soldiers that she has nursed, and her unborn baby. Kip is a sapper (bomb and landmine disposer) who has lost his mentors, his co-workers, and his identity as a Sikh from Punjab. Carravagio is a thief who was recruited as a spy who was caught and tortured, then lost his thumbs and became addicted to morphine. And finally there is the "English Patient" who was burned beyond recognition in a plane crash, but who had multiple losses before the physical injury.

Hana is the one character that I would like to know more about, both after my first readings and after this reading. She appeared as a child in In the Skin of a Lion; and now as a young adult in The English Patient. I would love to see her as she grows into full adulthood, likely back in Canada. There are hints given at the end of The English Patient, but to me, they aren't enough.

I did see the movie made of this book (with the screenplay written by Michael Ondaatje himself), but it didn't make as strong of an impression on me as the book did. It focused mainly on the back story of the "English Patient" rather than the present day interactions between the characters in the villa (which is the part of this book that intrigued me most, but would be hardest to depict in a movie).

I'm so glad that this book lived up to my memories of it!

Echoes of the Remnant - Regina Coupar

2011-12-08T22:57:00.003-05:00

This book was the first of a list of required reading for a Lay Worship Leader course that I will be taking over the next two years. I should also start by saying that the first weekend of the course was this past weekend, so I've already had a chance to discuss this book with the other course participants.

The cover of the book describes it as follows:

"Echoes of the Remnant is a collection of visual images, poetry and prose which convey the author's unique perspective on spirituality. ... The author asserts that people are responsible for shaping their own worldview by the manner in which they set priorities. As spirituality is awakened and developed, many people find their perceptions and expectations altered. Echoes of the Remnant presents new metaphors which are helpful for discussing spirituality in the language of our time."

I came to this book wanting to like it. The format intrigued me - a collection of pictures, poetry and prose. But somehow it didn't quite work for me.

First of all, I didn't "get" the pictures. I will be the first to admit that I don't know anything about visual arts so I would be open to someone explaining the pictures to me; but they didn't say anything to me.

Secondly, I found the prose to be very ramble-y. There were nuggets of beauty in there, but I had to work too hard to find them. Plus, she committed the cardinal sin of writing, by trying to explain a concept using the same words as the concept. My thoughts as I was reading it was that it would have benefited from a better editor.

Interestingly enough, I discovered while trying to find a cover image to use in this post that this book was published "under her own imprint, Gamaliel Publications." I have found that self-published books tend not to have the same quality as those published by a publisher proper - fortunately there were no glaring typos (though I am the world's worst proof-reader); but that may explain my impression that a better editing job was needed.

What kept me going through this book were the poems. That and the fact that it was required reading! The language of the poems was so clear and precise that I couldn't believe that they were written by the same person who wrote the prose sections. I flagged several of my favourites throughout the book, and I think that including one of them here would be the best way to end off this post. I've already ordered the books for the next weekend in March, and I'm hoping for better things next time around.

gifts

the gifts

of the spirit

are gifts of giving

the gift of breath

gives life

the gift of choice

gives dignity

the gift of love

gives relationship

the gift of hope

gives purpose

the gift of faith

gives peace

Anne McCaffrey: 1926-2011

2011-11-27T14:57:00.003-05:00

I have to confess that I have not read much fantasy; but having confessed that fact, I also have to state that I love the dragon books by Anne McCaffrey, and so I was very sad to read of her death last week, at age 85, of a massive stroke.

I read her Harper Hall trilogy (Dragonsong, Dragonsinger, and Dragon Drums) back in high school, on the recommendation of my cousin and fell in love with the books and the planet of Pern. I didn't want to be a dragonrider, I wanted to be a harper and study at Harper Hall. I did go on to read many of the other Pern books, and while none of them caught my attention the way that the Harper Hall trilogy did, I found all of them to be engaging and entertaining.

I think that what captured me most was her ability to make Pern such a real place. When I am reading one of her books, Pern is more real to me than the world around me. Her books are also responsible for my love of dragons, for in her books, they are the "good guys", fighting to save the planet from devastation. Because of this, whenever dragons appear in any other book, I am always rooting for the dragons and the humans belonging to the dragons.

In an ironic twist, I have spent the past week re-visiting the Harper Hall books, so I was deep in Pernese life when I learned of the author's death. I have now picked up The Masterharper of Pern, a book that has been on my shelves for at least 10 years and that I was sure that I had read; and yet 100 pages it, it is not striking any chords in my memory. And so I am enjoying a new (to me) tale from Pern and the Harper Hall.

These are books that I hope never get made into movies. I can't imagine that any director's rendition of Pern could live up to the vividness of the writing, and my own imagination!

After Tehran - Marina Nemat

2011-11-18T17:54:00.004-05:00

A year and a half ago, I read Marina Nemat's first book, Prisoner of Tehran, and absolutely loved it (I have to confess that my review was a bit of a rave). This is the sequel, and though it is a very different book, I loved it just as much.

Prisoner of Tehran tells the story of the author's arrest and imprisonment in Tehran's Evin Prison at age 16 in the early days of the Islamic Revolution. She was held there for 2 years and when she was released her family and friends did not want to acknowledge what she had been through. She married her sweetheart from before her imprisonment and eventually emigrated to Canada where she lives today.

This book tells the story of how she came to write Prisoner of Tehran. After her mother died in 2000, she started to experience hallucinations and flash-backs to the time of her imprisonment. In denying what had happened to her, she was denying part of herself. As she says in an interview that was posted today on the CBC website, "I decided that I had two options: one was to jump off a bridge, and the other was to write." I thought that the subtitle of the book was very appropriate - A Life Reclaimed.

Prisoner of Tehran is written as a relatively straightforward narrative - a straight line going from point A to point B. It is so gripping that I couldn't put it down and I read it in a single day. This book is different in that it is more of a series of interconnected essays. The introduction describes packing a suitcase of items to take with her to the next world, and each of the 23 essays is named after an object that she would pack in that suitcase. They jump back and forth a bit, and describe the process of confronting her family about her experiences in Evin Prison; joining a creative writing class at the University of Toronto and working her way through several drafts of her first book; having the book published and distributed around the world and the aftermath of book tours and award presentations; dealing with people who denied the veracity of her book; and re-connecting with old friends from both her childhood and imprisonment. The narrative line also sometimes wanders back and includes some stories from her imprisonment and her life afterwards up to the present day. All in all, the essays together made for a satisfying, and equally compelling if less gripping read as compared with the first book (I read most of this book in one-essay chunks at bedtime).

One thing that jumps out at me from both books, despite their dis-similarity is the author's voice. It is so clear and engaging and distinctive that it makes the books a pleasure to read. She is writing in her second language; and I only wish that I could write half as well in my first language! I suspect that she is finished now writing about her life, as there is an air of finality about this book that wasn't there in Prisoner of Tehran (because her story didn't end there). But I hope that she continues to write and publish books and I will be the first person in line to read them!

Minding Frankie - Maeve Binchy

2011-11-02T20:05:00.003-04:00

In the last Maeve Binchy book that I reviewed, I said that opening up a new Maeve Binchy book was comforting, like curling up with a cup of tea. This book was more of the same. If you like her books, you will like this one too. If you don't like her books, give it a miss.

She included many of the characters from previous books, along with some new ones. Frankie is a baby girl born to a mother who is dying and desperate to find someone to look after her daughter. Instead of finding one person, she finds a whole community to take Frankie in.

It is set in the same neighbourhood as her last book, Heart and Soul, and it was fun to find out what happened to the characters from that book. This is probably as close to a sequel as she has ever written, while taking on new plot lines.

I do have to ask, what man treated the author so badly in her past that she keeps writing him into her books? You know, the one who can't commit, the one who is selfish, the one who borders on sociopathic? She is married to writer Gordon Snell and has publicly denied that he is the model for this character that seems to appear in every book.

What is different about this book is that there is a strong, like-able male main character. I found myself cheering for Noel through the whole book.

I'll keep reading her books as long as she keeps writing them!

The Stone Angel - Margaret Laurence

2011-10-26T21:11:00.005-04:00

For this year's Canadian Book Challenge over at The Book Mine Set, I'm trying to re-read 13 Canadian Books from my past. I'm a bit behind schedule, but here is my second contribution.

Book: The Stone Angel, by Margaret Laurence (point of interest - my first re-read for this challenge also had angels in the title - The Rebel Angels)

First Read: I can be quite specific here - it was the summer of 1994, between grade 12 and 13. I had received a French language bursery and spent 6 weeks in the town of Rivière-du-Loup, living with a family and taking courses at the local CEGEP. I had limited access to English books, so read everything that I had packed in my suitcase, including the 4 Manawaka books.

Original Impressions: I didn't like it. In fact, if I hadn't had such limited book access that summer, I probably wouldn't have read the rest of the series. But I did read all of them, and found each book better than the one before, until I came to the last book, The Diviners, which I quite enjoyed.

Current Impressions: I re-read The Diviners a year or so ago and absolutely loved it, so I thought that this book was probably worth a re-read. I was staying with my sister last week, and she noticed that I was reading The Stone Angel and asked why I wanted to read the ramblings of a bitter old woman (note - she had to read it for school, while I first read it of my own free will and never had to study it). I certainly enjoyed it more than I did the first time around, but I wouldn't count it as one of my all-time favourites - I didn't click with Hagar the way that I did with Morag in The Diviners.

Hagar is a 90 year old woman who, as she approaches death, reflects back on her mostly unhappy life. She grew up as the only daughter of a relatively well-off merchant in the fictional prairie town of Manawaka. She married against her father's wishes and discovered that she wasn't happy in marriage. She became estranged from her elder son; left her husband; and then lost her younger son. She ends up lonely and resentful, living with her elder son and his wife. Come to think of it, my sister wasn't too far off calling Hagar a bitter old woman!

But really, it is a story of pride and ultimately redemption. Hagar realizes, close to the end of her life, that, "pride was my wilderness, and the demon that led me there was fear. I was alone, never anything else, and never free, for I carried my chains within me, and they spread out from me and shackled all I touched." She reflects, "I must always, always, have wanted... simply to rejoice. How is it I never could? ... Every good joy I might have held, in my man or any child of mine or even the plain light of morning, of walking the earth, all were forced to a standstill by some brake of proper appearances - oh, proper to whom? When did I ever speak the heart's truth?"

So I like to think that Hagar found redemption in the end and was able to leave her bitterness aside.

It was a much more enjoyable read now than it was 17 years ago; as I can see more meaning and purpose in the story of Hagar's life. I look forward to re-reading the rest of the Manawaka books.

Regarding the cover - I was reading my mother's copy which she purchased for $1.95 in the late '60s (I suspect). The McClelland and Stewart website has 3 different editions for sale (I picked my favourite cover for this post), the cheapest of which, an e-book, sells for 12.95!

Mr. Shakespeare's Bastard - Richard B. Wright

2011-10-26T07:49:00.002-04:00

This book caught my eye because I'm always a bit of a sucker for historical fiction. Especially good historical fiction; and the author of Clara Callan promised a good read. (As a side note, I read Clara Callan back when it first came out, and absolutely loved it. I couldn't believe that a male author could express female feelings in a first person narrative so deeply and accurately that I kept forgetting that it wasn't written by a female author.)

The plot in a nutshell? As the title implies, the main character, Aerlene Ward, is the illegitimate daughter of Mr. Shakespeare, author of such well known plays as Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Hamlet. Her mother Elizabeth had an affair with Shakespeare when she was a young woman recently moved to London, and Shakespeare was a young actor and playwright living in London while his wife and young children were left behind in Stratford Upon Avon. It is written as though Aerlene at age 80 is dictating her memoir, and jumps between the "present day" with Aerlene as an elderly housekeeper; her mother's story of growing up and moving to London as told to Aerlene; and Aerlene's own childhood.

It didn't have the same emotional clout (in my opinion) as Clara Callan, but again I was amazed that such believable female characters could be written by a male author (no offense intended to any men reading this!). It was a pretty easy and enjoyable read, and I passed it on to my sister to read as she recovers from an appendectomy. I thought it was a well crafted book in terms of the storytelling, and was sad when it ended.

And that's about all I have to say. There were no deeper meanings in this book to discuss; no controversy to pick apart; no unresolved issues. I enjoyed the book, and will leave it at that.

Practical Jean - Trevor Cole

2011-10-12T18:23:00.003-04:00

After reading and loving The Best Laid Plans, winner of the 2008 Stephen Leacock Award for Humour, I was looking forward to reading Practical Jean, the 2011 winner. Unfortunately I was disappointed.

While The Best Laid Plans made me laugh out loud (literally), Practical Jean left me feeling depressed instead. The blurb on the back of the book describes it as "tragicomic fiction", but in my opinion, the emphasis was on the tragedy rather than the comedy. Some of the adjectives used in the review quotes include black comedy, social satire, comic portraiture, piquant, hilarious, wickedly funny, diabolical deadpan, and mischievous. While I consider myself to have a very keen and sharp sense of humour, the humour in this book was lost on me.

The Jean in the title cares for her mother over the last few months of her life as she dies of cancer; and then decides to spare her best friends the pain and torment of a lingering death by killing them now. While she is presented as being very logical and practical; to me the tragedy is that here is a woman very obviously suffering from depression to the extreme who neither seeks out, nor is offered any sort of support or help. I'm afraid that the humour of a woman with depression systematically murdering her friends was lost on me. There isn't even a comic reversal at any point that would have added to the humour.

I can almost compare it to Swift's A Modest Proposal, but without the social commentary. In that case, it was the reversal of the expected that made it funny. Practical Jean is supposed to be a satire, but to my eyes it isn't satirizing anything.

If anyone else has read this book, please help me out! What did I miss? Why didn't I find it funny?

The Stepsister Scheme - Jim Hines

2011-10-03T20:37:00.002-04:00

Yes, I know that this book isn't usually my cup of tea. But I am now visiting a friend who was my supplier of pulp fiction (not the movie sort) through university, and her husband loaned me this book (which I finished in about 24 hours). This said friend's husband is friends with the author, and told me that the author wrote this book so that his daughter (then 8, now 12) would have a princess option other than the saccharine Disney variety.

Imagine, if you will, what happened after Cinderella's Happily Ever After. Imagine that her stepsisters have turned to magic and become witches, kidnapped Cinderella's prince, and are holding him hostage in the land of the fairies. And imagine that Cinderella's mother-in-law (the queen) has a personal body guard consisting of Sleeping Beauty and Snow White. And now imagine that Sleeping Beauty, contrary to the popular tale, was actually raped by the prince sent to wake her up and was awakened by the pains of childbirth; and that Snow White was poisoned by her mother who was jealous of her magical abilities and then watched her lover choose to be murdered by the queen rather than to kill Snow White (the 7 dwarves are, in fact, the 7 Anthropomorphic Incarnations of Elemental Magic - Earth, Air, Water, Fire, Light, Darkness, and Magic).

You would end up with three supremely pissed off princesses. And the story goes on from there.

I don't read enough fantasy in order to be able to judge this one, but it was certainly an enjoyable romp as far as such stories go. And yes, it offers a radially different re-telling of the stories from the Disney versions, featuring strong female leads. I just don't know that I would want my daughter to be reading it at the age of 8, or even 12. There is a lot of violence, and a number of references to sex. It doesn't seem quite geared to the pre-YA crowd... But it was a pleasant way to pass an autumn day; though I suspect that I won't be looking up the other books in the series. Like I said, not quite my cup of tea.

State of Wonder - Ann Patchett

2011-10-02T19:03:00.003-04:00

I wanted to like this book. Really, I did. Especially after hearing the author interviewed by Shelagh Rogers (best interviewer ever for authors, in my opinion), and downloading and listening to the full, uncut version. She was so entertaining, and witty, and I loved the passage of this book that she read.

But I come away from it with mixed feelings.

Yes, it was entertaining. Yes, there were parts that were laugh out loud funny and the author can see the humour and irony around her. And yes, it kept me reading to the end, quite quickly (a plane ride on Friday made for good uninterrupted reading time). But in the end, there was too much suspension of disbelief required to make me fully enjoy it.

The premise? A drug company in Minnesota is sponsoring a researcher in the Amazon jungle who is developing a drug that will extend fertility for as long as a woman is alive. The drug company sends another scientist down to get an update on her work. He is reported dead. They send another scientist (Marina, the main character of the book) down, to both find out what happened and finish the work that he set out to do. She ends up, by the end of the first chapter, deep in the Brazilian rain forest and clueless about how to survive.

The characters were really unique and memorable, but at times Marina (who is supposed to be intelligent) is just so stupid. I wanted to smack her and ask what she was thinking at times. And none of the characters were infallible - they all had their quirks and faults which made them much more believable.

It was when Marina reached the tribe where the women bear children well into their 70s that the plot became ridiculous. I managed to suspend disbelief long enough to enjoy it for a while, but then reality came back to me and I could only sit back and shake my head. I also found the tribe to be a caricature of themselves - almost what a European in the 1700's might imagine a "savage tribe" to be...

So a mixed review overall. Like I said, interesting enough to be good airplane reading; but not good enough for me to ever want to re-read it. I've already given my copy to the friend that I'm visiting. Has anyone else read this book? What did you think?

The Cat's Table - Michael Ondaatje

2011-09-30T14:43:00.001-04:00

I don't know why, but I always look forward to the publication of a new Micahel Ondaatje book. I loved The English Patient when I first read it back in my university days, enjoyed In the Skin of a Lion almost as much. However with his more recent books (Anil's Ghost and Divisidaro), I have found myself wavering in my loyalty.

I think that I enjoyed The Cat's Table as much as his earlier books, and certainly more than his more recent books, but only time will tell if it is as memorable. I think that is what I didn't enjoy about Anil's Ghost and Divisidero - they were very forgettable. If you were to ask me know, I wouldn't be able to tell you what they were about.

The Cat's Table is different. I found both the plot line, the setting, and the characters to be engaging, and therefore, I hope, memorable. Michael (yes, the author has stated that this book has autobiographical tendencies) is an 11-year old passenger on a ship traveling from Sri Lanka to England in the 1950's. He is assigned to take his meals at the Cat's Table - the table farthest from the captain's table. The story revolves around his interactions with fellow passengers both at his table and from other tables; as well as the happenings at sea as they journey half way around the world.

In the second half of the book, there are some happenings from the time after Michael arrives in England interspersed with the story of the ocean journey. This was not intrusive, and the past and the future link together so that both story lines make more sense.

There is a bit of a mystery on board that Michael didn't understand as an 11 year old, and he is gradually able to piece together as an adult, as he encounters other people who had been on board the ship.

This book has made it to the longlist for the Giller Prize, and I am hoping that it makes it to the shortlist when it is announced next week.

Reference and Thank You

2011-09-19T17:15:00.004-04:00

It's always humbling to discover that your opinion is valued enough that others will reference it and use it as a source; so I was quite chuffed to find out that a friend of mine quoted an essay that I wrote a few years back in a sermon that she gave yesterday. The full sermon can be found here, and the original essay was published by the CBC and can be found here. Thank you Laura Marie! I feel very honoured.

Le Petit Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

2011-09-18T19:26:00.003-04:00

It has been a bit of a joke of mine that there is only room in my brain for one language other than English. So when I learned and became fluent in Swahili, I had to delete my French in order to make room. However I have since discovered that the French is still there, just a bit rusty from lack of use.

This summer when I was in Paris, I picked up a copy of Le Petit Prince from a book stall on the left bank of the Seine. This is a book that I read back in high school French class and remembered liking it a lot, though I couldn't remember any of the plot. I also remember that most of the class (probably all of the class - there were only 6 of us!) tracked down English translations and read the book in English rather than French. And I remember that we had to write an essay on the book; though fortunately I don't remember what I wrote about - probably some pompous BS (as are most high school essays) regurgitating something that the teacher had told us.

I've had a very stressful week. Actually, make that a very stressful 6 months that flared up into an acute state of stress a week ago. This was a perfect book for me to be reading this week. Those vague impressions of liking the book back in high school proved to be true.

It is a hard book to describe for those of you who haven't read it as there are so many layers to the story. On the surface, the narrator crashes his plane in the middle of the Sahara desert where he meets a young boy. It turns out that this boy (the Little Prince) has traveled from a tiny astroid far far away, via some other stars, to the earth in search of some friends. He is now trying to get back to his own planet.

Along his journey he encounters a series of people and animals and each encounter is almost a little morality tale unto itself. He encounters a series of people who show to him the ridiculousness of many people - a king with no one to rule over; a drunk who drinks to forget the shame of being a drunk; a businessman who acquires things for the sake of acquiring them; and a geographer too proud to go exploring to have something to write about.

On the earth he meets a fox who teaches him the message that he needs to learn, which the Little Prince then shares with the narrator. That what is truly important is invisible to the eyes and can only be seen with the heart. To the Little Prince, his rose that he left behind on his planet (the rose that he escaped due to her vanity and self-centredness) is important since she depends on him for protection. To the narrator, it is the relationship that he develops with the Little Prince that is important.

I could list so many favourite quotes from this book that I would lose any readers for this posting, so I will try to limit myself to just a few (all translations by me).

"Nous écrivons des choses éternelles." (We write of the eternal things.)

"Mais si tu m'apprivoises, nous aurons besion l'un de l'autre. Tu serais pour moi unique au monde. Je serai pour toi unique au monde." (The fox to the prince - But if you tame me, we will need each other. You will be unique to me; and I will be unique to you.)

"On ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux. C'est le temps que tu as perdu pour ta rose qui fait ta rose si importante. Les hommes ont oublié cette vérité. Mais tu de doeis pas l'oublier." (We don't see except with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eyes. It is the time that you have spent on your rose that makes your rose so important. Men have forgotten this truth, but you must not forget.)

"On est seul aussi chez les hommes." (You are also alone when you are with men/humans.)

"Les grandes personnes sont décidément très très bizarres." (Adults are decidedly very, very bizarre."

"Ce sera comme si je t'avais donné, au lieu d'étoiles, des tas de petits grelots qui savent rire..." (It will be like I have given you, in the place of the stars, little bells that know how to laugh..)

Reading this book reminded me of another quote from high school, this time from English class. "No man is an Island, entire of itself; ... because I am involved in mankind." (John Donne - my very favourite English-language poet). Both the Little Prince and the narrator learn that it is relationships that are important to this life.

Another quote that came to mind is, "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 18:3) The innocence and child-like curiosity of the Little Prince are highlighted throughout the book; and yet he is the one that learns and teaches true wisdom at the end.

I'm glad that I was reading this book in the original French (with a dictionary at my side to look up the occasional word that i didn't know), since it forced me to read more slowly and take in every word rather than skimming. And I'm glad that I re-read this book this week. All is going to be OK with the world. I have a feeling that this book is going to be on my "to-reread-regularly" list.

The Rebel Angels - Robertson Davies

2011-09-15T07:47:00.003-04:00

This is my first selection for the Canadian Book Challenge #5 hosted by John at The Book Mine Set. This year, I decided that rather than just reading 13 Canadian books between July 1 and June 30 (too easy - I usually finish the challenge half way through the year), I would re-read and review 13 Canadian books. Books that I have read and loved; books that I have read and disliked; books that I have read and forgotten.

