Category Archives: Books

Wow it’s almost Thanksgiving and the start of the busy holiday season, my, how time flies! I wish everyone in the States a very happy turkey day with family and friends. In Canada I hope to re-celebrate the holiday with a smaller feast with my husband and dog since it’s a regular work week here, blah. Where’s the fun in that?

We are supposed to see some new snowflakes this week so I might have to splurge and get a hot cocoa like this decadent one I consumed recently. It was oh so good but gave me a headache from the intense sugar rush. How cold has it been where you are? Hopefully not as bad as the snowbelt of Buffalo. Those poor people are having to tunnel out of their houses!

My two-year-old Lab, Stella, sure knows how to spend these wintry afternoons. She likes to run at the park in the early mornings and evenings but in the afternoons she dozes off into dreamland, preferably near the floor heater. I think she’s dreaming sometimes about chasing bunnies and squirrels because her paws wiggle and she makes funny sounds.

This week I finished the 2007 nonfiction memoir “Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil” by Deborah Rodriguez & Kristin Ohlson, which was a book club read that our group discussed on Thursday. It’s about a woman from Michigan, Deborah, who travels with an aid organization to Afghanistan in 2002 shortly after the Taliban has been driven out. There, she gets the idea to help set up a beauty school for Afghan women to train to become hairdressers and salon owners. The memoir chronicles Deborah’s efforts to help set up the school during the four to five years she’s there and the women she meets along the way, many of whom become her students. The book gives a glimpse into Kabul and Afghan society that many in the West don’t know too much about.

I appreciated her efforts to try to help the Afghan women and the insights she provides into life there. I thought she was bold — and a bit foolish perhaps — to go to Kabul when the country was still so torn from war and when she still had two boys at home. Like others in my book group, I liked parts of the memoir, which is filled with stories of women’s lives there, but also thought the book has some drawbacks. It’s not written particularly well, and the woman, Deborah, makes some cultural blunders along the way that at times puts her Afghan women friends and students in awkward or dangerous situations. Also why she marries an Afghan man who she’s barely just met there after going through two bad marriages in the States seems beyond perplexing. She’s definitely got an impulsive, crazy, and emotional streak about her that a few in our group found pretty annoying.

Still I’m glad I read it for opening my eyes a bit more to life in Afghanistan, which I’ve also read about in Khaled Hosseini’s novels. Anything that can help women to work or make money there, I’m definitely for. “Kabul Beauty School” certainly paints a bleak picture of women’s lives in Kabul, but it also captures women’s eagerness for change and gaining rights to make their own living and lives. You definitely root for them in this book, which counts as my nonfiction November read, which is a meme co-hosted by Kim over at the blog Sophicated Dorkiness. Check out all the nonfiction this month people are reading!

Meanwhile I picked up two novels from the library: “Life Drawing” by Robin Black and “The Girls of Corona del Mar” by Rufi Thorpe. I hope to race through both before consuming the nonfiction epic “Unbroken: World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption” by Laura Hillenbrand, which is coming out as a movie at Christmas. Hmm … so much reading, so little time.

What about you — have you read any of these and what did you think? And what does your reading look like over the holidays?

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I finished Suzanne Collins’s last book in her trilogy “Mockingjay” in time for the upcoming movie adaptation. I’m geared and ready, but think it was a mistake for them to cut the final book into two movies. How greedy is that? Time magazine says this movie is little more than a “placeholder” for the finale “Mockingjay Part 2,” which is expected to hit theaters on Nov. 25, 2015. It’s too bad they didn’t keep it as one movie because I think it would’ve given the movie better pacing and action — these are my thoughts even before seeing it.

As for the book, it’s quite good like the others. You might recall from the end of the last Hunger Games, Katniss is taken by the resistance to District 13, an underground place whose people are unifying the districts of Panem to overthrow the tyrannical Capitol. There, she’s reunited with her mother and sister Prim, and goaded into becoming the symbol for the rebellion, the Mockingjay. But the Capitol is running lethal bombing raids and has kidnapped Katniss’s boy wonder Peeta, turning him into a weapon to hurt her and the rebellion. It’s a dicey situation and one that eventually leads to all out war.

