Category: ragdoll reads

#13 – Helping Me Help Myself

I had brought the ARC of Beth Lisick’s Helping Me Help Myself to Mexico with me, and had planned to read it on the plane home, but then I got swept away in What is the What. Most of my thoughts about the book are already noted over at The Savvy Reader so I won’t go into much more detail except to say that I’m really excited to send the author some questions next week for an email interview.

After a particularly grueling New Year’s Eve party, Lisick decides to spend the next 12 months working through the works of 10 self-help guru’s in an attempt to honestly change her life from the inside out, as she says, “What if I could just look at everything in my life that was bugging me, everything I wanted to make better, and systematically fix it all?” And despite being utterly skeptical of the whole self-help racket, she actually manages to find kernels of good advice in just about every aspect of her ‘year spent on the bring of [her] comfort zone.’

This is not a self-help book, but a book about helping yourself, about discovering what holds you back, about finding humour and dedicating yourself to a cause even if it means spending a whack of money to attend a Richard Simmons fitness cruise. It’s about approaching change honestly and openly, and taking what you need and leaving behind the rest, the bits that seem false, that seem like a racket, and improving your character because of it.

Also, it’s got a banana suit. And who doesn’t love a 30-something woman dressed up in a banana suit to pay the bills. Seriously?

As with many of my ARCs, I have no need to keep them and am very happy to use Canada Post, so, who wants my copy?

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: My own Achilles heel when it comes to home organization, the absolute exhaustion at the end of a work day that leads to every single piece of clothing being piled up on a chair instead of in my closet.

#12 – What Is The What


For the first time in my Around the World in 52 Books two-year reading odyssey, I am going to break the rules. You heard me. I’m going to bust them wide open and actually let the setting of the novel define my country choice, and not the author’s birth. It’s impossible to ignore the fact that the voice in Dave Egger’s What is the What seems so completely that of Valentino Achak Deng that to name this my book from the US might do it a disservice.

When I saw Eggers back in November, I was very taken by the social commentary found within his slide show presentation. The idea that China’s need for oil propels the terrible situation in Sudan still makes me think twice every time I see a Made In China stamp on just about everything we buy and/or own. But now that I’ve read the book, I’m thinking more about the accomplishments of its writer and main character, and not just about the social-political underpinnings of the book and its incredibly important message. It’s as if it all has a human face now.

Subtitled “The Autobiography of Valentine Achak Deng,” What is the What is such a skilled, intense and utterly compelling book that it held my interest through every one of its 535 pages. The structure of the novel develops around an epistolary format reminiscent to an early scene in the book where Achak, still living then with his parents quite happily in Marial Bal, sits with a group of men and listens to them debate ‘What is the What.’ Achak speaks to a number of different people directly within the novel as he tells his story, the nurse/clerk at the hospital, the boy set to watch him as he gets robbed in his own home, members of the health club where he works, and as a narrative tool, it’s ridiculously effective. It’s almost as if, as a larger theme, the entire story sets out with the need to find and define ‘the What,’ an elusive, angry at times, but always tragic quest for Valentino to discover not only his own purpose, but a larger sense of the universe.

It’s an unbearably sat, yet utterly uplifting story, as the rebels fight against the Arab government, war breaks out and a country falls apart, and then Achak begins a long, arduous walk to Ethiopia surrounded by hundreds of other Lost Boys. Finally settling at a refugee camp in Kenya called Kakuma, Achak lives with a foster family, receives an education, and finds a decent job before being relocated to Atlanta to start a new life in the United States. The novel opens with a harrowing scene of Valentino being beaten and robbed in his own home, and still, the utter strength of his character remains steadfast. When any number of truly horrible events conspire against him, Achak carries on.

