Book Reviews of Canadian books

I had hoped that people might want to share their reviews of Canadian books they have read. Feel free to post your reviews here if you are so inclined.

Enjoy!

The Book of Negroes / Lawrence Hill
4 stars

*********POSSIBLE SPOILERS**********
In the mid-1700s, Aminata is only 11-years old when her parents are murdered and she is kidnapped from her village in Africa. She is forced to walk for months to the ocean where she boards a ship to cross. She arrives in South Carolina, where she is sold to an indigo plantation owner and works there until she is then sold to another man and his wife, where she helps keep their home. After a number of years, "Meena" escapes to New York, and after a time, she finds herself in "The Book of Negroes" - a real list of Negroes who want to escape New York and the rebels for Nova Scotia as British Loyalists. All her life, she has really just wanted to go home, back to her village in Africa.
*********END SPOILERS*********

This was very very good, there was so much detail, and it seemed so realistic. The Book of Negroes was a real list - something I had never heard of - and it was interesting (and sad) to read how the mostly former slaves were treated when they arrived in Canada. I waffled for a long time between giving the book 4 or 4.5 stars; unfortunately I lowered it to 4 stars because I was disappointed in the ending, which took away from the book's realism for me.

Reread, 2 years later:
I still really enjoyed this book on a reread. I did remember some parts of the book before I even started rereading it, and a lot of the rest of the book came back to me as I read. My rating remains the same as the first time around.

are you posting only your own reviews? or is the idea to share reviews published in newspapers, magazines or other online sources too?

>3 JooniperD:. I had hoped people might share their own reviews. I hadn't even thought about magazine, newspapers, etc.

I suppose I thought that it might also invite conversation on the books, maybe entice people to add something to their tbrs, etc.

Do others have opinions on this?

I guess, for me, it wouldn't matter, as long as it's marked where the review came from.

Juno Beach: Canada's D-Day Victory, June 6, 1944 / Mark Zuehlke
3.5 stars

Canadian soldiers were a big part of the D-Day invasion in WWII. They were to take Juno Beach while the British took Gold and Sword Beaches and the Americans took Omaha and Utah Beaches.

This is a very detailed account of the Canadian troops as they fought for Juno Beach and made their way inland on June 6, 1944. I did have a little bit of trouble with some of military terminology, but I might have done a bit better with it (and possibly rated it higher) if I'd been reading at home with less distractions. I certainly ended the book feeling proud to be Canadian. The author has a couple more books focusing on the days following D-Day, so I have added one of them to my tbr. Just after Remembrance Day was a good time to read this.

re: #4, librarycin

thanks for clarifying. you offered no explanation in your first post, so i just wanted to understand your intent with this idea.

i guess, for me, i see the reviews when i am on any of my books' pages here, or click on them when i am curious about something mentioned in discussions. i don't know that sharing a review here would trigger any additional discussion over mentioning a book in the threads where there is talk of what people are currently reading, or had just read each month. do you know what i mean? so in some ways it seems a bit of a duplication.

are you hoping to achieve deeper conversations? (rather than just the quick hits of 'i read this book and it was good'?)

#6 Sorry for not putting more explanation in the first post. I put a question on whether or not people might be interested in this kind of thread in a different thread. Maybe I should have left that question there longer, before starting the thread. I thought a couple of people said they'd be ok with the thread, so I thought I'd try it.

Sorry, I came from shelfari and I am in a number of groups over there that have these kinds of threads. They can (sometimes, not all the time) create discussions and it's fun to share reviews. It might bring to mind or suggest a book that someone hadn't thought of before. Honestly, it's these kinds of review threads that usually inspire me to add a book to my tbr.

If people don't want to add to the thread, that's ok. I'll keep it going for a bit, but if I find I'm the only one adding reviews to it, then obviously no one else is interested and I will let it go.

I'll maybe Edit my first post to make it more clear that I'm inviting anyone who would like to to add their reviews?

Here's a review for the thread, copied from my ClubRead thread:

Ru, Kim Thuy, 2009, tranlated from French, Sheila Fischman, 2012


Cover comments: I think this cover is gorgeous on its own as a piece of art, but also because it captures that "Asian woman in Montreal" feeling. I love the Asian motif softly printed over the picture, like a snowflake on a Christmas card. Also, the paper is heavy and textured, almost like watercolour stock. When I flipped open the cover and saw that the book was designed by CS Richardson--the rock star of book design--I thought, "of course it was!".

Why I Read This Now: my bookclub selection for November

Rating: This is a 4 - 5 star book, which is reflected in its having won the Governor Generals award when it was published originally in French, and then later, nominated for the English language Giller Prize. However, my bookclub partner gave me the book 36 hours before our meeting, which technically is not a problem as it is only 141 pages long and has a lot of white space. The problem was that during those 36 hours I was deeply interested in a completely different book that I have going, and didn't want to break to read this. I was quite resentful actually, although I must say the inventiveness and good writing won me over. So for me it wasn't quite a 4 or 5, but that's what it deserves.

Comments: (when is she going to get to the comments, you say). Ru is a deep and complex novel about a growing up during the Vietnam War, becoming a boat person, and immigrating to Quebec. It had a intensely personal tone to it that makes me think it's more autobiographical than the author admits to (sort of like Michael Ondaatje's Cat's Table, my bookclub thought). The story is told in vignettes and jumps around in time. The writing is beautiful and evocative, but not so esoteric that the reader has to sweat over every sentence just to figure out what she's talking about. I have to admit that I just let the art wash over me at times, and I'd get more out of it on a second reading. Which, it being so short, would be an easy and pleasurable task (and note to all English uni profs out there--consider teaching this novel).

Everyone liked it, no one loved it. The main complaint was that the jumps in time combined with the vignettes made it too vague. Most people wanted more story with each piece. I agree, although because I was eager to return to my other novel, I didn't really care. Sorry, Kim Thuy.

We also had an interesting discussion on how subtly pro-Canadian this was (something I wouldn't have picked up on my own), and had the author written the same book after moving to the US instead, bookclubs down there would be saying "USA! USA!" That was a good laugh. We also compared it to our last book, Little Bee, which was about another young woman from a war torn country trying to immigrate to the UK, and how different their experiences were. But two completely different books, and two different stories. Both books are good reads, but it was interesting to see the links between two books that we read back-to-back at random.

Recommended for: Despite its accolades, I probably wouldn't have picked up this novel on my own, just because it doesn't fall within my areas of interest. However, it is a fine book, and if it sounds at all interesting to you, you should definitely track down a copy. After all, it's only 141 short pages.

>9 Nickelini: Thanks for posing a review. I like your formatting of the review, by the way. :-)

I also have a couple of more general LT questions for you, since I'm still a relative newbie here. I'll post those on your page/profile, though.

Great idea to have a thread for reviews, LibraryCin! Adding a review for the thread, copied from my 2013 Category Challenge and my 75 Books Challenge Group threads:

Crow Lake by Mary Lawson -

I hadn't been aware that people could change. But then, I hadn't been aware that people could die. At least not people you loved and needed. Death in principle I had known about; death in practice - no. I hadn't known that could happen.

This is my kind of story! I am still amazed that I purchased this one on a whim based solely on the recommendation of a total stranger at a book sale, took it home, place it on my bookcase and promptly forgot about it for over three years. Why didn't I start reading it as soon as I got it home!!?! The fact that I read this one from start to finish in less than 24 hours (yes, I did need to stop reading it to sleep and other things) speaks to the page turning quality of this mesmerizing story, at least for me.

Crow Lake: A small, somewhat isolated farming community in Northern Ontario and home to the Morrison family. When I say small, I mean small with about a dozen farms, a general store, a school and a church. Closest town was 20 miles away. Isolated in that there was only one road into Crow Lake and the train that passed through only stopped if you flagged it down. A tranquil place, or so one would think. Told through the point of view of Kate, an assistant professor of invertebrate ecology at a University in Toronto, we meet her family and the tragedy that struck them that fatal Saturday in July when Kate was only seven years old.

To say that this is a story about coping with loss and the struggles and sacrifices made to keep a family together really oversimplifies all that this story has to offer a reader. Lawson joins the ranks of some of my favorite authors like Timothy Findley, David Adams Richards and John Bemrose as having a wonderful gift for storytelling, bringing the characters, the events, the settings and the time period to life with poignant prose and balance. By the end of the story I felt like I had visited the Morrison's at the house in Crow Lake and had spent an afternoon at the ponds with Kate and her brother Matt.

What makes Crow Lake such an amazing story is that Lawson doesn't try to be everything or show everything to the reader. This story is told from Kate's POV and there are gaps where Kate was not privy to information or events, which brings a realism to the story that I really appreciate. I found it very easy to connect with Kate as a character. Her self confessed lack of empathy and strong desire to isolate herself from emotional attachments is one I can understand and appreciate. Now, don't get me wrong... this is not just a story about Kate. Kate's older brothers Luke and Matt and her baby sister Bo (short for Elizabeth) are also wonderfully drawn complex characters.

I like to pin my stories down to the era they are set in. This story has a timeless quality to it and could even today represent a small northern Canadian community, but Lawson did provide me with one piece of information to set the time period: Mention of the doctor's bill. While Canada's universal medicare system had its start in 1946 in Saskatchewan, it was adopted by all provinces in 1961, with the federal Medicare Act being brought in in 1966. I think it is safe to say that young Kate was probably born in the late 1950's or early 1960's. That is my theory anyways.

Overall, a wonderfully poignant story that kept me up reading way, way past my usual bed time and provided me with a strong connection to characters that has been missing from a number of books I have been reading lately. I am now extra happy that I already own a copy of Lawson's book The Other Side of the Bridge.

Recommendation: For anyone reading this and loved Crow Lake as much as I do, I highly, highly recommend John Bemrose's The Island Walkers!

Another review copied from my 2013 Category Challenge and my 75 Books Challenge Group threads:

February by Lisa Moore -



February is Lisa Moore’s second novel and one that has garnered a lot of attention in 2009 as a Globe and Mail Best Book and Quill and Quire Book of the Year, in 2011 as a 2010 Booker Prize Longlist and as a Commonwealth Writers Prize Shortlist and more recently in 2013 February won CBC’s annual book debate Canada Reads. High time I found out what this book is all about for myself.

Using the Ocean Ranger disaster – the mobile offshore drilling unit that sank in Canadian waters on February 15, 1982, killing all 84 crew members on board at the time – as a focal point, Moore has written a slow, reflective novel that grew on me as I read it. Character perspective books, and in particular ones that employ multiple time, place and narration shifts, can take some time to warm up to. February was no exception to this rule as I found I had to pay close attention to the section headings to ensure I knew where in the timeline the narration was as I was reading. Thankfully, Moore restricted her shifts in narration to Helen, her son John and his female acquaintance Jane. If you prefer plot-driven books, this one will drive you to some level of frustration as the focus is on fleshing out the emotional landscape of our main character, Helen and the impact that fateful night when her husband Cal dies and her life suddenly becomes that of a single mom raising four kids in Newfoundland. It is a poignant portrayal of aching loss and overpowering loneliness spanning some 25 years, all shrouded in a brave front to persevere and care for her family as best she can.

What I really liked about this one is Moore’s ability to create real characters.... characters you may recognize from your own community or would not be surprised to encounter on the street. Characters that reach an emotional cliff and wonder if they should just jump off or turn back towards land and continue on with life. The writing is stunning - fluid, evocative, and yet plainly written in a manner that speaks to the masses as its intended audience. She has also captured a Canadian perspective/point of view that is hard to explain but one that I can recognize and relate to. Grief is an anchor that can drag us down and change lives irreparably, if we let it. Some favorite quotes:

"The act of being dead, if you could call it an act, made them very hard to love. They'd lost the capacity to surprise. You needed a strong memory to love the dead, and it was not her fault that she was failing. She was trying. But no memory was that strong. This was what she knew: no memory was that strong."

"We are alone in death. Of course we are alone. It is a solitude so refined we cannot experience it while we are alive; it is too rarefied, too potent. It is a drug, that solitude, an immediate addiction. A profound selfishness, so full of self it is an immolation of all that came before. Cal was alone in that cold. Utterly alone, and that was death. That, finally, was death."

A book I am very glad I have finally made the time to pick up and read!

>11 lkernagh:. I read (years ago!) Crow Lake and really enjoyed it (though it's been so long, I must admit I don't remember much about it now!).

>12 lkernagh:. I added February to my tbr after Canada Reads earlier this year. It can take me a while to get to my tbr books, but I will get to it eventually!

Lori - You've made me bump Crow Lake up my TBR pile. I've had it for a while and have heard only superlatives . . . yet it seems bleak in a "I don't want to go there way". But I will get up my courage . . .

I loved February, and you captured some of my thoughts that I didn't know I'd thought! I'll have to dig out what I wrote about it and copy it here.

Wolf Moon / Charles de Lint
4 stars

Kern is a werewolf and, injured by a hunter, has been found and taken to an inn run by Ainsy. As he and Ainsy fall for each other, Kern feels he needs to keep the fact that he is a shapeshifter to himself, as it ruined his last relationship. Unfortunately for him, the hunter who tried to kill him once is still after him.

I really liked this. I'd call this one YA and it's not very long so it is quick to read. I also liked some of the supporting characters in the book.

