Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...