my life in books: quaterly review

junior fiction - tally: 3

a wrinkle in time by madeleine l'engle

heavyhanded. i know this is pre-harry potter and all, but children's literature doesn't have to be so obvious.

there's 5 books in this series and not only was i uninterested in continuing, i didn't see much point in trotting it out for the kids

caddie woodlawn by carol ryrie brink

read alongside fierce for SOTW, this is your typical 'year in the life of a pioneer' story. fierce thought it was a girl doing huck finn; i thought it was an upper class little house of the prairie. there is no great hardship for this family that has the largest home in the town, and learn they are descendants of english nobility. for that reason, i like the little house series is superior. but the whole enterprise is worth it for this one hillarious story that the main character's brother invents. fierce alughed aloud while at a store, and i laughed just as much alone in my car waiting for piano lessons to finish

 

night journey by kathryn lasky   

again, read alongside with fierce for SOTW. the story is told in tandem between superficial present day for rache (boring!), and 1900s russia for her great great grandmother (much more interesting). it's a very cultural jewish book - lots of identity and worry/shock over losing that identity - and very little religious underpinning.

you learn what a samovar and a pogrom is. not much else.

YA - tally: 2

under the never sky by veronica rossi

this started out as a pretty good sci-fi but then stalled in the middle and never recovered. i liked the concept of the pods and living thru virtual reality - something done many times - but the character left the pod too soon and we don't get a good sense of the underlying life there. by the time the negative side is described, i'd lost interest.

the outsiders have a good angle too - with many of their kind having their senses heightened - but this was also not developed enough.

there's a romance in there that would readily appeal to teen girls but that arc seems to take over the story. and then nothing is really resolved as you realize this is a (hopeful) trilogy. i won't be reading the rest because i can already predict what will happen.

confessions of a serial kisser by wedelin van draanen

i started this book thinking it was trite and shallow - silly teenage girl wanting a 'crimson kiss' (a la the romance novel she's reading) and kissing boys right, left and center while referencing 70s and 80s rock band. but man - and i should have known better because, after all, she's the incredibly awesome author of flipped! - and she sucked me in good!

great, great platform for teenage angst, searching for identity, and the perils of leaving your social standings... plus she writes some yummy kissing scenes :) i can now understand why some of my peers fell for 'twilight' - it brought them back to highschool (it didn't for me) but this quick novel took me there completely :)

graphic novels - tally: 9

the unwritten - tommy taylor and the bogus identity by mike carey
the unwritten - inside man
the unwritten - dead man's knock
the unwritten - leviathan
the unwritten - on to genesis
the unwritten - tommy taylor and the war of words
a couple new books of the series came out and i just HAD to go back to the beginning and read them again - not only for recapturing the plot, but more the sheer joy of them!  this is the best graphic novel/series i've ever read.  we're got gilgamesh in here, cain and abel, moby dick, beatrix potter, charles dickens, dime store pulp novels, the history of comic books - every facet and medium of the written word.  (plus other means for story telling: propaganda films, marionettes...)  a mecca for a lover of books and stories.

primates - the fearless science of jane goodall, dian fossey and birute galdikas by jim ottaviani and maris wicks

with hindsight, it's easy to be blaise about scientific discovery, but once again (like in his book T-minus) ottaviani does a good job at explaining why the work and the results were SO captivating in their day.

of the three sections/stories, the best was jane goodall where a true storie arc (childhood to senior) came through. the other 2 stories started when louis leakey met them and, since he always came across as domineering and a lech, felt like a rotten starting point.

 

science tales by darryl cunningham

this book is evidence that everything and anything is being turned into a graphic novel.  short vignettes that could easily be communicated through a magazine article.  i didn't see any need, or additional insight, in the use of pictures throughout.

only benefit - fierce picked it up, read it entirely, and can recall it all (the recalling isn't special - it's the impetus to start it) so i guess there is an audience for what i think is redundant.

 

a wrinkle time adapted by hope larson

having NOT liked the book, i gave the graphic novel a try.  nope.  still kinda crap.

 

novels - tally: 8

the almost moon by alice sebold

deeply dissatisfying. i enjoyed the lovely bones and lucky, and expect much better from her. but nothing happens that can be properly explained. perhaps the fault lies in having the plot occur within 28 hours - the use of backflashes were still not enough to ground the characters to each other and explain the present tense. everyone comes off as mentality ill.

sharp objects by gillian flynn

as promised, it was a page-turner - you didn't want to put it down.

but i figured out who was the killer halfway through the book and my need to finish the novel was tied with wanting to see if i was right. i was.

even the munchausen by proxy side plot was easily seen once it was revealed that the dead sister was sick her whole life long.

the only shock i had was that the girl's posse played such as active role in the murders (which conveniently explains how it's possible for someone so young/weak to carry out a murder)

so i can't say this was a good book... and i feel like i wasted a whole day (i did say it was impossible to put down, didn't i?) reading this instead of interacting with my family.

