Jessica Reads

Blow Me Down

2006-07-11T01:22:00.000-04:00

Blow Me Down
By Katie MacAlister

First off, this book requires some SERIOUS suspension of disbelief. The story is as follows: Kate gets “trapped” inside a virtual reality computer game about pirates by a jilted computer programmer. She experiences this alternate game world exactly like reality. Now, we’ve come a long way from the days of ATARI, but if you’ve ever played a MMPORPG you know it’s not like reality. (I know I’ve just revealed my true level of geekiness by using that acronym…)

Back to the book – aside from being totally ridiculous, I kind of enjoyed this book. It’s basically a period romance set in “pirate times” (I made that up because I have no idea when it was actually supposed to take place), except it’s actually set in the present but the main character gets trapped in an alternate reality based in the past. The book was fresh and funny, and at its heart is a twist on the classic boy-meets-girl story. Well, girl gets trapped inside pirate video game and meets boy pirate only to discover that he’s really the creator of the pirate video game and is also trapped and they band together to fight evil pirate who’s actually a computer programmer in real life and they fall in love… It's a fun, light read - and the cover is very bright and summery if you care about that sort of stuff.

Wildcat Wine

2006-07-06T18:53:00.000-04:00

Wildcat Wine
By Claire Matturro

Trashy mystery books with sassy female heroines are for me like a piece of carrot cake with cream cheese icing that I had once as a child. I remember it as being the single most delicious thing I have ever eaten and I am constantly trying (and failing) to replicate the experience. No cake is ever quite moist and carroty enough. No icing quite creamy enough. I still love carrot cake, but each first bite is always a little bit disappointing, no matter how good the cake is, because it can never live up to my memory of the perfect piece of carrot cake. I think my obsession with the genre can also be traced back to my first Nancy Drew book and that moment when I realized that I loved Nancy Drew and that there were like fifty more Nancy Drew books that I hadn’t even read yet. I could spot those yellow covers in any library, bookstore or yard sale from twenty feet away… I still have my prized Nancy Drew collection stored at my parents' house.

I digress. Wildcat Wine: it’s got a lot of right ingredients – not carrots in this case, but a neurotically endearing young heroine – yet it doesn’t really live up to its potential. I liked Lilly, who is an obsessive-compulsive litigation lawyer - although she's no Nancy Drew. Matturro did a good job of building the plot so that I hadn’t figured it all out by page 10, but when it all finally came together it made sense. Matturro tried to build a bit of a romantic element into the plot, but it really fell flat and detracted from the book for me. All in all it was a good mindless read.

Empire Falls

2006-07-04T10:23:00.000-04:00

Empire Falls
By Richard Russo

I really loved this book. Empire Falls is about a town of the same name and Russo has created an unforgettable cast of characters who inhabit the town. His characters are vibrant and engaging, and the book is much more character driven than plot driven. My only criticism is that I found the plot itself to be disappointingly predictable. There were a few moments that I suspect were intended to be “twists” but their foundations had been laid so obviously that there was no real surprise. I've never read anything else by Russo but I’ve added his other books to my “to read” list because I enjoyed Empire Falls so much.

I’d be interested to hear whether anyone who has read this book has also seen the mini-series based on it. I had it in my hands at the video store last night, but I put it back because I didn’t want to taint my experience of the book in case it was poorly done.

Human Cargo

2006-06-30T12:08:00.000-04:00

Human Cargo: A Journey Among Refugees
By Caroline Moorhead

This book is an intimate look at what it means to be a refugee. Caroline Moorhead shares the stories of dozens of refugees around the world. Their stories are horrific and moving. They have faced persecution, torture, and loss that are unfathomable to those of us lucky enough to be born into privilege.

What I found most compelling about this book is Moorhead’s discussion of immigration policies in western countries, which isn’t something that I’ve ever really given much thought to. The book raises some very tough issues around the morality of exclusionary immigration policies. She explores the ways in which our ideas of national identity are predicated on exclusion – on keeping “others” out. Moorhead certainly doesn’t offer any easy answers, because of course there aren’t any. The issues are complex and difficult – what obligations do we have to intervene in civil wars and domestic conflicts? What obligations do we have to people who are displaced by civil wars and domestic conflicts? How can we repair the legacy of destruction that is being perpetuated in refugee and displaced persons camps?

I really enjoyed this book and it raises some issues that I think we all need to give some thought to. On a personal note, this book planted the seed of an idea that I think may develop into a topic for my master’s thesis.

Honeymoon in Purdah

2006-06-25T13:34:00.000-04:00

Honeymoon in Purdah: An Iranian Journey
By Alison Wearing

Honeymoon in Purdah is the sort of book that fills you with wanderlust. I have never had any particular desire to visit Iran, but this book paints such a vivid picture of the country and its people that I might almost change my mind. Alison Wearing is a Canadian living in Montreal. She and her roommate decide to travel to Iran posing as a young couple on their honeymoon. The book is a travel journal of her experiences and encounters as a western woman traveling in Iran. She wears a chador as required by the Muslim faith as she travels across the country, and her reflections on the symbolism of that experience for her as a woman are very interesting.

The Iranian people that she meets on her journey show her unbelievable kindness and generosity and welcome her into their homes. The book offers a compelling look at life in contemporary Iran and the ways in which its people live within the complicated intersection of religion, culture and politics.

Red Azalea

2006-06-24T14:25:00.000-04:00

Red Azalea
By Anchee Min

This is an extraordinary book. I'd never heard of it and to be honest I picked it out at the library because it's a small paperback and was the only book on the shelf I was standing next to that would fit in my bag.