In places, Valentino describes a feeling that tears through him, not that he is cursed per se, but that bad luck has a way of following him around, shadow-like, in every facet of his life. I am not going to lie, and I know it might seem almost shameful for me to have felt akin to him in this way, but for many, many years I fought with the idea that I too must have been cursed in another life to have endured what I have. Nothing, nothing at all compared to Achak’s own struggles, I know, I have always had a roof over my head and have never had to walk further then a few blocks to a bus stop, but the feeling that life seems to consistently be a current working against you, well that’s something I can absolutely empathize with in more ways than one.

READING CHALLENGE UPDATE: Am declaring What is the What as my book from Sudan and not the United States as I had originally intended, which is good because I think I’d like to read Tom Perrotta’s Little Children instead. And because I did not buy my copy of the book, and with all the author proceeds going to Valentino’s charity, I went online and made a donation in lieu of the cost of the novel.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: I want to thank Baby Got Books for linking to the place to buy the t-shirt that had just arrived the day I finished the novel, where it ended up on my desk amongst a whole bunch of mail clutter from when we were away. I also want to give Tim an extra shout-out for saying that I “had” to read Eggers’s novel, because he was so very, very right, I did.

CURRENTLY READING: The Talented Mr. Ripley and last Saturday’s Globe and Mail crossword puzzle.

#11 – Belong To Me

First of all, please forgive me because this post is going to be so weepy and girlie that anyone not feeling particularly feminine may feel alienated. As I had been doing so much non-work related reading on vacation, I felt that I had to pay some attention to some of our upcoming titles and took this book with me after Charidy sent around a note that was so compelling it was impossible NOT to want to read Belong to Me. She had read and loved Marisa de los Santos’s first novel, Love Walked In, years ago, had high expectations for this book, and was not disappointed.

Fast forward to Wednesday afternoon, when I’m waiting and waiting and waiting for the doctor to see me. There was a wonderful old woman sitting next to me whose name was Diana, and her middle-aged daughter was so tender, caring, and well, good spirited, that I spent much of my time smiling at them and making idle chatter. Even so, I managed to read enough of Belong to Me to get so hooked that I actually turned off the television on Wednesday night waiting for my RRHB and our house guest to return from dinner. And then, I read the rest in bed until about 2 AM because the cough was keeping me up anyway and I might as well do something productive if I wasn’t sleeping.

Annnywaaay. Told from three inter-connecting points of view, Belong to Me could be described as a modern suburban drama. Taking place in a sleepy, yet totally high brow suburb of Philadelphia where looks matter and status is everything, at first it’s hard to tell where de los Santos is going. Each of the characters are so very different, it’s almost impossible to see what connects them — until the glistening, glorious and delicious end when it all becomes clear, that is.

Cornelia, married to the gorgeous Dr. Teo (he’s an oncologist), finds herself adrift almost from the moment she lands in town, a place not unlike the wistful suburb where she and her husband grew up (they’ve known each other since they were four but their romantic relationship developed much later in their lives), and makes a quasi fool of herself at a dinner party. The novel opens: “My fall from suburban grace, or, more accurately, my failure to achieve the merest molehill of suburban grace from which to fall, began with a dinner party and a perfectly innocent, modestly clever, and only faintly quirky remark about Armand Assante.”

From there, Cornelia tries to fit in to her new surroundings, failing to look, act or submit to the usual social niceties that would ensure she would make some new friends and become a good neighbour. Only it doesn’t work that way, as Queen Bee Piper swoops in and shows Cornelia who’s boss before we even hit page six. Shocking then, when Piper turns up as the protagonist whose point of view we take over in the next chapter. As we get inside Piper’s head toward the beginning of the novel, she sort of comes across like a Bree from in the first season of Desperate Housewives clone, until a tragedy turns her life, her values and her whole world inside out.

The third narrator, a thirteen-year-old boy named Dev, might just be the heart and soul of the book, and de los Santos’s talents at bringing to life his particular brand of teenage angst (hard luck at school, somewhat wacky but good intentioned mother, super-smart kid with a brain that’s always going) soar in ways that made me a little nostalgic, especially in the scenes where he falls in love for the first time with an equally special young girl. As an aside, I couldn’t help but think of the one boy that I felt that way about when I was their age, and how that relationship, idyllic, somewhat silly, and always special, remains one of the reasons (among many) that I can say I had a blissfully happy childhood. But there are emotional connections like that all through this book, which is why I think, overall, it’s incredibly successful.