I'll add my voice to those who loved Crow Lake!

re: #4 - librarycin

i guess my only suggestion would be that people note if they are sharing spoiler information. it's always such a frustration to stumble into spoiler-y information. some reviews are just plot regurgitations, and spoiler-filled. i spend serious effort avoiding reviews of books i am interested in reading, so as not to find out things i don't want to know until i have had a chance to read it myself. am i making sense? i am feeling like this is a jumbled mess, sorry!! :)

>17 JooniperD:. yes, you completely make sense. I do agree.

I do always try to do a plot summary as well, but I try to be aware if there might be spoilers, and I try not to go too far into the book.

If I'm afraid I have, I put in a large ********POSSIBLE SPOILERS*********, then an *******END SPOILERS******* to go with it.

(Although, I'm concerned on my reread of my original Book of Negroes review, I might have put too much info in there. I will edit it now with a spoiler warning...)

Sounds like we might need LT's new spoiler cover. I haven't tried it yet, but I think it goes like this . . . same coding as when you bold or italicize something (b) (/b) except using pointy brackets instead of regular and instead of b for bold, use "spoiler".

I'll experiment and this is the really exciting secret part. I think it worked.

sweet, nickelini! what's the coding for it?

Other than what I said in #19, I don't know how to describe it. Same thing you do for bold and italics but you use "spoiler." If I could type it out to show you I would, but it wouldn't display!

>19 Nickelini:. Oh, that's very cool! Thanks, Nickelini!

>20 JooniperD:, 21.

If you type
Here is the spoiler

without any spaces, I think is what should do it.

Testing Here is my "spoiler"

Edit: G'ah!!!! It took out my code, even though I'd entered in spaces where there shouldn't be! Sorry...

I guess you'll have to go with Nickelini's description.

re: #21 nickelini

okay, cool. thanks.

I've just finished The Truth about Trudeau by Bob Plamondon. Here is my review -- nonfiction, so no spoilers!

Bob Plamondon wrote this book to "set the record straight" about Canada's 15th Prime Minister. So many books have been written by and about Mr. Trudeau, almost uniformally complimentary. Yet, some argue that he wasn't the best PM we ever had -- in fact, he was the worse. Those voices haven't been broadly heard.

Mr. Plamondon has done an amazing amount of research, with his sources well documented. There is no doubt that his facts are accurate. At times, though, I felt a lack of context. For example, he discusses Trudeau's economic policies without explaining that his approach was supported by Keynesian theory, which was the dominant thinking at the time. He also fails to mention that the current government has generated a large deficit doing the same thing. He criticises the lack of power the Environment department had over other departments, but this situation remains true. At times, this author has commited the wrong he set out to redress: a lack of balance.

In addtion to the strong research, this book excelled at the end when Mr. Plamondon talks about why Trudeau remains such an icon. He quotes John Geddes explaining that, like a hockey player you idolized as a child, you can never completely abandon your admiration no matter what history shows. It reminded me of the very first Star Trek movie we all lined up to see. Someone asked if the movie was any good, and was told it didn't have to be -- it would be a blockbuster in any event.

As one biography of Trudeau says in the opening sentence, "he haunts us still." Mr. Plamondon's book is an important addition to the writings about Trudeau. Even as an admirer of Mr. Trudeau (sorry, Dad!), I found things I could agree with, and I'm glad I read this book

I Am Half-Sick of Shadows / Alan C. Bradley
3.5 stars

Flavia, our bright 11-year old budding chemist, has devised a way to figure out whether or not Father Christmas is real. Unfortunately, Christmas at Buckshaw has been potentially interrupted by a film crew, as Flavia's father agreed that they could film at their home. When someone is murdered, Flavia feels she must help figure out what happened.

As always, I listened to the audio, and Jayne Entwhistle continues to entertain as Flavia. She really is perfect. Once again, the story was decent. Overall, it gets a “good” rating from me and I will continue listening to the audios in this series, mostly for Flavia, as she's such a great character.

Walls: Travels Along the Barricades by Marcello di Cintio
3.5 stars

Marcello di Cintio decided to travel to various walls/fences/borders to not only see them, but to talk to the people living alongside them and others about how the walls affect their lives. Included in this is some history and politics about how and why the walls went up. Some of the places di Cintio visited included the Western Sahara, the Israel/Palestine border, India/Bangladesh, Cyprus (there is a wall that divides the city), Arizona/Mexico, Belfast, and even one in my (and the author's) home country, Canada (in Montreal).

This was interesting. People are affected in so many different ways – farmers are divided from their fields in some cases, Protestants divided from Catholics, the US is trying to keep out Mexican immigrants, and in Montreal, the wall simply divides one of the affluent areas from a poor immigrant neighbourhood. I have to admit that I found the “Western” areas more interesting (Belfast, US, Canada), but I think that's – in part – because I feel more able to “picture” them, as I've never been anywhere where the military is guarding walls or borders with guns and such... though Belfast sounds super-scary, as the violence seems to continue there for no reason. One thing I think I would have liked in the book was maps, so I could “see” where these walls were, exactly. Overall, though, a good, interesting read on a different kind of topic.

I really liked Walls: Travels Along the Barricades. The chapter on Belfast nearly made me cry. My English brother-in-law is actually going there for St. Patrick's Day!

Lynn, that will either be really fun or really scary! Hopefully it's the former! :-)

What the Body Remembers / Shauna Singh Baldwin
3 stars

It is India in the years leading up to independence from England and Partition, when the country will be divided into India and Pakistan. Roop has no mother, but has a father who is poor. When she is 16, out of desperation, her father arranges a marriage to a 40 year old man for her. Unfortunately, she is to be the second wife to this man. Though Roop hopes to be like sisters with his first wife, Satya, Satya doesn't see things that way.

I thought it took a long time for the story to really get going. I wasn't all that interested in Roop's story as a child. I found myself skimming a lot of the book. It got to be a little more interesting after she got married, but the political parts of the book lost my interest, except near the end, the day before partition. Overall, I thought it was simply ok.

I'm "claiming" Wallace Stegner as "Canadian". I have no idea if he had citizenship (probably not), but he lived in Southern Saskatchewan for a number of years as a child.

Crossing to Safety / Wallace Stegner
3.5 stars

This is a simple story about two married couples, friends. When Larry and Sally move to Wisconsin in the late 1930s for Larry to start a teaching job as a professor, they meet Sid and Charity and begin a life-long friendship.

The book starts in “current-day” and goes back in time for most of the first half to when they first met. It then goes back and forth for a while and it ends during the current-day again. I enjoyed this more than I expected to, but there was a section in the first bit where I completely lost interest, as it was pretty much filled with intellectual/literary conversation. I could have done without that. Otherwise, it was a good story. That being said, I hated Charity. She did some nice things, and was a good friend to Sally, but her personality! *Shudder. I think I liked the current-day stuff better than the reminiscences, but I think we had to get to know Charity and Sid from back then before we learned the end of the book. Overall, it turned out to be a good read and I'm glad I read it.

I'd suggest you try Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner...it was great.

Thanks, Lynn. I'm considering it. My uncle is a big Stegner fan, and said that Angle of Repose is his favourite, with Crossing for Safety next.

Away / Jane Urquhart
3 stars

This is the story of a family – Brian, Mary and their son Liam (and a daughter to come later) – as they immigrate from Ireland to Canada in the mid-1800s.

I waffled between 2.5 and 3 stars on this one. This is the first book I've read by her and I don't think I like her writing style, it's very vague and indirect. I thought I missed a couple of things happening at times where I was skimming, when it didn't seem very interesting, but then she seemed to come back to those things later and I figured it out. Parts were good, but a lot of it was not that exciting for me. In the end, because I did “like” the ending – that is, I was slightly surprised by it – I upped it to the 3 stars, which is “ok” for me.

Away is probably her most famous book, but it wasn't my favourite. I liked A Map of Glass much better.

35. I have another friend who mentioned The Stone Carvers as her favourite by Urquhart. I'm not sure if I'll try another, though.

Urquhart is not a writer to skim--you really need to read every sentence and think about it. I find her writing and storytelling breathtakingly beautiful, but she definitely has a chilly tone that I know turns some readers off. I have to be in the right mood to read her books (although I've read five or six, so I guess the mood strikes often enough).

@ 35, 36 - I really loved The Stone Carvers, though I was not able to get into A Map of Glass, at all for some reason. Away is still sitting on my shelf, as yet unread.

@#12 - I just finished a book today and this Lisa Moore book is next up for me! It also got a glowing review from the friend who passed it to me so I am looking forward to beginning it tonight!

@# 2 - This is the year I will read Book of Negroes. I have had this book on my shelf for awhile but as soon as I heard that Deepa Mehta will be doing the film, I decided I had to read it before the movie comes out. I have not yet heard of anyone not liking this book!

39. February by Lisa Moore is on my tbr (yes, both Away and February were added due to last year's Canada Reads... although I'd been contemplating trying Jane Urquhart, anyway).

40. The Book of Negroes is very good. Hope you like it!

I found the main character in The Book of Negroes too perfect for my liking!

Clouded Vision / Linwood Barclay
4 stars

When Ellie goes missing, her husband and daughter appear on tv to plead for her to come back or for whoever has taken her to let her go. Keisha is a “psychic” who is planning to visit Wendell (Ellie's husband) to offer to “help” him for a fee.

This is a super-short novella and I really enjoyed it. I didn't want to put it down! I do like that he repeats characters in different books – not enough that you need to remember them, but I still think it's a cool idea (Keisha was apparently in No Time for Goodbye). I was a little disappointed in the abrupt ending, but it wasn't enough for me to lower my rating.

Falling Backwards / Jann Arden
3.5 stars

Jann Arden is a Canadian singer/songwriter. This is her autobiography, from her childhood up to when she got her first record deal just before she turned 30.

I really enjoyed this. Jann had a fairly normal family and childhood, but it was still interesting to read about her growing up. I live in the city she grew up in (and still lives in), so I recognize many of the places. That's always fun. I was a little surprised that it wasn't funnier than it was, though. To hear her talk, she is absolutely hilarious! There were funny parts in the book, but I had expected more humour than there was. That being said, I still really enjoyed it.

419 / Will Ferguson
3 stars

When Laura and Warren's father drives himself off a cliff, it looks suspicious. The police quickly learn that Henry was being scammed by one of those Nigerian email scams.

In the first half of the book, I was ready to give this 3.5 stars (good), but when an additional character was introduced about halfway through and so much focused on him, I brought it down to 3 stars (ok). The parts that focused on Henry's family and on Winston, the guy in Nigeria behind the scam, I liked enough to rate good. However, there were two other characters that a lot of the book focused on (especially in the second half). I didn't find them nearly as interesting or entertaining to read about. I did learn more about those scams which was kind of interesting. Overall, I'm going to rate this one 3 stars, o.k.

Cindy, I agree with you completely!

Lynn, thank you! I was afraid I might be in a minority! (And maybe we both are...? :-) )

A review of Projection by Priscila Uppal

This book, being a memoir, is so intensely personal that I hesitate to criticize it. Uppal needed to write this as a way of dealing with her incredible loss. So. First the good: I really enjoyed the movie format, themes and comparisons. I was impressed by the candour. I'm always awed and amazed by people can use the creative process as a means of healing. But.

I felt really creepy reading about how horrible Uppal's mother is. She's fat, manipulative, insane, selfish, bulky, hateful. She waddles, talks too much, wears ugly clothing, is delusional. She's a monster. I think the author could have SHOWN her readers these aspects instead of TELLING. We would have got that message just from the actions and the words of the mother. Something felt really wrong about it. It reminded me of another book called Sickened by Julie Gregory. Gregory had a horrific childhood (at the hands of her mother as well) and like Uppal, she doesn't stick to the abuse and harm but tells us all about her mother's terrible taste and unrelated personal habits. Both books seem to veer to the side of vindictive and bitter, even if they started out as creative projects on the path of healing. Based on that, I wouldn't recommend this book, as much as I admire Uppal's surviving with a great deal of career success.

48. That's too bad. I like biographies/memoirs, but it sounds like this is one best skipped.

OK, I know the author's not Canadian, but it's set in Quebec, so I'll post it here, anyway! :-)

Deja Dead / Kathy Reichs
4 stars

This is the first book in the Temperance Brennan series. Tempe is a forensic anthropologist working in Quebec. When she is called in to examine some bones, she seems to think there is a serial killer out there, but the police don't agree. She tries to find links so she can convince them she is on the right track. In the meantime, she has an anthropologist friend working with prostitutes who she is quite worried about.

I really liked this! I was a little surprised at how short it was, but it was still really good. There are so many books in the series, but I will keep going. I actually quite enjoyed the narrator of the audio, as well.

@48 @49 I had a very different response to this book. There is a lot of "ouch", for sure, but I felt as though the author made it very clear that we all project in relationships (I love the play with 'projection' in film and 'projection' in psychology) and that she was aware that, even though she shared her own experience in a raw and open-hearted way, that her mother had a very different story to tell and it was just as valid for her.

I've ordered it ... before I read Angela's review .... glad to hear it may not be so bad! I'll post what I think once I've read it.

