Just One Evil Act by Elizabeth George

I was so disappointed with this novel– first of all, it was way too long, and I just found I didn't care about the characters at a certain point. A fair portion of the novel takes place in Italy, and she uses a lot of Italian in it, then translates it! Next, to me there were two novels in one BIG book here: the first one was interesting enough but I lost interest. 

This is the second of George's novels that I didn't finish, so I won't be chomping at the bit to read another.

On Canaan's Side by Sebastian Barry

I don't want to describe this story because it 's been so beautifully and masterfully written that reading it without any knowledge of the plot increases the enjoyment. Barry is an Irish writer  who also wrote The Secret Scripture, which I read some years ago, and he uses much the same technique in this novel. 

I have been known to express the opinion that most male writers are verbose - like John Irving or Ken Follett- but Barry is almost a minimalist, although his descriptions and the poetry of his language are quite extensive.

It's a story of love and loss, well worth delving into and savouring the writing.

The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party ✔✔✔

This is the 12th in McCall Smith's series of books called The #1 Ladies Detective Agency.  They are always such a wonderful treat, with gentle philosophy, wonderful people, and colorful personalities.

Mma Makutsi is about to marry Phuti after a long engagement, Precious discovers her beloved white van is still on the road, Charlie is accused of fathering, and then deserting, twins and of course there's a mystery to solve:  why are the cattle on a local farmer's property being killed.

Mma Makutsi is especially interesting this time around, especially after she goes shopping for shoes to wear at her wedding.  I still see her as she was portrayed in the BBC series a few years ago, which didn't last past the first season, unfortunately.

If I ever had the choice of meeting whatever author I wanted to, Alexander McCall Smith would be high on my list!

The Breadwinner Trilogy by Deborah Ellis ✔✔✔

Deborah Ellis is coming to KL in June for an author event I'm organizing at the Museum, so I wanted to review the books of hers that I had read and hopefully add a few more titles.  This trilogy includes three novels for children probably 9-12:  The Breadwinner, Parvana's Journey and Mud City.

We meet Parvana in The Breadwinner, where to support her family in  Kabul, Afghanistan, she dresses as a boy and sells items in the local market, where she meets Shauzia, a friend from her school, who is doing the same thing to support her family.  Parvana's father has been arrested by the Taliban, and there is no one to bring money into the house. At the end of this one, Parvana's father is released, but by then her mother and her siblings have left to attend the wedding of the oldest daughter, Nooria. Parvana and her Dad set out to meet the rest of their family.

In Parvana's Journey - which I really enjoyed - the father dies from his injuries while in prison and Parvana is left on her own to continue to search for her mother.  Her journey takes her through some pretty rough country, with some harrowing adventures, until she reaches a refugee camp and finds her mother and sisters.  Throughout the book she writes letters to her friend Shauzia just to keep her focus, and Mud City, the third of the trilogy, focusses on Shauzia and her efforts to reach " the sea" and sail to France.  This story is mostly set in what is called a Working Mothers' Compound, but at the end she  leaves with Mrs. Weera, her mother figure, and some other nurses to return to Afghanistan.

The next book, I Am A Taxi, is also set in Afghanistan.

How The Light Gets In - Louise Penny ✔✔✔✔

This is the latest Louise Penny mystery, again set in the tiny, romantic village of Three Pines south of Montreal.  Chief Inspector Gamache sets out to discover a missing woman, a friend of the bookstore owner in Three Pines, and finds not only her body, but the fact that she was one of five famous quintuplets.   While this  is going on, there is a dark plot brewing among some of the more rogue detectives in the Surete, designed to separate Gamache from the rest, and indeed kill him.

Everything comes together in a dramatic scene in the village itself, and all the important characters are part of the final scene.

It was hard to put the book down - I hadn't read a mystery in some time, and I just ate this one up.

A House In The Sky by Amanda Lindhout ✔✔✔✔✔

From the book jacket: "The dramatic and redemptive memoir of a woman whose curiosity led her to the world's most beautiful and remote places, its most interesting and perilous countries, and then into fifteen months of harrowing captivity - an exquisitely written story of courage, resilience, and grace"

This was a very powerful story, and I couldn't put it down.  The last fifteen or so pages I was in tears most of the time, even as I marvelled at how she ever survived with her mind and heart intact. As intense as the brutality and abuse were, however, I was overwhelmed by how she could ever come to feel the compassion that she did, and how seemingly naturally she would reassert herself and find another path to her deep sense of self.