“Mockingjay” doesn’t include a Hunger Games competition like the other two books, but its war games make the latter half of the novel pretty tense and compelling. Ultimately Katniss is left in a precarious situation, leading a rebel group, which includes her love interests Gale and Peeta, on an invasion of the Capitol — her mission being to assassinate President Snow. It’s an action-packed, mostly underground journey full of mines, wild creatures, and Capitol troops at their heels. The odds aren’t exactly in their favor one might say. You have to wonder if Katniss and the rebel group will get to Snow and overthrow the Capitol, and if they survive, if she will pick Gale or Peeta to be her man.

The ending has a few fatalities and surprises that skew what you might be expecting. It’s clear in this trilogy that no one really gets out unscathed. It’s a sci-fi post apocalyptic world that’s super violent and where loyalty and trust are hard to come by. The trilogy’s message seems to be one of warning and anti-war. I liked the young-adult series and think Collins on the whole did a good job putting it together. It’s a daunting militaristic world — we could face in the future — with little resources and full of damaged and hardened characters.

What about you — have you read “Mockingjay” and what did you think about it? Do you plan to see the movie? Continue reading →

It’s been a busy past week in book-related news. First off, congratulations to Tasmanian author Richard Flanagan for winning the 2014 Man Booker Prize for Fiction for his novel “The Narrow Road to the Deep North.” Like Eric Lomax’s memoir “The Railway Man,” which I read and reviewed earlier this year, Flanagan’s book is about a prisoner-of-war working on the Thailand-Burma “Death” railway in WWII. The main character is an Australian surgeon whose life is a daily struggle to save the men under his command. The novel’s inspired by Flanagan’s father’s experiences as a Japanese prisoner-of-war at a camp where 14,000 died. I know I’ll want to read “The Narrow Road,” but I still have another scary P.O.W. book to read first … “Unbroken” by Laura Hillenbrand. Need I say more? The film opens at Christmas.

Meanwhile our city’s annual book festival, Wordfest, has been going on this week, and as usual it’s been great hearing authors do readings and interviews about their latest books. I’ve been attending an event each evening and so far have heard Emma Donoghue (“Frog Music”), Damon Galgut (“Arctic Summer”), Tahereh Mafi (“Shatter Me” series), Veronica Roth (“Divergent” series), Padma Viswanathan (“The Ever After of Ashwin Rao”), Alison Pick (“Between Gods”), and Miriam Toews (“All My Puny Sorrows”). Some of these authors’ works I’ve known and others I have not, but hearing from them made me interested in their works nonetheless.

Apparently 600 people were in attendance when authors Tahereh Mafi and Veronica Roth interviewed each other at the Knox Church downtown. They held a good discussion and are quite poised and mature for their young age and huge success (both are only 26!). Call me a YA ignoramus, but I didn’t know about Mafi’s “Shatter Me” series beforehand, but she spoke very eloquently about her life as a writer and what it takes. Roth was cool as well. I read and reviewed her book “Divergent” in March before the movie came out. She came off looking a bit punk with very short, dyed blond hair and black boots. She’s tall to begin with, around 6 feet, whereas Mafi says she is 5’ 2.” Roth says she started fiction writing everyday when she was 11 (holy smokes), whereas Mafi took it up after college. I’m not sure what is next for either of them, but they still have long writing careers ahead.

It’s been an inspiring book festival this year, but it’s not over just yet. I still have two author talks left to go to: Canadian author Kathleen Winter tonight and Australian author Tim Winton on Sunday. You might recall Winter’s 2010 novel “Annabel,” which I read and reviewed earlier this year. She’ll be talking about her new nonfiction book “Boundless: Tracing Land and Dream in a New Northwest Passage” about a journey she took from Greenland to Baffin Island and all along the storied Northwest Passage. I can’t wait to hear about it and will likely get the book as she is such a terrific writer. Tim Winton, too, will be talking about his latest novel “Eyrie,” which I reviewed earlier this year. He’s been a finalist for the Booker Prize twice and is an amazing talent. I especially liked his novels “Breath” and “Dirt Music” and hopefully will have him sign my copy of them.