Heart spills out all over Belong to Me: messy, angry, wonderful, aching, honest, and open heart. It’s a novel about women and their relationships with each other; it’s about how tragedy can rip open your world and put it back together again in ways one might not recognize; it’s about the meaning and making of family; and, in more ways than one, it’s about love that comes in all shapes and sizes. Moments in this novel ring so true that it was impossible not to bawl like a baby (and I did cry openly at least four times). And while the emotional centre of the book switches as each character takes a turn telling their own story, it never looses any sense of the pure heart the narrative voice contains on the whole.

A bit Tom Perrotta (Charidy’s comp), a bit Ann Patchett (it’s a snow globe world for sure), with a little Carol Shields thrown in for good measure (it made me think of Unless), I highly recommend this book for bookclubs, for that lonely night when your significant other might be out of town and you’re dying for that little something the latest Cameron Diaz movie has failed, yet again, to provide, for mothers or women looking to become mothers — it’s a book that deserves to be passed around from friend to friend like a secretly coded game of telephone that says, “look, this is how much I love you.”

Now, who wants my copy? Anyone? Anyone?

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: The book sat atop What is the What, which I have now returned to reading, on my bedside table. Other things necessary for bedtime: ceramic holder for my rings, ear plugs, super-duper hand cream clutter the shot.

#s6 – 10 – Vacation Reading

So, this is the stack of books I brought with me on vacation. Maybe a bit too ambitious, but I did read 5.5 of them. Not bad, eh? At one point, I was so totally engrossed in The Good Soldier that my husband and friends marveled at how I totally ignored them until I had finished the last page. Ocean? Waves? Wha?

#6 – Another Thing to Fall

I know, I know, before anyone actually says it, I should never read the ARC of the LAST book in a mystery series before reading the first, well, many books. But after loving Laura Lippman’s What the Dead Know this summer and being utterly giddy at the sight of her cameo in the first episode of The Wire this season (why are you not watching that show? Go. Right now, stop reading and start watching, honestly. It’s the best show television has ever produced in my lifetime.), I couldn’t help myself. I grabbed a copy off the publicity shelves and snuck it out before anyone could notice (yes, yes, I replaced it when I got back to work and my own copies arrived). Annnywwaaay. It’s a Tess Monaghan novel. Once a fearless reporter for a Baltimore newspaper, Tess is now a private investigator, and in this book she’s charged with the protection of an uppity actress who seems to be causing all kinds of problems on the set of the HBO series in which she stars. It’s a taut, action-packed, first-rate detective novel that hooked me from start to finish. And I have to admit, the tongue-in-cheek references to a certain production currently filming in the so-called Charm City, were all kinds of wicked fun. Plus, isn’t the cover bloody gorgeous?

#7 – The Abstinence Teacher

I came home convinced that my life needs more Tom Perrotta. My friend Randy gave me the ARC for The Abstinence Teacher back in the summer and it’s taken me a few months to get here, but I am so glad that I took this book along with me and had the chance to give it the attention it deserved. Perrotta has such a gift for capturing the nuances of American life, the contradictions, the confusions, the Christian right in battle with the more liberal left, while ensuring that his characters aren’t sacrificed in anyway for the overall themes conveyed in the story, that it’s impossible to put the book down after you begin.

The book’s two main characters: Ruth Ramsey, a sexual education teacher convinced that proper information and open honesty are the best tools she could possibly equip herself with in terms of her job; and Tim Mason, an addict turned born-again Christian who coaches the local soccer team Ruth’s younger daughter plays on, find themselves in very adult and very difficult situations when it comes to their own families, their lives, and their careers. The themes in this novel, of how religion is polarizing much of the States, and the evaporation of the middle class, never overpower the story of Ruth and Tim’s friendship. But they certainly make you think twice about the state of our society as a whole, which might be a bit heavy for the usual beach fare (goodness I counted a lot of Da Vinci Codes, honestly), but not for me. Highly recommended.

