Bones are Forever - Kathy Reichs

Kathy Reichs tends to release a new book every year in late-August; and like clockwork, I pick up a copy the first time I see them on sale.  I think that I have mentioned in previous reviews of her books that she went through a slump for a couple of books a few years back, and I almost gave up on the series, but her more recent books have bounced back and this one is no exception.

I find it difficult to review mystery books without giving away too many of the plot twists, so please excuse me if this comes across as a somewhat vague review!

Tempe, the main character through the series, is a forensic anthropologist (i.e. she works in a morgue and handles the bodies that are too far degraded for the other medical examiners to handle - fire, water, and time being the biggest hazards).  She splits her time between Montréal and Charlotte, North Carolina.  Having spent 4 years on Montréal, the books set in Canada tend to appeal the most to me, since I can recognize locations around the city.

This book starts out on Montréal with the discovery of 3 infant skeletons / bodies in an apartment.  The chase then goes to Edmonton and eventually to Yellowknife.  It would take someone familiar with Edmonton and Yellowknife to know if the author captured those cities as well as she does Montréal, but it felt realistic to me!

There are the usual plot twists that I expect from a good mystery story, and as usual for Kathy Reichs, there are a couple of plots that end up twisted together in the final resolution of the book.  I did guess the ending in advance, but it was still satisfying to see the resolution coming.  I think that is why I enjoy mystery books on occasion - I know that there is going to be a good, satisfactory resolution after a few hundred pages of action and build-up!

So I will keep picking up her books each August when they are released.  I am happy to support a (part-) Canadian author by buying the books, even though I usually don't buy mysteries (they usually don't stand up to re-reading!).  I've passed this book on to my aunt and uncle, and told them to pass it along once they have finished with it!

Forgotten - Catherine McKenzie

Earlier this year, I picked up Catherine McKenzie's book Arranged as an impulse airport purchase.  Well, it wasn't a planned purchase, but I had heard her interviewed on the CBC and planned to read the book at some point.  And then I read it in a day and loved it.  I generally don't enjoy Chick Lit, but for some reason read a few books in that genre every year.  And books like Arranged are the reason why - they show what good Chick Lit can be - likable heroines, interesting and original plots.  And so based on my reading of that book, I had planned on picking up her other books when I was looking for an easy but enjoyable read.

So... imagine my delight when Harper Collins e-mailed me back in August, asking if they could please send me a copy of her newest book to read and review!  A book that I was planning to read (and probably buy) at some point, being sent to me for free!

I've had this book on my TBR stack for a while, but as I noted a few posts ago, my for-fun reading time has been somewhat limited this fall.  But this week I am on vacation with a beach and sun and lots of time to read, so I packed several of the lighter reads from my TBR stack in my suitcase.  This one was the first one up, and like Arranged, I polished it off in less than a day.

The premise in this one is very unique.  Emma, the main character, travels to Africa (to the fictional country of Tswanaland) for a month after the death of her mother.  She gets sick while there, and while recovering in a remote village, the country is hit by a devastating earthquake.  She has no way to communicate with her friends back home to let them know that she is alive; no way to travel to the capital city; and no way to fly out of the country until the airport has been re-built.  Fast-forward 6 months later and she arrives home to discover that she has been declared missing and presumed dead.

Can you imagine not having anywhere to live (her landlord got rid of her stuff and re-rented out her apartment), no job (she was a lawyer and lost all seniority as her cases got re-assigned), no boyfriend (he hooked up with her nemesis), and no mother, whose death she was trying to escape with her trip?

The premise intrigued me.  Emma was a likable character.  Not perfect, but very endearing.  Dominic, the love interest (this is Chick Lit after all) is also likable.  The emotions felt real as Emma dealt with the aftermath of her mother's death as well as the confusion of needing to start her life over again.  The writing was solid (I was reading an Advance Reader's Copy - I'm assuming that the handful of typos were corrected before the book was released).

So... this book has not changed my opinion of Catherine McKenzie.  I will continue to pick up her books when I am looking for something light and enjoyable!

419 - Will Ferguson

I want to start out by saying that I read this book before it won the Giller Prize!  I picked up all 5 short-listed books when the shortlist was announced back at the beginning of October; but my for-fun reading time was quite limited and I didn't have time to read my way through the whole list.  So instead, when I had some reading time, I picked up the short-listed book that interested me the most and lo and behold, a few weeks later, it takes the prize!