Prisoner of Tehran : a Memoir / Marina Nemat
4 stars

Marina was 16 years old in 1982 after the Iranian Revolution when she was arrested and taken to a prison in Tehran. There for a little over two years, she was tortured, imprisoned and blackmailed. She is now married with two kids and living in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The back of the book actually tells more than my summary, but I wanted to leave some of that out, so be cautious reading the blurb unless you want to know more.

This was very good. It was quicker to read than I'd expected, as well. At the start, her chapters alternated between her arrest, then back to when she was younger, then back to follow after her arrest, until her younger life caught up. It was easy to follow, though. The book primarily focused on the two years she was a prisoner. I thought it was very good, easy to read and well worth the read.

The Orenda, Joseph Boyden, 2013


Cover comments: Not sure if you can see clearly, but this is a close view of a birch tree forest--I think it's absolutely lovely.

Why I Read This Now: I've wanted to read it since it came out, but made time for it now because it's part of the CBC Canada Reads competition.

Comments: It's the early 1600s, and the Iroquois fight their long-time foe the Huron, and they both meet French Jesuits. The first-person narration rotates between a captured young Iroquois girl, a Huron warrior-leader named Bird, and a priest that they call "the Crow."

When this book was published I was very excited to read it because it's a piece of history that is underrepresented in literary historical fiction. I had also heard that Boyden took a fair approach to both the First Nations and the European characters--none was all good or all bad.

The Orenda started out very strong, and I had great hopes for the book. However, it soon grew both boring, which I feel odd saying because most of what I was reading was relentless events of the two First Nation groups brutally torturing each other. Finally, in the very last pages of this 490 page novel, there is a small glimmer maybe possible hope.

I have to agree with the two CBC panelists who criticize The Orenda's excessive violence and romanticization of torture (another called it torture pornography).

I also have to mention that late in the book when the warrior character Bird (and his co-warrior Fox) wrestle a massive buck that they are both cartoon-character super-heroes. Not as balanced a characterization as I had been led to believe.

Rating: No idea how to rate this--the book is indeed literary and I would classify it as quality historical fiction, and it has garnered many glowing reviews. But I was very disappointed in it and thinking about it just makes me shudder with dislike.

Recommended for: Anyone interested in indigenous people and first contact, fans of literary historical fiction, and people who like to read endless pages of gruesome torture.

Chinese Islanders: Making a Home in the New World / Hung-Min Chiang
3.5 stars

This is a history of Chinese immigrants to Prince Edward Island. There isn't a lot of information out there and there weren't very many immigrants, so the author not only looks at the history, including laws and politics in all of Canada and how that impacted the Chinese immigrants, but he is also able to look more closely at a few specific people and families.

I found this interesting. The entire history is interesting (from increasing head taxes to exclusion laws), as are the lives of the immigrants, most of whom – at least in the early days and up to much more recently – ran laundries and restaurants.

The Mystery of the Graffiti Ghoul / Marty Chan
4 stars

Marty is a 10-year old Chinese boy in a small town in Alberta. In fact, he is the only Chinese boy in town. Because of this (and it doesn't help that his mother picks out his clothes!), he gets picked on. He does have one friend, a French boy, Remi (but because Remi is in the French class and Marty in the English class, no one can know they are friends). When Remi and Marty discover some graffiti on the school shed, they are initially accused of spraying it themselves! They decide they must find out who did it...

This is a kids' book and I really enjoyed it. There is a lot of humour going on in the book, and Marty Chan does such a good job getting inside kids' heads, I think. It seemed like it, anyway. Obviously, being a kids' book, it was fairly simple, but it was just a really fun book!

How to be a Canadian / Will Ferguson and Ian Ferguson
3.5 stars

Will Ferguson and his brother Ian decided to write (with encouragement from Margaret Atwood) a “guidebook” on how to be a Canadian. Humourously, of course. Topics include language, food, politics, sports, sex, drinking and much more.

I enjoyed this. There were times I laughed out loud. Parts I enjoyed most included the breakdown of the provinces and curling. Of course, I am Canadian, so I “got” most of the jokes. I suspect there are plenty of jokes that wouldn't work for those who aren't Canadian. It was originally published in 2001, so some parts are out of date, in particular the political stuff. But still, a fun read.

>57 LibraryCin:
I remember reading this book and also laughing out loud. I don't actually remember much of it now except one part: the *national anthem* (aka, the theme from Hockey Night in Canada. Sadly, gone now, too)

I know, it is sad, isn't it?

The Book of Negroes uses modern expressions such as" good to know" which put me off. I didn't trust the story after that.

Looking forward to Crow Lake.

60. I did not even notice that! :-(

Life of Pi, Yann Martel, 2001


Cover comments: I really like the sea and the flying fish at the bottom of the picture. The rest of it is okay, but I find it sort of choppy looking.

Canadian Content: Before I read this, I thought that it was one of those "Canadian" books written by an author who has immigrated to Canada but is writing about his home country, or some completely un-Canadian topic (Rohiton Mistry's books come to mind as an example of this). I thought this because I knew Yann Martel was born in Spain, and I knew Pi was an Indian boy. Silly me--I was wrong this time. First, Yann Martel has French-Canadian parents and he was born in Spain because his father had a job there with the Canadian government. And the story itself is about a boy who is shipwrecked while immigrating to Canada and there are lots of mentions of Toronto and Winnipeg. So this one really does count as CanLit.

Comments I'm sure every bookish person has an idea of what this novel is about: Indian teenager named Pi is shipwrecked while immigrating to Canada with his family. He finds himself sharing a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger as they float eastward across the Pacific. In the end, people don't believe his story, but everyone agrees that the story with the tiger is a better story than the story without, and this is a metaphor for a belief in God.

Life of Pi won the Booker Prize in 2002 and is included in the 1001 Books list, so of course many people have enjoyed it. Some readers don't like that after a realistic beginning, the story gets more and more improbable, particularly when it gets to the blind Frenchman and then the algae island. I thoroughly enjoyed these scenes, along with the rest of the book. To me, the story is a sort of fairy tale or fable, although one that is told in a realistic style. I also enjoyed Pi's optimistic character, and the narrative voice.

Other readers have complained that this book is pro-religion at the expense of reason, and I completely disagree with that--the book is full of reason, particularly scientific facts about zoology and survival at sea. I understand this book to say that both spirituality AND reason are important. As for the pro-religion, I actually find that aspect of it sort of wishy-washy. Despite protests from his elders, Pi insists that he is Hindu, Catholic, and Muslim all at the same time. I was worried that Life of Pi might be preachy, but I didn't find it so at all.

Recommended for: I enjoyed this very much, and I think many others would too.

Why I Read This Now: I bought this for my TBR pile back in 2008 because I thought it would be a good read for any future tropical vacations I might take (I find it tricky to find the right book for those sorts of holidays). My recent trip to Maui was the perfect opportunity to pull Life of Pi from Planet TBR, and it was a good call. While I read about Pi bobbing up and down with sea turtles in the Pacific, I too was bobbing around the Pacific with sea turtles! A great vacation read--sunny and bright, but not vacuous.

Rating: 4.5 stars.


This is my daughter's attempt at a selfie with a sea turtle. That's her snorkel mask at the top and the turtle is at the bottom. She took this with her iPhone!

It has been years since I read Life of Pi, but I vaguely recall feeling similarly to how you felt about it, Nickelini.

Unless / Carol Shields
3.25 stars

Reta is an author and translator. She is married and has three teenage daughters. Norah, the oldest at 19, has just gone to university, but for some unknown reason has dropped out and stands on a corner in Toronto, begging with a sign around her neck that reads “Goodness”. The story is told from Reta's point of view and looks at how she is handling what her daughter is doing and how she is holding everything together. The story does jump a bit to some backstory, as well.

It started ok, but my mind did wander at first. It seemed to turn around in the last third of the book or so, when I seemed to find it more interesting. There was also some focus on Reta's current book, which I found mildly interesting.

The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway

First line:
~It screamed downward, splitting air and sky without effort~

From the description from amazon.com:
“This brilliant novel with universal resonance tells the story of three people trying to survive in a city rife with the extreme fear of desperate times, and of the sorrowing cellist who plays undaunted in their midst.”

Hauntingly beautiful writing. Moving depiction of life under siege. Desperately sad and yet shows the endurance and triumph of the human spirit.

4.0 stars

>65 ccookie:

Isn't this book the one chosen by the library to be the book Toronto reads this year? I actually have it sitting on my beside table, waiting for its turn. It was going to be my next read but I just won my first LT Early Reader book and I feel I should read that one first so I can review it.

>66 jessibud2: Yes. The Cellist of Sarajevo was the book chosen for 2014 "One Book : Keep Toronto Reading." That is the reason that I chose to read in in April. It is not a book I would have just picked up and I had heard nothing about it until I saw it there.

I am glad that I did.

The Cellist of Sarajevo was a hot novel on LT a few years ago--it seemed everyone was reading it. I hear it's great and still plan to read it one day.

>68 Nickelini:. It was popular a few years back. I thought it was good, but it didn't blow me away like it did so many other people.

#69 - Well, I own it, and I have my copy signed from an author book reading, and he actually lives on my walking route, so I definitely plan to read it one day. But the fact that I haven't done so yet . . . . means I'm letting the hype die down (? or something). But, very local author, so--good on him for making the "One Book" for the big city!

>70 Nickelini:. That is cool that it's the "one book". Most people really liked it, so the odds are in your favour. ;-)

Come Barbarians / Todd Babiak
3.5 stars

Christopher Kruse has taken his wife and little girl to France. While there, his daughter Lily is killed and the one who presumably killed her has been murdered himself. Evelyn, Kruse's wife, has disappeared. Though Kruse himself doesn't want to believe it, the assumption is that Evelyn has killed Lily's killer. Kruse sets out to find Evelyn and to prove her innocence, but other unscrupulous men are after her (and him), as well.

This book was really up and down for me. There were some real suspenseful (and gory, in some cases) moments, but there were also times I lost interest/focus. The suspenseful moments in the book were enough to bring my rating to “good”, 3.5 stars, however.

Book of the Negroes: I enjoyed this book so much...A story that I will remember for a very long time.
(interesting fact) This book was published under another name in the US (Someone Who Know My Name)

I thought the main character in the Book of Negroes was just too perfect to be true.

I agree with you, the main character is so strong that I didn't see any weaknesses which is a little bit unrealistic but however I got carried by the story to a point I felt being part of the story until the end.

Good to a Fault / Marina Endicott
3.5 stars

When Clara's car crashes into a family, there are only minor injuries, but once at the hospital, the mother, Lorraine, is found to have cancer. The family was living out of their car as they were moving from Winnipeg to Fort McMurray, Alberta so the father, Clayton, can find work. With Lorraine now in the hospital in Saskatoon, they have no place to stay. Clara feels so badly that she takes in the entire family (Clayton, 3 kids (Dolly, Trevor and baby Pearce), and Clayton's mother). Clara also visits Lorraine at the hospital, as Clayton disappears shortly thereafter.

I quite liked this. I kept waffling between 3.5 stars (good) and 4 stars, but went with the lower of the two as it didn't quite hit 4 stars overall for me. It's an unusual situation, but I was certainly wondering what would happen in the end... would Lorraine get better? If she does - or doesn't - what happens later, as Clara grows more and more fond of the children? And what about Clayton? I'm glad I finally read the book and I already have another book by the same author I'm planning to read (though it's historical fiction rather than contemporary).

The Sisters Brothers / Patrick deWitt
3.5 stars

It is the mid-1800s and Eli and Charlie Sisters are brothers who kill for a living. They are hired by the Commodore to kill someone in California, so they are travelling from their home in Oregon City to do so.

This was good. I wasn't sure if I was going to like it or not, being a western (of sorts) and an award-winning book, but I did. It was fast to read (I read it in a day), and it was an easy read. I liked the first half of the book better, while they were travelling (and their encounters along the way), versus after they arrived in California. The “intermissions”, I thought, were a bit odd, though. I suppose there was some purpose to them, but I didn't really get it.

Speaking From Among the Bones / Alan Bradley
3.5 stars

The town is planning to open up the tomb of St. Tancred. But when the tomb is opened, they find the body of the organist at Flavia's church, who had gone missing. Flavia can't resist but to try to figure out what happened.

Jayne Entwhistle continues to do an amazing job of voicing the likeable Flavia for the audio books. At the same time, the novelty is starting to wear off for me, I think. My mind does tend to wander at times while I listen. At the same time, I am quite amazed at how much of these books don't focus on the murder mystery at hand, yet there still comes an entire book out of it. I had been debating about giving up the series... until the cliffhanger ending on this one! I will be continuing with the next book, after all.

I forgot to add the last few Canadian books I've read. Well, one read, one attempted but abandoned. I have a few books on my shelves that are published from the CBC Massey Lectures Series. When I found them in the library in audiobook format, unabridged, I grabbed them, figuring I'd get through them faster that way. One was Winter: Five Windows on the Season. I like Adam Gopnik both as a writer and as a reader (of his own books). The lectures, recorded before a live audience in 5 cities across the country, were titled: Romantic Winter, Radical Winter, Recuperative Winter, Recreational Winter, and Remembering Winter. He covered a lot of ground, and included a lot of tangential info, from art, to history, to science, poetry and more. It was thorough and all pretty interesting though I did find my mind wandering at times and wondering, too, where it was all going. But Gopnik knows how to pull it all together and over all, it was good.

