And the Winner is ...

I bet you guys thought I forgot all about the Dog-eared Soul's Book of the Year. I held off on announcing the winner as I was a little slow in distributing some of my Christmas gifts and I didn't want to give away the surprise.

The book that moved me most in the past year was unquestionably Tahar Ben Jelloun's This Blinding Absence of Light. I believe that it is possible to be fundamentally changed by what you read and this book made me stop and take a look at my life from a different perspective. It was a tough choice for a couple of reasons. I'm not sure that all my friends are going to like it. While it ultimately delivers a message of hope and strength, there's also a lot of despair and, well, madness, in this novel. It's not a fun read and I think you have to be in the right frame of mind to engage with the text.

I also considered not selecting it because it is, almost, non-fiction. What do I mean "almost, non-fiction?" Well, I don't know. Is it a memoir? I hope not -- I've categorically stated that I'm not a fan of the memoir. Is it a fictionalized account of true events? Maybe. Does it make its message any less powerful if all of the elements didn't really happen? Again, I don't think so, but I'm not totally sure. I say -- pick it up, read it, and judge for yourself. And if you have any thoughts on the matter, please share.

Best to all for 2008. I wish you health, laughter, and a soul that dances on the wind.

Happy Friggin' New Year

Blood Brothers

Nora Roberts

Jove

Yes, I am pathetic and totally willing to admit it. Here it is, New Year's Eve, and I'm at home reading and working on my blog. For those of you that know me well, this will not come as much of a surprise. You see, I definitely have a thing against New Year.

As a really little kid, I actually loved it. We used to go to this house party at a friend's place in the country and while my parents never let me stay up until midnight, they did let me eat chips, inhale candy, and drink pop. Big night when I got to do all that and had bedtime extended to 9:30 pm.

It wasn't really until my teenage years that the "problems" began. 1985 saw me ringing in the New Year with a cast on my arm and bruises all over my body. My Aunt Jack and I had been in a head-on collision earlier in the afternoon. We were going to Kitchener to see a Nylons concert, got caught in some slush and then whammo, straight into on-coming traffic.

The next year, I thought I'd take it easy and invite Jennie Beaton over for a quiet night of movies and gossip. Well, quiet until Jennie raided the liquor cabinet and we both did our first drunk-and-dials. To this day I'm pretty sure my parents believed that we had a terrible case of the flu. I'm also pretty sure that I just wanted to die.

In my early twenties, I usually spent New Year's Eve with my boyfriend and his rugby buddies. I was the only girlfriend in the group who was from "away" and as the lone import, the girls didn't go out of their way to make me feel terribly welcome. I'd hang with the guys and flirt until they got too drunk and then hie myself off to bed.

Then there was the time that I broke out in hives when I belatedly realized that I was allergic to the echinacea I was taking to ward off a winter cold. I had hives where, well, you'd think a girl couldn't get hives. My date for the evening thought I was making it all up and never spoke to me again. Sigh. He was hot and the evening could have been promising. Wasn't meant to be, I suppose.

The next year things were looking up and I found myself celebrating on a beach in Curacao with my then boyfriend and his best friend. Sounds ideal, right? Well, imagine being on a holiday when both the girlfriend and the best friend are in love with the boyfriend. That was the final straw and from then on, I decided to celebrate New Year on my own by doing something that I love. Sometimes I have a movie fest (last year I watched all six episodes of Star Wars back-to-back,) sometimes I fast and indulge in girlie stuff like pedicures, getting my hair done, doing makeup, and sometimes, like this year, I go on a romance binge and read all sorts of trashy books.

Blood Brothers, the most recent offering from Nora Roberts, definitely qualifies as trash. The basic premise is that three small town boys go to the local haunted wood to celebrate their birthday (they were all born on the same day at the same time.) While there, they swear an oath of loyalty, and in binding it with their blood, unleash a demon into the world. Flash forward 21 years -- the same boys (now men) need to figure out how to stop the demon. Enter Quinn, a writer who decides to come to the town to do some research for her next book. She's lovely, curvy, and somehow connected to the strange goings-on. Of course, she just happens to fall in love with one of the boys turned men. I have to say, the plot is a tad more complicated than the average Harlequin, and the mix of fantasy and romance has caught my interest. I'll probably stick around for the second and third installments. Two screaming demons out of five.

'Tis but a Scratch!

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Simon Armitage

Faber and Faber

When I was an undergrad, my worst mark ever was the B+ I received in Middle English from Dr. Weldon. While I hated the professor and his pedantic approach to the texts, I loved the course material and would spend hours reading off the syllabus. I have to admit to not being a huge fan of poetry, but there is just something about verse from the Middle Ages that captures my imagination.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was written around 1400. Not a lot is known about the poet and the poem itself is noteworthy in that it draws on the Old English tradition of alliteration. For those of you, um, unpoetical types, alliteration is the repetition of a particular consonant sound or leading vowel in a phrase. It sounds easy, I know, but to do it in such a way that it adds to rather than distracts from a text is quite a talent -- and the Gawain poet does it with such style.

This particular edition of the poem is a new translation by Simon Armitage. He maintains the alliteration and in my opinion, does a fantastic job with the verse. The plot is pretty simple -- a bunch of knights are hanging out with Arthur and Guinevere over the Christmas break. Suddenly, the door to the hall bursts open and in tromps a very large man all dressed in green. He issues a challenge and invites one of Arthur's company to fell him with a blow -- the caveat being that should the Green Knight live, the knight must seek him out a year hence and agree to the same terms. Gawain takes up the challenge, fails to kill the green knight (who, in fact, picks up his severed head, tucks it under his arm and rides off) and then, a year later, sets out on his own quest. Talk about a party trick! Armitage's translation gets 5 green girdles out of 5.

And the Nominees Are ...

So, it's not like the D-E-S has been deluged with requests or anything, but a few of you written to ask about this year's candidates for best book. It's a tough one ... I ended up reading a lot of really good stuff this year and picking just one is going to take some serious thought.

In fact, it might be easier to come up with some exclusion criteria. Romances are not eligible by virtue of the fact that they are absolute crap and essentially the same book regardless of sub-genre, historical period, or setting.

Non-fiction books, while impressive and impactful, are not eligible. Maybe someday I will get motivated enough to set up another category for a non-fiction winner. But not today.

Any post where I made mention of Bruce Campbell -- those books aren't eligible either. Don't get me wrong, I love Bruce. But he's not serious and high-minded -- not at all what we are looking for in a D-E-S book of the year.

