February 4th, 2012
#3 – The Spiral Staircase
After rearranging all of my books in alphabetical order, I was disheartened to have to start at the “As” again — but it meant that I am finally getting to some of the nonfiction that has been collecting dust bunnies for more years than I’d care to count, and hence: The Spiral Staircase by Karen Armstrong. A friend of mine, Deborah Birkett, who used to run a terrific website called Chicklit, had mentioned Armstrong either in passing or in something she had written or in some conversation she may have moderated. I am pretty sure that’s how this book ended up on my shelves — through her recommendation.
Armstrong, a failed nun, a failed post-doc, a failed teacher and a failed television presenter (yes, I’m being harsh but bear with me), finally finds her calling when she, after a long struggle with real life, comes to writing about comparative religion. It’s funny, I finished The Night Circus, a whimsical novel about real magic only to come to a very real memoir about a woman who loses her faith so colossally that she fears she’ll never find her place in the real world, the magic in her ideas about God and religion, so to speak, lost for the foreseeable future. In so many ways, Armstrong’s struggles to find her right place in the world are so powerful that it’s impossible not to cheer for her every single time life churns her out in a direction she never imagined for herself. (more…)
December 19th, 2011
#85 – Blue Nights by Joan Didion
Over the last few years, instead of sending sympathy cards for friends who have lost loved ones, parents, I’ve sent copies of The Year of Magical Thinking. It’s the one book that helped me on every level deal with the accident/death of my own mother. Didion’s exceptionally precise writing and her own deep, deep loss was both oddly exacting and yet comforting at the same time. It’s the most consistently accurate book about how to think about what the absence of the kind of love that we take for granted every single day does to the human heart, mind, soul that I have ever read. And then, we come to Blue Nights.
After the death of her husband, Didion’s daughter, Quintana Roo, died a complicated death caused by inexplicable but utterly explainable cascading medical situations that seem to define the word tragedy. Blue Nights remains the author’s meditation, for it’s hard to refer to it as a memoir, on the loss of a child. But any discussion of children cannot be separate from that of motherhood, of its failures, of its successes, of its utter inability to define your life outside of it once it’s happened to you. And Didion, balancing the life of a writer with that of mother was never a cause for regret, per se, but of reflection — and the results are brilliant.
Having led a life already defined by the inexplicable kind of tragedy that Didion herself has experienced (and I am not for once “putting myself into her shoes,” I’m just saying that my life has not be easy), it’s impossible for me not to relate on every level to this work. I am happy that this book is free of the platitudes that usually plague books of this kind — that the honesty required of Didion to even write about what happened to her excises any of the typically movie-of-the-week emotions that would feather a lesser book into melodrama. Yet, when Didion describes her own frailty, her wonder at who her emergency contact might be now that both her daughter and husband have died, and the complex relationship she had with her beautiful daughter while alive, there’s an undercurrent of honesty that a lesser writer would simply be unable to achieve. Her writing is direct and simple yet it aches with emotion. The book can write in one sentence what would take me paragraphs. My heart will never be the same after Blue Nights. There are lessons in its pages, and maybe that’s more the point, for me as a reader, that my own words will never come close to being able to explain how profoundly this book affected my consciousness. I have put it back on the shelf — it’s one to keep, to reread, to remember.
July 27th, 2011
#56 – The Big Oyster by Mark Kurlansky
When I alphabetized by bookshelves to gain some order over the suburban sprawl of my TBR piles (read: four book shelves), I neglected to include any nonfiction in my overall reading strategy. I see now this was a mistake because I really love narrative nonfiction, especially when it’s well-written and about New York City. The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell, while, yes, might be a bit repetitive and contain perhaps one too many historical recipes that feel like filler, fits the bill. I have never read anything else by Mark Kurlansky but I am ever-curious to read more of his nonfiction after finishing this book.
From the early Dutch settlers to the heyday of the Golden Age, New Yorkers have always consumed copious amounts of oysters. The social-anthropological thesis behind Kurlansky’s narrative fascinated me: human beings, in any situation, will simply ruin a natural, wonderful thing (oysters in the NY and surrounding harbours) by industry, profit and greed. And what’s worse, while the environmental message rings clear in this book, it’s amazing to me that even if they did bring the oysters back, the water at the bottom is so dead (no oxygen) that they wouldn’t survive. Ironically, as many activists point out, oysters are like vacuums cleaning up the waters for us. Annnywaay, that’s my rant about the ruination of our earth.
