Arranged - Catherine McKenzie

I may have ranted once or twice (or more) on this blog about my dislike for what is affectionately known as Chick Lit.  (Probably the 3rd link best describes the reason for my dislike.)  However for some reason, I will still occasionally pick up a book of Chick Lit.

A few weekends ago, I was looking for some fluff to read.  I have been reading lots of non-fiction this year (partly course-work reading), and it was a beautiful summer weekend for reading out on the deck.  And so I picked this book up off of my TBR stack.

Actually, this book had been an impulse airport purchase a few weeks prior to reading it, as I was worried that I was going to finish the book I was reading at the time before I got home.  I didn't.  It caught my eye at the airport bookstore, as I had heard the author interviewed a year or so ago by Shelagh Rogers on CBC radio; and the fact that her main character is named Anne Blythe caught my attention (yes, Anne of Green Gables still ranks near the top of my Favourite Books of All Times list).

This book reminded me of why I will still pick up the occasional Chick Lit to read.  I didn't hate the main character (she was actually quite self-aware - very rare in Chick Lit; not whiney; and had a life outside of the romance story line).  It was funny at times.  It wasn't overly formulaic - in fact, the prerequisite wedding happens half-way through the novel rather than at the end.

The twist on the Chick Lit genre here is that the main character (the aforementioned Anne Blythe) realizes that she has terrible judgement about men, and so connects with an Arranged Marriage service and follows it through.  There is a plot twist in the second half which I'm not going to reveal here, but let me just say that I didn't see it coming.

And while the personality of the main character is nothing like that of her namesake, I did enjoy all of the Anne of Green Gables references through the book.  Her mother is a bit of a fanatic - it is even suggested that she married Anne's father just because his last name was Blythe.  The fact that Anne's brother is named Gilbert should say it all.  Here's one of my favourite passages (a conversation between Anne and her arranged husband, Jack):

"What was it like growing up named after a character in a book?" Jack asks as we linger over dessert.
"It was harder for my brother, Gilbert.  He had girls following him around, hoping to play out some romantic scenario they'd read about."
"Doesn't sound too bad."
"That's because you're assuming hot girls are obsessed with Anne of Green Gables."

Anyways, this was a perfect summer-time deck read on a weekend where I was looking for something mindless and enjoyable.  I'll keep Catherine Mckenzie (whose day job is as a lawyer in Montreal) in mind, next time I am tempted to pick up some Chick Lit.

What's So Amazing About Grace - Philip Yancey

This was my next book for the Lay Worship Leader course that I am taking - and an elective this time.  It is also a book borrowed from my church's library, as I had volunteered to do a book review for an upcoming newsletter.  And it is a book that has been on my radar as one that I might want to read for some time.  Am I allowed to list 3 reasons why I read it?

For the course, I was looking for a book that wouldn't challenge me too much (unlike a book read a month ago for the same course).  Life has been somewhat busy and stressful recently and since I knew I had to finish this book, I wanted to pick one up that I knew that I would finish.

So what is so amazing about grace?  I'm sure that everyone reading this blog, Christian or not, is familiar with the song Amazing Grace.  And yet what is grace?  The author pins it down to love/acceptance/forgiveness which is not earned or deserved, but given freely.  So many structures in our world are built on ungrace - earning your rewards - so the fact that we don't have to earn God's love really is quite amazing.

The book was easy to read and follow, and as I suspected, it didn't push me or challenge me too much.  I did get a bit frustrated at the big section of it dealing with American politics (I'm Canadian, eh - we have our own politics to worry about, so I tend not to follow our neighbours to the south too closely) and actually the overall feel of the book was quite American.  And the viewpoint tended to be that of an Evangelical Christian - fair enough since that is the perspective that the author is coming from - and as a Liberal Christian, I felt that my own perspective was not necessarily voiced always.

But overall, I'm glad that I picked this book to read.  I've submitted my formal response for the course - now I just have to write my book review for the newsletter!

Adventures in Solitude - Grant Lawrence

I bought this book back in January (I think), and I only just got around to reading it now.  I'm sorry I waited so long, since I loved this book!

I knew of Grant Lawrence from being an avid CBC radio listener; and last summer some of the stories that made up this book were played as audio pieces in local programs across Canada.  I loved the stories, and his story-telling style, but I can't stand his voice.  So this book was the perfect compromise.  The stories are there, along with their humour and tragedy; but without the voice.

Desolation Sound is on the BC coast, north of Vancouver, and when Grant Lawrence was a child (a very nerdy, mal-adjusted child), his outdoor-loving father decided to buy a large plot of land, and subdivide it for cottages keeping the original site for his family.  The first half of the book is the story of Grant growing up and growing into himself; learning to eventually enjoy his time at the cottage every summer after a rough beginning.  This half ends with teenage rebellion, and his refusal to have anything to do with his family and the cottage.