It is the story of the author’s childhood in China under the Maoist regime. I had to keep reminding myself that it’s an autobiography because it reads like a novel. Min’s story is about growing up, but this universal and familiar human experience is set in a time and place that for most readers is simply unimaginable. This is a book that I won’t soon forget and I highly recommend it.

Middlesex

2006-06-23T18:00:00.000-04:00

Middlesex
By Jeffrey Eugenides

I never really had any interest in reading this book, despite the fact that I didn’t know anything about it. I found the cover a bit blah, so it had never appealed to me visually. Also, for some reason the title made me think that the book would be about a British general. I could not have been more wrong.

In fact, this is a book about a young hermaphrodite whose childhood is spent as a young girl and who lives as a man after she becomes a teenager. The story reaches back to the main character’s grandparents, who, unbeknownst to her/him, are in fact brother and sister.

This book is strangely captivating and filled with unexpectedly poignant moments.

A Region in Turmoil

2006-06-15T15:22:00.000-04:00

A Region in Turmoil: South Asian Conflicts Since 1947
By Rob Johnson

This book looks at the trends of military, political, ethnic and religious conflict in South Asia, with an emphasis on India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Myanmar (Burma) and Nepal. It is part of the “Contemporary Worlds” series that focuses on contemporary geo-political forces. The book was published in August of 2005, so it is fairly up-to-date in terms of world events. I found it to be an engaging read and I learned a great deal about a region that I didn’t have much prior knowledge of. Johnson provides a great overview and uses enough detail to make his topic interesting, but without overwhelming the reader with trivia. I definitely recommend this to anyone who has an interest in the recent history of this part of the world.

Also, and this is a complete aside, I really loved the font that this book was published in. I’ve always found it strange that some books actually tell you what font or type-face they used – I just never thought anyone actually cared. Until I saw this font, and let me tell you – I am in love. It’s a British book, so it’s obviously some kind of delightful British font. I bet it has a sexy British-sounding name, too. I guess I’ll never know…

Gilead

2006-06-14T00:09:00.000-04:00

Gilead
By Marilynne Robinson

This novel is written in the form of a letter from a dying man to his young son. In the “letter” – which is a father’s legacy to his son – the Reverend John Ames reflects on his own life, his family history and his faith. This book is beautifully written and very moving. Although the main character’s faith is a very central element in the novel, I didn’t find it at all alienating despite the fact that I am not even slightly religious.

I highly recommend this book – and in fact I already passed my copy along to my parents to read because I think they’ll both really enjoy it. Plus, I’m still trying to make up for having loaned my father “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell”….

Thanks to Mapletree7 http://mapletree7.blogspot.com/gspot.com/ for her Alt.list recommendations, which prompted me to read this book.

Virtual War

2006-06-12T13:35:00.000-04:00

Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond
By Michael Ignatieff

In this book Michael Ignatieff looks at the implications of modern warfare. With reference to Kosovo, which he identifies as the first “virtual war”, he writes about the consequences of waging a war in which we are more voyeurs than combatants. He also looks at the ways in which we justify warfare and the hypocrisy, albeit necessary, of killing in the name of protecting human rights.

One of the parts of Virtual War that I found particularly interesting was Ignatieff’s writing about Louise Arbour in her capacity as the chief prosecutor of the War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague. I found his discussions with her around the indictment of Milosevic to be fascinating, particularly because I had the pleasure of hearing her speak about the same subject when she visited the University of Victoria Faculty of Law while I was student there.

I found this book to be philosophically interesting and thought provoking.

The Weekend Man

2006-06-09T10:36:00.000-04:00

The Weekend Man
By Richard B. Wright

The best thing I can say about this book is that Wright’s characters are marvelously textured and he does an amazing job of giving the reader tiny glimpses at them in a way that makes each character seem interesting and flawed and real. That said, I found the main character kind of pathetic. I know that he was supposed to be, but by the time I put the book down I felt kind of exhausted and hopeless about my own life. Definitely not an uplifting read.

While I didn’t love the Weekend Man, I did find Wright’s writing style appealing, so I think I’ll try another of his books – perhaps I’ll read Clara Callan, which won both the Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Award.

Allah's Mountains

2006-06-07T20:51:00.000-04:00

Allah’s Mountains: The Battle for Chechnya
By Sebastian Smith

Before I picked up this book I knew absolutely nothing about the conflict in Chechnya. Allah’s Mountains provides both a rich historical context and a detailed first-person account of the Russian response to Chechnya’s declaration of independence in 1991. It is as educational as a historical text, but as readable as a novel.

Smith is a journalist and was one of few foreign journalists in Chechnya during the First (1994-1996) Chechen War. His account of the conflict is made more powerful because he intersperses descriptions of political and military events with intensely personal vignettes of his experiences in Chechnya.

Allah’s Mountains is exactly the kind of book I like best. I found Smith’s writing style completely engaging and I also gained some understanding of what’s been going on in the Caucus over the past few decades. I think that we in North America are reluctant to look too closely at these kinds of disputes (I’m thinking also of the former Yugoslavia). It seems that we tend to write them off as internal religious or ethnic conflicts that are none of our business. I find our willful blindness about what’s really happening in other parts of the world to be terrifying. We live in a time where information can be transmitted half a world away in an instant, yet we are still ignorant about so much of what happens in the world.

Summer Crossing

2006-06-06T14:35:00.000-04:00

Summer Crossing
By Truman Capote

I was a bit puzzled when I came across this book at the library last week because I’d never heard of it. Once I picked it up, I realized why. This novel was published posthumously after a box of Capote’s things were put up for auction at Sotheby’s in 2004 – twenty years after Capote’s death.