#8 – Astrid and Veronika

The Swedish entry in my Around the World in 52 Books, Sam lent me this novel before I left and it was a last-minute addition to the vacation pile. Veronika, a young writer who has just suffered a terrible tragedy, arrives at her rented cottage adjacent to a small Swedish village to find her only neighbour, Astrid, is nothing like the “witch” she was told lived in the house next door. The two women, separated by an entire lifetime, form a fast and furious friendship that allows each to free themselves of the ghosts plaguing both of their pasts.

Linda Olsson’s novel is sweet and tender as the two women reveal themselves to one another through their stories. I have to admit that I found Olsson’s storytelling a bit cloying: “Oh, let me tell you that story”, but the further I drifted with Astrid, the more I enjoyed her character, and realized that the book means for you to find it awkward at first, just as all friendships are, until it’s as if you’ve known the person beside you all your life. And the setting, especially Astrid’s house and its descriptions, well, they absolutely made me think of Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses, and good grief did I love that novel. The landscape is rich and overall I did enjoy this book. One I never would have read if not for my challenge. And isn’t that always the point?

#9 – My Name is Bosnia

My friend Kat recommended this book to me when we were discussing Russian novels for my Around the World in 52 Books challenge. I’m pleased I picked it up last year on a whim, because it fit nicely with my quest to finish The Canadian Book Challenge. As the book’s author, Madeleine Gagnon, is from Quebec and part of the novel takes place outside of Quebec City and in Montreal, it’s my book for that province. Gut-wrenching and unbearably sad, but hopeful by the time you get to the end, it was another book, like Astrid and Veronika that took me aback in terms of the writing style (but that could be down to the translation). The story of a young girl, Sabaheta, who comes out of the forests surrounding Sarajevo after the death of her father and changes her name to Bosnia, her journey, both emotional and physical, is epic as she tries to escape the war. Heartbreaking, that’s a good word for this book, just heartbreaking.

#10 – The Good Soldier

Saving the best for last, of course. After many, many false starts, I was determined to bring Ford Madox Ford’s classic novel with me so I would absolutely have no choice but to finish. I’ve mentioned, at least two or three times on the blog before, how much I love the first sentence of this book: “This is the saddest story I have ever heard.” And considering the man telling the story, John Dowell, is also central to its plot, setting it up this way immediately clues one to the fact that he’s an utterly unreliable narrator, and isn’t that just delicious. When we first meet John, he’s still in love with his wife, a woman with a bad heart who needs constant caretaking and long, restful periods spent at Nauheim. An American couple of a certain stature, the Dowells count themselves lucky to find company with the Ashburnhams, an upper calls British couple who also vacation for their health. “The Good Soldier” of the novel’s title refers to Ashburnham, and the further we go into the utter depths of why it’s such a sad story, the more we uncover, or discover, rather, that nothing is as it seems, either with the Dowells or the Ashburnhams.

Indeed, it’s the saddest story I’d read in a while, but the writing is just so exact and so true, and the narrative so utterly engaging that I am ashamed to have put the novel down so many times before actually finishing it. I earmarked passage after passage of prose, and even pressed the book to my chest and uttered a few, “oh no’s” while reading in a totally melodramatic fashion as I grew cold on the beach when the sun started to go down, and literally refused to speak until I had finished. Part of my own 1001 Books challenge, I utterly agree with the inclusion of this novel on the list, and if I were still studying, I think I would devote pages and pages to the effectiveness of Ford’s unreliable, utterly immovable and somewhat (if I’m being honest) idiotic narrator.