 

the space between us by thrity umrigar

hollow.

this book was hollow where substance could have been. set in poverty-laden india, the same-same story of evil higher classes destroying lower caste innocents is ravelled out once again. it's 'a fine balance' without any of rohinton mistry's talent.

this author is so careful to fill up all the things a character is thinking, and all the ways that character might interprete another's actions that we are left with no imagination of our own, no way to connect with the character on our own terms (also, the character's mindset is usually one of bewilderment at being abused - even after said abuse reoccurs and reoccurs. no malice or thoughts of revenge are born)

life after life by kate atkinson

not sure how i feel about this one. at first i thought we were mistaken, ursula didn't die in the first chapter - but quickly realized that whenever she died, the story started again. but by the time the book ended, it seemed that other characters could restart life as well with mixed results (teddy happily reunited with nancy, but sylvia takes her own life as if she cannot endure another repeat)

i also thought it would end when ursula 'learned' from her mistakes, and killed hitler - but it didn't. and that confused me. all the talk of reincarnation with her psychiatrist, and the horrors of war, and even the prologue indicated that was the climax - to stop it. but the fact that life restarted after that ending made the whole thing seem inconsequential. and rather depressing.

since finishing the book, i've read a reviewer compare it to a video game - one where the influenza epidemic, and the blitz, are the harder 'bosses'. how true.

 

beautiful ruins by jess walter

read this one too fast. it could have been better, and even taken me in emotionally, if i'd taken more time with it. it read like a movie - convenient, since it was set in hollywood present day-ish as well as a hop/skip/jump from the set of the fiasco 'cleopatra' from way back when.

it was the sort of book that you finish and don't think much of (good or bad) but when you discuss it, you remember all the (quite) funny parts. i'm going to give this author another try. and this time allow myself more time to finish :)

because they wanted to by mary gaitskill

perhaps i'm too old or prudish to read a book that mostly features single, 30 year olds searching or meaning and/or sex. i read and loved Bad Behavior, and Two Girls, Fat and Thin. i practically begged my book club to read this collection of short stories. and now i'm feeling slightly embarrassed to defend these stories that are hyper focused on sex in general, and masochism in specific.

 

the language of flowers by vanessa diffenbaugh

a great start, and a strong finish, but the middle parts didn't connect with me. a newly emancipated foster child makes her way into the world with suspicion and a strong aversion to human connections. she was the easiest to understand, but the characters that surround her were baffling - they had so much unexplained love and support for the main character; i just couldn't buy it.

that, combined with all the 'just in time' plot points (like getting a bonus just when she needed a car; or meeting a midwife just before she gets pregnant, or having an unexpected, paid-for leave from work just she gets focused on a photography project and her new lover) made for a too contrived book.

 

gone girl by gillian flynn

of course i need to brag that i knew throughout part 1 that i was dealing with unreliable narrators - nick, who was upfront about his evations and lies, and amy, whose background in psychology made her an ideal author of a fudged journal.

so i was thrilled in part 2 when amy's authentic voice spoke up and i no longer had to ping pong between nick bashing her head in, and amy executing a brilliant revenge plan.

but it didn't end there - the author does a bang up job of dragging us back to an investment of amy. yes, she's psychopath, but were rooting for her to keep her identity secret (or at least keep her safe from those 2 rednecks, and later her ex-boyfriend) and since we're also rooting for nick, we are just as pleased (but an uneasy pleased) that she can return and sort of get away with it. well, we seesaw over that last part.

ultimately - besides being the most entertaining and plot twisting mystery i've ever read - you might even think the author is commenting on the institution of marriage itself. like stephen sondheim's marriage song/masterpiece: sorry-grateful

 

 

non-fiction - tally: 4

the ultimate TFSA guide by gordon pape

this topic did not deserve a full book. it could have easily been covered in a pamplet. the author gives a speil about how the conservatives came around to introducing the TFSA and how few canadians are properly taking advantage of it. but then he does his own comparision of this product vs RESPs for education savings and finds RESPs yield a higher rate. same thing when he does a comparison with saving for house using RRSPs - RRSPs are better. and RRSPs are better if you'll be in a lower tax bracket in the future, when you take out the cash. so really, didn't he just explain WHY so many people are not using TFSAs yet? they are choosing superior paths dependant upon their goal.

