2014 Challenges Wrap Up & 2015 Challenge Roster

2014 was a year with a limited number of Reading Challenges on my plate. I signed up for a big one, the Century of Books project, so only took on a few others along the way. I'm very glad that I chose to do the Century of Books over two years, as there is no way I could have finished it in one! Because I'm still working away on the Century of Books challenge in 2015, I'm limiting the number of new challenges I am joining as well.

Here is how I did with my challenges this year.

Century of Books

Read: 55
Reviewed so far: 32
To read: 45

 Postal Reading Challenge

Oh dear, my own challenge, and I was a miserable failure! As a reader AND as host!
Read: Only 7/12 -- sigh. I had so many more on the TBR!

More Diverse Universe 

I loved jumping in with Aarti's September reading event. I read 3 books that were all interesting, Man by Kim Thuy, Plum Bun by Jesse Redmon Fauset, and Thomas King's The Back of the Turtle.


RIP IX

I enjoyed Carl's Ninth edition of the RIP Challenge. I committed to 2 reads -- but ended up reading 4! None of which were the original two titles I had considered...

This is always a fun challenge.






Dewey's 24 Hr Readathon

While the Readathon is more of an event than a challenge, per se, I was still happy that my schedule allowed me to participate this fall!

I read for 19 hours, and started 7 books, finishing 5. It was a lot of fun.






8th Annual Canadian Book Challenge

Last but not least, there is is the Canadian Book Challenge, one I perennially participate in. It is still ongoing, as it runs from July 1st - July 1st. So far, I've read 9/13. Lots more to come!

2015

So for 2015, I'm going to be primarily focused on two reading challenges, the Century of Books project, and the Canadian Book Challenge.

For the Century of Books, I have 45 titles left to read, and lots to review. I have plans...

For the Canadian Book Challenge, I have 4 more to reach the official total, but 33 more to read and review to surpass my personal best from 2013! So we will see...

These are the only 2 year-long challenges I'm officially joining in 2015. I will most likely still jump in on a few shorter ones, like the RIP, but I'll decide that when they arise. Good luck with all of your own challenges this year -- and remember, have fun!

Man, by Kim Thuy

Man / Kim Thuy; translated from the French by Sheila Fischman.
Toronto: Random House, c2014.
139 p.

I read this new Canadian novel fairly quickly -- it is quite short, and just like Thuy's previous, award-winning novel Ru (my review here) it's written like brief prose poems following one upon the other. (you can get a sense of her style with this excerpt in Chatelaine magazine).

In this novel, Thuy uses food as a central image in the story. Man, a young Vietnamese girl, has three mothers -- one who gave birth to her, the nun who found her as an infant, and Maman who raised her. When Man is grown, Maman finds her a husband as security. He's a lonely restaurateur in Montreal, and so Man comes to live in Quebec.

Each section of the story has a word in Vietnamese in the margin, a theme for that section. It's followed by the English translation beneath. I thought that was an interesting touch, but, because this was originally in French, and the translation of words (and experience) from Vietnamese to French was such an integral part of Man's story, I would have liked to have seen the Vietnamese to French retained, with the English popped in beneath both.

Nonetheless, the slow, quiet reflections and recollections of Man's previous life colour the story, giving it depth. I was fascinated by the stories of Vietnam and Man's precarious life there, as well as general sociological tidbits like the fact that Northern Vietnamese women traditionally coated their teeth with black enamel. But alongside this strong thread of Vietnam running through Man's thoughts, she's also learning her new culture, and uncovering her passions for food and for one married chef -- the second passion is completely unexpected, and shakes her internal life.

Man's name means "perfect fulfillment" and yet for most of her life she seems to hold everyone and everything at a distance. She doesn't find love in her marriage, just security and a general contentment (and two children). She has trained herself not to disturb her surroundings, to quietly fade into the background and not be noticed. This survival technique has stayed with her throughout her marriage, but when she meets Luc while on a brief stay in Paris as a guest chef, she understands that she has been seen, been noticed, examined, and desired. The sections dealing with her love affair have more physical, sense-based detail, as if the language reflects her deepening awareness of her physical existence. Emotion begins to reveal itself.

This is a slow-paced novel, one that the reader needs to have patience with as it slowly reveals parts of Man's character and circumstances. The language is lovely, with the structure supporting her quiet, poetic style. If you read and enjoyed Ru, you will likely also like this new novel. I enjoyed it, even if Man did feel a bit like a cipher at times; her story is a bit disjointed as she moves between various memories, and the stories don't always follow one another exactly chronologically or even necessarily thematically. But it was a delicately told novel that I'd like to dip into for another taste of her writing now and again.

