Who Are They Anyway?

Them - Adventures with Extremists

Jon Ronson

Simon & Schuster

A couple of you keen observers/blog readers have noticed that for a short month, I've managed to churn through quite a few books. Um, well, not that I am apologizing or anything, but some of the material has been quite light (seriously -- it take less than two hours to blast through a Harlequin.) And frankly, I've been in a bit of a funk and what do I do when I'm feeling blue? I read.

So, let's talk about Them. In a nutshell, this book is the chronicle of one man's journey (Jon Ronson) into, well, what my mother would call "Land of the Wackos." Ronson, a British humourist/journalist follows around and reports on the comings and goings of various "extremist" individuals. What makes them "extremists" is not their desire to blow up buildings or kill thousands of innocents -- no, they are "extreme" because they all believe, to one degree or another, that world events are being manipulated by a clandestine, insidious cabal of prominent politicians, thinkers, and financiers. While I'm not so sure that I don't agree with Them -- such a group does exist -- I might dispute the author's contention that this shadowy organization is the infamous Bilderberg group. You see, I had always been under the impression that the world was controlled by the insidious cabal that writes and publishes The Economist. Hmmm ... had I only known ...

To be candid, Them is much more disturbing than it is amusing. I will admit to laughing out loud when the author describes being outed at the Jihadist training camp (Ronson is Jewish, not gay -- imagine the potential consquences!) What really scared me, though, was reading the profiles of the closer-to-home, America-based weirdos. I know I should take comfort in the fact Michael Adams argues that Americans and Canadians have socially divergent values and that the gap is widening every day. And I also know that Ronson is really only describing the lunatic fringe. What scares me is that at the end of the day, people are people, regardless of their country of origin, and weirdos, well, they're not all harmless like me. Three crackpots out of five.

Canada Reads

lullabies for little criminals

Heather O'Neill

Harper Perennial

When I was a little kid, one of my favourite poems was Dennis Lee's Alligator Pie. Aside from the fantastic rhymes, I liked it because it made the complicated ideas of want, need and sacrifice very easy to understand. My grade three teacher, Mrs. Graham, once asked our class what was it that we loved as much as alligator pie and what would we be willing to give up to keep it? To be honest, I have no idea how my eight-year old brain answered that question -- it was the question itself that stuck with me.

If you were to ask me today, however, I would tell you that my alligator pie is CBC Radio-One. I wouldn't be the person that I am if it weren't for the influence of our much maligned public broadcaster. Canada Reads is a perfect case in point. Heading into its sixth "season" CR is essentially Survivor for CanLit. Five panelists each choose a book to defend and at the end of a week, there is only one book left standing. The debates are lively, erudite, heated, and, like most programming on the Ceeb, make you think.

Why the digression into childhood poetry and my love for the Mothership? Well, this week's book, lullabies for little criminals, is actually one the novels being debated in this year's Canada Reads. Set in the rougher neighbourhoods of Montreal, the story is about a young girl, Baby, who is walking the fine line between childhood innocence and the temptations offered by the street-life world of drugs, sex and addiction. Billed by reviewers as a "coming of age"story, the novel definitely exhibits characteristics of the traditional bildungsroman. Aside from her sexual awakening (at the hands of Alphonse her pimp and her ur-nerd boyfriend Xavier), I am not convinced that Baby actually transitions from childhood into maturity. The ending left me curiously unsatisfied and I'll be interested to see how lullabies fares in the debates. 2/5 étoiles.

In the Immortal Words of DW -- Boogity boogity boogity!

Thunderstruck
Roxanne St. Claire
Harlequin

So, I'm going to take a wild guess here and assume that some of you reading this blog are wondering what in the H-E double hockey sticks I'm talking about in the title. Um, well ... DW would be Darrell Waltrip. Boogity boogity boogity is what he says at the start of a race. Uh huh ... that's right, sports fans, tomorrow afternoon will find me sitting in front of my television, a Budweiser in one hand, a bowl of chili in the other, celebrating the start to a new NASCAR Nextel Cup season.

Imagine my delight (and frankly, bewilderment) when on my way home from work on Friday I stopped at the local bookshop and found Thunderstruck. Honestly ... I had no idea that NASCAR has it own series of Harlequin romances. Once I managed compose myself (I almost hit the floor I was laughing so hard) I purchased a copy of said romance and unashamedly dug in. The basic "plot" is as follows: Handsome, athletic boy meets beautiful grease monkey girl. After much sexual tension and a few kisses, boy and girl fall in love. Boy and girl then have a huge fight. Boy and girl then make up and live happily ever after. The end.

I've read my fair share of Harlequins and this one was as wonderfully crappy as all the rest. The best part of this novel, however, was that it was set at the Daytona track during Speed Week. It couldn't have been more perfect! And just in case you missed it in the About Me section of this blog -- this year, I'm cheering for Tony Stewart, Dale Earnhardt Jr., and Juan Pablo Montoya. While I think all of them are talented drivers (Tony especially), I'm really cheering for them because I think they are all very attractive. Well, I guess there is a little more to it than that ... I like Tony because he can be a supreme dick on the track and his anger and bad behaviour make me laugh. Junior is my sentimental favourite because his accent just kills me, and I quite liked JP (I've decided to call him JP) when he raced in F1.