Whew! It certainly was a lot of very good reading. Good, I love vacation. I started What is the What on the last day we were there, and I’m this-close to finishing. So it was 5 Beach Books, Ragdoll styles on vacation last week.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: The stack of novels on my hotel room bed.

READING CHALLENGES: Oh, almost too many to list: 1001 Books, The Canadian Book Challenge, Around the World in 52 Books, it was a great catch-up week.

#5 – How to Talk to a Widower

I’ve read every single book Jonathan Tropper has ever published, oddly enough. They’re utterly readable works of commercial fiction that swoop in, grab a heart string or two, and carry you off into a story complete with humour and wit, with a healthy dose of good storytelling. Highly plot driven but ultimately about the main character, Doug Parker, How to Talk to a Widower is certainly as enjoyable as his two previous books, The Book of Joe and Everything Changes.

The title refers to a column the protagonist begins to write for a men’s magazine in the US upon the tragic death of his wife. Their relationship told mainly in flashbacks, and Doug’s inability to move past her death and get on with his life forms the emotional epicenter of the book. Hovering on the sidelines as he grieves are his highly dysfunctional family (a doctor of a father who has had a stroke; two sisters who take high-maintenance to new heights for completely different reasons; and a mother who pops prescription medicine and dolls out advice with the dryness of the martini she’s consistently holding in her hands), his friends (some, ahem, friendlier than others), and his teenage stepson. All the characters seem to orbit around Doug’s emotions until they simply can’t take it any longer. And the progression from widower to man finding his way in a life he never expected to find himself is oddly satisfying. It’s a sweet, satisfying, perfect-for-plane-rides book that kept me good company while we flew to Mexico.

I envy Tropper’s voice, the ease in which he writes tragedy into his characters, and the sweetness in terms of everyday family life he finds to colour out the edges of each of his books. On the whole, I’m willing to forgive the clichés, the movie of the week plot devices, in favour of wholly embracing the lovely mess Doug creates of his life. I got a little teary, I’ll admit.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: The ARC resting on my tray table on top of two issues of Vanity Fair that I finished first. I think, if we had any spare cash at the moment, I would subscribe. Can one truly subsist without knowing the crazy ins and outs of world royalty you’ve never heard of? Without the February “starlet” who’s career plummets after their cover shot? Without the rambling articles of whats-his-name? Sigh.

#4 – The Outlander


Preamble: I’ve got to write things in order or else I’ll totally forget bits and pieces along the way. Just before finishing up The Outlander for The Canadian Book Challenge I read the second book in the Pretty Little Liars series, Flawless, and thought it was a bit of fun (#3 for the year). Then, just before we left for Mexico, I finally finished Gil Adamson’s The Outlander, which I’m using as Alberta for the before-mentioned reading challenge. Adamson’s book has been on my nightstand for months. I picked it up after reading the somewhat controversial article by Noah Richler in Macleans last year, with the thought to reading all three novels discussed (next up, and the final title Richler critiques in his piece, Jacqueline Baker’s The Horseman’s Graves).

The Outlander tells the story of a nineteen-year-old widow, Mary Boulton, who flees her homestead in rural Alberta after murdering her cheating brute of a husband. Chased by his almost-twin brothers, each tall, blonde and brutish, the widow soon finds herself deep in the Rockies, lost in the wilderness and on the edge of death. That is, until she meets the ridgerunner, William Moreland, who saves her from starvation and a little from the madness that has haunted her ever since the terribly tragedy forced her from her miserable home. Their time together is brief, but it has an impact on both Mary and William, and their feelings form the emotional backdrop for the rest of the novel.

Alone again, and now hunted almost to the brink of her own sanity, the widow is finally shown kindness by the Reverend Bonnycastle, or “Bonny” as she calls him, in a tiny mining town called Frank. A world away from her own upbringing, the widow finds herself approaching happiness for the first time in her young life. But the hunters do not give up the hunt, and each day they grow closer to finding her, and ruining her tenuous grip on both reality and her own survival.