Lastly in book news this week, I finished Rebecca Skloot’s 2010 nonfiction bestseller “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” which was a book club read that we plan to discuss on Tuesday. I had this book sitting on my shelf for four years so I’m glad to have finally polished it off. It’s about a woman who died from cancer in 1951 and the cancer cells that were taken from her without her knowledge, which became the first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, launching a medical revolution in developing vaccines and uncovering secrets about viruses and cancer.

It’s a book about science — about what her cells did and contributed to — and bioethics — about whether consent or compensation is due when cell or tissue samples are taken — but it’s also a story about finding out who Henrietta Lacks was and tracking down her family. It turns out she was a poor black Southern tobacco farmer from Clover, Virginia, and her family didn’t know about her cells or her contribution to science till 20 years after her death. Moreover, they never received any compensation for her cells even though they’ve been sold worldwide to doctors and research labs ever since.

It’s quite a story that obviously you’ll see from the book’s writing consumed the author’s life in piecing it together for more than a decade. I can’t believe Rebecca Skloot’s patience in writing this book! She seems to hold it together, even when the Lacks family wasn’t easy to deal with a lot of the time nor the medical establishments. Towards the middle, I found the book bogged down a bit in its repetition of information about the cells. Luckily it picks up again later. In the end, the book gives an eye-opening glimpse into the early days of medical research when doctors experimented on patients without various legal guidelines.

I definitely felt what happened to Henrietta and the family’s story were unfortunate and sad in the book. They were taken advantage of at various points and had little means to hire a lawyer to make their claims and grievances known. It’s a book that raises various questions about what happened to Henrietta, her heirs, and who owns our bodies. It also illuminates the wonder known as the HeLa cell, which has helped people from all over to conquer diseases. I would recommend the book to those interested in science or even nonfiction narrative stories because this one will catch you up in it, rolling along in its grip until its conclusion. It’s just as much a human interest story as it is a science one.

What about you have you read this bestseller and what did you think? Continue reading →

Well, the opening weekend for the movie “Gone Girl” is finally upon us. Is everyone ready? I had to re-check my review of Gillian Flynn’s 2012 bestselling book to remember the gist of it. What I remember is this: the book starts out pretty straightforward or so one thinks and then towards the end it pretty much flies off the rails, right? It takes some pretty crazy twists and turns. But you weren’t expecting Nick and Amy to be the nice married couple who recently moved back to Missouri from New York, were you? So much for the celebration of their fifth wedding anniversary. Amy and Nick are perfect for each other … that is, until they aren’t.

I plan to see “Gone Girl” this weekend. Of course, I have to see if Ben Affleck is the right “Nick” and if Rosamund Pike is the true “Amy.” The two actors didn’t naturally come to my mind when plans for the movie were announced. Affleck was coming off his Best-Picture winner “Argo” and Pike reminded me of her lovely role in “Barney’s Version.” But could either one play conniving dirt bags? I’m sure having David Fincher as director helps. He’s had some big movie hits with “The Social Network,” “Fight Club” and “Seven” to name a few. So “Gone Girl’s” outlook looks promising, even if it’s a lengthy 2.5 hours long. But will the ending be changed? If you were a fan of this book, then you’ll just have to go check it out and see.

Meanwhile I just finished Jonathan Tropper’s 2009 novel “This Is Where I Leave You,” which also has been adapted to the big screen and is in theaters right now. I haven’t seen the movie of it yet, but I thought the book was quite good. You probably saw the movie preview and know it’s about a quirky Jewish family that gathers for the first time in years to observe “sitting shiva” together after the death of the father. The mother, the three grown sons, their sister and the spouses don’t necessarily get along but must gather at their childhood home for seven days to receive visitors and mourn.

With all the colorful personalities, it’s a bit of an awkward situation at the house made more so by the main character, the son, Judd, who happens to be on the verge of a breakdown. He’s discovered his wife has been having an affair with his boss for a year, which has sent him into a dark tailspin, giving the book’s narration a lonely, vulnerable lens.

