Margaret Atwood and Shakespeare on a sunny Sunday morning...

It’s a brisk, sunny morning, much closer to seasonal temperatures than we’ve had recently, and I’m enjoying a steaming cup of chai and a delicious Date Bare from City Cafe while I think about our book club discussion yesterday morning.

One of my book club members recommended Margaret Atwood’s book Hag-Seed some time ago, and since we haven’t read an Atwood novel in a while, I put it on the list for our March meeting.  I knew nothing about this novel, but the cover always put me off, as it looked like this book belonged to her more “dystopian” books (Oryx and Crake, MaddAddam and Year of the Flood), which did not really appeal to me (I’ve only read one, but that was enough).  It is, in fact, a contemporary retelling of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and it was classic Atwood, particularly in her brilliant use of language.  Felix is the Artistic Director of the popular Makeshiwag Theatre Festival and is planning his most daring play ever, an interpretation of The Tempest like no other.  But when his position is usurped by his right-hand man, Tony, he exiles himself to a hovel in a nearby township, where he spends twelve years plotting his revenge.  Added to his loss of position was the death of his three-year-old daughter Miranda, and his guilt over her death while he was away directing a play has festered.  He finds the perfect venue for his revenge as the instructor of a theatre program at nearby Fletcher Correctional Institute, where he directs Shakespearean plays with groups of inmates in a “Literacy through Literature” program.  He chooses The Tempest, using various techniques to entice the prisoners to take on certain roles, and also plots a secondary interactive scheme to exact revenge on those who forced him “off the throne”, so to speak.  What results is complex, brilliant, and totally effective, a pure reading delight.  I can’t give anything away, because part of the joy of reading this book is the mystery of Felix’ plan, and how he will pull it off.  But here are some of the highlights of our discussion.  One member wondered whether Felix was a madman or a genius, or maybe a bit of both.  She thought his teaching technique with the prisoners was fantastic.  We thought Atwood did a good job of portraying the prison culture, and we learned alot about staging a play and theatre culture, too.  One member thought that there was an overwhelming sense of sadness about Felix, that he exuded a sense of loss, loneliness and isolation, and that putting on this play was necessary for him as part of his grieving process, both to bring Miranda to life but also to let her go.  We thought the writing style was amazing (no surprise there!), but that the cover was off-putting.  One member had the book from the library for a few weeks but was reluctant to pick it up until the library sent a notice that the book was due and she realized that it was time to start reading (like me, she enjoyed Atwood’s earlier novels, but was turned off by her more recent “speculative fiction”).  To her surprise, she loved it and finished it in just two days!  We discussed the structure of the novel, and felt that it worked, and we enjoyed the rap songs that the prisoners/actors made up to make some of the more tedious parts of the play more interesting - we even read one aloud, each taking a stanza (seasoned rappers we are not!).  We especially enjoyed the scene when Felix takes the train into Toronto to purchase props and costumes for the play, and how creative he has to be to make this work (my favourite part is when he is buying a blue bathing cap for the actor playing Ariel, and his impromptu explanation to the middle-aged saleswoman in the swimwear shop).  We discussed the final section of the book, when the actors speculated about what they thought happened to their characters after the play ended.  Some thought they would have been just as happy if the novel ended before this section, but then we thought that it was a bit like real actors debriefing after their final performance.  It also showed how far each of the prisoners had come in such a short time, that they really grasped the meaning of the play and understood their character.  This novel is part of the Hogarth Shakespeare, a project that employs bestselling authors to retell Shakespearean plays in contemporary settings.  Some of the other novels in this project are Shylock is My Name by Howard Jacobson (The Merchant of Venice), Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler (The Taming of the Shrew), and New Boy by Tracy Chevalier (Othello).  This led us to discuss why there are so many retellings of Shakespearean plays, and the difficulty in studying the original plays due to the language.  All in all, it was a successful meeting and a great book choice, not one any of us would have picked up on our own.