Book: The Rebel Angels by Robertson Davies

First Read: Maybe 1993 or 1994? I know that by the time that I went off to university in 1995 I had read everything that Robertson Davies had written, then was very sad when he died that year knowing that he would not be writing any more books for me to enjoy. This is a book that I have re-read many times since the first reading. I usually get a craving to read it in September since it is a book inextricably linked with the school year.

Original Impressions: This wasn't my favourite Davies book the first time I read it. It is the first in a trilogy, and I liked it better than the 2nd book (What's Bred in the Bone) but the 3rd book (The Lyre of Orpheus) was by far my favourite, probably because it dealt with music and musicians. The characters in The Rebel Angels are scholars and professors and academics set in place in a university loosely based in the University of Toronto. I did like the character of Maria who, at age 23, was closest in age to my 17-year-old self. She was everything that I wanted to be - intelligent, beautiful, interesting.

Current Impressions: This book grew on me over the years, probably as I went through the university system (though with a science degree, not the arts); and the humour became funnier. Robertson Davies is one of the few authors that remains laugh-out-loud funny to me, every time I re-read his books. Maria doesn't appeal to me as much now, 18 years later. Have I outgrown her? She seems so immature at times, and lacking in wisdom despite her intelligence. Or maybe it is knowing what happens to her through the next 2 books in the trilogy. She becomes boring (in my opinion). But the other characters have developed much more depth to me since my first reading. It is interesting to re-read a book that I loved at a different stage in life - there are some books that have remained favourites (e.g. Anne of Green Gables); others that have grown on me (e.g. The Diviners); and others that I no longer enjoy (e.g. several by Maeve Binchey).

On this re-reading, I was frustrated by Maria's stubbornness, intrigued by Parlabane's background, sympathetic with Darcourt's frustrations, and impatient with Hollier's single mindedness. Overall, it is a book that continues to hold my interest with each re-reading.

Next up for the challenge? I don't know - maybe a re-reading of The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence, a book that I haven't re-read since my first reading.

Flash and Bones - Kathy Reichs

2011-09-05T19:51:00.002-04:00

Well, it's the end of summer, and time for my annual Kathy Reichs novel review!

Seriously though, despite the author churning out a book a year (as well as some television scripts), this book is very readable. I have mentioned in previous reviews that at one point I was considering giving up on this series, but the writing has definitely improved. I suspect that the author got a new editor a couple of books ago.

It is a typical murder mystery with multiple bodies both old and fresh; multiple red herrings; multiple suspects; and enough clues that I could have been able to figure out the murderer, but I didn't.

For those of you who haven't read any of her books, the main character Tempe Brennan is a forensic anthropologist who splits her time between Montréal and Charlotte (South Carolina), with this book set fully in and around Charlotte. Her family as well as her romantic life to play a role in the books, though not so much in this book.

For fans of a good mystery, this book can easily stand alone from the rest of the series. For fans of the series, this is a good addition. For fans of NASCAR racing, the story is set in and around race weekend in Charlotte.

Dead until Dark - Charaine Harris

2011-09-04T18:31:00.002-04:00

I have to confess that I approached this book with a significant amount of hesitation. After the whole Twilight fiasco, I have deliberately avoided all vampire books. However when recently visiting my cousin Kim (the same cousin who dared me to read Twilight; but who also usually has very similar taste in books to me), she loaned me a stack of books including this one. She understood my trepidation (which is why I only took the first book in the series), but assured me that this was likely much more my style than Twilight.

For anyone who doesn't know, this is the first book in the Southern Vampire Mystery series featuring Sookie Stackhouse that has recently been made into the TV programme True Blood.

I did enjoy this book, so thank you Kim for convincing me to read it and lending me your copy! I only wish that I had borrowed the rest of the series when you offered (though my co-worker has now offered to lend her copies to me). Really, the only think that this book had in common with Twilight is the fact that one of the romantic leads is a vampire.

First of all, the book doesn't take itself too seriously. There is a definite vein of humour running through it. Secondly, Sookie is a much more like-able and less spineless (sorry for the double negative!) heroine than Bella. I actually found myself relating to her throughout the book!

I heard the author interviewed by Jian Ghomeshi on Q (CBC radio) earlier this summer before I had read this book, and while reading, I could hear her voice throughout with her soft southern accent.

Plot? Sookie is a mind-reader in small town Louisiana who finds herself intrigued by the new man in town, Bill, who also happens to be a vampire. As several bodies turn up, she finds herself drawn into the vampire world. Almost a cross between a murder mystery novel, a romance, and a paranormal fantasy. With a generous dash of humour thrown in.

I think that I may have found my newest guilty pleasure! Watch for reviews of the rest of the series in months to come...

The Beggar's Garden - Michael Christie

2011-08-30T20:52:00.002-04:00

I picked up this book recently based on a raving review in the local paper and let me just say that I was not disappointed.

This is a collection of loosely linked short stories set in and around Vancouver's east side. Each one is almost like a little vignette or a mini portrait of a character, each with his or her own story to tell and view on life. There are a few interactions and connections between the characters in the different stories, but no more than you would expect from a group of people living in the same neighbourhood. There is no cute-sy wrap up or tie up where all of the characters come together in a happy campfire sing-along in the end. (oops - do I sound too cynical there?)

What I really liked about these stories was the uniqueness of each one. All of the characters were memorable, and each one had a unique voice, some more likable than others, some more memorable than others, but each one with a story to tell. From the woman running a thrift shop to a heroin junkie getting high, to a grandfather trying to track down his grandson who is living on the streets, to a young couple who meet at the dog park then come together over their dogs' friendship, to a banker who "befriends" a beggar as his marriage is falling apart, to a man in a psychiatric hospital who descends into more and more delusions as he stops his anti-psychotic meds; each character seemed so real to me as I was reading the stories.

I can't pin down a story as being my favourite or least favourite, but I can say that this is one of the best collections of short stories that I have read in a long time. I started each story with anticipation to find out who would be introduced, and what story he or she would have to tell.

OK - have I raved enough about this book yet? I really hope to see it on some of the award lists this fall!

Mistress of the Son - Sandra Gulland

2011-08-30T20:23:00.002-04:00

I think that I may have mentioned at some point in the past how much I enjoyed Sandra Gulland's Josephine books (The Many Lives and Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.; Tales of Passion, Tales of Woe; and The Last Great Dance on Earth); and so I was looking forward to going 100ish years earlier with the same author.

The title character is Louise de la Vallière (aka Petite); born to a family of minor nobility with no money for a dowery either for marriage or to enter a convent; and destined through a series of chances to become mistress of Louis IV, the Sun King.

Unfortunately, while it was an enjoyable read, I didn't love it as much as the Josephine books. I quite enjoyed the beginning when Petite is a child, with the description of French country life in the 17th century. Unfortunately I found that it really lost momentum in the middle part when Petite reaches the court; and then there was a pile of action in the last 50 pages and then the book ended. I never had the feeling of being right there in the middle of the action, the way that I did with Josephine B.

It was an easy read though, perfect for the summer when I don't want to have to devote too much energy to reading. And for when I was staying with my sister and her 3 children under the age of 5 and had very little energy left in the evening when I finally had a chance to open a book!

The Moonspinners - Mary Stewart

2011-08-09T20:03:00.002-04:00

I don't think that I've ever raved about my love for Mary Stewart's books on this blog. She is an author that I've loved ever since I was in high school, and one that I go back to whenever I feel in need of a good read, even though I've read everything that she ever wrote multiple times.

How would I describe Mary Stewart? She is a family favourite, enjoyed by my grandmother, my aunts, my mother, my cousins, and my sisters. Between my grandmothers bookcase, my mother's bookcase, and the local library, I read my way through everything that she wrote at least once by the time I finished high school.

She writes what I would consider light romantic suspense novels. They usually feature strong and independent female heroines who get into adventures in far-flung corners of the globe. There is usually a romance involved that culminates in a chaste kiss at the end. She was the wife of a professor of geology, and as thus she had the opportunity to travel the world and her books take place in a variety of countries. My sister and I both want to visit Greece some day as a result of reading her books. As well, she wrote a series of books re-telling the Arthurian legend with Merlin as the main character.

So when Niranjana over at Brown Paper hosted a Mary Stewart giveaway this year, I had to enter. Twice. The giveaway was sponsored by Hodder & Stoughton, Mary Stewart's life-long publishers, and with each entry, the contestants could specify any Mary Stewart book that they wanted to win. (I entered to win The Moonspinners as well as The Gabriel Hounds). So imagine my excitement when, on Canada Day, I received an e-mail from Niranjana telling me that I had won a copy of The Moonspinners, a book that I hadn't read in years but remember loving.

The plot is classic Mary Stewart. Nicola is working for the English embassy in Greece and is on holidays with her cousin Frances in Crete; she ends up getting involved with some English boys on holidays who have run into a bit of misadventure; they end up solving the mystery with not a small amount of danger along the way; and end up sailing off into the sunset at the end. Nice, light, adventurous, and romantic while not offending my feminist sensibilities. A perfect summer read. In fact, all through university when I was home on summer holidays, I would visit the local library in order to re-read all of the Mary Stewart books that they had in their collection.

I feel as though I should loan this book to my sister now that I have re-read it - I told her about the giveaway and she also entered for a chance to win this book but didn't. So I will be the good sister and pass my copy on to her next time I see her.

Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese

2011-08-09T19:50:00.003-04:00

I can't decide if I liked this book or not. When I was reading it, I was totally engrossed in the story; and yet I could put it down for days (or weeks) on end with no compulsion to continue the story.

I am a sucker for books set in Africa; and this book, set in a mission hospital in Ethiopia held a special appeal to me since I worked at a mission hospital in Tanzania from 2003-2006. I loved how he captured the atmosphere of an African mission hospital - I found myself right back at Ndolage at times while reading the first part of this book. There were just a few minor errors that stood out, and were made even more obvious by the overall accuracy of the details (e.g. a British surgeon called Dr. Stone, while in the British system, Dr. so-and-so refers to a physician while surgeons are referred to as Mr. so-and-so). But the descriptions of the patients waiting to be seen, and the families present at the hospital, and the logic (or lack there-of), and the pandering to donors, and the frustration and desperation and joys in different circumstances all rang so true.

The story would probably be considered epic in nature (and in my opinion, maybe just a bit too far reaching?). A British surgeon and an Indian nun in Ethiopia fall in love. Twins are born to the nun who dies and the surgeon disappears. The twins are raised by two other doctors at the hospital. One twin becomes a local specialist on fistulas, while the other twin goes to med school and eventually has to flee the country due to a misunderstanding in the civil war. That twin ends up in America where his past eventually catches up to him; and he learns more about his origins and ancestors.

Like I said, when I picked up this book, I could read it for hours on end with the impression of barely any time passing at all; and yet I could also put it down for weeks on end without picking it up again. But overall, my impression of this book is a positive one. The characters were well rounded and 3-dimensional; the story was interesting; and the setting was well described. I'd love to visit Ethiopia some day!

Bride of New France - Suzanne Desrochers

2011-08-09T19:30:00.003-04:00

This is the other book that I packed in my bag for my trip to Paris last month, and I was glad that I had it when I finished The Time In Between on the plane, then missed my connection in Toronto and had to wait 6 hours for another flight home to Thunder Bay. I had packed it since it was on my TBR list, and is set partly in France!

It was another thoroughly enjoying book, and I could tell that the author knew the time period and history well. This book evolved out of her master's thesis on Les Filles de Roi, and in turning it into fiction, it allowed her to imagine what the life of one of her real-life subjects might have been.

I remember learning about Les Filles de Roi in grade 7 (I think) history class many (many, many) years ago. My impression at the time was of adventurous girls who travelled from France to New France in order to be married to the settlers and so populate the new world. I also had the impression that they were feted and celebrated and pampered as their title, Daughters of the King, implied.

This book paints a starkly different picture. Laure, the main character, was stolen from her homeless parents, placed in an orphanage, and once she showed some intelligence and skills at needlework, she was placed in a special ward destined to be seamstresses to the nobility. Due to a conflict with the matron, she is banished to the new world; a journey that involves a wretched ship ride lasting several months that leaves her weakened on arrival due to illness and malnutrition. On arrival, she is expected to choose between a handful of illiterate and uncouth settlers, who are basically being bribed with a wife in order to stick it out in the wilderness of what is now Québec. This picture is likely the more accurate one.

Laure was a very enjoyable main character. Non-conformist for the time and circumstance that she was living in, with a free and independent spirit. For a while (spoiler alert), I was worried that she was not going to survive the book, but she did. I would love to see a sequel to this book so that I can find out how she ends up adapting to life in the new world, and hopefully thriving as well as just surviving.

Interestingly, I am reading another book now (Mistress of the Sun by Sandra Gulland) that is set in France in the same period. I look forward to comparing their perspectives - watch for my review of that one later.

The Time In Between - David Bergen

2011-08-09T19:11:00.002-04:00

I've been a lazy blogger this summer. Blame the beautiful weather that we've had. Or blame the weekend trips that I've been taking this year. Or blame the fact that I've been reading some good books and it's been hard to pause to take time to blog!

I've wanted to read this book ever since I read The Matter With Morris last year as part of my Giller Shortlist reading project. I loved The Matter With Morris; and while it didn't win the prize, I figured that this, an earlier book that had won the big prize, would still be a good read. Then Wanda's review over at A Season to Read was the straw that broke the camel's back and I went out to buy a copy.

I wasn't disappointed.

I read this book on the plane going to and from Paris back in July (no time while in Paris on a whirlwind weekend trip to do any reading), and it was perfect airplane reading for me. Entertaining enough to keep me interested; not so heavy that it was an effort to read even on a long-distance flight; and non-fluffy enough to keep me engaged and interested in the characters.

The plot is a bit hard to describe as it jumps around a bit between different times and places. A father tries to raise his children alone in the wilderness of BC after the death of his estranged wife; that same father returns to Vietnam in an attempt to come to terms with his war experience; a daughter travels to Vietnam trying to discover what happened to her father after he broke off communications. And above all, similar to The Matter with Morris, it is a book about relationships between different people, and the complexities that these relationships bring.

I love the title of this book. It implies a time in between the time that was before and the time that is to come. For Ada (the daughter mentioned above), it can refer to her time in Vietnam, in between her life in BC that she left and will go back to. For Charles (the father), it may refer to his time in BC raising his children, in between his experience fighting in Vietnam and his going back again as an adult. And for me, the reader, it referred to my time in the airplane, in between the origin and the destination. It has always struck me that time spent in an airplane is a bit of a blank time; or a time out of time. A time that must be passed through, but in which nothing of significance happens. And when I cross multiple time zones, that impression increases. I left Paris at noon, and arrived in Toronto 8 hours later at 2pm (only to find out that I had missed my connection and had to wait 6 hours for another flight to Thunder Bay); having read this book all the way across (except when I was napping).

My verdict? I really enjoyed this book, though not quite as much as The Matter With Morris. I didn't find that it packed the same emotional punch as TMWM; and I found that it ended on a pessimistic note, as compared with the overall optimism of TMWM. I am looking forward to reading more books by this author.

July Bookish Ramblings

2011-07-06T21:49:00.004-04:00

It has been a while since I posted a review - I am about half-way through an enjoyable book, but for some reason I stopped reading it a few weeks ago, and instead I have been indulging in re-reads of old favourites (Madeline L'Engle's Kairos series - A Wrinkle in Time etc - in case anyone's interested). I do plan on finishing the book I stopped reading (I have no idea why I put it down) this weekend. Tomorrow afternoon, I'm heading out to Quetico Provincial Park with just my canoe and a few books for company.

Just a few odds and ends and ramblings this post.

For the past 2 summers, I have enjoyed attending the Sleeping Giant Writers' Festival, but when I checked out the website to see the lineup for this summer, I discovered that it has been cancelled this year, no reason given. I am somewhat disappointed... Mind you, I may have had to miss it anyways, since I will be away for a few weeks in August visiting my sister and her growing family.

My Canada Day started with an e-mail from Niranjana over at Brown Paper, telling me that I had won a copy of The Moonspinners by Mary Stewart. Can you say excited?! Mary Stewart is a "family favourite" author; and by the time I finished high school, I think that I had read everything that she had written, courtesy of my grandmother's bookshelves and the local library. My sister Laura also read her books and the ones set in Greece (including The Moonspinners) led us to plan a trip there some day. The trip hasn't happened yet, but who knows, some day? This giveaway allowed the participants to pick which Mary Stewart book they would like to win - the hardest part was choosing which one I wanted! Her books wouldn't be considered high literature, but they are entertaining, adventurous (and possibly partly to blame for my travel bug), and usually feature strong and independent female characters. And don't forget the romance that never verges on anything distasteful. After all, my grandmother and mother and aunts and cousins and sisters all read and enjoyed these books!

I finished the Canadian Book Challenge 4 over at The Book Mine Set, reading and reviewing a total of 28 Canadian books between July 1 2010 and June 30 2011. (13 are required to compete the challenge). I had a bit of a reading and reviewing slump in January and February, so I wonder how many I would have read otherwise? I have signed up for the 5th Annual Canadian Book Challenge, and this year I plan on reading and reviewing 13 Canadian books that will be re-reads for me. There are several books that I read a while back that I want to re-visit, so this will give me an excuse to do so. This challenge got some coverage in the Globe and Mail a few weeks ago - you can read the article here.

And finally, one week tomorrow I will be on an airplane, heading for Paris. Does anyone have any book suggestions that are set in Paris? Fiction and non-fiction suggestions are eagerly welcomed! I love being able to connect places that I travel to with books, however in thinking back, I can't come up with any memorable books that I have read that are set in Paris. I'm very excited about this trip, since I've wanted to visit Paris for I-don't-know-how-many years!

Alone in the Classroom - Elizabeth Hay

2011-06-24T10:35:00.003-04:00

I approached this book with some mixed feelings. I read Late Nights on Air, Hay's last book, after it won the Giller back in 2007 and I was not overwhelmingly impressed. The last third of it was exciting (when the group goes on the canoe trip, for those of you who have read it), but I found the first 2/3 of the book slow-going, muddled, and hard to get attached to any of the characters.

Reading this book, I could hardly believe that it was the same author. The writing style was very crisp, the story moved along, and it was the sort of book that I didn't want to put down.

One of the things that I loved about this book is that it is being told by Anne, and we see things as Anne sees them, and we learn things as Anne learns them. It is truly a first-person narrative where there is no all-knowing presence giving hints as to what is to come. (Though like N icola, I did have trouble at times, remember who the "I" was that was telling the story, especially when jumping between different generations and stories.). There were a lot of layers to this story, however in the end they all came together to tell the story of a family. I could compare it to an onion, with all of the layers making up the whole, except that I don't like onions and I did like this story!

What are some of these plot layers? There is Connie, a teacher in rural Saskatchewan in 1929, struggling to teach a student with dyslexia who is gifted in other area and struggling with a creepy principal who may or may not have "interfered" with a 13-year-old student. Then in 1937, Connie is a reporter covering the murder of a young girl in the Ottawa Valley, where her life ends up linked with Anne's when her brother meets and marries a young woman who become Anne's parents (ie Connie is Anne's paternal aunt). Anne also tells us the story of her own life, and then ends with telling the story of her mother's family and of her mother, growing up with a domineering mother (Anne's grandmother). My overall impression is that Anne had to approach family history indirectly through her Aunt's story before she could get up the courage to examine her own story and the story of her direct ancestors.

But more than the plot itself (in fact I found the plot annoying at times, with implied significance to certain events fizzling out to nothing - though isn't that the way real life goes at times?), I loved seeing how all of these layers and generations and characters came together to make a whole story. This story could have been told chronologically, beginning with Anne's maternal family and their carpentry business in the Ottawa Valley intersecting with Anne's paternal family struggling in the Saskatchewan prairie; but that would have been much less interesting.

4 good books in a row (and the one that I'm reading now is interesting too) - I'm on a roll!

Has anyone else read this book? What did you think? How would you compare it to Late Nights on Air?

Irma Voth - Miriam Toews

2011-06-10T19:44:00.003-04:00

The world of this book has been a very enjoyable place to spend the past few days.

I am one of the few people who didn't like A Complicated Kindness, despite all of the awards that it won. I found it to be a very forgettable book. I did, however, love The Flying Troutmans that came out a few years ago (I finished reading it just a few weeks before starting this blog, so I'm afraid that I can't link to a review) and have been looking forward to reading this book for several months, ever since I heard that Miriam Toews would be having a new book published.

It is set in the Mennonite world that defined A Complicated Kindness, this time in the Mexican Mennonite community. Irma has been disowned by her father following her marriage (though she remains on good terms with her mother and her sister Aggie) and abandoned by her husband, a Mexican, non-Mennonite, sometimes drug-runner.

Irma made her first tentative advances into the world outside the Mennonite Campo when she meets and marries her Mexican husband. She has a chance to further broaden her horizons when a Mexican film crew sets up next door and offers her a job as a translator. Eventually her sister Aggie gets drawn into the film, one thing leads to another, and finally the three sisters (Irma, Aggie, and a newborn baby) end up running away to Mexico City.

This book felt a bit like a stone rolling down a hill. It was a bit slow to get going, but gradually picked up momentum so that by the end, things were careening out of control.

Ultimately though, it is a book about family. A family divided by a violent father. A new non-traditional family that forms when the sisters take off together. And even a loose family-like-unit that sets up when Irma gets a job at a Bed-and-Breakfast in Mexico City.

I really felt drawn to the character of Irma. Initially shy and withdrawn, she is curious about the world around her and outside of her experience. As her sister Aggie observes, she likes the world inside her head better than the world around her. She is forced to take on responsibilities that she didn't ask for or want, and is often over-shadowed by her younger sister. And yet she not only survives but manages to thrive and in the end, she carves out a niche for herself. I loved watching how she grew up and gained confidence over the course of the book.

One of my favourite passages in the book comes near the end when Irma is writing in her notebook / journal.

YOU MUST BE PREPARED TO DIE! I read over the original heading in my notebook, the one that Diego had given me a long time ago to record my thoughts and observations. I pondered his dark advice. I scratched out the word DIE and wrote LIVE. The that seemed cheesy and too uncooly emphatic so I added the words SORT OF. AT LEAST TRY. Even that seemed bossy so I added, in parentheses, a joke: OR DIE TRYING. Then I told myself that it wasn't funny and crossed it all, every word of it, out and started again.

My one disappointment was that this book was so short and ended so abruptly. I would have loved for it to continue for another 200 pages! And I would love to know what happened to Irma and Aggie after the last page. Sequel, anyone?

The High Road - Terry Fallis

2011-06-05T19:37:00.003-04:00

As I mentioned in my post on Friday, I purchased The High Road, the sequel to The Best Laid Plans, on my way home on Friday before I had even finished The Best Laid Plans. Yes, I loved The Best Laid Plans that much.

