True Grit Lit

Troy -- Shield of Thunder

David Gemmell

Bantam Press

Have you ever wondered why you like some books and don't like others? As someone who reads almost anything, I have often pondered matters of taste. For me, I think my likes/dislikes are somehow tied to genre. You already know that I'm not a big fan of chicklit --far too much self-indulgent navel gazing in my opinion. In fact, if you chucked the whole memoir genre, I don't think we'd lose too many good books. I definitely don't care for those massive historical tomes that you can only imagine being read by some guy whose smoking jacket smells like stale tobacco and last night's brandy. Self-help books? Uh, not so much ... if I wanted advice from harmless crackpots, I'd ask my family and friends.

So, what does the girl like? Well, believe it or not, I quite enjoy historical fiction that is geared toward a male audience. Go figure ... the feminist in me is shrinking from the keyboard even as I type. Taking place during the time of the Trojan War, Shield of Thunder recounts/rewrites the tales of fabled heroes (Aeneas, Hector, Odysseus) and introduces some new characters into the mix. There is a lot of blood and guts and gore in this novel (not so much sex -- sorry ladies!) and Gemmel makes the characters come alive even as he is describing their grisly deaths.

What I like best about this novel is the pace. While Gemmel is a master of characterization, he doesn't belabour character development and the plot just zips along. At the same time, he also adds his own dimensions to characters that have, to some degree, become firmly etched in western literary tradition. While I didn't need break out either Virgil or Homer to read this book, having them in the background definitely enhanced my enjoyment of the work.

And now for the bad news ... I was very saddened to learn that Gemmel passed away this summer from complications following heart surgery. He was only 57. At the time of his death, he had 70,000 words completed of the final installment of the Troy trilogy. I read somewhere that the outline is finished and his wife, Stella, will put out the third book. Here's hoping that it is a worthy tribute to a good writer.

She Blinded Me with Science

Does Anything Eat Wasps? And 101 Other Unsettling, Witty Answers to Questions You Never Thought You Wanted to Ask

New Scientist

Free Press

So, are you guys ready for yet another startling blog-inspired confession? In addition to loving Bruce Campbell and reading, ahem, the occasional business book, I have a secret addiction to popular science. Scary ... but true. If you must know, I blame my parents. As a little kid, copies of National Geographic were littered all over our house -- I couldn't help myself and just had to read them. To make matters worse, on Saturdays around lunchtime, my mom would sit me down at the kitchen table and I would munch on my pickles and carrot sticks while listening to Quirks and Quarks on CBC radio. Come to think of it, this may also explain my strange obsession with David Suzuki ... hmmmm.

Does Anything Eat Wasps? is a collection of questions posed to the editors of New Scientist magazine for their "Last Word" column. The questions are published and then responded to by the ur-Nerds that make up its readership. For the most part, the answers to the questions the book poses are delivered in layman's terms -- there are only a couple of cases where a reader might get bogged down by too much information and be tempted to scan. I was particularly pleased to learn why I have eyebrows and how much weight I will have to gain to become bulletproof. The questions range from the trivial to the fantastic and a great deal of the responses are articulate, witty, and in some cases, delightfully entertaining. Who said science can't be fun?

Rating? I'm giving this one 4 out of 5 Suzukis.

Who Cares What the Author Thinks Anyway?

Ender's Game
Orson Scott Card
Tor

Maybe it's the perpetual hangover I have from being a student of capital L "Literature," but I loathe introductions. Absolutely HATE them. You know the ones I mean ... the serious essays typically written by some high fallutin' professor type who, while well meaning, is essentially telling us that we're too dumb to interpret the text without his/her literary guidance. They infuriate me. "Why?" you ask. Because in my opinion, an introduction (good or bad) prejudices the entire reading experience. The text no longer stands on its own and inevitably gets interpreted through the context/filter of the words that precede it.

So, why the rant instead of the review? Well, the only thing I hate more than reading an introduction prior to the main text (curiously enough, I am okay with reading it after) is reading an introduction written by the author. Big sigh ... I did not get off to a good start with this book.