However, the next Massey Lectures book I had on my shelf was Margaret Atwood's *Payback*. When I saw the audiobook version at the library, I decided to give it a try, despite knowing that I am not particularly a fan of hers at the best of times. But the Massey Lectures (on CBC radio) are always so interesting and I actually originally bought the book because it's a topic that interests me. I already know I can't stand listening to her voice. Now I remember why.

She has a nasal, droning monotone voice. But, after listening to her laugh and chuckle at her own writing and jokes, I decided that track 2 of the first CD (there are 5, one for each lecture) was as far as I was going to get.

So, this is one book I will have to read as a book and not listen to.

I have 2 other Massey Lectures books waiting on my shelves: Lawrence Hill's *Blood* and Margaret Visser's *Beyond Fate*. I will get to those at some point...

>79 jessibud2: Massey lectures sound like good ones to listen to, for sure.

Except, of course, when you can't stand the person's voice! :-)

>79 jessibud2: - If you do go back and 'read' Margaret Atwood's Payback, I highly recommend the end bit which is a modern satirical take on Dicken's A Christmas Carol. That was the best part of Payback for me.

Funny comments about Atwood's voice. I love her, but have to be in the mood to listen to her. I had the audiobook of Year of the Flood and am glad she wasn't the reader.

>82 Nickelini: I really liked The Year of the Flood audio. Well, I liked the music and singing that they were able to add to it.

Before I Wake, Robert J Wiersema, 2006


Cover comments: It's okay, I guess but doesn't tell you what the book is about. I think it's misleading, actually.

Comments: Simon and Karen's three year old daughter is struck by a hit and run driver and is deemed brain dead. But when they take her off life support, she starts breathing on her own. They take her home, where it is slowly discovered that the little girl appears to have powers to miraculously heal others, including people with terminal illness. A shadowy character, Father Peter, appears to threaten their lives. There is a strong supernatural element to the novel. The story is told in short first-person narratives by a wide number of characters. This technique keeps the story moving, but I'm not 100% sold on this approach.

The blurb on the back cover, and the first quarter of the story, make Before I Wake seem like the story of a tragic life event. But then the book takes an unexpected turn. And another. And another. It definitely kept me guessing--and most of my guesses turned out to be wrong.

Why I Read This Now: it's been in my TBR for a while, and I recently read Before I Go to Sleep. As I always confused these two books, I thought I'd read them both so I could get them straight. Both titles make perfect sense in the context of their stories.

Rating: This was a good read. 4 stars.

Recommended for: As with Before I Go to Sleep, the reader must be willing to suspend disbelief in order to enjoy this book. If you can do that, then I recommend it. The book is set in Victoria, BC, and has a strong sense of place, so read Before I Wake if you're a fan of that city.

#83 - LibraryCin - I loved the music on the Year of the Flood audiobook. I even bought one of the songs on iTunes because it makes me laugh.

The Bird Detective: Investigating the Secret Lives of Birds / Bridget Stutchbury
3.5 stars

This is a nonfiction account of the author's study of birds. She looks at mating, migration, song, colour, and more for various species of bird.

It started off a little slow for me, but overall, this was good. It did pick up a bit, I thought. A lot of the species she was looking at were not ones I have seen, but it was still interesting to learn about their habits and how varied they are. She doesn't really talk much about climate change and how the environment is affecting them (she has another book for that), except in the epilogue and it was mentioned maybe once or twice otherwise. The focus of this one is simply the birds' behaviour.

>86 LibraryCin: - I have both of Stutchbury's books, though I have not yet read them. I have heard her speak on 2 separate occasions and I find her work so interesting. I think I'll go get one of them down and add it to the pile of my summer books to read!

>87 jessibud2: Cool! I read her other one a few years back - Silence of the Songbirds. I hope you enjoy!

The Stone Diaries / Carol Shields
3 stars

This tells the life story of Daisy from the time she is born to the time she dies and everything in between at approximately ten-year intervals.

It was ok. It's not fast-paced, though I liked the middle section a bit more – once she was married and had a family, as opposed to when she was younger and when she was older. Not sure why, but I preferred that part. Overall, though, I'd rate the book merely ok.

The Flood of 2013: A Summer of Angry Rivers in Southern Alberta / Calgary Herald
5 stars

In late June 2013, Southern Alberta was hit by floods that not only affected small cities and towns, but also the largest city in the province. This book was put together by the Calgary Herald, one of the daily newspapers. It tells the story of the flooding, but a good portion of the “story” is told through the photographs included. There is more text in the first and last chapters (The Raging Waters and Hell or High Water) but the middle chapters are almost all photos.

The chapters tell the story starting with the flood itself, then the damage and devastation, then the cleanup and the amazing number of people volunteering to help out afterward.

I am biased. I live in Calgary and was here while it happened. I certainly knew the events that happened, but this included some detail I hadn't known about, including more information on the few people who died in the flooding (five people died; over 100,000 people were evacuated). As I read this just over one year later, all kinds of emotions went through me while I was reading and looking at the photographs (probably most I'd seen before; some I remember, some I don't). The first chapter, especially, was written so well, I felt almost on the edge of my seat, though I knew what happened. Though I was not directly affected (work or home), I certainly knew a lot of people who were (many evacuated), and I could see the devastation not too far from where I lived and on my route (very detoured) to and from work. I thought this book was incredibly well done.

The Big Thaw: Travels in the Melting North / Ed Struzik
3.5 stars

The author travelled to the Arctic at various times and with different people to look at different aspects of it and how it is being affected by climate change. He spoke and travelled with scientists, as well as the native people living there.

I thought it was good. He looked at different topics such as polar bears, caribou, squirrels, permafrost, glaciers, icebreakers, border disputes, and more. I did learn new things from this book, even though I've read a bit about climate change. It was published in 2009, though, so I'm sure things have changed even since then.

when you go North, it is easy to see some aspects of climate change. I was struck by devastation to forests caused by the northern pine beetle which had migrated to Yukon from BC because the warmer winters didn't kill them off as in the past.

>He did briefly mention the pine beetles in this book, as well. I've never been that far north, myself. I guess I was in the Yukon once. I was on an Alaska cruise in 2010. Our port was Skagway, but I took a tour to Carcross, Yukon. I had nothing to compare to, though.

The Best Laid Plans / Terry Fallis
3.75 stars

Daniel has left his job working for the Liberal Leader in the House of Commons, but has promised to find someone to run in the next election for the Liberal Party in the Cumberland-Prescott riding, where the PC candidate has served for years and is loved by all. The PCs have this riding locked up. So, after a lot of searching, Daniel convinces Angus McLintock, an engineering professor, who has absolutely no desire to be a politician, to simply put his name on the ballot for the Liberals. However, things don't quite go as planned...

I was very pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed this book. I'm not a big fan of politics, or especially reading about it, but this is funny and entertaining. I couldn't quite give it a full 4 stars because in the first half of the book, there was an occasional slow patch, but the second half really picked up. Angus is a great character and I loved the "antipolitician" that he was. Not caring what people thought of him, he said and did what he thought was right. There were some great secondary characters in this book, as well.

Reread, just over 2 years later:
4 stars

This was a reread for my f2f book club. I love Angus! He's an honest politician who doesn't even want to be there. I thought the book picked up in the second halff but there is a lot of humour spread throughout the book. This is one that I suspect might be better appreciated by those who have some kind of knowledge of Canadian politics, but I wonder if there might be enough humour (and novelty – an honest politician!!) to keep others interested, as well.

>94 LibraryCin: - I just started this book last month and was LOVING it! I went on a road trip to the States and brought a bunch of books to my friend. She specifically requested Canadian books so though I hadn't finished, I gave it to her, knowing I could pick up another copy easily. I think Fallis is a great writer and like you, I would never consider myself someone interested in reading political books, but enjoyed this one right from the first page. I hope to get another copy soon so I can finish it while it is still fresh in my mind.

>95 jessibud2: Oh, I hope you do finish it soon! I only originally read it because it won Canada Reads. I don't read all the winners, but it sounded good enough from what I'd heard on the program, so I thought I'd give it a try! I have also since read The High Road, which is a sequel and really enjoyed it, too.

It seems that even if Canada Reads hadn't prompted me to read it originally, my book club would have now.

I've also bought a copy of it for my Dad for a Christmas gift.

>96 LibraryCin: - My friend in the States who I gave it to is a lawyer and lived in Ottawa for a few years and she loves Can Lit, always bemoaning the fact that there is so little of it there. I know she will love this. Believe it or not, I picked it up at Value Village. I may go back to see if there are any more copies but if not, I'll check my favourite used bookstore.

>97 jessibud2:. Value Village, nice! Good luck finding another copy!

If you remember to come back and let me know, I'd love to know what she thinks. I guess with her having lived in Ottawa, she'd have a better idea of the way the Canadian government works than a lot of Americans, but I am curious.

I'll try to remind her. Who knows when she'll get to it. Although not an LT'er or a bookcrosser, she certainly qualifies: piles of books everywhere, lol!

And yes, I suspect she will enjoy it a lot

Search and Rescue / Gail Anderson-Dargatz
4 stars

Claire is a reporter who inherited a “gift” from her mother. She has hunches and sees visions of people in distress who need help. Teenager Amber has gone missing, and though Claire can see where she is, the head of the search and rescue team doesn't believe her, so she takes it upon herself to go find Amber...

I received an Advanced Reader's Copy to review. It's a “Rapid Reads” book, so it's not long. I'd say it's about novella length at 102 pages. I really enjoyed it, though. There was lots happening to keep me interested. It's not complex; I'm sure that's because it's so short, so if this is or is going to be a series (“A Claire Abbott Mystery” says the cover), I'd love to have these books a little longer to be able to flesh out more. However, I still really enjoyed it.

The Winter Years: The Depression on the Prairies / James H. Gray
3.5 stars

This book looks at the “Dirty Thirties” (the depression in the 1930s) in the Prairie Provinces in Canada. More specifically, the author was living in Winnipeg at the time with a young family. Many chapters are a memoir, but there are also other chapters that look at the broader picture of what was going on.

I will admit that I was a little disappointed, initially. I wanted a Canadian perspective, but I had hoped for more about the drought and the farmers. There was some of that, and that was probably the parts I found most interesting, though some of the rest of it was more interesting than I expected. And there were parts that I wasn't as interested in. Overall, though, I'll rate it good.

Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life / Bryan Lee O'Malley
3 stars

Scott Pilgrim is 23 years old and is not working, but does play in a rock band. He is living with a gay friend and is dating a high school girl when he meets Ramona, a delivery girl for amazon.ca who has just moved to Toronto.

It was o.k. I liked the start of it and enjoyed most of it, but it had a very odd ending, I thought. I liked the simple black and white illustrations (it's a graphic novel). But because of the ending, I downgraded my rating to o.k. and don't plan to continue the series.

Bear, Marian Engel, 1976 (afterword by Aretha Van Herk)



Cover comments: These New Canadian Library editions don’t stand out very much on their own, but when you bring several of them together, I think they are very attractive. More cover comments to follow at the bottom of this post.

Comments: My challenge is how to describe Bear in one paragraph without sounding silly or missing the important bits. Not sure it can be done, but here goes:

In the opening paragraph of Bear, archivist Lou is described as mole-like. The historical institute she works for has recently been bequeathed a small island, with a house and a substantial 19th century library. Lou’s job is to spend the summer there, cataloguing its contents and determining the potential value to the institute. Just by the act of leaving the cold, grey city, Lou begins her transformation (check off CanLit trope). Arriving on the island, Lou learns that the house comes with a bear, who she finds chained up behind the house. Over the summer, Lou forms a sort of friendship with the bear, and yada yada yada, bear porn. Yes, you read that right.

Bear is one of those chewy literary books that you can read straight up, or pull apart and explore the layers and symbolism. The author started this when the Writer’s Union of Canada put out a call to established authors to write a piece of pornography (a project that was abandoned when the submissions that came in were dreadfully unpublishable). But Engels ran with the idea. As Margaret Atwood says in her blurb for the book (and I note that something about this reminds me of Atwood’s own book Surfacing), the bear sex is “as plausible as kitchens,” and the short novel is indeed written in a realistic style. But there are a thousand other things going on too. The main one is how Engels plays with and subverts the CanLit canon with its ubiquitous themes of the transformative powers of wilderness, the savage, nature, man against the wilderness, etc and so on. Then there’s the whole second wave feminist sexual awakening trope. But the one that I keep coming back to is—despite the realism—a fabulist feel. Is Bear a play on “Beauty and the Beast”? Or “Snow White and Rose Red”? Or with the lonely octagonal house as one of the characters, is it Gothic? It’s all of these.

My edition had a nice afterword written by university professor Aretha Van Herk that goes over some of the deeper meanings for those readers who got stuck on the sexy bear stuff.

Bear was awarded the Governor General’s Award for Literature, in a year when the jury included Mordecai Richler, Margaret Laurence, and Alice Munro. In places, the writing is absolutely gorgeous, and I can’t stop thinking about this book (and it’s not the bear porn that’s sticking in my mind).

Recommended for: It’s only 115 pages, so if you think it sounds interesting, give it a try. It’s definitely a not-to-be-missed book for anyone who is serious about reading CanLit. I wish I could have studied this at university—it would have been so much fun.