The second half of the book then deals with him re-discovering the cottage and his love for it as an adult.  Here, he is going back with his friends, and meeting the neighbours who have moved into the cottages in the area.  The whole book is interspersed with back-stories of the neighbours, stories of the history of the area, and stories of the geography.

Why did I love the book so much?  The stories were intriguing, the book was well paced, and the book made me laugh out loud at times, and cry at others (I finished it on the airplane a few weeks ago, and yes, I did cry at the end).  And above all, this book made me really, really want to visit Desolation Sound.  It sounds absolutely breathtaking!

My favourite quote from the book came not from Grant Lawrence, but from a quote that he included at the beginning.  "Language has created the word 'loneliness' to express the pain of being alone.  And it has created the word 'solitude' to express the glory of being alone."  (Paul Johannes Tillich).  I don't like loneliness, but I love solitude.  One of my favourite memories from last summer came from a day spent paddling my canoe by myself through the wilderness of Quetico Park - glorious solitude, but not an ounce of loneliness.

I guess this is a rave review!  I loved this book so much that I gave my copy away to my sister as soon as I finished it since I think that she and her husband will both enjoy reading it as well.

Simply Pray - Erik Walker Wikstrom

After an overall negative experience with the last book I read for the Lay Worship Leader course, it was a relief to pick up this one.  While the last book felt very prescriptive, this book felt very liberating.  I couldn't wait to pick it up, each time I had a few minutes to read.

The author is a Unitarian Universalist minister, but this book draws on a wide variety of faith traditions from Christianity to Wicca to Judaism to Buddhism to Islam to Hinduism.  He focuses on what is common between the different religions when it comes to prayer rather than what divides them.

The book is about prayer, but it encourages freedom in prayer and argues (if that isn't too strong a word for a gentle book) that there is room in anyones faith for a wide variety of prayers - from spontaneous prayers to recited prayers to breath prayers.  No one way to pray is more right than any other way, and there is a time for every type of prayer.  Even in the chapter that outlines a more specific prayer practice using beads, the book doesn't prescribe the words to say - the beads only gently guide the overall structure.

I'm glad that I read these last two books in the order that I did.  This book calmed my spirit after a difficult go with the last book.  Now I just need to visit the local craft store to pick up some beads.  I may just try the bead prayer practice suggested in this book.

And with this post, I'm caught up on the books that I have been reading in the past month.  I'm just about finished another book, so watch for more posts next week!

Christianity: A New Look at Ancient Wisdom - David J. H. Hart

Continuing with catching up on books that I have finished in the past month...

This is the next book that I read for the Lay Worship Leader course that I am taking, and the first book for the course that really challenged me.  I actually ended up stopping reading part way through, and only picked it up again 3 weeks later.  If it hadn't been required reading, I probably wouldn't have picked it up again; and it was with a real sense of relief that I finished it.

It wasn't all bad.  I enjoyed the author's personal stories that he interspersed through the book.  I liked the emphasis that religion and spirituality have to be balanced - that religion without spirituality is hollow, and spirituality without religion is unfocused.

But I didn't like the author's tone at times.  He seemed very prescriptive and restrictive in his approach, and that is really what turned me off.  "You should pray this way because it is the best way to pray." (I'm paraphrasing a bit!)  And at times, he passes off his own speculation as fact.  How can anyone know what the soul/spirit experiences after death?

Let me end on a positive.  I loved the chapter on healing and the emphasis on holisitc healing.  I am a physiotherapist, and have known ever since school about the difference between curing and healing.  I have also done some work in palliative care in recent years, and know about the importance in hope for healing.  But I currently work in home care, and one thing that has often bothered me is when a client tells me something like, "I feel better just because of your visit."  My (internal) response has always been along the lines of "But that's not physiotherapy!"  This book helped me see that maybe this is OK - so many of the clients I see are house-bound and lonely and having someone come to their house will likely contribute to healing.  I just won't tell OHIP (provincial health care plan, for anyone outside of Ontario) what they are paying for...

So I guess that I'm glad that I read the book, and I'm even gladder that I'm done!

Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George

I am a big fan of the Inspector Lynley books - every time a new one comes out, I rush out to buy it!  I picked this one up back in January, but unfortunately wasn't able to read it until April (yes, I am a bit behind on my reviews).

I enjoyed it, as will all other fans of this series.  All of the favourite characters are here - Lynley, Havers, Deborah and Simon St. James, Hadiyyah and Azhar...  The characters that carry over through the series have their stories develop.  And the mystery develops slowly but surely, like a ball rolling down a hill, until the momentum of it can't be stopped.

