Category: trh books

The Canadian Book Challenge

I haven’t quite got all of the books organized in my mind yet for this particular reading challenge. Some I’ll gather as I go along and some I’ll pick up along the way as new books come out this year. Regardless, I wanted to keep a master post for The Canadian Book Challenge like I’ve done with the two other lists I’ve got for this year. As the challenge actually started in October, I’m counting at least one book I’ve read since then towards my ultimate goal of reading “The White Stripes Way (From Sea To Sea To Sea).” Here’s the list so far:

1. Newfoundland: Alligator by Lisa Moore book actually read Air Stream Land Yacht by Ken Babstock.
2. Prince Edward Island: Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery. Book actually read Rilla of Ingelside.
3. Nova Scotia: Saints of Big Harbour by Lynn Coady. Book actually read: The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill.
4. New Brunswick: The Lost Highway by David Adams Richards
5. Quebec: My Name is Bosnia by Madeleine Gagnon, Translated by Phyllis Aronoff and Howard Scott
6. Ontario: Consolation by Michael Redhill
7. Manitoba: See the Child, David Bergen
8. Saskatchewan: The Horseman’s Graves by Jacqueline Baker
9. Alberta: The Outlander by Gil Adamson
10. British Columbia: Stanley Park by Timothy Taylor. Book actually read for BC, After River by Donna Milner.
11. Yukon Territory: I Married the Klondike by Laura Beatrice Berton
12. Northwest Territories: Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay
13. Nunavut: Unsettled, Zachariah Wells

#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!

New Year’s Revolutions Are Working

So in my attempt to not read celebrity gossip, I decided to use the internet for good and thought I’d check out The New Yorker‘s web site when I needed a mental break from work. Am I ever glad I did. Here’s Jhumpa Lahiri reading and discussing William Trevor’s story “A Day.”

Lahiri says she would be “lost” without having discovered William Trevor. Is there an author out there that you’d be lost without discovering? For me in my formative years it was always Kerouac and Henry Miller — not that I would ever write like either, but I obsessed over their absolute abandon of a ‘normal’ life for their art. And they wrote about places and people I was dying to see and meet. And now Paris and Big Sur, California are two of my favourite places that I’ve visited. Funny how those things work out, isn’t it?

In terms of writers, Roddy Doyle is on my life list of writers to look up to, also the Margaret Atwood that wrote Surfacing, which is my favourite of her novels, and these days I’m kind of obsessed with Tim Winton after reading Breath, which I think will be one of the best books I’ll have read this year…

#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.

#83 – Triangle

Even without noticing it acutely, I’m probably reading a book a day, well at least over the last two anyway. This trend might need to continue as my body forces me to rest, having now come down with a rotten cold not even ten days after the plague, and not even a day after my RRHB himself survived the awful GI sickness. Isn’t that what holidays are for?

Annnywaaay. Today it’s Katharine Weber’s excellent Triangle: A Novel. Started last night after we watched Eastern Promises (well, the RRHB watched the film; I half puttered about because I’d already seen the film), I just finished it moments ago, cuddled up with a cup of cold tea on the chair with Walter at my feet.

It’s an interesting novel, both in the way Weber chooses to tell the story, swinging back and forth over Esther Gottesfeld’s tale of the day in which she survived the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in 1911, and the modern day lives of Esther, her granddaughter Rebecca and her composer lover George. On the edge of death from the ripe old age of 106, Esther has kept a number of secrets about the fire for 90 years, details that an historian named Ruth Zion is desperate to pry out of her cold, dead hands. They are all fascinating characters all, but its truly Rebecca and George, whose final composition in the book finds its inspiration from those tragic events, who find their lives inexorably changed when Esther finally dies.

Told in various formats (court transcripts, newspaper articles, phone conversations), and commenting mercilessly on the nature of storytelling itself, the novel is rich in fascinating details, not only about the music George composes and its compellingly scientific beginnings, but also in the nature of Rebecca’s work as a geneticist, and how both of these things tie the couple together in ways that are not necessarily traditional, but certainly work to keep the two of them happy. It’s a beautiful book about the nature of family, the threads of tradition, and a tragedy that defined the history of New York at that particular time and place.