Back to the more fun things. It’s fascinating to examine the growth of a city through food — how it evolved, how it became an industry, and how said industry changed once the product disappeared for good. I loved how everyone in NYC: rich, poor, tourist, eats oysters — heck, my RRHB and I even took his parents to the beautiful oyster bar in Grand Central Station for dinner — all throughout history. Starting with the native peoples who first traded with the Dutch, through the English colonization and then downfall of their rule, and into the Golden Age, one thing remains constant: an unwaivering appetite for oysters among the inhabitants of one of the world’s greatest cities. (more…)
#55 – Bossypants by Tina Fey
Summer reading generally means three things to me: extremely popular bestsellers, chunky classics that I never get around to finishing, and chicklit. I know I shouldn’t consider Bossypants chicklit, but, in a way, to me, it was. I am not downplaying Tina Fey’s obvious feminism or her ability to spin a good yarn — but it’s more the sense of where her comedy comes from, a deeply funny, incredibly awesome redefinition of girlie. She’s confident without being boastful, extremely thankful of all of her hard-won opportunities, but also wickedly aware of her own limitations, and the limitations of a “Hollywood” life. Maybe I’m reading too much into it — because it’s really more of a series of vignettes than narrative nonfiction, which made for incredibly easy reading. Perfect for a week at the cottage by yourself with an infant.
I laughed out loud and I found so much of Fey’s self-deprecating humour, her voice, and her ability to find a positive message for women in just about every situation that it’s hard to remember what a force for change she remains in the “industry” (I say that like I am actually “in” any “industry”). I never found the read tedious like so many celebrity “memoirs” (and yes, it deserves air quotes, come on, you know it does). It doesn’t feel ghostwritten or contain any deep-seeded confessions that turn my stomach a little even though I’m dying to read them anyway, ahem, Ashley Judd (let me tell you, when I was a tween, bedtime reading was Mommie Dearest; I know, it says a lot about me. In fact, Mommie Dearest coupled with Sweet Valley High, Louisa-May Alcott and Anne of Green Gables — not much has changed all these years later).
April 12th, 2011
#32 – Committed
Dear Elizabeth Gilbert,
Should you have ever come to one of my book club meetings, you will have discovered that I am not a fan of the epistolary format. It makes me a bit crazy unless it’s Mary Shelley, actually. Yet, I feel the need to speak to you directly. Perhaps it’s the personal nature of your book or perhaps it’s my own selfish need to write a bit differently today — regardless, here we go, an open letter to you.
An apology to start: I really and truly hated Eat, Pray, Love. I didn’t give it a proper chance, however, and threw the book across the room halfway through India. The voice, the whining, the lack of appreciation for your life’s gifts, it all annoyed me to no end. And then I watched the movie (why oh why does Hollywood insist upon making movies about writers where they never, ever write? Aside from an email or two — to break up with a boyfriend none the less — the Liz Gilbert in the film never picks up a book or a pencil. Annoying. Didn’t that bother you?) and it affirmed my every action in terms of not finishing that book.
Cultural zeitgeist aside, I was weary to read Committed. In fact, I’m not sure why I did — and it took some effort, an extra trip to the library, a hold, actual dedication to read your book while caring for an ever-increasingly needy infant. But am I ever glad that I did. I’m going to say it loud and clear: I’m so very sorry. I was Judgy McJudgerson when it came to EPL, I couldn’t abide by the stories I was hearing of groups of women having themed parties and giving up their own lives for a year of self-journeyment. Maybe I was jealous. Maybe I wanted to be out there too — travelling for year and then writing about it. I mean, it sounds delicious. Yet, something in Committed, maybe it was the word “skeptic” in the book’s subtitle that caught me, or maybe it was the subject matter (being a happily married lady myself but ever-curious about the social and political implications of the institution itself), but I was hooked by the first chapter.
In fact, despite the odd pairing of the more anthropological aspects of the memoir with your own personal experiences, I was somewhat taken in by your obsessive/compulsive need to research just about everything you could possibly about marriage before wearily entering into your own second union. I know Curtis Sittenfeld pointed out that some of the connections between your own research and experiences in limbo while waiting for Felipe’s immigration situation to be sorted stretched thin across your narrative, but I didn’t mind. I enjoyed learning about the people that you met, the marriages you came across, the kind of social history that seems to only be discussed between women but not necessarily written down. Women need to talk more about their differences. Or, rather, women need to be better aware of the social and political implications of marriage around the world — if only to appreciate and understand our own particular wants, needs, and biases.
