Lori’s Book Nook

One of the books I’m reviewing is, well, rather brilliant — mesmerizing even. Zed, authored by Elizabeth McClung (Arsenal Press).

If you can read the first paragraph and not be drawn in, then okay, you don’t have to buy it. But if you can’t wait to read more, here’s the first chapter online.

Her name? Zed. Age? Eleven, twelve, maybe thirteen – it wasn’t like she was getting three square a day and multivitamins. She was small, four-foot nothing: thin, grubby, but with a thrust to her chin which told you, as you saw her beetling down the hall towards you – best step aside. Most people were fairly certain Zed was female. Her soft features and long lashes were contrasted by grey uniform coveralls, slick and shiny from constant wear. The hair was the deciding factor, because it fell, wildly uneven, to shoulder length. Once a year, Zed assaulted it with her knife, hacking it back above her ears. She had a habit of tilting her head down and staring up at people from under her bangs. She just showed up one day – no relations, no history. No one knew much about her, and those who did never passed it on. People didn’t gossip about her, at least not more than once, because if she caught them she’d stick her knife point somewhere soft on them and ask, “Got anything more to say, Chuckles?” which, invariably, they didn’t.
Yes, she fit right in with the Tower.

C’mon, Elizabeth! Get working on another one!

I write book reviews for the Canadian Book Review Annual, a very comprehensive publication — reviews of all books published in Canada in a given year. It’s a huge mandate, and we reviewers get paid in books and experience…and it’s a truly wonderful thing to get a package of books in the mail.

Anyway, one of the latest books that arrived via Canada Post was Lost Girls and Love Hotels by Catherine Hanrahan.

Wow! I could not put this book down. All the fun and despair of the expat community in Asia, without dealing with the alcoholism yourself. Get this book for someone who has lived overseas, and those who are trying to make the decision to go — this book will help them decide, one way or another!

And no, this is not my CBRA review. It’ll be more literary, hopefully.

Well, Booktalk.org is at it again. This time, one of the books is Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben. (Here’s the link to the Booktalk.org discussion forum.)

This one is hitting me close to home. I worked the opening day of the local Farmers’ Market (I’m the manager), came home, and picked up Deep Economy to read McKibben’s discussion on farmers’ markets — and the studied fact that people have 10 more social interactions there than they do in a supermarket.

I could’ve told  him that!!

McKibben believes in communities — the idea that as individuals we make decisions that (seem to) affect only us, but with an awareness of our community, we make decisions that have deeper consequences. [It's a big book, lots of ideas, and I'm writing this in an office with no circulation on a hot day at 6 p.m.. Bear with me on my simplistic synopses. ]

For example, if I’m just thinking of myself, then I’ll go to the local Walmart and buy the cheapest coffee on the shelf. But, if I were aware of my local community, I’d go to the grocery store in town that may have a higher price tag, but where I know that the management cares about their staff and pay good wages. If I were thinking of the broader community, I’d go out of my way to buy fair trade, shade-grown coffee, and by-pass the big corporations abusing the people of the coffee-growing nations. But, if I were really thinking of the greater community, I’d stop drinking coffee altogether, as the fossil fuels needed to bring that coffee to me, no matter how it’s grown, are damaging our environment. (Plus, they’re running out. Might as well overcome the coffee addiction now, before I’m forced to, down the road!)

This is a huge discussion…that I don’t feel like undertaking at this moment. Perhaps in the comments??

I was just reading one of Archie’s latest posts, on the book Cloudstreet, by Tim Winton.

I’ve never heard of it…and Archie’s review makes the book sound interesting, but what was most interesting to me was his personal identification with it. It’s about his childhood home, and essentially about his life.

I heard about “Cloudstreet” when it was first released. I chose not to read it because what interest could there be in the streets I knew, in the people I knew? I finally decided to read it. It was a task done slowly as I relived so much of my own life.

I too, would hesitate to read something that potentially reflected so much of my life. What if it brought up bad memories? What if the writer hadn’t seen what I saw? What if…?

The closest to this I have ever come is reading Tom Robbins’ book Skinny Legs and All on a beach on the Sunshine Coast of BC. I was spinning with the carnival that summer, and when I got to the description of Randolf “Boomer” Petway, I almost threw the book in the drink…it was Willie the Welder, the man I was currently involved with:

Randolf “Boomer” Petway was a welder by trade. He was seven years older than Ellen Cherry Charles. He was husky, dark, and, in a broad-faced, silly-grinned, thuggish sort of way, handsome. He drank a lot, guffawed a lot,  and walked with a moderate limp, a piece of equipment having crushed his anklebone in the welding shop. In spite of the lameness, he boogied to country-rock more flamboyantly than any man in east-central Virginia. Some dance critic, who worked behind the bar in a honky-tonk, said that when Boomer danced he looked like a monkey on roller skates juggling razor bladse in a hurricane.

“He’s a complete idiot,” reported Ellen Cherry to Patsy, “but I have to admit he’s a hill of fun.”

The sex was similar too. :p

Anyone else out there find their lives in a book?

Another birthday today (Hmm. There’s probably one every day, right?) from Writer’s Almanac:

It’s the birthday of novelist Jonathan Franzen, (books by this author) born in Western Springs, Illinois (1959). He spent years working on a novel while his marriage ended, his father died, and he quit smoking. After five years he had written hundreds of pages, but he still didn’t know what story he was telling. Then a good friend, David Foster Wallace, published a book (Infinite Jest) to great acclaim. It was the jolt Franzen needed. He threw away everything but a chapter about a cruise ship and started over. He wrote the rest of the book in less than a year.

