quarterly review: my life in books

YA - tally: 2

staying fat for sarah brynes by chris crutcher
an author talented enough in description and in a character's 'voice' to interest me in endurance swimming! that's gotta say something :) this book could be quite succesful in the current flash-required teen reading. it's premiss is bland enough: a character reveals she was abused by her father and - for fear of her life - won't report it. but then plot veers into (should be absurd but i didn't notice until almost the end) quite a suspenceful read. i'm sure pepper will enjoy it.

the disreputable history of frankie landau-banks by e. lockhart
did this an audiobook, and it started awkwardly... but i'm sure it was just the format that was awkward. because, as the story unfolded, and the main character revealed her sharp eye for teenage culture (upscale as it may be in this particular setting) - i fell in love with frankie landau-banks.
this book is littered with nuggets of truth about the siren comraderie of boys, the deeply rooted chavenism of modern institutions, and the dilema of classism. all that sounds highbrow and uninteresting to teen culture, but how about how a boy prefers his girlfriend to be weak and helpless? or how power (male or female) is exerted in social situations when one pretend not to remember you, or something you said? how a girlfriend, unceremoniously dumped, is immediately excised from her former boyfriend's social circle. how frankie notices that she enters her boyfriend's world entirely, but he never bothers to visit hers. how girls' witness male bonding - 1) find it boring and don't bother to show up, 2)watch from the periphery with other girls, or 3)wholeheartedly join into the fun thereby gaining acceptance and even respect.
so much of teenage life is instinctive reaction: frankie's quick mind analyzes the situation as it occurs and weighs her reactions. i love how regular events are deconstructed and shown as a potentail power struggle. frankie never lets her identity belong to anyone or any one group. all teenage girls should read this book.

graphic novels - tally : 8

sweet tooth: animal armies
sweet tooth: endangered species
sweet tooth: unnatural habitats by jeff lemire
picking up were we left off, jepperd has a change of heart and rescues gus along with a few other hybrids, 2 enslaved women, a doctor and a hick. so now there's a gang to root for. we get to see their backstories - inked in unique ways - and care as much for them as the original duo. there's a sidetracked story involving the inuit and a great take on unit art.
just like the walking dead, they appear to find a paradise in which to live but of course it is a scam. gus is growing older, looking more like a teen by the end of these books than a child. and now that he's got what amounts to a hybrid teen girlfriend, the story has more places to go.
i'll say it again: the art work is stunning - this author is a true creator: story AND artwork.

berlin: city of stones (book 1) by jason lutes
this is supposed to be a trilogy but i've just found out the third installment is out-of-print, and not available even through interlibrary loan! what a shame: this book is dense with narratives - it merits numerous rereads. set on the cusp of nazi germany, in town known for it's diversity and cultural currency, each event is made more sinister by our knowledge of where it ends up.

anne frank by sid jacobson and ernie colon
this was a good primer for someone who is going to read anne frank: diary of a young girl. it spans her entire life and so it covers alot of the political background of the time (even things that anne herself doesn't comment on in her diary). there are lots of asides that are labelled 'snapshots' and they do a good job of expaining world events or political movements in the context of her life. all in all, a great book that will emphasize - once again - that anne frank was not only a real person, but also a real talent that was lost when nazism spread across europe.

walking dead - volume 5
walking dead - volume 6
walking dead - volume 7
oh this wretched series...
it doesn't have a conclusion!  i thought, since the library had 7 books, that it would come to a close at the end of volume 7.  not so.  i looked it up on wikipedia only to find out it's still being produced.  and with the poularity of the tv show, i'm sure the publisher will be happy to keep selling it for many more years. i just wanted it to be over.  it taints you, reading/seeing all that blood and gore.

novels and memoirs - tally: 9

half-blood blues by esi edugyan
not a dyed-in-the-wool jazz fan, this book didn't capture me the way i'm sure it did for others. it's written through a continuous dialect and that took some getting used to. the ending seemed false, like the characters ended up in heaven or hell, and not in an actual geographic place... meh, i just didn't get what everyone else was grooving on

the abstinence teacher by tom perrotta
again, this author has disappointed me. he does such a good job of the minutia of life, small hidden truths buried in the larger scope, but his larger plot - again - failed to impress me: heavy-handed religion ruins both the atheist and the converted, until a sudden convergence of ideas (bye-bye god) brings the 2 leads together...