I spent the weekend deep in this book, continuing to follow the exploits and adventures of Angus McLintock, fictional Member of Parliament for the fictional riding of Cumberland-Prescott. (For anyone who is interested, in real life, part of Cumberland is in the Ottawa Orleans riding; while the rest of Cumberland and Prescott are in Glengarry-Prescott-Russell Riding. Both ridings are currently Conservative, however were Liberal up until the 2006 election and still have strong Liberal turnouts. So much for Cumberland-Prescott being the "safest Conservative riding in the country!" Have I mentioned that I am a bit of a political junkie?)

In this book, Angus continued to insist on taking the high road, while wading through another election (which he actually wants to win this time); researching then writing the McLintock Report and dealing with its aftermath following the collapse of a bridge (Angus is an engineer after all); hosting the President and First Lady of the United States; and trying to influence the Throne Speech and Federal Budget.

I don't think that I laughed out loud as much in this book as in the first, but it was still a very amusing read. And engaging. I did polish it off in 2 days; and even this afternoon, I was going to read for another 15 minutes then make dinner and when I checked my watch again, 45 minutes had passed.

I continued to enjoy the narrative style which was the same as the first book - most of it is told in the first person through the eyes of Daniel Addison, Executive Assistant to Angus; with a brief journal entry by Angus at the end of each chapter giving his perspective on the story. Some of the jokes started to get a bit stale by the end (e.g. Angus and Daniel correcting split infinitives), but I was sorry to see the end of this book. The author's website announced last week that his next book is going to be published in September 2012. After spending the last week immersed in this fictional, yet eerily reminiscent of real life, world, I don't know how I am going to wait for a year and a half to read the next installment.

The one thing that this book did was make me sad for the state of Canada today. I'm afraid that our government is going downhill; and I wish that we could have one Member of Parliament with the integrity and audacity of Angus McLintock that could change the direction for the better. I suspect that the budget that is going to be announced tomorrow afternoon will have nothing in common with the budget announced at the end of The High Road. Where is the Canadian politician today that will take the high road?

The Best Laid Plans - Terry Fallis

2011-06-03T19:20:00.002-04:00

I should probably warn any readers from the outset that this post may contain some gushing.

I loved this book!

If I had read it prior to the Canada Reads debates, I probably would have been cheering for it, even over Essex County.

I first heard of this book last summer, when Terry Fallis was one of the authors at the Sleeping Giant Writers' Festival and I was fortunate enough to sit next to him at lunch. It was a very hilarious lunch around our table, even though none of us knew each other, and I figured that if he was as entertaining in print as he was in person, this book would be a good read.

I am also a closeted political junkie who tends to come out of the closet during election campaigns, so this book was custom made for me.

The premise, just in case you don't already know, is that Daniel, a young speech writer for the Liberal Party of Canada, decides to leave Ottawa after a particularly nasty break-up with his girlfriend. As a parting promise to the party, he agrees to find a candidate to run in the "safest Conservative riding in the country." He convinces his landlord, Angus McClintock, to run, on the agreement that under no circumstances would he ever win. Of course, since it is a comedic book, a sex scandal dethrones the Conservative candidate, Angus wins, and he is off to try and change Ottawa with Daniel as his somewhat blinkered executive assistant at his side.

This book is not one that I should try to read in public, as I was laughing out loud at times. It was, however, a book that had me putting on my PJ's at 9 every night this week so that I could get an extra hour of reading in at bedtime.

It was also a very timely book, given the recent federal election. There is definitely the analogy with all of the NDP candidates in Quebec who ran with no expectation of winning (some of them having never been to the riding that they were running in, and spending the election campaign out of the country) and then ended up in parliament. There were no dates given, or names for most of the political figures in the book (they are instead referred to as The Prime Minister, The Speaker, The Leader of the Official Opposition), and the election was a fictional election based on fictional issues; but it all could have been real. Listening to the Speech from the Throne this afternoon had extra meaning, given the fact that the Speech from the Throne following an election plays a pivotal role in the book.

I have been recommending this book left, right, and centre all week, even though I only finished it today. Well, mostly left, since that is the way that I tend to vote, as well as the people that I tend to hang out with. I also purchased the sequel, The High Road, on my way home this morning, even though I hadn't quite finished this book yet.

The book isn't perfect. I thought that the romantic thread running through it was a bit unnecessary and tacked on. I also found the first part of the book more engaging and amusing. The second part was less laugh-out-loud funny, but more plot-driven.

I also loved the story-telling style. Most of the book is first-person narrative from Daniel's point of view, so we see events unfolding from his perspective. But at the end of every chapter, there is a journal entry by Angus, in the form of a letter to his deceased wife, which gives the reader his perspective, including his opinion of Daniel. I just hope that this style carries over into the next book.

In summary, the best book I have read in quite some time!

Game of Thrones - George R. R. Martin

2011-05-28T20:51:00.002-04:00

I read this book on a dare. Not quite on the scale of the infamous Twilight Dare; more of a self-inflicted dare. Loni first alerted me to the offensive New York Times article implying that women wouldn't watch the new HBO series based on the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series of which this is the first book. The writer, Ginia Bellafante, states,

While I do not doubt that there are women in the world who read books like Mr. Martin’s, I can honestly say that I have never met a single woman who has stood up in indignation at her book club and refused to read the latest from Lorrie Moore unless everyone agreed to “The Hobbit” first. “Game of Thrones” is boy fiction patronizingly turned out to reach the population’s other half.

Now I have never heard of Lorrie Moore, but I found this to be extremely offensive. Not only have I read The Hobbit, but I also worked my way through the full Lord of the Rings trilogy for the first time when I was 13 years old; Anne McCaffrey's Dragonrider books are among my favourite series; and I have read lots of fantasy books in my time (often recommended by my cousin - waving to Kim if you are reading this!). So based on this article, how could I not read Game of Thrones!

I don't know what I was expecting going into this book, other than "boy fiction" as Ms. Bellafante calls it. I guess I was expecting lots of sex and violence and hopefully a well-developed fantasy world.

Sex - yes it was there, but not as graphic as I had feared. Violence - yes, but again not too graphic or offensive; more as a plot device which was not lingered on for longer than necessary. And the fantasy world? Yes, it was there (with some striking similarities to the European Middle Ages), and while I was reading, it was real to me. And dragons even made an appearance at the end!

I really liked how the story was told, with chapters alternating between different points of view from different characters. It wasn't told in the first person - that would have been too disjointed - but the different points of view gave a very balanced view of different characters. I'm not quite sure who the good guys are and who the bad guys are, but that's real life I guess.

Now for what I didn't like...

The length. This book came in at 800 pages in paperback, and it is the shortest one in the series to date. The 5th book is scheduled to come out in July and there are 7 planned in the series. It is huge in scope with multiple inter-connected plot lines taking place simultaneously (hence the multiple points of view); however I can't help but wonder if it is so broad that it looses focus. I really found that it dragged on by the end, and I can't see myself plodding through further, longer volumes. Plus all of the plot lines ended without any resolution - almost like all 7 books are really one book in multiple volumes - one very long, 5600 page book.

The treatment of women. Maybe there is something to Ms. Bellafante's critique. There are a few stronger female characters, but for the most part, the women are either prostitutes or the property of their men-folk. The only truly strong female character (in my opinion) is Daenerys who takes the lousy hand she is dealt and manipulates the situation so that she thrives. (Another character, Arya, is strong, but gets there only by pretending to be a boy.) Plus there is a very blatant double standard - men are expected to have at least one or two bastards hanging around (or in some cases, many, many bastards); while if a wife gives birth to a child, no-one questions that it must be her husband's.

The despair. Every character seems to be longing for a time of peace, and "the way things used to be;" and yet there is no hint that anyone is going to get there. Plus the so-called good guys keep getting killed.

So am I glad that I took up the dare and read this book? Yes. There were some characters that I really liked (Daenerys, Tyrion, Bran). Will I read the rest of the series? Probably not, based on the length if nothing else; though I may watch the HBO series and from what I've heard, it is a fairly faithful adaptation of the book. Besides, I can always find out what happens in subsequent books on Wikipedia!

Port Mortuary - Patricia Cornwell

2011-05-20T19:49:00.003-04:00

I have been reading Patricia Cornwell's Scarpetta books for several years now, and can generally count on them for a good diversion - interesting enough to keep me occupied for a week or so, but not so great that I need to rush out and buy a copy as soon as they are released. This one was no different.

When it came out last November, I added my name to the (very) long hold list at the local library. Now when there is a waiting list for a book, you only get it for a week, no renewals allowed; and yet my turn didn't come up until the end of February. I had waited so long that I assumed my name had been taken off the list! And when the e-mail did arrive in my in-box, I was 4 provinces away, at the beginning of a week's holiday. So needless to say, I wasn't able to pick it up in the 3 days specified, and when I got home again, I put my name back at the bottom of the list. And finally this month, I got to read the book.

The story was what I've come to expect from the series - some gory murders, scientific analysis of the evidence, and lots of red herrings. This book focused a lot on the relationship between Sarpetta and her husband, Benton, and I missed the presence of Lucy through much of the story. The writing was so-so. There were several glaring grammatical errors that made me cringe; and yet there was another scene that was so brilliantly written that I was drawn right in to the situation.

Possible Spoiler below.

***

(The book is written in the first person with Scarpetta as narrator. At one point, she is accidentally drugged, but didn't realize it at first. As I was reading, I was getting very frustrated with the dialogue and the characters, and I was getting ready to throw the book across the room because none of it was making sense. And then when Scarpetta realized that she had been drugged, it all made sense - we, the readers, were seeing the situation through her drugged view. I was drawn right in, and had no clue what was happening - I just knew that it wasn't making sense.)

***

End Spoiler

So I probably will keep reading the books in this series as they are released, but they will remain as library books, rather than purchases.

Skim - Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki

2011-05-06T17:57:00.002-04:00

This is a book that has been on my "Want to Read" list for a while, and so last weekend, when I was putting in an online order, I decided to add it to the list. And when the order arrived this afternoon, I couldn't wait to pick it up, even though I have 2 library books that I should have read first.

It is a quick read, as I am discovering that graphic novels usually are. But for the hour or so I was reading, I was transported right back to high school, and all of the confusion and insecurity associated with that time. I could relate to Skim (officially Kimberly Keiko Cameron) and her experience of feeling isolated and not quite understanding what was going on. The issues that I remember from high school are not the same as what Skim is facing - I don't remember any suicides at my school, and I didn't have a lesbian crush on one of my teachers - but the issues that I do remember (depression, bullying, teen pregnancy...) resonated the same. I still remember the feeling of wanting to fit in, and yet seeing fitting in as being hypocritical. As an interesting side note, the book takes place in the fall of 1993 when Skim is 16 - I was also 16 in the fall of 1993.

I loved Skim's observations of the crazy world around her. "Truthfully I am always a little depressed but that is just because I am sixteen and everyone is stupid (ha-ha-ha). I doubt it has anything to do with being a goth." "Halloween is when a lot of non-witches dress up like witches. So it's hard to see people as they really are. Unless they are dressed up like Barbie or Nixon or Freddy, in which case you know they are lame-o freaks." "My school = goldfish tank of stupid." "P.S. Mom is NOT a light sleeper. Good thing I'm not a drug addict or anything or I could easily rob her blind."

So who should read this book? Anyone who remembers the real angst of being a misfit in high school. Or anyone who is currently experiencing the angst of being a misfit in high school. (Interestingly, this book is put out by a children's publisher.) Maybe not the "popular girls" from high school - though I'm not saying that they didn't have their problems, they just appeared as though they didn't.

And as an extra bonus, the day after I ordered this book, John over at The Book Mine Set announced a mini-challenge - if 10 Canadian books with a Japanese connection are reviewed in the month of April, he will donate $200 to the Red Cross. As Mariko and Jillian Tamaki are cousins of Japanese origin, this book definitely counts!

Drawn into the Mystery of Jesus through the Gospel of John - Jean Vanier

2011-04-23T18:50:00.003-04:00

This is a book that is very difficult to review. It is a devotional, with meditations written on John's gospel, by a hero of mine, Jean Vanier. Each chapter is devoted to a section of the gospel (usually a full chapter), and reads a bit like a sermon - not the boring kind of sermon that is easy to tune out but more like the type of sermon that engages your attention and causes you to reflect on the implications in your own life.

It was recommended to me by a retired minister a month or so ago, when I phoned him to ask him to cover a Sunday service at my church. He told me about this book, and that he reads through it as a devotional every year during Lent. As I mentioned above, Jean Vanier is a hero of mine; plus I love reading the Gospel of John, so the book seemed like a perfect match. And so it was. It lived up to it's title, "Drawn into the Mystery of Jesus" and at times I could sense the presence of Jesus in the room with me as I was reading.

I also managed to time my reading so that I was reading through the second half of the gospel this past week; reading about Jesus entering Jerusalem last Sunday (Palm Sunday), his arrest and crucifixion yesterday (Good Friday), and then his resurrection today, as the world prepares to celebrate the Easter miracle tomorrow. I suspect that this added extra depth to my reading.

Who would I recommend this book to? Anyone who is a fan of Jean Vanier and his work; anyone who loves the Gospel of John; and also to anyone who is seeking to know Jesus or learn more about Christianity. I suspect that I will join the retired minister who recommended this book to me in making it a part of my annual Lenten devotions.

In Praise of Slow - Carl Honoré

2011-04-17T17:59:00.003-04:00

Before I begin this review, I should probably say that Honoré is preaching to the converted in my case! Maybe that is why this book appealed to me so much when I saw it sitting on my friend's coffee table last week and asked to borrow it.

The basic premise of this book is that we live in a world obsessed with speed - that all domains of our lives are dominated by the clock and by our need to do everything faster. He starts out by explaining why this is detrimental to our health (physical and mental), our relationships with others, and the quality of everything we do, as well as our enjoyment of life. He then goes into different movements around the world aimed at slowing down different aspects of our lives - food, cities, mind and body, medicine, sex, work, leisure, and child-rearing - and makes connections between the different movements, connecting them all by the underlying philosophy that if you slow things down, you can enjoy them more. He also clarifies that he isn't a Luddite (there is even a plug for book blogging - not only is reading a Slow hobby, but then you slow it down even more when you reflect on what you have read); nor does he say that everything you do has to be at a slow pace, rather there is a "Tempo Giusto" or proper speed for everything.

As he said, he is preaching to the converted in my case. I work 4 days a week by choice, and my job (as a homecare physiotherapist) allows me to take time with each patient; I cook most of my food from scratch; I enjoy Slow hobbies such as reading, music, and gardening; I drive the speed limit (usually); I no longer have a television that works; and while I volunteer and participate in activities outside of work, I am nowhere near as scheduled as I was 10 years ago and have learned how to say No. My friends laughed at me when I picked up this book, telling me that I was the last person who needs to read it!

I especially enjoyed the section talking about the Tempo Giusto movement in classical music. Basically this says that all music written before 1900 is today played about twice as fast as it was originally intended to be played; and that while the increased speed allows for virtuosity, the music loses meaning when it is sped up too much. I was at a performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony a few weeks ago, and while I came out of the concert impressed with the performance, during it I found it to be too rushed (at least 3 out of the 4 movements) and that I didn't have time to enjoy the music. At a music lesson last week, my teacher told me that one piece by Bach I am working on is "basically correct, but needs to be about twice as fast." I should come back to him next lesson and tell him that I am practicing Tempo Giusto!

The book itself is very readable, well paced, and well organized. Overall, an enjoyable read. And with one week left until Easter, my fiction fast is almost over. I have had some cravings along the way, but have managed to hold out; and have discovered some excellent books along the way. I've placed a couple of fiction holds on books at the library - I just hope that my turn doesn't come up before next weekend!

The Great Work - Thomas Berry

2011-04-03T15:02:00.002-04:00

I always approach books recommended by friends with some trepidation. On one hand, the recommendation comes from someone who knows me and what I like to read; but on the other hand, what happens if I don't like the book (remembering Wide Sargasso Sea)?

The Great Work is the all-time favourite book of a good friend, and I finally sat down to read it this month. While I liked it, I didn't love it.

Berry's main premise is that our current geobiological era is ending, due to the devastation that humans have wrought on the planet; and that the Great Work of our present age is to move from our current way of living (all things are placed on the earth for humans to use) to a more benign way of living, in harmony with everything on the planet. (all things have equal right to exist and be). He explains in the first chapter, "We have human rights. We have rights to the nourishment and shelter we need. We have rights to habitat. But ewe have no rights to deprive other species of their proper habitat. We have no rights to interfere with their migration routes. We have no rights to disturb the basic functioning of the biosystems of the plane." Later, he describes standing by a meadow as a child where he observed, "Whatever preserves and enhances this meadow in the natural cycles of its transformation is good; whatever opposes this medow or negates it is not good."

The first part of the book describes the earth's history and emergence of life, with the cycles of seasons and days; with a particular focus on North America. The next part describes what has gone wrong, in human history - the human-centered rather than earth-centered norm; ethical thinking that favours humans over non-humans; corporations that control all aspects of our lives; over-reliance on petroleum; education and political systems that promote the status quo; and an economy that depends on extraction of resources from the earth that by definition must come to an end. And the final part of the book describes what must be done to enter the new era of living in harmony with the earth - re-inventing the human using the wisdoms that we already have but may not recognize (the wisdom of indigenous peoples, the wisdom of women, the wisdom of the classical traditions, and the wisdom of science).

I found much of this book to be very bleak - describing how all aspects of life have gone wrong due to human actions. A quote on the cover calls this book "the modern equivalent of the biblical book of Revelation" however I found myself comparing the author to John the Baptist, "the voice of one crying out in the wilderness," calling on all people to repent of our ways.

This is a book that I do think that people should read. Our current way of living is unsustainable. Petroleum is going to run out, possibly within our lifetime. Life in the future will, by necessity, look different than life today.

I did have a few quibbles with this book though. I found it to be written from a North American (and particularly US) point of view. If our Great Work is to re-invent how we live in relation to our earth, it will necessarily need to involve all people from all cultures. Having lived for a few years in another culture (the Haya people in Tanzania), many of the statements of why life is going off-the-rails don't apply in that culture.

Also, I found the overall impression to be very bleak. Given our capabilities of today, I feel very hopeless that we can as a human species make this transformation into the future. Take an example of food - humans can digest raw food, yet studies show that food becomes more nutritious if it is cooked. What is the way of cooking this food that is in harmony with the planet? Electricity? Coal vs. nuclear vs. hydroelectricity - all of these place stress on the planet. Wood? Air pollution and deforestation? Charcoal? Ditto. Various petroleum options? Air pollution and non-renewable. Even the "cleaner" sources of energy such as solar and wind affect the planet in a negative way though the production and transportation on a large or small scale of the components required. (This example is mine - it doesn't come from the book.)

And at the same time, I found his solutions to be naively optimistic at times. "We need not simply a national or a global economy but local subsistence economies where the variety of human groups become acquainted with the other species in the local bioregion." He does state that local populations will need to adapt to the local environment; but is this truly feasible?

But overall it is a book that made me think and made me consider the way that I am living now. I am the first one to admit that, much as I try to make as small of a footprint on this earth, I am still dependent on petroleum and the extractive economy. Thank you, LM, for the book recommendation!

I am going to end with the poem that serves as the dedication to this book, as I think that it is very beautiful and sums up this book very well.

To the children

To all the children

To the children who swim beneath

The waves of the sea, to those who live in

The soils of the Earth, to the children of the flowers

In the meadows and the trees in the forest, to

All those children who roam over the land

And the winged ones who fly with the winds,

To the human children too, that all the children

May go together into the future in the full

Diversity of their regional communities.

Compassion and Solidarity - Gregory Baum

2011-03-18T22:10:00.002-04:00

"In these lectures I have been discussing a new movement in the churches, one that binds Christian faith to the yearning for social justice."

"All who love justice, therefore, of whatever class, must support the poor in their struggle for liberation."

"Today, almsgiving is no longer enough. Love of neighbour calls for social justice, for a transformation of society, so that the victims will be delivered from their crushing burdens. In our day the love of neighbour generates a passion for justice."

"... despite it all, and in the face of it all, even though we see no immediate solution, we resist, and in this resistance we are consoled by God's presence and God's promise."

I don't normally write in books, but it is for the sake of books like this one that I keep a pen in my bedside table. The above are just a sampling of passages that I have underlined in this book.

There is a bit of a story behind my reading of this book. I picked up a copy 4 years ago (I think) because the topic is one of my passions, but then it sat on my bookcase through several moves without being read. Then I picked it up at Christmas time, deciding that it's time had come to be read, and after finishing the first chapter, I promptly left it behind at the Toronto airport when traveling to visit my family. So I re-ordered a copy, and finally had a chance to finish it this week.

This slim volume is a transcript of the Massey Lectures from 1987. The Massey Lectures were set up in 1961 in order to "invite a noted scholar to undertake study or original research in his field and present the results in a series of radio broadcasts." I have previously enjoyed listening to Stephen Lewis and Jean Vanier in their series of lectures, but this is the first time that I have read the transcripts.

I'm glad that I was reading the lectures rather than listening to them. The material was so thought provoking that I could stop and pause and think about an idea before continuing on; as well as flip back and forth and cross-reference one idea off another. Even though the book is short (106 pages) and has only 5 chapters (each of the 5 one-hour lectures), I could only read one chapter per day in order to absorb the information and reflect on it.

The ideas presented, as you may have guessed from the quotations above, have to do with social justice, liberation theology, and the faith-and-justice movement in the churches. Gregory Baum is an ex-Catholic priest (who left the priesthood over a disagreement with his order rather than a crisis of faith), so the book is presented from a Catholic viewpoint, but is very ecumenical in scope. Some of the references are a bit dated (computers as a new and emerging phenomenon in the workplace!), but so many of the themes are relevant today, maybe even more so than when the lectures were originally given.

I had so many thoughts and ideas while reading this book that if I were to try and write a full review, it would probably be as long as the book itself! I loved the fact that the overall tone was one of optimism - yes there are bad things in the world, and yes it can seem overwhelming to think about effecting change, but societal transformation is possible. And this is something that I have experienced and something that I believe strongly in. (Around the same time as I bought this book, but long before I read it, I wrote an essay - also for the CBC - along similar lines but much shorter of course. If you want to read it or hear me read it, it is still available online here.)

So an excellent book, and one that I would highly recommend to anyone interested in social justice and liberation theology.

Reading Lolita in Tehran - Azar Nafisi

2011-03-14T20:30:00.002-04:00

This is a book that I have heard about for years, but have not had a chance to read until this past week. And once I started reading it, I couldn't put it down.

It is the latest in a series of books about life in The Islamic Republic of Iran under theocratic rule that I have read in recent years (Persepolis and Prisoner of Tehran being the others). The subtitle is "A Memoir in Books" and that is truly what it is.

Azar Nafisi was from Iran originally and grew up under the regime of the westernized Shah, but was sent abroad at age 13 for her education. She returned back to Tehran in 1979 on the eve of the Islamic Revolution, newly married, and ready to teach English Literature at the University of Tehran. She eventually quits her job there after refusing to comply with the law that women must wear headscarves; spends several years (though the Iran-Iraq war) hiding at home; and then accept a job teaching at the more liberal Allameh Tabatabai University (where she teaches, wearing the mandatory headscarf - though as carelessly as she can get away with, with hair showing!). When she eventually leaves this job, she starts up an illicit study group with young women - some of her best students - out of her home, where they freely discuss classics of western literature.

