Lori’s Book Nook

I have a confession to make…I’ve not read anything new for months! I’ve been re-reading all books by Lois McMaster Bujold, almost obsessively, and in the last couple of weeks, the Dark is Rising series by Susan Cooper, one of my favourite authors as a child. (They pass the test of time though, still tasty books!)

Last week, for a couple of reasons, my reading life has changed:

• I took a mid-week Greyhound trip to Vancouver, and finally picked up a Christmas book: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Finished it yesterday — very good. If you haven’t picked this one up, thinking it had something to do with 18th Century England (I did…I wasn’t too terribly enthused about what I expected to be an Austen-wannabe.), do so now. It’s unexpected and a great yarn — wide-sweeping epic-like with very intriguing characters.
• I did recently read Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain, and while I was in Vancouver, I stopped at my favourite 2ndhand bookstore there, Albion Books (Hi Dave!), and found a copy of Bourdain’s next book, A Cook’s Tour. Just finished that one this morning — again, very good. Bourdain writes food porn — his relationship to food is definitely not one of merely fuel. If he did write regular porn, it would be nice and earthy, with all the fluids and smells lovingly recorded. His descriptions of the food he eats around the world are bloody, alcohol-soaked, crud-encrusted meals of absolute delight. I dare you to read this without wanting a bowl of fresh pho and a pint of tequila.

• I have also picked up a copy of Anna Gavalda’s Ensemble, c’est tout — quite a popular French novel. Discovered while searching up a link to give you, that it has just been made into a movie with the irrepressible Audrey Tautou.

So, I’m reading new stuff again. Hopefully this will mean that I’ll be posting here more often!

So, have you read Moby Dick?

I haven’t, and it’s not been on my mental TBR pile either.

Now I don’t have to read it, because over at MadHaiku’s place, he’s done the reading for us, with an illustrated haiku summary to inspire you to read it, or at least see the movie!

I wonder what he’ll come up with next!

Enjoy!

Can you?

More and more the author is required to pull together much of their own marketing, and the really savvy ones will come up some really imaginative ideas — like a website. But is a really good web-presence enough to inspire you to buy a book?

Check out this one: a novel entitled Specialty Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. I had never heard of the book until I stumbled upon this brilliant website. It appears to be a mystery, with a very literary main character…and if you dig a bit, you’ll find some tasty buzz for it.

Has anyone out there read this one? I must admit I’m tempted.

Your comments?

In an earlier post, I listed the books that arrived in my mailbox to review. I’m going to list them again, but this time, with a bit of a rating, and brief “to read or not to read” comments. Feel free to argue with me, like pretty much everything else, taste in books is all relative…

Running with Swords: The Adventures and Misadventures of the Irrepressible Canadian Fencing Champion by Sherraine MacKay (Fitzhenry & Whiteside)

This one was quite lovely. Sweet, almost — if a sports bio can be that. Fencing is a sport with very little funding, and MacKay is quite funny in her stories of how training all pans out.

6 out of 10 (but I’m not a sports enthusiast…)

*   *   *

The Rage: Reflections on Risk by Steve De Maio (Rocky Mountain Books)

De Maio is a raging ego-maniac. And a jerk that can’t write. If I see/read the word ‘chortled’ again in my life, it will be too soon — he used it in almost every essay/story, and I think 3 times in one. Oh, not in the pieces where he’s playing the ugly Canadian in South America — those were appalling bits of so-called storytelling…if you like stories of tourists laden with extreme sport gear haggling over pennies for taxi fares in developing countries, yelling “You cheat me!” then by all means, pick up this book.

-2 out of 10 

*   *   *

Mental Traps: a Field Guide to the Stupid Mistakes that can Ruin Your Life by Andre Kukla (Doubleday Canada)

A neat book, written in an archaic style to mimic early ‘Field Guides’ — it is an interesting look at the mental ‘flora’ that can keep us down. I found it to be quite Epicurean, promoting a do-what-you-want attitude, as long as it does no harm, brings pleasure, and doesn’t waste your time.

6 out of 10 

Zed by Elizabeth McClung (Arsenal Pulp Press)

I blogged about this one. Great novel. Great character. Get this book and read it.

9 out of 10

 *   *   *

Mallory by Margaret Gunning (Turnstone Press)

Good novel…interesting turns, great title character. I almost wished it were thicker, just to get more of the characters…but would it have been the same? No, probably not.

