The Casual Vacancy by J. K. Rowling ✔✔✔✔✔

There's nothing like ending the year with a great book!  This has been on my Kindle for a while, I was in need of a good read, and started reading this with some trepidation because the reviews have been rather dismissive.  I read the first three Harry Potter books and knew Rowling could tell a good story, so I settled down with this over Christmas in Fort Myers, and found I couldn't put it down.

One reviwer said the characters were rather one-dimensional, but I enjoyed them all the more for that, and besides the time frame of the novel is rather limited.  Another said it was predictable, and to a certain extent it was, but both reviewers - and others- all seemed to agree that, even with these criticisms, the book was highly readable.  That's enough for me, said I, and so it was.

Rowling really likes to appeal to the sense of sight, so her descriptions were quite colorful.  A description of a desk, for example, is done by listing the various ways in which that desk was used. The language of Terri Wheedon and her daughter Krystal was well-done,too - you could just hear them talking that way.

There's a political conflict going on, several parent-teenager conflicts, marriage and relationship problems, jealousy, grief - it's all here, well-constructed, and well-written.

Here's a brief summary from Book Browse:

When Barry Fairbrother dies unexpectedly in his early forties, the little town of Pagford is left in shock. Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty façade is a town at war. Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils…. Pagford is not what it first seems. 

And the empty seat left by Barry on the town's council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity and unexpected revelations? Blackly comic, thought-provoking and constantly surprising, The Casual Vacancy is J.K. Rowling's first novel for adults.

FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2012

Two of my favorites this year were re-reads from previous years, and are here listed as #1 and #2.  The list is in no particular order.  If I were to choose the BEST book I read this year, I would choose The Secret Piano, listed as #3.

1.  Master Butcher's Singing Club -- Louise Erdrich - a wonderful storyteller, a small-town family saga

2.  Life of Pi  - Yann Martel - A metaphor for life, spirituality and humanity

3.  The Secret Piano - Zhu Xiao-Mei - strength, courage and fortitude in a Chinese prison

4. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry - Rachel Joyce - beautiful story of healing and loss

5.  An Unquenchable Thirst - Mary Johnson - a former nun in Mother Theresa's order

6. The Casual Vacancy - J.K. Rowling - politics in a small English town.

7. Behind The Beautiful Forevers - Katherine Boo - life in the slums of Mumbai

8.  Sixty-Five Roses - Elizabeth Summerhayes Cariou - a sister tells the family story of life with cystic fibrosis/

9.  The O'Briens - Peter Behrens - a family saga set in Montreal and the CP Railway

10.Elizabeth the Queen - Sally Bedell Smith - a wonderful bio of a wonderful woman

Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of my Hasidic Roots by Deborah Feldman ✔✔✔

Deborah Feldman was born into the Satmar sect of Hasidic Judaism - the child of a mentally disabled father and a mother who abandoned the community while her daughter was still a toddler.  Deborah was raised by her strictly religious grandparents, was married off at age 17 by a matchmaker, gave borth to a son, and finally at age 24 left the sect with her son.  For many years, especially after her marriage, she struggled to make a way of life for herself with freedom, knowing that she was meant for far more.

These are some of the interesting things I learned from reading this story:

Zeidy ( her grandfather) reminds her that when he is giving her a harsh lecture, it is out of a sense of obligation. "In this family, we do not hug and kiss.  We do not compliment each other.  Instead, we watch each other closely, ever ready to point out someone's spiritual or physical failing. This, says Chaya ( her aunt, truly a mean-spirited person) is compassion - compassion for one's spiritual welfare."

"God lives in my soul, and I must spend my life scrubbing my soul clean of any trace of sin so that it deserves to host his presence".

At school, there is a daily modesty lecture. "Ervah refers to any part of a woman's body that must be covered, starting from the collarbone and ending at the wrists and knees. When "ervah" is exposed, men are commanded to leave its presence....Every time a man catches a glimpse of any part of your body that the Torah says should be covered, he is sinning.  But worse you have caused him to sin.  It is you who will bear the responsibility of his sin on Judgment Day"

Zeidy comes from a long line of oppression; his ancestors endured pogroms not unlike Hitler's presecution of Jews.  "I can't comprehend how a person who comes from so much pain and loss can perpetuate his own oppression.  In small ways Zeidy cages himself, depriving himself of harmless joys and yet it seems the very deprivation fulfills him."

On every Israeli Independence Day, the Satmar Hasids make the trip from their various communities to demonstrate their opposition to the State of Israel.  "The Satmar Rebbe insisted that we had to take it upon ourselves  to fight for the destruction of Israel......Faithful Jews wait for the Messiah; they don't take up guns and swords and do the work themselves."

" A woman becomes 'niddah' or cast aside as soon as one drop of blood exits her womb.  When a woman is niddah, her husband cannot touch her, not even to hand her a pate of food....She is forbidden to him.  After a woman stops menstruating, she must count seven days doing twice-daily inspections with cotton cloths to make sure there is no sign of blood."  Then she immerses in the ritual bath and becomes pure again.  Before marriage and after childbirth, she must be carefully inspected by women attendants at the baths to ensure that her body is "clean".  If you miss one of these twice-daily inspections, you must contact a rabbi for further instructions!

The consummation of a marriage - or the news of it at least - is a very public thing - the whole family knew that Deborah and her husband were not able to consummate their marriage for some time because she had a particularly tough maidenhead something called vaginamus - (Sounds made up to me!)

Deborah remains a Jew, proud of her heritage, and she believes in God :"God is no longer a prescription for paradise but an ally in my heart"

22 Brittania Road by Amanda Hodgkinson ✔✔✔

This is a title that's been on my list for some time, and I picked it up at PCB Library to have something to read before all my requested books came in.
It's a story of a Polish soldier, his wife and their child during WW II, and how the couple was separated for seven years before finally getting together in England at 22 Brittania Road.  But the two have changed so much with their experiences during the war that it's difficult to put their marriage back together.
It was a good enough read - I've read better war stories, but it is a good illustration of human survival and adjustment to catastrophoic changes.