Having said all that, Ender's Game is an example of superb science fiction writing and it a lot of ways, it reminds me of Dune. Card tackles immense social, religious, economic and political ideas and asks his readers to recontextualize them against the background of an interstellar war led by genetically engineered children. Ender, the messianic figure at the centre of the story, is a six-year old boy, who is taken from his family, isolated at a military academy and whose every move is manipulated by those in charge. Like a lot of science fiction, ultimately, this is not a happy book -- but it does make for compelling reading. Four out of five battleships.

Bathtub Worthy

Dead Until Dark
Charlaine Harris
Ace

So, uh, I might as well admit it. I'm a bit of a loser. When I get the chance, I like nothing better than to grab a glass of white (pinot grigio if you must know,) light some vanilla candles and soak in the tub with a not-so-good book. I had the opportunity to indulge last night and it was very relaxing.

Dead Until Dark is the story of Sookie Stackhouse -- a beautiful, down to earth twenty-something who works as a barmaid in rural Louisiana. Her life gets complicated when she realizes that someone is murdering women in her very small town. The suspects include her good ol' boy brother Jason, her recently acquired vampire boyfriend Bill, and some of Bill's blood sucking acquaintances from the next town over. Oh yeah, did I mention that Sookie is a telepath and that her boss at the bar is shapeshifter? Right. You get the idea ...

A bit of a genre blender, Dead Until Dark has something for everyone except a strong plot and good characterization. It shouldn't be a surprise if I tell you that the book would make the perfect source material for a B movie script. (Hey ... maybe we could get Bruce Campbell to play Bill-- wouldn't that be fun!) As for a rating, DUD gets one fang out of five. Sorry ... couldn't resist.

Siena mi fe’, disfecemi Maremma

The Painted Veil
W. Somerset Maugham
Vintage International

When The Painted Veil cried out to me at the bookshop the other day, I had no idea that the novel was inspired by a few lines from The Purgatorio. While studying in Italy as a young man, Maugham's imagination was ensnared by Dante's Pia and the account of her grisly death. Apparently, it wasn't until he visited China some years later that he finally found a setting appropriate to the story.

The Painted Veil takes place in London and Hong Kong during the 1920s. The novel opens with the beautiful and somewhat empty-headed Kitty Fane crying out in alarm to her lover -- someone has just tried the door to her room and she is afraid that her husband Walter, a bacteriologist for the colonial government, has come home early. As it turns out, she is correct -- the affair is discovered and as punishment, she is forced to accompany Walter to the cholera-infested mainland. At first, Kitty is numb to everything around her except her husband's anger. She understands that their mission is tantamount to suicide and she comes to regret having the power to hurt Walter so deeply. Of all the characters in the novel, she is the only one who isn't flat -- the harsh, unfamiliar reality of the disease-ridden Chinese forces her to grow and it is a very different Kitty that eventually returns to England.

The Painted Veil is a beautifully crafted story. It has been a long time since I have read any of his work and I had forgotten how precise Maugham's prose can be. Such a clever man to include a reference Shelley's sonnet in the title -- I can't help but think that we are to read the book within the context of the poem. As for a rating ... hmmm, tough one. Let's just say I loved it and leave it at that.

"Um, what circle are we in now?"

100 Ways America is Screwing up the World

John Tirman

Harper Perennial

Over the past week or so, a number of you oh-so-loyal blog readers have sent me notes asking why I haven't posted anything recently. Well, the answer, dear friends, is that I took a bit of a journey. With American foreign-policy guru John Tirman at my side, I descended into the nine circles of Hell and got up close and personal with the darker side of America, her politics and her people.

100 Ways is a serious and sometimes tongue-in-cheek look at how the United States has negatively impacted the rest of the world. Issues discussed are wide-ranging -- from climate change to Billary -- and it is obvious that despite his centre-left views, Tirman has given each of his topics much attention and thought.