oh, and the author continually uses 4 or 5% as the annual growth of a TFSA - ha! more like 1-2%

practically perfect in every way by jennifer niesslein

right from the start i loved this author - co-founder of BrainChild, naturally cynical (but trying to not be), strong willed and strongly opinionated - she is exactly like me. as i went through the book i mentally checked off the things we had done (and failed at):

flylady: oh yes you get the sense of satisfaction at first, but eventually it becomes a continual task and one that is reserved for women alone. bunk. (but i still watch those hot spots!)

retirement planning: we both hit a wall when we were forced to think: when will i die? when will my partner die? the statistics are easy to look up - do you want to know?

dr laura: how did she (temporarily) reel us both in? how does she continue to find her audience?

parenting philosophies: oh god, why can't people just choose their path? every niche acts like it's got the one, BEST, approach and you're a dummy for not following it. better yet, your child/ren will suffer for your ignorance

social graces: yes, we can widen our circle of casual friends with these handy tips - but to what avail? casual friendships offer no real relationship, and all that surface yappy-yappy takes time away from somethings you really want to do.

there came a point when the author took a 2 question test for her happiness quoitient - each with only 2 possible answers - and her answers seemed like the only possible ones that anyone could choose. out of curiosity i asked rob the same Qs. he answered exactly opposite of me. wow (on so many levels - that i was just like the author, that i couldn't even imagine someone thinking differently, the implications of rob's answers, and the implications for our relationship...)

but then she moved on to the 'health'portion of her self-help quest and totally lost me. she is a smoker.

a smoker.

how could not have come up before? when taking about daily savings (drop the 'latte factor'), this is exactly where the cost of cigarettes would come up. the author continually mentions her daily life as her writes the book - walking to the bus stop, chatting with a neighbor, being looked at weirdly by the cashier, tossing a treat to her dog, chopping veggies for dinner. how come she never mentioned the ubiquitous drag on a cigarette? in her 'winning freinds and influencing people section' how could smoking NOT come up? smoking is a class distinction here in canada, is it not so in the US? and in the marriage chapter, now i wonder if her husband smokes (and if he doesn't - how do they work around that?) and no parent is unaware of the health dangers present to children in smoking households...how could she be silent on smoking in the parenting chapter???

so i was really annoyed she chose to tackle her health self-improvement as her second-last task. and even then, she focused on her weight first: taking on exercise, then moderating her diet. she never even tries to quit smoking in this book - a book that is supposed to be about self-improvement!

(all that said, i do plan to read a few of the advice/self-help books she read. and it's been an eyeopener for me to see that i am an '-ist', not racist or sexist, or classist - i'm a smokist)   

 

don't know much about geography by kenneth cole

read with fierce for our geography course, it was a through trek thru history seen through the eyes of a real estate broker (location, location, location). where it was history we had already covered, it was great. but when it was more recent, and we didn't have the base knowledge, it was hard to grasp because - let's face it - geography without a framework is a boring list of never-heard-of places.

the book was published in the early 90's and it's a product of it's time - pushing an environmental agenda and raising all sorts of warning bells. actually it was quite a downer in that aspect. all the worries for the environmental age have gone nowhere - acid rain, artic ice melting, the hole in the ozone layer, carbon emissions...

how come that idiot's rich and i'm not by robert shemin
this guy is way too voodoo for me: suggesting you wear a wealth talisman, saying there's a spiritual aspect to wealth, repeating your wealth/commitment affirmation twice a day...

he's got lots of catch phrases and examples to back them up but they don't always make sense (for example: 'make it till you make it' advocates you ACT and DRESS wealthy to meet the right people but then his real life example is a poor woman who treated herself to tea at the plaza and then fesses-up to the maitre d' - who then gives her champagne and strawberries on the house and it starts a yearly ritual and relationship. um, with the maitre d'. i doubt that the 'fake' you wanted to make) he also thinks bringing up donald trump is a going to impress readers - but that guy is an idiot; he'll sell his name anywhere and for any price. that is not financial credibility.

this shemin has made a lot of money thru real estate - but i doubt his ethics. at some point he even brags about signing 65 people from one of his seminars to (what amounts to) a pyramid scheme... but he only signed himself up once he had those names, and puts his name first. (he got a cheque for 8K for delivering those names) and his math is lacking - he brags that a woman 'made' $500K when she sold a $750K house for $1250K, but that doesn't take into account the larger mortage payments she had to make for 4 years, the higher property tax, and the higher upkeep the property needed (vs the 200K house she would have bought). oh, and he never mentions the risk of carrying such a large mortage.

of course i wait to google him until after i read the book and see there are lots of complaints against him. ultimately, things worked out for him (and other 'from-nothings' like him) because he had nothing to lose and lots to gain. ie: low risk, pay payoff. works well if you start as a highschool dropout with an empty bank account.