V for Vomitous?  How about Vile?

The Paris Vendetta
Steve Berry
Ballantine

I travel a lot and, well, frankly, I'm nosy.  When I'm in the lounge, at the gate, or even sitting on the plane I often take a good look around and see what people are reading.  I run across quite of Nora Roberts -- either writing as herself for the women travellers and as J.D. Robb for the men.  Sadly, I still see a lot of Dan Brown.  (Did I tell you that when I joined a dating site I automatically closed matches where the "best book" read was The Davinci Code?)  Lately, I have also noticed that a lot of people are carrying around novels by Steve Berry.  They seemed like something that might interest me, so I picked one up.

OMG -- what a mistake.  Let's just say The Paris Vendetta was not a work of literature.  Former spy, Cotton Malone, gets pulled into a web of intrigue by one of his close friends and allies, some Dane name.  Dane is looking to avenge the senseless of his son and Cotton agrees to help.  The murderers, as it turns out, belong to The Paris Group, a collective of extremely wealthy individuals who are hatching a plan to manipulate the global stock markets to their advantage.  Throw in a Corsican connection, Napoleon, and a little bit of conspiracy and voila!  Yeah, it is a stupid as it sounds.

I'm not going to pollute the grading system that I have established on this blog by giving this book a rating.  Maybe it suffered because it was what I read directly following The Power of One.  Maybe it just sucked.  I will leave it to you to decide -- if you go there, caveat emptor definitely applies.

Heroes

The Power of One
Bryce Courtenay
McArthur & Co

It's hard to be believe, but I first read The Power of One over a decade ago.  My then boyfriend and I were still in the early stages of our relationship and I was completely blown away by the fact that I had found a "reader".  I remember asking him, all cow-eyed, of course, what book had most moved him in the last couple of years.  He pulled out a worn copy of Courtenay's novel and told me to read.

The Power of One was then, and probably still is now, one of the best books that I have ever read.  The story opens in the 1940s somewhere in rural South Africa.  Our hero, who later names himself Peekay, is five years old and heading off to an Afrikaner boarding school for the first time.  He's English and if you know anything about the history of the Boer War, you realize that poor little Peekay is in for a world of hurt.

What impressed me most about this novel was the fact that Courtenay made every character count.  As Peekay grows up, he (and therefore the reader) learns an important lesson from every single person who inhabits this book. Even when the interaction only lasts a few pages, the characters still resonate.  I have gone on to read other novels that this author has penned, and none have left me as breathless, as energized, as hopeful or as sad as The Power of One.  Five welterweight champions of the world out of five.

We have a Contender!

The Angel's Game
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Doubleday Canada

So here's the thing -- I am way, waaaay behind on my blog.  I got seriously sick a few weeks ago and since then, I haven't really had it in me to write.  I have, however, been reading like a fiend and as a result, your inboxes, Facebook pages, and RSS feeds are about to be deluged.  I have made it a goal to get caught up by week's end.  That's about an entry a day ... we'll see it how it goes.

Okay -- so let's talk about The Angel's Game.  David Martín, the story's hero, is a young writer who earns his way by churning out penny dreadfuls -- baroque tales of Barcelona's seedy, and somewhat mysterious underworld.  While he longs to write something of more substance, he is under contract to a pair of unscrupulous publishers who keep him busy with the popular, serialized stories 

David's future seems desolate and unrelenting.  It all changes, however, when he gets a letter from the reclusive Andreas Corelli.  Corelli promises David an extraordinary amount of money if David were to write him a book that creates a new myth -- one that can change the hearts and minds of all mankind.  David accepts Corelli's terms and enters into a world of darkness, passion, paranoia, and mystery.  It would seem that he has made a deal with the Devil.

I will be honest and tell you that I could not put this book down.  The weather outside was cold and gloomy and it was just the excuse I needed to stay snuggled in bed (and later on the couch) reading.  I've definitely found a candidate for the DES Book of the Year -- in fact, I think we have a front runner.  The Angel's Game gets five soul-shivering passages out of five.

Uh, Forgettable

I Remember You
Harriet Evans
Simon and Schuster

Can someone please explain to me why I feel like I have to finish a book even though it is absolute crap?  What is it about my personality that prevents me from walking away?  I can count on one hand the number of books that I have started and haven't finished.  In fact, let me share the list with you:

• Anna Karenina -- I tried to read this book when I was in Russia earlier this year, but reading about Moscow, when I was in St. Petersburg, didn't seem quite the thing.  I might have finished it on the way home, but I needed room in my luggage for souvenirs (I only took one bag).  Leaving it there, mostly unread, hurt me a little, but I take both comfort and secret delight in the fact that I ditched my copy on a nightstand in the Hotel Dostoevsky. 
• Ulysses -- Can you say Joyce at his most impenetrable?  I attempted to read it one summer in university and gave up.  I tried again in my early thirties and survived the experience.  Gotta love the snotgreen sea.
• Bridget Jones' Diary -- The only book that I have ever thrown away.  I was in Tokyo at the time and desperate for anything English as I was having a horrible case of culture shock.  Turns out I wasn't that desperate.  I pitched the book after the first ten pages, left the hotel and found an English bookstore.  What did I read instead?  The first two books of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  I was angling for a Godzilla novel, but couldn't find one in English.