8 out of 10

*   *   *

Certainty: a novel by Madeline Thien (McClelland & Stewart)

A delicious book when I read it, but when it came time to write the review, I couldn’t wrap my head around what it was actually about. A visitor to my illustrious blog left a link to her review of it, so check it out.

7.5 out of 10 

 *   *   *

The Best Way You Know How by Christine Pountney (Penguin)

Vaguely experimental in style — no quotes for the conversations, all written in the present tense, some weird weird weird long-winded similes (“…and the best man comes running over, the flaps of his jacket billowing to reveal the shiny beige lining like the pages of an open book left out to flutter in the breeze on a summer porch by a child who’s rushed down to the lake to plunge into the water and drown.”). I was intrigued to keep reading, but in the end I felt a little cheated.

3.5 out of 10 

*   *   *

Gotta Find Me an Angel: A Novel by Brenda Brooks (Raincoast)

Fun premise, great characters, honest dialogue, wonderful descriptive moments…this is one to pick up. The author is a poet, and there are moments that you can really tell. The characters happen to be lesbians, even the ghost, if you’re tired of the ubiquitous hetero fare.

9 out of 10 

Keep in mind, a rating of 10 out of 10 is really hard to come by.

Stolen from casa az, who plundered it from alejna

Four childhood books

• Freddy the Pig — don’t really remember much about the books, but that I used to love them. (Animal Farm always sort of freaked me out, with my Freddy background.)
• The Donkey Rustlers by Gerald Durrell. Again, I don’t remember much about the story, but I do remember taking it out of the library again and again.
• Paddington Bear — of course. I think he is the root of my love of the absurd…how can you resist a world where people don’t think twice about talking to a bear in a coat carrying a suitcase full of marmalade sandwiches, with bacon hanging out of it and dogs following him?
• No fourth comes to mind…the Hobbit, the Narnia books — all begun in my childhood, and continued to be read and re-read in my teens, my young adulthood, my middle ages, my dotage…

Four authors I will read again and again

• Robertson Davies (I’m with az here)
• Lois McMaster Bujold
• JRR Tolkien
• Jasper Fforde
• [This is all really quite random...there are 100s (10s?) of authors I would re-read again and again, I could continue this list on to the next page...]

Four authors I will never read again

I blank out the unpleasant in my life. I’ve not much interest in ever reading Dan Brown, Terry Pratchett (sorry az for putting those two in the same sentence), or Stephen King. Authors I don’t like, I just don’t remember.

The first four books on my to-be-read list

• Ulysses by James Joyce (az, alejna and I are threatening to read this together)
• Dante’s Inferno
• Plus a cast of 100s! Too many to list. (Wow. I’m being rather lazy with this one.)

The four books I would take to a desert island

• LOTR
• The complete Shakespeare
• Norton Anthology of Poetry
• a big blank book, with some pens

The last lines of one of my favourite books

• I don’t have any. Sorry to disappoint. Although I may think on this one, and change this some random morning at 4 a.m. when a line pops into my head and won’t let me sleep until I’ve added it here.

Anyway — tag yourselves on this one!

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 feel positively inundated with books!

Glorious!

I am a volunteer book reviewer, and the real joy of that is the periodic packages of books that arrive in the mail. One arrived this last week, and I’m still reeling from the fabulousness of that day’s mail.

Wanna hear what they are? Keep in mind, I have yet to read them. If any of them are familiar to you, give me a shout.

Some non-fiction:

Running with Swords: The Adventures and Misadventures of the Irrepressible Canadian Fencing Champion by Sherraine MacKay (Fitzhenry & Whiteside)

The Rage: Reflections on Risk by Steve De Maio (Rocky Mountain Books)

Mental Traps: a Field Guide to the Stupid Mistakes that can Ruin Your Life by Andre Kukla (Doubleday Canada)

And some novels:

Zed by Elizabeth McClung (Arsenal Pulp Press)

Mallory by Margaret Gunning (Turnstone Press)

Certainty: a novel by Madeline Thien (McClelland & Stewart)

The Best Way You Know How by Christine Pountney (Penguin)

Gotta Find Me an Angel: A Novel by Brenda Brooks (Raincoast)

I’m reading the fencing one first…then a novel. Then another non-fiction, maybe with a novel…

Joy!