So, after all that, the nominees are:

Three Day Road Joseph Boyden
Arthur & George Julian Barnes
The Road Cormac McCarthy
This Blinding Absence of Light Tahar Ben Jelloun
The Traveler John Twelve Hawks

Jay Silverheels ... what were you thinking?

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
Sherman Alexie
Grove Press

I read somewhere that Sherman Alexie is better known for his poetry than for his prose. He must be a helluva poet, because this book of short stories is simply amazing.

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven is a series of vignettes set in a Spokane reservation in Washington State. The stories feature a variety of characters across a generation and all of the tales in some way deal with what it means to be Native in a post-modern, white person's world. Alexie's depiction of life on the reservation brought back some good memories for me -- going to powwows on the Chippewa First Nations' reserve near my cottage and marvelling at the energy, inclusivity, power and grace of the dancers.

It also brought back some not-so-good memories for me and frankly, a great deal of guilt and frustration. No matter what you might hear, Canada has not treated its First Nations with respect. While we didn't commit the same level of genocide as our neighbours to the south (let's not forget that we did manage to wipe out an entire people -- Newfoundland's Beothuk,) the country still has a lot of reparations, reconciliations, and apologies to be made.

But I digress ... I really liked this book because even though I'm not native, I could still relate to Alexie's characters and their flaws. The poetic, almost magic-realist feel to the work made for a beautiful, but sometimes elusive read. Four laughing coyotes out of five.

Someone's Gotta Do it ...

A Dirty Job

Christopher Moore

Harper Collins

Holy cow! It has been exactly a month since I last posted anything on this blog. Instead of providing a laundry list of excuses as to why I haven't been reading/writing, I'm just going to hang my head in shame and get on with today's entry.

A few years ago, I introduced a few of you to Lamb -- The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. It was easily the funniest book that I had read in the last decade and it became the then equivalent of the D-E-S Book of the Year. Because I had enjoyed it so much, I was reluctant to read anything else by the author. Why muck with perfection? (C'mon, you had to expect at least one Jesus pun.) Quite recently, one of my good friends bought me a copy of A Dirty Job and I thought it would be churlish of me to leave it unread. Who wants to be a churl?

I can't believe I'm typing this, but A Dirty Job is almost as funny as Lamb. Set in present day San Francisco, the novel tells the story of Charlie Asher -- a slightly neurotic owner of a Bay area secondhand shop. At the beginning of the story, Asher's wife dies giving birth to their daughter Sophie. As Charlie struggles to cope with his grief and get used to the demands of a new baby, he learns that he has inherited some disturbing new responsibilities. You see, Charlie wakes up one day to realize that he's become Death -- or at least one's of death's minions (Charlie's not the sharpest knife in the drawer.) The chaos that ensues when Charlie tries to reject his new role is mordantly funny. A Dirty Job gets four scythes out of five.

It's All About the Hair

Blink

Malcolm Gladwell

Back Bay Books

It has been awhile since I've reviewed any non-fiction on this blog and I'm finding it rather difficult to get this entry going. To paraphrase Malcolm Gladwell, Blink is an adventure story that explores the human ability to make judgements, draw conclusions, and rapidly understand situations all in about the same time as it takes you to bat your eyelashes.

Part psychology text, part sociological tract, Gladwell's work articulates the theory of rapid cognition -- that is, how the mind processes information without really "thinking" about it. During this journey, he asks his readers to consider some fundamental questions that could and probably should inform our own world views. What would happen if we took our instincts seriously? How would our world change if we, as Gladwell suggest, stopped looking at the horizon with our binoculars and focused our microscopes on our own decision making processes? If you are interested in a plausible, reasonable and well written response to either of those questions, then Blink is a book for you.

Oh, and just so you know, I think MG has replaced Bruce Campbell as my new pseudo-celebrity fixation. He's got a lot going for him -- he writes for The New Yorker, he's Canadian, and he's even been on Oprah. Impressive. Blink gets four rapid eye movements out of five.

UberNerds Untie! Uh, ... I mean, Unite!

Starter for 10

David Nicholls

Villard

So, it's been awhile since I admitted to anything completely ridiculous on this blog. You know that I have naughty thoughts about Bruce Campbell and yes, I'm still watching NASCAR even though Junior is out of the Chase (I have some thoughts about him too!) Are you ready for something new? Well, when I was in high school, I participated in what was, at the time, the most socially suicidal of teen activities. That's right geeks, I was on my school's Reach for the Top team. And I loved EVERY minute of it.

I'd like to think that I only qualified for semi-geekdom. I mean, unlike a couple of my teammates, I could not quote at random from either Fawlty Towers or Python's Meaning of Life. Like the hero from Starter for 10 (who played on his university's equivalent of RFTT) I was a voracious reader, I flirted with leftist philosophies and I went to school hoping to escape the circumstances of life in a small town.

I quite enjoyed this novel and it a lot of ways, the narrative reminded me a great deal of Nick Hornby's writing. The characters were well drawn and in spots, the story was so achingly real that it was hard to read. My only criticism of the book was that it read more like a screenplay, in parts, than an actual novel. Three challenging trivia questions out of five.

Only This and Nothing More

The Pale Blue Eye
Louis Bayard
Harper Perennial

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore (back issues of The Economist do count as quaint and curious, right?), while I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping (as of some one gently rapping, rapping at my condo door.) "Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my condo door. Only this and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the warm September and ... okay ... enough. I don't think I can keep this up for the whole entry. If you haven't figured it out from the borrowed verse, this week's novel, The Pale Blue Eye, features a very young, and very melancholic Edgar Allen Poe as one of the main characters. Poe has been enlisted by the protagonist -- a wily, but retired, New York City constable -- to help investigate a series of gruesome murders at the West Point Military Academy. Like all great historical whodunits, The Pale Blue Eye if full of mayhem, murk, and melodrama, and Bayard skillfully keeps his readers guessing until the very end.

I have to be honest -- I didn't have a lot of expectations going into this book. Poe is such a huge figure in the American literary landscape/collective imagination that I was quite apprehensive as to how his character would be drawn. Would Poe be just another gimmick/tool to sell more books? It turns out that I needn't have worried. Bayard masterfully uses Poe's own themes, tropes and tone to somehow channel the spirit of the long-dead poet. Four shadowy ravens out of five.

You Have Entered ... the Twilight Zone

The Twilight Watch

Sergei Lukyanenko

Anchor Canada

Sigh. Have you ever read a book that you just didn't want to end? So much so that you procrastinated finishing the novel because you weren't ready to say goodbye to either the characters or the world in which they live? Yeah -- so that's the story as to why I haven't blogged in a couple of weeks -- I've been in mourning for Anton and the rest of his crazy gang.