Further Reading:

If you're interested in another story of love and passion and marriages coming undone (or not...), told in a similar style -- short sections following the thought process of the narrator, told in standalone paragraphs or pages -- try the recent Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill. 

If it's the themes of immigrants in North America, mothers & daughters, and the food that truly intrigues, you might like to try the classic novel by Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club (be aware however, that Man could fit into one chapter of Tan's more sprawling tale)

Plum Bun

Plum Bun by Jessie Redmon Fauset
London: Pandora Press, 1985, c1928.
379 p.

I want to get this review posted in time for the end of the Diversiverse reading project. I've been spurred to pick up this book which has been languishing on my shelves for ages by this project, and I thoroughly enjoyed the read. If I mulled over it a bit longer, I might be able to draw out more of the political import and some of the depth of it. However, here are my general thoughts instead!

Written in 1928, it tells us the story of sisters Angela and Virginia (Jinny) Murray, and the differing paths their lives take thanks to their skin colour. Angela, like her mother, is so pale she can "pass" for white, while Jinny and their father are clearly "coloured" (I'll use that term as that is the one used in the book).

After their parents die, Angela decides that her life will be easier if she leaves Philadelphia and the people who know her, to move to New York where she can live as a white woman. Obviously, it wouldn't exactly work to take Jinny along.

It's an absorbing read, following Angela as she changes herself -- both her name (now Angele Mory) and her public identity. She follows her longing to become an artist, and all along the way comes face to face with new ways of living, more bohemian in some ways but also still rife with animosity to anyone with even one miniscule shade of "colour" in their background. Angele discovers that not only is it difficult to be coloured, it is still difficult to be simply a woman. This recognition, and the role it plays in her struggle to become someone, to get what she wants, seems quite modern. It reflects the current focus on intersectionality in the feminist movement -- the idea that race and gender are not divisible units to be dealt with discretely, but that they are inextricably linked.

Angele is a prickly person, one with huge longings and ambitions. She allows herself a relationship with a rich white man (her ideal for a husband) who reveals himself to be a reactionary bigot. She denies herself a relationship with the man she's truly emotionally connected with because he is poor and has unlikely prospects. She cuts her sister when acknowledging her would ruin the facade of whiteness that she's built. All of these denials, however, fester in her, finally bursting her idyllic imaginary world. Thankfully she comes out stronger and a much better version of  herself than before.

As you might tell, this story is all about Angela. Her dreams, her perceptions, her selfishness, her grand gestures -- all of these shape and drive the story. Angela sees herself as a modern woman, one can accomplish things, and her story reflects that in the ways that it refuses to make her a victim of her society. There are harsh realities but Angela is no meek character mired in hopelessness; she makes decisions and rationalizes them to herself if necessary, but she acts. Near the end, when she acts from her conscience, she realizes that things will not now turn out as she'd wished. But she figures out an alternative path and goes for it anyhow.

I loved the complexity of this character. She's unlikeable and selfish in some ways; but she is also strong and lovely in others. She is a very contradictory person...so, she's very realistic. I was happy to see that there was a hopeful ending for her; I wanted something to work out after all her struggles.

This book is a fascinating look at New York (and the US more generally) during the time of the Harlem Renaissance. The flavour of a flourishing artistic community is clearly shared -- all the levels and shades of belonging among the different circles are in evidence. It's lively, exciting, and it's wonderful to have an inside view via Angele. But, the casual, entrenched racism that lurks behind the nicest faces was startling...even from those whose own experiences might have seemed to be a reason to be on-side with anti-racist beliefs.

The story is also one of personal connection, and family strength. The ties that bind Angela and Jinny are too strong to be broken forever, and this sense of love and connection permeates the book. I was so absorbed in how the "coloured" characters wrestle with life, how they come out as strong and tested people, while those who are privileged and have life easy seem so weak and negligible in comparison.

This is a powerful and readable book -- it is not overtaken by the issue she's facing, it's completely of a piece with the human struggle of the story. Definitely one that made me think.

Further Reading

Nella Larsen's Passing is another powerful title published in 1929, which also deals with a light-skinned woman living as a white woman, with more disastrous effect. It engages with issues of race, gender, and sexuality as well.