That’s all for today.  Get outside and enjoy the sunshine, but bundle up, as it’s still chilly!

Bye for now…
Julie

Keeping up with the Joneses on a mild Spring-like morning...

It’s sunny and mild right now, a perfect morning to hang laundry out on the clothesline and go for a long walk, both things I’m going to do after writing this post.  But for now, I’m enjoying my steaming cup of chai and a delicious Date Bar from City Café - yummy!!

Last weekend I needed to find a book to read and an audiobook to listen to, and I chose one of each without knowing much about either one.  What are the chances that I would choose a book and an audiobook on the same day that each had a main character named Jones (first name, that is)?  So even though I wasn’t sure how much I was enjoying either one, I felt destined to stick with them.  I just finished the book, A Sudden Light by Garth Stein (you may be familiar with this author’s name associated with his most popular novel, The Art of Racing in the Rain, told from the point of view of a dog).  I’m not quite sure why I had A Sudden Light on my shelf, but I picked it out along with a pile of other books I know nothing about.  I decided that I needed to weed out some books, so I read the first few pages of each and either kept it or brought it to the Little Free Library that is at the end of my street.  This one I stuck with, and finished reading last night.  It is told from the point of view of Trevor, an adult looking back on the summer he was fourteen, when his father took him to his Grandpa Samuel’s estate just outside of Seattle, an estate that seemed to be suspended in time, having never moved beyond the night Samuel’s wife, Isobel, passed away, leaving their son Jones and daughter Serena motherless and in the care of Samuel.  But sixteen-year-old Jones is sent away to school shortly thereafter, leaving eleven-year-old Serena to care for drunken Samuel, causing her to feel trapped and embittered.  Nearly twenty-five years later, she wants to sell the North Estate, a crumbling mansion surrounded by 200 acres of pristine forest, and develop it into 20 lots of 10 acres each for the newly-rich to build their McMansions on, making her rich and allowing her to travel the world.  But Jones’ ancestors, in particular his great-grand-uncle Ben, had other ideas:  they wanted to return the estate to its natural state and preserve it, a repayment for the rape and pillage of so much land, as well as the exploitation of the men they employed, that made the family rich in the timber industry in the early 1900s.  Grandpa Samuel is suffering dementia, and Serena needs him to sign over power of attorney, which is where Jones comes in.  Jones and his wife Rachel are experiencing marital problems after their personal bankruptcy, and are in the midst of a trial separation, and all Trevor wants is for them to get back together and be happy again.  He believes that money is the solution, but can money truly buy happiness?  Through letters and diary entries, Trevor pieces together the intentions of his ancestors, and must struggle to reconcile his desire to stay true to his dead family's wishes and his need to try to bring his living family back together. This sprawling, multigenerational story exploring the consequences of wealth and greed and the search for redemption, with a supernatural twist, is totally not my type of book, but it had me hooked!  Stein’s exploration into the motivations of Trevor, Serena, and to some extent Jones, was riveting, and this book reminded me in some ways of The Hunger of the Wolf by Stephen Marche, also about a wealthy, powerful American family with dark secrets, although Marche’s book was more literary, more of a “Lee Valley” book, than Stein’s “Canadian Tire” bestseller.  Still, it was an enjoyable read, and while I felt it dragged a bit, I still wanted to find opportunities to read and get to the end to find out how things are resolved.  There were also times, particularly in the first half of the book, when it reminded me of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, probably because both books involved a father and son on a quest to discover the true meaning of value and integrity. I would definitely recommend this book to just about anyone, as it defies categorization:  it’s part historical fiction, part ghost story, part domestic fiction, part psychological fiction, and so much more.  I didn’t love it, but I enjoyed it.  

That’s all for today.  Oh, the audiobook with the character named Jones is Darkness, my old friend by Lisa Unger.  I’m still listening to it, and will write about it when I’m done.  Get outside and enjoy the day!

Bye for now…
Julie

Books, audiobooks and tea on a long weekend...