In terms of pure storytelling, I thought this installment was the most engaging of the three novels in Lukyanenko's series. While it was also broken into three separate "tales", this novel seemed less jumpy than the other two and it felt more like I was reading a complete narrative. Despite the fact that Anton was the protagonist in each of the stories, other characters in the text were more fully developed and I felt that by the end of the trilogy Lukyanenko had truly developed an alternate reality with all the working parts.

I have to admit to also being intrigued by the author's use of allegory. He says a lot about geopolitics, humanism, Russian culture, archetypes, etc, and in some ways, the complexity of his text reminds me of Spenser's Faerie Queene or Dante's Inferno. You know ... those really long poems that you refused to read in high school. Three point five Redcrosse Knights out of five.

Anderson Cooper's Got Nothin' on Me...

In the past few months, a number of people have asked me where they can find other examples of my writing. I'm not sure if they're asking to be polite, if they are bored with reading about books, or if they genuinely think that I have some talent (see pic.) Whatever the reason, I'm sad to say that for the most part, the blog's the thing.

There are a couple of exceptions ... I will admit to being a sporadic correspondent with some far flung friends. Quite honestly, I absolutely adore everything about the letter writing process. Picking the appropriate stationery for my mood, striking the right balance between asking and sharing, walking to the park to drop it in the post -- it's just such a wonderful experience. And yeah, I know it's old fashioned and inefficient, but there's something so delicious about receiving notes in well-traveled, slightly tattered envelopes. At least I think so.

The other exception is my journal. Every once in awhile, something compels me to capture an idea, copy out a line of text, or sort out on paper what's going on in my head. Usually, my journal is epistolic and the entries are addressed to an unnamed reader. This implied audience changes from entry to entry depending on my mood. What doesn't change is that as soon as my journal is full, I destroy it. As a kid, I'd have secret burning ceremonies where I'd toss the book into the fire pit at the cottage. Now, I'm a little less melodramatic and just run pages through the shredder. So satisfying.

In fact, the whole idea of this blog has been a little weird for me. Knowing that there's a possibility that someone other than myself will read the post has definitely changed the way that I write, and in some ways, it has made my writing less honest. For those of you that are paying attention, I'm sure some of the real me shows through -- I thought, however, that for a change a pace, I'd give you an uncensored example of that other girl. The one you don't hear from very often. And as evidenced below, probably with good reason ...

Untitled

If I were Wordsworth, I would describe your beauty in simple terms
And ask that intercessions by my fervent tongue please you, not make you sad
If I were Shakespeare, I would celebrate our love
And as Capulet and Montague, we would shine brightly for a moment, then blaze across the sky like a falling star
If I were Donne, I would die a thousand little deaths
And ask which quarrels move, though you and I do love.

But I am none of those men and my words are as unfathomable to me as standing stones.
You are the field in which they lie -- trying to find meaning.

Darling Nikki

In the Cut

Susanna Moore

Vintage

While I wouldn't exactly describe myself as particularly well-read, I will admit that I consciously try to maintain an open mind when it comes to selecting titles. If you've been following this blog for any length of time, you'll notice that I prefer fiction to non-fiction, I've got a decidedly unhealthy relationship with fantasy literature, and aside from the occasional memoir, I'm not much for biography.

One of the genres that has been suspiciously absent from my repertoire has been erotica. I'm not sure why it hasn't made the queue (might be the recovering Lutheran in me,) but in the same way that I've never watched a porn flick, smut, as my mother terms it, has never held much appeal. Imagine my surprise, then, when I found myself quite engaged by In the Cut -- an erotic crime novel set in Giuliani's NYC.

I will not mince words -- the narrator (a cunning linguist) was, at times, quite vulgar. There are no euphemisms for the sex act in this novel -- just raw, dirty words. Maybe it's because the narrator was a woman, but I didn't feel that the female gender was being objectified by the text. In fact, from a characterization perspective, this book is the perfect foil for Chandler's depiction of the sexes. The women in Moore's novel are complicated, well-drawn and curiously detached. The men, on the other hand, are willful creatures controlled by passions and motivated by desire. The inversion of standard sexual convention was quite intriguing and to be candid the ending to this novel was brilliantly done. I'm not sure if I'll come back to this genre any time soon, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy myself. Three anima/animus out of five.

Still Looking for Mr. Right

The Righteous Men

Sam Bourne

Penguin

A few weeks ago, my best friend and I decided to catch the latest Jet Li movie and grab a burger at our favourite diner in the west end. As usual, we didn't plan it very well and had time to kill between the end of our meal and the start of the show. Instead of going to the movieplex to play air hockey and spend pots of money on overpriced video games, we ended up at the bookstore.

For Peter, I think it was a fairly worthwhile trip. He managed to spend a half an hour in front of the Ian Rankin section and eventually came away from the shop with a couple of good reads. Unfortunately, the literary gods were not as kind to me and stuck me with what I can only describe as a complete dud.

I struggled to get through this novel. The writing was bad, the story was implausible, and with the number of redundant technology explanations included within the text, I can only conclude that the author assumed his audience would be made up of either Luddites or octogenarians (okay, okay ... and maybe also my dad.) While I will admit to liking crazy Messianic cult stories as much as the next person, they have to be, at a minimum, interesting cult stories. The Righteous Men wasn't remotely engaging and it has the dubious distinction of being the first work reviewed on this blog that I'm going to tell you not to read. Zero mitzvahs out of five.

What a Dick!

The Lady in the Lake

Raymond Chandler

Vintage Crime

How is it that, until quite recently, I was probably the only person on the planet who'd never heard of Raymond Chandler? Oh ... so that's not ringing any bells for you either? Forget Chandler, then, what if I said Philip Marlowe? That's right, movie buffs, I've finally been introduced the literary version of one of the greatest detectives of all time.

According to my friend Russ, The Lady in the Lake is not a terribly good novel. In fact, he had actually recommended another of Chandler's works, but the book shop in Ottawa didn't have it in stock. As it turns out, I'm quite glad because I actually loved this story. The plot is dead (pun intended) simple -- two wives go missing from a remote cabin nestled in the mountains outside of LA. One of them (Marlowe's not sure which one) is discovered at the bottom of a lake. Was it murder? Suicide? A tragic accident? Marlowe doesn't really care -- he's paid to ask questions and solve cases and that's where his interest ends.