The Master Butcher's Singing Club by Louise Erdrich ✔✔✔✔✔

I own this book, and read it some years ago on recommendation by Sylvia Kennedy, and it is on my list of all-time favorites.  Somewhere along the way, I lost track of it, and could never find it in bookstores, so when I spotted it on Kindle lists, I downloaded it - just had to read it again!

For our trip down to Florida, I had downloaded Fall of Giants by Ken Follett - I started reading Sandra's copy last spring and just couldn't get into it, and thought I'd give it another try - only got about 50 pages further this time, yawning all the time... So I switched to Master Butcher's for the remainder of the trip and soon lost myself again in the wonderful story of family, loss, grief, friendship in a small town in North Dakota in the early thirites. And Erdrich, who is native herself, is a wonderful story teller and uses such beautiful language - I found myself re-reading passages just for the sheer beauty of her writing.  She is also able to write love scenes with such tenderness and understatement that your heart just aches for these people. I also re-read the ending - there is a surprise connection in this story which is revealed with such sensitivity at the end.  Don't miss reading this book!!

I love - love- love - this book - now I'm on the list to read her latest - The Round House.

The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg ✔✔✔

This was another "quickie" - read it in two days, no less! It's a fairly recent novel about a Jewish family. Edie as a young child weighs 65 pounds, and by the end of the novel weighs 332 pounds.  Her family despairs of her, and her husband Richard leaves her as she prepares for her second surgery to save her life.  Everyone loves Edie, and Edie also loves herself, but she also just loves to eat - lots, like a round trip for junk food that includes Macdonalds and Burger King and ends with a huge meal at a Chinese restaurant.

This is a story of marriage, family and obsession in a middle-class mid-western American family.  Quite enjoyable actually, but how could she eat that much???? Do people really do that?

Illuminations by Mary Sharratt ✔✔✔✔

This is  historical fiction subtitled "A Novel of Hildegard von Bingen", a mystic of the twelfth century whom I have always admired.  On a trip down the Rhine, the abbey at Rupertsburg, which is mentioned in this novel, was pointed out to us.  Von Bingen was also an accomplished musician, and I have a CD of her works - they are beautiful, as is a collection of her writings, which I used to have - I often think I lose more books than I actually have!

Anyway, this was a really good read, very informative, and I read it in less than three days - I honestly could not put it down.  I never knew she had been an anchorite from the age of 8 until she was 38 years old - entirely against her wishes as well - her mother basically sold her to an aristocratic family to be a companion to their daughter who had had a traumatic experience and wanted to renounce the world.

Her music is so beautiful, so flowing and joyful, that I was surprised to learn how, even after she was released from her cell, she was reviled by others in the church - well, not really surprised, because we know how women were and still are - treated by the Catholic Church.

I hadn't heard of this author before either, but I was glad to find this was such a good read.  I absolutely despise historical novels which are a little too cute - or romantic - this was quite realistic.

She indeed was "a feather on the breath of God".

Cast No Stones by Kevin Machell ✔✔✔

I found this title in a sidebar ad on Goodreads - it was advertised as a bestseller in the UK and cost only $2.99 on my Kindle, so I downloaded it.  It's the author's memoir of his growing up in a small town in England - his mother, Laura, who was a young woman in the early '40s when she met an American serviceman, Harry, who fathered Kevin, never got to to see him, and returned to America after serving in Europe.  Kevin grew up completely neglected, and ostracized by others in his community, including his grandmother and some of his siblings, most of whom had a different father.  (Laura was quite a girl - and not much of a mother)  He grew up not knowing why he was so despised and didn't know anything about his father.  He was in his early 40s before he even asked his mother directly about his father - he had asked previously and she just set the questions aside, refusing to answer him.

Then he embarked and a long and eventually fruitful search to find his father, and did travel to America to meet him.  Then Laura decided she wanted to meet Harry again,too, so she came to America as well.

The story of Kevin's childhood and his search for his father was most interesting, but after that it's basically just everyday stuff, but a good insight into families torn apart by war, distance, and lack of understanding.

The book is adequately enough written, but certainly could have used an editor, although considering the fact that the author is in his 60s when he writes this, I guess he did pretty well!

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick de Witt ✔✔✔✔

I started this book a year ago and read about 1/3 of it, before giving up on it.  Our Book Club is discussing it this month, so I tried again, finished it and really enjoyed it. What I enjoyed the most was the elegant language chosen by the narrator, Eli - I called this novel a literary western because of it. For example, when Charlie and Eli are travelling west to assassinate Warm: "Charlie called over to say he was impressed with California, that there was something in the air, a fortuitous energy, was the phrase he used. " ( Page 111 on the Kindle)  Really?  I can't imagine John Wayne saying that!

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Dewitt's bang-up second novel (after Ablutions) is a quirky and stylish revisionist western. When a frontier baron known as the Commodore orders Charlie and Eli Sisters, his hired gunslingers, to track down and kill a prospector named Herman Kermit Warm, the brothers journey from Oregon to San Francisco, and eventually to Warm's claim in the Sierra foothills, running into a witch, a bear, a dead Indian, a parlor of drunken floozies, and a gang of murderous fur trappers. Eli's deadpan narration is at times strangely funny (as when he discovers dental hygiene, thanks to a frontier dentist dispensing free samples of "tooth powder that produced a minty foam") but maintains the power to stir heartbreak, as with Eli's infatuation with a consumptive hotel bookkeeper. As more of the brothers' story is teased out, Charlie and Eli explore the human implications of many of the clichés of the old west and come off looking less and less like killers and more like traumatized young men. With nods to Charles Portis and Frank Norris, DeWitt has produced a genre-bending frontier saga that is exciting, funny, and, perhaps unexpectedly, moving. (May) 

Life of Pi by Yann Martel ✔✔✔✔✔

I first read this book in 2003, and we discussed it at Book Club that year. It was also on my list of the Best Books of 2003.  I re-read it this month to refresh the story in my mind before the movie is released later this month.

I loved it even more this time - what a story!  What a vision!  First of all, anyone who majors in religious studies and zoology at university has my admiration, especially when the zoology thesis was " a functional analysis of the thyroid gland of the three-toed sloth".  Growing up in a zoo in India, Pi had a great understanding of animals, an invaluable aid when sharing a twenty foot lifeboat with a 350 lb. Bengal tiger for 227 days!