For example, and I quote from page 294:  "On days when I was really sturggling, when I felt the pressure in my mind moving again toward a snapping point, a voice -( meaning her soul) posed questions.  It said: In this exact moment, are you okay?  The answer, in that exact moment, was steadying:Yes, right now I am still okay.

An amazing story, beautifully written, inspiring, and unforgettable.

I Am A Hutterite by Mary Ann Kirkby ✔✔✔

Jean Bott loaned me this book after I saw it sitting on her coffee table when we were there for Study Group.  We had a Hutterite colony close to us when we lived in Chauvin back in the 50s, and I somehow had the impression theirs was a very repressive society, so I was interested in learning more about them.  I guess we fear - or at least mistrust- those we don't know, because we always regarded them with some suspicion.  I know my Mom thought they had stolen my pjs from our clothesline once!

What a pleasant surprise it was to read about these people - everything is held in common, although families have their own homes.  All meals are taken together in a large hall and the women take a week about cooking, baking, etc.  They are taught by a teacher from "the outside", and there are amusing stories by the author about how they regarded her clothing, and spent Saturdays trying on her shoes in the teacher's room behind their classroom. The men drive trucks, and they do leave the colony to shop ( I remember seeing them in Chauvin - not the women though, who wear black and white polka dots head scarves.  But the overall impression is one of happiness and contentment, good food, good company, living in a long-ago type atmosphere.

There were strict rules, however, the strictest one being that a man had to promise on his wedding day that he would never force his family to leave the colony, and of course, this is what happened to Mary Ann's family after her father and his brother-in-law, the head minister/mayor/rule enforcer constantly disagreed until such time as here Dad and Mother could not continue living there.

Their life after leaving the colony was very hard - isolated from everything they knew, living in extreme poverty, and suffering bullying and discrimination from their school mates.  Things eventually got better, relatively speaking, and they were able occasionally to return to the colony and visit with friends.

I didn't expect this book to be as interesting as it was, and also well-written.

419 by Will Ferguson ✔✔✔

This novel won the Giller prize last fall, so late last spring I downloaded it and had begun reading it when it was selected for our Book Club this year, so I put it aside till this fall to finish.

I had some trouble reading it.  The beginning - with Laura's father found dead by apparent suicide and the discovery that he'd gotten into a scam from Nigeria- was interesting enough.  Then all of a sudden there's a mysterious woman travelling across Nigeria, hiding a lot of the time, begging enough food to feed herself and her unborn child.  We never do find out why she was wandering, except that her face was scarred, so maybe she'd been attacked back home. Nor does she appear to know where she's wandering to until she meets Nnamdi, another character who is just inserted into the novel, who seems to be there just to show us how the discovery of oil and the takeover by the multi-national companies has affected the poor.  There are occasional interjections back to Laura, but nothing substantial enough to give us any idea why- or how- these characters will finally intersect.

They finally do, but I was so uninterested in Nnamdi's story, simply because the novel seemed to shift so suddenly to him away from Laura and the wandering woman.  His story is actually the longest in the entire novel.  Anyway, I skimmed my way through all this - and got myself a major headache for doing it- but I decided I should read the final part of the novel more closely, so I read the last 1/3 of it, and found it interesting - even though I still don't know why Amina was wandering!  Now, in preparation for Book Club I'm reading Nnamdi's story, so I've actually read the complete novel, only not in order. Laura, who seems at the beginning to be this mousy little copy-editor, becomes Wonder Woman when she gets to Nigeria, chasing down the bad guys and putting herself in danger - I figured at this point that these characters were just driving the story and the author's message. I really do get a bit disgusted when the author has no respect for the reader, and I think that's what happened here.

I really don't think the novel is all that well-written.  It probably didn't help that I was re-reading some Alice Munro stories at the same time in honour of her being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, and I mean really - no one compares to her.

What attracted me to the novel was the 419 schemes, because we've all received these e-mails, and it was interesting to find out what could possibly happen when you respond to them.  But it was just too choppy and disconnected for me.  Should be an interesting discussion on Saturday, because I'm sure there'll be people who just loved it!

And you can be sure I'll be expressing my opinions!

The Massey Murder by Charlotte Gray ✔✔✔✔

I'm a real fan of Gray's books - she writes what I guess could be called narrative histories, since the stories are true, but she writes them so well they read like a novel.  She also is able to meld her research with a narrative touch so everything holds together well.

This book is about a young housemaid in Toronto in 1914 who shoots and kills her employer as he returns home from his work day. The subtitle of the book : A Maid, Her Master and the Trial That Shocked a Country pretty well tells it all- Carrie Davies  is the 18-year-old maid who has recently come from England to better herself and help her family financially back home, John Massey is the master whose wife is away visiting family in the US when he decides to make moves on Carrie, and the trial is shocking because of the differing levels of society that are represented here, as well as the lawyers, judge, etc and their presentation of this case, plus the ramifications for the jury's final verdict.