Adamson’s book feels epic, both in its scope and its language, as it sweeps across the landscape, leaving trails of interesting metaphors and intricate detail that create a vivid picture of the experiences of her protagonist. It’s an engaging novel, and one that I thoroughly enjoyed. If the purpose of my participation in The Canadian Book Challenge is to read from coast to coast, I am certainly glad I finally read Adamson’s book. Filled up with local history and real people (although fictionalized for the purposes of the narrative, of course), the most interesting parts of the book are the things that happen to the widow and the people she meets, not necessarily the drive for her to escape her dead husband’s merciless brothers.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: Simply a link taken from the publisher’s website, in case anyone was interested in knowing that it took Adamson 10 years to write this novel.

READING CHALLENGE UPDATE: So…this takes care of Alberta! And Canada for that matter (I’m killing two challenges with one read).

#2 – July’s People

Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People is a bloody good book. A book I wasn’t necessarily expecting to be as riveting as I certainly found it, and by far one of the best titles I’ve read from the 1001 Books list. In fact, I was so obsessed with finishing that I stood on Lansdowne Ave and read the last two pages before walking home. Some guy walked by, chuckled, and said, “Must be a really good book.”

Uh, duh.

The story takes place in South Africa in 1980 during an uprising, which is fictional, where the country is invaded by Mozambique. With mayhem all around, Maureen, her husband Bam, and their three children are forced to flee the city. Their servant, whom they call July, offers to take them to his village, where they settle in his mother-in-law’s hut for the time being.

Stripped of their city life, their status, and with nothing but the colour of their skin and a few prized possessions (a “bakkie” [truck] and a rifle) to remind them of what life was once like and despite their fiercely liberal beliefs, Bam and Maureen struggle to get along in this foreign world. Fighting fleas, sickness in their children, language difficulties, and a whole host of other problems, it’s a challenge just to get through a day.

After weeks pass, the family starts to adjust, and the little motions that happen in families start again. The children make friends, and even Maureen finds herself more comfortable around the other women, gathering greens for dinner with them, speaking in broken Afrikaans to them, and managing the hut with a strong hand. But as a whole the family cannot flourish in the environment, and as a result, the relationship between July and the Smales breaks down.

Once affable, even amiable, small things pick away at the core differences between them: how July refuses to give back the car keys after taking a trip to town; how Maureen lords the information of his city mistress over him; and how he adjusts to life back in the village full time, how his own presence effects his family unused to seeing him home. Themes of racial inequality are impossible to ignore, as they’re turned on their heads, then ripped apart, and forced into situations that exploit how the idea of the liberalism so cherished by Maureen and her husband in a philosophical way is almost farcical.

In one of my undergraduate classes in post-colonial literature, I read Gordimer’s Burger’s Daughter, which I remember to be just as poignant and readable as July’s People. It was the same year that I read my first novel by J.M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians, but for some reason, I carried on reading him and abandoned Gordimer altogether. Maybe now is the time for me to read more Gordimer? Especially considering how much I enjoyed this novel.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: Because I didn’t have my camera with me on Lansdowne as I read the last two pages, I’ve piled the book up on a stack of ARCs that I have to take back to work. Oh, and there are some stocking feet poking their way in as well as the library book I need to return. Ah, the life of a literary gal.

READING CHALLENGES: July’s People is on two of my lists: the 1001 Books I’d like to read this year, and the South African entry in my current Around the World in 52 Books. I’d highly recommend it for either. Oh, and I think Nadine Gordimer won the Nobel Prize for Literature (which I just confirmed on Wikipedia; she won in 1991), so we can add that to the major award winners that I’ve read in my lifetime too. Whew. Kind of like a bird life list for bookish peeps.