But what I adored about your book, and what made me feel like a heel for being so judgmental about your first book, was the story about your grandmother. I, too, grew up with a strong natured, extremely intelligent, ridiculously amazing grandmother — a war bride who bravely left her family behind in England to start a new life in Canada with a difficult man, who held her family together tragedy after tragedy, and whom I loved so much that I still think about her every single day. Your grandmother, with her sassy fur coat and her determination, her happiness in that tiny farmhouse with her small kids and everything that she gave up — there’s a richness to her story that I felt was missing from the bits of EPL that I read. Maybe I should have been more patient. Maybe more Maud-like stories would have shown up in the “Love” section of your book. Alas, I didn’t wait around to find out.
I did, however, rip through to the end of this book and was pleased to see that the legalities of your situation worked itself out. That your skepticism still allowed you to take a brave step down the aisle and I could absolutely relate to the idea of wanting to be married but not necessarily needing a “wedding” (we called ours a “non-wedding” for a long time and got married at city hall; it took less than 15 minutes. In fact, the actual “wedding” means so little to either of us that we a) forget our anniversary just about every year and b) neither can remember exactly how long we’ve been married. Some people might think this strange — but for me, and for us, it’s about the relationship, not the piece of paper, about building a life together, not about the institution. In a way, why did we get married at all, one might wonder. But it was important to me to be married and I’m sure it’s exactly as you explore throughout your book — the way I was raised, the example of my parents’ marriage, my grandparents and aunts and uncles.
Also, you have such a grand sense of humour throughout this book that perhaps I missed completely while being so annoyed with EPL? The tone of this book was whip-smart yet still with a questioning when it came to having to do something you were both so against from the beginning of your relationship. Lastly, I can absolutely relate to the obsessive/compulsive way you went about coming to terms with having to get hitched — the research, the restlessness, the ideas of how to still be the “you” that you had discovered after your first failed marriage. And as one who obsesses and has their own compulsive tendencies when it comes to many aspects of my life — it made me feel better to see someone else put it down in writing so eloquently.
So, in short, here’s my apology for being so flippant and, well, cruel. I’m sorry.
April 5th, 2011
Notes From A House Frau XVIII
At this very moment, my RRBB, after an exhausting few minutes of rolling over, fussing because he can’t get himself back again (like a turtle on its back only in reverse; it’s quite funny), has spent the last fifteen or so minutes looking at himself in the mirror on his activity mat. His concentration skills are hilarious. I’m not sure at all what he sees in the mirror but he’s absolutely enamoured with whatever it is…
Here is our wee boy at five months (five months!) [And this picture is already three weeks old because he's 26 weeks tomorrow]. He’s starting to have quite the little personality. My temper, my RRHB’s response to anything traumatic (to go to sleep), and a lovely happy smile that belongs to him alone. Everyone keeps telling us that this is the best of the baby stage — when they get to this age, five or six months, but I’m enjoying every baby stage these days, if only because it’s all so new to me, and just so damn fun. That’s not to say that I’m not exhausted, because I am, beyond words, and that I’m not frustrated by how the disease still refuses to calm down, because I am, but I’m trying to be calm and collected, find a quiet routine we can settle into, and make the most of the time that I have before heading up to the cottage for the summer (without plumbing!).
We gave the RRBB some sweet potatoes this afternoon. His very first non-cereal food. He decided about four bites in that enough was enough and he’d really just prefer to breast feed. It’s a slow, patient process, this real-food business. Like anything, I am excited for him and want to record every little thing that happens — but I can’t be sure that when he’s older, he’ll actually want to know.
Over the last few days, I’ve seen many doctors: SFDD, kidney doctor, gastro doc, and had some blood work done today. I’m not going to lie — I’ve been panicking inside a whole lot about the state of my poor kidneys. I have tried to be positive, tried to look at the bright side of it all (that my condition is essentially unchanged since two weeks before having the baby), and yet regardless of all the drugs, of all the “resting,” of all the not working, my creatinine is still sky high as is my blood pressure. In all the years I’ve had the disease, I’ve never had high blood pressure — and I hate taking medicine for things that my body should just do right — and it scares me when I put the cuff on and get a reading like 146/98. We can’t afford any more restorative yoga at the moment, and the money I thought would last us a year barely made it through six months. Such is life, right?