The Corrections was published in 2001. It’s about a family falling apart and was a big success. His most recent book is a collection of essays: How to Be Alone (2002).

Okay people. Someone help me with this. Has anyone out there read The Corrections? I’ve tried, but couldn’t get past the first couple of chapters. I just didn’t give a rat’s ass about any of the characters — couldn’t raise any emotion about them, not even an active dislike.

Who out there has read this book? Please tell me your experience, and your thoughts on the book. Should I tackle it again? (We do have a copy on the shelf.)

Thanks.

Just heard some brilliant news on the radio — three Mexican fishermen, presumed dead/drowned by their families in September, have just been found, after drifting (almost literally) halfway around the world.

Can you imagine the joy and celebration right now with their families?!? I picture stunned silence, followed by crazed jubilation, then a huge party in the town square. It’s still 2 weeks until the fishing boat they were picked up by gets into port…then they have to be sent home. Time enough, I hope, to get that lean, hungry look out of their eyes before seeing their families again.

Three cheers for rainwater! Hip hip hooray!

A great real life story, mirroring, in some ways the Booker Prize winner from 2002, Yann Martel’s Life of Pi.

Okay, so maybe the only parallels are the being stranded at sea for months — but I see the world through books (and sometimes movies), so sue me if this is the first thing that came to mind!

If you haven’t read about the Indian boy, Pi, who grew up learning about the animals in his father’s zoo, then subsequently got stranded at sea in a lifeboat with a tiger, then well, go to the library today, and pick it up. It’s a book that pulls you in and keeps you there, with its anecdotes about animals, comments on life and religion, and moments of magical realism.

I listened today to Terry Gross’ (of Fresh Air, NPR fame) interview with Lt-Gen Romeo Dallaire, UN Force Commander during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. I have his book, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda…I’ve read part of it. I had to stop once his description of the genocide really got going.

Much like I had to stop, when, in Grade 5, I was reading Roots by Alex Haley. I couldn’t get past the slave ship sequence. Put it aside for 6 months, went back, all was fine.

So, I think it’s time to pull out Dallaire’s award-winning book again.

It is truly a significant, moving book. He writes in a very spare style, focussing his words, and energy, on detailing the recorded facts of the events. If he gives an opinion, be it negative or positive, you can bet it is backed up by evidence.

I once heard his editor, Anne Collins of Random House Canada, read a section of this book to us — a group of wanna-be publishers at SFU’s Book Publishing Immersion Workshop (two of the most intense, but rewarding, weeks of my young life!). It moved us all to tears.

Now, go and read an excerpt of the interview with Terry Gross here. If it moves you, go on to listen to the interview (about 50 minutes long), conducted 10 years after the horrific events in Rwanda.

And perhaps, join me in reading the book.

Have you folks seen Before Sunset? Julie Delpy & Ethan Hawke reprise their roles as Celine & Jesse, meeting up again 9 years after they parted in Before Sunrise.

Nine years ago, the first one wowed me with its natural flow and realistic conversations…I found myself thinking more than once “I’ve had that conversation!”.

Before Sunset takes place in Paris, starting in the bookstore of bookstores, Shakespeare & Co….right across from Notre Dame [My purchase there: Delta of Venus by Anais Nin and Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote.]

Jesse is a writer, and is touring on his popular novel, based on that one night in Vienna almost a decade earlier.

Of course Celine shows up.

The rest of the movie is shot essentially in real time, as they walk and talk before he has to catch a plane back to the USA.

Again, amazing conversation…Who writes like that? I remember reading that the actors and the director wrote the script together, basing it on their intimate knowledge of the characters.

It is so unusual to read dialogue like that in a novel — why is that?

Can anyone recommend a writer whose dialogue hits you in the gut? It’s not the realism I’m looking for. Too often we speak, uh, you know…like I said yesterday…what’s the word? Yeah. Dumb.

No. I’m talking about the idealized conversations we remember having that were so damned significant — I want that in a novel.

Or, one of my top 3 lists…

Are they still my favourite books, or have I not updated the list in awhile? Hmm…

Here goes:

LOTR
What can I say? Hold up your hand if you've read them more than once. More than twice? Keep your hand up. More than 10 times?
On the top 3 list because I've re-read these books every year since I was first introduced to them as a pre-teen. I don't remember reading them for the first time though…
For their re-readability, and film adaptability, they are true classics.

The Bone People by Keri Hulme

One of only a few books to move me to tears….complicated tears too, not just a sad 'boo-hoo'. How does one classify this book? I've seen it called a mystery — which is odd. It's a compelling story of 3 damaged, but likeable, people living in New Zealand. When I find this book in a secondhand store, I buy it, and give it away. I once gave it to a friend for Christmas, and she was totally pissed off at me the next day, since she stayed up all night reading it instead of sleeping.

Read it, don't read about it. Any description could not do justice to the story, the characters, or the lush writing.

The Power of One by Bryce Courtney

The movie captured the tone, but not the wonderful depth of the story. This is another book that moved me to tears — and again, far more complex tears than just 'oh poor kid'. A great story about a little boy growing up in South Africa as apartheid takes hold. A moving story about a boy who learns to box. A fascinating story about….

Ack. Again. Just read it. But once you are utterly enthralled with Peekay and his life, do not read the sequel, Tandia. It's good, but disappointing in many ways…but mostly because it does not have the wondrous hope of the first.