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.