Last time, I promised I would stop complaining about being sick. Or tired. Sick and tired. A lot of residual shock and awe about how everything turned out led me to try and read other birth stories. Helen left a comment letting me know about a collection called Great Expectations: Twenty-Four True Stories About Childbirth edited by Lisa Moore and Dede Crane (#31). And it’s excellent (thank you Toronto Public Library for loaning me a copy). I whipped through it in just a couple of hours (over a few days) and came to the conclusion that not a single birth plan goes according to, well, plan. For something that women have been doing since women were, well, invented, childbirth is as complex and ever-changing as people are themselves. I needed to read this — I needed to know that despite all the best laid plans (birthing tubs, doulas, midwifes, home births, drugs, no drugs) that a women might set out before her due date, chances are something dramatic will change in the minutes when she shouts “it’s time” at her husband and/or significant other. It’s a bright, fascinating collection — not a single one of the writers fall back into cliche to describe their experiences, which I felt was a revelation considering most pop culture birth stories coming to us via television and the movies aren’t remotely realistic. Like firefighters heading into a blaze without their masks, they’re all panting and fake screaming, with babies popping out looking six months old already. But this collection is painstakingly honest, achingly real and just what I needed to read.
Anyway, I don’t have much else to say. I’ve been trying to write this blog post for over a week now and the RRBB hasn’t let me get much done. I’ve got two book reviews to get to and a to-do list that is as long as my arm. So, I will stop rambling, for now.
March 21st, 2011
Notes From A House Frau XVI
RRBB has been hitting some very fun milestones lately. He had his first taste of solid food (if you can call it that) as the picture here depicts. He slept through the night: twice (even though in the few hours preceding the long sleep he was over-tired and ridiculously manic, but not upset). He visited a sugar bush and an antique mall (or, rather, his bored parents dragged him to said sugar bush and said antique mall). And he was babysat for the second time while my RRHB and I went to see the Elephant 6 collective at Lee’s Palace on Friday night. Shockingly, he’s still the happy, well adjusted, easy baby we’ve brought into this world.
Of course, I’m still not sleeping from the drugs. But the odd night isn’t so bad here and there, I can handle it. It’s funny, I get poetic about it in a way: the sun rises and it sets, the moon comes out, but without that deep hours-long pause — time passing in an instant because you are, well, unconscious, everything blurs into one, breakfast feels like a late night snack, lunch disappears, and dinner is always rushed, trying to cram the day in before the bedtime routine starts. As always, I am at a loss for spoken words. Friends came over for dinner yesterday and I just couldn’t finish my sentences, kept forgetting words, used the wrong words, filled up the space with malapropisms — when does the ‘baby brain’ end? Perhaps when I get more consistent, consecutive rest, or perhaps when the RRBB turns 18 and heads off to university. Who knows. For now, I’m struggling with simple sentences while complex thoughts careen around my brain like snowflakes — always melting before they necessarily land.
We went to the Bloor/Gladstone library last week, and it was glorious. It really is a beautiful building and I’d forgotten how much I enjoy libraries. I haven’t truly visited one on a regular basis since being in grad school, and now that we’re pinching every penny, I simply can’t afford to buy books. I’ve been wondering a lot about other birth stories, wanting to compare experiences, wanting to maybe experience a little catharsis too in terms of my own trials and tribulations. So, one of the books I picked up was Rebecca Eckler’s Knocked Up (#27). I didn’t read anything other then What to Expect When You’re Expecting while I was pregnant, and now that I’m no longer pregnant (although still with-pooch), I am curious to know about other mothers-to-be. I mean, not everyone ends up on the special pregnancy ward of Mt. Sinai hospital with their lungs bleeding before giving birth, right?
In short, I wanted to know what normal was like, in a way. Granted, there was a little too much: “is my ass fat????” throughout Knocked Up, and I don’t know that I would have chosen a c-section had one not been chosen for me (I was oddly looking forward to the experience of giving birth). But I did laugh in various places, and while I know Eckler takes a lot of flack for her self-involved, me-first, examination of both pregnancy and parenthood, I actually enjoyed the lighthearted nature of the book. More chicklit than the nauseating “motherhood makes me a saint” stance of so much that I find online relating to this situation we’re in (yes, motherhood), Knocked Up gave me a bit of a mental break in terms of contemplating all that happened to me, and that’s all I’d ask of it. It was an easy-breezy read and I’m jealous of her ability to stay so completely focussed on not changing in the midst of such a huge change.
That’s not something I’ve been able to do — none of my clothes fit, in fact, I can’t even seem to find three-quarters of my wardrobe, having packed things away to who knows where in the house. My body is so very different and I barely recognize myself in the mirror. The shock of the naked self in the shower is enough to give up food forever, and were it not for the prednisone encouraging my stomach to crave every baked good on the face of this earth, I just might. I need to get more exercise, and I was actually jealous when the Rebecca in Knocked Up went out on a girl date barely two weeks into her daughter’s existence. There’s a level of guilt that I feel the moment I am away from the baby — that I am being a bad mother in a way by not constantly being in his company. I know that’s crazy, and ridiculous, and that doesn’t mean that I don’t hand him off to his father for hours at a time, but it doesn’t seem to be getting any easier leaving him. But to get back to my point, the physical changes — shorter hair, chubbier me, bloating from the meds — feel so much more permanent these days than the mental ones.