Nice list, huh?  Forty years of living and I have given up on only three novels.   Ugh -- think of all the hours I have wasted reading bad, bad writing.  I should have spared myself some head shaking and given up on I Remember You.  It was terrible!  So much so, in fact, that I'm not even going to bore you with the details. Minus one navel-gazing examples of badly written Chick Lit out of five.

Moon Walker

The Boy in the Moon:  A Father's Search for his Disabled Son
Ian Brown
Vintage Canada

The Boy in the Moon, a memoir by journalist and broadcaster Ian Brown, tells the story of Brown and his relationship with his son Walker, a severely disabled tween, who cannot talk, cannot thrive without the help of a feeding tube, is still in diapers and who has the intellectual capacity of a toddler.  Walker belongs to an exclusive group -- only three hundred people in the entire world suffer from caridiofaciocutaneous syndrome -- a rare genetic condition that causes its suffers to self-abuse (Walker if left unattended would smash his head to a pulp) and often, but not always traps them and makes them unknowable inside their uncooperative bodies.

I picked this book up because I had heard a interview with the author on CBC radio.  Always charming and articulate, Brown, on whom I will admit to having a slight intellectual crush, told his story without seeming like either a martyr or a cheerleader for the disabled.  Physically caring for Walker sounded like hard business and Brown and his wife, writer Johanna Schneller, shifted their lives to accommodate the demands of their profoundly disabled son.  Trying to find the meaning of Walker's life, sounded like even harder business, and after listening to him speak, I wanted to know how Brown's journey turned.

This is a magnificent book.  It is beautiful and raw and it is so full of love that it makes my heart ache.  Brown speaks so honestly about Walker, about how terrible and terrifying it can be, that the reader can't help but be drawn in.  I am glad that I read this story.  Thank you, Mr. Brown, for sharing Walker with all of us.  Five beautiful boys out of five. 

Get UR Freak On - The Remix

SuperFreakonomics
Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Harper Collins

As it happens, one of the very first books that I reviewed on this blog was Levitt and Dubner's Freakonomics.  I may have mentioned at the time that I'm not a huge consumer of non-fiction.  I often set out to read things in the spirit of improving my business acumen, however, I find that when it comes right down to it, I'm a geek and my non-fiction tastes run to the zany and obscure.

Well, thank goodness for Levitt and Dubner.  SuperFreakonomics is as entertaining and as thought-provoking as its predecessor.  The economic dynamic duo provide intriguing answers to great unasked questions like "why is a prostitute like a department store Santa?"  I know -- how could I resist?

What's more, the chapter that outlines the commonality between Al Gore and Mount Pinatubo seriously has me considering suggesting this book to Yann Martel as one of his recommendations to Stephen Harper (see my entry from January of this year.)   The Stevils (as I have decided to call them) suggest a solution to the pollution created by the Alberta tar sands which I think is bloody brilliant.  I can't believe that there hasn't already been a call to action and I might just be doing some follow up research of my own.  Maybe this is why I don't read more non-fiction -- I get so caught up in it that my mind doesn't have room for anything else.

SuperFreak is definitely worth of few hours of your time.  It is consumable, engaging, and not always altogether believable which makes it a lot of fun.  Three funkadelic stars out of five.

Milton, I'm so sorry ...

The Amber Spyglass
Philip Pullman
Yearling

Okay, the final instalment of Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy was so bad, so confusing, and so utterly ridiculous that I'm flummoxed as to how to give it a review.   I finished this book weeks ago -- more out of sheer stubbornness than anything else -- and still find that I have nothing to say. 

Don't get me wrong -- my reasons for not liking this novel have nothing to do with the anti-religious overtones.  I'm as much of a humanist as the next person and I didn't find the book offensive.  I just thought it was stupid.  And a little bit weird.  Part of me thinks that the author was trying to invert/reinvent/problematize the theist world view that is expounded by Milton in Paradise Lost.  Another part of me thinks that Pullman was trying to out-do Blake -- who himself tried to reinvigorate Milton in terms of Innocence and Experience.   I think I must have fallen off the turnip truck a little too soon because the majority of this book sailed right over my head.  It was a Whitbread award winner for goodness sake.  What did I miss?  Perhaps if one of you read it, and get it, you can explain it it me.  Two Little Girls Lost out of five.