Dunn-Dufault: June 2014

YA - tally: 2

a monster calls by patrick ness
well done. the story is from an idea by siobhan dowd (so i'm curious to look her up and see if it's HER or HIM that made the story so compelling)
a monster in the form of a walking yew tree arrives at the window of a boy in denial of his mother's terminal cancer. so sad and yet so good. stories DO help us understand and 'tidy up' strong emotions but what if the stories aren't so tidy? what if the emotions are too messy to tidy? a properly messy book that still manages a lyrical ending.

if i stay by gail forman
a real tearjerker.
i read someplace they are turning this into a movie and i'm not sure how that's going to work because she dies pretty early on in the book. so its most told in flashback mode as she remembers events... spolier alert: her whole family dies in a horrific accident and she's hovering between life and death and trying to decide to stay or not. in the end, she chooses life - entirely because of her boyfriend (which is a ridiculous weight to put on a highschool romance BUT this is a YA book afterall - teen girls will eat that up)
so yes, it's a tear jerker as she feels the loss of each of her family members. and there's no mention of the incredible burden her young love will have to absorb and endure. ie: could you ever leave a girl like that??

novels - tally: 8

the bone people by keri hulme
what an odd duck of a book - no grammar or spelling rules, stream-of-conscious rants, deeply flawed people and mystical turn of events.
but nope, I didn't like it. in fact, I only finished it b/c it was my choice for bookclub.
there's no much to cringe at: a young kid smoking, a drunk and abusive father, dead bunnies, dreams of rivers flowing from vaginas..... I get that I am reacting in a 'western' way and, consequently, judging another's culture but I can't help who I am, even if what I am is a colonial master.
one thing I did appreciate was the delicate dance back and forth of kerewin discovering the child abuse, her trying to rectify it with what she's seen of the relationship, and her simmering anger. the abuse/violence is viewed from all 3 main characters and their reflections take a significant portion of the novel. it shapes them and defines the story.

cockroach by rawi hage
at first i really liked this book: an angry immigrant for once (after all the cheerful and perseverant immigrant tales) he's louse - a cockroach actually, but he seems to have a justified cynicism.
but then the symbolism became too heavy handed and i lost interest and/or concern for the guy.

the grandmothers: 4 short novels by doris lessing
my first doris lessing. after watching 'adore' on screen and learning it was based on a lessing short story/novella, i just had to read it! the plot of the story is just about the same as the novel, but - in print - the story is one moment, framed by the envy of a waitress that has seen this family come and go and has always wished to be a part of them. a great point of view as the scene deteriorates when the newly-learned truth is shared with both the other wife, and the grandmothers. a fine pivot point that lets the whole of the story be told without immediate judgement and distain because, afterall, it is already done and the punishment delivered.
the book also contains 3 other stories and i really enjoyed the sci-fi type one as well as the one titled: victoria and the staveneys. the author moves the point of view from one character to another and keeps it there - changign the poijt of the story and keeping you off balance. lessing write a long, rich description of the sea journey during the war in 'a love child' but other parts of the story were sterile in comparison.

the interestings by meg wolitzer
meg wolitzer just 'gets' me. her book, the 10 year nap spoke direct to me at a time that i was living a tandem life to her main character, and now she's written an arching novel that takes her teen protagonist, jules, to her mid 50s - like a manual for me :)
reading this book i remembered the freshness and intensity that was 15. it's made me re-exam my current attitude about art with respect to pepper's academic record and possible career outcomes.
i listened to the book on CD but i'll have to go back and read it. there were so many quotables, so many nuggests of truth i want to hold on to.

lord of the flies by william golding
perhaps this should be categorized as YA, but the facts are that 1) golding wrote this for an adult audience 2) his publisher sold it to an adult audience and 3) the YA category didn't even exist back then!
anyhow, it's often read in highschool (i didn't - we were assigned john knowle's 'a separate peace') but fierce was reading it for a writing critique so i picked it up as well.
it's got some archaic vocabulary, and long descriptive passages so i can see how it might dovetail into middle school boys hating to read. i was also surprised at how piggy was described. knowing that his death was to be a pivot point of the novel, i expect a more compassionate account of him (thru either the author's or the protagonist's eyes) but he's actually quite easy to dislike. then again, that may be the point. a kid you tease, bully and even hate still is not deserving of death. maybe the pivot point is supposed to happen in the reader's mind.

the imposter bride by nancy richler
with it's a soap opera title, i didn't expect much from this book so i was pleasantly surprised to have the plot move quickly from the imposter to her 6 year old child and to her future sister-in-law's family. the book was choppy - shifting backwards and forwards through time without much grace or warning. but i liked that at first, as if it was a new book every time and maybe i'd like this one better.
but ultimately, i felt nothing for these characters. an attempt for closure at the end of the book consisted of an unspoken understanding between the abandoned child and mother so i, the uninformed reader, am still in the dark. except, as i already stated, i don't care about any of the characters so i can't even muster outrage at the author's choice of ending.