Danzy Senna's hard-hitting novel Caucasia (1998) also tells the story of two sisters whose differing appearances tear them away from one another, when their parents separate and each take the one that looks most like them. 

The Back of the Turtle

The Back of the Turtle / Thomas King
Toronto: HarperCollins, c2014.
518 p.

I've been awaiting this novel with great anticipation; I've really enjoyed King's previous fiction, and have had a 15 year wait for this one! Meanwhile, of course, there have been his nonfiction works to enjoy and learn from...but I love fiction. It's quite a beautiful package; the cover suits the book wonderfully, which makes sense, as King's partner Helen Hoy painted it.

In The Back of the Turtle, King has created a kaleidoscopic vision of linked characters telling their stories discretely. It begins with Gabriel Quinn, a bio-engineer who has been working for Domidion for many years. Domidion is a massive multinational whose research, thanks to Gabriel, created GreenSweep, a nasty defoliant which, used in error, kills a river in British Columbia, travelling for miles, all the way to the sea and a further twenty miles offshore. It kills the vegetation, the animal life, and even many human beings living alongside -- including the residents of Smoke River Reserve -- Gabriel's estranged family among them. When Gabriel cottons on to his part in this disaster, he disappears from Domidion.

Gabriel has gone to Smoke River to kill himself. But life gets in the way. He meets Mara, who has returned to the reserve alone after years in Toronto. He also meets local Nicholas Crisp, a trickster figure. All of this happens within the context of a creation myth which they all tell to one another -- The Woman Who Fell From the Sky. 

Meanwhile, Domidion CEO Dorian Asher is trying to find his lost scientist. He's also trying to minimize the fallout from yet another environmental disaster caused by his company, this time a breach of a tailing pond on the Athabasca River (wait a second, is this really fiction?) He is fixated on his image, his power, and his money. To survive the stress, Asher pops out and buys expensive new watches, clothes, and even a new condo.

Switching back and forth between these two stories, from Toronto to BC, from rampant, destructive capitalism to a living being trying to take responsibility for his actions, trying to find his place in the world again, is quite effective. We can see how this small group of individuals are connected, and how their circle grows; of course, we can see this in the creation myth as well. And we can see what happens when someone disconnects from the greater community and thinks only of their own benefit and gain. Just as in the creation myth, Dorian and Gabriel are like the two twins of the Woman Who Fell From the Sky -- one builds up and one destroys. There are echoes set up in the story between native mythology, Christian mythology, humanism and more. It's an interesting read, which only occasionally dips too far into political commentary.

I enjoyed the structure, really liked some of the characters, and found the descriptions of Domidion's environmental follies all too stark and realistic. King is encouraging us to do something, to make changes in our world, even while telling us an entertaining, richly peopled story.

While there were a few flaws in the reading, for me -- some of the characters' tics became a bit irritating, the ending was somewhat inconclusive, for example -- as a reading experience it was rewarding. The story is completely embedded in our modern way of life, featuring characters with constant electronic connection but disconnection from the greater sense of Life. Less overtly based in native mythologies than Truth & Bright Water, perhaps, but still steeped in a spiritual recognition of our place in a wider world.

You can listen to a fascinating interview between King and Jian Ghomeshi over at Q on CBC, too.
This is also my first read for the Diverse Universe Reading Event this year!

Further Reading:

Motorcycles & Sweetgrass by Drew Hayden Taylor uses the same idea of native mythology coming to life in the modern world, and tells a story of regular people on a reserve who encounter a strange new interloper into their community. It involves historical land use and environmental concerns, but is also full of humour, too!

For a more sombre read featuring the coming-of-age of a Haisla heroine, which also involves the loss of family members, try Monkey Beach by Eden Robinson. This novel is similarly set in BC, and is steeped in West Coast mythology. It features a well-drawn cast of supporting characters.

Diversiverse!

Aarti of Book Lust is once again hosting her More Diverse Universe reading challenge. I'm really looking forward to it! 

Previously this challenge was focused on science fiction & fantasy, as that is an area in which writers of colour are noticeably underrepresented. This year, however, Aarti has adapted the challenge to include ANY book written by a person of colour. Whatever you like to read, pick just ONE book and read along!

Aarti says:

• Read and review one book
• Written by a person of color
• During the last two weeks of September (September 14th – 27th) 

Do you think you can do it? Sure you can! Sign up over at Aarti's blog and join the plethora of readers who will be celebrating the vast number of books that feature a more diverse universe.