Around the World in 52 Books – 2008

I’ve been mulling over whether or not I want to restrict my reading by doing the Around the World in 52 Books challenge again this year. But I think my overall reading was absolutely enriched by forcing myself out of my comfort zone (read: Canadian fiction) that it would be a shame not to try again, even if I did only manage 33 overall countries. So, here’s the list. I’ve copied the remaining countries I didn’t get to in 2007, and added a few books that have been lingering on my shelves, and will be adding more authors as we go along, having promised myself not to simply read another book by the same writer I read last year as a way of easily knocking countries down off the list. So, here’s where we are so far:

1. The Successor, Ismail Kadare, Albania
2. The Attack, Yasmina Khadra, Algeria
3. The Turning, Tim Winton, Australia
4. The Outlander, Gil Adamson, Canada
5. The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende, Chile
6. Soul Mountain, Gao Xingjian, China
7. The Trial, Franz Kafka, Czech Republic
8. The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz, Dominican Republic
9. The Outcast, Sadie Jones, England
10. Voice Over, Celine Curiol, France
11. Austerlitz, W.G. Sebald, Germany
12. Our Sister Killjoy, Ama Ata Aidoo, Ghana
13. Disappearance, David Dabydeen, Guyana
14. The Melancholy of Resistance, Laszlo Krasznahorkai, Hungary
15. Halldór Laxness, Independent People, Iceland
16. The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai, India
17. The Sea, John Banville, Ireland
18. Let it be Morning, Sayed Kashua, Israel
19. From Harvey River, Lorna Goodison, Jamaica
20. The Unconsoled, Kazuo Ishiguro, Japan
21. Petals of Blood, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Kenya
22. DeNiro’s Game, Rawi Hage, Lebanon
23. The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Mohsin Hamid, Pakistan
24. Blindness, Jose Saramago, Portugal
25. The Woman Who Waited, Makine, Russia
26. Nurudin Farah, Links, Somalia
27. The Speed of Light, Javier Cercas, Spain
28. The Sweet and Simple Kind, Yasmine Gooneratne, Sri Lanka
29. July’s People, Nadine Gordimer, South Africa
30. Javier Cercas, Soldiers of Salamis, Spain
31. Dave Eggers / Valentino Achak Deng, What is the What, Sudan
32. Astrid and Veronika, Linda Olsson, Sweden
33. All Soul’s Day, Cees Nooteboom, The Netherlands
34. In a Free State, V.S. Naipul, Trinidad
35. My Name is Red, Orhan Pamuk, Turkey
36. Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri, United States

Added after this master list:

37. Hunger, Knut Hamsun, Norway

#1 – I Married The Klondike

As of about 8 AM this morning, I was reading the following books: July’s People, War and Peace, What Was Lost, Under the Volcano, The Outlander and I Married the Klondike. The first title in this list of the ridiculously scattered reading I finished was Laura Beatrice Berton’s I Married the Klondike, a memoir written by Pierre Berton’s mother about her time in the North. Not unlike Out of Africa in tone, but with a softer, sweeter core, Berton’s story rolls along with a merry voice that shows the author not only clearly enjoyed her life, but also the setting in which she lived vigorously for many years.

As a schoolteacher living at home in Toronto, Miss Thompson (the author’s maiden name) left at twenty-nine to teach kindergarten in the Yukon. During her years in Dawson City, she fell in love, raised a family, and stayed until her husband ultimately lost his job during the Depression. Leaving behind “the Outside” world for a hard, but happy, life full of old prospectors, prostitutes, upper class society mavens, politics and adventure, it’s a completely charming story of a different kind of life lived.

If I have one small criticism, it’s that the book reads perhaps a bit too much like a small town newspaper account of the author’s time in the Klondike. There are few interpersonal details, which I guess isn’t really the point she’s trying to make, but rather record a history that was definitely only known to the few hearty pioneers who settled Dawson City. And I would imagine that the distance I felt in the narrative might too be evidence of Berton’s own upbringing — written long before the A Million Little Pieces style of memoirs, it’s no doubt she didn’t simply refuse to talk about the more personal aspects of her story, but having them within the narrative may not have ever even crossed her mind.