My favorite passage is his interpretation of the Christian Story, so I quote it completely:

And what a story.  The first thing that drew me was disbelief.  What?  Humanity sins but it's God's Son who pays the price?  I tried to imagine Father saying to me,"Piscine, a  lion slipped into the llama pen today and killed two llamas.  Yesterday another one killed a black buck.  Last week two of them ate the camel.  The week before it was painted storks and grey herons.  And who's to say for sure who snacked on our golden agouti?  The situation has become intolerable.  Something must be done.  I have decided that the only way the lions can atone for their sins is if I feed you to them".
"Yes, father, that would be the right and logical thing to do.  Give me a moment to wash up."
"Hallelujah, my son"
Hallelujah, Father."
What a downright weird story.  What peculiar psychology.

I love it!

Sing Them Home - Stephanie Kallos ✔✔✔✔

Copied from Book Browse:

Sing Them Home is a deeply moving portrait of three grown siblings who have lived in the shadow of unresolved grief since their mother’s mysterious disappearance when they were children. Everyone in Emlyn Springs, Nebraska, knows the story of Hope Jones, the physician’s wife whose big dreams for their tiny town were lost along with her in the tornado of 1978. For Hope’s three young children, the stability of life with their distant, preoccupied father, and with Viney, their mother’s spitfire best friend, is no match for their mother’s absence. Larken, the eldest, is an art history professor who seeks in food an answer to a less tangible hunger; Gaelan, the only son, is a telegenic weatherman who devotes his life to predicting the unpredictable and whose profession, and all too much more, depend on his sculpted frame and ready smile; and Bonnie, the baby of the family is a self-proclaimed archivist who combs the roadsides for clues to her mother’s legacy, and permission to move on. 

When, decades after their mother’s disappearance, they are summoned home after their father’s sudden death, they are forced to revisit the childhood tragedy at the center of their lives. With breathtaking lyricism, wisdom, and humor, Stephanie Kallos explores the consequences of protecting the ones we love. 

Sing Them Home is a magnificent tapestry of lives connected and undone by tragedy, lives poised—unbeknownst to the characters themselves—for redemption.

My comments- I thoroughly enjoyed this book and even shed tears at the end.  It's a wonderful mother-daughter story and Hope's letter to her children  - which they never get to see - sums up so much about what being a mother is all about.  Beautifully done - and some quirky moments too - there were lots of chuckles. Highly recommended, especially if you're a Mom!

She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb ✔✔✔✔

I read this probably about 20 years ago, and have read every novel since written by Wally Lamb.  I believe it qwas a very early "Oprah book" and was loaned to me by Janie.  I was recommending books to the girl who does my nails - she's in her mid-twenties, and; I mentioned Lamb's name to her at that time. Then when we visited Bracebridge, I saw it on Rynnetta's "give-away shelf", so I brought it home for her.  In the meantime, I re-read it - in four days, all 465 pages!  Rainy days helped this for sure,but it is a very easy read and so good!

Dolores  is thirteen when we meet her, her childhood behind her because of a particularly harmful experience she had.  She's beached like a whale in front of her TV, nourished only by junk food and an anxious mother, whose life has not been terribly functional, either. Now at age 27 and 257 pounds, she's ready to give herself another chance.

I guess what I appreciated the most is that the author - a man - was able to so accurately write about a young girl's growing up.  And the book is loaded with detail, although very clearly written - you never have to turn back pages to figure out who someone is.  There's neighbours in the apartment upstairs, a grandmother who agonizes over her daughter and her grand-daughter, a guidance counsellor who ends up a close friend, a tattoo artist who also ends up a mentor and advisor, spoiled girls at college, bratty girls at work, a psychologist who spends seven years re-working Dolores' childhood - the characters are as colourful as Dolores herself, and few of them are forgettable.

This is a funny, painful, wise, heart-rending story, and I saw so many of young girls I taught at school in Dolores.  A very good book for everyone to read, and I'm glad I re-read it.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachael Joyce ✔✔✔✔✔

FINALLY - a book I could fall into!  First off, I must say I tried reading Elizabeth George's new book  '"The Edge of Nowhere" but gave up on it, too - it was just plain boring and so predictable.

But this one was marvellous - Harold Fry gets a letter from Queenie, a co-worker from 20 years ago, telling him she is dying of cancer. He writes her a letter and takes it down the road to post it, then somewhow decides he would rather deliver it in person, and not only that, but he would walk to 800 miles to get to the hospital where she is spending her last days.

It's the story of friendship, marriage, love and loss, and how at age 68, Harold finds himself again in the journey.  I LOVED this book and I didn't want it to end.

The Three Miss Margarets by Louise Schaffer ✔✔

I don't know how I heard about this, and I was likely more intrigued by the title than anything.  It was  pretty quick read, and I skimmed over a lot.  It's hard to decide whether she was trying to emulate really good Southern writers like Anne Rivers Siddons, Fannie Flagg, or Kathryn Strockett, but no matter - it didn't work.  I grow tired of characters who (a) have a drinking problem because of some deep dark past (b) had rotten parents, or (c) fell in love with the wrong person.  And that about sums up many of the characters in this book.  'Nuff said - there's another book I want to get started on.

Seems a while since I read a REALLY good one!

The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson ✔✔✔✔

Allan Karlsson has had a long and eventful life, but as he approaches his 100th birthday, he is very unhappy living in a nursing home.  He's very healthy and he hates Nurse Alice, the administrator who is planning a big birthday party, so the morning of the celebration, Allan steps out of his window in his slippers and embarks on an amazing, unexpected and hilarious journey.

During his adventures, we also learn of Allan's history, and it is an impressive one for he has taken part in some of the most important events of the 20th century, met and mingled with such people as Harry S. Truman, Mao Tse-Tung, Stalin and even LBJ in a unique capacity.

The opening part had me laughing till tears ran down my face, and I thoroughly enjoyed the whole book.  It's a sort of Forrest Gump as Allan embarks on this remarkable journey as well as an interesting look back at events of the 20th century. And if I hadn't checked the credits, I would not have even guessed that it had been translated from Swedish.