Gray also fits all of this into the framework of a country at war, a newspaper war, emerging rights for women and a fast growing Toronto.  I found it fascinating.

Nocturne: On the Life and Death of My Brother - Helen Humphreys ✔✔✔

Humphreys is a favorite Canadian author of mine - I loved The Lost Garden especially.  This was a very different book, since it is a letter to her brother Martin, a well-known Canadian pianist, RCM examiner, composer who was diagnosed with terminal cancer in the summer of 2009 and who died in December of the same year at the age of 45.

There are some wonderful quotes I could copy here , on the themes of grief, dying, sibling love, but most especially about music.  Interestingly enough, one of Martin's favorite pieces was Debussy's Clair de Lune, which is also my "signature piece", and she even quotes the Paul Verlaine poem which was the basis for all of Suite Bergamasque.  But anyway, here are a few...

"Grief enjoys shorthand, that's what I'm thinking today.  Narrative is too fluid.  Grief is all chop, all rhythm and breaks, broken.  It is the lurch of the heart, not the steady beating of it."

"Maybe music is better company than writing because it makes a sound, takes up human space, a dimension in the world.  It releases emotion, whereas writing pins emotion down.  And all writing is necessarily elegaic."

"You must have felt both liberated and oppressed by the fact that the music lived through you, that you were responsible for making it happen, that without your body to animate it there was only silence"

The Orenda by Joseph Boyden ✔✔✔✔✔

I could give this book more checkmarks, I would - it's a wonderful book! The third by Boyden, and although I thoroughly enjoyed them all, this was very special.

The Orenda is the story of the Huron Indians, the Jesuit priests who came to convert them in the early seventeenth century, and the Iroquois Indians, who were bitter enemies of both the Hurons and the Jesuits.  Bird is a Huron elder whose wife and family were killed by the Iroqouis many years earlier, and is the central Huron character in the story.  He captures and kills an Iroquois family, but saves their young daughter, and adopts her as his own, naming her Snow Falls.  And finally there is Christophe, the Jesuit priest referred to by the Hurons as Crow, because he wears a flapping black robe.  He has come to the Hurons, escorted by Bird when this killing takes place, and is later joined by other Jesuits.  Christophe's character is based on Jean de Brebeuf, the Jesuit martyr.


This isn't an easy book to read, because it is very brutal, both in the violence throughout, but also in the weather conditions, the illnesses, lack of proper food.  However, Boyden paints a clear picture of a way of life we can only wonder at, and describes many native rituals, including torture, in such a way that you could never say the violence was gratuitous.  And I couldn't put it down, and found myself thinking about it when I wasn't reading it. The rituals ands religious symbols of the Jesuits were a complete mystery to the natives, and to have these described from the native's vantage point  is masterful.

It's been nominated for the Giller, which Boyden won for Through Black Spruce a few years ago, so it'll be interesting to see if he's able to repeat.  And - as usual after I read a good historical novel like this one - I spent another half hour or so looking up information about the various tribes and the role of the Jesuits in these communities.

This may be a good book to recommend for Book Club another year.

Stranglehold by Robert Rotenberg ✔✔✔✔✔

This is the fourth crime novel written by Rotenberg, a criminal lawyer himself from Toronto.  I have read them all, and this one is my favorite so far.  Nearly all of the characters are familiar, because they appear in the three previous novels, although the stories are not sequential.

Detective Ari Greene is accused of murder in this particular one, and the victim is another well-known character from the previous novels.

Fast-paced, many references to familiar spots in Toronto ( this one centers on a motel on Kingston Road, a very familiar street for us when travelling to David's place), and informative glimpses into the police department and courtroom drama, these are very exciting reads from beginning to end.

I can't say enough about the quality of these novels.  I read this  one in three days - couldn't put it down!

Spark by Kristine Barnett ✔✔✔

I heard Barnett being interviewed on CBC Radio, and I was impressed with her son's story.  I'm also pretty sure I'd heard about him before. Jake was born with autism, but also with incredible mathematical skills.  He was placed in a Special Ed programme, but his mother withdrew him because he was so unhappy - teachers were trying to discover what he couldn't do rather than what he could. And what he can do is virtually immeasureable, although he has to be reminded to tie his shoelaces, and eat a proper breakfast.