I admit that I am a sucker for any book set in Africa, and that is probably why I picked this one out of the shortlist to read.  419 refers to the section of the Nigerian criminal code to do with fraud.  I'm sure that anyone who is online receives these e-mails on a regular basis.  "Dear Madam, I am writing you because ....  Please send me $100 immediately by Western Union, and you will receive $100,000 in return..."  Fortunately I have a good spam filter on my e-mail account so only see them in passing as I empty my junk folder!  The premise behind this book is that an older man falls for one of these scams, loses all of his money and is about to lose his house, and commits suicide.  His family is then left trying to put the pieces together to figure out what happened.

At least that is the top layer of this story.  What I loved about it is how gradually the author introduces seemingly unrelated story lines; and the reader gets to see the different story lines eventually converge in the end.  Another story line is of the independent e-mail scammer working away in an internet cafe in Lagos, Nigeria, and how he gets drawn into the world of organized crime.  Then there is the young girl who is pregnant fleeing her home in north-eastern Nigeria on foot.  Then there is the layer of a young boy growing up in the Niger delta - known these days for the oil companies destroying the environment and causing violent conflict and kidnappings and murders.

But it was not just the layered structure of this book that I loved.  It has now been a month since I finished the book, and it is the images that have stayed with me.  A young girl, on foot, walking through the desert.  The absolute devastation to the environment, and thus to the people living there, caused by the oil industry in the delta.  A slightly agoraphobic and neurotic woman flitting between her condo in Calgary and the food court downstairs.

Will Ferguson is known mostly for his humour writing which I have never read, but based on this book, I will be picking up more of his books in the future.

I have loaned my copy of this book to a friend.  I had to leave it in her mailbox and so I e-mailed her the next day to make sure that she had received it.  She replied that yes, she had it, and that she was half-way through it already and loving it!

Catching up...

 It feels like a long time since I have posted anything here, and looking back at my posts, it has been a long time!  Life has been busy for the past several months, and I haven't been able to keep up with my reviews.  That doesn't mean that I haven't been reading though!

Over the summer, I did a lot of "fluff" reading.  Last year, I mentioned that I had found my latest guilty pleasure when I discovered the first Southern Vampire Mystery book (a.k.a. the first Sookie Stackhouse book), Dead Until Dark.  In the second part of August and into September, I read books 2-6 in the series (there have been 12 published so far with one more expected).  They continued to be easy and enjoyable reading, but I started to lose interest in reading one after another at that point.  Friends have loaned the rest of the series to me - I will probably pick them up at some point in the future to keep reading - just not right away.

Since September, I have also been reading the next set of books for the Lay Worship Leader course that I am doing.  I'm not going to write full reviews here, but will write a few sentences about each of the books I have read for the course.

 The Sermon:  Dancing the Edge of Mystery (Eugene Lowry)
We were told to pick one book on preaching from a list, and I picked this one because the title appealed to me.  I loved the juxtaposition of the word "sermon," a word with connotations of dullness; with the words "dancing" and "mystery."  The book did live up to my expectations, and I have found that it has really changed the way that I think about sermons.

Wonderful Worship in Smaller Churches (David R. Ray)
This book was required reading.  He defines "smaller churches" as anything with an attendance of fewer than 100; and so most of my worship experiences (in English!) fall into that category.  I did find that he provided a strong argument for the value of smaller churches, but I found him to be a bit prescriptive at times.

A History of God (Karen Armstrong)
This book was my elective from this time around.  It was very interesting reading - it looks at the way that the three monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) have perceived God over the past 4000 years.  I had no idea that there were so many ways of perceiving God, and my own perspective has been broadened.  I think that the most valuable insight that I gained is that while God remains the same, each time and place views God through it's own cultural lens.



Over the summer, I also discovered free e-books for the Kobo and Kindle app on my iPad.  The problem with free e-books is that you get what you pay for.  The advantage of free e-books is that they are free.  I am still opposed to e-books (I much prefer reading traditional paper books) and refuse to actually pay money for them, but when they are free....  I have been reading them at the gym on my iPad which has the distinct advantage of staying open on the ledge of the Elliptical machine (unlike a paper book), and you can make the font size large which is an advantage whilst reading.  But since they tend to be trash, I won't waste space here with reviews!