Inspiring, addictive, ridiculously smart and completely effective, Triangle: A Novel might just be the perfect book for a partially snowy grey day in Toronto; miles and years away from 1911 New York, and worlds away from composers, geneticists, and all kinds of other things I would have never known about had I not finished Weber’s work.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: I love the detail on the cover where the word “Triangle” is stitched onto a shirt (maybe a shirtwaist?), and wanted to highlight it with my photograph of the book sitting on my desk surrounded by used Kleenex (gross), pens, a notepad, with Helen Humphrey’s The Frozen Thames underneath.

#82 – Away

With Christmas decidedly out of the way, and the two of us absolutely crashing last night while we watched (and I bawled, natch) one of the greatest of the great movies, The Shawshank Redemption, we now come upon one of my favourite weeks of the year: Between Christmas and New Year (BCANY).

Goodness, a whole lot of nothing happens BCANY, last year we recovered from Cuba, the year before that we recovered from getting married (and watched all of the extended Lord of the Rings trilogy, awesome), and the year before that…well, you get the picture. We do a whole lot of recovering in the week BCANY. What generally happens is that I read a crapload of books, psyche myself up for the upcoming year, and generally bemoan the fact that I’m still sick (as defined by having to take stupid-ass medication) and going on my fourth year of dealing with this round of the disease.

So, as my year-end reading comes to a manic close, there might be a flurry of posts about different books I’ve finished. The first of which, Amy Bloom’s Away, I have to say I enjoyed very much, and I hope that it starts a sort of trend. It’s the story of Lillian Leyb, whose tale begins when her entire family is murdered in their home in a Russian pogrom and ends in the frozen tundras of the north. It’s an epic book, one that takes Lillian, in her grief, to New York City, where she lives in the Lower East Side, and then, upon discovering that her daughter Sophie isn’t dead after all, but rescued and spirited away to Siberia, on a journey all the way north. Lillian travels by train (in the closet), by boat (driven by her own hands) and sometimes by foot (blistered and bleeding), to northernmost Alaska, where she hopes to sail a boat across to Siberia and Sophie.

Bloom writes beautifully. The novel’s research isn’t obtrusive, but fits in the novel like sheets on a bed, lining Lillian’s story with bits to keep her warm despite what she endures. The book isn’t simply epic in scope, but also in story, along the way Lillian meets a cast of characters, and one would think it would be hard to keep them all straight, but Bloom’s skill as a novelist never allows a single thread to drop untied. Instead, she’s got a gift for ensuring that the reader knows the end to each main character. Tangential slips take off bit by bit as Lillian exits someone’s life, and every question is answered — even if it takes just a few paragraphs, Bloom makes sure you know what happens to the people that have touched Lillian’s life.

All in all, it was a delightful book to read, and I loved the Canadian content, the Telegraph Trail, Dawson City’s depleted “Paris of the North” status by the early 20th century, the bugs, and the idea of walking to the sound of your own voice, as Lillian does to keep going, telling Sophie stories with each step she takes. I won’t ruin the ending, but I will say that I’d highly recommend this novel, regardless of the fact that my RRHB thinks the cover might just be the most hideous he’s ever seen. I kind of like it, but am willing to hear arguments from either side.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: Away standing up on my new bookshelves, already crammed with books, candles, sunglasses, ARCs, computer cords, pictures, receipts, CDRs, brochures and a whole host of other crap.

1001 Books Challenge – 2008

So my goal for the 1001 Books challenge is to try and read two titles per month. And in an attempt to not ensure my RRHB goes completely mad with the stacks of books consistently piling up on our shelves, I’m going to try and read the titles that I’ve already got in-house. So here’s my list for the year:

1. War and Peace by Tolstoy
Having been assigned by my creative writing teacher in a manner of speaking, the claim that it’s the most “romantic” book ever written is at stake. At 1448 pages, it’ll be almost impossible to get through. Good thing I’ve got 11 days off starting today.