Why I Read This Now: Bear has been in my TBR pile for a while, but I thought to suggest it to my book club after discussion of it went viral on the internet this summer. In my book club, we vote on the books we will read, and every single member voted to read Bear. I look forward to the upcoming discussion.

Rating: Great writing + interesting story + librarian hero + humour + bravery of writing erotica + CanLit playfulness + literary influences = 4.5 stars.

I commented in my post (# 34), that discussion of Marian Engel's 1976 book Bear went viral on the internet this summer.

It all started here: "What the Actual Fuck, Canada?" http://imgur.com/gallery/uf3YE

Which was instigated by this cover:



Discussion on CBC: "Bearotica: Why the 1976 Novel Bear is Actually a Good Read" http://www.cbc.ca/q/blog/2014/08/18/bear-1976-retro-racey/

And for those of you who like to discuss cover art for novels, the publisher has this: "Bear Re-Imagined" http://penguinrandomhouse.ca/hazlitt/feature/bear-re-imagined

And also this interesting article: "There's More to Bear than Bear Sex" http://penguinrandomhouse.ca/hazlitt/feature/theres-more-bear-bear-sex

>104 Nickelini: Wow, that's an... interesting... cover...? LOL!

I love Bear and have read it more than once.

Good grief! I never would have picked it up with that cover. How awful is that?

I read it because it won the GG award and I am slowly working my way through the list of winners. And I loved it. Felt a little dirty afterwards for liking it as much as I did but it really is so much more than Bear Porn. She writes beautifully and I loved the overall feeling of isolation that she portrayed.

Thanks for the links.

Mennonites Don't Dance / Darcie Friesen Hossack
3.5 stars

This is a book of short stories, all of which are set on the Canadian Prairies, mostly on farms run by Mennonite families.

I enjoyed this more than most short story collections. The first couple weren't as interesting to me, but they got better, I thought. I loved that one later story brought me up to date on the characters from one of the earlier stories. My dad's family is Mennonite, so of the Mennonite references, I mostly just caught the food, but that was kind of fun for me, too. I also recognized some of the little German/Mennonite towns in Saskatchewan, as it was where Dad grew up.

The Handmaid's Tale / Margaret Atwood
3.5 stars

Offred is a “handmaid” - that is, she really only exists to provide a body to house a potential child for a rich man and his wife. The world wasn't always this way. Offred remembers a time when she was married and had her own child. This is her tale.

I read this about 15 years ago; this reread was for my book club. I remember liking it the first time around, and I still thought it was good. It did go back and forth in time to a couple of different time periods, so it could be a bit confusing that way sometimes, plus with trying to figure out what the heck a “Martha” was and such – a little more confusion. However, I thought it was a good story. I also thought it picked up a little right at the end as Offred was “misbehaving” a little more.

Natasha and Other Stories / David Bezmozgis
3.5 stars

This is a book of short stories focusing on Russian Jews who have immigrated to Toronto, Ontario.

I liked that these stories followed the same people, or the same general group of people, and the same characters tended to pop up in different stories. I'm not always a fan of short stories because I find they end before I'm finished reading about the characters. So, it was nice to have them continue.

Very Grimm Fairy Tales / Trevor Strong
3.5 stars

This is a small collection of what you could call “modern-day” fairy tales. Or anti-fairy tales? It includes characters such as the unemployed, vegetarian troll and the “Average Man” and the “Important Man” who works at the “Prestigious Firm”. It's humour. The stories are very short and entertaining (though sometimes gross). The illustrations went nicely with the stories.

This isn't a review as I haven't read it yet but Sean Michaels just won the Giller this evening for his novel Us Conductors. I have heard nothing but good things about this book and can't wait to read it. Has anyone here read it yet?

Loved it! I was beyond happy to see it win last night. It is a fictionalised account of the inventor of the Theremin. This is fascinating look at science and music with a little Russian spy action thrown in for good measure.

>113 Yells: Thanks. I actually know quite a bit about the book, having heard several discussions, interviews, etc (listening to him right now on *Q*!) but I do want to read it myself. I am also a bookcrosser and we will be having a meetup hopefully at the beginning of December. I am hoping that one of our regulars will have read it and bring it to the meetup for exchange! ;-)

Y, Marjorie Celona, 2013, audiobook read by Sarah Moon


Cover comments: no comment as my audiobook cover is not on LT

Comments: Y takes its title from the opening scene where 18 year old Yula leaves her newborn baby at the front door of the YMCA, and it also suggests the word “why?”, as in “why would someone abandon her baby?” The novel shifts back and forth in time and follows the baby, now named Shannon, as she is passed through foster care and eventually into a more stable home, and alternates with the story of Yula and what happens to her in the time leading up to Shannon’s birth.

Y has received rave reviews and was nominated for the Giller Prize. I’m stunned, because I thought the writing was fairly atrocious. I was able to make it through only because I listened to the audiobook, but if I’d been reading the paper copy I would have thrown it in the recycling bin before getting halfway through. A few of the negative comments I read were that readers found the characters unlikeable and the story unrelentingly depressing. This may be true, but is not my complaint.

To give the writer some credit, I think she handled the alternating storyline and the pacing well. Of course from the beginning the reader knows that this is going to be Shannon’s quest for her birth mother, and I was mildly interested in the path that would take. So it wasn’t all bad.

If I had a paper copy, I would have noted all the problems I had with how the story is written, but since I’ve already erased my electronic copy, I will just outline a few of my problems. Overall, I could see the author at work, and picture her checking her copious notes as she sat at her keyboard. I can see that she took a creative writing course, and was given the advice to add an air of reality and to paint a picture through the use of rich detail. She was also told to know absolutely everything about all her characters—not to use it in the novel necessarily, but to understand what makes them tick. Celona’s problem is that she couldn’t stop herself from including every single meaningless detail. The result is that for every minor character that is ever mentioned and every major character that enters a scene, the reader gets a sentence describing their hair, a sentence or two describing their complete outfit, and a sentence describing the effect of their physical appearance on Shannon. This made the narrative flow very clunky and mechanical. Before the end of the first chapter, it was making me scream. She also layered on the forced details like this with settings and locations. I often admire the magic an author can achieve with subtle details, but here I felt like she was bludgeoning me over the head with them.

Celona chose an unusual narrative technique, one that I will dub “first person omniscient.” The narrator, Shannon, knows details about other characters thoughts and motivations, even when she wasn’t there, even when she wasn’t born yet. Ultimately this is just a hinky form of third person narration.

And to really make sure I hated this book, Celona employs my pet peeve cliché of the young woman having sex for the first time and getting pregnant. In actuality, the chances of conceiving from any single sexual encounter is 3%-11%, but in literature, if you’re young and unmarried, it’s 100%, cause sluts have to be punished. Authors: if you want to have some credibility, stop. Please stop.

It’s pretty clear from the start where the novel would end up, and that was fine with me as it was really about the journey. However, I was surprised at how judgemental and preachy the ending was—colour me Not Impressed.

Recommended for: creative writing teachers to show their classes how NOT to use detail.

>155 LibraryCin: I was just about to add it to the tbr based on the summary, then I read the rest of your review! I guess not!!! LOL!

I do want to say thank you for explaining the title, though, as that was my first question.

LibraryCin -- look at the reviews on this book--I seem to be the only one who didn't like it. I'm absolutely stunned that I'm alone thinking it's shite.

>117 Nickelini: Ok, thank you. I'll take a look at the other reviews, as well.

Three Day Road, Joseph Boyden, 2005


Cover comments: entirely suitable for the story

Why I Read This Now: After not enjoying the same author's The Orenda this past winter, I hadn't planned on reading any more of his books for a while, but this was my book club's November book so I pulled it out from the depths of the TBR pile.

Comments: Joseph Boyden's debut novel is about two Cree young men, Xavier and Elijah, who become snipers on the Western Front of WWI. Their story is interspersed with stories from the life of Xavier's aunt, Niska, who takes care of the wounded and morphine addicted Xavier at the end of the war.

Three Day Road has won awards and earned critical acclaim, and it is highly esteemed by readers. The writing is good, the story is interesting, it has a pleasing narrative flow (something that has been lacking in too many books I've read this year), and the WWI setting is one I usually like reading about. Despite all that, I did not enjoy this book. I think it comes down to simply not wanting to spend time in the world he created. And every time I picked it up I thought how much I'd rather be reading something else.

Recommended for: everyone, since I seem to be the only person who didn't like Three Day Road.

Green Grass, Running Water / Thomas King
3 stars

This was a reread for my f2f book club. Originally read: 10ish years ago.

I'm not sure there was much of a “plot” to this one. Alberta is dating two men, Lionel and Charlie. She wants a baby but doesn't want to get married. There are four escaped Indians from a hospital and people are looking for them. Eli has come home to the reserve from Ontario; his mother died and if he's not there, her house will be torn down to build a dam, so he feels he must fight that. In the meantime, we have commentary by Coyote and other “characters”.

It was ok. I liked the “real people” storylines, but the Coyote stuff and some of the other “peripheral” stuff, I really wasn't interested in. I guess that was the magical realism in the story that I'm generally not a fan of, anyway (and wasn't, once again). Overall, then: simply ok.

I agree with LibraryCin. I thought King's Truth and Bright Water, while not as well known, was much better.

I'm one of the ones who loved Green Grass, Running Water. But then I like magic realism.

>122 Nickelini: I wonder if that's the difference. Whether or not you like magical realism. I will be interested to hear what the rest of my book club thought when we meet on Tuesday. Our discussions are always so interesting to me, as others will notice and point out things I had never thought of!

>121 LynnB: Maybe I'll take a look at that one. I don't think I've read anything else by King.

For Honour's Sake: The War of 1812 and the Brokering of an Uneasy Peace / Mark Zuehlke
3 stars

The War of 1812 lasted a little over two years. The U.S. wanted to increase their territory, so they invaded Canada (or what was to later become Canada). The British, Canadians, French-Canadians, and Indians all fought back and in fact, won almost all the battles, though the one battle convincingly won by the Americans, The Battle of New Orleans, was just after the peace treaty was signed.

I'm sure I learned a bit about this war in high school, but I don't remember. I really knew very little about the war going into reading the book (except that the White House was burned – I know that because of a song). I have to admit that I had a hard time getting into the book and a hard time focusing. I still learned some from what I was able to focus on and I'd still be willing to read more about it. Overall, I'm rating it ok.

From a Whisper to a Scream / Samuel M. Key (aka Charles de Lint)
3.5 stars

Jim is a photographer and he suspects a woman he took a picture of knows something about some recent murders, so he sets out to find her. When they figure out what's actually going on, he (and the others) are in for more than they bargained for.

It took a little while to get into it. The book is told from many different points of view, so the first number of chapters are all introducing different characters, so it made it harder for me to get into it, as I was trying to figure out who everyone was. Once I had a better idea of that and after the mystery woman is found, in about the second half, it really picked up for me. Overall, it was good.

MaddAdam / Margaret Atwood
3 stars

This is the conclusion to the Oryx and Crake trilogy. In this one, Toby is attempting to tell the Crakers stories to fill in for Jimmy, who is ill. And we learn about Zeb's past.

It was ok. I listened to the audio and like with many audios, my mind did wander, so I missed some things, as it didn't hold my attention as much as I would have liked. The narrators were fine. There were two main narrators, telling the story from the viewpoints of Toby and Zeb. There was also a third narrator added in at the very end.

The Outlander / Gil Adamson
3.75 stars

It's 1903 and “the widow” is running from something or someone. She makes her way to the foothills of the Canadian Rockies where she tries to hide from whatever/whoever is pursuing her.

I could probably say a bit more to summarize, as the back of the book has slightly more info, but I'll leave it at that. This was pretty good. I did find the sections of the book when she was with someone to be more interesting than when she was on her own (at those times, there seemed to mostly be description). There was one question I had that was never answered. I also would have liked an author's note with more info on the Frank Slide. I know about it, but not details, so I “had” to look it up after I finished.

Eye of the Crow / Shane Peacock
3.5 stars

13-year old Sherlock Holmes is bullied at school and mostly skips it, anyway. When a woman is murdered and a boy arrested, Holmes is convinced the boy is innocent and goes out to find the real killer.

Well, I enjoyed this! I liked the extra background information on Sherlock Holmes – his family and his life beyond Watson and solving crimes. And it was fun getting to know some of the other characters – Holmes new friend, Irene, and the young local crime boss in the area, Malefactor. The mystery itself started off slow for me, but picked up in the second half. I enjoyed this and will read the next in the series.

>126 LibraryCin: I am just about to start MaddAdam but I will be reading it.

>129 gypsysmom: I hope you like it. Maybe in print it will work better. Or maybe it was just me whose mind wandered during the audio! :-)

Has anyone followed the Canada Reads competition this week? I admit that I haven't read any of the nominated books yet but this is actually the first year that I have watched (online) and followed the discussions each day. There are at least 2 of the books that appealed to me even before the week began and now, at least a few more. I was mesmerized and impressed with the quality of the discussions all week, although, admittedly, *personality* did factor in for me, to a degree. I think Wab Kinew is a terrific host and the 5 members of the panel were all really good at defending their books.