after river by donna milner
an obvious first book (and probably her only) that does what it's supposed to do: hint at a dark secret that will only be revealed 2/3rds into the novel, then surprise the reader a few times (hopefully one of the surprises will still be novel to them - i figured out 3 of the 4 'shockers' before they were revealed), then reunite all the characters for a tearful goodbye. yup, i cried. but that doesn't mean the book was good. it could have been a short-story (and likely was) without all the soap opera details.

the end of your life book club by will schwalbe
first off: i assumed this would be a work of fiction, and not a memoir. so i had some disappointment to deal with that may have lessened my opinion of this book... because... i didn't really like it.
besides being a downer - the author's mother is dying bit by bit after all - i found there too much unnecessary detail in the preamble to each book: a short description of the author's life, and/or a statement of who gave his mother the book (which the prerequisite story of how his mother knew that person), and/or brief mentions of other books that the author wrote and how they were received. even in mentioning his mother's friends or co-workers, there seemed to be a need to catalogue their accomplishments as well. i wondered if the son actually wrote a much more pared down book but then went back to fill in details that would please the people mentioned.
about midway, i got excited as the mother/son team starting reading books i truly adored: didion's year of magical thinking, olive kiterridge, the elegance of the hedgehog... yet will schwalbe and his mother saw none of the things i saw in these books...
and when this reading team hit books that i fairly despised - like the girl with a dragon tatoo - i noticed that they gave every single book they read a thumbs up. and i think disliking, or disagreeing with, a book can be just as helpful to personal development. i mean they - gasp - thought the last lecture was mana from above. i hated the audacity that this man wanted his child to know him (and not the other way around) (and granted i was more annoyed with the fanfare, tv appearances, and book pushing that follwed his first presentation of the last lecture. if the lecture was indeed for his sons, and he wanted to spend time with them, every moment on tv, or working on the book, was taken from them)
but even a bad book provides a few gems: i liked the author's summation of dealing with dying people - don't ask how they are feeling, ask instead: would you like to talk about how you're feeling -
and his summation of prayer: the 2 best prayers are: "help me, help me, help me" and "thank-you, thank-you, thank-you". plus i got a short list of books i'll be putting on my TBR list

the descendants by kaui hart hemmings
i liked this immediately but the author / publisher (cheated?) took a short cut - the cover is a still from the movie featuring george clooney. so, oh course i could hear the main character's voice clearly, from the beginning. but there is also something to be said for it's style: told in first person and in the present tense, there is an immediacy to the action.
it was this immediacy that made me want to keep reading.
i liked the narrator. but not anybody else, really. the wife is presented as a victim and gets a pass until her flaws are revealed in cascading fashion. the older daughter is hard to pin down at all. the 10 yo is shocking - much more like 14 or 15 yo - but i guess that's what popular culture is doing to the masses - allowing us to believe that this is how 'tweens' talk and act...

strangers on a train by patricia highsmith
wow. i've heard of (and have probably seen some of) the film that grew out of this novel, but i was surprised (and impressed) at the level of consciousness this piece had. sure the murders occur. but the thoughts behind them, the rationalizations, the subsequent loss of humanity from within - it was so well done. i always assumed thrillers were simply about a crime - either the thrill and worry of carrying one out, or the fear and anxiety of being the victim of one. this book was so much more. i'm curious to watch the movie now and see if if tries to encompass the nuance of breaking societal codes in order to justify a murder

