All about Challenges

Thinking about my choices for the RIP challenge made me also think about how many Challenges I have underway and half done at present. This is a round-up post for me, to remind myself of everything I must read in the last quarter of this year! To recap:


Russian Reading Challenge
have read:

Death and the Penguin / Andrey Kurkov
The State Counsellor / Boris Akunin
Spirit of the Times / Olena Pchilka & Nataliya Kobrynska

must read:
1 more


Short Story Challenge
have read:

Blackouts / Craig Boyko
Spirit of the Times / Olena Pchilka & Nataliya Kobrynska
The Gipsy's Baby / Rosamond Lehmann

must read:
7 more collections of short stories


Science Book Challenge

have read:

Miss Leavitt's Stars / George Johnson

must read:

2 more

Chunkster Challenge

have read: 0!
must read: 4


Annie's What's in a Name Challenge
have read:
Blackouts / Craig Boyko (colour in title)
Death and the Penguin / Andrey Kurkov (animal in title)
The Solitude of Thomas Cave / Georgina Harding (personal name in title)
The House in Paris / Elizabeth Bowen (place in title)
Sunlight on a broken column / Attia Hossain (weather event in title)
The Seduction of the Crimson Rose / Lauren Willig (plant in title)

must read:
Hey, I'm done! Yay!


And now my newer Challenges, the Canadian Book Challenge (have read 2 of 13 so far) and the RIP III (just beginning).

Think that's it. Whew!

Prairie Bridesmaid

The Prairie Bridesmaid / Daria Salamon
Toronto : Key Porter, c2008.
(novel with soundtrack)


I just read this new book; it came across my desk and was appealing enough for a trip home with me. I hadn't planned to read this for the Canadian Book Challenge but there it is. However, I think there's a reason why most chick lit is set in New York or L.A. or somewhere glamorous like that. When it's set in Winnipeg it calls for a HUGE suspension of disbelief!


I think I'm being a bit facetious calling this chick-lit; after all it is published in hardcover and by a publisher not exactly known for their huge chick lit backlist. Still. It is! (stomping of feet) If it had only been published in trade paper with cartoony font for the title and the photo more like a sketch instead, it would be obvious. :)


The synopsis:
Anna Lasko, in her early 30's, has a nasty & emotionally abusive boyfriend. He goes away for 6 months, giving her time to break it off properly, which entails buying and then not reading self-help books and being ambushed with an 'intervention' by her caring friends -- one pregnant, one a bride-to-be and one a large woman happy with her size. Anna is a mess, and like most heroines of these kinds of books, she smokes, lives admidst chaos and is often quite annoying.


What I Liked:
I should have loved it; it has Ukrainians! That's one of the reasons I wanted to read it, not often you get a book set in the Canadian prairies with a character of Ukrainian background that isn't "about" being Ukrainian. I did like the way that Anna and her Baba are just there, not standing as symbols of some larger "Ukrainian experience". Rather, they are simply people who live in Manitoba who happen to be of Ukrainian descent, and they do things like make perogies and decorate eggs in a matter of fact way, not as ethnic colour. I really liked that touch. Her Baba is a tough old bird and made me laugh. Here's Baba giving relationship advice:

Relationships take work. Life with your Gido sure wasn't easy. I hung on because he's all I had. It certainly didn't help when his parents showed up from the Old Country to live with us.... To think I came here to get away from them and then they followed us. The buggers.

I found many of the minor characters and situations more entertaining than the primary story. Anna, alone in her ramshackle house, takes to chatting with the squirrel who has taken up residence in the attic. Those conversations are quite funny and quirky. Her parents are interesting and odd and I would have liked to read more about them as well. If only the light touch had continued, rather than the continuous moaning over the horrible behaviour of Adam, the nasty boyfriend. He's a jerk, we can clearly see that. We wish Anna would just get rid of him already.

What I Didn't Like:
There are tons of subplots in this, and sometimes it feels a bit too much. For example, Anna's sister Natalia has become involved with a cultish boyfriend and moved to Iran, where he takes a second wife as permitted by Islam and simultaneously knocks up Natalia. This cries out for a book of its own. At the end of the book Anna decides she will go to Iran to help her sister with the birth and hopefully rescue her and bring her home. She buys a plane ticket and heads off, lickety split. Has she never heard of passports or visas? I found this a bit of a stretch. I also felt that Anna's three friends were all constructed to play a certain role; they all had specific issues they represented so that these issues could be brought into the book.