I know, however, that books aren’t read in a vacuum, and I’d have to say that the same kind of quasi-racism that troubled me in Dinsen’s book, kept nagging at me here too, when Berton wrote things about the “half-breeds” and “going wild like the Indians”, the book made me kind of uncomfortable. It’s interesting then to note that, in all honesty, I was pleasantly surprised to enjoy the book as much as I did.

The history of the Klondike is a subject I find fascinating. Ever since I wrote a series of articles about it for History Television, it’s been something I float back to on occasion, and it was interesting to read the history from a woman’s point of view — to get the perspective of one not intending to strike it rich, but of an adventurous woman who sets out to take a challenging post for one year and ends up spending her entire life. As Berton notes, “I imagine that in everyone’s life there eventually comes a moment when a simple question, or a chance meeting, or a knock on the door, changes the entire course of one’s future.”

Lastly, wouldn’t it be fun to take part in the Berton House Writer’s Retreat?

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: I read a copy of the book that had a library binding and so decided not to take a picture. Instead, I found the original jacket image from M&S (which wasn’t hard, ahem, Amazon!), but if you’re looking to read the book now, Harbour Publishing has the book back in print.

READING CHALLENGE: I’m going to try and balance out my Canadian reading and participate in The Canadian Book Challenge this year (In case you’re wondering, I’ve picked #1 The White Stripes Way). I’m counting this book as my Yukon entry, even before I decide what I’m going to read for the remaining rest of the provinces and territories!

#84 – The Frozen Thames

It’s a brave new world. I am sitting on my couch this morning with my brand new (gifted by my incredibly generous brother) MacBook in front of me typing this blog entry. After a false start, and a shady Future Shop clerk who sold him a used model that was actually missing important pieces (like the plug that goes from the power adaptor to the wall) and had a burned out hard drive, we’re back on track this morning with a beautiful new machine that hums and looks absolutely gorgeous.

Having not owned a Mac before, I’m stumbling around, but the more I get used to it, the more I like it, and not just because the commercials with Justin Long are just so cute. I’m excited to learn how to cut movies and all that fun stuff — but for now I’ll settle for figuring out how to get a photo into this post.
Okay, enough preamble.
Oh, wait, more preamble.
Today is my 2nd wedding anniversary and the anniversary of our 9th year living together. Congratulations to us!
Okay, now that’s enough preamble.
Helen Humphreys’s The Frozen Thames is an interesting novel. Written as 40 short vignettes describing each time the Thames has frozen over the last 1,000 or so years (the book starts with the 1142 freeze). Each story captures a moment in time around when the Thames froze from all different walks of life, publicans, noblemen, Kings, Queens, clergy — the characters are as different as the ice itself.
While some of the stories tend toward repetition (there are a lot of frozen birds and a lot of Frost Fairs), each one has intimate historical details that bring that particular year to life. Whether it’s Queen Matilda fighting off her cousin in the first tale, or the strange inscription the mason makes on the stone in another, it’s impossible not to be taken in by the stories and transported to a time when warmth was little but a figment of one’s imagination.
Of the stories, my favourites include the Postscript, 1709, 1716, 1565 and 1809. And I don’t want to give anything away really because it’s a sweet little book to read. In the Author’s Note, Humphreys explains that she wanted to write about ice at a time when our world might soon be without it entirely. To document the wonders of the cold so that there would be a record. A cool appreciation for a season so many of us simply try and avoid — by staying inside, by wrapping up in sleeping bag coats, by travelling down south — instead of maybe enjoying it a little, like so many of her characters who walk along the frozen banks wondering at the sounds, wandering over the makeshift tundras, and always realizing the inspiration within.
PHOTO IN CONTEXT: How I wouldn’t love to simply have taken the book outside, plopped it into the snowbank, and shot the picture, but that would ruin the package, and it’s a truly delightful looking book. Instead, it’s a fairly typical shot of the book on the chair in our TV room.