The mental part of being a mother seems easy these days. There’s love. You give it out, a lot of it. There’s patience, which sometimes gets tested. There’s joy. There’s boredom, and there’s bliss — but it all comes together in a pretty awesome package. So, I don’t blame someone for obsessing about the size of their ass — it’s overwhelming to contemplate all of the physical and mental changes at the same time, something’s got to give. I was remembering way back in the way back this week. An old boss I had at an evil corporation that I used to work for (which no longer exists) took us out for lunch within the first few months of her assuming a position she later proved she was utterly unqualified for. She had just finished mat leave for her second child and we were talking about babies. At some point, and I can’t remember what preceded the moment, she crinkled up her face and said that she really didn’t like babies, not even her own. Perhaps she likes her kids when they get out of the difficult infant stage, who knows, but all I’ve been thinking this week is how awesome babies are. I know I shouldn’t be so judgmental but as if I didn’t need another reason to post-actively hate the woman, now I even think she’s kind of inhumane. I’ve already forgotten the witching hour, the exhaustion, the frustration of the first little while, and moved on to complete and utter adoration.
I know it won’t always be like this — and we’re so lucky that we have an extremely easy going baby — but, for right now, I’m wallowing in the fun of it all. Charging ahead with crazy vampire kisses and holding that baby high up in the air to hear him squeal. Suffering through the whining when he’s in the car seat to enjoy a beautiful spring day where it neither rains nor snows — where the sun actually feels warm. Staying up far past my bedtime to enjoy a moment of non-couch (baby STILL only sleeps on me for long periods of time) freedom to watch reruns of Law and Order. Listening to him giggle uncontrollably downstairs as my RRHB plays with him. Even sobbing uncontrollably because of the hormones and whatever else is coarsing through my system because of the meds. It’s all awesome in a traditional sense of the word — it inspires awe in me that this is my life now, that my life contains another’s so completely at the moment, all things that I didn’t know when I was just pregnant and hoping to live. I am thankful that I did. I wouldn’t want to miss any of this.
Other library finds for this week: Blink, A History of the World in 10 and 1/2 Chapters, West Toronto Junction, Christina Rossetti: Selected Poems, as well as Knocked Up. I’ve been reading a poem a night before I go to bed, just dipping into them, and found this delicious line that somewhat sums up my last couple weeks: “O clamorous heart, lie still.”
As if it could. As if.
December 30th, 2010
#65 – Payback
Margaret Atwood is one of the few authors, Canadian authors, where I’ve read almost every single thing she’s ever written. It’s not even a love-hate relationship: I count a few of her books among my absolute favourites (Surfacing), and when I saw her at the IFOA a couple of years ago, it was one of the most entertaining readings I had ever been too. So, I bought Payback, years ago, I think, and it sat on the shelves. Atwood’s Massey lecture looks at the philosophical and literary implications of debt — what it means from a balanced perspective. This isn’t a book about the recession or about the failure of our monetary system but it’s about what it means to be in debt from a moral perspective.
I was honestly surprised at how much I enjoyed reading Payback. I actually learned a great deal about the idea of balance. Atwood takes a very thorough look at what defined debt throughout the ages — starting with early philosophical positions (there’s lots of talk of mythology) and ending with a modern-day take on Dickens’ character Scrooge (with all of the implications of how we are living today), Atwood’s point is simple: we can’t keep taking so much without giving something back… and if we don’t give it back, the universe will just take it.
Anyway, I don’t have much more to say about it — this is probably my shortest review ever. Balance is good. Taking advantage of our resources isn’t. Money is so much more than dollars and cents, and there’s a surprising amount of debt in literature. If I ever go back to grad school, what a fascinating thesis that would make.
READING CHALLENGES: Off the Shelf, naturally.
August 27th, 2010
#41 – No Way Down
Perhaps I should follow up my furious Franzen rant with another post about the state of publishing or some other issue floating around (and, believe me, if I was still remotely anonymous, I would). But, instead, I’m going to go back to basics: a book review. This week I took a break from guilty pleasure reading and read, well, more guilty pleasure stuff. Most people imagine armchair travel to be lovely, pretty memoirs like Eat, Pray, Yawn or the like. Instead, what I love is a truly good horror story incurred by a natural disaster happening at the top of a mountain. Yes, I love climbing disasters — I don’t know what it is about it, maybe the time I spent in Banff during my formative years scrambling up mountains, maybe it’s the sheer Titanic-ness of it all — the knowledge that the weather’s about to turn, something’s about to crack, someone’s about to fall, and no one will ever be the same again.