the lottery by shirley jackson
my first surprise was how short a short story could be. there are more than 25 in this collection.
my next surprise was that, although stephen king lists her as a strong influence, her stories are not nywhere close to horror/suspense. no, her stories aremore a study in human foibles
my last surprise was that i'd read some of these tales before. i knew and liked her work already.

hector and the search for happiness by francois lelord
reminiscent of The Alchemist, with it's journey and constant meditation, this is another simple parable about one man's life that is supposed to make you reflect on your own. in this case, the meditations are on happiness. and yes, I did reflect on these simple truths. but I confess to being even more interested in the real story between the lines. hector meets a high class prostitute in hong kong and falls in love with her, even to the point of wishing it was possible to love 2 women at once (he has a steady companion back home already; in fact he 'chooses' to be with her by the end of the parable and she, feeling this steady love, dedicates more of her time to be with him).
meanwhile, in lelord's real life, he married a Vietnamese woman and they live in Thailand - both hotbeds for sex tourism. does this fact imply life is not as simple as this parable? perhaps simply choosing and loving someone doesn't make them a better fit for you? or maybe, potential wives don't WANT to read about their mate visiting a prostitute and falling in love so quickly with their beauty, or that one night with such a woman could so easily displace their feelings.

non-fiction & memoirs - tally: 5

the fear: robert mugabe and the martyrdom of zimbabwe by peter godwin
this is a horrible book - the content, i mean - not the style or the writing...
i've read the author's other 2 memoirs of zimbabwe and loved them. same thing this time, 2 or 3 pages in, and i immediately recognized how much i like reading his prose. although the material should be daunting and i should feel reluctant to immerse myself in all this true violence, i continually looked forward to the next time i could pick up the book.
of course, i feel angry about the content. i feel ashamed that this all went on while i lived my little life in 2009, only vaguely hearing the news reports. i feel disheartened over the ease in which some people embody evil.

pastrix: the cranky, beautiful faith of a sinner & saint by nadia bolz-weber
more of a memoir than i was anticipating (i heard her on the radio and was intrigued), this book went quickly from a tatooed, alcoholic, recovering fundamentalist to a typical, run-of-the-mill preacher. sure, she comes off as 'dear sugar' (cheryl strayed) with her prefacing radical empathy, but ultimately she uses the same turn-off vocabulary i've heard/read in the past like: ...a kingdom rules by the crucified one and populated by the unclean...
what's next: the blood of the lamb?
this was my choice for bookclub so i was disappointed. her 'radical beliefs' reputation has more to do with her unorthodox looks and her inclusion of marginalized people in her church. unfortunately, this book can only preach to the converted.

the inconvenient indian by thomas king
'canada reads' selected a book they thought all canadians should read to change the world/our country and picked joseph boyden's The Orenda but THIS is the book that all canadians should read.
king is funny and he eases you into the topic by starting with hollywood, light banter, and puns. but make no mistake - he knows his facts and soons hammers them hard. i finally have a handle on the oka crisis, what elijah harper did, and what happened at the caledonia estates. sure the papers reported the present day facts - but without the history, there's no context: no hope for understanding.

the opposite of loneliness: essays and stories by marina keegan
heartbreaking to read - because THIS was a voice that was going to move mountains.
the author, only 22, died 5 days after her graduation from Yale. and her opening piece, Cold Pastoral, is a masterful tale of modern life for the twenty-somethings of today. there's feeling nostalgia for that age, and there's living at that age: marina keegan writes it as fresh and yet absolutely tangible to this 40+ year old.
some of her essays were meh (but is that a fault of her writting or my lack of interest in that particular subject?) but some were enlightening enough to make me ant to change my opinion about academics, job prospects, and designs for the future.
it is in the essays that her family, her mom especially, must find some comfort in their loss. marina was cognisant of her parents' lives in a way that most 22 year old wouldn't yet be: "i'd laugh at her love and scoff at her efforts. it didn't matter to me. i was still too young to try on her shoes." while it's true her life was cut short, in many ways - with her empathy, reflection and experience - she was an old soul.

the normal bar: the surprising secrets of happy couples and what they reveal about creating a new normal in your relationship by chrisanna northrup, pepper schwartz, and james witte
mostly a waste of time, this book is too vague to be of any use. i don't care how the stats compare internationally, and i don't believe anecdotal stuff has any real value. give me the straight dope - i'm capable of analyzing it myself.
the biggest strength of their study is also their weakest: is it so wide (international, as i've mentioned) but including results from china or india - where cultural norms and/or economics are so different from here - can easily skew results. plus the 'findings' are based on internet questionnaires - that's what people will admit to, not necessary actually BE.
lastly, for a book that purports to have data on so many relationship parameters, they still wrote this sentence: It is worth considering that a very large number of men who visit prostitutes are married... with no data to back-up this claim (besides, who really cares? the data you could - and should - report is the % of maried men who have used a prositute, not a breakdown of said prostitute's client breakdown)