I have read a couple of other books, which I will write full reviews of in the next couple of days.

Still Alice - Lisa Genova

This book was on my TBR stack for several years.  I picked up a copy, probably 2 years ago, and then it just sat there.  In the interim, various people kept asking me, "Have you read Still Alice yet?"  I don't know why I didn't pick it up until recently.  Maybe I was a little worried about the subject matter - Alzheimer's Disease - since that is something that I see often through work.  Maybe I was a little worried about the "Heather's Pick" sticker on the front cover - I had yet to read a "Heather's Pick" book that I actually enjoyed unreservedly.  Whatever the reason, I didn't pick it up until I threw it in my pack for the canoe trip earlier this summer when I was looking for paperbacks on my TBR stack to take with me.

What makes a good canoe trip book?  It should be entertaining (i.e. a good plot); not too challenging to read as I am usually too exhausted after a day of paddling and portaging to be able to focus on anything too tough; and easy enough to put down as my eyes drift shut in the tent, often before the sun has even set.  This book met those criteria.

If anyone hasn't heard of this book (unlikely, I know), Alice is a Harvard Psychology professor who is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's Disease at the beginning of the book.  Actually - that was my only accuracy issue with this book - I had trouble accepting that the thought of Alzheimer's didn't even cross her mind (given that she is a Psychology professor and familiar with most of the cognitive tests that were administered) when she began noticing problems.

The book is not told in the first person, but it is definitely told from Alice's point of view.  Which made for interesting reading, because as time passes, Alice's memory and cognitive abilities deteriorate.  Alice's neurologist tells her early on that, "you may not be the most reliable source of what's been going on."  I know that in healthcare jargon (and I've been guilty of using the phrase as well), this is called an "unreliable historian."  Through the story, there are more and more holes that appear in the narrative as Alice's Alzheimer's progresses.

I mentioned in my last post that my friend's e-reader died part-way through our trip, so we both ended up reading both of the paper books that I had packed (Little Bee came home slightly soggy, but Still Alice is still in good condition!).  On discussing this book after we had both read it, we both agreed that Alice's husband was a bit of an a** in his dealings with Alice.  However on reflection, I wonder how much of this was Alice's poor memory.  It appears that he is springing a move from Boston to New York on her without consultation, but maybe there were hours of discussion prior to this but Alice doesn't remember them.  Her children, on the other hand, are overwhelmingly supportive, even when she doesn't remember that they are her children.

I'm sorry that I didn't read this book any sooner, and I'm glad that I packed it to take on this trip.  And I can no longer say that I haven't enjoyed any of "Heather's Picks"!  I plan on picking up the author's next book soon, entitled Left Neglected.  This one is about a woman who sustains a brain injury and ends up with left-sided neglect - also something that I see frequently at work.  I can't wait to see how she handles this neurological puzzle!

Little Bee - Chris Cleave

Still working on catching up with my reviews for books finished while canoeing last week.  We got wind-bound for a day which gave us both a chance to finish both paperbacks that I had packed.  LM (the friend that I was paddling with) had brought an e-reader which stopped working on day 5, so she was glad that I had packed a couple of real paper books!

Little Bee first came to my attention a year or so ago.  Two woman meet on a beach in Africa, only to re-connect when Little Bee shows up on Sarah's front step a few years later.  That was the extent of what I knew about this book.  But it is so much more than that.

First of all, I loved reading it.  It was easy enough reading and entertaining enough that it made great holiday reading (especially on a canoe trip where I am generally too exhausted after a day's paddling and portaging to be able to focus on anything more than a bit challenging).  And yet it brings up a lot of "issues", especially around immigration and refugee policies.

I hesitate to write too much here about the plot, because part of the pleasure of reading this book came in how slowly the plot and the past unfold through the chapters.  Let me just say that the original meeting of the two women on the beach was a lot more traumatic than I had originally thought.

The chapters are told in alternating voices - that of Sarah, an upper-middle class Englishwoman; and that of Little Bee, a refugee from Nigeria - and the author does a very good job of making the two voices and perspectives distinct without resorting to cheap tricks like changing the font (I'm looking at you, Jodi Picoult!).  And as I said in my last post, I admire male authors who can authentically capture a female voice.