The Guilty Plea by Robert Rotenberg

I read the author's first book and really enjoyed it, and this one is even better.  I could not put it down, as much for the fact that the settting is Toronto - with visits to Cobalt and New Liskeard, too - as it is a good crime/legal thriller.  Short chapters, swift action, hardly any screwing!  Good read!!

Death of a Schoolgirl by Joanna Campbell Slan

This book is a continuation of "Jane Eyre", one of my all-time favorite classics.  Jane has given birth to a son, and is very happy in her marriage to Rochester.  But his ward,Adele, who is attending a private school in London, writes a strange letter, and Jane is sent to find out what is going on.  Of course, there's a big mystery - well not really, it's actually a little mystery but the author drags it out like crazy and by about 2/3 of the way through you're just crazy for it to be over.

No one does Jane Eyre like Charlotte Bronte, I guess.  I did like The Flight of Gemma Hardy, though, which is a re-writing of Jane's story - this is a continuation.  Two stars.....

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh ✔✔✔

This is the story of a young woman who, because she was taken away from her mother at a very young age, is not able to form relationships. She's gone through many foster homes and is usually removed from most of them because of her behaviour, until she comes to live with Elizabeth.  Early on, the reader knows that she has not continued to live with Elizabeth because on her 18th birthday when the book begins, she becomes homeless.  However, she has developed a close relationship and understanding of flowers, and it is this that ultimately - but not without lots of hurdles along the way - saves her.

This was a quick read and entertaining enough.  The best parts are the flowers, and their meanings, and at the end of the novel there's a dictionary of flowers with their meanings.  For example, red carnations mean "my heart breaks", daisies mean "cheerfulness". Holly means "foresight".
Roses:  orange is "fascination",  pink is "grace", red is "love", white is "a heart unacquainted with love" and yellow is "infidelity"  Hmmm - I love yellow roses!  Who am I being unfaithful to, I wonder?

An Unquenchable Thirst by Mary Johnson ✔✔✔✔

I heard Mary Johnson interviewed on Tapestry and decided I would enjoy reading her story. Mary Johnson spent 20 years as a nun in the Missionaries of Charity, the order founded and led by Mother Teresa.  It's sub-titled: "one woman's extraordinary journey of faith, hope and clarity".

It was an unrelenting 20 years of following The Rules as laid down by Mother - as she was called - sisters were not allowed to even touch each other, they lived in poverty as they lived in community , worked long, hard hours, and were told that suffering endeared them even more to Jesus.

Sister Donata - the name Mary was given as a novice - finally left in 1997, just before Mother died.  She had been given some authority over the years, but could never reconcile herself to The Rules and their harshness, even though she "took the discipline and chains" every day, since she believed they made her a better nun.  Despite her many contributions to the order, she was never thanked, and very late in the story, she reveals that Mother never once even called her by name.

Here are some quotes and such that really struck me:

Mother Teresa wore shoes that were several sizes too small for her.  She believed that by doing this, she pleased God and saved souls "I couldn't think of any time Jesus deliberately tried to make life harder for the sake of making it harder"

Sister Dolorosa, the novice mistress, calling out in the night: "I need a man.  I need a man"

Sister Donata was constantly reminded that her doubts and questions, even her dreams, were the devil's work. She would double the strokes of discipline and the hours she wore chains.

There were lots of interesting stories in this book - and people - Father Tom, with whom Mary had a very close personal relationship, Sister Niobe, who was a sexual predator, Sister Frederick who was as nasty as could be all the time, and even Mother herself, who visited quite frequently.  Mary was mostly stationed in Italy, incidentally.

Now, Mary lives in the US, has married, and never goes to church.  "The stories about God no longer ring true...physics and literature and music feel so much more honest than theology.....I've learned to be content with mystery, that the universe and its secrets excite me.... Living mindfully, trying to do good while avoiding harm, works better than keeping the Rules ever did".

There is an extensive video on Mary Johnson on You Tube, and her website, www.anunquenchablethirst.com is very interesting.

See also her "dare to be different" meditation at Location 7427 on my Kindle.  She wrote this after she was condemned by other sisters for holding a young nun who had suffered some mental problems.

The Secret Piano by Zhu Xiao-Mei ✔✔✔✔✔

Zhu Xiao Mei was born in post-war China to middle-class parents.  Taught first by her mother , she showed unusual talent and was just 10 yrears old when she began intensive studies at the Beijing Conservatory of Music.  In 1966, when she was 17 Mao's Cultural Revolution began and life changed forever. Her family members were scattered and sent to prison or labor camps and three years later, Xiao-Mei was sent to a work camp in Mongolia where she spent the next five years in horrific living conditions.  She - like all the others there - were brainwashed and she truly believed she was helping the Revolution by informing on her prison mates, renouncing her family, and submitting to self-criticism, a very important aspect of life in the prison.  But still she kept her passion for music, and when the Revolution finally ended, it was her piano and her music that helped her to heal.

She eventually fled to Hong Kong, from there to the US, where she found it very difficult to live and function, although she had a wonderful piano professor.  She then went to Paris, where she still lives.

Her philosophy of music is all tied in with her way of living - Taoism is very strong here.  I downloaded her recording of the Goldberg Variations and it is truly amazing.  She's a very inspirational woman.

I downloaded this book because it was cheap and also as a further study towards our Book Club theme of China from 1885 to the present.  I didn't expect it to be so musically inspirational! As a matter of fact, after I read Part One I fooled around with the idea of not continuing, but the remainder of the book was even more interesting.

The Virgin Cure by Ami McKay ✔✔✔✔

Now this one I really enjoyed!  I read The Birth House by the same author, so I snatched this one up when I dropped into the library last week.

The Virgin Cure is set in New York City in 1871, and the narrator is Moth, the daughter of a gypsy and a father who early on deserted the family.  When she is 12, Moth is "sold" to a Mrs. Wentworth  and becomes a lady's maid, which basically means she has to endure regular beatings and humiliations at Mrs. Wentworth's hands.  After fleeing the Wentworth mansion, and failing to find her mother, Moth becomes homeless and then is taken to Miss Everett's home and begins training to become a whore.

The Virgin Cure refers to a myth among men of riches at the time who suffered from syphilis and believed that deflowering a virgin would cure them.  When this happened, the young girl often died a painful death from syphilis herself.