In 2008, eleven climbers died on K2, the world’s second-highest mountain. NY Times reporter Graham Bowley first saw the story flash across his screen as an assignment (I think) for the paper. He wrote so convincingly about it that it appeared on the front page and then he went on to realize that the story was so much larger than the paper could accommodate. The resulting effort, his book No Way Down, couples a little bit of the climbing history of K2 (it’s deathly grip!) alongside a detailed, poignant and utterly captivating look at what went wrong.
The weather was seemingly perfect on the assent. A record number of climbers advanced to the summit despite some epic problems getting up through a bottleneck of people who were having trouble at one particular point on the mountain. But as the aptly titled book suggests, the descent was problematic for many. Between glaciers breaking, avalanches, snapped ropes and leaving the summit simply too late, many of the climbers were trapped at high altitudes, which had disastrous consequences — deaths, frostbitten limbs, climbers getting lost coming down, bad weather, accidents — all contributed to the high toll the mountain took on that day.
It’s hard to explain what I find so fascinating about these kinds of stories. I’m hugely attracted to the idea of climbing to the top of a mountain even if health- and lifestyle-wise I’d never be able to do it. I’m also consistently amazed at the propensity for things to go wrong and that, still, hundreds of athletes still push themselves to the limits and then put their lives at risk in a very classic human versus nature scenario. Bowley’s careful to explain, both in his preface and his epilogue, how much research went into constructing the narrative. In his words, he tells the story as well as he could, but there’s always room for conjecture. It’s a sad, captivating story and even though it’s a terrible tragedy, it makes for one hell of a good read.
August 5th, 2010
Summer Reading: A Catch Up Edition
I have a huge list of books to get caught up on in terms of keeping track of my reading here in the blog. As I doubt I’ll find the time to create individual posts for every book I’ve read since the beginning of July, I’m going to do one big post here, and then try very hard for the rest of the summer to update here more than once a month.
#24 – Shadow Tag
This was the very first book I read for my new book club. I’d read Louise Erdrich back in university and remembered enjoying Love Medicine very much. Shadow Tag, with its semi-autobiographic overtones and extremely dark subject matter, was an unsettling novel. It’s not even that you can’t trust the protagonist, or that she’s an unreliable narrator; it’s more that both Irene and her husband Gil are truly, completely unlikeable. They lie to one another, feed off each other’s insecurities, have a terrible, damaging relationship, and ultimately aren’t the best parents to their three children. The writing is terrific but I consistently go back and forth on the age-old debate in my head — can I really enjoy a book when I hate the characters? We had an amazing discussion about the novel, about their motivation to stay together, about the destructive nature of art in the book, and about both of their selfish, selfish behavior. It’s an intense novel, be prepared for that should you decide to delve in.
#25 – Freedom
I’m not sure how much to say about Franzen’s latest novel because I read a work galley (well, I begged to borrow a work galley and it’s my ONLY copy) and the book isn’t being published for another few weeks. However, I will say this — it’s a terrifically engaging chunk of a book that follows the lives of the Berglund family. Like The Corrections, Franzen writes so convincingly about American life that it’s impossible not to get emotionally involved in the lives of these characters. It’s an excellent novel.
#26 – I’d Know You Anywhere
The same goes for the new Laura Lippman. She’s one of my favourite commercial fiction writers — her stories are always page-turners and her characters always have issues to overcome that develop into rich, realistic plot lines — you never feel like she sacrifices anything for the story, it’s relentless. Her latest novel is no exception. Eliza Benedict has worked hard to create a very particular kind of life for herself — until the man who abducted her when she was a teenager tracks her down and asks something of her she isn’t necessarily prepared to give. The novel reminded me in a way of Barbara Gowdy’s Helpless in the way it gives a bird’s eye view of not only the victim, but the criminal as well. It’s a captivating novel — perfect for summer reading.
#27 – We Have Always Lived In The Castle
Oh my goodness I adored Shirley Jackson’s macabre, Gothic novel. This was another book club book and what an awesome choice it was. Merricat (Mary Katherine) Blackwood and her sister Constance live in a run-down old manor house with their Uncle Julian. Years ago her entire family was killed by a fatal dose of arsenic-laced strawberries during dinner. Constance, the elder sister, was accused of the crime, and then tried, but found innocent. However, the townspeople have never quite forgiven her, and so Merricat (an 18 year-old who acts far more like a 12 year-old) and Constance have somewhat shut themselves up against the world. That is, until their cousin Charles arrives and throws their world in chaos. It’s a delicious, deceptively simple novel, and we all raved about it at book club. I comped it to the best of Flannery O’Connor with even more edge, if that’s possible.