2. Invisble Man by Ralph Ellison
I should have read this novel during my undergraduate American fiction class, but I never got around to it. I’ve had the novel on various bookshelves over the years and I think it’s about time I actually read the damn book.

3. The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
Having read the first sentence about a dozen times over the past three years, I have to say it’s still one of the best I’ve ever read. That doesn’t mean I’ve actually found my way to the end of the book.
FINISHED JANUARY 2008

4. Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates
Something fun for the upcoming year.

5. Schooling by Heather McGowan
See #4.

6. The Sea by John Banville
Another book I’ve had on my TBR pile for quite some time.
FINISHED MARCH 21st

7. Drop City by T. Coraghessan Boyle
I picked up a copy of this at a used book store in Stratford, and although I’d never heard of T. Coraghessan Boyle before the 1001 Books list, the fact that part of the novel is set on a commune has me utterly intrigued. Who doesn’t love a good commune story?

8. Islands by Dan Sleigh
Ever since I heard our family story that my great-great grandfather went off to the Boer War and never returned, I’ve been curious about South Africa. It’s on my list of countries where I would spend two months if I got the chance to tour the world, if only to find out if the story is true, and this epic novel seems a good place to start.

9. July’s People by Nadine Gordimer
Speaking of South Africa, another novel that’s been on my TBR pile for years, I’ve already half-finished it twice. This is the year to get to the last page.
FINISHED JANUARY 2, 2008.

10. Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
Recommended by Kath as one of the greatest novels of all time (at least I think that’s what she said), I brought a lovely copy home from work, and it’s going on the list.

11. Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Another “as recommended by” — it’s a friend’s favourite novel.

12. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Continuing my love affair with Austen, I am so happy that I’ve still got novels of hers to read.
FINISHED MARCH 2008

13. Middlemarch by George Eliot
Another giant classic. Enough said.
FINISHED DECEMBER 2008

14. Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald
I have a copy. It’s on a shelf. That’s pretty much why it’s on the list.

15. Philip Roth: The Plot Against America or American Pastoral
Both are on my 1001 Books shelf, so I’m not sure which one I’ll choose, but I’m happy to try and read either one.

16. Ulysses by James Joyce
We’ll see if I actually get through this one. We’ll see.

17. The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
I recently re-watched the movie version (it was on TMN and I wasn’t feeling well) and was surprised at how much I actually enjoyed it. I’m sure the book will be even better.

18. Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey
This book goes in the same category as The Good Soldier. I’ve stopped and started a dozen times since first picking it up in high school.

19. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Emma at work recommends this one. Hence, it’s on the list.
FINISHED MAY 2008

20. The Quiet American by Graham Greene
This is for my 1001 Books club.
FINISHED FEBRUARY 2008

21. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Who doesn’t love a good Wharton (it took my fancy; see below)
FINISHED APRIL 2008

22. Hunger by Knut Hamsun
The fancy struck me.
FINISHED NOVEMBER 2008

23. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Again, the fancy struck me.
FINISHED NOVEMBER 2008

24. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Because it was just that time of year.
FINISHED DECEMBER 2008

25. Choke by Chuck Palahniuk
Because there’s a movie.
FINISHED DECEMBER 2008.

And that leaves a few more titles to be determined over the next few months if something simply takes my fancy.

The running tally: 161

Reading Resolutions

Now that I’ve got a glorious 11 days off and absolutely no freelance to do, I can actually start thinking about what kind of reading resolutions to tackle for 2008. I read 32 of my Around the World in 52 Books, and would have made it through more if my work reading hadn’t filled up so much of my spare time. I added 13 more titles to the 1001 Books challenge, which brings me up to 145, which means I’m slowly but surely getting to my goal of maybe reading half the list in my lifetime.

I think I will surely update my Around the World in 52 Books for 2008, include an across Canada challenge, make a list of the 1001 books I’d like to tackle, and try to finish some of the great big books, like War and Peace, which I started yesterday — 4 chapters down, hundreds more to go. Goodness, I really don’t like long books.

So, lots more to come as I compile my lists over the next few days.