I'm not sure what I'll be reading, but I have some great choices on my TBR right now, so I will probably pick up at least one of those. I've discovered some fabulous authors through this challenge, hope to find more this year!

Brown Girl in the Ring

Brown Girl in the Ring / Nalo Hopkinson
New York: Grand Central, c1998.
250 p.

This is the second book I've read by Nalo Hopkinson, but it was her first novel. I've read them both as part of Aarti's More Diverse Universe challenge, the first one, The New Moon's Arms, just last year. I enjoyed that one a lot and kept meaning to get to this one next, but have finally just picked it up. And it's great timing for it, too.

It's set in Toronto, at a time in which the economy and social structure has pretty much collapsed, with everyone affluent moving out to the burbs -- and erecting barriers so those left can't overrun the much more stable and economically viable communities there. Inner Toronto is now a mass of poor survivors of many races, survivalists who squat in old hotels or flats, grow food or barter for it, or belong to gangs like The Posse, the ruling gang whose overlord Rudy is an arrogant, power-hungry drug lord. This is dystopian fiction... or is it? I think Hopkinson may have some of the power of second sight that she's given to the main characters of this novel!

But to be serious -- this is a wonderful read. The Toronto setting is continually evoked: Ti-Jeanne, the main character, lives with her Mami in the Simpson house at what used to be Riverdale Farm. Mami is a healer, growing plants and dispensing stockpiled medications, but she is also an obeah woman, speaking to the spirits in a very literal sense. She calls the spirits and we see them as they appear as characters themselves (you can see two of them on this fantastic cover). Ti-Jeanne is a young woman, with a new baby, who has left her boyfriend Tony because of his drug habit and involvement with the Posse. She's learning that she has the gift of seeing and hearing the spirits, despite not wanting to, and Mami is trying to get her to own up to it and train her in the proper ways to deal with it, so that she doesn't go mad from it. But all Ti-Jeanne can think about is Tony.

But when Tony comes back into their lives, things do not go at all well.

It's hard to summarize the book, as I don't want to spoil the joy of discovery for any new reader. But there is family drama, street kids who live in the former subways, a very villainous villain, thwarted love, spirits both good and bad, a showdown in the CN Tower, and an amazing sense of the Caribbean culture that Mami and Ti-Jeanne are rooted in. Even the rhythms of language reflect that, and it was wonderful to read. It immersed me in this story, making it hard to put down. The incipient violence on every page drove the tension of the story, and the unexpected twists and events continually surprised me. It was shocking, and funny, and horrible, and sad, and utterly fascinating.


The combination of Caribbean mysteries and urban, dystopian Toronto was pitch perfect. It's hard to say whether place or character is stronger in the story -- they were both so well developed. It's a very good read, and if you've never read Hopkinson before, this would be a wonderful introduction to her work.

Mandanna's Lost Girl

The Lost Girl / Sangu Mandanna

New York: Balzer & Bray/HarperCollins, c2012.
390 p. (in paperback)

Another choice for the More Diverse Universe reading challenge hosted by Aarti at Booklust, I read this in ebook format after serendipitously discovering it in my library's ebook collection. It was perfect for taking with me for my commute yesterday.

The Lost Girl is a thoughtful thriller, raising questions of identity, bioethics, and self-determination. Our main character, Eva, is 15, and she is an "echo", a person who has been created, or stitched together, as they call it, by The Weavers, a secretive trio of London-based bioengineers who create life. She is carefully raised in isolation in the English countryside, as the purpose of her existence is to become a shadow copy, an echo, of her original, Amarra. In case the unthinkable happens and her original dies, Eva can step in and become Amarra.

Of course, it happens, and Eva's life is utterly changed as she must fulfill her responsibilities and move to Bangalore to live with Amarra's family. Amarra's mother seems to believe that Amarra's soul is there within Eva, but it quickly becomes clear that the rest of her family -- the father, younger brother and very young sister -- do not. They accept that Eva is a different person but they don't want to destroy their mother's hope that Amarra is really still there with them. And all of Amarra's friends, especially her boyfriend, are very suspicious. Echoes are illegal in India, just to up the stakes a bit, and Eva is feeling the pressure to fully become Amarra... and then she is revealed.