I think my main difficulty with this book was simply that I don't really like chick-lit. I like the premise, I thought the setting was great, but somehow the main character in these books always turn me off. They are so self-centred and whiny and such a mess! If you like Bridget Jones or Sophie Kinsella etc. you may like this (though there isn't much shopping in it!) I had a hard time warming up to Anna, though, especially when she acts like a bratty 13 yr old at her friend Sarah's wedding. The point of the title is that Anna has been a bridesmaid so many times and she just wants to be a bride for once. Here she is stuck in a horrible breakup and all Sarah can think about is her wedding! So she sabotages the wedding in a passive aggressive manner, by cutting a huge chunk out of the back of the cake, by stealing the best man's speech, etc. etc. I found Anna in this scene excessively childish and really not sympathetic at all.


Salamon is clearly a genius at marketing and promotion, however; her website is full of great stuff including a downloadable soundtrack for the book, created by various Canadian musicians. It's very neat. I will look out for her next book and just hope I get along better with the next heroine.

Another You-Are-Not-Well-Read-At-All List

It's the beginning of the long weekend, except, well, I work this weekend. All I want to do is sit in the backyard and read all weekend, but nooooo. So I don't have the mental relaxation time to write up all the reviews I want to do! Time for a meme, I believe.

I found this one over at A Work in Progress; a good list is fun to look at when your brain can't string its own sentences together! Even if it does make you feel kind of dumb sometimes... This is the BBC version of a must-read list.

Here's the instructions:

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love. (I will make these ones red instead)
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated. (I'll make them purple; it's easier!)
5) Reprint this list in your own blog.


1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible -
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare : I've read most but have to read the history plays to say I've read everything
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (because I really can't stand Steinbeck)
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma- Jane Austen : I can't remember reading this so can't honestly count it
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt - I've tried this 3 times and have never got past the first few chapters.
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables– Victor Hugo

Return of the RIP, 3rd time round

Well I am glad to see I am not the only one shocked by how suddenly it is time for Carl's R.I.P. Challenge again this year! Where did this year go??? Even though I am still halfway through some of my other challenges and just beginning a couple more, I've been waiting for Carl to post about the resurgence of the RIP -- I so look forward to it. And I am in the mood to begin again, hvaing just read Will Storr's Will Storr vs. the Supernatural. (quick review: creepy and hilariously funny in parts, and like Bookfool said, "loads of fun daylight reading", but don't read it alone at bedtime!)

I like Carl's idea of having a pool of books from which to choose, so thinking big I'll choose Peril the First; reading 4 books with some sort of scary connection. Here's my pool of ideas, I may swap out later anyhow but I am aiming to pick from these ones on the never-ending TBR:

1. Vernon Lee / Supernatural Tales

2. Elizabeth Gaskell / Gothic Tales

3. Robertson Davies / High Spirits : a collection of ghost stories

4. Barbara Michaels / Ammie Come Home, or, The Crying Child, or, Greygallows

5. Dan Simmons / The Terror

6. Shirley Jackson / The Haunting of Hill House

7. Ray Bradbury / something....

8. Wilkie Collins / The Woman in White

Eating for Energy

Eating for Energy / Yuri Elkaim

(self-published through lulu.com)

This is the first book I have received through the great new website for Canadian bloggers, Mini Book Expo. I requested it because it is written by a Canadian who is a Registered Holistic Nutritionist and a fitness & wellness expert. It talks about nutrition for us regular lazy folks as well as having chapters on eating well as an athlete (very timely reading during the Olympics, I'd say!). He also has quite an impressive website for his business, Total Wellness Consulting.

The author, Yuri Elkaim, is certainly enthusiastic about his subject. You can just tell by reading this that talking to him would be an exciting whirlwind of energetic learning opportunities. If he was your personal trainer I don't think you'd lack for motivation! It is obvious that knowledge is his passion and that he wants everyone to live better through the knowledge he has to share. Many of my regular readers know that I find the subject of vegetarian nutrition quite fascinating, and this book recommends a nearly vegan diet for optimal health. However, he does allow that fish oil and the occasional bit of chicken or fish is just fine. For myself, I prefer vegan -- the recent book I bought by Jae Steele, Get it Ripe, is fully vegan, and strangely enough both authors have done the same educational program. It's great to have so much information from a Canadian viewpoint.