This child's mind is unbelievable!  Kristine relates driving past a Best Buy parking lot at 55 mph, and Jake being able to tell her not only how many cars were in the lot, but also what percentage of them were silver in color! At age seven, she makes arrangements for him to audit college classes, where the professors often cannot answer his questions.  At age 11, he becomes a full-time student in a graduate degree programme, although only one class at a time, simply because when he and his Mom went for the interview, the coins in his pocket overflowed onto the floor, and he was more interested in retrieiving them than talking to the admitting officer! At the present time, he is tutoring his classmates, and research is being done into his developing what has been termed an "original theory" of mathematics, which could put him in line for a Nobel Prize.

I would assign more stars to this book for Jake and Kristine's story, but I wasn't too impressed with the writing. But a fascinating read all the same.  People like Jake do not forget information - they are constantly reliving the moment when they learned, and their ability is akin to our never forgetting how to ride a bike.  When we have to remember a telephone number, we have to write it down quickly, or it'll be forgotten, but Jake's mind is itself the page that's written upon - and his mom describes the size of his "page" as the size of a football field.

It still is almost impossible to comprehend, but the book again reveals the remarkable power and ability of the human brain.  If I were a student again, I'd want to pursue this a bit further.

Summer Reading Recap

I noticed this morning that I haven't got too many books recorded on this blog for the past two months or so, but I only record the ones I've completed - I have a number of books "on the go" at any one time.

So I thought I'd list them here, more to remind myself when I'm looking for something to read ( as if that will ever happen!).  I always have a couple of non-fiction hanging around or on my Kindle/iPad, and books about spirituality are regularly read and reflected upon.

Currently Reading Non-Fiction:

Jazz: A History of America's Music by Ken Burns and Geoffrey C. Ward

The 36-Hour Day: A Family Guide To Caring For People Who Have Alzheimer Disease, Related Dementias and Memory Loss - Mace and Rabins

Spirituality:

Immortal Diamond  - Richard Rohr
Falling Upward       - Richard Rohr ( Study Group selection for 2013/2014)

Hildegard of Bingen: A  Saint For Our Times - Matthew Fox
The Greatest Prayer: Rediscovering the Revolutionary Message of the Lord's Prayer - John Dominic Crossan

(Interesting to note that all four titles above have been written by Catholic writers.  All of them are former priests!)

Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom - John O'Donohue

Book Club Preparation:

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry - Rachel Joyce
Ernie's Gold: A Prospector's Tale - Brian Martin

THE CUCKOO'S CALLING by J.K. Rowling ✔✔✔

This book reads like the could be the beginning of a series of novels by Robert Galbraith aka J.K. Rowling.  It introduces us to private investigator Cormoran Strike, an British ex-soldier who lost his leg in Afghanistan, and to Robyn, the young temp he hires to help him with his new - and to this point highly unsuccessful - business as a private investigator.  Robin arrives for her temporary duties at the precise moment Cormoran's girlfriend, Charlotte, flees his office, having just broken up their 15-year relationship.

Anyway, it's a good read, well-paced, with interesting characters, whose names or places in the story I didn't seem to forget , which is always a good point with mysteries.  The chemistry between Robin and Cormoran is good, and doesn't ever intrude on the progress of the case Strike is trying to solve.

All in all, a pretty good read, and I'd read a sequel for sure.  I did read that there's the possibility of a TV show based on it - I hope it's British!

Most of Me:Surviving My Medical Meltdown by Robyn Levy ✔✔✔

This woman was interviewed for a CBC radio series called Coping, and when I heard that she'd been diagnosed with Parkinson's at age 38 , then breast cancer two weeks later, I knew I had to read it.

She has an irreverent, but spot-on wit : her prosthesis is called Dolores, when she cries she calls that "person" Cry Lady , her loyal dog Nellie, her many friends who help her through the disease.  Her father also has Parkinson's.

A quick read, but a good one. Recommended for younger women diagnosed with either disease.

I'm glad to have actually finished a book!  I started reading Inferno by Dan Brown and had to put it down simply because I just didn't care. I'm reading a bit of Richard Rohr, but found that hard slogging. I was glad to find something I actually wanted to finish reading!

Little Girl Blue by Randy L. Schmidt ✔✔✔

A biography of Karen Carpenter, I've been reading bits and pieces of this over the last few months and finally finished it.  What a sad story of an amazing singer - from a domineering mother who encouraged her brother Richard far more than she did Karen, to the schmuck she married, her struggles with anorexia - she was 75 pounds when she died of a heart attack at age 31.