The book’s rather sad but also quite funny. Tropper has done a number with these characters, especially the four siblings, breathing life and humor into them. There seems to be no real secrets in the family among each other’s personal lives, and none of them has very good relationships with their spouses. It’s a bit of a spoof on relationships and marriages. There’s considerable profanity and sex and sex talk in the book, which might not be for everyone. I think quite a few people at Goodreads disliked how the main character Judd objectifies women through out it (mentioning if they had smooth legs or a great behind etc.). He’s meant to be a lonely, sad sack of a horny male but that’s not to defend it too much.

I, too, at first worried the novel “This Is Where I Leave You” was just going to be a flippant look at a family and imperfect marriages — something for laughs — but instead as it goes on the story conjures some real heart about growing up, family, and the people we love. Not to mention, it’s filled with wry observations about life that seem too good to miss. The suspense of it comes from wondering if Judd is going to resolve his breakdown and marriage, and if the family will pull through the shiva together or implode. You’ll want to stick with it to find out. Tropper is definitely a talented writer who pulls it wonderfully together. I hadn’t read him before, but plan to check out his novels in the future. I’m thinking the novel must be considerably better than the movie of it out right now. Have you seen it?

Or you have you read this novel or author before? Or have you seen the new “Gone Girl” movie? And what did you think? Continue reading →

Greetings and happy September! I was away for a while, sailing with my hub on Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River. We rented a boat and had an enjoyable adventure, sailing during the days and docking overnight at small marinas and islands. I’m still learning quite a bit about sailing, but my husband grew up on it and knows most of the ins and outs. We had some good wind and the area was beautiful and we didn’t have any incidents with the boat or anything so we feel very fortunate that it all worked out quite well.

While onboard I was reading Annie Proulx’s first novel “Postcards” from 1992. It’s not really an easy novel so I’m not sure why I chose it for reading material on the boat, but a friend had given me her copy months ago and told me to read it. So I eventually did, even though I had to push myself a bit in the last 100 pages.

It’s a story that follows the Blood family, who are New England farmers, as they struggle to exist and adapt in the 20th century, from the 1940s through the 1980s. There’s the parents, Jewelle and Mink, the daughter Mernelle, and the sons Dub and Loyal, who turns out to be the main protagonist.

At the beginning, Loyal, the eldest son, is forced to leave the farm when he accidentally kills his lover and hides her within a stone wall. That’s when you get an idea this novel is going to be rather bleak. Loyal doesn’t tell anyone about her death but takes off across the country on a self-imposed exile of solitude and struggle, like he deserved the hardships for his past deed. Over the years, he roves from job to job first in mining, then fossil finding and later trapping, sending back occasional postcards to his family’s farm in Vermont. He’s viewed rather sympathetically in the book despite what he’s done.

Meanwhile, the rest of the family falls in ruins, and eventually loses the farm. The other son Dub and the father spend time in jail for arson, the daughter responds to a lumberman’s ad for a wife, and the mother finds work in a cannery till one day she loses her way driving on a mountain road during a snowstorm.

So all does not go too well for the Bloods. “Postcards” is a different kind of novel, one that follows a family’s struggles during the American 20th century and mixes in postcards at the start of each chapter from the family members to one another and from other characters. The postcards add an interesting dimension to the characters and the times they’re living in. Author Annie Proulx is at her best describing the lives of her gritty characters in farming, mining, hunting, and trapping and the natural world around them. Wow does she seem to know how these people live and breathe. This novel didn’t win the 1993 Pen/Faulkner Award for nothing; she can write.

But the story itself didn’t really consume me, and I didn’t latch on to any of the characters. Towards the end, the book rambles for a while and I had to focus hard to finish it. Proulx seems a brilliant stylist but perhaps her novels such as this one aren’t exactly known for riveting storytelling. They’re known for having quirky, odd characters, yes, in bleak or violent circumstances, but the story not as much. I read her novel “The Shipping News” back in the ‘90s and recall it being filled with quirky characters in dark situations, too.

What do you think? Have you read any of her books before?

It’s good to push oneself reading at times, but now I need something fun and lighter. I’m going to pick up Jonathan Tropper’s novel “This Is Where I Leave You” because the movie is coming out soon and it looks worthy of some laughs. Hopefully the book is good, too. Have you read this one, or do you plan to see the movie? Continue reading →

A lot of people read and raved about Peter Heller’s post-apocalyptic debut novel “The Dog Stars” from 2012. I gave a copy to my Hub who liked it quite a bit. I still plan to read it, but picked up the author’s second novel “The Painter,” wondering if it could be as good.

