The Flying Troutmans by Miriam Toews ✔✔✔✔✔

It's been a long while since I shed a few tears at the end of a novel, but I did with this one. It's a quick read, a family road trip, and last night I thought I'd skim through to the end but today I backed up to re-read the last thirty pages and was overwhelmed, both by the beauty of the writing and the love of family that permeates the end of the book, as well as the fact that it resembles so closely the dilemma our David continues to endure with his separation from his 17-month-old daughter.

Min, the mother, is in a psychiatric hospital for the nth time, and tells her sister Hattie, the narrator, that she wants to die. Min has two children: Logan, aged 15 and Thebes, 12, and Logan, who has seen the exchange between the two sisters, wants to know what his mother said. Hattie doesn't want to tell him, so instead she says that Min wants the three of them to find Cherkis, their father and promptly sets out on a road trip with the two teenagers to find their father - a seemingly impossible task, given the fact that they have no clue where he is and they're driving in an aged and inform Ford Aerostar, and all three of them are a bit nuts themselves.

It's a unconventional trio, but you know all along that they do love each other, and of course they meet some interesting characters along the way.

A five-star read for sure, Toews certainly knows how to write about teenagers and family. As the Edmonton Journal said, " She shines a kindly light on family dynamics that the average social worker would find worthy of a hefty investigation. And she balances heartbreak with laugh-out-loud wit."

Shirley loaned me this book - it came from her cousin Cheryl.

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain ✔✔✔✔

This is our first Book Club selection for September 2011, which I downloaded to my Kindle. It was a slow start, but I was very busy with other things while reading it. I ended up enjoying it and look forward to our discussion of it. Meanwhile, I've copied this from Book Browse because, once again, I'm feeling lazy...


A deeply evocative story of ambition and betrayal, The Paris Wife captures a remarkable period of time and a love affair between two unforgettable people: Ernest Hemingway and his wife Hadley.

Chicago, 1920: Hadley Richardson is a quiet twenty-eight-year-old who has all but given up on love and happiness—until she meets Ernest Hemingway and her life changes forever. Following a whirlwind courtship and wedding, the pair set sail for Paris, where they become the golden couple in a lively and volatile group—the fabled “Lost Generation”—that includes Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.

Though deeply in love, the Hemingways are ill prepared for the hard-drinking and fast-living life of Jazz Age Paris, which hardly values traditional notions of family and monogamy. Surrounded by beautiful women and competing egos, Ernest struggles to find the voice that will earn him a place in history, pouring all the richness and intensity of his life with Hadley and their circle of friends into the novel that will become The Sun Also Rises. Hadley, meanwhile, strives to hold on to her sense of self as the demands of life with Ernest grow costly and her roles as wife, friend, and muse become more challenging. Despite their extraordinary bond, they eventually find themselves facing the ultimate crisis of their marriage—a deception that will lead to the unraveling of everything they’ve fought so hard for.

A heartbreaking portrayal of love and torn loyalty, The Paris Wife is all the more poignant because we know that, in the end, Hemingway wrote that he would rather have died than fallen in love with anyone but Hadley.

God's Secretaries by Adam Nicolson ✔✔✔✔

How the King James Bible came about is the theme of this informative, reader-friendly book. I have always loved the King James version, with its beautiful language, which flows so majestically, especially in the Psalms. I already knew, of course, that it had been put together in the 17th century in England, but I never knew exactly how, or how much James I - who succeeded Elizabeth I - was actually involved in the making of it. This book answered those questions, but was also a vivid portrayal of that post-Elizabethan time in England, plus a comparison of the Puritans to the Church of England clergy.

Some of the highlights were: - a Puritan minister who spent five years from 1594 - 1599,preaching each and every Thursday on the book of Jonah, which consists of four chapters, a total of 48 verses! The author calls this "word - inflation".

- the fact that James I commissioned this translation as a way of unifying England and Scotland.

- the translators divided up the Bible amongst some 50 of themselves, and each translator was to work on a chapter, then submit it to his particular group to work on it together, then to submit it to the entire group. In this way, the richness and majesty of the text was the result - each word was important.

- this richness and lushness was reflected in the stained-glass windows and beautifully-wrought interiors , not to mention vestments of the churches and clergy. It reminds me of the Baroque period in Europe, particularly in Bach and Vivaldi.

This was not a stuffy, scholarly read. Nicolson was obviously passionate about the subject - he says he is a Christian, but doesn't go to church - and has made this book as readable as its subject.

If I Stay - and - Where She Went by Gayle Forman ✔✔✔

I put these two books together, because the second one is a sequel. These are young adult books, and both were highly recommended in blogs that I read. I was intrigued by these books, first because the story is about a young classical cellist, Mia, and her boyfriend, Adam Wilde, who is a star in a rock band, and also because in the opening pages, Mia's family suffers a terrible tragedy, which Mia alone survives. The first novel is told from Mia's perspective, and the second one from Adam's, so it's interesting to see how events unfolded from one another's vantage point. These were easy reads for me, but entertaining enough.

I guess it must be bcause I now have a Kindle, but in the past month or so, I've been reading several books at the same time - my last three entries here have all been read at the same time, and I have three others on the go right now. I read whatever I feel like at any particular time. The fact that they're all non-fiction makes it more possible to do this, and actually as I'm writing this, I just received a book I won on Book Browse - My Reading Life by Pat Conroy, so I'm going to sit right down now and start it, so I guess I'm up to four at a time!

The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis✔✔✔

I purchased this book because I had heard about it on Canada Reads 2011, and it actually won the title as "the most essential book of the decade", beating out The Birth House, which was my first choice. Now I'm considering recommending it for Book Club next year, not because it's the best book I've read this year, but because it covers a topic we've never had - politics, and Canadian politics at that. The subject is quite interesting right now since the Conservatives have a majority for the first time in years, the NDP have all these rookie MPs from Quebec, and Jack Layton wants to restore order and dignity to the house. In another year we'll see how things are doing, and it might be fun to discuss them from the vantage point of this novel, where the candidate does not want to run, but when he is elected, finds his political soul in doing what is right, not what will win him more votes next time.

The other interesting thing about this novel is that the author first offered the entire novel as a free podcast online in the hopes that someone would hear it and consider publishing it. The author's webpage has the complete podcast.

This book was my recommendation for Book Club next year, and was accepted by the group. We'll do it in October.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot ✔✔✔

I copied this from Book Browse:

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.

Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.

Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia — a land of wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo — to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.

Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family — past and present — is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

This is our next selection for Book Club, and I will be presenting it. I think this is the third time I've read it - and each time I find something new. Olive is quite a person, and I guess what draws me to this novel, which is presented in thirteen short stories, is that I see myself, and many other women, in her. And Crosby, Maine is a small town, just like my own town, so I see many resemblances. Should be an interesting discussion!
I first posted on this book in May, 2009.