I loved Little Bee (the character), despite her imperfections.  She has such a quirky sense of humour that I found myself quoting the book to LM in places (she may have been wondering why I was giggling out loud as I read in the tent in the evening - but then she had to share the parts that made her giggle when it was her turn to read).  Some of my favourite examples:

"I think I shall teach you the names of all of the English flowers," said Sarah.  "This is fuchsia, and this is a rose, and this is honeysuckle.  What?  What are you smiling about?"
"There are no goats.  That is why you have all these beautiful flowers."
"There were goats, in your village?"
"Yes, and they ate all the flowers."
"I'm sorry."
"Do not be sorry.  We at all the goats."

Or:

I (Little Bee) said to her, "I do not think you are wrong for living the life you were born in.  A dog must be a dog and a wolf must be a wolf, that is the proverb in my country."
"That's beautiful," said Sarah.
"Actually that is not the proverb in my country."
"No?"
"No!  Why would we have a proverb with wolves in it?  We have two hundred proverbs about monkeys, three hundred about cassava.  We talk about what we know.  But I have noticed, in your country, I can say anything so long as I say that is the proverb in my country.  Then people will nod their heads and look very serious."

I'm not going to give any details about the ending of the book, other than to say that it was perfect.  I was hoping all along that everything wouldn't wrap up neatly in 266 pages because that isn't how things happen in real life.  The ending was perfect.

I'm glad that I read this book.  I know that there couldn't be a sequel to it without ruining that perfect ending, but I do plan on reading Chris Cleave's other books.  In fact, LM found a copy of his first book,  Incendiary, in the discount bin at a bookstore on her way home from the canoe trip; and she has promised to pass it along to me when she is finished!

Why Men Lie - Linden MacIntyre

Last week, on holidays, I finished 3 books and now it is time to get my reviews caught up to date.  (I spent a week canoeing in the backcountry with a good friend - no phones, no computers, no internet - bliss!)  I read this one in hardcover - I finished it before heading out paddling otherwise it would have been too heavy to make the pack cut.

I enjoyed reading The Bishop's Man a few years ago when it won the Giller Prize, so when I heard that Linden MacIntyre was writing a companion book featuring Fr. Duncan's sister Effie, I couldn't wait to read it.  It is only recently that I realized that The Bishop's Man was the 2nd in a trilogy that is completed by Why Men Lie - The Long Stretch was published in 1999 - I think that I have just added another book to my constantly expanding TBR list.  I had a vague feeling during The Bishop's Man that I was missing a bit of the back story, and that feeling was much stronger during Why Men Lie.  The existence of a previous book would explain that feeling!

I had mixed feelings as I read this book.  I enjoy MacIntyre's writing, so it was a pleasure to pick it up and read his well crafted prose.  My problem with the book was the story - there seemed to be no substance to it.  Fluff.  Effie, a 50 year old professor at the UofT spends the book anguishing over why a boy isn't calling her.  This could have been the ramblings of a 15-year-old high school student.  I very quickly ran out of patience with her.

I do think that MacIntyre did a good job, for a male writer, writing in a female voice.  Not quite as profound as Richard B. Wright managed in Clara Callen (I really must re-read that book at some point); but still I was able to forget for most of the book that the author was a man.  I wonder - is it easier for a female writer to write in a male voice, or for a male writer to write in a female voice?  As a female reader, I am amazed when a male writer manages to write a female voice in a believable manner.  Not being a male though, I can never tell if a female writer is accurate in portraying a male voice!

So I'm glad that I read this book, and I will be hunting up a copy of The Long Stretch.  I just wish that there had been more substance to the plot.  It was an easy read - perfect for reading on vacation - and pleasurable reading due to the quality of the writing.

I have entered myself in the 6th Annual Canadian Book Challenge, and this will be my first of 13 Canadian books read for the challenge.  I didn't manage to complete the challenge last year due to a combination of 2 factors - I decided to only count my Canadian re-reads; and with the reading for the Lay Worship Leader course that I am doing, it left less time for recreational reading.  Last year (July 1, 2011 - June 30, 2012) I finished 8 Canadian re-reads, but if I had counted all of my Canadian books, I would have easily finished the challenge with 22 Canadian books read.  The LWL course is going to last another year, so I'm going to go with the easier version of the challenge - to read 13 Canadian books without putting any limitations on myself!