What I liked best about this novel had to be how it was told. As I was reading, the voice in my head sounded very much like a radio drama -- lots of dialogue, short, descriptive sentences and just the right amount of mood. I could "hear" Marlowe speaking -- it was almost as if I was looking out at the world through his eyes and hearing his voice from inside his head. Sublime. Oh, and in case you were wondering, I'll definitely be coming back to Chandler over the course of the next few months. The Lady, in this case, is definitely a ten.

And the Survey Says .... (with apologies to Richard Dawson)

An Opening Act of Unspeakable Evil

Jim Munroe

No Media Kings

Okay, blog readers, I gotta know ... would it bug you if I wrote about you on this blog? I know that I've already made some specific references to friends and family in these posts, but I haven't really spilled anything juicy. My mind has been occupied lately with thoughts about the collision of public and private space, where the boundaries are, and what rules can be applied to private thoughts in a public forum. More significantly, what are the moral implications of me writing about all of you without your permission? Hmmmm ....

Funnily enough, the heroine of this week's novel is facing the same dilemma. Kate registers a website (roommatefromhell.com) and dishes on the comings and goings of her ritual chanting, pentagram drawing housemate. A recovering yuppie, Kate is so fascinated by Lilith's otherworldliness that she asks her to perform her ritual as a performance piece at a gallery opening. The show goes so well that the two girls decide to take the act on the road and while on tour, they eventually evolve into the opening act for a rock band called the Everenders.

Part bildungsroman, part blog, An Opening Act of Unspeakable Evil is chock-a-block full of ideas that make a reader pause and think. Where is the line between private and public? What "qualifies" as Outsider Art? Can you ever really trust a narrator? What does it mean when life imitates art? I like books that make me ask a lot of questions. I'm going to give this one 2.5 stars out of 5.

My Boyfriend’s Back

Black Order
James Rollins
Harper

So, for those of you who are following along, I’ve got good news. My boyfriend’s back. That’s right, Grayson Pierce and I hooked up in Copenhagen this past weekend and I have to say, he was as, uh, enigmatic and energetic as ever.

This time, Gray managed to suck me into some kind of post-Nazi Übermensch drama. We originally went to Denmark to attend an auction (I had my eye on a Bible that once belonged to Charles Darwin) and all of a sudden, the bookshop that we were exploring went up in flames. Not that I’m complaining, my boy has skills, but I’m kinda getting tired of being shot at when I’m in his company. Maybe I should rethink this relationship.

Anyway, after a narrow escape, he whisked me away on a private jet to South Africa where we came face-to-face with a creepy Himmler type who had used his millions to fund his own gene modification/evolution project. Of course, Grayson blamed it all on me and my interest in that darn Bible. Apparently someone had hidden a clue in the book and our Himmler friend needed it to solve the riddle of his evolution device. Sounds complicated, right? Good thing Grayson has brains as well as looks …

Much like our first encounter, time spent with the boy was, well, curiously satisfying. I wonder where he’ll take me on our next date. Forget where … I’m even wondering when the next one will be. I have to say, dating an international man of mystery certainly has its disadvantages. The sex is quite good though. I’d say he gets a four out of five. There’s always room for improvement.

Crap Alert - Boys, Please Skip this Post

The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever

Julia Quinn

Harper Collins

There has been a LOT of stuff going on in my personal life lately and I've been in a pissy mood as a result. After the ritualized torture of a session with my personal trainer this weekend, I wandered (okay, limped) over to the bookstore to see what I could find to improve my mood. Bad idea. Nothing spoke to me. I've blogged elsewhere about how books tend to choose me, but on Saturday morning, nothing or nobody was calling my name.

Since it is sacrilege to go away from my Happy Place empty-handed, I decided to try an old stand-by and I made my way over to the romance section. That's right, loyal readers, I picked up a Regency romance. The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever follows the classic Regency formula:

• Girl meets boy and falls in love
• Boy is an entirely inappropriate choice
• Girl and boy end up hitting the sheets and girl's virtue is compromised
• Boy's honour forces them to marry
• Girl and boy have a falling out
• Boy and girl have an epiphany that they are destined to be together
• Girl and boy kiss and make up and live happily ever after in a manor house with a whack of children, some optional hunting dogs, and a lot of money

Why reading this crap cheers me up I have no idea. I think we'd probably have to pay a therapist a lot of money to figure it out. At any rate, Miss Miranda and her diaries held true to form. Maybe it's the comfort of the no-surprise ending. Maybe it's the old fashioned idea of a gentleman being bound by his honour. Maybe it's just the sex scenes (remember ... no boyfriend here.) Maybe it's the fact that when I dropped the novel in the tub when I was startled by the phone, I just didn't care. Whatever the reason, Miss Miranda didn't disappoint and helped me shed my gloomies. One pathetic star out of five.

Rainy Days and Sundays

The Day Watch

Sergei Lukyanenko

Anchor Canada

It's mid-afternoon Sunday and as I type this, I find myself seated in the lounge at the Island Airport waiting to catch a flight to Ottawa. I know it seems a little weird to be heading to Ottawa so early in the day, but it actually works out for me. You see ... I HATE Sundays. Absolutely detest them. I despise the feeling of dread that seems to linger like a black cloud over my day -- there's always so much to do; laundry, packing, running, friending, cleaning, writing -- and it all needs to get done before I head out on the road for another week. Traveling earlier the day means that when I get to where I'm going, I can actually relax and enjoy a few hours of solitude without the pressure of an unloaded dishwasher or an unmade phone call bringing me down. Between the lounge, the plane, and the time spent at the hotel, I tend to read a lot on Sundays and it is pretty much guilt free. Gotta like that.

Last week on the trip to Ottawa I started the next installment in the Night Watch series. I'll admit it -- I'm addicted. In this novel, there is less focus on Anton (although he is still a major character) and we are introduced more thoroughly to some of the Dark players in the game. What struck me in particular about this volume was Lukyanenko's use of setting to enhance/advance the story. After reading these books, I desperately want to go to Russia. Even in translation, he writes so effectively about place that Moscow seems to jump off the page. In some ways, it has a similar feel to the way Dumas describes Paris in The Three Musketeers.

If I had one criticism of the novel it would be the multiple story format. I'm not sure how these were originally published in the late 90s, but for the English editions, each book has a number of related tales that focus on different characters. Had I been the editor for the series, I might have been inclined to combine all of the stories into one bigger tale and identify different narrators for different "chapters". Some work would have had to be done to adjust the chronology, but it might have made the novel a little more consumable/interesting. Regardless, The Day Watch gets three point five werewolves out of five. Oh yeah, and for those of you who care ... the next novel, The Twilight Watch, has already been purchased. It's going to take me a few weeks to get to it though ... I need a break from my new friends. My boyfriend Grayson (remember him?) is getting jealous.