#28 – Mr. Shakespeare’s Bastard
Richard B. Wright remains one of those Canadian authors, like Jane Urquhart or Michael Ondaatje, that I’ll read anything they write. If they wrote a grocery list, I’d probably read and enjoy it. His latest novel, Mr. Shakespeare’s Bastard, feels like a departure, and that’s not a bad thing. While I loved October, I felt like it had a definite place in the Canadian canon — it was almost as if he was actively trying to write back to Hugh MacLennan. With this new novel, I feel like he’s moved into decidedly new territory. It’s a hybrid kind of novel — one part historical fiction (the book’s protagonist is the bastard daughter of Wm Shakespeare), one part typical literary fiction, and one part juicy page turner. Aerlene Ward has lived her entire life with a secret: William Shakespeare was her father. As she gets on in age, she feels the need to tell her story and enlists the help of Charlotte, the youngest daughter in the manor house where she’s been the housekeeper for all of her adult life. It’s a rich tale — both as its told and as it was lived — and Wright has a keen ear for Elizabethan London. The biggest issue that I have with so much historical fiction is the romance-novel-ness of them all. This book isn’t that, while I can see how it would appeal to the biggest fans of Philippa Gregory, it’s so much richer in how the historical details are integrated into the fabric of the story. These are strong, interesting women, and there’s an apt feminist critique to be explored upon a more educational reading of the novel. Anyway, I’ve got high hopes for this book for the fall — I really want many, many people to love it as much as I did. We’re doing a Savvy Reader read-along post for it that should be live in the next couple weeks.
#29 – The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Like the rest of the universe, I finally went back and read the first of Steig Larsson’s ridiculously addictive series. I’m glad I did, if only to fully understand how all three books fit together, and to see how Lisbeth and Blomkvist actually meet for the first time. We watched the film the other night, and I found it almost better than the book — while definitely not as detailed, it was far more streamlined, which I appreciated. As much as I find these great books, great social experiments in how a book can “tip,” sometimes the writing is clunky, the dialogue terrible, and there’s just too much detail. And I enjoyed seeing the Swedish landscape if only to give myself a visual picture to accompany the reading experience in my head. I read this book on my iPad with the Kobo application and found that there were some layout issues with the text that made transitions a little awkward but overall I think it’s the perfect way of reading commercial fiction. It’s not a book that I’m dying to keep — it’s an impulse, something I want to read right now and steam through, and knowing I don’t have to pawn off a physical copy on a friend was a relief.
#30 – The Help
Now, this novel truly surprised me. From the cover, it screams “Oprah” and “Nicholas Sparks,” but because it’s my job to know what kinds of books sell like stink, I figured it would be another good one to try on my iPad. This time, I used the Kindle application, and I found it just that teeny bit superior to the Kobo (mainly in the fact that it gives an accurate idea of where you are in a book), but there’s really little difference between the two as a reading application for the basic stuff that I need (good bookmarks, easy navigation, etc). Annywaaay, The Help. I bawled like a baby by the end of it, found myself reading until 4 AM one night at the cottage when I couldn’t sleep and realizing it’s just a really good novel. Set in Jackson, Mississippi smack-dab in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement, The Help entwines the stories of the young white women who form the “society” of the area with the black women who they consider their “help.” From debate over why separate bathrooms IN ONE HOUSE for the women who feed, clothe, bathe, and raise their children to Miss Skeeter’s desperate ‘Peggy in Mad Men-esque’ quest to get out of her Southern life entirely, the novel keeps you emotionally invested from beginning to end. Stockett writes convincingly from both perspectives and the payoff at the end was impeccable.
#31 – Locavore
When the iBookstore launched at the beginning of July, I bought a few of our books so I could make sure they worked. Sarah Elton’s look at the local food movement from a Canadian perspective had been on my TBR pile forever. I did a lot of work with her when the book first came out and she’s just such a lovely author (but that’s an aside). She has a very easy-going writing style and her way into the topic (from a pink sugar cookie made in China in her daughter’s loot bag) was both personal and intriguing. There were so many things that I didn’t know and so many interesting, new perspectives about the local food issues that Elton puts forth that I learned a lot. How wrong was my assumption that once I’d read Pollan and Kingsolver that there was nothing left to know about the locavore movement. This is a book for anyone remotely interested in the issues surrounding the food we eat — and even if you aren’t, it’s a great primer to get you started. But my favourite part of Elton’s perspective isn’t a holier than thou approach, it’s more “do the best you can; it all helps in the end.” And I feel like this suits my life — we buy local where possible, support farmer’s markets, grow our own veggies, and balance out the more exotic aspects of your eating with better choices. I LOVED this book.