As a relative newbie to Canada Reads, though, I have a few questions. If anyone on this forum can answer them, I'd be very appreciative. First, how is the panel chosen? And do they each get to choose the book they ultimately defend or are the books randomly assigned? I understand that they obviously have to read all five in order for the daily discussions to be of the high quality they have been, but I am curious about how much choice was involved prior to this week.

jessibud2, there is a thread called CBC's Canada Reads Fans.

Over the years, Canada Reads has changed how books are selected. It used to be a black box, but for the past few years, they've asked the public for ideas. The suggestions are whittled down to a Top 40, which the public votes on. The panelists then get to choose from the Top 20.

From this year's debates, I learned that the panelists work with the producers on potential topics and titles. Not sure how the voting and the discussions get squared.

I don't know how they choose the panelists.

>132 LynnB: - Thanks for that, Lynn. Do you have a link to that thread?

>133 jessibud2: It's actually not just a thread, but an entire group. Here it is:
http://www.librarything.com/groups/cbcscanadareadsfans

The Day the Falls Stood Still / Cathy Marie Buchanan
4 stars

In Niagara Falls, Ontario, in the early 1900s, 17-year old Bess comes home from her private school to find her life is about to change. Her father has lost his job, her sister appears to be sick, and she meets Tom, who helps her with her trunk at the train station. Unfortunately, Bess's parents see Tom as “below” Bess and unsuitable. It's a time when WWI is going on and, locally, hydroelectric plants are being built along the Niagara River/Falls and water is being diverted for that.

I really liked this. The setting was interesting and it was a big part of the book, but I do still wonder how much, if any, opposition there was to the hydroelectric plants. Were there really worries at the time about how it would affect the river and falls? (Tom was worried about this in the book.) Though the author note at the end didn't really address this, I did discover that Tom's character (as the “riverman”, who fishes people out of the river/falls) was based on a real person. I listened to the audio, and I must admit that the narrator did distract me a bit at first with quite audible inhalations. However, I got used to that after a short time, then mostly didn't notice. The audio still kept my attention throughout most of the book.

Essex County / Jeff Lemire
4.5 stars

Lester is living on a farm with his Uncle Ken. Lou and his brother Vince played hockey when they were younger. Now, Lou is deaf and elderly and can't take care of himself on the farm, anymore; he is thinking back on all the memories. Anne is a nurse in Essex County. They each have their own stories in this graphic novel collection set in Essex County in Southern Ontario.

I really enjoyed this. It was quick to read, despite it's length, and, I thought, very Canadian. I hope it will appeal to non-Canadians, as well, though. The rural farming community was familiar to me; though I didn't grow up on a farm, I lived in a small town - a farming community. The stories all come together as you read through them. There were a couple of short stories added at the end that were originally going to be part of the main stories - I didn't find them quite as interesting. There were also bonus materials including early drawings, and promotional material that was interesting to see.

In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death & the World It Made / Norman F. Cantor
3 stars

In this book, Cantor looks at the Black Death that hit Europe in the mid-1300s. It is mostly attributed to the plague, but Cantor suggests it might not only have been the plague; there might have been some anthrax at the same time. In the book, he also looks at people (individual and groups of people) who were affected in some way or another and how and how it changed history.

I liked his writing style – that is, it was informal and easy to read. But, for some reason, I will still losing focus at times. It felt like he was going off tangents a lot, though he did bring things back to the Black Death, but it just seemed a bit disjointed, I guess. Overall, I'm going to give it an “ok”, as I thought the topics he presented were interesting; I just wish I could have stayed more focused while reading.

Frog Music / Emma Donoghue
4.25 stars

It is the late 1800s. Blanche is a dancer/prostitute. She came to San Francisco from France with her lover, Arthur. When Jenny, who dresses like a man in trousers, literally runs into Blanche on a bicycle, they become friends and things change for both women forever; soon after, Jenny is murdered. Blanche thinks the murderer meant to kill her.

The book starts with Jenny's murder, then backs up to one month earlier when Jenny and Blanche met. The book goes back and forth between the time following Jenny's murder, when Blanche is trying to find out what happened, and it leads up to the murder.

I really liked this. I was hooked right away. I can't really say I liked Blanche much, but I kind of liked Jenny. She maybe wasn't a super-likable character, but there was still something likable about her. I listened to the audio, and the narrator did a really good job with all the different accents (French, Irish, American?), so the extra ¼ star is for the narrator.

The Little Shadows / Marina Endicott
3.5 stars

It is 1912. Aurora, Clover and Belle are sisters and their father is gone. Their mother used to work in vaudeville, so she decides to teach the girls and set up an act so they can all make a living. The girls are 13, 15, and 16 and their mother, at the same time as teaching them to perform, is also trying to protect them as they travel and try to find theatres to perform in. The book follows them up to 1917.

I liked this, but it didn't quite live up to what I expected. There was a lot of vaudeville detail that probably didn't need to be there. I did read it, in part, because of the vaudeville, but it was a lot. Overall, though, I did enjoy it and I wanted to keep reading and wanted to be reading when I wasn't. It was a long book, but didn't feel long to me (despite all the extra detail).

The Shadowy Horses / Susanne Kearsley
3.5 stars

Verity heads out to rural Scotland for a job interview on an archaeological dig site. Little does she know, it's kind of an unofficial site. The head man running it, Peter, believes that there was a specific purpose to the site, but no one else really agrees that that is the case. Peter is said to be “mad”. She takes the job, anyway, and discovers that Peter's belief is based on the “sight” of a psychic 9-year old boy... a boy who talks to the resident ghost he calls The Sentinel.

I quite enjoyed this. It took a little bit to get into it and it's not a fast-paced book, but I liked (most of) the characters and I also liked the little romance that developed for Verity (though it was pretty low-key - till the end, anyway).

I forgot to copy the reviews of my last few CanLit reviews over here, but I remembered this time:

North of Normal: A Memoir of My Wilderness Childhood, My Counterculture Family, and How I Survived Both, 2014


Cover comments: this is a perfect cover for this memoir -- a picture of the author as a child in the wilds. It reminds me of the summer I turned nine, which I spent on a lake far in the north of British Columbia, and where I was often taken out fishing in a small boat. This picture could be me then (except I wasn't that cute)

Comments: In a sentence, this is the memoir of a woman who was raised by hippies in a tipi in winters of forty-below, who went on to be a fashion model in New York and Paris.

Her story really starts before she was born, when her Korean-war vet grandfather married her outdoor-loving grandmother. He was a forest ranger for a while, but that was too conventional, and they dropped out, learned to live off the land, ignored culture's rules, smoked a lot of pot, and eventually ended up at a house in central California that was a magnet for other hippies. By this time they had four teenage kids, including the author's mother. The kids dropped out of school and hung out at the house smoking dope and having sex with whomever was around. Cea's mother got pregnant with her at age 15 and was married briefly to the father.

By the time Cea was born in 1969, her father had left, and the family had moved to Canada to "escape the man." They lived in a tipi in the wilderness of the Kootney Plain. Her grandfather, Papa Dick, developed a following of other hippies who he taught how to live off the land. The rampant pot smoking, free love continued. Cea and her mother travelled between Alberta and various areas of BC, sometimes with her grandparents, sometimes with the mom's current boyfriends, sometimes just the two of them. Most of the book is their harrowing and heartrending stories in this era. They eventually made it to the Yukon, were the grandparents have settled their latest tipi. Mom couldn't handle the lack of men in the dating pool and took off for Calgary, and Cea spent the forty-below winter cuddled under bear skins with the wind howling around her.

Throughout this all, her mother and grandparents express a great deal of love to her, but in reality were narcissistic, irresponsible, selfish and neglectful guardians lost in a haze of pot smoke.

When she was 13 and living with her mom in Calgary, Cea lies about her age on a modelling application. She is soon signed with Elite Models, and moves by herself to New York City. She works as a model in New York and Europe until she is 31. Now in her mid-forties, Cea is married, has three young children, and lives in an upscale suburb of Vancouver.

Rating: Highly recommended. 4.5 stars, maybe even 5. Very readable, although some of the neglectful vignettes from her childhood are heartbreaking and infuriating.

Recommended for: anyone who is interested in people, particularly people who lead very different lifestyles. Also, anyone interested in authentic hippie culture-- I think it's so long in the past that we have sort of this Hollywood nostalgic softened image of it. I think this story really appeals because she started out so disadvantaged and not only managed to make something of herself, but is articulate, empathetic, and intelligent.

I think I will recommend this to my book club.

Why I Read This Now: I heard the author tell her story at a corporate event I attended last winter and was fascinated by her story. Bought her book, had her sign it, and it's been at the top of Mnt TBR ever since.

The author today:


A couple of extra notes on North of Normal

- this book is also a testament to the failure of the hippie lifestyle. I can't really explain what I mean by that without regurgitating the book back at you. But I note that her mother and grandfather die young from cancer, and her mom's three siblings all suffer from serious mental health issues.

- I've been thinking about child abuse. In my last review, the one on Beyond Black, I commented on the extreme childhood abuse that Mantel's protagonist suffered, and compared it to another story of horrific abuse, Push. While reading North of Normal I was also horrified by her guardians' behaviour, although they always told her they loved her. Yesterday I listened to a podcast by two American-born ex-Muslim young women, and their stories of brutality in the hands of their families was shocking. I've concluded that I just can't rate and compare child abuse. It's ALL terrible and no child should suffer through it for any reason.

>141 Nickelini: Yeah, I have a tendency to forget, too! I think I might have missed one, since the Kearsley book, too...

Thought so! Here's one I missed:

The Little Shadows / Marina Endicott
3.5 stars

It is 1912. Aurora, Clover and Belle are sisters and their father is gone. Their mother used to work in vaudeville, so she decides to teach the girls and set up an act so they can all make a living. The girls are 13, 15, and 16 and their mother, at the same time as teaching them to perform, is also trying to protect them as they travel and try to find theatres to perform in. The book follows them up to 1917.

I liked this, but it didn't quite live up to what I expected. There was a lot of vaudeville detail that probably didn't need to be there. I did read it, in part, because of the vaudeville, but it was a lot. Overall, though, I did enjoy it and I wanted to keep reading and wanted to be reading when I wasn't. It was a long book, but didn't feel long to me (despite all the extra detail).

I like the pictures, Nickelini!
Read Kitchens of the Great Midwest, reading My Brilliant Friend.

An Embarrassment of Mangoes / Ann Vanderhoof
3.5 stars

The author, Ann, and her husband, Steve, decided to take two years to sail to and around the Caribbean. This is a memoir of their journey.

I enjoyed this. There was a little too much discussion of local food (with recipes included) for me, but I'm sure there a lots of people who would enjoy that. It does help with describing the culture of all the various places/islands they visited. Along the way, they also met plenty of other cruisers and locals. At the end of the book, I would have liked to hear a bit about how they got over what must have been some culture shock coming back home. They did go back to visit in the Caribbean a few years later, though, so we did get a few updates of some of the local people they'd met.

Innocent / Eric Walters
4 stars

It is the 1960s. Betty is an orphan, raised at an orphanage. Shortly before her 18th birthday, when she would be released from the orphanage to make it out on her own, the orphanage catches on fire and burns down, so Betty (and the other older girls) are to set off on their own a bit early. The orphanage fire is the premise behind the Secrets series, all written by different authors, and to be released at the end of this month (I'm reviewing an ARC of this one). This book focuses on Betty and the others focus on the other older girls.

Betty is sent to Kingston to work for a rich family. When she is released, she is given a bit of information about her biological parents: it turns out her father murdered her mother when she was just 4-years old. She was born in Kingston, and surprisingly, the family she is now working for knew her parents, so she is able to find out more.

I really enjoyed this. I was interested to find out more about Betty and her parents and what happened there. It is YA, though, so it did move faster than I would have thought – that is, she found out the information really quickly and it didn't seem too difficult to find things out. I guess I was skeptical at all the coincidences that made it so easy. But, still, I was interested and really did enjoy reading it. I will plan to read more of the series.

Sweetness in the Belly / Camilla Gibb
3.5 stars

Lilly was born to an English father and an Irish mother, but her parents were nomads of a sort, so she grew up in Morocco, at least until both parents died. From there, the person who was taking care of her brought her to Ethiopia. This was the 1970s, before a revolution in that country. In the 1980s, Lilly is living in London, England, along with an Ethiopian friend. The two of them are helping Ethiopian refugees find family, friends, and relatives, and both hope to one day find and be reunited with the man they each love.

It was good. I mostly didn't like Lilly, though, especially in the 1980s as she pined away for Aziz so many years later and wouldn't let anyone else in (nor did she even decorate her apartment...she just couldn't move on). I had a bit of trouble getting “into” the book at first, though. It was a bit tricky, also at first, as the narrative jumped back and forth between Ethiopia in the 70s and London in the 80s, as I tried to follow along and figure out who everyone was. Overall, though, the story still turned out to be a good one.

Madness, Betrayal and the Lash: The Epic Voyage of Captain George Vancouver / Stephen R. Bown
3.5 stars

Captain George Vancouver served the British Royal Navy in the late 18th century. He initially did some exploring with Captain James Cook, and was later assigned to lead his own exploration to document/map the Pacific Northwest and to look for a Northwest Passage. No one yet had explored this large territory. Unfortunately for him, he was a stickler for rules and made some high-powered enemies (subordinates based on navy rankings, but high-powered back home in England) on this multi-year voyage. At the same time, he was very congenial towards the people they met along the way.