Enjoy the race, everyone. I know I will.

Ice Cold, Baby

So Yesterday

Scott Westerfeld

Razor Bill

When I first started reading this novel, I did a bit of a double take. Did I actually pick up a book about the pursuit of cool, or was I reading some kind of trippy, fictionalized version of Crossing the Chasm meets The Tipping Point? The scary thing is that I'm still undecided.


So Yesterday introduces us to 17 year old Hunter Braque. Hunter is a Trendsetter (someone who has the innate ability to spot "cool" before it is "cool") and he occasionally works as a consultant for The Client -- a large footwear manufacturer named after a four-letter Greek god. One of Hunter's jobs is to attend Tastings (aka focus groups) where he and a pack of under twenty-somethings are asked to be the arbiters of taste. Hunter's other job is to roam the streets of New York and take pictures of cool things (using his ultra-hip Finnish mobile device, of course) and send them to his boss. It is on one of these excursions that he meets Jen, the girl of his dreams. The girl, as it turns out, is an Innovator and as soon as they hook up, strange things start to happen. Someone is trying to topple the pyramid of cool and bring rampant consumerism to the brink of destruction. It is up to Hunter and his new girl to figure it all out.

What's cooler than cool? Well, not me and definitely not this book. While I think Westerfeld gets readers to think about some of the issues around the production and marketing of popular culture, the story just doesn't work. What the book lacks, I'm afraid, is innovation. Hunter wouldn't have even picked it up.

New Boy in Town

Darkly Dreaming Dexter
Jeff Lindsay
Vintage Crime / Black Lizard

What is it with me, this blog, and the need to confess? As if liking Bruce Campbell weren't bad enough, now I think I'm in love with a serial killer. Is it any wonder that I'm single? (Don't answer that ... it was entirely rhetorical.)

I first met Dexter Morgan a couple of months ago -- my friend Peter actually introduced us one night after work. Dex is a blood spatter expert with the Miami-Dade police department (great job -- lots of opportunity!) and like of most of my past boyfriends, he is quite handsome, very fit, devastatingly charming, and, uh, emotionally unavailable. Big sigh.

You see, Dex has some serious baggage. He went through a terrible trauma as a young boy and it damaged him. Some people, lay people, might even be tempted to call him a sociopath. Actually, if I look at it objectively, I would have to say that Dexter is pretty much a homicidal maniac. The upside, and the reason I love him, is that he only kills VBPs -- very bad people. To make matters a little more complicated, his sister (a complete potty-mouthed cop if ever I met one) is investigating a series of brutal slayings that bear a striking resemblance to Dex's own unique style.

For someone who doesn't usually express much by way of emotion, he has been a little edgy and out of sorts lately. My internal radar is telling me to stay away ... but there is something so, I dunno, sexy about him, I might just have to see where this could lead. BTW, on our last date, he took me to a little medianoche for the best Cuban sandwich I have ever eaten. The decor left a little to be desired, but on the whole I'd give it three and a half stars. I'll keep you posted (pun intended) if things get serious.

Definitely Not Lost in Translation

The Club Dumas
Arturo Perez-Reverte
Harcourt

When you were a little kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? For the longest time, I was convinced that I was going to be a journalist, get a job with CBC radio, and travel the world. Sometime during university, I realized that I wasn't emotionally tough enough to become the next Mary Lou Findlay, so I decided that I would get married to my then boyfriend and eventually go to grad school to become a literature professor. The boy, well, he dumped me partway through grad school and since I was tired of being a dirt poor student, the other part of the dream faded away as well.

Ask me today what I want to be when I grow up, I'm going to say that I want to become Lucas Corso -- the very rumpled, borderline alcoholic, wolfish, book hunting hero of The Club Dumas. If I had to describe this novel in a sentence, I would probably say that it's The Da Vinci Code for the well-read. The story opens with a possible murder -- a well-known bibliophile is found hanged in his apartment, leaving behind a fragment of Dumas' original manuscript for The Three Musketeers. Corso is hired to authenticate the text and he suddenly finds himself swept into a mystery that involves satanic rituals, angels and demons, forgeries, and of course, a little bit of romance. Set against the backdrop of some of Europe's most literary and beautiful cities, this novel is meant for book-loving cynics.

Corso, while not entirely likeable, gains the reader's admiration and respect -- despite the fact that he uses questionable methods in pursuit of the truth. Like any good thriller, the author kept me guessing right to the very end. You'll have to read it for yourselves to find out more. I would advise you, however, to crack open your Latin text, fire up Google for some of the more obscure references, and do your best imitation of Sherlock Holmes. Four very melodramatic fleur-de-lis out of five.