Wild by Cheryl Strayed ✔✔✔✔

One of the best memoirs I've read in a long time - ranks right up there with The Glass Castle.
Cheryl is a young woman of 22 when her mother dies from cancer at the age of 44, and it's a wrenching description of how the disease claimed her mother's life so quickly.  Four years later, Cheryl embarked on this journey - hiking over 1000 miles across the Pacific Coast Trail - and did it all alone.
The people she meets along the way, the problems she faces with snow and cold, running out of money, constant agony from her hiking boots, make for riveting reading. I found I couldn't put it down.

The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan ✔✔✔✔

Set in Paris in the late 1800s, this historical novel tells the story of two sisters, Antoinette and Marie, whose father has just died and left their mother, themselves, and their younger sister Charlotte with no money and three months due in rent. Marie is sent to the Paris Opera where she begins studies to become a ballet dancer, and later a model for Edgar Degas, while Antoinette falls in love with a disreputable criminal, a relationship which ends up with her in prison.

I didn't realize that these two sisters actually existed until I had finished the novel, and Marie is the girl in the painting "Little Dancer Aged Fourteen".  The book was recommended to me by the rug-hooker who shared my table at Trent, and I found it in our library.

It's a vivd portrayal of poverty, of class distinction, of prison life, convent life, brothels, bars etc. in Paris at this time.  Well - written and highly recommended.

Be sure to check www.CathyMarieBuchanan.com/art for a complete showing of the art works mentioned in this book, along with the quote describing each one.  Marie was so self-conscious about her appearance, while Degas may well have chosen her for that very reason!

Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin ✔✔✔

A historical novel about the real Alice behind Alice in Wonderland,  the man who created the story, their relationship, plus a vivid insight into life in Victorian times.  I really enjoyed the Victorian flavor to this story, which is both factual and fiction, but I found the relationship between Alice and Mr Dodgson, later Lewis Carroll, who was a math instructor at Oxford, where Alice's father was Dean, to be a bit unsettling.

The latter half of the book was not as interesting - about Alice's married life and her three sons. Neither did I feel there was a sense of resolution at the end - hence the 3 stars.

Our Daily Bread by Lauren B. Davis ✔✔

I can only give this book two checkmarks.  It's rare for me to even finish a book I don't really care for, and I'm not sure why I finished this one. I did scramble through the last 15% of it, that's for sure.

I read Davis' The Stubborn Season a few years back and thoroughly enjoyed it because it explored a mother-daughter relationship and was set in Toronto, so I had no qualms about downloading her second one, which I hadn't even heard about.  According to its cover, the book was named  "one of the very best books of 2011" by the Globe and Mail.  Oh well...

The story revolves around an extremely dysfunctional family up in the mountains and the attitudes of the people in the village nearby. But I found the drugs, abuse, incest of the Erskines gratuitously presented, and I didn't feel it was well-written.  At one point, because the sentences were so short and unevenly phrased, I thought maybe it was a young adult book, but the language ( at least one "fucking" per page) convinced me it was just not well-done. Maybe she was having trouble meeting a publisher's deadlines.

Too bad - I was looking forward to reading her latest, "The Empty Room"!

Stray Bullets by Robert Rotenberg ✔✔✔✔

This is the third of Rotenberg's novels, and the third that I've read and throughly enjoyed, mainly because they're all set in Toronto, along streets and in buildings and restaurants that I know.  For example, one scene is the Esso station on O'Connor Drive, where we occasionally stop for gas before arriving at our destination.  One of the defence lawyers meets her client in a restaurant on the Danforth.

Not only that, his novels - and they're crime novels - are fast-paced, characters are clearly drawn, and since the author is a lawyer, he's very familiar with the courts.

This story is about some shady characters who all converge on a Tim Horton's location in downtown Toronto, and a young boy who accidentally gets in the way of a bullet meant for someone else - all of this witnessed by an illegal immigrant who disappearsright after the shooting.

I read it in three days - Mike's been reading it for 6 months now!

The Golem and The Jinni by Helene Wecker ✔✔✔✔

I had read about this book, but I thought it might be a novel cashing in on the interest in vampires, but when I saw it for sale at Costco for 10 bucks, I bought it.  I really enjoyed reading it - the golem is a Jewish mythological figure, like a robot, and made of clay; the jinni ( or genie) is a Syrian figure, made of fire.  This golem, although made of clay, is brought to life as a woman, who finds herself in NYC in 1899 - the jinni has been trapped in a silver flask for hundreds of years, and is released by a tinsmith who has been given the flask for repairs. These two unlikely beings find one another and strike up a peculiar friendship, even while struggling to adapt to a human world.  The golem never sleeps and never eats: the jinni cannot stand to be near water.  There are other fascinating characters as well, including Shaalman, the villain of the piece, and the creator of the golem who comes to New York City to find his creation.