This book, because it is self-published, is lacking a few amenities, most notably an index. However, he includes a 12 week menu plan, many recipes, and lots of fascinating nutritional information. One of the things I found most intriguing was his discussion of the need for an acidic-alkaline balance in the body. He talks about the physiological effects of different foods and recommends how and when to eat different things for optimal health. If you are looking for more of a cookbook, I'd recommend Jae Steele's book; she also includes a lot of nutritional information about living as a vegan in the first half of her book. But if you are not strictly vegan and are more interested in eating well while being an active, athletic type of person, this is the book for you. There are lots of great points in here, and lots of 'book bonuses' you can find at the author's website to accompany the text. I'm heading over there to take a look; he's also the originator of the Fitter U iPod/MP3 workouts which are available at his site, and reading him is so motivational I need to check out his products too. There's also a TON of free articles and video workouts to download at his site so if you're in need of a nudge toward better eating and better health, pop over and take a look at just one of the many, many resources to be found there. And try to find this book -- outside Canada you'll probably have to go direct to the website, but that's something you would probably want to do anyhow if you are interested in this topic.

Bookworms Carnival, August edition

Yikes, nearly forgot to mention the August edition of the Bookworms Carnival! It's up over at The 3 R's. The theme is YA literature, and there are sure a lot of links to follow -- we all seem to love some good YA...

Thanks, Florinda, for hosting!

Book Blogger Appreciation Week

Hey, has everyone heard about this? Over at My Friend Amy, she's opened nominations for various categories of book blogs. Go on over and check it out and maybe nominate a few blogs. This sounds like a great way to get to know some of the other lit bloggers out there that you may have missed...

Saltsea, a PEI Idyll

Saltsea / David Helwig
TO: Biblioasis, c2006.

Another tour de force for Helwig. I'm so glad I discovered this author last year, through Porcupine's Quill Press and with the incentive of the 1st Canadian Book Challenge. Now I'm back for the CBC II with this full-length novel set in PEI.

This novel is a type I am particularly fond of: it takes a location, here the specific house which becomes the hotel Saltsea, and traces the lives of those who pass through it. Of course, this kind of story could go on forever, so the events of the novel are limited to a few weeks of a summer pretty much in our present. People arrive at the hotel, small things happen, relationships are formed and/or dissolved, people leave the hotel -- and more people arrive, whose stories we'll never hear. In the last few pages of the novel, all of the people we've been following are leaving, the story is changing, and into this comes an observant little girl, Eleanor. She's come with her family, her parents and two little sisters Helena and Melanie. She looks at some of the things left behind by the departing guests and interprets them completely differently than those who'd left them behind; I loved this about the story. Many of the characters are shown viewing the same occurrence and coming to completely different conclusions, and Helwig lets this be. He doesn't try to explain which is the REAL reason behind something, the point is that everyone sees something different in every moment.

While reading this, I was reminded of Vonnegut's comment on fiction: "The plot is just a bribe." While there is a plot in this novel, it serves to propel the story to a moment of closure but is not the purpose of the telling. The reward in reading this comes from savouring the specificity of a butterfly clinging to a stalk of grass with tiny feet, or feeling yourself in the hotel on a rainy night entertaining one another with music and recitations. It comes from recognizing how strange and lonely/alone every human being is, and how our relationships result from our need for connection.

There is a feeling of Virginia Woolf here, a Woolf of To the Lighthouse or The Waves. In the minutiae of human interaction there is also a hint of Henry James, though the action is more earthy. The impetus of the story is love, in all its forms -- love, lust, affection, friendship, hatred. And it is marvellously told. Helwig's talent creates each individual in this crowded cast of characters as someone with a full and present existence. He provides backstory and all the little quirks of individual behaviour without overwhelming us with detail. He also writes precise, to the point observations of the natural world. No rambling 'sunset' paragraphs, just one or two lines thrown in which nonetheless bring the setting to life in full 3D reality: scent, sight, sound, even tastes and textures. For example:

Robin was cycling home in the dark... She had a lamp on the front of her bike, and she knew the way, but still the darkness was very large and her bit of illumination crossing it was very small...the brightness of the stars made her aware of the huge cold spaces that surrounded her, made her breathe deeply and and listen to the sound of her wheels on the pavement. You could vanish into that great night of space, an image fading to black, a hint that romance and horror may lie behind any moment of time, or so the movies believe. They have no love for the quotidian, the tiny blessings.