#32 – The Lovers
I have so much respect and admiration for Vendela Vida. Not just because she leads an obviously envious life and is bloody gorgeous, but because she’s an exquisite writer whose craft I covet every time I read a sentence of hers. Yet, this novel disappointed me. It lacked the emotional resonance that reverberated so nicely through Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, and the tragic event posited by the jacket copy to “rock” the protagonist, Yvonne, to her core, felt contrived and even stereotypical when looked at in context. It felt very Hollywood, this novel, and maybe I was just expecting too much from Vida because I pushed her earlier book on every single person I know. So, in short, Yvonne, a middle-aged widow, visits Turkey, the site of her honeymoon, to try and figure out how to move on with her life. She’s had a good life, but one with issues, and she starts to unravel the more time she spends trying to ‘find’ herself in relation to who she once was: mother, teacher, wife. The setting, at once meant to invoke her past and perhaps spurn Yvonne into a sense of self-discovery, becomes exotic and strange to her. And then, things start to go very awry when she befriends a young Turkish boy visiting his grandmother. There could have been such a rich palette to explore so much in the book but Vida doesn’t drift beyond the superficial in a way. You never truly feel like you know Yvonne, and maybe that’s on purpose, but the whole novel felt incomplete to me, especially the ending.
#33 – Secrets of Eden
And, again, here’s another of my favourite novelists with new books that fell short of my expectations. I adore Chris Bohjalian’s books — even his critical misfires work for me, unlike many, many reviewers, I really liked the trippy nature of The Double Bind and didn’t even mind his last book, Skeletons at the Feast despite its truly awful cover. But Secrets of Eden, well, it failed to impress either with the moral premise underneath the story or by its storytelling. Like in Vida’s novel, the “twist” at the end felt very much like an M. Night Shyamalan film — far, far too apparent from too early on and really quite stereotypical for my tastes. The whole book felt like a Law and Order episode but without any convincing or interesting characters. I find the complex nature of religious characters in novels interesting — but I’ll turn to Marilynne Robinson when I want to explore it in more depth — Bohjalian used it to very obviously pit “good” against apparent “evil” and in this case it didn’t work. Oh, the plot, right: a reverend loses a member of his flock, a woman who had been abused by her husband, and becomes accused of the murder when she and said partner are found dead the morning after her baptism. Enter a very famous writer who has made plenty of money writing about angels. They become involved, which, of course, casts even more suspicion on the poor Reverend Stephen Drew. Yawn. Yes, I know, I’m being sarcastic, but the book was truly tedious in places. Anyway, nothing will stop me from reading Bohjalian, because I adore his fiction, but this just wasn’t the book for me.
#34 – The Big Short
Wow, was this a dynamo of a nonfiction book. Michael Lewis examines the financial crisis in such a detailed and fascinating way that it’s impossible NOT to think of the yahoos on Wall Street as crooks by the end of it. While the book has a LOT of technical jargon as it relates to the financial markets, it’s not remotely dry. In fact, it’s just the opposite — it’s utterly riveting and totally fascinating. He breaks down the few characters who managed to short the crisis even before it began, including a hedge fund owner whose driving characteristic is his Asperger’s, along with a few “outsider” funds who actually took the time to investigate the market and pull it apart at the seams — primarily to find the ways of making huge amounts of money from what they could see coming: a total collapse of the system. It’s incredible that the US government propped up the big investment houses, essentially rewarded them for their stupidity, and then they turned around and rewarded themselves with huge bonuses, and, well, got to all keep their jobs. Billions upon billions of dollars with hidden paper trails and bad trades are lost, unknown or hidden from the general public, just so we can keep the illusion that the big investment banks actually had any idea of what was happening. I’d highly recommend this to anyone remotely interested in why the US is such a mess these days — it’s just utterly captivating and you will shake your head in amazement that not a single person stopped the madness before it all collapsed. Anyway, it’s a great, great read.
Whew. That’s about it — I’m sure there are a couple of books that I’ve probably forgotten but that’s about the extent of my summer reading so far. I’m so behind in my reading in general this year that it’s nice to just have a big stack of books out of the way before the insanity of the fall creeps up on us.