I quite enjoyed the structure of this book. There are four sections with the first and final sections centered around the discussions that she and her "girls" have in their sessions; as well as the friendships that grew out of these sessions. The middle two sections are more of a chronological relating of events that led her from America back to Iran and through the revolution and war with Iraq. Always, the story revolves around books that are being read and discussed; and parallels are drawn between the books and events in real life. Even though I haven't read many of the books that are discussed, enough of the plot of each is outlined for the comparisons to have made sense to me.

Compared with the other books about Iran in this time period, this book hit home a lot more to me. I suspect that this is because the author was a bit older than the authors of Persepolis (who was a child through the Islamic Revolution) or Prisoner of Tehran (who was imprisoned at age 16 early in the revolution), and she had lived abroad before returning to Tehran; therefore she had a better perspective and could give more background to what was happening. But still it is a memoir, and is one person's experiences of historical events.

My roommate from university was born in Tehran in 1976 and told stories of the bombings through the Iran-Iraq war; as well as the liberation that they felt when they could leave Iran on holiday and leave behind all of the imposed Islamic restrictions. My brother-in-law was also born in Tehran in 1980, and his mother (my sister's mother-in-law - another Azar) was a student of Azar Nafisi at Allameh Tabatabai University. I asked our Azar what she thought of Azar Nafisi as a professor in the time period being written about, and this is what she said:

I can't tell you much about her from 20 years ago when I was doing my B.A. It was a dark time from political point of view, most educated people including Dr. Nafisi didn't have political/democratic activities at that time because of the regime.

She was only teaching english literature and linguistics. She was bright and deep but not talking about things other than linguistics as I remember.

My sister read this book and passed her copy on to me. She didn't enjoy it as much as I did, and found the author to come across as condescending. (Laura - if you are reading this, please feel free to expand your opinion in the comments section!)

There was a great question that Azar Nafisi posed to her very first class, on her very first day of teaching at the University of Tehran. "What do you think fiction should accomplish? Why should one bother to read fiction at all?" She gives part of an answer at this point, "... most great works of the imagination were meant to make you feel like a stranger in your own home. The best fiction always forced us to question what we took for granted. It questioned traditions and expectations when they seemed too immutable. I told my students I wanted them in their reading to consier in what ways these works unsettled them, made them a little uneasy, made them look around and consider the world, like Alice in Wonderland, through different eyes." She expands a bit more later in the book when she talks about novels allowing the reader to experience different worlds, and through different points of view. You can expand your world view in this way, but you can also then draw comparisons between yourself and your situation, and others.

So this made me ask myself, why do I read fiction? I read fiction because I love it. Why do I love reading fiction? I am very much an escapist reader. When I am reading (well-written and engaging) fiction, I am in another time and place while I am reading. But that may not always be a good thing, when the fiction takes me away from the here and now. This Lent, we were posed the question, what distracts you from God?, and after much soul-searching, I have decided to fast from fiction this Lent. I am hoping to now have time over the next to read some non-fiction that has been sitting on my TBR stack for a while. Watch for upcoming reviews...

Cool Water - Dianne Warren

2011-03-06T16:29:00.004-05:00

This is a book that first hit my radar about a year ago. I was working with a patient who had had her hip replaced, and her local rural librarian was plying her with books during her recovery period. (I used to book extra-long sessions with this patient - we would rush through the physio, and spend the rest of the time talking about books we had read in the past week!) This book came up as one that the librarian had given the patient to read - the patient said that it was one that she probably wouldn't have picked up on her own, but she had loved it and highly recommended it.

Then it made the long list for the Giller Prize last year, and ended up winning the Governor General's prize. Now I don't always like the GG winner (there have been some odd choices made in the past), but I loved this book.

It has an unusual structure. The whole book takes place over a 24 hour period in small town Saskatchewan. There are 5 different stories being told - different characters and family groups - as they move through the day. But rather than being told one after another, they are woven together over time so that the reader is able to follow what is happening in each story as the day progresses. Each chapter covers a period of time, and is broken into several parts according to the different stories being told.

As I said earlier, I loved this book! The characters, while not all likable, were so well drawn and real. They could be real people in just about any small town in Canada. And the setting was so vividly drawn that while I was reading the book, I was there in the hot, dry, southern Saskatchewan summer rather than in snowy northern Ontario in March. And the stories were so engrossing that I couldn't put the book down. Yes, I sprained my ankle badly on Saturday morning so wasn't moving far from my sofa anyways; but I really couldn't put the book down and the sprained ankle just gave me an excuse to keep reading!

Have you ever had the experience of a book being inexorably linked with a place? I know that when I had an opportunity to walk in the Sahara desert, I couldn't stop thinking about The English Patient; walking through the UofT campus screams Robertson Davies at me; and driving through the Muskokas always brings Valancy and The Blue Castle to mind. This book has left such a strong impression on me that I am sure to think of it, and it's characters, if I ever drive through southern Saskatchewan in the heat of summer.

Twenties Girl - Sophie Kinsella

2011-03-06T16:20:00.004-05:00

Have I mentioned before that I don't usually like Chick Lit? Mostly because the plot is predictable (girl in crisis, girl dating wrong man, girl hits rock-bottom, girl starts dating right man, everyone lives happily ever after); and I don't usually sympathize with the main character. But my sister handed me her copy of this book over Christmas and told me that it was better than the average Chick Lit; so I threw it in my suitcase a couple of weeks ago as airplane reading when I flew out to BC to go skiing.

Unfortunately, I have to disagree with my sister - I didn't find that this book stood above the Chick Lit average. I didn't particularly like the main character, and it did follow the predictable plot line. The only thing that made it different was the presence of the ghost of her great aunt.

Plot summary: Lara is at outs with her family, recently broke up with her boyfriend, and about to lose the business that she had put all of her savings into. Her great aunt dies at age 105 and at her funeral, the aforementioned ghost appears to Lara - Lara is the only one who can see or hear her; however the ghost can influence the behaviour of others by screaming in their ear. Over the course of the book, Lara gets together with her ex (who is still Mr. Wrong), loses the business, meets Mr. Right, starts up a new and more successful business, and along the way, solves the mystery of her great aunt's life and necklace.

So overall, not a great book; but it did get me out of the reading slump that lasted a month and a half. It was a good book to be reading on vacation as not much concentration was required. And I was able to pass my sister's copy on to our cousin when I was finished. And the reading slump is now officially over, and I am ready to get on to new and better books!

Intuition - Allegra Goodman

2011-03-06T16:11:00.003-05:00

This is the second book that I finished in early January that lead to my reading slump. I didn't really dislike this book, but I can't seem to pin down why I didn't like it either.

It is set in a research lab in Massachusetts, in the land of scientists and postdocs and grad students and undergrads, all trying to find a cure for cancer. This is a world in which I have lived vicariously through several friends who work in this messed-up world of scientific research. So I have heard all about the hierarchies, and jealousies, and competition, and back-stabbing from them.

In this book, a postdoc on the verge of being fired comes up with a seemingly miraculous breakthrough, which another postdoc suspects might be fabricated. The story deals with the fall-out of both the breakthrough and the accusations.

Overall, I should have liked this book. It is a very different setting than any other novel that I have read. I allied myself with some of the characters, and against others. The "truth" of what really happened is kept hidden, and so the plot unfolded almost like a whodunit and kept me guessing. And it was fairly well written.

But somehow, something was missing, and I can't quite put my finger on it. I was reading this book at bedtime, and if I am reading a good book, I often have trouble closing it in order to turn off my light and go to sleep. But with this book, I found myself dozing off after only two or three pages. Has anyone else read this book? Can you enlighten me on why I didn't enjoy it as much as I think that I should have?

The English Stories - Cynthia Flood

2011-03-06T15:54:00.003-05:00

I really must apologize to anyone who is reading this blog - two months without a post. I have not only been in a blogging slump, but also in a reading slump and I spent all of January and most of February re-reading old favourites. I am going to blame the fact that early in January, I finished off two very mediocre books that made me crave books that I knew would be engrossing and comforting. But I do have a few reviews to do, that I'm going to try and get posted in the next couple of days.

The first of the mediocre books finished in January was The English Stories by Cynthia Flood. There are 12 inter-connected short stories in this collection that cover a 2 year period in Amanda's life as she enters adolescence in the early 1950s. Her father is an English Literature professor in Toronto who takes a sabbatical to go to England to do research "for a year that stretched into two". The stories are told from different points of view - Amanda's, her parents, her teachers, the other residents at the boarding house where they live - and deal mainly with Amanda's adaptation to a different culture as well as her growing up.

I liked the fact that different voices were used, but I didn't think that Amanda was a very likable heroine, and so I didn't really care what happened to her. And I also found it difficult to keep the characters straight, especially with the perspective changing from story to story - I found myself flipping back and forth a lot trying to remember who was who. And honestly, I didn't find any of the characters to be very likable which made it difficult to care about any of them.

Two months after finishing this book, none of the stories really stand out in my mind - only a somewhat vague memory of not particularly enjoying reading this book.

(For another opinion on this book, check out Buried in Print.)

2010 Top Reads

2011-01-01T13:50:00.002-05:00

This time last year, I was lamenting that 2009 had not been an outstanding reading year for me, and I was hoping that 2010 would be better. Well, that wish came true, and this year introduced me to many wonderful books. I had a hard time coming up with this list, because it was so difficult to cut some wonderful books off of it.

So here is my list of Top 10 Books Read in 2010. Same rules as always - no re-reads (I must have read it for the first time in 2010); books published in any year are accepted though. Fiction or non-fiction, Canadian or international, kids books, poetry - all are admissible in this list!

1. The Matter with Morris - David Bergen

2. Essex County - Jeff Lemire

3. The Book of Secrets - M. G. Vassanji

4. Sailor Girl - Sheree-Lee Olson

5. The Cellist of Sarajavo - Steven Galloway

6. Room - Emma Donoghue

7. Motorcycles and Sweetgrass - Drew Hayden Taylor

8. Streams of Faith - Lois M. Wilson

9. Yellowknife - Steve Zipp

10. Annabel - Kathleen Winters

And, in case you're interested, the books that made the longlist but had to be cut to come up with my top ten were (in no particular order): Light Lifting (Alexander MacLeod); The Boy in the Moon (Ian Brown); The Wife's Tale (Lori Lansens); and The Mistress of Nothing (Kate Pullinger).

A few random observations about this list:

All of the books (including the longlist) are Canadian!
I didn't read much non-fiction in 2010. I should probably work on that this year...
Not only was the quality better, but after a slow-ish start I ended up reading more books in 2010 than in 2009.
I have not yet read the 2010 Giller or GG winners, but both books are sitting on my TBR list and I should get to them in the next month or so.

I haven't posted any new reviews in the past few weeks - I'm actually part-way through 3 different books right now, including one that I left behind in the airport when traveling over the holidays!

Wishing everyone a happy 2011 filled with wonderful books to read!

The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag - Alan Bradley

2010-12-19T20:42:00.003-05:00

This book is the follow-up to The Sweetness in the Bottom of the Pie which I read and mostly enjoyed earlier this year, and like the first book, it was a quick and easy read for me.

My biggest complaint about the first book was that I didn't find the main character, Flavia de Luce, very believable as an 11 year old. I found her much more believable in this book (despite her precocious chemistry knowledge, especially with respect to poisons). In fact, I found all of the characters to be better drawn in this book - the older sisters, Ophelia (Feely) and Daphne (Daffy) are much more rounded rather than being purely evil; and most of the secondary characters seem realistic rather than just caricatures.

But unfortunately, the story doesn't hold up as well this time around. There are two mysteries to be solved that (of course) are linked together - a young boy died 6 years ago; then a visiting puppeteer dies in the middle of a performance in the "present" time (the book is set in 1950). While it was fun getting to know the characters, Flavia solves the mysteries mainly by collecting gossip from different villagers, without any excitement or true deduction. A bit like an 11-year-old Miss Marple.

There is a third book in the series due out next year - A Red Herring Without Mustard (the author seems to be into quirky titles!). As before, I will probably read it, but will either check it out of the library or wait for it to come out in paperback.

Kiss Me! (I'm a Prince!) - Heather McLeod, illustrated by Brooke Kerrigan

2010-12-17T16:03:00.003-05:00

Everyone knows the story of the Frog Prince - a prince is turned into a frog and needs to be kissed to turn back into a prince and they all lived happily ever after. Well, this picture book speculates on what would have happened if the girl, named Ella, preferred a talking frog over a prince.

It is a real twist on the old fairy tale, as even the frog-prince decides that he enjoys not being a prince too as he now has time to play. The only problem is that since frogs don't have hands, he can't play baseball!

This book is by local Thunder Bay author, Heather McLeod, and I managed to snag a copy at the book launch before they sold out to give to my nephew and niece for Christmas. I suspect that my cousin who is raising her daughter while trying to avoid the "Disney Princess Hype" would also appreciate this story.

The pictures are fairly simple but they compliment the story well. I love how the frog pops up in every picture, even if he isn't directly involved in the story. And the expressions on Ella's face as she imagines what her life would be like as a princess are priceless.

So all in all, a great book in my adult opinion, but I guess the real test will come when the gift is opened on Christmas day...

Twenty boy Summer - Sarah Ockler

2010-12-12T16:59:00.003-05:00

I am against book banning on principle. This probably goes back to my last year of high school when my English teacher announced that The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood had been removed from the curriculum because some parents did not think it appropriate for 18-year-olds to be reading. So I did what any curious reader would do - tracked down a copy as soon as possible, read it, and loved it. I suspect that this was Mr. Shortall's intended effect.

So when I heard over at The Broke and the Bookish about the effort to ban Twenty Boy Summer from a school board down in Missouri, I decided that it would be this week's act of subversion to track down a copy and read it. I don't think that any book should be banned - I believe, as my grandmother told me, that children (and anyone) should be allowed to read as widely as possible, and that it is only through exposure to a wide variety of authors, and genres, and qualities of books that you learn to determine for yourself what is good writing and what is not. I do think that in the case of young children that parents should play a role, and be aware of what their children are reading, and possibly to guide their choices, but every book should be made available to every person.

Ahem... stepping off my soapbox now...

On to this book. It is not a book that I would have picked up on my own. It is in the rapidly-expanding "young adult" genre - basically chick-lit for the high school set. I thought that it dealt very well with the topic of grief. At the beginning of the book, the narrator Anna falls in love with Matt, the older brother of her best friend Frankie, however Matt dies a month later leaving behind his family to mourn him publicly and Anna to mourn him in secret. The book did a good job portraying the different ways that everyone handles their grief. Anna tries to keep everything bottled up inside; Frankie enters a deep depression and then comes out of it as the Rebel Child; Matt's mother tries to cover up the emptiness in her life by re-decorating the house every week or so; and Matt's father tries to compensate by spoiling and indulging Frankie.

There is a very insightful quote about mourning towards the beginning of the book. Anna, the 16-year-old narrator reflects, "When someone you love dies, people ask you how you're doing, but they don't really want to know. They seek affirmation that you're okay, that you appreciate their concern, that life goes on and so can they. Secretly they wonder when the statute of limitations on asking expires (it's three months, by the way. Written or unwritten, that's about all the time it takes for people to forget the one thing that you never will.)"

This aspect of the book is handled very well, with the characters moving through their grief and coming out on the other end with some sort of resolution.

As to why there was an attempt to ban the book, I suspect that it has to do with the plot line of Anna's (successful) attempt to lose her virginity. And possibly the title, which has to do with Anna and Frankie's project to meet twenty boys on their 3-week vacation in California. And possibly all of the lying to the parents, sneaking out at night, underage drinking, and partying that all goes undiscovered and without repercussion.

This book deals with all the angst and anxiety and uncertainty and self-discovery that goes along with being a teen girl. But when held up to my personal "gold standard" of books dealing with transitioning through adolescence towards adulthood (A House Like a Lotus, by Madeline L'Engle), it falls short. I think because the girls in this book don't really learn anything or grow up at all through their experiences.

So do I think that this book should be banned? Obviously not. Would I recommend it as a "must read" book to anyone? Possibly if I knew a young person dealing with a loss (don't I sound old here!) since that is the issue that this book handles well. Do I think that it is a book that every girl should read? No - and I don't think that it is going to be a classic that will endure through the years and be read fifty years from now. It was a good read, but not a great book. That is what my grandmother's encouragement to read widely had taught me.

Essex County - Jeff Lemire

2010-12-10T11:10:00.004-05:00

This is a book that has been generating a lot of buzz recently. I have read very positive reviews over at John's (Volume 1, Volume 2, and Volume 3) and Wanda's (Volume 1, Volume 2, and Volume 3) blogs; and now it is one of the finalists in the CBC Canada Reads competition.

I picked this book up on Wednesday evening, planning to read a few pages before going to bed, and by the time I turned the lights out, I was half-way finished this 510-page book! It was easy work to finish it up the next night. This is my second experience with a graphic novel (Persepolis being the first - though strictly speaking, it should be considered a graphic memoir), and a very enjoyable experience it was too.

There are 3 volumes - Tales from the Farm, Ghost Stories, and The Country Nurse - all collected in one volume with some "extras" (promotional material, early drafts etc). Tales from the Farm deals with a boy being raised by his uncle after his mother (who was a single mother) dies. He befriends the cashier at the local gas station, an ex-Leafs player, and fellow comic book lover. Ghost Stories is the tale of two brothers who play hockey together in Toronto in the early '50s, become estranged from each other, are re-united after tragedy strikes, and then become estranged again. And then The Country Nurse is the story of a home-care nurse, interwoven with the story of her grandmother, which ties the plot of all three volumes together.

I enjoyed the artwork for the most part, though sometimes I found the chunky black-and-white style a bit confusing (there is one picture that I had to turn back to 3 or 4 times to figure out what was being depicted). But it is the stories that are so poignant. My favourite of the volumes is probably Ghost Stories, and I found myself in tears a few times while reading it. And as far as the pictures go, I loved how the crow kept appearing throughout all of the stories. After all, what bird is more ubiquitous in Canada than the crow.

And that is, I think, what I liked most about this book - its Canadian-ness. I can't picture these stories being set anywhere other than rural southern Ontario. Farms, hockey, inter-generational histories, and yes, crows. Though I haven't read all of the other contenders for Canada Reads, I'm pretty sure that I am going to be rooting for this book.

The In-Between World of Vikram Lall - M. G. Vassanji

2010-12-07T19:33:00.003-05:00

I love the title of this book. Vikram Lall is a boy of Indian heritage, growing up in Kenya in the era of the Mau Mau Uprising just prior to independence, and in the years following; and the title perfectly describes how he is caught in between the worlds of the black Africans and the white Europeans. Though he is born in Africa, he is considered not quite African, and while he and his family initially had British citizenship (Kenya was originally a British colony), they gave it up at the time of independence to become Kenyan citizens. There is a passage towards the end of the book that describes Vikram Lall's view of his homeland as he rides the train:

"He let me ride in his cabin, and as I watched the red earth pass beneath us, and the dense forest up ahead, and the green hills to my right where monkeys frolicked in the tree branches, and the odd gang of half-dressed children who had stopped on the paths to watch us, as the driver hummed "onward Christian Soldiers" while adjusting his controls, and the engine went clackety-clack on the rails, I told myself how desperately I loved this country that somehow could not quiet accept me. Was there really something prohibitively negative in me, and in those like me, with our alien forbidding skins off which the soul of Africa simply slipped away?"

The book is well structured with three longer sections and then a short section at the end. The first section deals with Vikram growing up in a smaller town as the Mau Mau uprising stirs around them. Vikram and his sister Deepa are friends with two British children, Bill and Annie, and an African boy, Njoroge, the grandson of a servant of the Lalls. This section does not end well, as the Mau Mau rebels murder Bill, Annie, and their parents.

The second section takes place 10+ years later in Nairobi where the Lalls moved shortly after the first section ends. Njoroge is re-united with his Indian "family" and he and Deepa fall in love. This section also does not end well, as the prejudice towards inter-racial marriage drives them apart, and they both marry other people.

The third section takes place in the decades following, as Vikram is gradually drawn into the powerful circles as government, slowly realizing that he is there as an Indian scapegoat on which to place the blame for all of the corruption taking place around him. This section (surprise, surprise) does not end well, as Njoroge is assassinated, Deepa's husband dies, Vikram and his wife separate, and Vikram is forced out of his country to Canada with his name at the top of his country's List of Shame.

The fourth and final section takes place with Vikram returns to Kenya in an attempt to clear his name and regain the ability to visit his home country. This section ends ambiguously, and I'm not going to reveal any more!

It sounds like a depressing book, but really it isn't. There are definitely some heavier issues brought up - corruption, race relations, post-colonial history in Africa - but what really shone through for me were the characters and the love that they have for one another. The different sections of the book are drawn together as Vikram tells his life story to a friend in Canada, with some input from Deepa and Njoroge's son Joseph.

The narrative ends somewhere in the mid- to late-90s, however many issues are still relevant today. There is still corruption in Kenya and much of Africa. There is still inter-tribal conflict in Kenyan politics that flares up every couple of years (most recently following the general elections on Dec. 26, 2007). Inter-racial marriage in Africa is still very uncommon.

I think that I liked this book at least as much as The Book of Secrets, and definitely more than The Gunny Sack. I suspect that this story will stay with me longer than either of the other two.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest - Stieg Larsson

2010-12-01T18:13:00.003-05:00

Poor M. G. Vassanji seems destined not to get read. First he was bumped by my need to indulge in some fluff, and then when I got half way through the book, I received an e-mail from the library saying that my copy of The Girl that Kicked the Hornet's next was ready for me to pick up.

The e-mail probably couldn't have come at a worse time - not only was I half way through another book, but I am just coming out of my busiest week in quite some time. I have been out almost every night, and have had a lot of music commitments, all of which have eaten into valuable reading time! And I only had a week to get through all 563 pages of this book! (Actually, one of my biggest complaints about this book is the sheer size of the hardcover - my hands hurt from trying to hold this book while reading. But more on the length of it later.) But I stayed up until midnight last night in order to finish it, and will be returning it to the library as soon as I am done writing this post.

You may recall that I did not enjoy The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (GDT), but quite enjoyed The Girl who Played with Fire (GPF). This, the final book in the trilogy, falls somewhere between the first two. It was not as slow going as GDT, but there was still a lot of detail about the Swedish government structure and history that I found myself skimming over. And while the plot centers around Lisbeth Salander (similar to GPF), she tended to be shunted to the sidelines (maybe because she spends most of the book in hospital or prison).

Overall, I though that this book could have used some better editing. As I mentioned, I found myself skimming over entire pages; and there was a whole separate plot line concerning Erika Berger that could have easily been left out without affecting the plot.