It’s the Family Day weekend here in Ontario, which means an extra day of sleeping late, puttering around the house, getting a few things done outside, and of course reading and drinking hot beverages!  

I’ve been sick for much of the past week, which didn’t actually provide me with as much extra reading time as you might think, but I did manage to finish a good mystery by an Irish author, The Liar’s Girl by Catherine Ryan Howard.  This was a freebee from the library conference I was at recently, and it was totally riveting!  Alison is a 29-year-old woman living in the Netherlands who gets a visit from the Gardai (the Irish police) asking her to return to Dublin - her former boyfriend from her university days, Will Hurley, a convicted serial killer, wants to speak with her about the recent murders of two girls in Dublin.  She heads back with them reluctantly, the first time she’s been back in ten years, and is certain that Will has no useful information about these recent murders.  But why does he suddenly want to talk, after all these years?  And why to her?  Ten years earlier, five female students from St John’s College in Dublin sustained head injuries and were thrown into the canal to drown, and police were searching for the Canal Killer until they stumbled upon fellow student Will, who, after hours of interrogation, confessed and was sent to a psychiatric institute, where he languished for years.  Now the killings have begun again, and he claims to have information that may help catch not a copycat, but the real Canal Killer.  But he will only speak to his former girlfriend, Alison, determining that she is the only person who may believe his innocence and follow his leads.  Readers are then treated to alternating “Alison, then”, “Alison, now” chapters that piece together the story from ten years earlier, detailing Alison’s relationship with Will and her love/hate relationship with her best friend Liz, the Canal Killer’s fifth victim, and the ongoing search in the present-day.  These are interspersed with chapters from the point of view of the current killer… but is he a copycat, or did he kill those girls ten years earlier, too?  And if so, why did he lie dormant for so many years?  And why would Will confess to murders he didn’t commit?  Filled with twists and turns, this compelling murder mystery had this reader glued to the page as she fought the need for an afternoon nap due to the fatigue of illness.  It is due out this month, so if you enjoy a good murder mystery weaving together past secrets and present-day circumstances, I would highly recommend that you put this item on hold at your local library today!

And I am nearly finished listening to a short audiobook by David Rosenfelt, one of the books in the “Andy Carpenter” series, Bury the Lead.  This novel is narrated by one of my favourite readers, Grover Gardner, the narrator for all of the “Andy Carpenter” books I've listened to so far, and he always does such a wonderful job of bringing the characters to life.  I’d forgotten how much I enjoy listening to these smart, witty, light mysteries.  Andy is drawn into a case involving the murder of three women who have been strangled and had their hands cut off.  The killer communicates with news reporter Daniel Cummings, and at the most recent murder scene, Daniel is wounded and is ultimately charged with the crime.  What follows is the discovery of evidence linking him to the past murders, and Andy is called upon to represent him in court.  The evidence is strong, but only a fool would be so careless as to keep such evidence around, and Daniel is no fool. But how can Andy prove that he is being framed?  And why?  I’m actually just about to find out what the final answer is, but it has been such a thoroughly entertaining listening experience that I’m thinking about downloading other “Andy Carpenter” books, even if I’ve already listened to them, because they are so enjoyable, a guaranteed satisfying listening experience when I don’t know what to listen to next.

That’s all for today.  I feel well enough to get outside and enjoy the sunshine for a bit before the rainy mild weather sets in over the next couple of days.  Enjoy the rest of the long weekend, and don’t forget to keep reading!

Bye for now…
Julie

Books and tea on a "sick" morning...

I’ve been sick this past weekend, and am home sick again today, so this may be a brief post.  I’ve got hot tea and warm flat gingerale in front of me as I think about the books I’ve read recently.