The Wanderer

Kiss the Sunset Pig

Laurie Gough

Penguin

Hmmm ... I think it's about time for another blog-inspired confession. Call me weird, but in addition to Joaquin Phoenix, fantasy novels, and CBC Radio One, I love road trips. Short ones, long ones -- it doesn't matter. Put me in a car, give me some sunshine, some tunes (and some junk food) and I am a very happy girl.

This past spring, some friends and I flew to San Francisco where we made our way to the coast and drove part of the PCH. At Cambria, we cut across the state and picked up Route 66 in Barstow. What a trip! Who knew the Mother Road could be so much fun? I kissed a wild burro in an old mining town, sat on a giant fibreglass jackrabbit somewhere in the desert, stood on the corner of Winslow, Arizona, and saw a million winking fireflies while jogging down a country road outside of Tulsa. Oh yeah ... we can't forget the evening spent getting ridiculously drunk at a biker bar named The Birdcage. Ah ... good times.

In Kiss the Sunset Pig, Laurie Gough, (a girl from Guelph) leaves her Canadian hometown to drive across America with the goal of finding herself (both spiritually and physically) in California. Along the way, she meets some friends, has some adventures and recalls earlier versions of herself that she discovered while traveling to other, more exotic, places in the world. The narrative is smart, funny, introspective, and not so personal that a reader can't relate. Her commentary on the differences between Canadians and Americans is particularly astute. Having spent a great deal of time south of the border, I don't buy into all of the stereotypes either. Three Steak and Shakes out of five.

The evil that men do lives after them;
the good is oft interred with their bones

Map of Bones
James Rollins
Avon

I met my latest boyfriend, Grayson Pierce, in transit. I was on my way home from Ottawa and he had been sent by the Vatican (and US special ops) to investigate a mysterious murder/theft from a cathedral in Germany. Our romance was fast-paced -- we hit five different countries in less than a week and it was mere hours after our chance encounter that I was up to my neck in spies, cults, cardinals and religious artifacts. I might have protested, but ... well, he was hot and it's not like I had anything better to do ...

Okay, so back to reality. Unfortunately for me, Grayson's not really my boyfriend. Sigh. I know -- you're completely stunned. He is, however, the lead character in Rollins' fast-paced, Ludlumesque thriller about an underground society that steals the bones of the three magi in an attempt to solve a centuries-old alchemical riddle. Throw in a bunch of murders, some special forces personal, corrupt church officials, and a psychotic grandma and you have a fairly brief (but accurate) synopsis of both plot and characterization.

I liked it. So much so, that I even recommended it to my dad. Map of Bones was a fine example of what I described earlier as True Grit Lit. If I am ever stuck in an airport without something to read, I won't think twice about picking up another Rollins' novel. Three shrouds of mystery out of five

No Spoiler Here

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

J.K. Rowling

Raincoast Books

Like pretty much everyone else on the planet, I got the latest Harry Potter the day it was released. Unlike most of Harry's devoted following, I didn't tuck into it right away. I know ... what the hell was I thinking when I agreed to go up north to visit my parents? It's not like I didn't know that the book was going to be released -- kinda hard to miss the hype.

Anyway, I did get the opportunity to get it started the following Sunday. I gathered some interesting stats over the course of the day -- seven people (three adults and four kids) in the Porter lounge had the book open on their laps. At dinner, three patrons other than myself were alternately munching and turning pages. (Curiously, we were all eating pasta that you could stab with one hand.) On the walk home, I spotted four pedestrians who were living quite dangerously by walking and reading.

It made me wonder -- what is it about these books that make them have such broad appeal? Is it because people are finally waking up to the fact that fantasy is a "legitimate" genre? Nah, I don't think that's it -- the legion of Jordan and Tolkien fans would be apoplectic-- good fantasy has been around for decades. Is it because, like Star Wars, the Potter books treat the archetypal theme of good vs. evil in a new and interesting way? Yeah, that might be it. But really, part of the appeal for me is that the complexity and maturity of Rowling's writing seemed to keep pace with the growth of her characters. Every year that Harry, Ron and Hermione got older, I found that the novels became a little more complex, a little darker and a whole lot more conflicted. Kind of like most of the teenagers I know.

Five soaring Thestrals out of five.

Dave -- This One's 4 U

Breakfast of Champions

Kurt Vonnegut

Delta

A couple of months ago, a friend asked me if I had ever read Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions. I was ashamed to admit that I hadn't and agreed to post my review of the book on this blog.

Vonnegut, if you haven't read him, is brilliant. He's also, as I am finding here, difficult to describe. Reading a Vonnegut novel is kind of like being a stranger in a strange land. The reader is never too sure of the rules of the narrative and as such, can't rush to judgement or conclusions. Often, as in Breakfast of Champions, Vonnegut uses the elements/conventions of science fiction to dislocate his readers and force them to construct/consider an entirely new world view.

In this novel (which apparently he wrote to celebrate his 5oth birthday) we are introduced to Dwayne Hoover -- a mentally ill, self-made man from the Mid West who owns car dealerships, restaurant franchises, and the local Holiday Inn. Dwayne's chemical imbalance causes him to have a psychotic break (he suspects everyone else in the world is a robot) and he goes on a rampage beating his lover, his son, and a host of other innocent bystanders.

The interesting twist in this novel is how Vonnegut blurs the line between creator and created. Vonnegut is at once the author, the narrator and a "real-time" character in the novel who manipulates the narrative to his own advantage. He "drops in" on his creation and hangs out in the lounge at the Holiday Inn, watching his characters in action, and thinking up new things for them to see/do. The overt parallels between Vonnegut and his deranged hero are also disturbing -- suicides, depression, middle age, the Mid West. Layered into that complexity is the presence of Kilgore Trout, the aging, somewhat distracted science fiction writer (some say Vonnegut's alter-ego) who, in some respects, facilitates Hoover's collapse. What does it all mean? I have no idea ... but it sure was fun to read. Three Heinlein's out of five

Lisa, vampires are make-believe like elves, gremlins and eskimos ...

The Night Watch

Sergei Lukyanenko

Anchor Canada

I know what you're thinking ... what is it with this girl and vampire novels? How many books about the undead can one person possibly read? Well, next to Dracula, this is probably the most imaginative, dislocating novel concerning vampires that I have ever read. Seriously.