This was a very colorful story - the mansions, vaudeville theatres, the back alleys of New York, the Bowery and all.  It's a good recommendation for our Mother-Daughter theme as well - despite the fact that her mother rarely held her, that she exploited her and finally sold her then disappeared herself - Moth truly loves her mother and stays in a terrible situation simply because she doesn't want to disappoint her mother.

Hangman's Blind by Cassandra Clark ✔✔

I downloaded this title to my Kindle because it was a mystery about a medieval nun named Hildegard - sounded interesting.  There's a fair amount of description about life in those times - castles, convents,abbeys, small villages,festivals, jousts and all - and that was quite interesting, and the mystery itself was intruiging enough to keep me reading, although I really wasn't terribly  taken with the novel on the whole. As I write this, I'm not even sure who the murderer was, and I don't care!

Dreams of Joy by Lisa See ✔✔✔✔

I copied this summary from Book Browse
Lisa See continues the story of sisters Pearl and May from Shanghai Girls, and Pearl's strong-willed nineteen-year-old daughter, Joy. 

Reeling from newly uncovered family secrets, and anger at her mother and aunt for keeping them from her, Joy runs away to Shanghai in early 1957 to find her birth father - the artist Z.G. Li, with whom both May and Pearl were once in love. Dazzled by him, and blinded by idealism and defiance, Joy throws herself into the New Society of Red China, heedless of the dangers in the communist regime. 

Devastated by Joy's flight and terrified for her safety, Pearl is determined to save her daughter, no matter the personal cost. From the crowded city to remote villages, Pearl confronts old demons and almost insurmountable challenges as she follows Joy, hoping for reconciliation. Yet even as Joy's and Pearl's separate journeys converge, one of the most tragic episodes in China's history threatens their very lives. 

Acclaimed for her richly drawn characters and vivid storytelling, Lisa See once again renders a family challenged by tragedy and time, yet ultimately united by the resilience of love.


I found this a little slow-going at first, and somewhat unbelievable - we're not told why Joy suddenly flies to Hong Kong to eventually enter Red China, only that there has been a big upset between Pearl and May, at which time Joy discovers that May is her real mother, not Pearl, who is in fact her aunt.  Upon arriving in Shanghai, it takes Joy all of 30 minutes to find Z.G.!  Certainly Joy is quite idealistic - a typical 19 year old who has a high opinion of herself and refuses to listen to common sense, but we see as the novel moves on why she was presented this way in the beginning.


Her experiences at the Green Dragon commune are horrific - the constant loudspeakers spouting out propoganda, the communal living and social interaction.  Oh, I forgot to mention when Joy arrives in Shanghai the immigration officer throws out her bras - they are considered a Western abomination!


Then there's Mao's Great Leap Forward, how everything has to be "faster, bigger, better" than the enemies', specifically the USA, and how this results in a terrible famine where the families at the commune are restricted to 1/4 of one person's ration to feed the whole family, how they eat leaves, roots, rats, mice  anything to stay alive and of course many of them die terrible deaths.


Lisa See writes well and thoroughly and I ended up learning a lot from this novel.  Our Book Club theme for September is China from 1885 to the present, and this will certainly be part of that discussion.

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn ✔✔✔

Gillian Flynn's latest novel was mentioned on one of Sheila Rogers' programs, and I searched her name in the library and found this title, her first crime novel.  I read it in three days - in between finishing off the Elvis bio, which I found hard reading for any great length of time.

It ends up this book may well serve as an interesting possibility for discussion when we have the Mother-Daughter theme next year.  Camille, who writes for a little-known Chicago paper, is sent back to her small home town in the south to investigate the possibility of a serial murderer: two young girls have been murdered a year apart, but found in similar circumstances - their teeth had been pulled out after death.  Camille's mother, Adora, is a central character in the book, and not likeable at all, and neither is Camille's young step-sister, Amma, who is only 13 buts acts like she's 25.  Camille herself has her own problems as a result of her lifelong alienation from her mother - she never knew her father, she lost her younger sister Marian to illness, and she has been a lifelong cutter - at this point she's not cutting any more simply because there's nowhere else to cut, but she does write all over herself!

Weird, but an easy enough read - I prefer the more old-fashioned bullets or knives for murder weapons, and there's a lot of drug stuff going on, but hey- that's the world today.  And the word "computer" is never even mentioned!!

Baby,Let's Play House: Elvis Presley and the Women who Loved Him by Alanna Nash ✔✔✔

Another Elvis bio!  He's such an interesting character, and after reading the Guralnick books last year, I found this in the Coles Store on Queen St. E, but didn't buy it till this past spring - I've never seen it anywhere else.

The Guralnick books concentrated more on Elvis'career, although certainly his many girlfriends were mentioned, but this book focuses on his relationships - all of them - and there were thousands! All of them stem from his obsessive relationship with his mother, and even more so after she died, although his losing his older twin at birth certainly had a major impact,too. He was particularly drawn to girls with dark hair - like Gladys - and seemed to be eternally searching for her replacement.  In his final years, which are quite hard to read about, he even reverted to baby talk, fetal positions, and play-acting in which he would be the baby and his girlfriends the mother.

I didn't like Elvis as much in this book for sure, and I didn't like many of the women who basically gave up their lives - they had to! - for him. Ann-Margret appears to have been the love of his life, the marriage with Priscilla was over even before they actually married, although they remained good friends right to the end, and Colonel Parker was an asshole who manipulated and controlled Elvis to feed his own gambling habit.  Even when Elvis was gravely ill towards the end of his life, and the Colonel saw how ill he was, he just barked out orders to the "entourage" to get him better fast because he had a show coming up.

This was another long bio - over 600 pages - but I think I'm done reading about Elvis now!

The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesey ✔✔✔✔

Jane Eyre is one of my all-time favorite classic novels,  I re-read it just this past year as a prelude to reading Charlotte and Emily by Jude Morgan, and we also watched the most recent movie version not too long ago.  This particular book, The Flight of Gemma Hardy, has been on my list, and I borrowed it from Ann Gaston.