I really enjoyed this book, mostly because I love Capote’s writing style, but it definitely had an unfinished feel about it. Which makes sense, obviously, since he never intended for it to be published in its present form. If you like Capote already you’ll enjoy Summer Crossing, but if you are a Capote-virgin, I’d recommend starting with something else (maybe In Cold Blood or Breakfast at Tiffany's).

Barney's Version

2006-06-05T15:19:00.000-04:00

Barney’s Version
By Mordecai Richler

First a confession: this is the first Mordecai Richler book I’ve ever read (unless you count Jacob Two-two Meets the Hooded Fang, which I don’t). I know – bad Canadian. I’m not sure how I managed to get through high school AND an Honours English degree without ever having the Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz show up on a syllabus, but somehow I did.

First impressions: I HATE the cover of this book. I actually find it repellent. I opened this book not really expecting that I’d like it, but I was very pleasantly surprised and read the entire thing in two sittings.

Barney’s Version is a mockobiography – fiction written in the style of an autobiography, complete with an “Afterword” written by the main character’s fictional son. I found myself grudgingly liking Barney, the main character, by the end of the book in spite of myself. He possessed few (if any!) redeeming qualities, yet the confessional nature of the book detailed his mistakes, weaknesses and regrets in a way that humanized him for me.

What I liked about this book was that Richler cleverly demonstrated that there is no such thing as “truth”, as life is always obscured and coloured by our memories and perceptions. I highly recommend this book and I will definitely make a point of picking up some of Richler’s other works the next time I’m at the library.

Night

2006-06-04T11:47:00.000-04:00

Night
By Elie Wiesel

See Oprah? I haven’t held a grudge about Gap Creek.

It seems a bit improper to be making a joke in a post about this book, but since I’m one of those people with the unfortunate habit of laughing or giggling when it’s REALLY inappropriate, I suppose it’s fitting.

I had actually never heard of this book until I was at Chapters the other night with my friend Hilary. She decided to buy this book by Douglas Coupland

– which I supported because I really want to read it too. Then we saw the display for Night, which she’d heard was very good. She talked me into buying it so that we could trade after we’d read them. I never need much convincing to buy a book, so I agreed.

This is a deceptively slim volume, translated from a book originally written in Yiddish. It is an autobiographical recounting of the author’s experience as a young teenager when he and his family were taken to Auschwitz concentration camp. The Holocaust is a tragedy of such enormity that it’s hard to get my head around. It just seems so impossible that people could have committed such acts of atrocity against one another. What makes the legacy of the Holocaust so terrifying is not the idea that people have the capacity for senseless hatred and cruelty, but that so many people were complicit in this. How can we ever make sense of that?

The Night looks at the Holocaust in the context of its impact on a single life. The author’s style is sparse but immensely powerful. Before his experience at Auschwitz – and the labour camps after that – the author was very religious. What I found most compelling about this book was the author’s struggle to reconcile his faith with his experiences. The horror of the camps made it impossible for him to continue to believe as he had before:

I did not fast. First of all, to please my father who had forbidden me to do
so. And then, there was no longer any reason for me to fast. I no
longer accepted God’s silence. As I swallowed my ration of soup, I turned
that act into a symbol of rebellion, of protest against Him.
And I nibbled on my crust of bread.
Deep inside me, I felt a great void opening.

The book’s message transcends religion and speaks to our faith in humanity: silence is unacceptable. We are each of us complicit when we do nothing when others are persecuted. This isn’t a pleasant book, and it shouldn’t be. I wasn’t even born when the Holocaust happened, but I nonetheless felt guilt reading this book. I think that we – all of us – ought to feel a collective guilt and shame that this was ever allowed to happen to even one person, let alone millions. For me this is what makes this book important and I’m glad that it is enjoying a resurgence in popularity nearly fifty years after it was first published. It’s dangerous for us to think of the Holocaust as something that happened in another time and place and could never happen again.

Night contains a very important message that we must never let ourselves forget.

Fair Trade For All

2006-06-02T17:09:00.000-04:00

Fair Trade For All: How Trade Can Promote Development
By Joseph E. Stiglitz and Andrew Charlton

This book looks at economic and trade policy aimed at promoting development within the least developed countries in the context of the World Trade Organization. To be completely honest, most of the book was over my head. At best, I have a rudimentary understanding of economics.

Still, the premise of the book was interesting. It was primarily a critique of the existing assumptions and rules that govern trade agreement negotiations between WTO countries. The authors argue that most of the economic assumptions that underlie these negotiations simply don't hold true for developing countries. Large developed countries, like the US, consistently negotiate trade agreements with less developed countries that negatively impact the potential for development in those countries. The authors argue that we need re-evaluate the popular notion that trade liberalization is the best and only recipe for development.

The authors posit a new form of trade agreement between developed and developing countries, which they call the Market Access Proposal. Essentially, the proposal is as follows:

All WTO members could commit themselves to providing free market access in all
goods to developing countries poorer and smaller than themselves. (94)

The idea is that market access is distributed progressively based on criteria like GDP and population. As I understand it, this model would look like a big pyramid with the US at the top providing unrestricted access to its markets to all countries below it.

As I said, much of this book was beyond me, but I did take away a few things from it. I have a better understanding of the complexity of farm subsidies. Living in southwestern Ontario, this is an issue that is often in the news, but one that I've never really understood. I certainly wouldn't claim to understand it now, but I have a better appreciation for why it is such a contentious issue. When developed countries like Canada, the US or the EU subsidize agriculture it drives down prices in those markets that developing countries are most likely to have a competitive advantage in, which obviously is to the detriment of developing countries.