The power of his writing, and his love for the quotidian, is one reason I've become so fond of Helwig's work so quickly. I feel while reading that not only am I experiencing an enjoyable story, I am also learning how to create a fictional world which is so real is feels more like a memory than something read. Just listen to these opening lines:

Birdsong, wind: here by the ocean every noise was surrounded by silence that reached all the way to the stars. Monica studied the white shingled building above the slope of green lawn, deep bays rising two storeys on each side of the front door and the windowed porch. You felt the big rambling construction must have a memory, old thoughts. Listen, I am the voice of what once was. I am as real as the beating of your hungry heart.

Memory is the other primary theme of the novel. The memory of a building for its past, shown through characters like Barbara, whose industrialist father once owned the house, before Barbara and her hippie friends inhabited the deserted building as young adults. Each character has a history which is carefully and slowly revealed through narrative and internal dialogue, much as the archaeological grad student camping below Saltsea digs up artifacts of the recent past. This digging up of lives is balanced at the end of the book by the focus on Eleanor, a young girl without much chance of having a past, not yet. Saltsea's place as a retreat away from all this life and busy-ness is revealed by the current owner, Lawrence Gardiner, as he muses while falling asleep one night, thinking about his former career as a diplomat:

The life he lived here was outside of history. Saltsea was a place for contemplation, where men and women indulged themselves in the slowness of pleasure, like the mandarin in his garden, thoughts moving in the measured strokes of a fine calligraphy. At worst, pinchbeck paradise. Perhaps leisure allowed a man or woman to grow aware of the specific gravity of the personality -- a high flown phrase, but all the same, when you put it that way, you saw that there was a point to their work, that clean laundry, even, had its justification, its meaning.

There are a few characters I dislike, but not because of any flaws in their realization, rather because they are so real, and so disagreeable. I am impressed by Helwig's ability to create a story so fascinating out of not much at all. Most of the shocking action takes place off-stage, so to speak, in memory and recollection, although the younger characters do get up to some of their own particular memory-making. It's a book to read while on vacation, or even as a vacation; the narrative voice is slow and deliberate and it takes some time to get to know all the players. The rewards are well worth the effort, though.
This book has started off my year of Canadian Book Challenging on a high note.
Definitely recommended.

Meme of Me

Oh, look, a meme I'd forgotten to do! Eva at A Striped Armchair tagged me for this one while I was in Ukraine and in all the kerfuffle since, this fun meme completely slipped my mind. Just the thing for this week!


What was I doing 10 years ago?

Ten years ago...that would be '98, let's see... I was living in Montreal and working 3 part-time jobs in 3 different libraries. The world of the new librarian is not a glamorous one!


Five Snacks I enjoy in a perfect, non weight-gaining world:

1. Chocolate, pure milk chocolate.

2. Hot chocolate with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles

3. Fresh scones with homemade jam

4. Chocolate chip cookie dough (vegan so I can eat it raw!)

5. A nice fluffy cupcake or slice of pound cake

Five Snacks I Enjoy in the Real World:

1. Rice crackers and Salsa

2. Melons and peaches, especially at this time of year

3. Frozen peas. Seriously, they're good.

4. Apples

5. Sesame seed protein bars

Five Jobs I Have Had:

1. Deli counter staff (2 summers - and hard work!)

2. Nanny (worst job EVER!!!)

3. Housemaid (wearing a black dress and frilly apron; lasted one day)

4. Ticket seller for a service club raffle - I did this boring job for an entire summer

5. Various permutations of librarian's work


Three of My Habits:

1. At this time of year I habitually get into a domestic groove and make jam.

2. While making jam -- or during any other lengthy cooking foray -- I must listen to Abba. Preferably Abba Gold so I can sing along in my lovely Abba-esque voice...

3. I always take my shoes off inside the house and ask anyone else visiting to do the same. I hate the thought of walking around my house with the same shoes that were on the sidewalk.


Five Things I Would Do if I Was a Billionaire:

1. Quit my job! :)

2. Set up educational and/or charitable grants to support the arts and literacy

3. Buy new clothes once in a while

4. Have nice flats in all the cities I'd love to live in, so I could live in them alternately

5. Give lots of money away

Five Places I’ve Lived:

1. Prince Albert, Saskatchewan

2. Montreal, Quebec

3. Stratford, Ontario

And that's it...

Five People I Want to Know Better:

(i.e.: the tags! )
I'm never sure who to tag but I do know I like reading strange little tidbits about my fellow bloggers! So if you'd like to try this one, feel free to run with it. Just let me know in the comments so I'll be sure to see your answers, too. :)

First among Sequels

First among Sequels : a Thursday Next novel / Jasper Fforde
NY: Penguin, c2008.
(paperback ed.)