It's a modern re-telling of the Bronte novel, set in the 1960's, and it follows the original story line very closely, but with enough bends in it to make it more modern.  I didn't find the romance between Gemma and Mr. Sinclair quite as meaningful as in the original, and I felt a bit of a let-down by the ending, but I'd still give it four stars.

Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan ✔✔✔✔

Looping from Nazi-occupied Berlin and Paris to modern-day Baltimore and back, Esi Edugyan's Giller prize-winning Half-Blood Blues is a haunting song of a novel. In Paris 1940, the three remaining Hot-Time Swingers run take after exhausted take, trying to get one right before the S.S. boots stomp their last chance. Our irascible narrator, Sid, learned to play bass lin Baltimore, with his longtime friend and rival Chip on drums, and in Berlin they'd joined up with Hiero, a half-black German “kid” who blows brilliant trumpet with a “massive sound, wild and unexpected, like a thicket of flowers in a bone-dry field.” As Hiero scratches the wax on disc after disc of imagined mistakes, Sid saves the final take--the record that will become legendary. When Hiero's arrested and sent to a Nazi camp, Sid’s the only witness, and things look suspicious. Fifty years later, Chip and Sid return to Berlin for the opening of a film about Hiero. But Sid stands accused of engineering his disappearance, and a strange letter suggests there’s more to the story than anyone knew. With delightfully witty jazz-cat banter, tactile imagery, and descriptions of music sensual enough to stand your hair on end, Edugyan evokes a time, a place, and a band whose refusal to repress their difference could mean death, or become a catalyst for acts of creative genius that will make them immortal. --Mari Malcolm

I'm not sure whether the above really sums up this novel properly.  I found it somewhat difficult to read, because it's dark and there's a sense of impending doom over it throughout, but I also found it difficult to file it under "Did not finish" on my Kindle.  I think this will be this year's recommendation for Book Club.  It's a different take on WWII, it's by a Canadian author we've not yet read, and it really is, as the reviewer says above:"a haunting song of a novel"

Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo ✔✔✔

I read this book over a couple of months, then finally finished it - not because I didn't like it, but I was reading a couple of others at the same time.

This is non-fiction, but the author spent so much time "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" ( a slum are behind the Beautiful Forevers Airport in Mumbai) that it reads like a novel - one of the most effective approaches I've seen to non-fiction investigative reporting that I've read in a long time.

What a life these people lead.  There are no rescues, like those in "Slumdog Millionaire" - it's just everyday garbage picking as a slum industry, living packed in like sardines, with  scary descriptions of brushes with the law, being kicked or beaten at will..... sometimes hard to read, but very well-done.

Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children ✔✔

I hope this makes it to my blog - I hate it when things are changed.
I bought this book in New Liskeard - seduced by the title and cover yet again.  It's a book for young adults - interesting because there are photographs that the author collected from all over the place and used in the book to illustrate the story.
It was a bit fantastic, but imaginative, and, most importnat right now, it was short!
I'll probably donate it to the Library.

The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley

I first read this book over 10 years ago, since it was given to me by the host of a B&B where Mike and I had stayed. She just didn't like it, but had been assured it was a good one, so I gladly brought it home with me, read it, and declared it a real favorite.

I've always been intrigued by the Arthurian legends, since my mother introduced me to the books of Mary Stewart, which were all based on Merlin and his magical powers. Mists of Avalon presented the story from the point of view of the Lady of the Lake, and emphasized the goddess philosophy, the struggle between Christianity and the religion of the goddess, within the story of Arthur, so I just lapped this up. I've since loaned the book to several other people, and all of them enjoyed it too.

Our last theme in Book Club is the Arthurian legend, so I decided to re-read Mists, and I enjoyed it once again, although not as deeply as the first reading. First of all, I've read several VERY long books this year, and I guess I'm just tired of them. The stories in the book are interesting, and Bradley presents a much different view , for example, of Morgaine, Arthur's sister,than the TV series on CBC earlier this year, but the in-between parts were just too tedious, and I found myself skipping sections or skimming, which of course resulted in a headache the next morning - my eyes just don't like skipping.

Anyway, that's all I have to say. about that - I'll save my viewpoints and such for Book Club this Saturday! Just out of interest, and also to put my head in place for the discussion, I'll be talking about the differences between this interpretation of the legend, and that of both Thomas Malory, who wrote La Morte d'Arthur - which I have on my Kindle - and the CBC production of Camelot, which refreshed it all in my mind this past summer. I'll also talk about how Guinevere is such a prig! And compare this legend to those of the Greeks and the Christians.

The O'Briens by Peter Behrens ✔✔✔✔

I was happy to find this book on Kindle for two reasons. First of all, I read Behrens' first book, Law of Dreams, and really enjoyed it. Also, we were preparing to leave Florida to begin the long trip home to KL, and I wanted something to keep me going throughout the trip. It's a family saga - the family consists of Joe, his two brothers and his two sisters, who live with their mother and their abusive stepfather in the forests of Quebec around the turn of the century. The story centers around Joe, the leader of the family, his wife Iseult, and how he becomes a wealthy contractor in Montreal, covering some fifty years.

I can't say I enjoyed this one as much as Law of Dreams, but it still held my interest.

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman ✔✔✔

This is the story of a newspaper which is owned by a family based in Atlanta, but is published in Rome. It follows the topsy-turvy lives of the various people who work at the paper - and each one is presented almost as a short story - as well as tracing the history of the Ott family from Oliver, who founded the paper fifty years ago. There is Kathleen, the editor-in-chief, Arthur the obituary writer, Abby the financial officer, Lloyd, who is going to extreme lengths to get his next byline, and - my favorite, Winston, a fledgling journalist who really doesn't know what he's doing, is sent to Cairo to be the "Egyptian stringer" and is completely taken over and pushed around by a bombastic, egocentric competitor who moves into Winston's apartment eats all his food, even takes his laptop away.
I enjoyed the book - it's one of those contemporary books that I'm not sure I'm going to enjoy but I end up reading very quickly and with increasing interest as it goes by. And it's an interesting glimpse into the world of newspapers, especially when they're all about to lose their jobs!