My one complaint is that I found that the book could have used better editing.  My hardcover weighs in at a hefty 608 pages; and as I was reading it, I thought that it could have been pruned significantly.  She has a new publisher with this book, and I suspect that there may have been a new editor involved as well.  The story was there, but it wasn't as tight as her previous books.

I will stick with the series though, if for no reason than this book ended with a major cliff-hanger.  No more to say on this here, since I don't want to include any spoilers!  Based on the cliff-hanger though, I have great hopes that the next book will focus more on Barbara Havers, my favourite character in the series!

The Salterton Trilogy - Robertson Davies

I'm cheating a little bit here by reviewing 3 books in one post, but since I originally read them as a trilogy; and have just finished re-reading them as a trilogy; I am going to review them as a trilogy! These count as books 6, 7, and 8 in my attempt to re-read 13 Canadian books for The Canadian Book Challenge over at The Book Mine Set. (5 books to go, and only 3 months left in the challenge. Can I do it?)

So, using the format that I have been using for these reviews, here goes...

Book(s): Tempest-Tost, A Leaven of Malice, and A Mixture of Frailties, aka The Salterton Trilogy. My copies are all in one volume (one rather thick-ish volume). I'm not sure that I like these covers that Penguin is currently using.

First Read: The spring of 1995. For anyone who attended high school in the same province as me, in the same era, I read them for my OAC English Independent Study. At that point, I had read all of Robertson Davies' other books, loved him as an author, planned on reading these books anyways, so why not read them for credit!

Original Impressions: Not surprisingly, I loved them. I went into the books expecting to enjoy them, so I did. I don't have the essay that I wrote about these books, but I remember the thesis - that these books marked Robertson Davies' transition from playwright to novelist. He had previously written several plays, and when he came up with the idea for Tempest-Tost (a group of amateur actors put on a performance of Shakespeare's The Tempest), he figured that he would never get a group of actors to actually perform it as a play, since it is essentially poking fun at amateur actors and theatre groups. And so he wrote it as a novel, changing the direction of his future writing career. My essay was probably a bunch of pompous garbage, but I did inspire my English teacher to read these books (he hadn't previously, even though we were studying another Robertson Davies novel - Fifth Business - that year).

Current Impression: I have re-read these books many times over the years. Robertson Davies is one of my laugh-out-loud authors. I love his ironic sense of humour and his ability to draw such sharp characters. I still enjoy them. And I still agree with that original essay, though I could probably write it much better now. The first two books in the trilogy read more like plays - very character and action driven; an ensemble cast; episodic - I could almost see the scene and act divisions; and a romp with not much growth from beginning to end. But by the 3rd novel, there is a distinct main character who has grown by the end of the book.

The three books are held together by a common setting (Salterton - based on Kingston, Ontario) and by many common characters. The third book deviates a bit - it starts out in Salterton and the opening chapter gives the impression that the cast of characters is going to be similar to the previous books; but a new "main character" is quickly introduced, and the main plot line moves to London (England, not Ontario).

Let me say here and now that these books contain what is probably my favourite character in all of fiction - Humphrey Cobbler. How can I not like a character who is described as follows: "Cobbler was a man so alive, and so apparently happy, that the air around him seemed charged with his delight in life." Or who can declaim a speech such as, "Purcell! What a genius! And lucky, too. Nobody has ever thought to blow him up into a God-like Genius, like poor old Bach, or a Misunderstood Genius, like poor old Mozart, or a Wicked and Immoral Genius, like poor old Wagner. Purcell is just a nice, simple Genius, rollicking happily through Eternity. The boobs and the gramophone salesmen and the music hucksters haven't discovered him yet and please God they never will. Kids don't peck and mess at little scraps of Purcell for examinations. Arthritic organists don't torture Purcell in chapels and tin Bethels all over the country on Sundays, while the middle classes are pretending to be holy. Purcell is still left for people who really like music." I don't remember ever pecking away at Purcell's music for examinations; but I do torture Purcell on the organ the occasional Sunday! (Though I'm not yet arthritic.) I would love to meet Cobbler in person, but I don't know if I would be able to take his intensity if I had him as my teacher.

OK - diversion over. These books were written in the 1950s, and while there are a few cultural references that can place the books in that decade (see the gramophone reference above!), I can almost imagine much of them being written today.

One thing that bothered me on this re-read is Revelstoke's treatment of Monica in A Mixture of Frailties. Their relationship seems to be very much that of the abuser and his victim (psychological rather than physical); and possibly because I am older now than I was when I first read this book, it seemed more tinged by horror. I know that in the decade in which this book was written, domestic abuse was present by not openly acknowledged; but in this book, other characters reference it, and in the end she is free of him.

But all-in-all, these books include all that I love about Robertson Davies' writing, and really do show his development as an author. They will probably cycle through my re-read list every few years!