I was going to suggest this for Book Club next year, but it's too similar to Night Circus, which was my choice last year.

Up and Down by Terry Fallis ✔✔✔

This is the third of Terry Fallis' books. This time the story is about sending a private citizen on a space shuttle mission, one Canadian and one American. I had a good few chuckles over this one - the plot is very simple, the characters are predictable - but it all works somehow for a light read.

Falling To Earth by Kate Southwood ✔✔✔✔

In March 1925, probably the worst tornado ever to hit the U.S. Killed over 700 people over three states. This novel's setting is Marah, Illinois, where everyone in this rural town loses something – a child, a house, a business – except the Graves family, who are miraculously spared. The children are at home with chicken pox, being looked after by their mother and grandmother. Paul is at work at his lumber business. Those at home find refuge in their storm cellar, while Paul hangs onto a telegraph pole. Their only mishap is that their car, parked in the driveway, is turned completely around. But the Graves family suffers irreparable damage, as the entire town, including Paul's best friend, turns against them – the children are bullied, those who buy lumber from Paul to re-build their homes, burn the lumber, Mae is ostracized by her friends, and is haunted by a woman who stands across the street from their home, simply staring at the house.  The Graves' have assisted in any way they can with those who have suffered, from allowing their front porch to be used as a temporary morgue, cleaning up the after-effects of the storm, making coffins, etc, but the townspeople cannot get past the fact that the Graves' lost nothing; they somehow think the family arranged this somehow, and are profiting from the losses of others.

This novel shows how people deal with these monumental disasters, and how the best of us can succumb to envy and bitterness. It makes one wonder, in this day and age, what happens to these very ordinary people after the cameras and the world's attention leaves. Would we act the same way?

Putting Away Childish Things - Marcus Borg

This has been on my shelf for at least two years, and I pulled this off as a possibility for our Study Group to discuss next year.  It's called a "didactic novel" because the novel form is merely a vehicle for teaching and discussing what the title suggests - looking at our faith and religion in a new light - an adult approach.  It's been very well done - Borg chooses  his setting in a liberal arts college where Kate is teaching the Enlightenment in a Religious Studies course, and his theme is different understandings of what it means to be a Christian today - how to understand Christianity in an Enlightenment and non-Enlightenment world.  Lots of room for discussion here.

After The Falls: Coming of Age In The Sixties by Catherine Gildiner ✔✔✔

I requested this book through Inter-Library Loan - I'm glad I didn't purchase it, because I didn't find it as engaging as Too Close To The Falls.  It certainly illustrates coming of age in the sixties, though - alienation from her father, teenage angst, discovering the facts of life in a thoroughly terrifying manner, trying marijuana, having her first relationship, her jobs throughout high school, her involvement in the Civil Rights movement, and later a brush with SNCC, the more radical group, the unhappy ending of a long-term relationship.

Her relationship with her father was probably the focus of the book, beginning with their move to Boston because of losing his business, his trying to deal with her discovering "boys", his later illness, with the necessity of her taking away his driver's license, and then his death.  Yet through it all, she has a high regard for her father, and her comments about the relationship between her parents indicates he was a good man, a good citizen.

There are some interesting stories - the party where she and a friend witnessed a gang rape through a closet door, her being sent to New York City to speak to various organizations about her prize-winning essay, as well as the incident which prompted the essay in the first place.  Just not as many belly laughs as the first one, and frankly some of her adventures were so "out there" I wondered if they were actually true.

We learned in her first book that her mother died of cancer, and this was never alluded to in this segment, so I'm assuming there'll be another memoir.  I'll read it - but maybe re-read the first one before I start it.

I Am My Father's Son - a memoir by Dan Hill ✔✔✔

Dan Hill was here in KL as part of our conert series, and I purchased this memoir there.  He is a great story-teller, and this memoir certainly illustrated that.  He has been tremendously influenced by his father - a charismatic rights activist - all his life, trying to live up his father's expectations as well as carving his own way in life, a path that didn't always meet with his father's approval.  His father was certainly a larger-than-life presence, and his mother suffered from depression, but Dan himself doesn't come across as being easy to have around either!  A good read, and I'll share it with others who attended the concert.