Overall, this was good. There were parts where I had trouble focusing, though, so I did end up skimming a bit of it. I debated between an “ok” rating (3 stars) or a “good” rating (3.5 stars), but decided on 3.5 (though I more often tend to round down when I'm having trouble deciding). However, the end of the book really picked up for me, and I felt badly for Captain Vancouver and how he was treated after the voyage was over. He was already ill and I felt he was being bullied. He was very strict, but it sounds like for the time, he was within his rights to be as strict as he was. I was very impressed with his dealings with the natives he came across, as well as the Spanish explorers they met along the way.

The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America / Thomas King
3 stars

This is a history (from the point of view of an Indian non-historican) of Indians in North America. It looks at treaties, popular culture and more.

It was ok. I liked that it was very informal, with some humour thrown in. I quite enjoyed how the author interjected his wife's comments in at various points, as well. To be honest, I'm not sure how much of it I'll remember, though. Having trouble focusing on it could have been due to a personal loss just before starting the book, however.

Have you read other books by King? His fiction is very memorable I think. I still remember parts of Green Grass, Running Water and it's been at least a decade since I read it.

>150 gypsysmom: Yes, I have read Green Grass Running Water. It has probably been between 10 and 15 years since I read it, as well, and I just don't remember it well! I can't recall if I've read anything else by him or not.

My favourite King book is Truth and Bright Water

I think the only King I'd read before Inconvenient Indian was Green Grass Running Water. I don't think I've read any others...

Playing With Fire: a Claire Abbott Mystery / Gail Anderson-Dargatz
3 stars

This is the second book in the Claire Abbott mystery series. It's also a “Rapid Reads” book, so meant as a quick read or for adult literacy learners. I have an Advanced Reader's Copy here.

Claire is a reporter in a small town. She is dating one of the firemen, Trevor, but Matt is interested in her, as well, so she decides to date both at the same time, while constantly being warned that she'll have to choose between them. There is also an arsonist in town and she is trying to figure out who it might be.

It was ok. I read and enjoyed the first in the series more. It is very simple and it took less than an hour to read. I was able to figure out the arsonist without too much trouble.

Tell / Frances Itani
3.5 stars

It's 1919. Kenan fought in the war, was wounded, and has come home to a small town in Ontario. However, he hasn't left the house since he got back and getting used to regular life again is hard on both him and his wife, Tress. Tress's Aunt Maggie is in a somewhat strained relationship with her husband, Am, and is finding solace in music. She has always been a good singer, but has never wanted to sing in public. Am is one of the few people Kenan feels comfortable talking to.

It's not a fast paced book, but it was good. It was a “continuation” of the author's book, Deafening, which focused on Tress's deaf sister, Grania. This book has a completely different focus, however, and can be read without having read Deafening (though I liked Deafening better). Overall, though, it was good and definitely worth the read.

>155 LibraryCin: - Good to hear that it was good. I picked this book up recently at my local Value Village but have not yet got to it. I have read almost everything else by Itani and like her a lot. My favourite of her books so far has been Remembering the Bones

Has anyone here read Anne DeGrace's Flying With Amelia? I am currently struggling to get through it. I am not a fan of short stories but have come to realize, about half way through the book, that this is exactly what it is. Nowhere on the cover or flyleaf does it even hint at this being a book of short stories. The writing is good, and I kept reading, waiting somehow for the connection between *chapters* to emerge. Then it dawned on me that it won't; that these are vignettes, different stories with different characters at different points in time, beginning in 1847. Each chapter/story has a title and a date and is on average around 20 or so pages long. Each story takes place in a different part of Canada, during a different part of history and circumstance. Mostly quite interesting, granted, and well written. But there is no flow, one to the next and I guess that is what bothers me. So far, the best one has been the one that bears the title to this book, Flying With Amelia. I really liked that one but am now not so sure I will continue and finish. I always feel a bit cheated with short stories, wanting more, expecting more, when the story comes to an abrupt - and not always satisfying - end. I guess this reminds me why I prefer meatier novels to the short story genre.

I'd be interested to hear other people's impressions, though

>156 jessibud2: Thank you for that suggestion. Deafening and Tell are the only ones I've read by her so far. I believe I also have Requiem on my tbr, but I'll look up Remembering the Bones, as well.

>157 jessibud2: I haven't read it, but that's really unfortunate there is no "warning" that it's short stories. I usually feel the same as you do about short stories, so I would likely end up quite disappointed, as well.

>157 jessibud2: Because I know that some of the most wonderful writing is found in short stories, I made it a personal project to focus on them a few years ago. I found that I soon became burnt out. It was exhausting to constantly have to world build -- to figure out: who are these characters? What is this time period? Where are we? Why is the writer writing this story? Whereas with a novel, you figure out the world, and then settle it. Which I think just means about the same thing that you said.

> 155 I remember when I read Tell that I didn't know it was a continuation of Deafening and I was delighted because Deafening was one of those books that haunted me. I don't know if I could pick out a favourite book by Itani but I agree with jessibud2 that Remembering the Bones is really good.

>157 jessibud2: I have not read this book but I have a similar reaction to you with lots of books of short stories. Alice Munro and Mavis Gallant are almost the only Canadian authors I can think of that write consistently great short stories. And I think what makes theirs work is that they set their stories in one place and time and don't jump around from location to location and time period to time period. Having said that I still love reading science fiction short stories but that's a whole other genre.

>158 LibraryCin: - I listened to both Requiem and Remembering the Bones as audiobooks and both were exceptionally well done. I can't remember the reader's name for Requiem but he was good. The only Itani book I could not get into, and eventually gave up on was one called Leaning, Leaning Over Water. I don't know why but it just didn't grab me at all.

>159 Nickelini: - That is exactly what I kept thinking in this one, by DeGrace. It didn't dawn on me at first because there was one character in the first story who was a baby. Then, in the second one, which is many years later, her name comes up as the granny. So figured there was a connection. But after that, in the subsequent stories, there were no connections, other than they continued to be in the Maritimes and during difficult ties. I believe that in other stories further on, the locale changes to other places in Canada. The writing is good but I just don't think I'm a short story type of person.

>160 gypsysmom:, >161 gypsysmom: - I have read one book by Alice Munro and enjoyed it (I think it was The View From Castle Rock but that was it. And here's a funny coincidence for you. Wendy, I am going to assume you know Lynda (Pooker3) from bookcrossing? Well, as fate would have it, when she came to Toronto a few years ago and joined us at our Word on the Street September book festival, she was the one who picked up the copy of the Itani book I never finished! Sort of full circle!

Leaning, Leaning Over Water was my favourite Itani book! By far

Just realized that I haven't been copying my Canadian read reviews over here.

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Guyana by Elise Turcotte - translated from the French by Rhonda Mullins
Decimal/ Star rating: 3.20 out of 5 /
Book description/summary: adapted from the amazon.ca website listing:

Ana, a free-lance journalist and her nine-year-old son, Philippe, are grieving the loss of Philippe's father when Philippe's hairstylist, Kimi, dies in an apparent suicide. Driven by a force she doesn't understand, Ana starts digging into Kimi's past in Guyana in 1978, which leads to nested tales of north and south, past and present, and to the Jonestown Massacre.

Review:
I will start the review off by saying that the book description above is probably not the best to give an impression of what this story is all about but it is what the publisher's came up with... I just added in Ana's career and the age of her son. For me, this story is more of an introspective examination of how death (and violence) leaves its scars on the psyche of the living. Written with wonderful sparse prose - Turcotte is a poet/novelist - Turcotte captures the essence of her characters' emotional turbulence, slowly drawing out not only Ana's burning need to understand Kimi's death, but also frightening details of Ana's own past and her dependence on her young son to ground her. The shifts in narrative work well to flesh out just how in tune Phillipe is with his mother's emotional balance and when she is withholding information from him. While Turcotte does bring into the story information about the November 18, 1978 mass suicide of the People's Temple cult members, she is elusive with Kimi's past in Guyana and Guyana in general, painting a half finished portrait of Guyana in quick, post-colonial strokes. The threads driving Ana forward with her personal examination of Kimi's death are tenuous at best and left me with some questions and somewhat unsatisfied with how the story made it to the ending.

Overall, a story that seems to be a bit at odds with its sparse, eloquent prose trying to contain the emotional turmoil that is pushing its way to the surface.

The Wars by Timothy Findley
Decimal/ Star rating: 4.40 out of 5 /
Book description/summary: from the amazon.ca book listing:

Robert Ross, a sensitive nineteen-year-old Canadian officer, went to war—The War to End All Wars. He found himself in the nightmare world of trench warfare, of mud and smoke, of chlorine gas and rotting corpses. In this world gone mad, Robert Ross performed a last desperate act to declare his commitment to life in the midst of death.

Review:
I have to start this review off by saying that I was a little shocked to see this book displaying as a "Beach Reads" book on the amazon.ca webpage. The gritty and yet metaphysical examination of the meaning of life, survival and the atrocities that humans have inflicted upon other humans doesn't quite equate into a "beach read"... not in my mind anyways. I mean, this has some similarities to the story telling of Brideshead Revisited but with the grim brutal futility of war as a full frontal assault, minus the whole drinking and waxing philosophical bit. Now, don't get me wrong. I happen to be a huge fan of Findley's stories, especially the way he gets under his character's skin to expose the human condition for the flawed thing that it really is. I can highly, highly recommend Findley's The Last of the Crazy People, but I digress. In The Wars, Findley experiments with story telling by presenting the narration of this story as one of an unnamed individual's work to cobble together fragments of memories, snapshots and facts to tell Ross's story. I am still undecided if this was the best mechanism to use, as the story tends to jump around a bit and I was a bit confused as to what exactly happened to one of the characters, but Findley's ability to make me experience the trench warfare of World War I in all of its mud, confusion, harrowing despair, coupled with the determination to rise above it all is what continues to resonate within me long after I finished reading this story. Findley has a knack for producing wonderful quote-worthy passages, like the following monologue by Robert's mother early in the story:

For a moment she looked at what she'd done and then, without looking up, she spoke in a voice as passionless as sleep: "You think Rowena belonged to you. Well I'm here to tell you, Robert, that no one belongs to anyone. We're all cut off at birth with a knife and left at the mercy of strangers. You hear that? Strangers. I know what you want to do. I know you're going to go away and be a solder. Well - you can go to hell. I'm not responsible. I'm just another stranger. Birth I can give you - but life I cannot. I can't keep anyone alive. Not anymore.

I close off this review with two more quotes that really resonated with me while I was reading this story:

The first dead man he'd seen, I think. And he said that after a while you saw them everywhere and you sort of accepted it. But the acceptance made him mad and he said this marvelous thing: I still maintain that an ordinary human being has a right to be horrified by a mangled body seen on an afternoon walk. So what it was we were denied was to be ordinary. All our ordinary credos and expectations vanished. Vanished There was so much death. No one can imagine. These were not accidents - or the quiet, expected deaths of the old. These were murders. By the thousands. All your friends were...murdered.

Overall, another brilliant, thought-provoking read from one of my favorite Canadian authors. I can see why this won the 1977 Governor General's Award. A worthy read.

Tragedy at Second Narrows: The Story of the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge by Eric Jamieson
Decimal/ Star rating: 4.00 out of 5 /
Book description/summary: adapted from the amazon.com website book listing:

On June 17, 1958, Vancouver experienced the worst industrial accident in its history when the new bridge being built across Burrard Inlet collapsed into the flooding tidal waters of Second Narrows, killing eighteen workers. Photos of the two broken spans tilted into the sea went around the world and provided the city with one of its iconic historical images, still familiar to school children half a century later. The shocking thing was that the bridge was not an old, decrepit structure, but a new one just in the midst of being erected with all the support and security modern engineering could provide. That somebody had made a colossal error seemed obvious, but it would take a Royal Commission to discover how and why. Even then, some mysteries will never be solved. Author Eric Jamieson reconstructs the tragic event, introducing the entire cast of politicians, construction bosses, engineers and ironworkers while presenting readers an insight into the world of big-time bridge building and clear picture of precisely how this great disaster took shape and plunged to its inevitable conclusion.

Review:
This was a good read, keeping in mind that my interest in the topic stems from a desire to learn more about local BC history. Jamieson really dives into the nitty-gritty details of bridge design and the details of the construction specifications like a forensic civil engineer. Some of the engineering details were a little over my head - I can appreciate the necessity for schematic numbering when building a bridge, but continual references to piers and what not by number had my non-engineering mind struggling a little bit to keep the image all straight in my mind. I now know more about cantilevered-truss bridge construction, cofferdams and falseworks than I ever thought I would know, which has a personal plus side for me in that I have a better appreciation for the current bridge work I walk past on a daily basis. If you are worried that this book is geared towards more engineering-minded individual, I can state that for like-minded readers like myself, the story nicely balances the construction details with the human interest side of the story: the workers involved with the bridge construction and that fateful day. I could never do an ironworker's job - I have a thing about heights - so I bow to the men, and women, who aspire to this type of construction high trapeze work. What really stood out for me while reading this story is how young certain members of the bridge construction team were and the horrifically low wages the ironworkers earned for such a high-risk job. Even taking into account that we are talking about 1958, 2 dollars and change an hour for such high risk, high skilled labour to construct a 1,292 meter long 6 lane bridge with a centre span of 335 meters (1,099 ft) as a major replacement traffic artery between Vancouver, Burnaby and North Vancouver.