Like all great fantasy novels, The Night Watch narrates the epic struggle between good and evil. In this case, the hero of the story is Anton, an IT geek, apprentice mage, and general warrior of the Light. Anton is also an "Other" -- part of an ancient race of humans who are compelled by their very nature to swear allegiance to either the Light or the Dark. While the balance of power between the factions is governed by a thousand-year old treaty, the uneasy truce is upset by the revelation that someone has been born that will reign supreme and plunge the world into the war to end all wars.

What differentiates the Light from the Dark is what made this novel so intriguing. The Light isn't always "good" -- it can be manipulative, sneaky, and vicious in how it supports its larger purpose. Those serving the Light are committed to serving others. Those serving the Dark are committed to serving themselves. It goes without saying that my reductive mind jumped immediately (and maybe erroneously) to Socialism versus Capitalism, Community versus the Individual, East versus West. Ain't allegory grand? I really enjoyed this novel and once I get the new Harry Potter out of the way, I see the second book in the series, The Day Watch, becoming my traveling companion over the next week or so. Four shape-shifters out of five.

The Case of the Disappearing Entry

Labyrinth

Kate Mosse

Orion

Okay, so a few of you have sent emails asking me what happened to the last post. Well, um, er, shuffle ... I actually took it down and, uh, deleted it. Honestly, it was total crap and I was kinda embarrassed when I put it out there in the first place.

For whatever reason, I've really struggled to find something interesting to say about this book. To be fair, Labyrinth was a decent summer/beach/cottage read. The story revolves around a young woman who, while volunteering on an archaeological dig in France, inadvertently discovers a hidden cave that holds the secret to the holy grail. Think the DaVinci Code meets Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

The book, while quite long, moved along at a good clip and there were a couple of surprises in terms of plot. What I didn't like about the story, was the poor/flat characterization -- the author very much leaned on stereotypes to construct her narrative. Again, as a beach read that's okay. As a potentially more interesting piece of historical fiction about the Cathars, the grail, and medieval France, not so much. Two wooden cups out of five.

That Isn't Writing; It's Typing

On the Road

Jack Kerouac

Penguin Classics

Well, hipsters, I have finally read Kerouac's classic post-war American novel. It took me the better part of a week to get through it and, to be candid, I'm unsure if it was worth the effort. I didn't understand a damn thing. Okay, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but I was definitely expecting it to blow me away and, well, it didn't.

For the uninitiated, Kerouac's story (told in a sort of groovy stream-of-consciousness) is narrated by Sal Paradise, a fledgling student/writer, who likes jazz, drugs and very young women. Sal yearns to live in a world without rules and one of the ways in which he expresses his rebelliousness is to take to the road. With very few dollars in his pocket, Sal travels across America -- meeting up with friends, making it with girls, and generally seeking out the margins of society. Central to the novel is Sal's friendship with the iconic Dean Moriarty. Dean is a drug-addled, two-timing con man who is unable to commit to anything but the vision he has of himself. He is altogether unlikeable, yet infinitely interesting and Sal is drawn to him despite the terrible things that he does.

Why did I have such a problem with this novel? Maybe because Sal's celebration of "life on the road" was often punctuated by dependence on the very conventions that he sought to reject. His adventures (unlike Dean's) seem little more than an occasional foray into a forbidden world. He always had a safety net (his aunt in New Jersey, his GI benefits) and it seemed that while he tried to live on the edge, it was always a low risk proposition. Sal was, what my friends in the 80s would have called a "poser"; a watcher who collected someone else's stories and tried to live them as if they were his own.

Putting my dislike of the characters aside, Kerouac's writing is brilliant and the novel is worth reading if only for the beauty of his prose. I came across a couple of new (I guess old!) names for certain drugs in the book and I have to give him props for his use of the word "hincty." And no, I'm not going to tell you what it means. Three juke joints out of five.

A Bouquet of Alarming Aphorisms

Horseradish - Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid
Lemony Snicket
Harper Collins

Daniel Handler strikes again! Horseradish - Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid is a collection of oddly funny, yet slightly depressing aphorisms from the author of the Series of Unfortunate Events. Reading it started me to wonder ... why is it that the bookstore, which is most definitely my "happy place", the source of such angst, sadness and depression in my imaginative life?

I mean, really, just look at the books I have reviewed in the past few months. Why don't people want to write, read and/or publish happy stories? Or is it just me and I am drawn to books with heavy themes like death, war, pestilence and strife? I have liked, if not loved, quite a number of the novels that I have read since starting this blog and I would like to know what, exactly, this says about me. Maybe I should be worried ... Sigh.

Okay, so back to Handler for a moment. His little book of wit and wisdom is divided into thirteen (noticing a trend?) chapters. In each, he offers up a few "kernels of dread" that can inspire or deflate -- depending on the mood of the reader. I will leave you with my favourite and the one that I think, perhaps, is the most true.

It is one of life's bitterest

truths that bedtime so often

arrives just when things are

really getting interesting.

Wanking in the Attic

Apples
Richard Milward
Faber and Faber

Meet Adam and Eve -- two blue-collar kids growing up in the Middlesbrough estates. Adam is a slightly OCD Beatlemaniac who regularly gets beaten up by his dad, has few friends, and is trying desperately to break out of geekdom. Eve is a beautiful, but bored young woman, who spends her weekends going to clubs, getting high, and finding cute boys for snogging and sex. They are both fifteen.

According to other reviewers, Milward's portrayal of Adam and Eve is an accurate depiction of teenage life in the working class areas of northern England. Date rape, teenage pregnancy, underage drinking, domestic violence -- this book had it all. Despite the heaviness of the material, however, I often found myself laughing at the antics of the main characters. The episode where Adam gets caught masturbating to his father's 80's copy of a Razzle magazine still has me giggling.

So, why the title? Well, aside from the obvious, I think the book is supposed to be about temptation, how to deal with it, and what happens when you fail. I think it's also about gaining knowledge, learning the good from the bad, and figuring out how to recover when you choose poorly. While the circumstances and location may be slightly different (it was acid and hot knives in my day ... not poppers and tac) I think everyone can identify with Adam and Eve and that's what makes this book so appealing. Three tempting serpents out of five.

Missives from an Old Friend

Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction

Sue Townsend

Penguin

When I was a teenager, my parents let me spend summers up at the cottage. I have so many good memories of those years -- kissing my first boy, cruising with my cousin Chris in his white Chevy Cavalier, rollerskating to Electric Avenue at the arena, and spending late nights down by the water watching the stars and listening to the chattering of the raccoons.