It’s about a well-known expressionist painter Jim Stegner, 45, who’s trying to piece his life back together after a stint in jail, two divorces and the death of his teenage daughter to a drug dealer. He’s moved from Santa Fe, N.M., to a rural town in Colorado for a fresh start, and appears to be finding solace in the beauty of the wilderness and in fly-fishing. He’s inspired to paint again and finds a model for his art, who’s a fun, smart woman who seems to understand him and get his work. In time, she becomes his girlfriend.

All goes well, until Stegner encounters a man brutally beating a horse. He’s a well-known bad guy who’s a hunting outfitter in the area. Stegner’s violent altercations with him, and then his brother, shatter the peaceful existence of his new-found life. The police are on to Stegner, and so, too, is one of the hunters seeking revenge. Stegner’s on the run, but he’s still painting thought-provoking works fueled by anguish and love. His daughter’s death still hangs over his life. In the end, you’ll be wondering if he’s going to be able to cope without her, and you’ll also wonder if he’ll be arrested for the hunter’s murder, or if he’ll be killed. But you won’t know for sure till the last few pages.

It’s a pretty suspenseful book and I got drawn in by the protagonist’s plight right from the start. He seems a good-hearted, well-intentioned guy who’s made some mistakes and is trying to start anew. Unfortunately he also has some violent tendencies when he runs into bad situations or people, which get him into trouble.

“The Painter’s” plot is compelling and Peter Heller captures the western landscape and fly-fishing beautifully. Painting also plays a big role in the book as Stegner’s mental states take shape on his canvases. For the most part, the depiction of his art throughout it enhances the novel and adds an interesting element. There’s just one point near the end that I felt the painting parts got in the way and were a bit tiresome. It’s when an intense scene with the sheriff confronting Stegner is followed by dozens of pages about Stegner’s next paintings when all you really want to know at that late point is will he be apprehended. It just gets a bit prolonged there.

Otherwise, I really liked Heller’s writing style. “The Painter” has some beautiful descriptions and poignant thoughts on life and love. On top of that it has some intense action scenes, which heighten its suspense. The ending, too, deciding Stegner’s fate, kept me thinking about it for long after. Now I’m really looking forward to reading “The Dog Stars.” After sampling this one, I know it’ll be good. Heller, for sure, is a writer to be watched.

How about you — have you read this novel or author before? And what did you think? Continue reading →

I was at the beach in California for a few days this past week and zoomed through this nonfiction book (pictured below), which proved to be a quick and moving read. “Crazy for the Storm: A Memoir of Survival” by Norman Ollestad was published back in 2009, but I didn’t cross paths with it until recently when I saw it on display in a bookstore in Canada. Come on, with a cover like that there was no way I was going to walk away from it, especially since the book has such terrific blurbs about it all over its front and back.

I was ready for an “Into Thin Air”-type of riveting, survival experience, but this is pleasantly something a bit different, a bit more. It’s mainly about a boy, his family, and particularly his father, living on Topanga Beach in California in the 1970s. The father is an adventurous-type of thrill-seeker who pushes his son from the age of three onward into the world of surfing, hockey, and competitive downhill skiing.

The father’s rather crazy thrusting his son into dangerous challenges at such a young age, but he also has a zest for life that’s quite admirable. The son both resents him for involving him in scary activities and looks up to him. But it’s only when a chartered plane they are riding in crashes in the California mountains does the son realize all that his father has taught him. Ultimately it saves the boy’s life, who is just 11 years old at the time of the crash in 1979 and is left to descend the treacherous peak alone after the three others onboard die.

The son (now in his 40s) narrates “Crazy for the Storm,” alternating chapters from what happened in the crash, to his life before that on Topanga Beach with his mom, her boyfriend, and particularly his relationship with his father. In one episode, he and his father take a long road trip, far south into Mexico and get stuck in a remote area. It turns out being both scary after they’re chased by the federales and exhilarating after the son experiences his first ride through the tube of a big wave.