To be candid, I struggled through portions of this book -- not because it wasn't interesting, but because it was depressing. The examination of genocide was particularly hard. How could I have been unaware of the slaughter of nearly a half million Filipinos in the early part of the 20th century? Where was that in my history books? Closer to home, where was the acknowledgement that the white settlers of North America wiped out nearly 85% of all indigenous tribes? That's eight to ten million people -- as Tirman states "a slow motion genocide but a very thorough one." How can that not upset me? Big Pharma (way number 36) might suggest Prozac, but that would only treat the symptom.

Like Dante with the Divine Comedy (I can't believe I'm actually making a comparison here, but it does seem to be an underlying theme in this blog,) Tirman tries to end on an optimistic note and proposes a top-ten list of what America does right. I'm not sure it's enough to convince me that the elephant isn't evil, but it at least left me with a more positive vibe. Tirman (not the book) gets 4/5 stars.

Nothing Runs Like a Deere or Smells Like a John (except maybe a scheming trollop)

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
Marina Lewcycka
Penguin Books

I LOVE the title of this book. A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian is a story about suffering, family, survival, and surviving your family. When elderly Nikolai announces to his girls that he has decided to marry a buxom Ukrainian divorcee less than half his age, Nadia and Vera work to set aside their differences to save their father from the clutches of the scheming trollop. Unfortunately, they don't work fast enough and the voluptuous Valentina wins her man. Chaos ensues.

One broken-down Rolls Royce, a used Land Rover, and a Lada later, Nikolai is convinced by his daughters to give up on his marriage (and on his wife's torpedo-like boobs) and ask for a divorce. His only solace is his life's work -- the history of tractors -- which he reads aloud to anyone who will listen.

While I did enjoy aspects of this novel (I think the author has interesting things to say about learning to live in the present and appreciating the immigrant experience in all its diversity,) I hated the tractor bits. They reminded me of the whaling chapters in Moby Dick. I'm quite sure that I'm failing to grasp the underlying meaning of an important literary device, but in this reader's opinion, the book would have been much better (or at least shorter!) without them. Two and a half John Deeres.

And the nominees are ...

You've all probably figured out by now that I really like to read. I'm not sure why ... I don't exactly come from a family of book lovers. My mom worked full-time nights while we were growing up, so her reading time was limited. She definitely needed novels that you could pick up and put down without a tonne of thought. Hence my addiction to the regency romance. I think I had read every Barbara Cartland in print by the time I was ten.

My dad, well, while he wasn't that interested in books, he was (and still is) a committed newspaper reader. His daily view into the world came courtesy of the Toronto Star. On Sundays, he read the Toronto Sun (apparently, it had better sports, the Sunshine Girl, and was more ideologically suited to his political bent.) We also took the two local papers, the weekly from my father's hometown AND the local paper up at the cottage. He read all of them cover to cover -- including the fliers. Like all fathers, my dad possessed a weird sixth sense about improperly folded sections and would scold anyone who touched the paper before he did.

Me? I read EVERYTHING (except for newspapers ... for some reason they make me nervous) and at Christmas, I use the holiday as an excuse to share my love of the written word. Every year, I select one book and give it to my close girlfriends as part of their gift. This year, it was a tough choice. As I scanned back through my book diary, I found there were quite a few works that met my criteria. So ... the nominees for the dog-eared soul's book of the year are:

1. The Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini
2. The Zahir Paulo Coelho
3. I am Charlotte Simmons Tom Wolfe
4. Suite Française Irene Nemirovsky
5. Codex: A Novel Lev Grossman
6. Nick Twisp: Youth in Revolt C.D. Payne

The winner will be announced December 25th at 6:00 pm. A half hour later in Newfoundland.

Get Ur Freak On with Apologies to Missy Elliot

Freakonomics - A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
William Morrow

It would seem that this blog pulls out all my guilty secrets. Yes, I read non-fiction (big gasp from the studio audience.) Even worse? I've occasionally been known to browse and then make a pick from the business section. Shocking, but really, it's all part of my much larger ploy to infiltrate corporate America. Didn't someone once say "know thy enemy?"