I will begin by stating that I have recently read the final book in a number of different series without reading the ones preceding. Despite the fact that I've been avoiding Jasper Fforde's witty, bookish Thursday Next series, due to fears that it would be too twee or that the humour would be over the top and too obvious to be entertaining, I now freely state that I was totally wrong.

Even without reading the first 4 books, this novel was deliciously entertaining, a riot to read and to quote from. His world is a crazy confabulation of a future world similar to our own, and a whole universe inside novels. If you are one of the few (which I was) who hasn't read any Fforde yet, do yourself a favour and begin. This was a perfect holiday book, making me snort with laughter and making people around me shake their heads at my strange behaviour. (caveat: you probably don't want to read this on a crowded airplane. Just saying.)

Thursday Next is an operative for the Jurisfiction Police, which has been officially disbanded. Her cover is that she's an employee of Acme Carpets, though she never actually has to lay a carpet...well, except that once... In this adventure she has to return to the world of fiction to figure out how the mammoth Goliath Corporation is sending real world probes into the bookish universe, an advance scout for their plans for bookworld tourism. Reality television is trying to lay claim to the fictional world as well, presenting P&P as a viewer driven program called The Bennets, and Thursday has her hands full trying to maintain the integrity of the book. There are a ton of subplots to this one; something is always going on, and Thursday, along with her fictional counterparts Thursday 5 and Thursday 1-4, has to deal with it all. Here is just one throw-away idea which I found hugely entertaining:

[in a staff meeting] "Item one: an active cell of bowdlerizers has been at work again, this time in Philip Larkin and 'This be the Verse'. We've found several editions with the first line altered to read 'They tuck you up, your mum and dad', which is a gross distortion of the original intent. Who wants to have a go at this?"

In an episode dealing with P&P there is a great explanation for why, sometimes, our old favourites just don't seem to do the trick. Here, due to excessive reading, P&P has been taken in for repairs:

"If this is Pride & Prejudice," said Thursday 5 as we walked toward the Bennets' property of Longbourn, "then what are people reading in the Outland?" ...
"We divert the readings to a lesser copy on a standby Storycode Engine, and people read that," I replied, nodding a greeting to the various technicians who were trying to make good the damage wrought by the last million readings or so. "The book is never quite as good, but the only people who might see a difference are the Austen enthusiasts and scholars. They would notice the slight dulling and lack of vitality, but, unable to come to a satisfactory answer as to why this might be so, they will simply blame themselves -- a reading later in the week will once again renew their confidence in the magnificence of the novel."

I've now gone back and started at the beginning with The Eyre Affair. Thank goodness there are still three more to go. This will definitely be one of my most cherished review copies I've received lately, what with all the slips of paper sticking out of it at the parts I want to copy down. If you are a bookish person (and I know that most of my readers will be that) you will most likely find this series a rather self-referential literary romp with great amusement value. And you'll never look at Pride and Prejudice the same way again...

Church of the Dog

Church of the Dog / Kaya McLaren
NY : Penguin, c2008.

Time to catch up on a couple of reviews from the week-before-last's "Weekly Geeks" theme. To answer a couple more questions about my unreviewed books, here at long last is my look at Church of the Dog.

Heather at Errant Dreams asks:
'The Church of the Dog'?!I've never heard of it, and I just have to know, what is it about, and what does the title refer to??


First, Heather, I'll let you know what the title refers to...

The main character, Mara O’Shaunessey, is a wanderer who finds herself washing up in a small Oregon town. In very short order she has adopted a pig and moved into a small shack behind the elderly Edith and Earl McRae's farmhouse. Mara is a free spirit, and a stained glass artist and a painter and an art teacher...art is a big part of her life. To brighten up her shack she paints a beautiful mural on the outside walls of a husky dog she has been dreaming of. Shortly after this, that very dog appears and adopts her, or she him, depending on how you look at it. I think this reveals that there is a lot of New Age spirituality in this storyline, and thus the main character feels that her home, beautifully decorated and peacefully inhabited, is a spiritual haven of sorts. That feeling, added to the dog/spirit guide painted on the walls, is what the title is referring to.