Herein lies the tension - should we do just what's best for Canada? For our farmers and our agricultural industry? Or do we need to broaden the scope of the application of principles of fairness and equality and think globally rather than just nationally? Fair Trade For All makes the point that political globalization has not kept up with economic globalization and that as a result we are still adhering to a system of international trade negotiation based upon political and economic power rather than upon principle and fairness.

Interesting topic, but not exactly accessible for those of us without a background in economics or international trade. The writing was extremely dry, and I think that if the authors wanted to appeal to a wider audience they should have used some real-life examples (ie. described the impacts of non-tariff barriers) to make the subject more relatable.

Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination

2006-05-31T13:56:00.000-04:00

Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination
By Helen Fielding

This was a very disappointing book. I loved Bridget Jones’ Diary and thought Fielding’s writing style was hilarious - I literally laughed out loud while reading that book for the first time. I suppose in light of the success of Bridget Jones she wanted to try to writing something that wasn’t exactly the same, but I think that with this book she’s gone too far a field of what it is that she does best.

What we loved about Bridget Jones as a character was her ordinariness – her relatability. Olivia Joules, the character in this book, lacks that quality. Olivia Joules is a free-lance journalist, flying around the world to exotic locations to write magazine articles. We’re supposed to believe that she’s good enough to continue getting work, and yet we’re told that her recent work has been unbelievable and she’s accused by one of her editors of having an overactive imagination. (For what it's worth, I would have titled this book "Olivia Joules and Her Overactive Imagination".)

She’s sent to Miami to cover a cosmetics launch and her imagination is engaged by a handsome French producer whom she believes to be Osama bin Laden undercover. The plot just spins off from there become more and more implausible as the book progresses. Olivia is portrayed as an irresistible temptress and she’s seducing men left and right. Fielding describes Olivia’s humble beginnings (from small town in England, used to be a bit overweight) in an effort to make her more likeable, but it really didn’t work.

None of the relationships in the book were well developed enough to be believable and the plot was absolutely absurd. What made it most disappointing is that we know what great stuff Fielding is capable of. Hopefully the commercial failure of this book will force her to go back to writing about ordinary people dealing with ordinary problems with her signature hilarious style. I don’t want to see a single CIA agent in her next book!

I gave this book my lowest rating - I don't even have a half-book rating, although if Helen Fielding writes a sequel to this book I will definitely have to develop one!

Gap Creek

2006-05-31T13:07:00.000-04:00

Gap Creek: The Story of a Marriage
By Robert Morgan

I’ve got two books to post for today because I had a two and a half hour train trip yesterday, so I read one book on the way there and another on the way home. The books were chosen on the basis of being small enough to fit both into my purse and still leave room for lip gloss and sunglasses.

Although I never read a book simply because it’s an Oprah book club selection, I’ve always really enjoyed all of the books she recommends. When I see the Oprah symbol on the front cover I think of it as a guarantee that the book won’t suck. I have to say that Gap Creek is the first Oprah-endorsed book that I have really not liked. First off, I had an uncanny sense while reading this book that I’d already read it, although I know that I haven’t. I think it just really reminded me of Jewel, by Bret Lott (another Oprah book, incidentally), which I read fairly recently.

I found Morgan’s use of dialect when writing from the first-person perspective of Julie, the protagonist, to be distracting and tiresome. The book is titled Gap Creek: The Story of a Marriage, which I don’t really think is an apt title because it implies that the relationship between Julie and her husband is the focus of the book. In reality, Julie is the focus of the book, although her husband is a significant character. Most of the other characters in the book are really despicable, including Hank, Julie’s husband. Morgan tried to end the book on a hopeful note, but I just didn’t buy it. He’d painted such a bleak picture of Julie and Hank’s life together that it seemed unlikely that anything would ever change between them.

What Gap Creek lacked in character development it made up for in its detailed description of the hardships of life in the late 1800’s in rural America. Each obstacle or struggle seemed to be resolved in the same way – Julie would display amazing courage, strength and endurance and she would overcome. It got a bit old for me.

Ordinary Life

2006-05-30T23:20:00.000-04:00

Ordinary Life
By Elizabeth Berg

Okay, I know this is the third Elizabeth Berg book I’ve read this month, but I really like her. I’m going to have to start pacing myself though, because I think there’s only a few of her books left that I haven’t read yet. Just thinking about that gives me a bit of a tight feeling in my chest….

This is a book of short stories, which I was a bit skeptical about at first, since it isn’t my favourite genre. I find it’s tough to really connect with the characters and plot in only a few pages. These stories put me in mind of looking at a stranger’s photo album. Each story is a like a little intimate glimpse inside of someone’s life. In these stories Berg expertly captures the joys and tragedies that are the stuff of everyday life in a way that highlights the moments of transcendence that we all experience in our lives. As Berg notes in the Author’s Note at the close of the book:

These stories are not perfect either, but they are the best I could to to
portray certain life events, to illuminate certain ways of thinking, to
illustrate the way we can get from here to there, to document some interesting
insights. More than anything, they are meant to celebrate the extraordinary
moments and events that make up ordinary life.

If you like Elizabeth Berg, you’ll enjoy these short stories. I couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed as each story ended though, as if I’d been given just a taste and left wanting more.

The Bully of Bentonville

2006-05-29T13:50:00.000-04:00

The Bully of Bentonville: The High Cost of Wal-Mart’s Everyday Low Prices
By Anthony Bianco

This book is a critical look at the economic impact that Wal-Mart has had on American society. I initially picked up this book because my mother had recommended a documentary film about Wal-Mart to me. I couldn’t find the film anywhere, but still thought it was a subject I wanted to know a bit more about.