Anyway, Freakonomics is a book about nothing -- or at least, as its authors painstakingly point out, it is a book with no unifying theme. In reality, Freakon debunks what John Kenneth Galbraith refers to as "conventional wisdom" and asks readers to consider interesting questions such as "what do school teachers and sumo wrestlers have in common?" (Cheating, in case you are wondering.) Levitt blurs the distinction between economist and social scientist and does it with flair. At no point did I find myself skimming the text -- I was engaged throughout the work and that is a testament to both the fascinating subject matter and the wry wit and approachability of Dubner and Levitt's writing style.

Rating? Gosh, that's a tough question since I know that I have different standards for fiction vs. non-fiction. For a business book, I'd give it five out of five Trumps. Compared to something life transforming like The Reader, it would probably get a three.

Mr. Sandman

Anansi Boys
Neil Gaiman
Harper Torch

Okay, I've been staring at a blank screen for about an hour now, thinking about what to write for this entry. There isn't anything new that I can say about Gaiman or his work that hasn't already been expressed elsewhere. So, I'll just sum up all the reviews you could possibly find on the internet and give it to you straight ... the man is a brilliant storyteller.

Anansi Boys, in particular, is an inventive, funny and oft-times disturbing novel where the author combines the sheer absurdity of Pythonesque humour with traditional Caribbean folklore to create a tale that is, at once, laugh-out-loud funny and spookily uncanny. When Fat Charlie Nancy learns that his estranged father (who died while performing on a Florida karaoke stage) was a god, the world, as he knows it, stops making sense. It careens out of control when Spider, Charlie's long-lost brother (also a god) shows up, steals his girl, gets him fired from his job and lands him in a heap of trouble with the other old-world spirits. Fat Charlie can save the day, but only if he can figure out who he is meant to be.

Part comedy, part fantasy -- Anansi Boys is a fun read that operates on multiple levels. If I were to teach a course on post-modern literature, I'd probably make sure that this one was included on the syllabus. Three and half Joseph Campbells out of five.

Journal of the Plague Year

Alright, so maybe I didn't have the plague this week, but I have to tell you, if it wasn't the Black Death, it was a very close relative. You don't often get to use the word afflicted, but holy crap, I can't think of a better word to describe how I felt. The worst part? I was too ill to read. I know ... the horror. I went seven days without picking up a book. Without even thinking about picking up a book. To quote the venerable Vizzini, "Inconceivable!"

Luckily, it seems that I am now on the mend. I still have a beastly cough and my appetite's not quite right, but I feel a little more like myself. Maybe tomorrow I will starting reading again.

Baby Talk



The End
A Series of Unfortunate Events - Book the Thirteenth
Lemony Snicket
Harper Collins

When I was a little kid, my mom let me read pretty much anything I wanted. Every other week we'd visit our town's Carnegie Library and come home with at least three or four selections each. By the time I was eleven, I had read most of the interesting stuff in the Children's section and Mrs. Vousden (the best librarian EVER) suggested that it was finally time to "go upstairs" and start reading some more mature material. She started me off gently (or so I thought) and had me check out Pride and Prejudice. When I'd return a book, we didn't discuss it much -- she basically asked me to give her a thumbs up or a thumbs down so she could get a general feel for my likes and dislikes as an "adult" reader. I think my Holocaust period disturbed her. As did my fascination with an author named Dana Fuller Ross. What can I say? I was a weird kid.

Now that I am a full fledged adult, I find it mildly amusing that I spend a great deal of time reading so-called Children's Literature. The End, as the title implies, is the conclusion to a thirteen book series written by Lemony Snicket. Well, not really ... Lemony Snicket is the nom de plume of American author Daniel Handler. In fact, Snicket is not so much a pseudonym as he is a character in the work. From a narrative voice perspective, Snicket reminds me a great deal of the narrator in Robinson Crusoe. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised then, when in this novel, the Baudelaires found themselves on a deserted island meeting a girl called Friday.