The basic storyline follows Mara as she makes a home for herself in this town, and gets to know the McRaes. Her openess changes the lives of all those around her, as Edith becomes more daring, drinking wine and accompanying Mara on midnight stealth charity errands. Earl discovers one morning while shaving that there is a tumour on his neck, and it is cancer. Mara's presence allows him to realize that the important things in life are his relationships, so he spends his last weeks on earth rebuilding the romance with his wife; the marriage is of such length that they've been taking each other for granted. He also writes to his estranged grandson, begging him to come home from Alaska and reconcile. The grandson, Daniel, works as a fisherman in Alaska, but decides he will return; they have their chance to forgive one another, and Daniel stays on in the McCrae house.

The Good:
The cover is a wonderful image, drawing attention to the artistic elements of the story. From the opening, when Mara arrives in town during a 4H auction and buys a pig to save him from slaughter, I was entertained and curious to know what this person was going to do next. Edith and Earl were characters I'd have liked to know more about -- the novel was told in alternating voices and I wanted more of these two. The story pays attention to the small things in life that make it worth living, illuminating the value of everyday things and everyday routines. Some of the descriptions of the farm, the shack she's painting, and Earl's friends in town are lovely and amusing.

The Not-so-good:
An element of the story which I actually didn't much like at all was the character of Daniel. He is not fleshed out much as an individual; I wasn't sure what he was thinking or what made him into the character he was. There is a lot in the book about his group of housemates in Alaska, and I could have lived without them. They live in squalor -- they are proud of the fact that their house reeks, is filled with garbage, and marauding raccoons attack the piles of crap on the back porch. I'm not sure if she thought this description showed the anti-establishment, free spirited nature of his friends, or if (heaven forbid) it came from life, but it was actually quite disgusting. I was hoping Daniel would come home and distance himself from this group of slackers, but instead they follow him to Oregon.

And, there is a bit too much woo-woo in the book for me. Mara and Daniel share dreams; this is not presented in a 'magical realism' way, but in a very pragmatic, "well, I was in your dream last night" kind of way, and it creeped me out! Do I really want to believe that somebody can just pop in to my very private dream world without a by-your-leave? Ick.

Overall, I liked this novel as a fun summer read, but if you have any reservations about New Age spirituality you probably will find it a bit over the top. The character of Mara is a great one; she is artistic, gentle yet spunky, open hearted and inspiring. I'd have liked the book better without the Daniel subplot, but I know that he was a favourite of others who've read this, so read it for yourself and decide!

Weekly Geeks Photo Assignment

Ok, I haven't even finished answering some of the questions from the last Weekly Geeks I tried to participate in, but I can't NOT do this one! It looks like such fun. I'm sad Dewey will be offline for a week or two, but I hope she knows how we all enjoy her weekly assignments nonetheless.

1. Photos of your favorite author(s).

I have far too many to post for this one. So I'll sample 3 -

Lucy Maud Montgomery, who is dear to my heart, and will always be my "favourite" author of all. (here at age 10)


José Saramago, whose genius astonishes me and whose books I am always eager to get my hands on.


And a new author, whose first book I loved and who may become one of my favourite authors as she writes more, Olga Grushin. (author of The Dream Life of Sukhanov)



2. Photo(s) of the author(s) of the book(s) you’re currently reading.

David Helwig's Saltsea:


3. Photo(s) of any author(s) you’ve met in person (even very briefly).


I've met a lot of authors, so I'm going to share just a couple of my hometown acquaintances. First, the very well known Jane Urquhart, who I think is a great writer and is a really nice person, too.

Second, there's a personal friend, Virgil Burnett. He's probably better known as a sculptor and/or illustrator, but he's written one of my favourite books ever, Towers at the Edge of a World, and has just this summer published a novel called Scarbo Edge. It's set in Ontario and will most likely be one of my Canadian Book Challenge II Reads. He's also a delightful man; extremely intelligent, full of great stories, who has been very kind both to me and to my shy husband.

4. A youtube of (an) author(s) you’ve heard speak.

While hearing Margaret Atwood speak at charity dinner was amazing, I've decided to post a video of her which highlights her amusing side. There are hundreds of videos on youtube of Atwood being interviewed and lecturing; I happen to really enjoy her voice and her wry delivery, so if you do too, please take some time and explore some of those videos. People don't always think of her as funny, however, so I'm posting one of my faves from a Canadian weekly satire show called Rick Mercer's Monday Report. (a great show on its own) Here's Margaret Atwood describing the finer points of being a goalie --





5. Any photo(s) you may have of yourself with an author.

This will be added in a day or two; I have to find and scan one!



6. A photo of the author of the book you’ve most recently finished

Here's Dean Koontz, author of Odd Hours -- both with hair, and without...