The Bully of Bentonville is a fairly dry read. Bianco describes the history of Wal-Mart’s emergence as a corporate super-power in great detail, which is fairly interesting. However, a lot of the book is concerned with the history of the corporation’s leadership over the past decades, which really didn’t interest me much at all.

I started this book with a fairly open mind. I’ve never agreed with those people who seem to hate Wal-Mart on principle because it is emblematic of big box stores in general. I certainly wouldn’t say that I like what big box retailing has done to the urban landscape of Canadian cities, but I don’t think that we can hold a single corporation responsible. Wal-Mart exists because billions of people make the conscious decision to shop there every single day. It may be true that Wal-Mart is responsible for the decay of downtown retail that used to be the heart of many cities – but, that is a responsibility that each of us is complicit in every time we shop there.

I think a lot of what people negatively associate with Wal-Mart (such as importing most of its products from China) is actually a product of the globalization of our economy. In that respect, Wal-Mart is doing what other American corporations (GAP, Nike) have been doing for decades – they’re just doing it better and on a much larger scale.

However, Bianco did open my eyes to Wal-Mart’s legacy of abysmal labour practices, of which I really hadn’t been aware until I read this book. Wal-Mart is one of the largest single employers in the United States, but it has a 50% annual employee turnover. The fact that ½ of the company’s employees quit every year speaks volumes about the wages, benefits and working conditions that Wal-Mart offers. They also have a very bad track record in respect of their discriminatory treatment of female (who are paid less and promoted less often than their less experienced male counterparts) and minority employees. They are also violently anti-union, because they are only able to offer low prices if they keep their employees’ wages as low as possible. In this respect, they benefit from their high employee turnover because they are able to avoid pay increases associated with long-term employees.

Some might argue that Wal-Mart is just a company trying to make a profit for its shareholders, and we can’t expect it to behave any differently than it does. Why should Wal-Mart be held to higher standards? Well, I think that Wal-Mart has become so huge and so successful that it ought to be held to higher standards. But – and here’s the catch – consumers are the only ones with the power to do that because money is the only language that Wal-Mart speaks. Unfortunately, most people seem content to complain about Wal-Mart and what it’s doing to the economy and the landscape of our cities, but when they need a new garbage can it’s the first place they go.

I enjoyed this book and I’d recommend it to anyone who’s interested in becoming a more educated shopper. There was one particular quote in the book that sticks with me, although I forgot to mark the page, so this is from memory: If price and profit are more important than principle, you’re prostituting yourself. I, for one, will not be prostituting myself again in the aisles of Wal-Mart!

The Year of Pleasures

2006-05-25T10:45:00.000-04:00

The Year of Pleasures
by Elizabeth Berg

Well, I’ve always openly admitted my adoration of Elizabeth Berg. But “The Year of Pleasures” is my favourite of her books by far. I didn’t read it as much as I savoured it – I was keenly aware with every page turn how close I was getting to the end and I consciously read a little slower than usual to prolong the experience.

This book is about Betta, a woman in her mid-fifties who suddenly loses her husband, John, to cancer. John makes Betta promise him that she will find joy in her life even after he’s gone and that she’ll realize their dream of leaving the city for a small town. Betta struggles to keep her promise in the face of her overwhelming grief. She leaves Boston and buys a big old house in a small town. She begins a new life alone and negotiates for herself how to simultaneously hold onto John and also how to let him go. Betta gradually recognizes that happiness isn’t always something that just happens to you, but that you must seek it out. So Betta begins to seek out happiness in her life; she nourishes new friendships and rekindles old friendships.

Berg’s portrayal of a woman trying to create that most difficult thing – a joyful life – despite her tremendous loss is very moving. This is a beautiful novel about learning to cherish the small pleasures in life.

The English Teacher

2006-05-23T09:36:00.000-04:00

The English Teacher
By Lily King

This is Lily King’s first novel. The English Teacher is an insightful novel that details the struggles of Vida Avery, an English teacher at a small private school. Vida is a single mother of a fifteen-year-old boy, Peter, whose parentage she has never spoken of. Vida’s quiet and reclusive life is changed forever when she accepts the marriage proposal of a widower with three children.

When Peter and Vida are suddenly thrown together into a larger family their own sense of themselves as a family in their own right is destroyed. Vida is seemingly unprepared for the emotional intimacy of marriage and is unable to cope with her new husband’s expectations of her. She withdraws from Peter and her husband, starts drinking heavily, and her life begins to echo the novel she is teaching to her students – Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles.

This is a suspenseful and perceptive novel, all the more impressive because it is King’s first. I see from the dust jacket that she’s written another novel called “The Pleasing Hour”, which I will absolutely be adding to my reading list.

Darwin's Nightmare

2006-05-22T12:36:00.001-04:00

Darwin’s Nightmare
By Hubert Sauper

As part of my ongoing efforts to keep my brain from atrophying from misuse, I’m trying to read more non-fiction and also watch more documentary films. This is another post about a film rather than a book. While I’m sure no one is interested in my thoughts on the newest Jennifer Aniston film, I do feel like I’d like to share some of the amazing films that I’ve discovered. Since we rarely get to see any advertisement for these films, I only hear about them through word of mouth. So, I’d like to make my contribution to the word of mouth about Darwin’s Nightmare.

This is a film about people and fish.