Last week I read a book that I picked up from the big library conference I was at just over a week ago, The French Girl by Lexie Elliott.  On the cover of this book, which features a shadowy night-time scene by a pool, is the tagline “We all have our secrets”.  Kate Channing is struggling to keep her legal headhunting business solvent.  In her early thirties, she knows that working in a law office is not for her (been there, done that), and she doesn’t know what other options she has.  Then she lands a contract with a big law firm, and things are looking up… until her past comes to haunt her.  A decade earlier, Kate and five friends spent a week at a French farmhouse and encountered the neighbour girl, lithe, tanned, languid Severine, who disappeared on the last day of their vacation.  Now Severine’s body had been discovered in the well behind the farmhouse, and everyone is a suspect.  As the six friends get together and try to piece together the puzzle surrounding Severine’s death, long-buried secrets come to light that threaten their friendships, and possibly their very lives.  This sounded like it was exactly the type of book I love, and one review suggested it was perfect for fans of Fiona Barton and Ruth Ware.  It started out really well, but then I found it became too repetitive and mired in self-absorption.  Perhaps it would have been a better novel if it were not restricted to Kate’s point of view only, or if Elliott offered more in the way of details about the week so long ago that was the start of all of this mystery.  As it is, this book reminded me more of Ruth Ware and less of Fiona Barton - in Barton’s books, the story actually moves along, whereas Ware’s books tend to stay mired in one character’s thoughts and are repetitive (especially her latest book, The Lying Game).  This is Elliott’s debut novel, and I can see that she has talent, but I hope she takes the time in her next book to develop her own voice and storytelling technique - there are too many books out there already just like this one.    

Then yesterday I needed to grab something to read while I went to a walk-in clinic, as my symptoms were getting worse and I wanted to make sure I didn’t need further treatment (no antibiotics needed - just fluids and bedrest… and extra kitty cuddles *sigh*), so I picked up my favourite mystery novel from childhood, Summer of Fear by Lois Duncan, and read it all yesterday.  I loved this novel as a child and I still love it - it is exactly the type of book I still read today, a bit of a combination of Du Maurier’s Rebecca and Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby.  I wrote a post about this in April 2015, and because I’ve been sick, I’m just going to copy and paste that post here:

“This novel, originally published in 1976, tells the story of Rachel, a 15-year old girl living with her family in Albuquerque, whose family learns of the recent death of Rachel's aunt and uncle, along with the young woman they hired to help out around the house.  Her parents immediately leave for the small house built in the Ozarks to bring back their niece, 17-year-old Julia.  Rachel, who has two brothers, one older and one younger, is not entirely thrilled at the idea of suddenly having a ready-made big sister, but she does her best to be welcoming when her parents return with Julia.  Immediately, Rachel senses something is not right about her.  Perhaps it’s those haunting, haunted eyes, or her strange accent and way of speaking, when she speaks at all, perhaps it’s the fact that Rachel’s gentle, loving dog, Trickle, dislikes Julia the instant he encounters her… but no one will believe Rachel, even when strange things begin to happen to her family and her neighbours.  Could Julia really be a witch?  And how is Rachel the only one to recognize her for what she is?”

Duncan revised and updated her novels to make them more relevant and accessible for readers today, including references to cell phones and computers, and in this updated edition of Summer of Fear, she even made reference to Harry Potter books!  I so enjoyed reading this book again - it was just the right book for a day when I felt pretty crappy.