There are some aspects of the plot that bear some reflection given what is going on in the world today. Salander is awaiting trial and the government wants to lock her up in a psychiatric hospital for the rest of her life, despite knowing that she is not crazy, because they consider her to be a risk if she is left free based on what she knows. There is one section where the secret police are justifying to themselves that unlawful imprisonment and even murder is OK in "the interest of National Security". This inevitably draws comparison with what has happened around the world (especially in our neighbours to the south?) in the years since 2001. The ending of the book tells us quite clearly where the author (who was apparently the editor of an anarchist magazine!) stands on this issue. And it has been interesting this week, watching the aftermath of the WikiLeaks publication of classified documents and the Interpol warrant for the arrest of the WikiLeaks founder (wanted in Sweden, of all places). Though the founder is wanted on a charge of rape, and I definitely don't condone rape, but this book has triggered the conspiracy theorist in me, and comparisons with Salander's situation are inevitable in my mind!

(***SPOILER ALERT***)

B. Kienapple, over at A Certain Bent Appeal, said that she was disappointed in the ending as she read her way through all 3 books in the expectation that Blomkvist and Salander would get together in the end, and then they didn't. I didn't feel this way, simply because I don't think that Bomkvist deserved her. Yes, he's a great journalist. Yes, he's persistent and works doggedly to get the job done and to see truth prevail. But he's a player who doesn't care about the feelings of anyone else. It is all done for the glory of Mikael Blomkvist. His sister sums him up well towards the end of the book. "My brother is completely irresponsible when it comes to relationships. He screws his way through life and doesn't seem to grasp how much it can hurt those women who think of him as more than a casual affair." I lost count of how many women he slept with, but most of them ended up sad, lonely, and disappointed.

(***END SPOILER***)

I did have some believability issues with this book as well. 2 characters surviving point-blank gunshot wounds to the head? And I lost count of how many hard drives Salander saved onto her tiny hand-held computer. How big was the hard drive of that thing?! It was also amusing at times to read about the computer use of the time. Anyone remember ICQ? And not a single mention of Facebook (no Facebook in 2004 - how did we ever survive without it?).

So am I glad that I read these books, and persisted to the end of the trilogy? Yes. Will I ever re-read them? Probably not. Will they make my top 10 books of 2010? Again, probably not. But they were good for an entertaining read, and Lisbeth Salander is one of my favourite characters in fiction in a long time!

Now off to the library to return the book before 9 and avoid overdue fines!

Seasons - Marianne Jones, artwork by Karen Reinikka

2010-11-28T13:21:00.003-05:00

I have been looking forward to writing this review, though I should probably say that my review may not be completely unbiased - Marianne Jones is my friend's aunt and Karen Reinikka is her mother!

This collection of poems and watercolours began as a project to raise money for the Red Cross School Nutrition Program which provides healthy breakfasts, lunches, and snacks to children and youth in Thunder Bay and Northwestern Ontario. Marianne Jones (who is a published poet in her own right) wrote 12 poems, covering the four seasons, and her sister Karen Reinikka painted 8 watercolours to illustrate the poems. I bought the "deluxe edition" that is bound in four separate volumes in a cloth-bound wrapper, however there is also a "chapbook" available with all of the poems and paintings in one volume. It is a very limited run, with only 26 copies of the deluxe edition printed (I have copy "K"), and 50 copies of the chapbook.

The poems are all short - many of them just a few lines - but beautifully evocative of this part of the world. A few well-chosen words can distill the essence of the feelings that the change of seasons bring. And the watercolour paintings compliment the poems seamlessly.

The books were designed, printed, and hand-bound by Chris and Laurie Wright of BookWrights Bindery in Red Rock (just east of Thunder Bay), friends of the Joneses and Reinikkas. The feel of the paper in the books is so delicate that my hands felt almost too rough to handle them.

As we are rapidly approaching the shortest day of the year, I want to end this post with one of my favourite poems from the Summer section. I can just picture the drive into town along Dog Lake Road, late on a summer night when the sun doesn't set until after 10.

A Little Night Music

Headlights illumine the yellow snake

splitting the road that leads home.

Above the road stars dance.

They dance to

the jazzy beat of the night.

Dipper twists and jives.

Roadside grasses sway ghostly.

They hear

the far-off song of the sky.

It's a long way

from earth to heaven,

a long way

to catch

those crazy constellations.

This counts as another book towards The Canadian Book Challenge at The Book Mine Set.

A Book-ish Quote

2010-11-20T19:05:00.002-05:00

The other day at the gym, I was listening to a podcast of Eleanor Wachtel interviewing J. M. Coetzee, Nobel Prize winning author and professor of literature. One question particularly caught my attention.

EW: "You've admitted a fondness for narrative pleasure, but you're also proficient in difficult and demanding literary theory. Which kind of reading do you do, the first time you go through a book?"

JMC: "I read for the story and have no shame about that. I wouldn't want to make a distinction between pleasure on the one hand and thought or analysis on the other. In fact, the ultimate fruit, I would say, of a literary education is to produce people to whom intellectual pleasure is possible; and people who are not ashamed of reading for the story because reading for the story, to them, is not just unthinking fun, but it is an intellectual pleasure as well. Writing has everything to do with pleasure, and the kind of thinking one does about writing has a great deal to do with pleasure as well."

Yay! There are other people out there who appreciate a good story, but also like to think about it as well!

On an completely unrelated note, I also want to put a plug in for my baby sister, who recently completed her first Ironman competition. You can read about her experiences here. A bookish connection? Reading books allows us to experience things that we may never experience in real life. And since most of us will never experience an Ironman, reading my sister's experience will allow us to experience it through her.

Lucy's Launderette

2010-11-19T18:34:00.003-05:00

It is pretty obvious that a book published by "Red Dress Ink" is going to be Chick Lit, and this book lived up to expectations!

The last several books that I have read have been a bit on the heavy and serious side, so I was in need of something light and fluffy for a change.

There's not much to report on this book. Anyone who has ever read any chick lit knows that it tends to be very formulaeic, and this book followed the formula to a T. Heroine of the story watches her life fall to pieces around her, hits rock bottom, and then gradually watches everything come together in terms of love, work, and personal fulfillment. A good modern-day fairy tale. In this case, Lucy is an artist who hasn't painted in years, works as a glorified gopher at an art gallery with a sadistic boss and hasn't had a boyfriend in years. After an affair with a cruel artist, quitting her job, burying her beloved grandfather, and trying to support the aforementioned grandfather's pregnant girlfriend; she ends up painting again, running a successful business, and with a handsome, rich, kind boyfriend. End of story!

A friend gave me her copy of this book years ago, and I was saving it for a time when I needed something fluffy and brainless to read, and it worked for me this week. The big thing that I liked about it (and the reason why Renée passed it on to me) is that Lucy is a very likable character. In some chick lit that I've read, I can't stand the main character, and want to tell her to just suck it up and get on with it, but I can see myself being friends with Lucy-in-real-life.

So that's about it for this book. And now on to something a bit heavier (another M. G. Vassanji is up next, though a big box of books arrived in my mailbox yesterday).

I debated on whether this book could count towards the Canadian Book Challenge over at The Book Mine Set, since the author was born in England, grew up in Victoria, BC, and now lives in Italy (I had a similar issue with Emma Donoghue's Room); but I have decided that it does count (the deciding factor is that it is set in Vancouver!).

Streams of Faith - Lois M. Wilson

2010-11-12T14:26:00.002-05:00

Reading this book was like looking into a mirror and seeing myself reflected right back at me.

I bought this book back in the spring, and it has sat on my "To-Be-Read" stack since then. I think that I was avoiding it because of the description on the front: "Young women canoeists struggle with God, death, forgiveness and other important matters in their maturity." I was thinking that it would be just interviews with the women who had gone on these canoe trips 40+ years ago as teenagers, reflecting on their lives since then. But this book is so much more.

Lois Wilson has worn many hats in her life - United Church Minister, the first female Moderator (i.e. head) of the United Church of Canada, president of the Canadian Council of Churches, president of the World Council of Churches, Canadian Senator, Chancellor of Lakehead University, member of the Order of Canada, recipient of the Pearson Medal of Peace, director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, and, according to the book flap, mother of four and grandmother of twelve. Her full title as given on the back of the book is The Very Rev. Dr. the Hon. Lois M. Wilson, CC. Can you imagine introducing yourself at parties with a name like that?!

I purchased this book directly from the author when she came here to Thunder Bay in June to preach at an 85th Anniversary Service for the United Church of Canada (and my copy is autographed!). The day of the service, I came home from work exhausted, and wouldn't have gone to the service, except that I had read an interview with Lois Wilson a few weeks earlier, and I was determined to hear her speak in person. What an inspiration! She is 82 years old, but you wouldn't know it to hear her preach!

This book originated in several canoe trips that she took in Quetico Park in the 1960s with teenaged girls from the church here in Thunder Bay where she and her husband had a shared ministry. 40 years later, she wondered what had happened in the lives of these girls and so she tracked them down and interviewed them. Her interviews touched on many topics, and the chapters are broadly defined by these topics - faith and spirituality in a broad sense; relationship to the church (for both the women still active in the church and those who had left); life-changing experiences; forgiveness; death; feminism; interfaith dialogue; bearing witness in today's world.

There are segments of the interviews transcribed word-for-word in the book, but these interview segments are interspersed with Lois Wilson's own reflections based on her experiences in her multiple roles, as well as teachings from other theologians. I was baptized into the United Church of Canada as an adult - as a deliberate choice - and many aspects of what drew me to the United Church are reflected in this book. Social Justice, ministering to others as we would to Jesus, environmental justice, interfaith dialogue - all of these make appearances in this book. I kept finding myself nodding in agreement as I read; and I have now compiled a list of other books which I want to read, that were cited in this book.

One of my favourite passages came early in this book (and this is Lois Wilson's own voice at this point):

"It always depresses me to read that 90 percent of Americans believe in a higher power. My response is, 'So what?' Does it make any difference to their social, political, economic, theological views or actions? To believe in a higher power is a safe and comfortable thing to do, but it may make absolutely no difference to one's life posture. But to align one's life and work with the One who is creating and sustaining a just community is quite a different matter. 'To do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God' (Micah 6:8) is one of the tougher implications of belief in a higher power!"

Now for all of my Protestant friends who are reading this, don't get me wrong. I do believe that salvation is "Sola Fide" or through faith alone; but I also believe that if we love God, we will want to serve him by serving others around us. Or to put it differently, the vertical relationship should be the model for horizontal relationships. Or to put it scripturally, "just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me." (Mat 25:40)

The book was well written, and flowed well. I don't want to compare it to reading a novel, as I was much more deliberate in my reading of it, wanting to savour every word and reflect on each thought presented. But I couldn't wait to pick it up again, each time I put it down. I can see this being a book that I will turn back to again in the future.

Laura Marie - I will loan you this book next time I see you - canoeing and faith in one book - what more could you want! This book also counts as a selection towards The Canadian Book Challenge at The Book Mine Set.

And now, I will conclude with one more quotation from the book:

"Humour is a prelude to faith, and laughter is the beginning of prayer. Laughter can be heard in the vestibule, and echoes of it in the sanctuary, but there is no laughter in the Holy of Holies. There, laughter is swallowed up by prayer, and humour is fulfilled by faith. Laughter can't deal with real evil, such as I saw in Chile during the Pinochet years, or in South Africa during the years of aparthied. Laughter knows it is powerless to defeat tyranny or oppression. Only standing in solidarity with God in the midst of suffering can bring resolution and hope."

Giller Part 2 - and the winner is...

2010-11-09T22:06:00.003-05:00

I've just watched the broadcast of the Giller awards show (live-streamed from the internet - very convenient since my cable package doesn't include any of the channels that it will be shown on).

And the winner is......

Johanna Skibsrud for her novel The Sentimentalists

And my thoughts are.....

I don't know.

This has apparently been the hardest book out of the whole shortlist to obtain a copy of. I haven't heard of anyone actually able to read it. My copy is supposed to be shipped to me some time later this month. I suspect that Gaspereau press hasn't been able to keep up with the demand generated by the shortlist, and will be even more swamped now that this book has won the prize.

So stay tuned. I'll be sure to offer up an opinion once I have had a chance to read this book!

North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell

2010-11-07T14:40:00.003-05:00

For some reason, this is one of the classics that I never got around to reading before now. I love Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy; some of what the Brontë sisters wrote (love Jane Eyre, dislike Wuthering Heights, neutral on some of the others); and have even slogged through and enjoyed some of Dickens' works. (As a side note, Elizabeth Gaskell and Charlotte Brontë were apparently good friends.)

I approached this book with some trepidation, as it had been enthusiastically recommended by the same friend who recommended Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and Wide Sargasso Sea. Well, I can happily report that she has finally recommended a book that I loved!

I was already familiar with the plot of this book, from the lovely BBC production (featuring the lovely Richard Armitage), and having now read the book, I can say that the plot of the film was quite faithful to the book with only minor changes. Basically, Margaret is 18 years old and transplanted from the pastoral south of England up to the manufacturing north (Milton, in Darkshire being a stand-in for Manchester in Lancashire) in the later years of the Industrial Revolution. She gradually adjusts to the different ways of thinking and acting, as well as the differences in how the social classes are defined.

Overall, it is a social commentary in novel form. England at the time was a very class-conscious society, yet Margaret tends to straddle all of the classes. Though her family has very little money, their roots are in the gentry, yet when they move to Milton, Margaret makes friends with, and socializes with both the factory workers and the factory owners. My favourite part of the book came when she is able to initiate a friendship of sorts between a factory owner and a factory worker. The differences between life in the "south" and life in the "north" are compared and contrasted (sometimes rather clumsily and pedantically, but at other times very subtly); as are the differences in values and class structure. The difficulties of the lives of the impoverished factory workers is highlighted, but the difficulties faced by the factory owners are also presented.

I loved Margaret as the heroine of this novel. She is such a human character - not perfect and not afraid to face her faults. She does grow and develop over the course of the novel - the only somewhat unbelievable aspect of her character is her age - she seems very mature in her thoughts and opinions for 18 years old. I could relate very strongly to her, and fancy several comparisons between Margaret and me:

- compassion for the poor

- working practically for social justice

- independent - not relying on anyone else

- not beautiful

- crashing through social barriers

- stubborn in our opinions

Anyways, it was a great book all around, and I'm sorry that I didn't discover it earlier. I've now borrowed the DVD of the BBC production from a friend, so having finished the book, I now have an excuse to sit down and watch Richard Armitage again!

Light Lifting - Alexander MacLeod

2010-10-31T18:07:00.003-04:00

This book, the 4th in my Giller read-athon, arrived in my mailbox this week. It is a collection of short stories, and I found it to be a very fast read.

As I said in my review of This Cake is for the Party, I find it very difficult to review short story collections. Overall, my impressions of this one are mixed.

I found the voices in the different stories to be clear and distinct, and I found myself drawn right into the action, almost immediately. Each story is distinct, and as expected, I found myself strongly relating with some stories, and not with others. And similar to This Cake is for the Party, the stories were just the right length for "short" stories - long enough to really be able to get into them, but not so long as to be considered a novella.

My biggest critique is in the structure of some of the stories themselves. Most of them just seem to end abruptly, with no real ending or resolution. This usually left me wondering, well, what was the point of that?

My least favourite story? I didn't strongly dislike any of the stories. Possibly "Wonder About Parents". It seemed very disjointed, jumping back and forth in time between 3 periods in the life of a couple with no resolution to any of the story lines.

My favourite story? Hands down, "The Loop." It is the story of a kid (age 9-12) who has a delivery job on his bicycle for a local pharmacy. He poignantly describes the homes and lives of the lonely house-bound people that he visits. This really resonated with me, as my current job is as a home care physiotherapist, and I visit many of the people described in their homes because they can't get out to visit the physiotherapist. I never before realized how many lonely people there are out there. Really, a visit from the physiotherapist should NOT be the highlight of a person's week. I am going to give away the ending, because that is really what made the story so impact-ful - the narrator quits his job after a traumatic experience, in order to preserve what is left of his child-like outlook on life.

So another mixed review for this one. I have one book left on the Giller short-list to read, and I'm not sure if I am going to get to read it before the prize is announced on November 9 - I just received an e-mail from the store I ordered it from, telling me that it is on back-order and won't be shipped until mid-November.

This counts towards The Canadian Book Challenge over at The Book Mine Set.

And so, with just over a week left until the prize is announced, my current Giller standings are:

1. The Matter with Morris

2. Annabel

3. Light Lifting

4. This Cake is for the Party

5. ?

Annabel - Kathleen Winters

2010-10-20T19:25:00.004-04:00

I don't know why, but I had been avoiding this book. Something in the premise didn't appeal to me. But now I have read it, and I'm glad that I did.

It is the story of Wayne/Annabel, a hermaphrodite born in 1968 in rural Labrador. His father decides that his son is to be brought up as a boy and so surgery is done to turn him into a boy, and hormone pills are introduced at the age when he should reach puberty. As might be expected, Wayne's female side begins to shine through, both in physical and intellectual ways. I won't reveal the ending here, but it involves Wayne/Annabel coming to terms with both halves of himself; the male and female within.

There are lots of interesting issues and questions brought up in this story. The question of sex vs. gender. In terms of sex, Wayne/Annabel is both male and female. But in terms of gender, he is brought up as a male, but later in life she begins to identify more as a female. In the end, he comes to terms with and relates to both genders.

I also can't help but wonder what would have happened if Wayne's father had made the opposite decision - to raise Annabel as a daughter. Would the same issues and conflicts have arisen? I suspect that they would have been less traumatic on Annabel than they were on Wayne. Given the culture of the time and place, Wayne as a boy was expected to be almost hyper-masculine - out trapping and hunting with his father, while showing off for the girls. Whereas a tomboy-ish girl probably would have stood out less (though Wayne's best friend, a girl, was bullied and ostracized for being different than the other girls).

It also brings up the effect that having a child who is considered different has on the parents, though not in great depth. Wayne's father tends to isolate himself from his family, spending more and more time in the bush letting his mother raise Wayne. While Wayne's mother ends up sinking into a deep depression later on in her life. In the end, there is a role reversal, and Wayne's father ends up closer to him than his mother.

I found the first couple of chapters (especially the prologue) tough slogging, but once I got into the book, it was a fast and engaging read.

My only other criticism was that I found a few of the secondary characters to be more interesting than the more central characters. I would have liked to know more about Thomasina, a family friend and the only person in the community outside of the family who knows the secret. She was a much more richly drawn character than Jacinta, Wayne's mother, but she disappears for the entire middle section of the book. And my favourite character was Wally, Wayne's best friend for a year or so. She has the potential to have a whole book written about her, but instead, after a roaring introduction, she fades away until she is re-introduced towards the end of the book, almost as a plot device.

This counts as another selection towards the Canadian Book Challenge over at The Book Mine Set. And it puts my Giller read-athon on hold, as the other 2 shortlisted books, while ordered, have yet to arrive in my mailbox. I've started instead into a classic that I somehow managed to miss along the way.

And so my personal Giller standings, in order of preference, are:

1. The Matter with Morris

2. Annabel

3. This Cake is for the Party

4. ?

5. ?

On a not-quite-unrelated note, I was browsing the Governor General Literary Awards shortlist earlier this week. Annabel is the only book to appear on both the Giller and the GG shortlist; however the GG shortlist includes one of the Giller long-listed books (Cool Water by Dianne Warren) and the two books that I was hoping to see on the Giller shortlist (Motorcycles and Sweetgrass and Room). The Boy in the Moon is also on the GG non-fiction shortlist.

The Matter with Morris - David Bergen

2010-10-15T10:52:00.003-04:00

I finished this book (my second read in the Giller shortlist) last night, and I loved it. I found the story very compelling, and well paced, and optimistic at the end.

The main character, Morris, is watching his life fall apart around him. His son was a soldier recently killed in Afghanistan, his wife has kicked him out, his eldest daughter won't talk to him or let him see his grandson, and his younger daughter, at age 17, is dating a man twice her age. He regularly uses an escort service (where he meets one of his son's friends who is working there); he is carrying on a correspondence with a woman in the US who's son was killed in Iraq, which may or may not develop into more; and he is on leave from his job as a syndicated columnist as his writing fell apart after his son was killed.

Morris is a very flawed character. In his own words, he describes the burden that he has to carry around with him, "his tremendous pride, his fear, his love of sex and high-heeled shoes, his envy and rage, his shame." And yet I was drawn to him, for who of us is without flaw. His flaws are balanced out by the good - his generosity, his love for his family, his introspection and wanting to make his life better. At times I found myself comparing (favourably) this book to Girl Crazy, another story of a man watching his life fall apart around him. In that case, I found nothing sympathetic in the main character, and found the characters to all be very flat and two-dimensional. In this book, I found the characters to be very well rounded, and with depth that is revealed throughout the book, and, well, human.

There are moments of profound sadness in this book. When Morris writes to Ursula about his son, "I am afraid of many things. Of sleeping and dreaming of my son and then waking to find that I was only dreaming. Of the darkness, of death, of life itself, of plodding through the day, always aware that i am alive when my son is dead." And yet the book as a whole left me with a sense of hope.

I'm sure that this book isn't for everyone. It is very introspective and lacking in action. However I enjoyed it unreservedly. I'm glad that it made the shortlist as I likely wouldn't have read it otherwise.

This counts as a selection towards The Canadian Book Challenge at The Book Mine Set.

And the current standings in my Giller reading challenge (in order of preference):

1. The Matter with Morris

2. This Cake is for the Party

3. ?

4. ?

5. ?

This Cake is for the Party - Sarah Selecky

2010-10-15T10:16:00.003-04:00

This was my first read from this year's Giller shortlist; and I always find it difficult to write reviews of short story collections. Each story is unique, and it is difficult to see the book as a whole.

There are 10 stories in this collection, and I found that I read my way through them fairly quickly. Almost all of them were in the 20-30 page range, which I find to be the perfect length for short stories - long enough to be able to get into the story, but not so long that I get bogged down with too many characters and plot lines.

My one criticism is that most of the stories are told in the first person, and I found it hard to distinguish between the narrative voices in many of the stories. The typical voice is female, 20-30 years old, repressed and unable to speak her thoughts freely, and somewhat whiney. However it is the stories that break this bold that stand out in my mind, now that it is almost a week since I finished this book. The story featuring a middle-aged male looking back on his life with his slightly-crazy wife; the story about a teenage girl about to be orphaned; the young couple torn by the ethical decision of whether or not to report a friend's daughter to the Children's Aid Society.

My least favourite story? Go-Manchura. I just wanted to slap the main character and tell her to pull herself together and get some confidence in herself.

My favourite story? Where Are You Coming From, Sweetheart? From the first sentence, I was drawn into the story of Christine, and how inevitable the ending would be. And by the time the ending came around, I was in tears.

This is the first collection of stories from Sarah Selecky. I don't think that it is perfect, but I do think that if she keeps writing, her stories will get better and better, and I look forward to reading more of them.

This counts as a selection towards the Canadian Book Challenge at The Book Mine Set.

So... My personal Giller reading challenge (in order of preference) stands at:

1. This Cake is for the Party

2. ?

3. ?

4. ?

5. ?

Musings on the 2010 Giller Shortlist

2010-10-05T21:05:00.003-04:00

Well, it's that time of year again. The 2010 Giller Prize shortlist was announced today, and so now I will attempt to read my way through the shortlist before the prize is announced on November 9. The only thing is, this year, I don't know if it will be possible.