after the falls by catherine gildiner
uneven.
having thoroughly enjoyed her first memoir, too close to the falls, i wanted to like this book. it started well - with a firm departure from her childhood town (and her childhood years): on to the tumultous teen years. and here's where it faltered for the first time: without a suficient emotional connection between her and her father established (unless you just finished reading too close to the falls), she drops a bomb on page 43 that her father's recently changed attitude and behaviour is a result of financial ruin (which in turn was caused by his generous heart) as a reader, there isn't enough time for us to be invested in this relationship. and this relationship is supposed to be reflected upon at many time throughout the novel.
the junior high years are funny. this part has the same vibe from her first book where she's the odd-man-out looking in at these strange creatures we call human beings. but then it gets dicey - she does an about-face over sororities supposedly over racism but that just happens to coincide with their rejection of her due to her acne. suddenly, she's a mishmash of contradictions. after she gets to college, she continually acts as if she is seeing racism for the first time (over and over). then the author has to hide the fact that she is no longer wearing her sweater sets from her mother because her mother had spent so much money on her fashion - but she also says her mother knew the pretense of normalcy using clothes was absurb. so which was it?
often times the plot point were confusing. her car is blocked in by a pick-up truck and an altercation seems imminent; a punch is thrown and then the car speds off. how? when did the pick-up truck get out of the way?
other times, her behavior seems 'explained away' in a manner i did NOT find convincing. like the time she worked in a donut shop - she took the time to wash her hands and arms, clean her nails, change uniforms AND redo her hair before she discovered the kitchen fire she started. or when she was the only white person to use the black power salute at a baseball game; she says it was for unity with all black people and her black boyfriend but she never asks him afterwards why he didn't share his plans for doing so.
there are too many people in this memoir, and many that could have been ignored altogether. for example, if you decide to put on a play - must you mention that you knew a friend named X and that she had friends Y and Z in town and they wanted you to see a play and you thought it was bad and that you could do better? lastly, the book overplays her love affair with a back man and her civil rights actions. it smacked of: i'm not a racist and here's my proof.
that said, i found this book to be an exercise in nostalgia in so many ways - a father, in his pyjamas, kneeling for the family nightly prayers is a scene taken from my own young life... being asked to exit from a car while parked on a busy freeway for poor conduct (she didn't obey, but i did when it happened to me)

state of wonder by anne patchett
wonderful book.  interesting, and different, and - at the end, suddenly turning into a romance.  and ending to bring you to tears with happiness...
the author has a few themes that are repeated subtly: one is about gender inequality, and the other is the idea of 'owning' our children - such a weird stance in a book about elongating a woman's fertility in order to postpone procreation.  or maybe that's the point - the desire to deprioritize the child-rearing phase in order to acheive x,y and z.  (wo)man is a fickle beast.  i most definitely want to read more from her

the forever war by joe haldeman
ok, i joined another book club and i was dreading this sci-fi title.  even though i've recently discovered i like sci-fi, i assumed it was only the current stuff.  this book was published in the '70s and i envisioned all the crap that rob used to read (with sexual caricatures for women, and just plain boring details of futuristic machines)
anyhow, it was engrossing.  it helped that the author's note made it clear he was writng through the prism of the vietnam war (and that, because it was obvious, publishing houses wouldn't touch it)  the novel spans centuries of warfare and the character progresses through the chain of command so there always something new to learn.  there's space travel, and there's a future earth, and there is the senselessness of war.  and somehow, there's also a happy ending.  what more could you ask for?

non-fiction - tally: 3

making babies: stmbling into motherhood by anne enright
i wanted read more by this author after i discovered her dense irish prose - and many of the essays here were cerebral.  but some were closer to the fluff you see in national parenting magazines...  she really did see the birth of her motherhood as a death to her self, and maybe i felt a bit of that underneath the post partum depression.  but it's been so long for me, and cannot remember life pre-children.  i imagine the cerebral stuff came out of her journal from that time, and the generic i-love-my-baby stuff came with the mommy mush brain that overtakes you and sometimes never goes away
 