7. Photos of the hottest author(s)!


It's kind of hard to think of an author who I'd consider 'hot'...but here goes! Two similar fellows, one British (that accent itself is hot), Edward Docx


and one Canadian, Evan Solomon.

We Interrupt this Broadcast to Bring You an Olympic Moment

Just a quick note -- even though I am not in any way a sports-minded person, I've been watching a bit of the Olympics online. This is only because my cousin, Sherraine Schalm, was fencing. Sherraine unfortunately didn't do as well as she'd hoped and expressed her feelings, which were then picked up by tv and made into quite a huge deal with people freely sharing their opinions of either her 'honesty' or her 'unsportmanslike behaviour', depending on their point of view. I have no comment on any of that; just wanted to acknowledge her efforts to get to the Olympics in the first place.

And because this is a book blog, I do have to note as well that she's written a memoir of sorts, published a couple of years ago, called Running with Swords. If you're at all curious about fencing you may find it interesting.

Garden Spells

Garden Spells / Sarah Addison Allen

New York : Bantam Dell, c2007.

Like many, I was attracted to this book by its beautiful cover. It is magical and quite lovely. I was also intrigued by reading many reviews. Unfortunately I think I will be in the minority when I say that I really didn't love it. I thought it was just alright. Many people have compared Allen to Alice Hoffman. The plot of this story really does cleave a little too closely to that of Practical Magic for my taste; it leaves me feeling as if I'm reading a pale shadow of Hoffman's rich story. I've read all of Alice Hoffman's work, and I think her particular brand of storytelling has an originality and a darkness to it despite its label of 'magical realism' (which often seems to be interpreted as 'dreamy and fey'). This novel, in comparison, seems shallower, with more of a bubbly chick-lit feel to it. Each Waverly woman has a special gift, but really, hairdressing as a special magical talent?

Andi asked:

Did you like Garden Spells? What was your favorite part and/or character?

Despite what I've just written, I didn't think it was awful! I read it all in one night, so there was something in it that kept me fascinated. There were some characters with depth, particularly elderly Cousin Evanelle, and young Bay Waverly. There were some clever elements, like the Waverly apple tree with its magical powers. The image that Bay kept dreaming of, that of the tree sparkling and rustling in the breeze, was brought into reality with great visual acuity. However, I did not really like either sister, Claire or Sydney, nor the men they were interested in, nor the twee town they lived in. So it is hard for me to give this a thumbs up. There was certainly potential, but I'd like to see her get out of the shadow of Alice Hoffman and give free rein to her own voice.

Overall, this story of two dissimilar sisters, each with their own strengths (Claire with the ability to cook and cater with quite unexpected results for those partaking, Sydney for...doing hair) falls into predictability. I'm not sure I really believed the romantic elements, or the ease of the sisterly reconciliation. However, it was another light summer read, and as such, not bad.

TinyLittleLibrarian asked:

Were you totally enchanted by Garden Spells? I was, but have since read a few reviews from people who thought it was so-so. If you loved it, are you planning to read her new book, The Sugar Queen?

I guess I fall into the so-so camp. However, I may just read The Sugar Queen, hoping that she has become a more assured writer. The idea of the book sounds like it could be either really good or really bad. I might have to find out which! And, once again the cover is gorgeous.

Summertime...

Has anyone else noticed that the summer is a very difficult time to blog?! I've been travelling and then coming back from travelling -- and catching up on library work and on housework...well, okay, so maybe not the housework.

Plus I'm more in the mood to sit outside and read than sit in the basement and blog! (I really need a laptop). I have a few reviews half written and many more books half read. I will be back to update once again, after another busy weekend of family visits.

Hope you are all having a great summer holiday!

Dead and Laughing

I'm going to do a quick review of two books which both suit the title of this post: Elizabeth Peters' The Laughter of Dead Kings, and Dean Koontz's Odd Hours. They are distinctly different, but both make for enjoyable reading, especially on holiday.