A co-worker and I have discovered that we both read fantasy novels. She took it upon herself to lend me a rather silly series, by a writer I’d never heard of before — Tamora Pierce. A quick Google search tells me that she is a fantasy author who writes books for young people. That just tells me that publishers don’t think young people can handle any richness to their writing. Here’s her motivation for writing, from an interview (quoted here):

I got into this to write about girls who kick butt. In the mid-’70s, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Sheri Tepper, C.J. Cherryh, that crowd particularly, started to change the field. For me, there was a problem that a number of these characters were gay or celibate female warriors, and I was neither. So I wrote fantasy with female warrior heroes who like guys. Robin McKinley and Barbara Hambly both started to publish their fantasy at the same time, so I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

Is she comparing herself to Robin McKinley? Author of The Blue Sword? Funny though, how Pierce’s heroine, Alanna — who isn’t a lesbian, no way no how! — has a series of adventures very similar to those of Harry/Harimad-sol in McKinley’s book. Desert adventure, finding her powers…

Thank goodness, she’s not comparing herself to Bradley, Tepper, or Cherryh!

What problem do I have with this writer?

• She takes absolutely no time to develop her characters beyond the bare minimum.
• She tells, and tells, and tells, and never once shows.
• The plot points are so transparent it’s annoying — since she doesn’t take any time to develop the world or the characters, when someone blinks, you know it’s significant.
• Three words: Deus ex machina. Magic is unexplained, it just bang! is there to save the day.
• Each of the 4 books in the series I read (oh yes! All 4…I’m not complaining on the strength of only reading one — not too onerous, they were quick reads), had enough action for 3 or 4 books. Huge quest material, dealt with in 4 chapters. Move on to the next with a “And they all went back to the city.” Come up with another 3 adventures, some innocent shtupping (’cause remember, she’s not a lesbian. NO. Not a lesbian!), some more ways for Alanna to be utterly wonderful and perfect and strong and the best fighter and . . . ingredients for one more Tamora Pierce book, 3 more for any other writer with a modicum of talent for exposition.

I wish I could say I was exaggerating. But if I’d been introduced to this as a pre-teen, I would have been scarred for life, my ability to appreciate good writing forever damaged.

I’ll go back to Lois McMaster Bujold (or Sheri S. Tepper or . . .) any day.

I interrupted my reading of this tripe to pick up one of Bujold’s latest, that I’d been trying to ignore, trying to prolong the anticipation — The Sharing Knife: Beguilement. (Read the first couple of chapters here!)

Bujold really takes the time to develop her characters, and their world. In one sequence, 2 of the characters ride 3 hours into town…it takes 15, beautifully written pages.

Pierce would have done it more efficiently: “They rode three hours to town.”

Gads. I don’t usually write negative reviews, but I need something to show for the wasted time!

I wonder if it’s significant that two of the more memorable books I’ve read have to do with perfume…

Jitterbug Perfume is my favourite Tom Robbins book [not linking to any TR sites...there just seems to be Wikipedia and fan sites -- nothing definitive]. If you’ve never read any Robbins, then you don’t know that he’s got a bit of thang for many a topic, and will take on a major theme or two in each book, going on these wonderful rants that end up being rather heady, like a warm brandy. In Jitterbug Perfume, the main theme is, of course, the power of our sense of smell….and sex, but then it’s always sex….oh, and beets.

Anyway, the sense of smell.

On the same theme is the brilliant novel by German author Patrick Suskind, Perfume.  It’s an adjective-rich descriptive soup of a novel…where you can almost perceive the stench of Paris in the Middle Ages rising up from the pages. Imagine reading it in the original German!!

We watched the movie version of Perfume: The Story of a Murder last night — well done! It was so nicely done that it was almost scratch’n’sniff (a la Odorama of John Waters)! Fetid Paris streets, foul tanneries, odiferous breath…ick. And the most difficult detail of the novel was subtly portrayed: that the main character, John Baptiste Grenouille, with his superhuman nose, had absolutely no aroma of his own. It’s an odd detail, covered in much more detail in the book, but conveyed in some very interesting ways.

I wonder if it would have been harder to discern if I hadn’t been looking for it?

Two very good books. One rather disturbing movie.

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.