Bad Boy by Peter Robinson ✔✔✔

I really should read more of Peter Robinson's crime thrillers. This is probably the third one I've read, and I do enjoy them. There's not the extra craft and humor of Elizabeth George, but they are set in England, so they're a bit more civilized than American mysteries.

In this one, a childhood friend of Alan Banks' daughter, Tracy, accidentally shoots and kills her father. The owner of the gun - the Bad Boy - seduces and then abducts Tracy while her father is on vacation in the US.

Sixty-Five Roses by Heather Summerhayes Cariou ✔✔✔✔

I heard this author being interviewed on CBC and was intrigued by the story of these two sisters, so I found it on line and ordered it. By some strange reason, it was waiting for me here in Florida when I arrived this winter - I began to think I hadn't ordered it and it didn't appear on my Kindle. Anyway...

Pam, Heather's younger sister, is born with Cystic Fibrosis, a chronic illness hardly even known about back in the 70s, and it was actually Pam's mom and dad who founded the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. The reason for the title of the book is that Pam was too young to say the name of her illness, so she called it "sixty-five roses",

This was an amazing read - Heather lays it all out - how the family functions through all of this constant pounding of Pam's chest, going to the hospital, vomiting, masks, lungs bursting, plus how the rest of the family deals with her illness. Heather feels tremendous guilt because she didn't get the disease, Pam feels guilt that all of the rest of them give up their lives for her, and actually they do - but out of love and desperation. Another child - the youngest in the family of four siblings - is also born with CF although not as serious as the sister.

Pam lived till just after her 26th birthday, but what a journey - what a family - what a story! You couldn't get a novel as insightful and real as this one.

Elizabeth the Queen by Sally Bedell Smith✔✔✔✔

A wonderful bio of Elizabeth, who celebrates her diamond jubilee on the throne this year. It was packed full of information, all of it interesting.

Some things to note:

1. The Queen loves to laugh and, like her mother, delights in surprises.

2. There is a very close family there, although she never interferes in their lives with advice - she just accepts and carries on.

3. Diana and Elizabeth got on well - Diana called her "Mum".

4. Diana knew how to manipulate the press for her own need of attention.

5. Elizabeth and Phillip have a very strong marriage and there's never been any affairs or such.

6. She was really quite beautiful - and tiny- as a young person.

7. She is tremendously well read in history and politics and works every day on "boxes" which come to her filled with information. She studiously reads these and is always prepared when the Prime Minister comes to visit.

8. She has never commented on any political situation in such a way as to show her own opinion.

9. She keeps active physically and walks miles every day.

10. She just seems like a person I'd like to have known.

Death Comes To Pemberley by P.D. James✔✔

I've only read a couple of P.D. James' books, but I downloaded this one because I'm a fan of Pride and Prejudice, and this one is a sort of sequel to it. James is now 92 years old!

This one involves all the people who were in the Austen novel and has Wickham, the reprobate who took off with Lydia, accused in a murder. The first chapter, which basically sums up the plot line of P&P, was done very well, using the language and style of Jane Austen, but it did move very slowly throughout. Then there's a close to 20 page explanation and discovery to end the book, and you feel nothing but compassion for poor old Wickham, who was unjustly accused and spent months in prison while all these people who reveal their own involvement at the end could have exonerated him long before.

I think James was late for dinner and just wanted to tie things up quickly. Or maybe she forgot what she'd already written??
I don't know, but I think she should retire from writing - just dictate it and let someone else write it!

Jane wouldn't be happy, I'm afraid, and she certainly deserves better!

Believing The Lie - Elizabeth George ✔✔✔✔✔

I always snap up Elizabeth George's books - I've read them all, and have loved every single one of them.
In this one, Inspector Lynley is asked to ascertain whether a drowning at a huge country estate was an accident or a murder. He is asked to do this not as an investigation, so he has to dodge around questions from his boss at the same time as he's having an affair with her. He's still recovering from the tragic loss of his wife Helen, who was expecting their child when she was shot to death in front of their home.

What I like about Elizabeth George is her ability to weave so many different stories into the plot line in such a way that you don't lose track of them, and each one of them holds your interest. She also explores family dynamics so insightfully and so deeply that it's as much a psychological thriller as anything.

As usual, I'm already looking forward to the next one. Will Barbara Havers' friend find his daughter who's been taken from him by his wife? I'll be watching!!

Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick ✔✔✔

This title won Book Browse's award for the best children's book of 2011, and the comment was made that it was good for both adults and children, so I reserved it at our library here. When I went to pick it up and saw the size of the book -637 pages, I said "Oh no, how am I going to get this finished?"

Then I saw that there were pages and pages of illustrations, and for a few seconds I thought the whole book was drawings, but then I found some text, so I decided to give it a try.

It's a story of two people fifty years apart. Ben's story is told in text, Rose's in drawings, and you are gradually drawn into their stories, especially when you realize that even though they are told in two different times, Rose's in 1927, Ben's in 1977, that they are similar.

Both are deaf, and both are on their own, trying to find their way in the world. How their stories intertwine is really quite amazing, and the art work ( all in black and white pencil drawings) is quite impressive.

Certainly a different format for me, but enjoyable. I just marvel at the imagination of some of the writers today!

Radio Shangri-La by Lisa Napoli ✔✔✔

The author, a radio journalist in Los Angeles, was looking for a change in her life, and a chance encounter led her to travel to Bhutan - said to be one of the happiest places on earth - to volunteer her expertise to help develop a youth-oriented radio station. And for this reason, in her own words: " I longed for a way of life in which people made it a priority to look into each other's eyes and communicate, soul-to-soul....I yearned for meandering conversations about all things important, all things banal. Bhutan, I imagined, might be as close as you could get on earth to what I'd been craving - a real,live, actual community, where being wired took a backseat to being present, face-to-face, experiencing the here and now"

The book is mainly a travel memoir, and gives a good look at this remote Himalayan kingdom, and it certainly had some interesting people in it. The trip from the airport alone would be enough to keep me from going! But what I enjoyed most of all was the preface to the book, for in here Napoli describes a positive psychology workshop that she took while in LA, and some of the questions used by the workshop leader to help people discover "what we appreciated in ourselves, and what inspired us about others":

1. Describe in detail a person you love - and why.
2. 'write a toast to four difficult periods in your life and how you handled them
3. Summarize your life story as if you were 90 and telling a child.