First, Elizabeth Peters. As I just mentioned, I've read mostly everything by Elizabeth Peters (as well as her alterego, Barbara Michaels). This book, which I received as an advance reading copy, was certainly up to standard. It is a Vicky Bliss novel, if you follow her series. Vicky is an art historian who works at a German museum which lets her travel pretty much anywhere -- which really works for the plot! Her boss, Anton Z. Schmidt, is one of my favourite characters in this series; a very large and gregarious man, he takes a fatherly interest in Vicky, meaning he spends lots of money on her and wants to know what she is doing all of the time. This book opens with Vicky and her lover John Tregarth (aka John Smythe, a former international art smuggler) getting themselves embroiled in the circumstances around the clandestine theft of King Tut's mummy. FBI agents are convinced John was involved, as it was done in such a professional manner, and was as successful as all his former heists had been. It is up to John, Vicky, and of course Anton Z. Schmidt, to clear John's name and reveal the actual criminals behind the theft. So, they all head off to Egypt where they make use of John's contacts in the underworld, Schmidt's contacts everywhere else, and Vicky's clever yet bullheaded personality to solve the problem. Lots of adventure, humour, atmosphere, banter and true love later, it all comes to a satisfactory close. Those of you familiar with Elizabeth Peters' writing will know that I can not detail the plot too closely, as it would take quite a bit of exposition to explain her tangled storylines. Everything depends upon everything else, and I don't want to spoil the joy of discovery for any future readers! I hope it is enough to say that it is Elizabeth Peters in top form, and the fact that they are in Egypt explains the origin of the mysterious John Smythe -- characters from another series appear as his antecedents, and the early 20th century expeditionary home of the Peabodys plays a large role in this story.

And now for Dean Koontz' Odd Hours:

Rachel has asked, can I recommend Dean Koontz to her? Well, all I have read of his work is the Odd Thomas series, because I love the character so much. I don't read a lot of horror or supernatural fiction, so I am not exactly tempted by most of Koontz' work, and I'll also admit that I have ever only read one Stephen King novel, and that was in high school. Still, for some strange reason I picked up the first Odd Thomas, and the character was so appealing that I kept reading, right through mass murder and eye-closing terror. I then read the next two quite eagerly, and was pleased to receive this fourth in the series as a review copy. And it was a wonderful summer read, once I got to it (my husband claimed it before I could...). In this adventure, Odd has left his hometown of Pico Mundo to go to the oceanside community of Magic Beach. He has been drawn there by his visions of a 'red tide', a great disaster in the making. He has taken a position as private cook to an aged star of the silver screen, Hutch Hutchison. The banter between these two was delightful and really highlights Koontz' quirky and original sense of humour. I enjoy his pages of dialogue; he may be a 'genre' writer, but he is a very accomplished one as well, as his writing reveals. Odd, of course, becomes embroiled in the mysterious criminal activity causing his visions, and once again saves the world. This particular novel is more of a classic suspense story than the previous three; as illustration of possible influences, Odd more than once presents himself to the authorities as "Harry Lime". In case you don't catch that, the movie The Third Man is later referenced by another character. His dead companion changes here as well -- dead Elvis has moved on the next world, and the shade of Frank Sinatra has taken to hanging about (to great effect in one jail scene). All in all, a great summer read which I'd recommend, as much less terrifying than the first book in the series! Still, I think my favourite of the series so far has been #3, Brother Odd. If you don't mind a little bit of hair-raising gore and a few ghosts and scary supernatural beings floating about, do give this series a try. Odd Thomas is a memorable character.

Answers, partly!

As I am once again travelling this week, I'm just going to check in by answering a couple of general questions -- I'll write more in a few days about specific questions on the specific books we've mentioned. This summer is crazy; I am not sitting still long enough to string two sentences together! (but it sure has been fun....)
To begin:



Bibliolatrist asks:
Of these books, which would you save from a fire, assuming you could save only one? Why this one? (And I'm already knocking on wood that this never happens, don't worry!) If you had to sacrifice one to save the rest, which would you toss? Why?

Ooh, Literary Survivor!! Well, I'd probably save The Master and Margarita, mainly because it is such a classic, and it really made me think while I was reading it. For pure literary value, it would be this one. Every rereading would provide more food for thought, and I am sure it will take a few rereadings before I am really sure what it is all about!



Bookfool asks:
Which of these books was your favourite, and why?

Despite Bulgakov being the most literary and the one I'd feel compelled to keep in case of fire, I think my favourite among this list, the one that gave me the most enjoyment in reading, would be The Laughter of Dead Kings, by Elizabeth Peters. Why? Because I simply love Elizabeth Peters and would read any and all of her books over again and again. This one was particularly fun, as it took the characters from her Vicky Bliss series and connected them to my favourite, the Amelia Peabody series. Wonderfully fun and campy summer reading, with a dose of Egyptology thrown in. Kudos for the fencing scene - you could read this one to prepare for the upcoming Olympics, ha ha.

For other light summer reading, I'd also recommend Koontz's Odd Hours or Kaya McLaren's Church of the Dog. More on those later... promise!