Darwin’s Nightmare is a documentary filmed in Tanzania on the shores of Lake Victoria, the largest freshwater lake in the world. Sometime in the 1960’s a new species of fish, the Nile Perch, was introduced into Lake Victoria. The Nile Perch is a natural predator and soon changed the ecology of the lake forever, virtually wiping out all the native fish species. However, the Nile Perch also developed into Tanzania’s largest industry and fish factories sprung up all along the shores of Lake Victoria. Today, Nile Perch is the country’s single biggest export and huge cargo plane-loads of fish are exported to Europe from Tanzania everyday.

Darwin’s Nightmare explores the environmental, economic and social impact of this one fish on the land and people of Tanzania. Tanzania is a country plagued by poverty, an epidemic of AIDS and civil war. The film explores the complex relationship between this fish, an exploitive fishing industry and the society of fisherman, prostitutes and orphans that have resulted.

Here’s what the filmmaker, Hubert Sauper, had to say about the project:

In DARWIN’S NIGHTMARE I tried to transform the bizarre success story of a fish
and the ephemeral boom around this "fittest" animal into an ironic, frightening
allegory for what is called the New World Order. I could make the same kind of
movie in Sierra Leone, only the fish would be diamonds, in Honduras, bananas,
and in Libya, Nigeria or Angola, crude oil. Most of us I guess, know about the
destructive mechanisms of our time, but we cannot fully picture them. We are
unable to "get it", unable to actually believe what we know.

It is, for example, incredible that wherever prime raw material is discovered, the locals die in misery, their sons become soldiers, and their daughters are turned into
servants and whores. Hearing and seeing the same stories over and over makes me
feel sick. After hundreds of years of slavery and colonisation of Africa,
globalisation of african markets is the third and deadliest humiliation for the
people of this continent. The arrogance of rich countries towards the third
world (that's three quarters of humanity) is creating immeasurable future
dangers for all peoples.

(from the official website: http://www.darwinsnightmare.com/)

This was a deeply disturbing and memorable film. Sauper is able to establish very intimate connections with his subjects, and his depiction of their lives is compelling and unforgettable. Sauper tells this story by interspersing different narratives and leaving the viewer to form his or her own conclusions about their interconnectedness.

The Red Tent

2006-05-22T12:36:00.000-04:00

The Red Tent
By Anita Diamant

The Red Tent is one of those books that I’ve heard great things about and have been meaning to read for years, but just never got around to. However, this May long weekend was rainy, windy and cold - and inspired me to spend much of the weekend indoors. Yesterday morning I finally curled up in front of the fireplace with The Red Tent and I was not disappointed.

The Red Tent tells the tale of Dinah, a biblical figure. The book’s prologue hints that Dinah is mentioned only briefly in the Bible, which focuses (surprise, surprise) on the exploits of her father and brothers.

Diamant paints a vivid, rich and often brutal portrait of life in biblical times. Her sweeping narrative tells Dinah’s life from before her birth to her eventual death. The red tent is a symbolic location in the novel, a women-only space to which the women of Dinah’s tribe retreat monthly to celebrate their femininity. Within its fabric walls, Dinah learns the stories and traditions of her family.

I really enjoyed this novel and read it from cover to cover in one sitting. Diamant’s The Red Tent is escapist fiction at its finest.

On Six Continents

2006-05-20T17:15:00.000-04:00

On Six Continents: A Life in Canada’s Foreign Service 1966-2002
By James Bartleman

This book is a memoir of James Bartleman’s four decades of service with the Canadian Foreign Service. He recounts a career that took him from Ottawa to New York, Columbia, Bangladesh, Brussles, Cuba, Israel, South Africa, Australia and finally back to Canada as Ontario Lieutenant-Governor.

Bartleman offers a behind-the-scenes look at diplomacy and the evolution of Canadian foreign policy from the Cold War era to today. The book follows Bartleman from his impoverished childhood in Port Carling, Ontario throughout his remarkable career, which included meetings with such historic figures as Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro. Bartleman’s writing style is direct and honest, sometimes self-deprecating and often funny. I found On Six Continents to be enjoyable and inspiring.

Everyone Their Grain of Sand

2006-05-20T14:48:00.000-04:00

Everyone Their Grain of Sand
(2005) Beth Bird

Although this is a bit of a departure from the overall theme of my blog (books), I wanted to share my thoughts on this documentary film that I watched last night. This is a film about Maclovio Rojas, a small community outside of Tijuana, Mexico. The film documents the community’s struggles against the state government in order to secure basic services – running water, roads, a school – for their community. Ignored by the government – who prefers to lease land to large multinational corporations - the people of Maclovio Rojas organize and work together on development projects like building a school and tapping into the nearby aqueduct to get access to clean water.

Filmmaker Beth Bird follows the progress of this impoverished community over a period of three years. During these three years the community faces repeated setbacks, like the arrest and imprisonment of their leaders, and hard-won victories, such as the first graduating class at the school they build and staffed themselves. This film is a fascinating look at the true grassroots activism and the social, economic and political impacts of NAFTA and economic globalization on the spirited people of this amazing community.

What We Keep

2006-05-18T11:25:00.000-04:00

What We Keep
By Elizabeth Berg

At the risk of sounding unabashedly biased, I love Elizabeth Berg. I have immensely enjoyed every one of her novels, and I’m pleased to see that there are still a few I haven’t read yet. I would describe her novels as intimate and personal portraits of ordinary lives. What makes Berg’s novels extraordinary is her ability to create nuanced and authentic characters. In the simplest terms, her books are about the complexity of human relationships. Her characters are compelling and complicated, and Berg demonstrates amazing insight in ways that always resonate with me. As I read her books, I always have moments when I think “I, too, have felt exactly like that.”