The cottage was even fun on stormy days. If the bay was really rough, Mom would let us put our legs through the arm holes of a life jacket and bob up and down in the waves. She'd only call us in if we were turning blue from cold or if the lightning was getting too close. One such afternoon, she gave us the hook and offered to make hot chocolate so we could warm up. We settled ourselves in front of the television expecting to watch an old Elvis movie and instead, we saw an episode of the BBC's The Secret Diaries of Adrian Mole Aged, 13 and 3/4. I cried I laughed so hard and I was completely smitten with Adrian and Pandora for the rest of the summer.

Sadly, I don't think the Weapons of Mass Destruction stood up well against my memories of the programme or Townsend's first book. Adrian is still a git, Pandora is still a bitch, and Adrian's life, in general, is still a mess. The only thing that I did appreciate about the novel was Townsend's not-so-subtle political commentary. In this installment of the diaries, Adrian's son, Glenn, is shipped to Iraq and Townsend very poignantly deals with the loss of Glenn's best friend. That storyline aside, there wasn't much else to keep my interest. So much so, in fact, that I think my relationship with Adrian is over. This book gets two scuds out of five. Oh wait ... that was the last invasion, er, I mean war ...

Les Jeux sont faits

Absurdistan

Gary Shteyngart

Random House

I know, I know ... it's been awhile since I've posted anything. The only thing that I can say in my defense is that I haven't really been reading. And yes, before you loyal (and slightly odd) blog followers deluge me with emails and comments, I will admit that me not reading is a little bizarre. Don't panic -- it's not a sign of the Apocalypse or anything. I've just been busy. You know, working, vacationing, commuting to hell, er, I mean Ottawa. Takes a lot out of a girl.

So let's talk about Absurdistan. This novel was a sometimes biting, always over-the-top satire of twenty first century geo-politics. At the centre of the story is (anti) hero Misha Borisovich Vainberg, a grossly rich and obscenely overweight Russian hip-hop fop. Misha, who received a degree in multiculturalism from Accidental College in Middle America, has been exiled from his beloved United States (his father killed an Oklahoman) and he decides to travel to Absurdsvani to obtain a not-so-legitimate Belgian passport so he can become a citizen of the EU. While there, Absurdistan descends into an oil-fueled civil war (that only gets meager coverage by the international media) and our hero has to sort out the good guys from the bad guys.

While most reviewers have firmly positioned Shteyngart's work as a satiric exemplar worthy of Swift or Heller, I think it has more in common with French absurdist/existentialist plays. To my mind, the basic message of the text is that we live in a world where morality and truth do not (perhaps cannot) exist. Like Misha, however, we are responsible for our choices and must absurdly create morality even though we can never be sure of the implications of our actions. Three melancholic Sisyphus out of five.

Crazy Is as Crazy Does

Poppy Shakespeare

Clare Allan

Anchor Canada

Quite honestly, this was one of those novels that make you say WTF?! Set in a north London day hospital, Poppy Shakespeare tells the story of "N" -- a woman who grew up in the system and whose main ambition is to never be discharged. One day, a new girl arrives (Poppy Shakespeare) and asks for N's help to prove to the hospital administration that she is not mad. N agrees and comes up with a crazy plan to win Poppy's freedom.

Darkly and disturbingly funny, Allan's novel blurs the lines between sanity and lunacy. If you can read through the working-class London dialect, Allan's message sounds suspiciously like Plato and the Cave, although she might just be taking the piss out of us -- it's hard to tell. The novel also comes across as a subtle indictment of the British mental health system. One of the characters states "Reality's one thing. The truth quite another." I'm not sure if we readers are to apply that to Poppy's state of mind, the state of institutionalized healthcare in Britain, or take it as a Platonism that should be applied to every day life. Two dribblers out of five.

Memoirs of a Gaysha

Possible Side Effects

Augusten Burroughs

Picador

Honestly, how many memoirs can one fortysomething write? In Possible Side Effects, a book of short, but bitingly funny essays, Burroughs gives us yet another hilarious glimpse into some of the more, uh, interesting periods in his life. When I looked at this novel in the bookstore, I was a little worried that he wouldn't have anything new to say -- how could he top the stories he told in both Running with Scissors and Dry? As it turns out, my worries were not entirely unfounded.

Possible Side Effects seems to be very much about Augusten the writer of today, versus Augusten the abused child, or Augusten the raging alcoholic. Stories about his dogs or the holidays that he takes with his partner might be interesting someday, but right now, they don't have a lot of resonance with me. Maybe I'm not the target audience for some of these anecdotes -- I don't know. Burroughs does seem to understand that people, regardless of our melting pot mentality, still sort themselves into buckets and it could just be that I can't totally identify with the bucket that is GWM.

Having said all that, this book is still worth picking up. The essay entitled "Moving Violations" had me laughing so hard that people were staring. Never in a million years would I have thought that the phrase "the positive power of porn" would enter my head. No kidding -- reading this chapter has completely altered the course of my life. I'd tell you more, but that would spoil the surprise. Two quirks out of five.

Cryin' -- But Not Over You

Long for This World
Michael Byers
Mariner Books

For those of you who know me personally, you can attest to the fact that I rarely cry. When I was a little girl, my inconsolable moments were usually as a result of extreme frustration -- I shed many a tear over "not getting" long division in grade three and not being able to master a free-hip-to-handstand on the uneven parallel bars. Who'd have guessed that being eight could be so traumatic?

As a adult, I'm still not much of a crier. True, I do have weepy moments when I get hormonal, but unlike some family members, I am not predisposed to crying while watching sappy Tim Horton's commercials. You can imagine my horror (and that of the gentleman sitting beside me) when I burst into tears on an airplane this past week.

Why the drama? Long for this World is a story about an incredibly bright and funny young man, William Durbin. William has a rare disease, and his geneticist, Henry Moss, is on the cusp of finding a cure for the patient he has grown to love. It wasn't the fact that William died that did me in -- his prognosis was never good and his passing wasn't a surprise. Instead, it was the denouement signalled by his death that was so hard. I was not ready to give up the characters that I met in this book. If it is possible to fall in love with a fictional family, I think that's what happened to me this past week. Byers' characters are flawed, human, and ever so lovingly drawn. I did not want to say goodbye. Four shooting stars out of five.

Notes from a Posthumous Land

The Road
Cormac McCarthy
Vintage

For whatever reason, I think I have been struck by a severe case of performance anxiety. I have been working on this post for a couple of days now and nothing I write seems good enough to keep. I wouldn't call it writer's block exactly -- I just know that there is a thought in my head trying to articulate itself on the page and somewhere, something is getting lost in the process.