I headed out to the local bookstore after work today, armed with a list of the books on the shortlist. But I could only find copies of two of the five books on the list! I suspect that in this case, it is because the books on the list aren't terribly well known, and thus weren't stocked by the local store.

The list is as follows:

The Matter with Morris (David Bergen)

Light Lifting (Alexander McLeod)

This Cake is for the Party (Sarah Selecky)

The Sentimentalists (Johanna Skibsrud)

Annabel (Kathleen Winter)

Of the five books, I not only haven't read any of them, but had only heard of one of them before the longlist was announced a few weeks ago (B. Kienapple reviewed Annabel back in the summer with a mixed opinion). And after only being able to find 2 in my local bookstore (The Matter with Morris and Annabel), I had to split my online order between 2 sites in order to find copies of the other three. What the?!?!?!? Two of them should arrive in time for me to finish them by my self-imposed deadline; but Chapters.Indigo tells me that Light Lifting may not arrive until mid-November.

There were also a couple of books that I have read in the past year that I was a bit surprised not to see on the list, notably Room by Emma Donoghue, and Motorcycles and Sweetgrass by Drew Hayden Taylor. However, given the propensity of book awards to list controversial books, I was glad to see that Girl Crazy by Russell Smith did not make the list!

So I guess the bottom line is that I don't know what to think about this year's list. I will read my way through the list though, and decide what I think for myself. In the past, I have generally enjoyed the Giller winners (generally much more so than the GG winner); however last year the format changed and the push was made towards non-Canadian jurors, and I haven't necessarily enjoyed the shortlisted books (notably The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon last year). It almost seems as though the flavour of the award has changed. But I really shouldn't pass judgement until I have read all of the books on the list (if they ever arrive).

So....

Ready... Set... Read!

Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys

2010-09-26T16:40:00.004-04:00

Given that Jane Eyre is one of my favourite books of all times, I'm a bit surprised that I hadn't heard of this book until this year.

(Spoiler alert: I'm assuming that everyone knows the plot of Jane Eyre, whether you have read the book or not. If you don't want to know what happens in Jane Eyre, you'd best stop reading this post now.)

This book is basically the story of the "madwoman in the attic" from Jane Eyre, based on hints given to her story in Jane's story.

What we know about the Madwoman: she was born in the Caribbean; she is the "infamous daughter of an infamous mother", a dipsomaniac and insane; Mr. Rochester married her due to the plotting of his father and older brother in order to bring him some wealth not normally due to a second son; following the death of his father and brother, he brought her back to England and locked her up in the tower under the supervision of Grace Poole, where she eventually burned down the house and committed suicide.

This book goes into her childhood in a post-emancipation Jamaica, her mother's poverty and second marriage, her reluctant marriage and the subsequent fall-out. An interesting concept, but I found that the promise didn't live up to my expectations. Compared with Jane Eyre, despite being set in a much more lush location (the Caribbean vs. England), I found it to be a much less rich book in terms of depth and description. I found the plot a bit difficult to follow, though that may be because the first person narrator is an alcoholic and possibly insane. I also suspect that it would make even less sense if the reader weren't familiar with the story as presented in Jane Eyre.

It does point out though, that there are multiple points of view to every story, and calls into question why the first Mrs. Rochester became insane. In Jane Eyre, it is presumed to be genetic, however in this book it is presented as a combination of childhood experiences, culture shock, repression, and alcohol.

Much as I love the book Jane Eyre and it's heroine, I never had much sympathy for Mr. Rochester - he struck me as being very selfish, vain, and condescending. And what appeals to me about Jane is her integrity and how she stayed true to her principles, no matter how much it hurt at the time. I never quite understood what Jane saw in Mr. Rochester, and his character didn't come across any more favourably in this book.

I borrowed this book from a friend who had read it from school (the same friend who recommended Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to me); and she warned me when I borrowed it that she wasn't a fan of Jane Eyre, but loved Wide Sargasso Sea. Sorry Kirsti - this is 3 out of 3 books that I disagree with you over! It did however give me a craving to re-read Jane Eyre, so I think that I will curl up with that book next.

The Girl who Played with Fire - Stieg Larsson

2010-09-24T19:57:00.003-04:00

Sex and violence; sex and violence. If I had to sum up this book, that is how I would do it.

Back in the summer when I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I wasn't sure if I would continue with this series. But enough people persuaded me that the other books were better that I decided to pick up the next book in the series. And they were right - The Girl who Played with Fire was much more interesting and engaging than Dragon Tattoo.

The one factor in Dragon Tattoo that I truly enjoyed was the character of Lisbeth Salander, and this book focused primarily on her. It picks up about a year after the end of Dragon Tattoo when Salander cut off all association with Mikael Blomkvist. It is a more conventional mystery than the first book - three people have been murdered and the police, along with Blomkvist and his magazine and a private investigation firm, have to solve the murders. Salander is the prime suspect right from the get-go.

I don't know what it is about Salander that appeals to me. She can be unpredictable, violent, anti-social, and stubborn. But she has a strong sense of justice that appeals to me; and she is completely self-reliant, not depending on any other person. And she is stronger than any person I have ever met in real life. This is summed up near the end of the book:

"Over the years she had been mixed up in fights, subjected to abuse, been the object of both official and private injustces. She had taken many more punches to both body and soul than anyone should ever have to endure. But she had been able to rebel every time."

In this book, the reader gets to learn about her history, and what happened to make her the way that she is. (I'm not going to reveal it here - you'll have to read the book to find out!)

I can't always turn my physiotherapist brain off when reading. I found fault with the injury in The Solitude of Prime Numbers, and there is an anatomy fault towards the end of this book. I challenge anyone with any knowledge of neuroanatomy to figure out where the bullet is lodged based on this description: "The third bullet caught her about an inch below the top of her left ear. It penetrated her skull and caused a spiderweb of radial cracks in her cranium. The lead came to rest in the grey matter about two inches beneath the cerebral cortex, by the cerebrum." Hmmm.... last time I checked, the cerebral cortex is grey matter, so if it were lodged beneath the cerebral cortex, it would be lodged in white matter; and the cerebrum refers to the main part of the brain so if it in the cerebrum, it can't be near the cerebrum. OK, I guess that authors can't be perfect!

This book ends with a cliff-hanger, so there is no question that I will eventually read the final book in this trilogy. I can't see myself buying the hardcover, so I will either wait for the paperback or track it down from the library.

Room - Emma Donoghue

2010-09-19T13:14:00.002-04:00

"Un-put-down-able" would be the best non-word that I can think of to describe this book. I can't quite say that I polished it off in a day as it was after midnight when I finally reached the back cover, but it was close.

In case you have missed the buzz surrounding this book, it is the story of a girl who was kidnapped at the age of 19 and locked in a room for 7 years; as told by her 5-year old son, Jack.

I heard Emma Donoghue interviewed a few weeks ago and she was influenced by the real-life story of the Austrian father who imprisoned his daughter in the basement for many years which hit the media a few years ago when the situation was discovered.

The book isn't perfect. I had trouble at first believing Jack's voice. For a child who is already able to read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and write and parrot long passages heard on television, his grammar should be better than it is. My almost-4-year-old nephew speaks better English than Jack. And even if he knows the word "sarcasm", I can't see a 5-year-old being able to recognize it.

But even though this bothered me in the first few pages, I quickly forgot about these quibbles as I got drawn into the story. And I really was drawn into it - I found myself harshly jarred back to reality when the phone rang; and I had trouble falling asleep after finishing as the world of the book seemed more real than the real world.

It is a very well crafted story, with 5 separate sections: Presents (describing life in Room as experienced by Jack), Unlying (Jack discovering that there is a real world outside of room - his mother undoing the lies that she has been telling him), Dying (the escape from Room), After (the aftermath of the escape), Living (learning to live outside of Room).

This book is the only Canadian book to make the shortlist for the Man Booker Prize, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it on other book prize lists this year. Certainly all of the buzz that I have seen/heard/read about it is positive, and I have to agree with that buzz.

This is yet another book towards the Canadian Book Challenge over at The Book Mine Set.

Spider Bones - Kathy Reichs

2010-09-18T19:24:00.002-04:00

While admittedly not first-class writing, I tend to rush out and gobble up each new Kathy Reichs book as soon as it comes out. When I read 206 Bones last year, I noted that the series had deteriorated from the early books but was looking up with 206 Bones. Spider Bones isn't the best in the series, but isn't the worst either.

It was a fast, easy read, and provided a change of scene from the usual setting of Montreal/North Carolina with a shift to Hawaii. And the mystery was a departure from the usual as well - there was a murder mixed up in it all waiting to be solved, but the primary story focused on trying to figure out how two bodies could have the same identity. That was a bit too easy for me - I figured out early in the book how the mistake had been made - but then there were lots of red herrings thrown in, and it was interesting to see how the characters proved it.

I have never seen the television series Bones which is (very) loosely based on this series of books, and for which Kathy Reichs is a producer, however there is a laugh-out-loud reference to the television programme in this book.

And if nothing else, this book has made me want to visit Hawaii some day!

And it counts towards the Canadian Book Challenge over at The Book Mine Set.

The Giller longlist is set to be announced on Monday - I'm looking forward to seeing which books make the list this year; and then the shortlist which will be announced on October 5.

The Gunny Sack - M. G. Vassanji

2010-09-14T17:49:00.008-04:00

I first discovered M. G. Vassanji as an author earlier this year when I read and loved The Book of Secrets. So recently I went out to the local bookstore and picked up a couple of his other books, and have been reading The Gunny Sack over the past few weeks.

Unfortunately, I did not enjoy this book as much as The Book of Secrets. The plot was much more simple and straightforward, and at times I couldn't decide if he didn't have a point to make and so was just telling a story; or if he had an important point to make but didn't quite know how to make it.

It is basically a fictional memoir, if such a genre exists. The narrator, Salim, is of (mainly) Indian origin, born and raised in East Africa, who ends up in

North America - a strikingly similar history to that of the author. Like any traditional memoirist, he begins his story by telling of his ancestors (the first half of the book), and then continues with the story of his life.

There were some aspects that I liked - the complex family structure with the story spanning generations; the fluid writing style; and of course I always love being transported in a book back to my "other home" of Tanzania. And the cover. If you compare the cover of this book with this picture that a friend of mine recently took on Zanzibar (part of Tanzania), you know that the cover picture was taken on the East African coast.

But then there were aspects that I didn't like. As I mentioned above, the plot is very linear and lacking the complexity of The Book of Secrets; and I also found that the gunny sack of the title, as well as the sack's owner Ji Bai, played only a minor role in the book despite being built up in significance in the opening chapter.

I am going to be generous though. The Gunny Sack was M. G. Vassanji's first novel, published in 1989. The Book of Secrets came 2 novels later in 1994, and is definitely a stronger book while retaining the writing style. I also have a copy of The In-Between World of Vikram Lall which was published in 2003 so I am going to hope that he continued to develop as a writer, and that this book will be the best of all!

The Gunny Sack counts as a selection towards The Canadian Book Challenge over at The Book Mine Set.

Becoming George Sand - Rosalind Brackenbury

2010-08-28T18:46:00.002-04:00

As a certified (or certifiable?) Chopin fanatic, I knew of George Sand because of her relationship with Chopin. So I was drawn to this book when I saw it at the bookstore, hoping to be able to read about the composer of the most beautiful piano music ever written.

Unfortunately, the reading of it didn't live up to my expectations. Rather than a novel about a feminist writer ahead of her time, her relationship with one of the great Romantic composers, and life in the rich literary and musical society of Paris in the 1800s; I found myself immersed in Chick Lit of the worst kind. Don't get me wrong - I enjoy well written Chick Lit at times (Bridget Jones anyone?), but this wasn't that.

I guess one of my biggest complaints about this book is that I found all of the characters to be entirely unsympathetic.

The main character, Marie, is researching George Sand in order to write a book about her. There are clumsily incorporated flashbacks to George Sand's life, but the main story focuses on Marie. And Marie's biggest problem in life is that she is trying to balance the security of her 20-year old marriage with the excitement of her younger lover. I'm afraid that I just can sympathize with a woman who complains, "In the twenty-first century, it seems to be necessary to lie to one's children as well as one's husband. What she is doing is simply not what married women, mothers, do. Not in this country, not in this town, not in this century, two hundred years after George's birth. When did this change happen? When did history turn over in the night and decree that adultery was a punishable offense again, punishable not by stoning or imprisonment, but by more subtle means? Being accused of cheating, of immaturity - the new sin - of being unfit to bring up one's children?" Call me old-fashioned (and Marie probably would) for thinking that marriage means something, including forsaking all others for your spouse; but when was adultery socially acceptable?

Marie does get her come-uppance - her husband finds out about her lover and leaves her; and her lover also leaves her to be faithful to his wife and children - but even by the end of the book, Marie shows no signs of acknowledging that her views may be maybe just a wee bit wrong.

And the characters in the flashbacks don't come across any better. George Sand seems to be quite stupid, while Chopin is weak and whiney. And as for the rich artistic community of 19th Century Europe? Lots of name dropping but never fleshed out.

My previously held views of the Chopin/George Sand relationship (and keep in mind that I am a Chopin fan) was of Chopin, the frail but brilliant genius who was bullied to death by the domineering George Sand. This book tries to portray Chopin as weak and selfish, who depended on George Sand to manage and plan and look after him. Who knows what the truth was. Probably somewhere in the middle.

Oh well. I am playing the piano at church tomorrow, and if nothing else, reading this book this week has inspired me to slip some Chopin into the service. Maybe one of the preludes (mentioned in this book) for the offertory...

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies - Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

2010-08-22T19:54:00.002-04:00

Let me preface this by stating that I am not a fan of zombies. In fact (confession time), I found the zombie scene in Pirates of the Caribbean to be so disturbing that I had to close my eyes and I couldn't watch it.

However, I am a fan of Jane Austen, and when a friend whose taste in books I generally respect (waves to Kirsti if you are reading this!) suggested this as a fun read, I decided to give it a try.

Basically, this book takes the events of Pride and Prejudice (which I'm pretty sure that most people are familiar with, either from the book or one of the many film versions), and sets it in an England that is under attack from zombies. Elizabeth, as well as being intelligent and well read etc, is also a fierce warrior, taking delight in beheading the "unmentionables."

The bare bones of the plot are essentially the same as in the original, with any possibility to include gore and fighting added in.

Was it entertaining? Yes, for the first 50 or so pages, until the novelty of the re-write wore off. I found myself missing the language and the subtlety of the original, as it tended to be over-simplified in this version. Not surprising though, considering the whole premise of zombies!

So I think from now on, I will stick with re-reading the original. And maybe occasionally drooling over Colin Firth in the BBC version!

The Solitude of Prime Numbers - Paolo Giordano

2010-08-17T18:18:00.002-04:00

I love prime numbers. To me they symbolize independence - "I don't need any of you divisors to stand strong as my own number!" When Dad was celebrating his 61st birthday a few years ago, he felt as though it was a bit of a let-down after his 60th the year before, until I pointed out that he had to celebrate a prime year, as another one won't come along until he reaches 67.

So it was the title of this book that attracted me. This book tells the story of two societal "misfits" who meet in high school, and stay friends into their adulthood. Alice suffers a skiing accident and ends up with a lame leg (though speaking as a physiotherapist, I don't see how a fractured fibula could result in the degree of disability Alice develops - it isn't part of the knee joint and isn't normally a weight-bearing bone), then subsequently develops a severe eating disorder and withdraws from her family. Mattia is traumatized by the disappearance of his twin sister (by his own fault), and develops self-mutilating behaviours and is possibly somewhere along the autism spectrum disorder, as well as being a mathematical genius. He is the one who considers himself and Alice to be prime numbers, possibly twin primes (two prime numbers separated only by one other number - e.g. 11 and 13, or 17 and 19).

Interesting concept, but unfortunately it didn't live up to my hopes. I found the vagueness to be annoying at times - Alice has an unspecified disability, her mother is dying of an unspecified illness, Mattia moves to an unspecified university. And the book just ends, with no resolution - just people drifting through space and time. I also found the characters to be very two-dimensional (though this was probably compounded by the fact that I started it just after finishing The Diviners with such strong characters) and therefore hard to care about.

It was an easy read, and tugged at my heart at times, but unfortunately not a favourable overall impression.

The Diviners - Margaret Laurence

2010-08-14T19:32:00.002-04:00

I read my way through the Manawaka books by Margaret Laurence the summer that I was 17, living in Rivière du Loup, Québec, staying with a family and learning French. If I had had easy access to any other books in English, I probably would have given up after The Stone Angel as I detested that book, but fortunately I persevered and each book got better (in my opinion) so by the time I reached The Diviners, I quite enjoyed it.

I have not re-read any of these books in the past 16 years, but The Diviners has been on my "to be re-read" list for a while and I finally picked it up this week. And I am glad that I did! Looking back at my 17-year-old self, I'm sure that lots of this book (and probably the others in the series) went right over my head, but I thoroughly enjoyed this re-read.

How to summarize this book in a paragraph? Now there is a challenge. Morag Gunn is born in small-town Manitoba; loses her parents at a young age; is brought up by the town scavenger (garbage collector) and his dim wife; goes to university in Winnipeg vowing to escape the life she has grown up in; marries her professor; becomes a writer; leaves her husband; has a baby with a childhood friend/lover; raises the baby on her own in Vancouver, London (England), and finally McConnell's Landing (rural southern Ontario). It is her search to find herself - where she has come from and where she wants to go.

I found myself really relating to Morag on this re-reading. Loved in her own family but socially awkward outside of home; moving from place to place in search of "home"; introverted and living inside her head. There is a great scene where Morag learns to cry in front of others - that was also a difficult lesson for me to learn. And a time where her daughter tells her, "You're so goddamn proud and so scared of being rejected," that hit home for me as well.

I went looking for an image of the cover of the edition that I was reading (Banatam, 1975 - Mum must have bought it when it first came out in paperback), but couldn't find it. But along the way, I learned a bit about Margaret Laurence, and discovered that a lot of this book was autobiographical - born in small-town Manitoba; loss of parents when young; early writing career; worked at a newspaper; university in Winnipeg; married then separated from her husband; living in Vancouver, England, Toronto, and rural southern Ontario. There is even an element of the predictive in this book as Jules, Morag's sometimes-lover, commits suicide when he has terminal cancer - Margaret Laurence did the same in 1987.

So a good book, yes; but I don't know if that will inspire me to go back and re-read the rest of the series!

Where God Begins to Be - Karen Karper

2010-08-08T19:50:00.003-04:00

What a delightful and though-provoking book this is. I first heard about it last May over on Amanda's blog, and immediately went and ordered a copy for myself.

In 1959, at the age of 17, the author entered a Poor Clare monastery and spent 30 years living in community as a nun. During that time, she struggled with a call to give up the community life and the security that it promised, and enter the wilderness to become a hermit and trust in God to provide for her day-to-day needs.

This is her story of growth and learning survival skills (chopping wood, fetching water, killing poisonous snakes etc) as well as her spiritual growth (sharing what little she had and trusting that she would have enough; seeing the beauty and cherishing what she once sought to destroy - wild rosebushes in this case; patience and humility in learning to quilt; being still and hearing the voice of God).

There are several quotes throughout the book that sum it up very well:

"There where clinging to things ends, there God begins to be." (Meister Eckhart)

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, ... and I -

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference." (Robert Frost)

"Your heavenly father knows all that you need. Seek first his kingship over you, his way of holiness, and all these things will be given you besides." (Matt. 6:32-33, a slightly different translation than the one that I am familiar with)

I enjoyed this book very much, and can relate to a lot of the struggles that she goes through - trusting that God knows what we need more than we do; balancing solitude with relationship; having the confidence to go into myself and evaluate what I truly think and feel. It constantly raised questions in my mind. What am I doing in my life that shows God's kingship over me? Do I trust that God will provide for me, or am I still clinging to self-reliance? Could I live a life in solitude? I think that I will choose to answer these questions in the privacy of my journal rather than here in public!

I had assumed that a hermits life implied total solitude, so I was surprised at how much of the book dealt with building relationships with others (not just God). From the two Franciscan sisters living down the road, to her cat, to other neighbours who always showed up with exactly what was needed, when it was needed. After this book arrived, but before I had a chance to read it, I loaned it to a Very Catholic friend of mine (waves to Sarah if you are reading this!) who said that she enjoyed the book, but that it wasn't what she was expecting. I wonder if it was this aspect that she meant?

This is a book that I think is going to stay with me, and that I will choose to re-read on a regular basis. There were just so many messages in it for me.

Motorcycles and Sweetgrass - Drew Hayden Taylor

2010-08-07T18:37:00.002-04:00

I loved this book! It had an original plot, it made me laugh out loud, and it was paced so that I couldn't put it down.

The story takes place in Otter Lake, a fictional reserve located (to the best of my reckoning) several hundred kilometers north of Toronto. Things get shaken up when Nanabush, the trickster in Ojibwe mythology, rides into town on a 1953 Indian Chief Motorcycle, disguised as a tall, muscular, White man with long blonde hair and eyes that change from blue to green to hazel to amber, depending on his mood (it is implied that this disguise was based on a Harlequin cover!). He has come to say goodbye to his former love, Lillian who is dying; and then stays around to seduce Maggie, Lillian's daughter and the chief of Otter Lake, and to create mischief in and bring magic to the community. Maggie's son Virgil doesn't trust this stranger, and enlists the help of Wayne, Maggie's recluse brother who lives on an island developing an aboriginal martial art, to fight off the stranger.

Now how's that for a plot summary?! It reads at times as a fairy tale, at times as a morality tale, and at times as a straight novel. I was reminded at times of Alice in Wonderland / Through the Looking Glass with the absurdity and delight of pure nonsense.

In the past couple of years, I have read several great books by Canadian First Nations authors (Kiss of the Fur Queen - Thomson Highway; Through Black Spruce - Joseph Boyden; Three Day Road - Joseph Boyden). This one was much lighter in tone than the others, but still touched on some of the same heavier issues - the residential school experience and legacy, abuse, current day conflict and land issues, education. There is a section discussing the difference between Anishnawbe and First Nations, and I did notice that White is always capitalized (and why not - after all, First Nations / Anishnawbe / Indian is always capitalized).

I think that this book will go onto my "to be re-read" list, and it will probably make my "Top Reads of 2010" list at the end of the year. It also counts as a selection for the Canadian Book Challenge over at The Book Mine Set.

The Boy in the Moon - Ian Brown

2010-08-01T19:57:00.002-04:00

This book initially grabbed my attention last winter when it was nominated for, and won, the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction. The topic fascinated me, and as a prize winner, I was pretty sure that it would be well-written.

But the real impetus for picking it up this month was that Ian Brown was going to be at the Sleeping Giant Writers Festival in August, and I had signed up to attend his session. Unfortunately, when I got home last week, I had a phone message from the festival telling me that Ian Brown was not going to be able to attend the festival, and I would have to choose a different session. I am disappointed about this (his session was the primary reason that I had signed up to attend the festival), but very glad that I have read this book.