money rules by gail vaz-oxlade
quick read. lots of good tips and concrete numbers. here's quick rundown of some of the things i learned:
* tit for tat approach to savings: if you want to buy a 'want', then put an equal amount of money in your savings. that will force you to really consider the purchase rather than impulse buy
* 50% of net income for needs; 25% on wants
* don't tithe if you owe money (i loved her explaination for that one - the principle of tithing is to give of what you have (you know, to feel it) so if you must tithe - take it from no longer buying a coffee every day for example)
* even chickens can play the stock market - buy a bond that matures at a specific level and use the difference between that value, and the money you put in, as your risk money. your principal stays guaranteed
* don't play/use equities unless your horizon is 10 years plus
* people's money set points are static - so use multiple accounts you overcome the feeling you are already rich
* you can use RRSP as collateral if it's at the bank where the loan will come from, and if you can repay it before the end of the year
* no CDIC coverage for mutual funds, bonds, etc (even if in your RRSP) or deposit terms (like GICs) over 5 years
* adult kids living at home? charge 35% of their net income so they get used to how much money is needed to provide shelter (you can always give a portion back when they buy a home?)
* plan to graduate with loans no more than one year's net income in the field you are entering
* never travel without private medical insurance but be sure you know what it covers (don't assume) * since credit card companies charge the vendor between 2-4%, you can and should ask for a 1% cash discount
* assume (and budget) 3% of your home's value as upkeep / maintenance and put it aside for new carpets/windows/roof etc
* updated kitchens or new windows/roof are only an investment if you sell your house in the next 2-3 years. live in your home another 5+ years, and you've consumed that value. SO :don't convince yourself (or your partner) that some upcoming cost is actually an investment, when in actuality - it's likely a 'want'
* even children can contribute to an RRSP! if they earned an income (a paper route counts), they can start an RRSP - just don't bother claiming the deduction until they are paying taxes
* be wary of lifestyle inflation: when an occassional treat becomes a regular thing, or you try to keep up with the jones
* when mutual funds merge, the funds history disappears - this might be to hide a poor performance
* pay attention to 'contributed' and 'non-contributed' RESP money.
* your contributions are always tax free, but the non-contributions are taxable. so take the taxable stuff out early when junior is earning a pittance
* only $5,000 of the non-contributions can be withdrawn from an RESP in the first 13 weeks.
* even if junior doesn't go to uni or college - wait. they may change their mind. and once you liquid the RESP, you won't be able to get back any of non-contribution portion
* the life on an RESP is 36 years
* to avoid a penalty - you could transfer the non-contribution amounts to an RRSP
* before buying anything, calculate he per use cost to determine it's value
* the average CDN family spends $802 a month on food
* if you write a cheque, and that cheque goes to a third party (think cash stores), the third party has a right to collect the money - even if you put a 'stop' on the cheque... a crossed cheque, with 'non-negotiable', on it will make that impossible
* new investors can avoid being overwhelmed by choice buying the index

things i must do now:
* go back to reviewing my credit card statements carefully - did you know they can suddenly lower your credit limit (and not tell you) and then charge you a penalty if you go over said new limit!
* make sure all our investments: RRSP, RESP, insurance, TFSA... have a named beneficiary. most probate fees increase dramatically with the size of the estate
* write a will
* officially name a guardian for the children
* name a 'contingent subscriber' on the RESP - if you die before the kids reach college, the fund will terminate and you'll lose all the government grants
* consider using crossed cheques for activities / purchases that require a series of post dated cheques * find out when my life insurance term ends and compare it to permanent (but probably dropped the ball on that one)
* consider increasing our insurance deductibles (since a claim causes insurance to go up 10% for the next 3 years at least, people will pay out of their own pocket for smallish claims)
* find out if my RESPs are covered by CDIC
* get another credit card (with a small credit limit) for on-line purchases

tiny beautiful things: advice on love and life from dear sugar by cheryl strayed
this author has/had an on-line column under the pseudonym of  'sugar' and she's gotten enough press to get a book deal...  in the column, she practises 'radical empathy' which seems to me to be regular straightforward advice steeped in the language of validation and support.  so - she'll start off telling you that your (fill-in-the-blank) behavior is sooo understandable, relateable, and practically impossible to avoid if you are a human being - and then tell you the said behavior is destructive/selfish/obnoxious...  it reminded me of the non-violent communication style of talking - a whole lot of yammer-yammer before you could tell your child to stop hitting their brother.  i also think it's a book better tasted in small sips (one or two letters/replies) because radical empathy loses it's authenticity when it's repeated ad nauseam. yes, that means it got on my nerves.