The chapters of the crash itself are mind-blowing that the son got out at all, and sad that the others did not. His escape down a mountain in a blizzard is utterly heroic and the book is hard to put down. Moreover, throughout the memoir you get a feeling for the closeness of the father and son, their complicated relationship and the sports they shared together. It’s so sad that the son is robbed of all this in such a devastating accident at such a young age.

“Crazy for the Storm” captures the exotic life they led in Topanga, the unique bond they shared, and what the author hopes to pass along to his own son from his thrill-seeking father. Both poignant and illuminating, the book is one of the better memoirs that I’ve read in a long while.

What about you — have you read or seen this book? If so, what did you think? Or what memoir has been a favorite of yours? Continue reading →

Who says dogs can’t fly? My yellow Lab, Stella (pictured above), thinks sometimes she can. She likes to get air time when jumping in the water after her ball. While she’s been spending these hot summer days swimming, I’ve been spending them among other things reading “The Silkworm” by Robert Galbraith (aka J.K. Rowling).

This is my first foray into reading Rowling post-Harry Potter. Instead of her first mystery with private detective Cormoran Strike, “Cuckoo’s Calling,” I went straight to the sequel and wasn’t confused by doing so. “The Silkworm” gives plenty of background on Strike and his handy assistant Robin so I didn’t feel out of the loop without having read “Cuckoo’s Calling,” though I’ll probably go back and read it sometime.

“The Silkworm” lured me, being a murder mystery set within the book publishing industry. Who better than Rowling would have an interesting perspective on that? I was game to see what she had cooked up about it.

The plot’s easy enough to follow. A novelist goes missing who’s just finished his latest manuscript, leading his wife to hire private eye Cormoran Strike to find him. It turns out the manuscript contains poisonous portraits of everyone the novelist (Owen Quine) knows, leading to an array of people who might want want to silence him before it’s to be published. But when Quine is found brutally murdered, the police zero in on his wife, who Strike thinks is innocent. In a race against time, he must find out who really killed him and why.

“The Silkworm” follows a typical murder-mystery arc, but Rowling infuses it with colorful character development. Who can build a cast of characters like she can? Afghanistan war veteran Cormoran Strike makes an intuitive PI, but this time around he’s limping around while trying to solve the case because his knee is injured above his prosthetic leg. His heart and head are a bit of a mess, too, since his longtime girlfriend, Charlotte, is now engaged to somebody else. Meanwhile his assistant Robin is having her own personal problems because her fiance Matthew disapproves of her work with Strike, and yet she wants to become more involved in the investigating and less solely as Strike’s secretary. In the long run both have to overcome their personal dilemmas to make any headway on the case.

The array of suspects in the author’s murder are all pretty slimy. Anyone of them seems like they could have murdered Quine who comes across as an narcissistic jerk. There’s his editor, the alcoholic; his agent, the parasite; his rival (an author who blames him for his wife’s suicide); his mistress who’s an author of fantasy erotica, and a couple of eccentric publishers out only for themselves. Who did it? Well, you won’t know for sure until about the last five pages of the 455-paged book.

“The Silkworm” takes quite a while to get to its conclusion. It’s detailed, lengthy, and not as quick a read as I originally thought it would be. Though Cormoran Strike and Robin are certainly entertaining to follow, I think “The Silkworm” would have been better if it were edited shorter, tauter and even more suspenseful. Moreover the book says Strike’s about 35 years old but to me he came off as older, maybe mid-40s. I also really wanted him to get his bad knee checked because it’s mentioned so many times in the book how he can barely walk that I felt like yelling ‘Please just go see a Doctor! or go to physio.’ But alas, he doesn’t.

I don’t normally read murder-mysteries, but I thought since it was summer it’d make a good back-deck read. For the most part I enjoyed it, especially for the characters and dialogue. The publishing world in “The Silkworm” sure didn’t turn out looking so hot — it definitely exemplified a darker side of people in the book industry, where ambitions in this case ran amok. The plot and conclusion were cleverly done. I guess I just wanted it to get there a bit sooner.

What about you have you read this one? Or any of J.K. Rowling’s books post-Harry Potter? And if so, what did you think? Continue reading →