Fourteen years ago, on June 23, 1996, Walker Brown was born with severe physical and intellectual disabilities that were later diagnosed as cardiofaciocutaneous syndrome (CFC), a very rare genetic condition. This book is his story as told by his father; as well as his father's story of trying to get to know and understand his son.

Walker's father does everything he can; from genetic testing, to meeting with researchers, to an MRI scan, to meeting with parents of other children with CFC; in order to learn about Walker and his abilities and disabilities. But in the end, it is actually his interactions with Walker and the people around him who love and care for him, that teach him about his son.

What really got to me was the poignancy of this story. The joy and the despair (at times) and the love and the sorrow. I had tears running down my face at times; and I laughed out loud at times. And the authors unique voice shone through at all times.

What I didn't like about this book was that I couldn't determine any structure. The chapter divisions seemed almost random; and the story was told neither linearly nor by topic. I don't know if this was deliberate, but I finished the book feeling as though I had been going around in circles and arriving (almost) back at the beginning again. I say almost because along the way, the author does have several insights into himself and his son.

But what I will remember from this book is not the structure, but Walker and the people who love him. I am going to close with a long-ish passage from the end of the book that seemed best to convey the message of Walker and his story.

These days, I have a fantasy of my own. In my fantasy, Walker and people like him live in a L'Arche-like community, with the help of assistants. It's a beautiful place, in a beautiful spot, with a view of the sea or the mountains, because for once, in this place, it isn't just those who can afford them who have access to the best views, but people who might need beauty even more, because they live with so much less. In my fantasy, this village is owned and inhabited by the disabled, on their schedule, at their pace, according to their standards of what is successful - not money or results, but friendship, and fellow feeling, and companionship. In my fantasy, it is the rest of us, the normals, who have to be "integrated" into their society, who have to adapt to their pace and their place. I can leave, I can go back to my more pressing and even more interesting life, but I can also return to live with Walker, as Walker lives - slowly, and without much of an agenda beyond merely being himself.

Because in my fantasy lots of people want to visit and live in Walker's society for extended stretches at a time. Composers, writers, artists, students, MBA types doing their doctorates in business administration, researchers, executives on sabbatical - we too can enjoy the privilege of living in Walker's village for a few weeks or months at a time, in pleasant rooms of our own where we're encouraged to pursue our work, our art and our studies. Our only obligation is to integrate ourselves into the disabled world by eating lunch and dinner with them, and, once a week, by giving one of the residents a bath. The rest of the time we are free to think and write and paint and compose and analyze and calculate. But by then the disabled will have done their work, accomplished their goals, and changed the way we see the world. We will have benefited far more that we have benefited them, but they won't mind. Walker will have made his contribution, by simply being there. As I say, a fantasy.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson

2010-08-01T19:41:00.002-04:00

So I finally succumbed to the hype and decided to pick this book up. I bought it partly because of all of the good reviews; and partly because the paperback version is so think that it is almost a cube and I had a long airplane ride to pass (which actually turned out to be 7 long airplane rides in order to get to the final destination!). Ironically, I barely picked up the book on the plane, maybe reading 10 pages before reaching Zambia. But once there, I made pretty fast progress through it.

It is a basic mystery book, with a twist. Mikael Blomkvist is hired to discover the truth about how Harriet Vanger disappeared forty years ago. He then hires Lisbeth Salander to assist him with digging through historical documents. They do solve the mystery, and in the process discover goings-on that one faction of the Vanger family would prefer to remain secret.

I'm not quite sure why this book has been so hyped. Maybe because the author died before it and the two sequels were published. Maybe because of the rumours that there are another one or two sequels in his computer that are being argued over in the courts. Maybe because it is a very easy read.

I didn't feel particularly compelled by this book. I found the first half of the book to be boring (and with such a thick book, that was several hundred pages). The next third was gripping and hard to put down. But then the ending of the book seemed to drag on forever and I struggled to finish it before getting onto the airplane again, so that I could leave it behind!

The story was pretty conventional, as far as mysteries go. Nothing special here, though the story that was uncovered was very disturbing.

And most of the characters didn't grab me either, with the exception of Lisbeth Salander. She is quite the enigma. Fiercely independent, brilliant, socially inept, and with an unexplained background. I haven't decided yet whether I will read the sequels, but if I do, it will be purely because I want to find out what happens next to Lisbeth, and hopefully discover more about her past.

So definitely a mixed review on this one. It kept me sufficiently occupied while away on holidays, but not much beyond that.

The Cellist of Sarajevo - Steven Galloway

2010-07-03T21:11:00.003-04:00

Once a year, or so, I like to indulge myself by reading a book cover-to-cover in a single day. Out of necessity, this usually happens on a holiday, and this year, my chance came on Canada Day.

My motivation for picking up this book in particular was because I lugged it to Africa and back last summer without reading it, and I vowed that now that my next trip to Africa is looming, I wouldn't repeat history!

Now that I have read it, I wish that I hadn't taken so long to pick it up!

The book is set during the siege of Sarajevo (1992-1996), and it weaves four stories together of people dealing with living in war time. The cellist of the title witnesses a bomb kill 22 people lined up waiting to buy bread, and deals with the trauma by playing Albinoni's Adagio in the spot where the people were killed for 22 consecutive days (this is based on a true story). Arrow is a sniper fighting for the resistance. Kenan is walking across the city under siege to fetch water for his family. Dragan is walking to the bakery to buy bread. All four have been profoundly affected by the war.

I think that what I came away from this book with is an appreciation for the mundane, commonplace, happy days, as these characters long for their lives to get back to "normal".

The character that I felt the most drawn to was Arrow. She was on the university sharp-shooting team when the war broke out, and was reluctantly recruited to fight for the resistance. At the same time, she is fighting to maintain her integrity, and constantly questions her own actions. I also found it fascinating to read how a sniper has to think. (And yes, I am a pacifist who can't imagine ever handling a gun!)

The book was so compelling that I had trouble putting it down, and I think that the story as well as the writing will stay with me for a while. I finished it up just as the fireworks were going off to celebrate Canada Day, and it was somewhat fitting that the sound of gunpowder accompanied a book about war.

This will be my second book for the Canadian Book Challenge over at The Book Mine Set.

This will be my last review for a while, as I am headed to the other side of the world for a few weeks. I have some books packed to take with me, so will get caught up on my reviews once I am home again!

Miss Elva - Stephens Gerard Malone

2010-07-01T16:30:00.004-04:00

This book was a giveaway from Wanda over at A Season to Read, and so I wish that I could give it a better review.

The story centers around a pair of sisters - Jane who is beautiful on the outside and cruel on the inside, and Elva who was born with some unspecified disability (?Erbs Palsy, ?CP - there is a mention of Rheumatoid Arthritis later in life - sorry, this is the physiotherapist in me coming out!) but is an artist. The sisters are friends with neighbouring twins, Gil and Dom who have a haunted past. Jane gets herself in "trouble", and there is an expected tragic ending.

I found it to be a very ugly book. The setting was ugly, the events of the story were ugly, and the characters were ugly (externally and internally). There seemed to be no beauty or hope shining through at any point.

For those other fans of L. M. Montgomery out there, as I was finishing this book, I was reminded of Mr. Carpenter's advice to Emily, "Don't be lead away by those howls about realism. Remember - pine woods are just as real as pigsties - and a darn sight pleasanter to be in."

It wasn't all bad. The story moved along quite quickly, and I enjoyed the style of story-telling. The author makes the reader think a little bit, as the story isn't presented linearly, and pieces of the plot come together as you go along.

But I was glad to get to the end of the book and leave that ugly place behind. Personally, I think that the world is a beautiful place; and that most people have at least some redeeming qualities; and I enjoy living with my world-view more than with this book's world-view.

I have signed up for the 4th Canadian Book Challenge over at The Book Mine Set, and this will count as my first review. I have also registered for the Sleeping Giant Writers Festival in August, and look forward to meeting Miriam Toews and Ian Brown.

Island Beneath the Sea - Isabel Allende

2010-06-25T09:36:00.005-04:00

I love finishing a book, and feeling disappointed to be leaving the world that the author has created. This was one such book.

This book was a birthday present from my sister - we went into a bookstore together, and she told me that I could choose any book that I wanted as a present - now there's a great idea!

The first 2/3 of the book is set in Haiti in colonial times - a time and era that I did not have much knowledge of. Haiti, then known as Saint-Domingue, had the worst reputation in the Americas for their treatment of slaves, as it was considered to be more economical to replace slaves that died from being overworked, than to treat them as humans. And Haiti is the only country in the world that obtained independence as a result of a slave revolt. I found that as I was reading this book, I was checking up every evening on the facts - what had actually happened in the view of history, and which characters were based on real people.

It is the story of Zarité (called Tété), a slave born with intelligence and a thirst for freedom (sounds like a cliché!), who is sold at age 9 to be trained as a lady's maid for the new wife of Toulouse Valmorain. The story follows Tété as she moves to the sugar plantation of Valmorain; as she is raped by Valmorain; as her first-born child is sold away from her; as she raises both the legitimate and illegitimate children of Valmorain; as her mistress dies; and as revolution breaks out in Haiti and the family has to flee the plantation.

The story then moves from Haiti to Cuba and on to New Orleans where Valmorain works his way into the Creole society there. I won't be spoiling the ending by saying that Tété is emancipated (this is revealed in the opening chapter) and settles down to live as a free "woman of colour" in New Orleans in the early 19th century.

I found the character of Tété to be very compelling, and I kept reading in order to find out what would happen next, and what decisions she would make. I also enjoyed the historical aspect of this book - I learned a lot about the history of Haiti and Louisiana in the late 18th and early 19th century; and it was interesting to see how it fit together with the history of France and the French Revolution. It was a book that kept me awake far too late at night for several nights in a row!

My one complaint with this book was that the ending felt a bit rushed. A lot of action and activity was crammed into the last few chapters. It was almost as though the author had conceived a family epic, but her publisher forced her to keep it under 500 pages.

One interesting point is that I was reading this book in translation (it was originally published in Spanish as La Isla Bajo el Mar). I often don't enjoy reading translations, but in this case I wasn't even aware that it was a translation - it was only when I checked the cover page at the end and noticed the name of the translator, Margaret Sayers Peden. Kudos to her, as the language of the book is very beautiful.

As is the design. It is a beautiful book to read in terms of typeset, layout of the pages, and feel of the pages. My copy has the cover pictured above, but I had trouble finding an image of this cover to use - there seems to be another cover out there that is much more common, but I like this cover better!

Girl Crazy - Russell Smith

2010-06-18T17:16:00.004-04:00

I grabbed this book off of my TBR stack last weekend as I was heading down to Toronto for the weekend and wanted something not too heavy that wouldn't tax my brain too much - airport, airplane, and hotel room reading in other words.

Well, this book lived up to my expectations in that respect, and for the first half of the book, the plot was engaging enough that it kept my attention. But then I got bogged down in the second half.

I finished the book on Sunday evening, so have had a few days to digest it, and I have come to the conclusion that I really didn't like it. Or I guess I should say, I didn't get it.

It is a strange book. I described it to my sister as being almost "Chick Lit" for guys. But, not being a guy myself, I don't know how it would stand up to a reader of the opposite gender. It starts off with the Chick Lit formula, but with a male author and a male protagonist. Guy just broke up with his "normal" girlfriend, stuck in a dead-end job, falls in lust with a girl much younger and in a different social class as defined in our Canadian society. They are happy together for all of about 5 days, and then things fall apart. Our happy protagonist is drawn into a world of drugs, violence, and gambling (actually, I didn't really get how the gambling chapter fit with the rest of the book), is still lusting after the girl, and then just when he seems to have turned the corner and managed to get his life back on track, there is an ambiguous ending.

So what were my (numerous) problems with this book? First of all, I didn't like either of the main characters. At first, I could relate to the protagonist, but then as he got dragged into the above-mentioned world, I lost my sympathy for him. And his girl was someone that I definitely wouldn't like in real life. Then there were the heavy issues that were touched on (human trafficking, gun control) but it wasn't even implied that there was something wrong with a society that would allow these things. And then there was the fact that I, as a female reader, resented the fact that all of the female characters were presented as being their bodies and nothing more. And finally, the writing. Though it kept me engaged, I did after a while notice that the author tended to re-use certain words quite frequently (this was also one of my many beefs with Twilight, if you recall). If I had to read about one more "taut" body, I was going to throw the book across the room!

OK - I'm glad to get that out of my system; and fortunately I am reading a much better book this week!

Yellowknife - Steve Zipp

2010-05-30T18:52:00.004-04:00

Imagine my surprise and delight when, out of the blue, I received an e-mail from Steve Zipp earlier this month, asking if I would like a copy of his book, Yellowknife.

And imagine my even greater delight (though not so much surprise) when I read the book and loved it!

I must confess that initially, I was a bit nervous to review a book sent to me by an author, but after reading his comments on another blog review, I was reassured that an honest opinion would be OK.

This book was also shortlisted for the National Post "Canada Also Reads" in March of this year - you can read that review here.

It seemed to be a very-much character driven, rather than a plot driven book, and oh the characters! From a drifter who develops a taste for dogfood; to a mosquito researcher who falls through the ice in the dead of winter; to a wildlife biologist who becomes catatonic in the basement of her office building after breaking up with her fiance; to a woman who spent her childhood walking and hitchhiking across Canada with her mother to return north; to a group of fish hijackers. There isn't any one main plot-line, but rather a half-dozen or so plots that all tied together in the end.

What I enjoyed most about this book was the humour, most of it bordering on the absurd. A secret underground society; an underground caribou herd; the above-mentioned fish hijackers; Ol' Slavey, the monster of Great Slave Lake; a mosquito research institute with a researcher on the hunt for white mosquitoes that are active in the winter (only in Canada!). Many parts were laugh-out-loud funny, including this, one of my favourite examples, which I shared with my sister as I was reading it:

"His name was Hugo Poisson, and he worked for the Mosquito Research Institute. Most of his summer was spent in the field marking mosquitoes with dots of paint so he could chart their ever-changing flyways. They migrated in the same fashion as caribou, forming hoards instead of herds, and the information he gathered was considered so vital to tourism that it was incorporated every year in the Explorer's Map."

The only plot line that I was disappointed in was that of Nora, one of the wildlife biologists. She was initially my favourite character; strong, intelligent, and funny. Her story took a twist when she broke up with her fiance and he disappeared, and she gradually became catatonic not leaving her basement office in one of the government buildings, even when her office was moved into a cave. But then, lickity-split, she finds out that she is pregnant, snaps out of it, becomes boring and marries a boring guy, then moves to Ottawa a third of the way through the book, and is never heard from again. I kept hoping that she would pop up again, but no such luck.

But that was only a minor detraction from my overall enjoyment of the book. I know that the characters are going to stay with me for a long time; and between my reading of this, as well as Late Nights on Air a few years ago, I really must visit Yellowknife at some point to see how accurate the portrayals are! I am intrigued...

Steve - if you are reading this, thank you for sharing your book with me. I hope that you will write more books, and I look forward to reading them!

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie - Alan Bradley

2010-05-27T22:15:00.003-04:00

This book has been so hyped up that I must confess that I approached it with some reluctance, worried that it could not live up to the hype.

Fortunately, I did enjoy it.

It is a not-so-traditional murder mystery, set in England in 1950, with an precocious 11-year-old girl, Flavia de Luce as the detective. Flavia is the youngest of three sisters (Ophelia and Daphne are the older sisters - I'd love to meet the parent who could give daughters such names!) and she accidently discovers a dead body in the cucumber patch one morning. What follows are multiple bicycle trips to the local library, a boys school, the local jail, and a local inn, as Flavia tries to sort out events from 30 years ago and reconcile them with what has happened in the cucumber patch.

I found the book well-paced and easy to read. What I enjoyed the most was reading about the antagonistic relationship between the sisters - having two sisters myself, I could definitely relate to some of what went on between them! And I've now loaned my copy to one of my sisters in the hopes that she enjoys it as much as I did.

And like The Golden Mean, it is set in a beautiful typeface, but unlike The Golden Mean, the story stood out above the font!

Now the book wasn't perfect - there are a few errors that better editing could have weeded out (these were particularly noticeable early in the book before I had decided that I liked it!); and despite all that has been said and written about Flavia, and despite the fact that I quite enjoyed reading about her, I did not find her believable as an 11-year-old girl.

There is another book featuring Flavia, and while I probably won't spend the money to buy the hardcover, I probably will either seek it out from the library or wait until it is out in paperback to read it.

The Book of Secrets - M. G. Vassanji

2010-05-18T20:07:00.003-04:00

I love a book that makes me think.

This is a book that I have been meaning to read for years, and I finally got around to it now. It won the first Giller Prize ever awarded in 1984, and as regular readers of my rambling posts know, I am generally a big fan of the Giller winners.

Plus it is mainly set in Tanzania, a country that I know fairly well.

What more could I ask for in a book?

The style of this book is very different, but I didn't realise this until I had almost finished it. It is a mish-mash of journal entries, first-person narrative, third-person narrative, letters, memos, book excerpts, footnotes. But they are all woven together so seamlessly that as I said, I didn't even think about the format until close to the end.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have found myself reading more memoirs in recent years, and I especially enjoy the ones that flow like a novel. I think that I can say that this is a novel that almost reads like a memoir. It is hard to believe that the events in this book didn't take place in real life!

The place came alive for me. I have spent a bit of time in Dar es Salaam, and it was fun to come across descriptions of places that I know (though in an era that I don't). I am interested to know what other people who have read this book but who haven't been to East Africa think of the descriptions - it is hard to read a book as an impartial observer!

It is a multi-threaded story where the threads don't come together until the very end. The story of an English colonist in East Africa; the story of an Indian school teacher arriving in Tanganyika (now Tanzania); the story of a family tragedy. I want to go back to the beginning now and re-read it with the knowledge of how all of the parts fit together.

So a great read through-and-through!

The Mistress of Nothing - Kate Pullinger

2010-05-09T18:16:00.003-04:00

This book has sat on my TBR stack for a few months, but I couldn't bring myself to get around to reading it. I think that it was partly due to the Governor General award that it won last year - I generally don't enjoy the GG-winning books, and find them dry and uninteresting. But after hearing Kate Pullinger interviewed on the radio yesterday, I had to pick it up, and polished it off in less than a day.

I quite enjoyed the read. It is very fast-paced and interesting, and kept me wanting more every time I put it down. Basically it is the story of 2 women - Lucie Duff Gordon and her "Lady's Maid" Sally Naldrett - as they travel to Egypt from England in the 1860's in an attempt to cure the mistress's tuberculosis.

Sally is the first-person narrator, and I found myself drawn in by her voice. Lucie Duff Gordon (who is a real historical person) comes across as quite a character and rebel for the time period in which she lived - dressing in the clothing of an Egyptian male, learning Arabic, becoming involved in politics, and generally doing things that a well-bred English lady didn't do. She also seems to have a touch of the "little girl, who had a little curl" in her (i.e. when she was good, she was very, very, good, but when she was bad she was horrid). As long as you were on her side, you were fine, but if you dare to cross her, watch out!

After finishing the book, I am surprised that it won the GG award, as it is a very female book. It focuses on the relationships between Sally and Lucie; Sally and Omar (their dragoman and father of Sally's child); then Sally and Mabrouka (Omar's first wife). It is strange that the award committee would choose a book that only appeals to half of the reading public. Mind you, that is me writing from a female perspective. If there are any fellows out there who have read this book, I would be interested in your take on it!

This Body of Death - Elizabeth George

2010-05-08T20:53:00.002-04:00

I love Elizabeth George's series of murder mysteries featuring the team of Lynley and Havers (and others), so when a new one was released 2 weeks ago, I rushed out and bought a copy. I have read all of the books to date, and one thing that I love is that the main characters aren't static - they have lives outside of their work, and you can follow what is happening in their private lives as they solve the mystery.

This book didn't disappoint in that respect - Havers and her neighbour Hadiyyah (my two all-time favourite characters!) feature thoughout the book, as does Lynley as he slowly recovers from the death of his wife (3 books ago, I think). A new character, Isabelle Ardery is introduced as the Acting Superintendent, and the end of the book implies that she will be appearing in future books. I will say now that I really don't like her, but her presence adds an interesting dimension to the team.

The other thing that Elizabeth George is brilliant at is the art of the red herring, and they are present in abundance throughout this book.

The plot was interesting - the body of a young woman is found in a graveyard with her carotid artery slashed, and no identification on her, which eventually leads to her home and family and friends. I don't think that it is one of her strongest plots though, as I had pretty much guessed the ending half way through the book. But I don't think that it's a case of an author running out of plots - What Came Before He Shot Her (2 books ago) is my favourite book that she has written.

My other critique of this book is in its length. At 689 pages, it could have easily been 100-200 pages shorter with some better editing. There seemed to be a lot of repetition that did nothing to forward either the plot or the character development.

But overall a decent read, and I look forward to the next book in the series whenever it might come out.

Beatrice and Virgil - Yann Martel

2010-04-30T21:57:00.002-04:00

I am one of those people who was really on the fence about Life of Pi (I loved the book right up until, but not including, the last chapter). I probably would have read Beatrice and Virgil eventually, but then my sister sent it to me for my birthday earlier this month, and it was bumped up to the top of my reading list.

I think that I liked this book. I found it quite engaging - as I read it over the course of this week, mainly in 30-60 minute chunks at bedtime, it was easy enough to pick up and put down with no problem remembering the story from night to night; but not so gripping that it kept me awake at night. That is, until last night when I was finishing the book.

I'm not going to reveal the plot, but I will say that there is a plot twist right close to the end that was as visceral as a punch in the stomach. In retrospect (hindsight being 20/20 and all), I should have seen it coming, but I didn't, and it kept me awake after finishing the book, reflecting on what had just happened.

Parts of it were a bit clunky - there are obvious parallels between the main character and the author; it was a bit slow to get going and to figure out where the story was going - but it was almost like a runaway train picking up momentum before crashing at the end of the line.

A lot of the promotion has been about the concept of a "flip-book". The main character is an author who can't get his latest book published because it is a flip-book with a novel beginning at one end and an essay at the other that meet in the middle; and apparently Yann Martel wanted to publish this as a flip book along with an essay on the holocaust. But then someone sensibly pointed out that including an essay would necessarily colour any reader's interpretation of the book. Though a lot has been made of this, I think that the whole thing was less relevant than the actual plot.

So as I said at the beginning, I think that I liked this book, but I'm going to need to take some time to digest what just happened. It is certainly a book that is going to stay with me for a while.

Half the Sky - Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn

2010-04-24T21:26:00.002-04:00

The sub-title of this book is "Turning Oppression into Opprotunity for Women Worldwide. I read it as part of the group study leading up to a short-term mission trip to Zambia in July, but given my interests (namely social justice and international development), it is a book that likely would have crossed my path anyways.

The authors are journalists who won the Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of China, and this book is very well written and easy to read with respect to writing style. What makes it difficult are the topic covered. The title comes from a Chinese proverb, "Women hold up half the sky," and it delves into issues that women face around the world. The authors have traveled extensively through Asia and Africa (I noticed fewer stories from Latin America), talking to people and collecting stories. They present problems such as human trafficking, forced prostitution, maternal mortality, and female genital mutilation; but rather than presenting only the problems, they also tell stories of people and organizations, and what is being done to combat these problems. The issues are grim, and in some places it seems as though they are getting worse rather than better, but each chapter ends on a positive note with the story of how issues are being addressed.