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson ✔✔✔✔

A novel by Kate Atkinson is an item I don't hesitate to download to my Kindle.  I was hoping this would be another Jackson Brown detective novel, but instead it was a time-shifting novel, so I found it a ittle hard to get into, but I have such devotion to this author's writing that I kept reading, and was very glad I did.  I didn't know what was happening occasionally, because of the time shifting, but that's the way life is, after all.

I'm quoting from the book desription on Kindle:

"What if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you got it right?
During a snowstorm in England in 1910, a baby is born and dies before she can draw her first breath.
During the same snowstorm in England in 1910, the same baby is born and lives to tell the tale.
This is Ursula Todd, and her story of life after many deaths - a loop of lives, or the continuous circle of destiny - life after life after life."

The narrative unfolds around historical events in England from World War I through World War II - and Ursula's role in them. Especially interesting was her life as a warden throughout the Blitz of London - I had a little more trouble with her friendship with Eva Braun, Hitler's mistress, probably because of the way the reader is just airlifted, it seems, into the centre of the story.  But the book is well-written, and could probably bear another reading, if only to dissect her structure - it was extremely inventive - nearly every chapter is a new year, say 1910, then 1936, then 1926, and so on.  Events in one section are seen from a different angle in another section, or in another year.  It sounds tremendously complex, but Atkinson, a Scottish writer by the way, handles it very well.

Strongly recommended!

Too Close To The Fallls by Catherine Gildiner ✔✔✔✔

I've been thinking about this book for a long time - I believe I heard Gildiner, who is a practising psychologist in Toronto, reading an excerpt from her sequel to this particular memoir, entitled After the Falls - and finally downloaded it to my Kindle, where it has sat for about a year or more.

Since reading Dickens, I've been somewhat anchorless in my reading.  I tried A Tale Of Two Cities, and I do intend to finish it, but there were several others, too, which I attempted but didn't find them speaking to me at all.  I usually flow from one book to the next and I really didn't know why this gap in my reading had occured.  I still don't, but I did decide that going back to non-fiction was probably best, so I picked up Too Close To The Falls, and was instantly captivated.

Catherine grew up  in Lewiston, New York, which is very close to Niagara Falls. Her father was a busy and highly-respected druggist there, her mother was - well, a very different mother - and Catherine seems to have raised herself, even though she had a close relationship with both her parents.  A family doctor thinks Catherine doesn't have enough to do - she's almost ADD, so her Dad puts her to work at the drugstore when she's only four, and this is the first chapter of the book.

The book is her story, of course, but she has a complete chapter for various colorful people in Lewiston, including Roy, her driver when she's delivering prescriptions, her mother, Sister Agnese, as well as some of her friends.  Many times I was laughing so hard I cried - for example, Catherine writes about Elvis' first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, how the sisters told them all it would be a sin to watch him, which only made it even more intruiging, and then how Sullivan announced prior to the show that Elvis would be televised from the waist up only , so the sisters told them they could watch the show with their parents.  So Catherine's watching the show and telling everyone how Elvis is "sinning from the waist down" - she hasn't figured out what sin is anyway, but wants to appear knowledgeable for her guests.

And this was what was so captivating about the book - she's so innocent, and knows absolutely nothing about most things, so it's her reaction to events and people that is so humorous. And she also has a very inoocent approach to matters of faith, and is constantly the despair of the nuns and priests - absolutely irreverent!

I'm looking forward to the sequel - I do know her mother died quite young, so I think the book will focus on that. This was one of the best memoirs I've read since A Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls.

Unusual Uses For Olive Oil - Alexander McCall Smith

This was a very light read and quick to get through, which was nice after David Copperfield's 1100 pages!  Olive Oil is the 4th novel in the Professor von Igelfeld series - McCall Smith describes it as an "entertainment novel" and that it was.  Just a turn of phrase is enough to send me into minutes of laughter, as von Igelfeld, author of the eminently respectable, highly intellectual and highly-prized bestseller: Portuguese Irregular Verbs, gets himself into one scrape or another. von Igelfeld has two rather obnoxious colleagues - Prof. Unterholzer and the librarian Herr Huber, who always talks about his aunt in the nursing home - and life is not made easier for von Igelfeld with these two men, but certainly the reader is richer for having met them! von Igelfeld is a rather Walter Mitty-like character himself, and that is his charm. The series is also a gentle poke at academia and the somewhat fuzzy-headed professors who spend their days there.  A good read, lots of laughs, and - as always with McCall Smith - well-written.

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

I re-read this 1100 page novel in preparation for April's book club theme.  I was reading Jane Smiley's "Charles Dickens" when I realized I really should read him,too.  Now I must have taught this novel somewhere along the way, or studied it, because the characters were very familiar - David, Peggotty, Steerforth, Dora, Agnes Wickfield et al.  I enjoyed the novel more as an older adult, and constantly marvelled at the complexity of the writing, the fact that it was serialized, and that Dickens wrote this in long-hand!