“What We Keep” is a novel about a woman (“Ginny”) struggling to come to terms with the very complex relationship she has with her mother, whom she hasn’t seen in 35 years. The book alternates between Ginny’s memories of her childhood and her present life as a woman of 47. What I liked best about “What We Keep” was the relationship between Ginny and her sister. Berg beautifully captured the simultaneous closeness and tension of their relationship. This is a lovely book.

Pink Blood

2006-05-17T00:24:00.000-04:00

Pink Blood: Homophobic Violence in Canada
By Douglas Victor Janoff

This book looks at homophobic violence in Canada since 1995. A consistent theme throughout is the failure of hate crimes legislation in Canada to capture, address and respond to instances of “gay bashing”. Janoff argues that police almost always refuse to categorize violence against gays, lesbians and transgendered persons as “hate crimes.”

While I think that Janoff makes some compelling arguments – especially about the need for better education and training for law enforcement officers – I have trouble with his position on what should be considered a hate crime. The premise of a “hate crime” is problematic for me because I don’t think it’s ever possible to objectively assess an offender’s subjective motivation for committing a crime.

Let’s say that a gay man is leaving a gay bar in the early morning hours - he’s followed by three men who yell obscenities at him, disparage his sexual orientation and violently assault him while he’s walking back to his car. This is clearly an incident of “gay-bashing” – but is it a hate crime? Janoff would say yes, and I’d tend to agree. Now, what if our victim is a heterosexual woman instead? Is this a hate crime? What if she’s raped, now is it a hate crime? Surely misogyny is just as hateful as racism or homophobia?

I think Janoff casts his net too broadly – he wants to see most crimes where the victims are gay, lesbian or transgendered categorized as hate crimes. I simply don’t see that as useful, anymore than categorizing all crimes against women as hate crimes would be useful. Further, in the majority of the violent crimes that Janoff studies in the book with gay, lesbian or transgendered victims, the victims knew their attackers. In fact, they often had sexual relationships. Is it really a hate crime when a gay man is killed by a lover or former lover? I don’t think that it is, any more than when a heterosexual woman is killed by a lover or former lover.

One of the things that I found very interesting in the book was the following set of statistics about the number of queer-bashing cases reported in Canadian cities between 1990 and 2005:

Toronto/Mississauga 70
Greater Vancouver 57
Montreal/Longueil 25
London 24
Other parts of Canada 168

I was shocked to see that London (quite a small city with just over 350,000 residents) had nearly the same number of incidents of queer-bashing as Montreal (which had a population of 1.5 million in 2001). I grew up in the London area and have lived here for nearly four years now and I was extremely surprised to see this statistic. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised given London’s embarrassing history of very public homophobia. I’m referring to the refusal of London’s mayor in 1997 to proclaim a gay pride day – supported I might add by City Council by a vote of 14-5. The matter was eventually referred to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal which determined, of course, that the conduct was discriminatory and ordered the city to make the proclamation.

Here’s a link to a summary of the Board’s decision: http://www.ohrc.on.ca/english/cases/summary-1997.shtml

Here’s a Wikipedia entry on our most infamous mayor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dianne_Haskett

This book was interesting, although a very dry read. Janoff was liberal with the statistics and, in my opinion, made way too many references to studies and papers by other authors. It read kind of like a doctoral thesis to be honest. Well researched and thought provoking, but not exactly riveting.

Okay - this has been a really heavy reading week - even for me! Next I'm going to read something that doesn't require so much thought and is bit less depressing. I just noticed that most of the books I read this week deal with death and violence. (Okay, the vampire book dealt with death in a light-hearted way - but still). My next book will be something pleasant - I promise!

Country of My Skull

2006-05-16T10:54:00.000-04:00

Country of My Skull: Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa
By Antjie Krog

This is a first-hand account of a South African radio journalist who is assigned to cover the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings. Nelson Mandela created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1995 to investigate the atrocities that had occurred in South Africa under apartheid. The Commission was tasked with hearing the testimony of both victims and their oppressors, who had applied to the Commission for amnesty for their crimes.

Krog’s account of the hearings is intensely personal and makes explicit the message that the personal can never be separated from the political. The book is filled with first-hand accounts of the violence and horror of the apartheid regime. Krog deftly demonstrates the power and limitation of story telling as a mechanism for finding truth. Her writing is compelling and lyrical and she coveys to her readers the enormity and impossibility of the Commission’s task.

This is a fascinating book in terms of its content, but it is also beautifully written. I’ve been reading a lot more non-fiction lately than I normally do, and I have developed a stronger appreciation for non-fiction that is well written. The subject matter of this book was more impactful for me because Krog’s writing style is so emotive. One of my favourite passages in the book is this one, which really has nothing to do with apartheid at all but speaks to the author’s personal experience as a South African living through the Commission hearings:

We lie on our backs in the autumn. The leaves sift like coals from the burning
trees. Your voice smells of bark. “Come with me…” The flaming season plunges
into us. And it lies heavily on my arms – this late inopportune lust to abandon
what is seen to be my life.

Before picking up this book, I knew absolutely nothing about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Reading this book has inspired me to learn more. I’m interested not only about the work of the Commission in South Africa, but I’m intrigued by the idea of reconciliation as a something that can be achieved through the process of story telling. It seems to me that implicit in the creation of the Commission is the acknowledgement that the criminal justice system is inherently inadequate to redress crimes of the kind of widespread complicity that marked apartheid rule in South Africa. The Commission was a very public and very political way to try to accomplish things we think of as intensely personal – healing and forgiveness. It seems impossible, almost laughable, to undertake the task of healing an entire nation of people after decades of divisive apartheid rule. But to do nothing is even more impossible, no?