This book really should be on the must-read list for anyone interested in International Development to become familiar with the issues before going overseas. It is very powerfully written; and one thing that I really enjoyed were the photographic portraits of the women whose stories are told.

All that being said, the book isn't perfect. The authors do acknowledge their biases throughout the book (e.g. their views on how to solve the problems of forced prostitution - should governments legalize and regulate prostitution; or should it stay illegal and governments should crack down on brothels? The authors are quite clear in their preference for cracking down on brothels and give their reasons why.)

And one issue that I thought was brushed off was the issue of prostitution here in North America. The authors say, right in the first chapter, "Growing up in the United States and then living in China and Japan, we though of prostitution as something that women may turn to opportunistically or out of economic desperation," and then there is one similar comment along the same lines later in the book. But really, the issues underlying this so-called "voluntary" prostitution are the same issues underlying forced prostitution or human trafficking - poverty, abuse, and drug addiction. I would challenge the authors to show me a girl growing up in a loving middle- or upper-class family who plans to be a prostitute when she grows up! Most women on the streets here in Canada have been abused, are addicted to drugs, and have no other options. Life on the streets here is not fun (to put it mildly); but in order for someone to choose it, it has to be better than any other option open to her.

Ahem. Stepping off my soapbox now.

Despite this quibble (which, as it arose in the first chapter, coloured my reading of the rest of the book as I was always on guard for other disagreements with the authors), I do agree with the majority of the issues presented, as well as with the proposed solutions. An excellent read.

Here Lies Arthur - Philip Reeve

2010-04-21T20:07:00.002-04:00

From the outset, I have to confess that I love stories about King Arthur, and have read every version that I can get my hands on. But this one left me cold.

It was well written, and very readable, but it was author's take on the legend that I didn't care for. Arthur is portrayed as a small-time ruffian with his band of followers, pillaging and raping at will; Gwenhwyfar is a bit of a cougar (in the modern usage of the term); there is no round table and the building built to house the round table has a straw roof and collapses; and Merlin is a teller of tales and a petty conjurer, who is spreading his vision of who Arthur should be rather than who he really is.

I do appreciate the value of different perspectives on legends, but I could have done without this version. All of the magic, chivalry, and questing nature - everything that I love about the Arthurian legend - are gone. This is not going to make my re-read list, and I am going to have to try very hard to forget it.

Out of Africa - Karen Blixen

2010-04-13T20:57:00.002-04:00

I picked this book out of my TBR pile a few weeks ago, and it has served me well during this busy time as a book that I could pick up at bedtime and read a chapter at a time.

It is a book that I have planned to read for many a year (though I have never seen the movie); especially since moving back to Canada from Africa. I am in mixed feelings about this book, as I had expected to be.

What I didn't like: the colonial attitude, the racism (though the author seemed to pride herself on her lack of racism and relationship with the "natives"), the use of multiple random languages without a translation. I managed OK with the French and Swahili, but the German was beyond me! I was also frustrated by the lack of personal details - it was only by doing my own research after finishing the book that I learned about the authors marriage, separation, divorce, and affair with Denys Finch-Hatton; which were all going on during the period that this book takes place.

What I did like: the beautiful descriptions of the countryside so that I could imagine myself there. I am currently trying to write out some of my experiences in Tanzania, but after reading this book, I have to ask myself why bother - it has already been written and far better than I could write it. A sample: "One year the long rains failed. That is a terrible, tremendous experience, and the farmer who has lived through it will never forget it. Years afterwards, away from Africa, in the wet climate of a northern country, he will start up at night, at the sound of a sudden shower of rain, and cry, 'At last, at last.'"

About the language, I am quite fluent in Swahili, and it was nice seeing it used in a book, but I found some of the spellings and usages to be strange. I don't know if it is archaic usages because of the almost-90-year gap between when Karen Blixen learned the language and when I learned the language, or a difference between Kenyan and Tanzanian Swahili (though they are both lumped together as East African Swahili as compared with Congolese Swahili).

But overall a good read, and I'm glad that I read it!

Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

2010-04-10T19:56:00.003-04:00

I can't remember how old I was when I first read this book. I suspect that I was probably around 12 years old. I do remember that my mother gave it to me; and as neither of my sisters have read it (I think), I suspect that it may have been in order to introduce me to a new series of books that would keep me in the realm of childhood, rather than reading the "adult" novels that I was starting to discover. I can't remember how many of the books in this series I eventually read - I think that I made it through 4 or 5, and then our little rural library didn't have the rest of the series.

I don't think that I have re-read it since reaching adulthood, that random line which I draw either at the point when I went away to university or the point when I graduated and started working. Anyways, point is that I haven't read it in a long time, and yet somehow my copy has travelled with me every time that I have moved, and been filed away in my bookcase.

Last weekend was Easter weekend, and as a church musician, it is probably the busiest week of the year for me. On Good Friday, I was looking for something to read that wouldn't involve too much brain power, and my copy of Swallows and Amazons leapt off the shelf at me. (I have to admit that I was browsing the Children's bookcase in my library!)

It was a very enjoyable re-read. All that I could remember of the plot is that it was about 2 families of children sailing and camping out in the Lake District of England. It was well written and so kept me engaged and guessing about the plot; while not being too taxing on my tired brain. Plus it made me long for summer when the ice will be off the lakes and I can get my canoe on the water again. It is definitely going to stay on my shelf for re-reads in the future!

The Wife's Tale - Lori Lansens

2010-03-21T21:31:00.002-04:00

OK - after a week or so of re-reading, I polished off the new book by Lori Lansens in 4 days flat. Admittedly, two of those days were weekend days, but they were busy weekend days! I loved her first novel, Rush Home Road, and quite liked her second novel The Girls (though it didn't stay with me the way that Rush Home Road did). I'm not quite sure yet of my verdict on The Wife's Tale.

At first, I was completely drawn into the story, as well as the characters, but as time went on, some shades of disillusionment crept in. The plot ticked along just a bit too neatly. And then I was not happy with the ending. It was almost as though the publisher told the author, "Thou shalt not exceed 375 pages," and so the book just ended with no resolution of any of the plot lines or characters. What the...?!

Backing up a little, the book is the story of Mary Gooch, a morbidly obese woman whose husband leaves her the day before their 25th wedding anniversary. But it is really the story of Mary's life - her childhood, teen years, and married years are all woven seamlessly into the story of her trip down to California from rural southern Ontario in search of her missing husband.

Mary is such a well-drawn and believable character that I am sure that she will stay with me over time, I'm just not sure what I think of the story. I would be first in line to buy a sequel though, in order to find out what happens next! Does Mary maintain a healthy relationship with food into the future? What ever did happen to Gooch? What about those headaches that kept popping up at times? What about Ronni and the triplets? And did Eden hook up with Jack's friend?

Has anyone else read this book? What did you think of the ending? Am I missing something?

The Day the Falls Stood Still - Cathy Marie Buchanan

2010-03-07T21:08:00.002-05:00

I have to admit that I was disappointed with this book. After reading Sailor Girl last week, a book that I would pick up in the evening to read a few pages before bed and then find myself an hour later, struggling to find a place to put it down; I found it very hard to get into this book.

I think that it was mainly the characters. Other than Tom, the "romantic lead", I found the characters (including the first-person narrator) to be very wooden and 2-dimensional. There also seemed to be no point to the book - after Tom spends his life fighting against the hydroelectric companies who are stealing water from the river to generate electricity, we are told at the end that Niagara Falls now only has between 25 and 50 percent of the original water flowing over. I guess that Tom lived and died in vain.

Was there anything that I liked about this book? I guess that I can say the historical aspect of it. The book is set between 1915 and 1923, and even though I was obviously never alive in that time period, this book made me feel that I was really there. I have read more books set in WW1 than WW2, and so that time period is very vivid in my mind. This book, describing the advent of electricity, and life in an increasingly urban setting, and ladies fashion (Bess, the narrator, is a dressmaker), sharpens my image of the period.

So a mixed review this time. Am I glad that I read this book? Yes. Will I read it again? Probably not. Will I recommend it to a friend? Again, probably not. I'm going to take a break from new books now, and re-read some old favourites this week!

Sailor Girl - Sheree-Lee Olson

2010-02-24T20:42:00.002-05:00

This book first hit my radar when it came out 2 years ago, and I had always planned to read it, but never quite got around to it. Then last summer, I met Sheree-Lee Olson at the Sleeping Giant Writers Festival, and the first thing that she said when we introduced ourselves was "Oh, my heroine is named Kate - I should have no problems remembering your name!" So I knew that I would have to read this book!

My one regret is not reading it sooner - I just loved it. Kate, the 19-year-old heroine (who is nothing like me!) is running away from life in 1981 and gets a job on a laker, shipping up and down the Great Lakes.

What I loved most about this book was it's ability to draw me right into the moment and make it all seem so real and vivid. And as with the the best books, I was (almost) never aware of the author's voice, but was completely drawn into the narrator's voice. There are a few exceptions to this - one of the most ridiculous similes was a description of a storm on Lake Superior, "Undulating through the waves like a heifer swaying through a field of long grass;" however this was easily balanced out by the beauty of the description the page before, and the page after, and the page after that....

I have been fascinated by the lakers since I was little. Driving with my parents on the Skyway over the Hamilton Harbour on the way to visit Grandma and Grandpa, we would see the lakers gliding in and out, and docked waiting to be loaded or unloaded. Dad would tell us stories about how they would travel all over the Great Lakes carrying all sorts of loads.

Then in high school, I discovered the ballad "White Squall" by Stan Rogers, with it's tragic story of a young sailor swept overboard in a storm.

Later, I moved to Thunder Bay on the north-west corner of Lake Superior, and I can watch the same boats coming in and out of the harbour here, and think of how the same boats will probably end up in that harbour down in Hamilton. I had a chance to travel out to Isle Royale a few years ago by tugboat, and one of the memorable moments of that trip was passing by two lakers in the shipping lane on the way back to Thunder Bay.

And now, reading this book, I can put a picture to what life on the boats might be like.

One final note. Like The Golden Mean, the typeset in this book is beautiful. However, unlike The Golden Mean, the story was interesting enough that I didn't find myself distracted by the beautiful typeset!

The Sweetest One of All - Jean Little / Marisol Sarrazin

2010-02-07T14:01:00.000-05:00

This beautiful picture book was bought as a present for my nephew (3 years) and niece (16 months) - I'm writing the review in mid-January, but won't post it until I know that the book has arrived to them, as I know that my sister occasionally checks out this blog.

The story is simple - each one of the barnyard animals has a baby animal that is just right for them (the sheep has a lamb, the horse has a foal etc), and ends with the mother telling her child that the child is the perfect one for her. A beautiful story about parent-child love (think along the lines of Robert Munsch's I'll Love You Forever) that had me crying, even though I'm not a mother.

The illustrations are also lovely - simple, clear, and colourful, with a couple of playful cats that appear on each page.

I hope that my nephew and niece enjoy this story, and I'm sure that their parents (my sister is a big fan of Jean Little) will enjoy reading it to them.

Animal Vegetable, Miracle - Barbara Kingsolver

2010-01-31T15:41:00.002-05:00

I love a good non-fiction book that reads as well as a novel, and is impossible to put down! I am hit-and-miss when it comes to Barbara Kingsolver's fiction (I loved The Bean Trees but didn't care for The Poisonwood Bible), but this book is definitely a hit in my opinion. It is the sort of book that I would pick up in the evening, and put it down, what felt like a few minutes later and realise that I had read waaaaay past my bedtime!

As far as content goes, the subtitle is "A Year of Food Life", and documents the family's attempt to eat locally for a full year following the growing season from March to March. I have to admit that she was preaching to the choir - I have my own garden, frequent the local farmer's market, and try to eat according to the season. I only eat local meat and eggs, do my best when it comes to fruit and vegetables, buy organic milk that is a provincial (rather than national) brand, and avoid processed foods. However this book put my small efforts to shame.

Some of the funniest writing came in the family's dealing with the farm animals that they were raising. Now I have kept chickens in the past (the picture in my profile is taken with Chanel - a particularly bad-tempered chicken that it was a pleasure to eat!), and can relate to some of what the family went through, however a city by-law prevents me from having any livestock within city limits at this time. A sample quote:

"The previous morning we'd sequestered half a dozen roosters and as many tom turkeys in a room of the barn we call "death row." We hold poultry there, clean and comfortable with water but no food, for a twenty-four-hour fast prior to harvest. It makes the processing cleaner and seems to calm the animals also. I could tell you it gives them time to get their emotional affiars in order, if that helps. But they have limited emotional affairs, and no idea what's coming. We had a lot more of both."

The writing was honest - she admitted to buying foods that they couldn't access locally (coffee, flour for homemade bread, pasta) - and very informative. As well as the documentation of the family experience of the year, there are also recipes for food mentioned in the text, sidebars that explore some aspects of american food production, and most chapters end with her 18-year-0ld daughter's perspective on the experience.

I do appreciate the irony of reading this book in January in Thunder Bay when the only produce available at the local farmer's market are potatoes (and the usual meat, fish, eggs, and cheese). However this issue was addressed in one of the later chapters - in order to eat locally year round, you need to plan in the summer when you can freeze or can or preserve the locally available produce to see you through the winter.

And I was rather jealous of her gardening season in Virginia which is approximately twice as long as the gardening season in Thunder Bay! What - planting in early April?! The ground is still covered with snow with more snow likely for the rest of the month. Seeds can go in the ground here by the last weekend in May, but nothing with leaves for a few weeks later since we get frost most years until mid-June. But this book also made me appreciate what we do have available locally - unlike the Kingsolver-Hopp family, I can buy local wheat flour (locally grown and ground), as well as local fish (one of the advantages of living on the shores of the largest freshwater lake in the world - fresh and frozen lake trout, whitefish, pickerel...).

Two things that I plan to try based on this book. 1) Cheesemaking. This is something that I have wanted to try for a while, but assumed that it would be complicated. This book assured me that it is not, and pointed me to resources to help. We have lovely local Gouda cheese, but having been raised on local Cheddar, I would love to be able to make my own! And 2) Canning or freezing more from my garden / the market to see me though the winter. I have always frozen my garden produce (my green peas saw me through to December, and I still have raspberries in the freezer), but want to make it on a larger scale. Theresa, the Tomato Queen, sells the best tomatoes I have tasted outside of Africa, and next summer I plan to buy them in bulk to see me at least part-way through the winter.

Anyways, I guess that is all off-topic, but in summary, a great book. Well written, thought-provoking, and inspirational.

Baking Cakes in Kigali - Gaile Parkin

2010-01-24T13:41:00.002-05:00

I picked this book up on Friday night, and couldn't put it down until I finished (some time on Saturday evening). And it is so vividly written that after putting it down on Saturday evening, I went to bed and dreamed that I was back in Africa!

I have read several books (non-fiction and fiction) about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, but this book is probably my favourite of the bunch.

Set in 2000, 6 years after 1 million people died in 100 days, it is the story of a city and a country trying to rebuild itself following the horrors that left no family untouched. It centres around Angel, a Tanzanian who is in Kigali (the capital of Rwanda) with her husband who has been hired to work at the new university. Angel runs a cake-making business out of their apartment, and the book is based around her interactions with her customers and the others living in the same compound.

The genocide is always in the background as it affects all of the characters, whether they be survivors, or returning refugees, or in Kigali to help to rebuild the country. But other issues affecting contemporary Africa are addressed - the AIDS epidemic and the shame that people feel because of it; poverty and hunger; female circumcision; and grandparents raising grandchildren. And then there are the everyday happenings included - cooking meals and hospitality; love, courtship, and marriage; shopping and haggling over the price.

My favourite parts of the book were the character sketches and the dialogue. The characters are so vivid that they seem like real people (and apparently many are based on real people that the author knows). And the dialogue made me think that I was back in Tanzania with the rhythms and word choice. At times, I caught my brain translating the dialogue into Swahili as it was written almost exactly the way a Swahili-speaker would say it!

The author was born in Zambia, but spent 2 years in Rwanda as a VSO volunteer (Voluntary Service Overseas - the same organization that sent me to Tanzania). Even before I read the author bio at the end of the book, I knew that she must have spent some time in that part of the world, with all of the details included - mannerisms of the characters; the language use; the cooking description; the clothing. I am sure that many of the characters living in the compound with Angel are similar to the people that the author met in Kigali - from the Rwandans, to the diplomats, to the volunteers, to the foreign contractors. And the range of motivations for being there, ranging from an altruistic desire to help the people of Rwanda to a desire for the plum salary that many expats earn, are very familiar to me.

There were a few details that didn't ring true, and they did jump out at me, probably because I have lived in that part of the world. I don't think that most readers would even notice them. Things like the occasional word choice (Angel refers to a "flashlight" when really she would have called it a "torch"; ditto for a reference to "soccer" when most people would call it "football"); and a reference to the quality of coffee from Bukoba (which in reality is instant coffee made from the coffee beans that are too poor to export). But like I said, I'm probably being overly picky here!

If anyone is looking for a trip to central Africa without paying for the airticket, this is definitely a book to check out. Angel is from Bukoba, in northwestern Tanzania, only 50km from where I lived from 2003-2006. Only 6 months now until I get to go back and see my friends there! And I foresee an African cooking binge in my near future...

Galore - Michael Crummey

2010-01-23T14:37:00.002-05:00

This book first crossed by radar when I read an interview with the author over on The Book Mine Set. Then a little while later, I heard him interviewed on the radio by Shelagh Rogers. The story grabbed me enough that I figured that I would give it a try.

I have to confess that it took me a while to get into this book, but once I did, I loved it. The slowness is probably my own fault - starting it in the middle of the Christmas holidays rush, while reading another book at the same time. It took me about 3 weeks to read the first 1/3 of the book, and then 3 days to read the last 2/3!

The book is basically a family saga - 6 generations of 2 families whose members are either feuding or marrying each other in rural Newfoundland in the 1800s. Thank goodness for the family tree at the front of the book!

It took me a while to get into the rhythm of the storytelling. It almost seems like a transcription of one long session with a storyteller of the oral tradition. The plot doesn't follow a straightforward A to B path; rather it jumps around as one story reminds the teller of another, but then goes back to give more details from the original story, and then on to another story. Back and forth in time, but all of the pieces fit together in the end. That is probably why I liked Part 2 of the book better than Part 1 - it was easier to follow when reading the book in one sitting rather then a few pages at a time.

The characters (in every sense of the word!) were quite vividly drawn, and if they stick with me as much as I think they will, I will probably go back and re-read this book sooner rather than later.

And as this is book #13 for me in The Canadian Book Challenge, I am now officially done, 5 months early! Not that I'm planning to stop reading Canadian books, or anything...

2009 Best Reads

2010-01-01T10:33:00.002-05:00

The time has come, the walrus said...

To compile "best of" lists.

So here is my list of my Top 10 Reads of 2009. Same rules as last year - only first time reads allowed (no re-reads); and the publishing year doesn't matter, so long as I read it in 2009.

1. The Year of the Flood - Margaret Atwood

2. Three Day Road - Joseph Boyden

3. The Disappeared - Kim Echlin

4. The Bishop's Man - Linden MacIntyre

5. Too Much Happiness - Alice Munro

6. The Blythes are Quoted - L. M. Montgomery

7. The Composer is Dead - Lemony Snicket

8. Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi

9. The Orange Trees of Baghdad - Leilah Nadir

10. One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey

Compiling this list, and comparing it with last year's list, it struck me that overall, the books that I read in 2009 were overall not as good as the books that I read in 2008. Here's hoping for a better year in 2010!

The Blythes are Quoted - L. M. Montgomery

2009-12-28T10:46:00.002-05:00

I know that in academic circles, it is the thing to do to declare biases at the beginning of a paper or a talk. I'm definitely not an academic, but I wish to declare that I am a huge fan of L. M. Montgomery, so this review is going to be written from this bias.

I have read all of the fiction that she wrote (novels and short stories) that are currently published, as well as some of her journals, poetry, and some of what has been written about her, so I was very excited to hear that a new book came out this fall. It is considered to be the 9th and final book in the Anne of Green Gables series, and apparently the manuscript was delivered to the publisher on the day that Montgomery died. It is not a novel, but rather a collection of short stories set in and around the village where Anne and Gilbert Blythe lived after their marriage. The short stories are connected by poems written by Anne, as well as her son Walter, as well as dialogue within the family.

The poems and dialogue are what I was really looking forward to. All of the stories were previously published (most in the book The Road to Yesterday) and so none were new to me. But the poems and dialogue give new insight into the Blythe family.

As far as the poetry goes, I'm not and expert so this is just my opinion. While a couple of the poems really struck me ("I Wish You", "The Change", "Grief", "The Aftermath"), most of them were or the style that I tend to skim across. I can't help but wonder what Mr. Carpenter (from the Emily of New Moon books) would think of the poetry. I see lots of the same faults that he finds in Emily's poetry popping up in the poems of Montgomery - overuse of certain words (including "purple"), weak rhymes in places, descriptions with no underlying meaning.

My favourite part of the book is the end, where the family comes to terms with the death of the aforementioned son, Walter, who died in World War 1 (in Rilla of Ingleside).

My least favourite part of the book is the over-mentioning of the Blythe family in all of the stories - almost as if Montgomery felt obliged to pull them in to every story, while most of the stories would have been fine without the mention.

In the publicity of this book, much has been made of it showing "the darker side of L. M. Montgomery". In fact, to quote the dust jacket, "Adultery, illegitimacy, revenge, murder, and death - these are not the first terms we associate with L. M. Montgomery. But in The Blythes are Quoted, completed at the end of her life, the author brings topics such as these to the fore." I, however, was not surprised by this. These darker themes do show up in her earlier books and stories, though maybe not as consistently as in this book. The Anne books don't shy away from darker topics (the death of Anne and Gilbert's first baby; the effects of World War 1; and some of the episodes in Anne of Ingleside); the Emily books are quite dark in places; Pat of Silver Bush and Mistress Pat are downright depressing at times; and many of the short stories deal with the darker side of life.

But all of this doesn't detract from my enjoyment of her writing - rather, I find that it adds depth to it, when often Montgomery is dismissed as being too unrealistically cheerful and optimistic.

I can't wait to get home now to my bookcases, and compare the stories as published now in their entirety, with the previously published versions in The Road to Yesterday, and the other collections of short stories. Let me end with one of the shorter poems from the book that I enjoyed.

The Change

There is no difference this blithe morning

'Tween yesterday and today...

The dim fringed poppies are still blowing

In sea fields misty and grey.

The west wind overhead in the beeches

Is the friend of lovers still,

And the river puts its arm as bluely

Around the beckoning hill.

The rose that laughed in the waning twilight

Laughs with the same delight,

But, pale and sweet as the lilies of Eden,

A little hope died last night.

Anne Blythe

This book was read for the Canadian Book Challenge over at The Book Mine Set.