What I love most about these books is that while they are intended for consumption by kids, Handler never ever talks down to his readers. He uses wonderfully unusual words and phrases (schism, penultimate, tangential, etc.) and then goes on to define them in the text. For his more, uh, mature readers, he is also a master of literary, social, and historical allusion. Sunny Baudelaire, the youngest of the three children at the heart of the series, blurts out some fairly odd (but contextually relevant) words that occasionally had me going to Google to uncover the "deeper" meaning. I would kill to have her both her vocabulary and her knowledge of world mythology.

I'm not going to spoil the surprise and give any hints as to how The End ends. Suffice it to say, the conclusion to the Baudelaires travails is not what most readers will expect and I kind of like it that way. A Series of Unfortunate Events gets two thumbs up. Mrs. Vousden would be proud.

On the Road Again

Once y'all come to know me a little bit better, you'll realize that one of the advantages of my crazy lifestyle is that it affords me ample time to read. Yep -- I'm one of those not-so-nerdy software types who travels to exotic locales such as Cleveland, OH and Madison, WI. Alright, it doesn't all suck ... I occasionally do some overseas stuff too, but mostly I hang out in airport lounges across North America.

In my opinion, there are rules to picking a good travel book:

1. No hardcovers! Between paperwork, the laptop, and emergency toiletries, who's got room?
2. No John Grisham. If a handsome man sits next to me, I want to be reading something sexy and intriguing.
3. No chicklit. Shudder. (And not in a good way.)
4. No fantasy literature. While previous entries in this blog can attest to the fact that I LOVE fantasy, if the book has multiple narratives and an army of characters, it is just way too hard to pick up/put down without a tonne of rereading.
5. No self-help or business books. Why advertise the fact that I have issues?

Happily, this week's travel book, The End by "Lemony Snicket," doesn't violate any of the above mentioned dictums. It was a fun read and will be the subject of my next entry. Stay tuned ...

He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it.

The Reader
Bernhard Schlink
Vintage Books

I have to be honest ... had I known that The Reader had been one of Oprah's Book Club selections, I probably wouldn't have picked it up off the table. It's not that I am book snob, or anything, but I am a firm believer that literature picks me and for whatever reason, books with the Oprah seal of approval don't usually call my name.

The Reader is a hauntingly beautiful, thought provoking novel. Growing up in postwar Germany, fifteen year old Michael Berg falls in love with a woman more than twice his age. Soon, the two become lovers and then one day, the mysterious woman just disappears.

When Michael next sees her, he is studying law and she, a former SS guard at Auschwitz, is on trial for war crimes. Schlink masterfully pulls his readers into the narrative and forces them to face their own notions of morality. His prose is enthralling, the story captivating, and the characters as real as you and me.

Schlink's The Reader will definitely find its way into my permanent collection. I haven't read anything so beautifully disturbing since Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Française. In fact, it makes me wonder what kind of literature will be born out of the current conflict in Iraq. It is amazing to me how imagination/artistic expression can transform the worst aspects of our humanity and make them shine.

Rating? Five rays of hope out of five.

Wherefor art thou Bubba Ho-tep?

Make Love! the Bruce Campbell Way
Bruce Campbell
Thomas Dunne Books

I have a confession. Deep breath .... I love Bruce Campbell. There, I said it and it hardly even hurt. For those of you who aren't BC fans, he's a former Michigander who has starred in a bunch o' crazy B movies, indie flicks, and lots and lots of television shows. In fact, it was on the small screen that the dashing Bruce first caught my eye. Ready for another humiliating admission? I fell in love with him while watching episodes of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Um, okay (shuffle, pause, blush) ... and on Xena: Warrior Princess. Yeah, yeah, I had seen him in other things, but it was Autolycus that captured my heart -- or at the very least, my imagination. So, over the years, my interest in all things Bruce continued to grow (why else would someone rent a DVD called Bubba Ho-tep?) and I found myself with a couple of his books on my shelves.

Make Love! the Bruce Campbell Way is a novel about a B movie actor (Bruce) who lands and then researches a small (but important) role in a A-list feature film. Trying to impress, he dispenses advice to the director (Mike Nichols,) gives fashion tips to the female lead (Renee Zellweger,) and manages to debauch a Buddhist in Vegas (Richard Gere.) Honestly, while the story is not as well written as If Chins Could Kill, it is hysterically funny. Pee your pants kind of funny. I actually laughed out loud and since it kind of reads like a B movie, I think I can say that I had "rollicking good time."