He also assigned them a nightly exercise to teach them how to appreciate life in its most basic terms. Every night before going to sleep, review your day and make a short list of three things that happened that were good. "I want you to see that every single day, three good things do happen. It will help you discover that goodness exists all around us, already". Those good things are the most nourishing to our life. It's like a gym for the brain: over time this ritual with strengthen you.

And what did Lisa learn? "I was learning to slow down, to sit with myself and the uncertainties of the future. To enjoy not knowing what was next, instead of fearing and panicking over what might be. To appreciate the successes I'd had, instead of dwelling on my failure to have accomplished more".

Good stuff and worth thinking about.

Pearl of China by Anchee Min ✔✔✔

Pearl S Buck was the author of The Good Earth, a story of China written by an American woman who was actually more Chinese than American, although both her parents were American. This historical fiction novel tells the story of Pearl's friendship with Willow, who is actually a fictional character developed by the author to tell Pearl's story.

The following is taken from Book Browse:

In the small southern town of Chin-kiang, in the last days of the nineteenth century, two young girls bump heads and become thick as thieves. Willow is the only child of a destitute family, Pearl the headstrong daughter of zealous Christian missionaries. She will ultimately become the internationally renowned author Pearl S. Buck, but for now she is just a girl embarrassed by her blonde hair and enchanted by her new Chinese friend. The two embark on a friendship that will sustain both of them through one of the most tumultuous periods in Chinese history.

Moving out into the world together, the two enter the intellectual fray of the times, share love interests and survive early marriages gone bad. Their shared upbringing inspires Pearl's novels, which celebrate the life of the Chinese peasant and will eventually earn her both a Pulitzer and a Nobel Prize. But when a civil war erupts between the Nationalists and Communists, Pearl is forced to flee the country just ahead of angry mobs. Willow, despite close ties to Mao’s inner circle, is punished for loyalty to her 'cultural imperialist' friend. And yet, through love and loss, heartbreak and joy, exile and imprisonment, the two women remain intimately entwined.

In this ambitious new novel, Anchee Min brings to life a courageous and passionate woman who is now hailed in China as a modern heroine. Like nothing before it, Pearl of China tells the story of one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers, from the perspective of the people she loved and of the land she called home.

When She Woke by Hillary Jordan ✔✔✔✔

Take Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Margaret Attwood's The Handmaid's Tale, cast them both in a post-scourge America where church and state have become one, there are no prisons, and the chief form of entertainment is watching convicted criminals living from day-to-day on television and you have When She Woke.

These convicted criminals are "chromed" - their bodies are chemically altered to cast them a vivid colour so they are immediately identifiable not only for their crime, but also the nature of it.

Hannah Payne is red because she had an abortion and therefore, according to the state, is guilty of murder. She is in prison in solitary confinement for three months then cast out into the streets to make it on her own - knowing that her every move is subject to whoever feels like watching her on TV.

The novel is a form of science fiction but the scary part of it, plus the reason you keep reading it is because it could
SO easily happen.

Lots of room for a lively discussion here. I'm not sure I liked the ending, and I thought Hannah would have suffered a bit more from PTSD - she seems remarkably adapatable to many different situations - but the book certainly has a lot of food for thought in it.

Never Knowing by Chevy Stevens ✔✔✔

I thoroughly enjoyed Chevy Stevens' first thriller, Still Missing,( see January,2011) so I was happy to hear she'd published a second one, entitled Never Knowing. Sara is a 30 yr old woman who was adopted at birth, and has recently taken steps to find her birth mother. She does find her, but also finds out that this person was the victim of a serial killer who survived her attack, although she was raped. Sara is the child that was born, and this story is about how her father - known as the Campsite Killer - finds her and tries to establish a relationship with her.

This was a real thriller - I couldn't put it down. Maybe the ending was a little TOO tidy, but it was good nonetheless.

The Kitchen Counter Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn ✔✔✔✔

One of the most informative book I've ever read about cooking, this title was first mentioned in a Chatelaine magazine. I put it on my Christmas list.

The Author, a graduate in culinary arts from France, put together nine volunteers who lacked confidence in their cooking skills, and offered them a teaching session over one summer. There were lessons in how to use a knife, how to braise a chicken, make an omelet, make a pasta dish, use items already in the kitchen cupboards, and so on.

I underlined like crazy in this book, and learned lots, like how to measure flour properly, to shake a pan after a fish or chicken has been put into it to saute it, how to chop an onion - the list goes on and on.

Just tonight I made an omelet - I wasn't planning this for supper, but this book has persuaded me to clean out the things I have. I just followed her suggestions and it was very tasty. Somehow I always thought an omelet was hard to cook- it's not, you just need to have courage! Bravo, Kathleen Flinn!

Tomorrow I'm going to tackle onions!

FAVORITE READS OF 2011

I read a lot of non-fiction this year, much of it so good that I find I'm continuing to read it. When I pick my favorite reads for a year, there are several reasons why a book might be chosen. Sometimes in non-fiction it's the subject that is so fascinating - Elvis Presley, for example, or Gina Welch, who "embedded " herself in Jimmy Swaggart's church in West Virginia. Sometimes it's the human spirit that endures despite terrible hardship, as the "Unbroken" or in "The Boy In The Moon". There are only four novels on this list, and one of them is a Christmas novel, but each of these spoke to me in different ways. The Christmas novel was probably the best-written of all of them, but Ian Brown in Boy In The Moon comes pretty close. Anyway, before I get off on a "why and how I read" tangent, here's my favorites for this year, in the order in which I read them.

1. Unbroken by Lauren Hillebrand ( also the top pick of the year on Book Browse)
2. Charlotte and Emily by Jude Morgan ( the story of the Bronte sisters)
3. Elvis Presley: Careless Love and Last Train To Memphis by Robert Guralnick
4. The Flying Troutmans by Miriam Toews
5. The Art of Racing In The Rain by Garth Stein
6. In The Land of Believers - Gina Welch
7. Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother - William Shawcross
8. The Boy In The Moon - Ian Brown
9. Mrs. King by Charlotte Gray
10. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
11. Wishin' and Hopin' by Wally Lamb