The story is really exciting, the pace is quick with lots of drama, due to Eva's being an Echo, and to the fact that she's rebelling against the rules of The Weavers and is thus in danger from them too -- rebellious Echoes are usually dealt with in a permanent fashion. There are also her romantic trials; she's fallen in love with one of her English guardians (strictly forbidden) while trying to convince Amarra's boyfriend Ray that she is truly Amarra. Quite a tangle!

There are some wonderful characters in this, aside from the main ones. Eva's guardian Mina Ma is loyal, tough, and loving. Her other guardians are mostly kindly people, as much as possible, but her creator, the Weaver Matthew, is very complicated -- at times fascinating, at others repellent. Amarra's younger brother Nikhil is a very sweet and serious boy, and I thought he was a wonderful, loyal, thoughtful character. The story moves between England and Bangalore, and there is lots of danger, excitement, and romance to keep you reading. The plot itself showed a few weaknesses, but as long as you don't try to convince yourself of the plausibility of every single step Eva takes, you will enjoy the fast moving yet serious tone of this book.

Mandanna says that she was inspired partly by Mary Shelley's Frankenstein  -- a book, by the way, that all Echoes are strictly forbidden to read. Since it's about the personhood of a created monster, and one that turns on its maker, you can see why! This was an entertaining, thought-provoking book with some clever elements that I appreciated, and think that the themes could really spark some discussion in a teen bookgroup. The settings, characters and ideas were all well done, and I am so glad this title dropped into my hands, so to speak.

The Shadow Speaker

The Shadow Speaker / Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu
New York: Hyperion, c2007.
336 p.

This YA novel was a great discovery: I found it thanks to the More Diverse Universe event sponsored by Aarti at Book Lust, an event happening this weekend. I checked out her many suggestions for titles to read, and this one both looked fascinating AND was at my library :)

I'm glad I picked it up, as it was a very engaging read. It's set in West Africa, in 2070. It's a world in which magic has returned, after a great nuclear destruction that opened up connections between Earth and a few other worlds.

The main character, Ejii, is 14, and she is one of the 'meta-humans' who've appeared following the Great Change. She is a Shadow Speaker, someone who can hear voices from the shadows, who has the gift of tapping into that deep knowledge and understanding. One of her talents is also being able to see in the dark, and having extreme long-range vision. There are other metahumans in this world, with other talents, but regular people don't like them much. There is the predictable distrust and scapegoating of those with differences.

Ejii, however, is a little bit different for other reasons too. Her father used to be chief of her village and region, a position he assumed when their queen Sarauniya Jaa left town. He held that position for a decade, becoming more power-hungry all the time, enforcing laws limiting women's freedoms and divorcing Ejii's mother when she wouldn't support him. Ejii now has many half-siblings, as her father quickly remarried 5 new wives nearly as young as Ejii herself. His corruption comes to an end when Sarauniya Jaa returns unexpectedly and chops off his head at a public event. Yep, chops it right off, in front of Ejii. There is a bit of violence in this book, and questions of when and whether someone has a right to take action in this way. Ejii brings this up a number of times throughout the book.

That's just the beginning: shortly after this blazing introduction, we learn that Jaa is leaving again, sending nervous shockwaves through the community -- what will happen this time? But for Ejii, things are really going to change, as she decides to follow Jaa and her two husbands through the desert, to Jaa's meeting with representatives from one of the other worlds. Ejii's shadows have told her that it is very important that she goes with Jaa to this meeting, that Ejii will be the only one able to avert war.

So with that upon her shoulders, she takes on the dangerous trip, alone but for her talking camel Onion. Along the way she meets a fellow traveller, encounters dangers like living sand storms that scour the flesh off people, a mischevious desert magician, sinkholes into other realities and more. One of her most present dangers is herself; she is coming into her powers as a Shadow Speaker, and if she is not able to incorporate these new powers and rise to the challenge, the only option is for her to be overcome by them, and die in the process.

She eventually does catch up with Jaa, and crosses over into the world of Ginen with her entourage. Ginen is a fascinating creation, a plant-based culture with a varied population and magic-based technology. Ejii comes of age in Ginen, through many shocking events. This is a book full of fabulous imagination, with new species of living beings introduced, with great remaking of traditional themes, and also with complex and engaging characters. Okorafor-Mbachu doesn't shy away from including realistic emotional reactions to violence or loss, or giving her main character issues to deal with that are ambiguous and difficult.

I really enjoyed this story, reading it pretty much straight through. There are other books by this author that I'm going to explore too, as I really like her style.