After Camelot: A Personal History of the Kennedy Family 1968 to the present by Randy Taraborelli

I've long been a fan of the Kennedy's and this book brought me up-to-date on the family's many mishaps and adventures over the past 40-odd years. Most recently, there was John Jr's death on a flight to Hyannisport, so there were details about that, as well as Jackie's marriage to Onassis, her life after his death, the problems of Joan Kennedy, the children of Ethel and Bobby Kennedy, who had so many problems with drugs, womanizing, etc.

It was very informative, though quite long.  So what did I learn?  I'd forgotten Ted Kennedy challenged Jimmy Carter for the presidential nomination bid for Carter's second term ( which of course, Carter lost to Reagan), how Jackie was the strong, wise woman in the family and maintained her ties to that family, that the Jackie-Jack marriage was a good one, despite his womanizing, that the entire family is extremely close, that Eunice was a bitch and Pat was an alcoholic, that Ted and his son Ted Jr. hit on women together, that Maria Shriver is Democrat and old Arnold is Republican,  that Carolyn Bessette was so much like Jackie, and that the family never ever truly recovered from those assassinations back in the sixties.

Dear Life by Alice Munro ✔✔✔✔

Dear Life - dear me!!  This is, once again, a book I read over several months, usually one story at a time in between other novels I was reading.  So when I came to it yesterday during a long wait at the hairdresser's, I finally got it finished - but now, I don't remember very much about the stories!!

I just flipped through them all and really - only the ones I read yesterday and tonight have stayed in my mind!  I remember only tiny bits about them - but, not to worry - I do remember that I thoroughly enjoyed each and every story and marvelled at Munro's mastery of the short story - she says so much in just a few words, conveys so much information in a paragraph, and paints such a vivd picture of humanity - especially relationships.

Her first sentences suck you in right away - " On the bench outside the station I sat and waited" - so this person has been travelling, and is waiting for someone to meet her or him.  The fact that he/she is waiting indicates that this is a new situation, a new place, with new people.  I wonder how long she's been there?

Elton John: The Bitch Is Back ✔✔

I only gave this book two stars because the writing is atrocious.  This biographer - Mark Bego - gives every fact possible about Elton John , including most of the names of people who attended his parties, or who he worked with, a listing of all his concerts in any given year - and so on.  Did I find out a lot about Elton John?  Well, I guess I did, but not too much more than I knew already.

I wanted to give it more stars because, despite his many failings, I still think Elton John is an amazing musician, a wonderful pianist and an inventive composer.  But his life was a mess - sex, drugs, ridiculous costumes, over-eating, being a real "bitch", as the title implies.

Fortunately, the role young Ryan White played in his life turned him around from a life of pure debauchery, and he remains a top-notch performer even in his late fifties.

I don't think this was an authorized bio because the author makes no attempt to get right into the story of Elton's life  - it's just a series of press clippings really.

Not only that, the editing was terrible!  It took me a long, long time to read this book - over about four months, I'd say, and the only thing that kept me reading it was that I have such respect for him as a musician- and I'll never, ever, forget how beautifully he sang and played at Princess Diana's funeral.

The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman ✔✔✔✔✔

Book Browse chose this book as the best book of 2012, as voted by its subscribers.  It was available at our library here, so I requested it, picked it up this past Monday and finished it just this afternoon.  It was the first book I've read in some time which I wanted to stay up late and finish it, even though it's not a mystery.

Set on an isolated island off the coast of Australia in 1926, Tom and Isabel have moved there to be the lighthouse keepers shortly after their marriage.  Isabel suffers three miscarriages, so when a boat is washed ashore on the island with a dead man inside and a crying baby, Isabel claims the little girl as her own and persaudes Tom to not record the arrival of the boat, the man or the baby.

When the child is two years old, and a strong family unit has been created, the family returns to Australia to find that there is another claim on the child, and some decisions are made which forever change several lives.

The powerful bonds between a mother and child are explored, and as a mother, I found myself deeply involved emotionally with the women in this story, and identified closely with them throughout.

One of the comments about this novel is that reading it  was an "exquisite" experience, and that sums up my opinion as well.  When I first heard about the novel, I immediately thought of Joan Clark's Latitudes of Melt, a favorite book of mine set in Newfoundland, but this one takes a very different path, and a very successful one, particularly for a first-time author.

Highly recommended - have a kleenex or two handy!