A brilliant example of post-apocalyptic fiction, The Road chronicles the journey of an unnamed father and son as they travel through a catastrophe-ravaged world that offers nothing save ash on the wind. Pushing a shopping cart down the interstate, the rag-clad duo scavenge for whatever they can find while trying their best to avoid bands of menacing survivors, or as the young boy calls them, "bad guys."

At first glance, there is little hope in this novel. A pistol with two bullets is all that really stands between the travelers and an uncomfortable death. Why, then, I asked myself, do they go on? What could possibly be the purpose? The cynic in me says that the need to persevere is instinctual -- no different from the way in which a horse or a cow will turn its back to a blast of freezing prairie air. The critics seem to think that McCarthy's implicit message is that it is the love that the man bears for his child that is the wellspring of hope. I'm not really happy with either of those answers. If I look inside myself, I think I've traveled The Road from time to time (I'm pretty sure I was on it this week, in fact) and it was neither love nor hope that kept me going. It was the fundamentally naive belief that things will get better. Maybe I'm not so different from that cow in the wind.

You Don't Send a Gentleman to Catch Vermin

Ratcatcher

James McGee

Harper

When I checked out online reviews of Ratcatcher, I wasn't surprised to learn that women and men seemed to be divided about the relative merits of this book. In general, guys indicated that they didn't particularly enjoy the novel and felt that it was a weak example of the thriller/mystery genre. Female readers, on the other hand, offered praise for both the storyline and the uber-manly charms of the brooding (and, uh, hot) protagonist, Matthew Hawkwood. Why the difference? I'm just guessing, but I suspect it's because this wasn't really a thriller -- it was a Regency romance in disguise.

What's a Regency romance, you ask? Well, it is a novel set in England between the years 1811 - 1820. While the romantic plots revolve around marriages of convenience, compromised honour, and attraction between virginal maids and reckless rakes, the back stories often involve the intrigues of the British monarchy and aristocracy, the ongoing war against Napoleon, and, in some cases, the daring exploits of men such as the Bow Street Runners. Enter our mysterious hero -- former captain in the British military, man of brooding good looks, and quite the player with the ladies ... you can see why it was easy for me to draw my conclusion.

Ratcatcher is probably not a book that would appeal to most men. To be candid, I read the bulk of it by candlelight while lounging in the tub with a glass of white wine. Hawkwood was a good companion for a night, but I'm not sure that I will be asking him back. One Prinny out of five.

Delusional? Who, Me? ...

The God Delusion

Richard Dawkins

Houghton Mifflin

This probably wasn't the kind of book that I should have been bringing home as bedtime reading over the Easter holiday. Admittedly, the timing wasn't so good, but it was recommended to me by a colleague and I just couldn't help myself. How could I resist a book that promised to raise my consciousness to the fact that atheists can be happy, balanced, moral and intelligent? (And yes, I did stoop so low as to remove the cover so I could smuggle it into the house. Sorry, Mom -- I'm not proud of it.)

Dawkins, an Oxford professor of ethology, asserts that a persistent (insistent?) "false belief in the face of strong contradictory evidence" is delusional. He then goes on to quote Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, who said, " When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion." And that, my friends, was just the introduction!

I would be a liar if I told you that I didn't enjoy the text and identify with parts of what Dawkins has to say. Yes, religion sometimes legitimizes some pretty dumb things. And yes, out of context, even the most sane and normal of religious practices can seem kind of weird. Unfortunately, much of what Dawkins asserts is undermined by that fact that he often comes across as a pseudo-religious zealot who glosses a text to hide/support a weak argument. I was expecting the book to be a little more persuasive, and frankly, a little more articulate. Two point five deities out of five.

Oh, and just because I know at least some of you reading this post will ask me what I believe, I will tell you here and now. I'm with Einstein. I can't conceive of anything as perfect as a strawberry or as beautiful and functional as, say, a golden eyelash, without understanding god.

Nature vs Nurture

We Need to Talk About Kevin
Lionel Shriver
Harper Perennial

I'm not exactly sure what it was about this novel that grabbed me so much. The central character, Eva, is a successful, hands-on business woman, who obviously has some serious commitment issues. Her job frequently takes her away from home (sounding familiar?) and while she occasionally grouses about being away from Franklin, her husband, she's really not that interested in changing careers. One day, she decides that she might not be "happy enough" and asks Franklin if he wants to have a baby. Franklin is dying to be an all-American dad and readily agrees.

Months later, Kevin is born. Right from the start, he and Eva have an uneasy relationship --he won't take to the breast, he goes through nannies like diapers, and is fundamentally a mean (can I say evil?) little boy. When, two days before his sixteenth birthday, Kevin turns into a Columbine-type mass murderer , Eva's world is shattered. In putting it back together, she is forced to re-examine her life in the context of Kevin's horrific act of nihilism.

Reading We Need to Talk about Kevin is both a gripping and a harrowing experience. Written in the form of an epistolary novel, Shriver uses the text to implicitly provoke readers into considering the nature versus nurture question. Did her son turn out that way because Eva was a cold, aloof, emotionally-absent mother, or was he just bad from the beginning? Personally, I believe that the latter is more often the case. Sure, parents can seriously muck-up their kids, but the existentialist in me asserts that we are all responsible for our own choices and that morally there is a right and wrong. Kevin, like my boyfriend Dexter, (remember him?) is smart enough to understand the conventions of morality -- even if they don't exist for him as part of his nihilistic world-view. Three and a half Nietzsches out of five.

P is for Paris

The End of the Alphabet

CS Richardson

Doubleday Canada

Aphorisms be damned! I know they say that you can't judge a book by its cover, but that's what I did with the subject of this week's post and it seemed to work out fine. I was originally attracted to The End of the Alphabet by the picture of the camel that graced the front cover. The cousin that lives with me at the moment has been nuts for dromedaries since she was a little girl. She's got pictures, stuffed animals, figurines, Christmas ornaments -- you name it, and if it has a camel on it, I'm sure she has one.

When I picked up the book and read the publisher's blurb on the dust jacket, I didn't quite know what to expect. I suppose I thought it would be like an alphabetized Book of Hours crossed with Tuesdays with Morrie. It turns out that my assumption wasn't that far off the mark.

Somewhere in his early fifties, art lover and advertising man, Ambrose Zephyr learns that he has a month to live. He decides that in his remaining days he wants to travel his way through the alphabet and use the time he has left to absorb the beauty of art, life and the self. He and his wife only make it as far as Istanbul when Ambrose returns home to die. Gentle, witty and charming, The End of the Alphabet is a magical love letter well worth picking up. Three camels out of five.