Here is the Commission’s website if you want to know more: http://www.doj.gov.za/trc/

Race Against Time

2006-05-15T12:55:00.000-04:00

Race Against Time
Stephen Lewis

Race Against Time is a collection of Stephen Lewis’ 2005 Massey Lectures. Lewis explores the promise and the limitations of the Millennium Development Goals for Africa. For more information about the MDGs, check out the UN's website: http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/

These lectures look at poverty, education, AIDS, and the legacy of structural adjustment along with other challenges facing Africa in the 21st century. This is a fascinating book and is required reading for anyone who wants to know more about the humanitarian crises in Africa.

Undead and Unappreciated

2006-05-14T18:37:00.000-04:00

Undead and Unappreciated
By Mary Janice Davidson

I know, I know – reading this kind of stuff will rot my brain. But who can resist an undead heroine with a shoe fetish? This is the third book I’ve read from the “Undead” series, which I’d describe as “Shopaholic meets Buffy”. When I googled this book it came up as belonging to the “paranormal romance” genre. Who knew there were enough vampire/werewolf romance books out there to constitute an entire separate genre?

Metro Girl

2006-05-14T14:03:00.004-04:00

Metro Girl
By Janet Evanovich

Ok, so I enjoy Janet Evanovich – especially the Stephanie Plum books.

(Dear Janet, Please write more Stephanie Plum books. Yours truly, Girl, reading).

Anyway, this book was light and entertaining and had all of the trashy, delightful qualities that I look for in these kinds of books. If Stephanie Plum books are diet Coke, Metro Girl is store-brand diet soda. Also, I find her books are becoming too formulaic (sassy bumbling heroine + macho, over-protective love interest + quirky crime-fighting side-kick(s) + mystery/missing person + bad guys), but I’ll likely keep reading them so long as she keeps churning them out.

The Kite Runner

2006-05-14T14:03:00.003-04:00

The Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini

I actually bought this book for a friend for her birthday before I’d even read it, because I’d heard such good things about it, and she loaned it to me after she’d read it.

This novel is set in Kabul, Afghanistan. At its heart, it is a story about the friendship of two outwardly different boys growing up together in pre-war Afghanistan. The book’s most compelling and recurring themes are shame, power and identity. Amir’s existence at the outset of the novel is a charmed one – he lives a life of economic, social and ethnic privilege in Afghan society. Amir’s childhood is coloured by a strained relationship with his father and feelings of isolation. He prefers books to soccer and he struggles to reconcile his own sense of self-worth with the messages of his inherent ethnic superiority that he is bombarded by. His eventual complicity in the growing ethnic tension and violence culminates in a betrayal of his friendship with Hassan.

I found this book compelling and emotionally engaging. While I didn’t read the whole thing in one sitting, I did finish it in a day. It is a book that I’ll remember and reflect on long after I’ve read the last line, which is a compliment of the highest order.

Like most of the books I have been drawn to recently, this book speaks powerfully about reconciliation – about how we live today with the mistakes we’ve made in the past. I think the relationship between Amir and Hassan offers us a parable for the ethnic tension that plagues Afghanistan.

Although there are no similarities in place or time, this novel reminded me in some ways of Fifth Business, by Robertson Davies, a book I enjoyed immensely when I read it years ago and which I think I shall revisit soon.

We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families

2006-05-14T14:03:00.002-04:00

We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families
Phillip Gourevitch

I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in gaining a deeper understanding of the terrible events in Rwanda in 1994. This book explores the complexity of the genocide in Rwanda with insight and sensitivity. Until I read this book I didn’t fully appreciate how little I knew about what had happened in Rwanda, nor did I appreciate the response of the rest of the world to those events.

In 1994 I was still in high school and knew nothing about the genocide in Rwanda. Like many 17 year olds, I was self-obsessed and apathetic about world politics. What astonished me most about this book was that the rest of the world seems to have shared my teenaged-attitude towards Rwanda in 1994.

Gourevitch also writes at length about the huge refugee camps in the countries bordering Rwanda that were a product of the genocide. His discussion of the significant and complex role that international humanitarian aid agencies played in the creation and survival of these camps is fascinating.

Season of Blood

2006-05-14T14:03:00.001-04:00

Season of Blood: A Rwandan Journey
by Fergal Keane

Season of Blood is an outsider’s intimate experience in post-genocide Rwanda. Keane is a BBC journalist who travels to Rwanda in the late spring of 1994. What I enjoyed most about this book was the simplicity of the narrative style. Keane recounts his experiences in Rwanda with vivid and detailed observations and the book has an episodic quality. The book does not sensationalize and he resists making judgments or conclusions about what can only be described as the horrifically complicated situation that existed in Rwanda at the time of his visit.

I read this book only a few days after finishing We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, by Phillip Gourevitch. I enjoyed Season of Blood, but I’m not sure I would have appreciated it fully without the larger context provided by the Gourevitch book.

Resistance

2006-05-14T14:03:00.000-04:00

Resistance
by Anita Shreve

I’ve read several of Anita Shreve’s books in the past year. A few of her books I really liked (Sea Glass, The Weight of Water), but others I’ve had a lukewarm response to. This books falls into the latter category.

This is a love story set in Belgium in WWII. I found the story predictable and not particularly engaging. I doubt I’ll ever think about this book again, but I will keep reading Anita Shreve and hoping for another treasure.

Future: Tense

2006-05-14T13:41:00.000-04:00

Future: Tense
by Gwynne Dyer

This is one of the best books that I have read in a long time. Dyer’s journalistic writing style is both accessible and engaging. Future: Tense is a fascinating look at the American invasion of Iraq and its implications for the international community. Dyer reinforced my healthy fear of American foreign policy as one of the scariest things in the world.