Overall, this is a well written, well researched and well documented book with numerous archive photos to help communicate the events as they unfolded. I can definitely recommend this one to civil engineer/bridge enthusiasts and to readers like myself who just want to learn more about the details of the bridge collapse, the findings of the royal commission after the collapse and a glimpse into part of BC's past.

Shoot! by George Bowering
Decimal/ Star rating: 4.30 out of 5 /
Book description/summary: adapted from various sources:

In the dry plateau country around Kamloops, brothers Allan, Charlie, Archie McLean and sidekick Alex Hare were known as the McLean gang. They were also known as "breeds"--outcasts caught between the cultures--Alex Hare, a Metis, and Allan, Charlie and Archie, brothers of mixed Salish and Scottish blood. They roamed the high Chilcotin ranch country of British Columbia in the 1870s, cattle rustling, stealing and creating high-spirited mayhem. Until one frozen, crystalline morning in 1879, when they crossed the line and shot two men in cold blood, one of them, Johnny Ussher, the local sheriff. Tracked down by a posse of over 100 men, the McLean Gang were eventually trapped and brought to justice. Or were they?

Review:
Shoot! started out as a slow and very confusing read for me. Bowering weaves historical fact with native legend and his own unique story-telling. The first 100 pages of the story was a bit of a challenge to piece together, bouncing around like a pinball ricocheting around in a pinball machine. Flipping narratives and timelines every page or so can get a bit unnerving for any reader, I think. Thankfully, Bowering finally settles into his story and calms down the narrative flipping to a more manageable level, allowing me to finally sit back and get drawn in. Bowering, Canada's first Poet Laureate, captures the dead cold of that 1879 interior BC winter with a practiced hand, communicating its terrifying raw, elemental beauty. In Shoot!, Bowering strips bare and exposes to the light of day the stories that have been relegated to the 'dusty basement' of BC's recorded historical past. While this story is on its surface a story about a gang of outlaws, the posse who tracked them down and the English justice that they they faced in New Westminster, it has a dark underbelly that I believe to be the thrust of Bowering's story. As mentioned by Sherrill Grace in her afterword to the story:

"Shoot! is a story about the HBC (Hudson Bay Company), its white businessmen, their Indian country wives, and their mixed-race children who would not be fully accepted by either white or native communities. These children were especially feared by those white colonizers who wanted to make fortunes and create a civilized English-speaking society of law, order and status out of a wild, rich, as yet unexploited land, and who definitely wanted to deny their past sexual alliances."

Unlike a number of the famous outlaw gangs of the American Wild West that I have read about, the McLean Gang, outside of Allan, were still mere boys. Allan, the oldest, was 25. Charlie and Alex Hare were 17 and young Archie was 15. Their rampage was fueled in part by the way they were treated as 'breeds'. For the McLeans, their suffering started at the hand of their violent father, a Hudson Bay Company Chief Factor and grew into one of community-wide disgust, disdain and indifference after their father's death in 1864 at the hand of a Chilcotin warrior when the family's Hat Creek ranch was taken away from their Native Indian mother by the white settlers, leaving the family destitute. For all members of the McLean Gang, their anger was also fueled by the fact that one of Kamloops richest white settlers, Mara, was having his way with the McLean brothers' young sister, Annie. Bowering's story hit a resounding nerve within me as a reminder of Canada's settlement past and how important it is for stories that are a legacy of Canada's past to be communicated and shared. At their trial in New Westminster, Judge Henry Pering Pellew Crease makes a statement that, as Bowering has written, may explain why the McLean Gang and their rampage are not widely captured in the recent written histories of the province: "You have caused great terror throughout the country, and by a campaign of robbery and assault and murder you have disgraced British Columbia." They do always say that history is written by the winners/victors. I believe that Bowering has brilliantly captured in his story the very fact that everyone has a story and it is all of the stories, not just the stories of the victors, that need to be heard and shared.

I can recommend this story to anyone who has an interest in outlaw gangs of the 19th century North American west. For me as a Canadian and a British Columbian, this story has extra meaning and really resonated with me. It has also left me with a lot to think about.

On a Related Note: For those of you who may be interested in the McLean Gang, their rampage, seige and subsequent capture, these did make the news in the newspapers of the time, such as the Daily Colonist in Victoria, as the paper was known at that time. As luck would have it, the old Daily Colonist newspapers have been digitized as part of a University of Victoria project. A search for McLean during the December 1879 period of the siege produced the following results. Not all articles are related to the McLean Gang but enough of them are to give one a really good impression of the events as they played out. The prisoners did not stand trial until three months later in the Spring of 1880, faced a second trial months later - the first trial was determined to have been conducted without the necessary commission - and were executed on January 31, 1881.

The Cure for Death by Lightning by Gail Anderson-Dargatz
Decimal/ Star rating: 4.20 out of 5 /
Book description/summary: adapted from various sources:

In the shadow of the Second World War, the fifteenth summer of Beth Weeks’s life is full of strange happenings: a classmate is mauled to death; children go missing on the nearby reserve; and Beth herself is being hunted by an unseen predator. The isolated valley of the B.C. farming community where she lives is home to a host of unusual characters: Nora, the sensual half-Native girl whose friendship provides refuge; Filthy Billy, the hired hand on her family's farm with Tourette’s Syndrome; and Nora’s mother, who has a man’s voice and an extra little finger. Then there’s the darkness within her own family: her domineering, shell-shocked father has fits of madness, and her mother frequently talks to the dead. Beth, meanwhile, must wrestle with her new found sexuality in a harsh world where nylons, perfume and affection have no place. Then, in a violent storm, she is struck by lightning in her arm, and nothing is quite the same again.

Review:
This story has one of my favorite opening sentences:

"The cure for death by lightning was handwritten in thick, messy blue ink in my mother’s scrapbook, under the recipe for my father’s favorite oatcakes: Dunk the dead by lightning in a cold water bath for two hours and if still dead, add vinegar and soak for an hour more."

It really sets the tone for what I can only describe as a compelling coming-of-age story. A wonderful blending of isolated rural community living, family histories, native folklore, evocative memories stirred by the wonders captured within the pages of her mother's scrapbook and the luscious descriptions of food, gardening and bizarre remedies. It is a wonderful throw-back to a forgotten era and I love how Beth reminds us that the story she is telling is something that occurred in her past, not her present. The writing is a delight to experience, like this description of eating cherries fresh off a cherry tree:

"When you eat a ripe cherry straight from the tree on a sunny day, its juice is so hot, thick, and red that it has the feel of blood running down your chin, staining your lips, and filling your mouth. Once you've sucked all you can from it, you spit out the pit and go for another warm cherry off the tree, and another and another, because the cherry will seduce you every time. You don't see that ripeness, that hot blood juice, in a store-bought cherry. But a cherry sun-hot off the tree, well, that's where it came from, the insinuation of lust in the cherry, the smut-name put to the ripe button-love of a woman. Cherry. It's all juice and warmth, a O in your mouth, a soft marble for your tongue to play with, a sweet soft thing with a core cloaked in flesh."

I delighted in the recipes and remedies that are strewn throughout the story. The kind that are handed down from generation to generation. Even better, there is an index at the back of the book. While the story is set in the Turtle Valley region of British Columbia, it is easy to picture it as taking place in almost any Northwest valley farming community with an reserve nearby. Canadian specific references to such things as Vancouver, Vernon and residential schools are kept to a minimum. As with most coming-of-age stories, it has elements that are harrowing and emotional. Anderson-Dargatz focuses on how Beth reacts/deals with situations, instead of exposing the reader to minute details of the situations themselves. A nice touch as some of the topics are disturbing enough without having the read through pages and pages of ugly details.

Overall, a really good read.

>162 jessibud2: I always check my library for audio or e-books first before looking for a physical book, so I'll see if they library has either of those on audio (maybe I'll do that now, before I forget!). Thank you.

>165 lkernagh: I have only read Not Wanted on the Voyage by Findley (and I really liked it), and I've been trying to figure out what by him I should try next. I am thinking that this one, The Wars might not be one for me, though, with your mention of it jumping around and it being a bit confusing.

And thanks for adding some of your reviews. It's nice to see a bit more conversation happening here, as well. :-)

>168 lkernagh: I read this a long time ago, but I just don't remember anything about it, I'm afraid.

>170 LibraryCin: - I haven't read that one by Findley but I did read and love his From Stone Orchard

Ok, this is weird. The touchstone that pops up as I typed From Stone Orchard is Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. What's up with that?!!

One last word about Anne DeGrace's Flying With Amelia. I just noticed now that right there on the cover, in very small print, almost unnoticeable, it says *a novel*. Which is probably why I picked it up in the first place. I beg to differ; I honestly don't see how it could be a novel. There is no connection from one chapter to the next, no continuity of characters, setting, plot. Nothing. I made it to page 115 and have decided to give up. I think it's safe to guess that if that hasn't happened by this point, it isn't likely to. I will pass it along to someone else. I don't usually wait this long before abandoning a book but despite what it says on the cover, in my humble opinion, this is a book of short stories, NOT a novel. Unless the definition of novel has changed when I wasn't looking.

I love Timothy Findlay! You might want to try The Last of the Crazy People was good or Pilgrim

The Last of the Crazy People is amazing and my favorite Findley!

>174 jessibud2: Yikes! That's deceiving. I would think that to be a publisher's error? They decide what goes on the cover, yes? Either way, not good to indicate it's a novel when it's obviously not!

And thank you all for the Findley recommendations. Looking at descriptions for all three, I think I'll first try The Last of the Crazy People.

ETA: To be more clear, I will add it to my tbr. Hard to say when I'll get to it, though!

>162 jessibud2: Wendy, I am going to assume you know Lynda (Pooker3) from bookcrossing? Well, as fate would have it, when she came to Toronto a few years ago and joined us at our Word on the Street September book festival, she was the one who picked up the copy of the Itani book I never finished! Sort of full circle!

Yes I certainly know Lynda. I know I have read Leaning, Leaning Over Water and now I am wondering if it was your copy. The search function on BookCrossing isn't working right now so I can't check but that would be very coincidental.

>179 gypsysmom: - It would be what we call bookcrossing karma! lol!

The Cellist of Sarajevo / Steven Galloway
3.5 stars (2015 reread)

It is 1992 and a time of war in Sarajevo. 22 people who were simply standing in line for bread were killed when a bomb hit. A cellist saw it happen from his apartment across the street and decides to play on the street at the same time each day, for 22 days – one day for each of the people who died. The book actually follows three other people more closely: Arrow, a sniper; Kenan, who has a family and must make a potentially deadly trip every few days to retrieve water; and Dragan, who works at a bakery, and is able to eat for free at that bakery.

(2010: 3 stars). I can’t say I’m overly excited about the book. It was o.k., but not much really happened. I guess it kind of gave me a look at day-to-day life in a war zone. I found I couldn’t really connect with the characters, though. It often felt sort of surreal, like the characters themselves were watching a movie; it didn’t feel to me like they were living it, and I think that’s why I couldn’t connect. But, it was fast to read and it was interesting to learn in the afterword, that there really was a cellist in Sarajevo who played for 22 days in remembrance of the people in the bread line who died.

2015 Reread for my book club: 3.5 stars.

I originally read this five years ago and was underwhelmed. Maybe my expectations were too high from so many people loving it so much, I'm not sure. Back then, I rated it 3 stars (ok). I'm upping my rating slightly this time to “good”. I agree with my original review that not much really happened, but that it is a good look at regular people having to live in a war zone. I think I was able to “connect” with the characters a bit better this time. Or maybe my expectations just weren't as high.

The Custodian of Paradise / Wayne Johnston
3 stars

Sheilagh Fielding grew up without her mother and her father insisted he wasn't really her father. As a teenager, she became pregnant and gave up her twin children. As she got older, she received letters from someone who called himself her “Provider”. He seemed to know all her secrets.

It was ok, but in my opinion, the author has much better books. I really wasn't all that interested in Sheilagh (though I was mildly curious about this “Provider”), and I really didn't like her all that much, either. Much of the book is told in diary form or letters as she thinks back on her life. Normally, that doesn't bother me much, but for some reason, I tended to skim through the letters and such more than the “regular” text of the book.

No Safe House / Linwood Barclay
4 stars

This sequel to No Time for Goodbye takes place 7 years later. Terry and Cynthia are having a few bumps in their marriage and Cynthia periodically moves out to sort things out for herself. Their daughter Grace is now 14-years old, and though her mother tries to protect her a little too much, she still manages to get herself in trouble one night when she is out with her boyfriend, Stuart, whose father is involved in various crimes. While what Stuart and Grace are doing is not overly serious (but still illegal), things take a turn for the worse when someone gets shot!

This was another fast-paced read from Barclay. It's been quite a while since I read No Time for Goodbye, but from what I remember, this one's not quite as good. But that's just a comparison – this one is still really good. The book does alternate viewpoints (most commonly from Terry's), and I have to admit (and this is usually the case) that I tend not to find the viewpoint from the “bad guys” as interesting... at least until things start coming together at or toward the end. And this one had multiple “bad guys”. But, as usual, it all came together at the end with a little twist thrown in.