As for a rating, this one gets three out of five zombies. Unless you're a huge Bruce Campbell fan, in which case it gets five zombies. And a groovy.

Fantasyland

Shadowmarch, Volume One
Tad Williams
DAW

I was introduced to fantasy as a genre the summer I was turning fifteen. My grandmother had just passed away and for whatever reason, I found myself on the way to Cambridge with a much older cousin. Grandma had been the anchor in our family and I guess none of us really wanted to be alone to let the sadness sink in. So, while Cathy was gathering the things she would need for the week, I wandered my way through her belongings envying the coolness of her twenty-something space.

Then I found the bookshelf. I was surprised to see that some of my own favourites also appealed to my cousin. She had a well-paged copy of Anne of Green Gables, a few ratty Austens and some Steinbeck. "What's this?" I asked, picking up a copy of Donaldson's Lord Foul's Bane. Cathy just smiled, ran her hand over my hair and said "I think now is the perfect time for you to have an adventure. Enjoy."

And enjoy it I did. That one book changed my reading life forever. I mention it here because Williams' character, Barrick, reminds me a great deal of Thomas Covenant. In a lot of ways, Shadowmarch is typical high fantasy -- you have a kingdom rife with political intrigue caught between an advancing evil empire from the south and an invading supernatural realm from the north. The novels opens with the murder of the Marchlands prince regent. The kingdom is left in the hands of two teenagers -- Briony, an impetuous but brainy young woman and her crippled and very moody twin brother, Barrick. As confidence in their leadership crumbles, the kingdom comes under attack from the advancing Twilight People. Barrick goes off to war and Briony remains behind to deal with the burdensome responsibilities of the regency.

Williams introduces a large number of characters into the work and there are multiple plot lines to keep the reader engaged. If you're the type of person who likes a straightforward, single-threaded narrative, this is NOT the book for you. In addition to Briony and Barrick, Williams writes from the perspective of a doctor, a dwarf, a guard captain, a street urchin, a mysterious little boy, and the leader of the supernatural forces that are beyond the Shadowline. Time and again, Williams takes you to a point of crisis with a plot/character only to have the chapter end and a new chapter open with another scene. Yeah, I hate it. But I love it too. My one complaint with this book? It is part of a larger body of work (the Volume One not-so-prominently displayed on the cover should have tipped me off.) So, I'm compelled to wait.

If you find that what I have written here has interested you enough to give Williams a try, but you're not so sure that you'd like to commit to what will probably be (at least) a trilogy ... give War of the Flowers a whirl. Great, epic fantasy in a single volume. In fact, it's what got me hooked on this author in the first place.

As for the rating system, I still haven't come up with one. I'll work on it. I promise. In the interim, let me just say that this was a damn good book in my estimation. Not the best fantasy that I have ever read, but Williams will always be near the top of my list.

Lasciate ogne speranza ...

Hmmm, kind of intimidating, this blogging thing. So, the basic premise/purpose/idea behind this blog is to share a bit about what I'm reading. "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate." In other words, watch out! I read a lot of crap so if you choose to journey with me, I cannot promise I won't occasionally drag you to the depths of hell a.k.a. the romantic scribblings of Nora Roberts and her ilk. Not that I am apologizing ... a body can't read high fallutin' stuff all the time. My brain would melt.

So, at the moment, I'm in media res with a few good books. I'm halfway through Who Murdered Chaucer by Terry Jones. That's the "non-fiction" entry. I've got 100 pages to go in Volume One of Tad Williams Shadowmarch. Mr. Williams is my favourite fantasy author du jour. On deck is a novel by Bernhard Schlink. I found it on the Books about Books table at my much frequented Chapters store.

I suppose I should come up with some kind of reviewing/rating system. I'll give it some thought before the next post. Suggestions welcome.