And I finished listening to an audiobook last week that was also really good, a Young Adult novel by Heather Brewer, The Cemetery Boys.  The book opens with Stephen and his dad moving back to Spencer, population 814, a move that resulted from his dad losing his job and spending all their savings on Stephen’s mom’s hospital bills.  They have moved in with Stephen’s grandmother, who only speaks to them when she has more chores for them to do, a long list which she demands daily.  This town seems stuck in time, and Stephen resigns himself to a summer in hell until he meets sexy punk girl Cara, her mysterious twin brother Devon, and his loyal group of friends.  When he starts hanging out with them, he begins to uncover unsavoury details about the town’s past, including vague references to something called “the winged ones”, which are  believed to have the ability to alleviate “the bad times” - all they require is a sacrifice.  Can Stephen stay loyal to his friends, save the girl he loves, and save himself, before it is too late? This darkly funny coming-of-age horror brought to mind that ‘80s film “The Lost Boys”, with Devon as the Kiefer Sutherland character, white-blond hair and all.  When I started listening to this book, it didn’t immediately grab me, but I’m so glad I stuck with it.  This author, who has written many YA vampire novels, has the speech pattern, the tone and the atmosphere down pat.  It was funny and spooky and downright creepy.  In terms of content and language, this book is unfortunately too mature for my school libraries, but I’m now interested in trying out one of her other books, maybe the first in the “Chronicles of Vladimir Tod” series, which I have in my YA collection.

Whew!  That was longer than I expected - I must be feeling a bit better!  Happy Monday!

Bye for now…
Julie

Tea and book club highlights on a snowy morning...

It’s a winter wonderland outside this morning, with plenty of the white stuff to make everything look pure and unmarred... at least for a little while.

I had a Volunteer book club meeting yesterday to discuss Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books by Azar Nafisi.  I’m sure I selected this book for this month because “Freedom to Read” week (http://www.freedomtoread.ca/freedom-to-read-week/) is always in February, and while I was reading it last week, I was using my “Banned Books” mug in honour of this.  “Freedom to Read” week is actually Feb 26-March 3 this year, so I’m a bit early, but this book confirmed my decision to reread Lolita later in the month in honour of that week.  Reading Lolita in Tehran recounts the experiences of Nafisi, an Iranian Literature professor who returned to Tehran in the late 1970s after 17 years spent in Europe and the US.  She had wonderful memories of Iran as a beautiful country with a progressive culture, but when she returned, just shortly after the Iranian Revolution, she found her country in tatters, its culture slowly disintegrating and the laws reverting back to those of nearly 70 years before.  She returned for her first post as a professor at the University of Tehran, but over the years, it became harder and harder for her to teach, first to teach the books she wanted to teach, then for her to teach at all, particularly as she refused to start wearing the veil that was becoming mandatory for women to wear when out in public.  After being dismissed from her position in the mid-1990’s, she began a secret book discussion group with some of her former students, mostly women but also one or two of their husbands, who met every Thursday at her home.  There they discussed works that were considered controversial, such as Lolita, books by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James and even Jane Austen, trying to understand these novels from a modern Iranian perspective.  This was the first time I can recall reading a book about books, and it was at times a bit difficult to plow through yet another analysis of Humbert Humbert’s dysfunctional and misogynistic role in Lolita or the relationships between Daisy Buchanan and her husband Tom, Tom’s mistress Myrtle Wilson and the ever-longing of Jay Gatsby.  And I’m no historian, so I found it very difficult to follow the politics surrounding the Iranian Revolution in the 1970s and later the Iran-Iraq war, but Nafisi managed to bring it all back to how this upheaval affected her role as a professor of literature and as a woman, as well as the experiences of her students during those years of uncertainty.  She was never graphic, but she made clear the situations these young women found themselves in on a regular basis.  This was all very interesting, but the thing that kept me riveted to the book was the beauty of her writing.  She captured every detail so exquisitely, both the anguish and frustration she felt towards the new political regime, and the delight she was able to take in the smallest of experiences.  I didn’t have a chance to finish it before the meeting, but I got partway into the last section, “Austen”, so I felt fairly prepared.  Only three others came out, and only one of them read the book, well, most of the book - she was just a little behind me.  As you might expect, we didn’t spend much time discussing the book, but one of my members who had only read the first few pages decided to read Lolita.  No one else had read that, so we decided that we’d put it on the list for next year in February, and someone suggested that we should make it a tradition that in February we always read a banned or challenged book.  I think everyone will make a point of reading this, as the two of us who had nearly finished it spoke so highly of it.  All in all, it was a good meeting, even if it wasn’t all about the book!

That’s all for today.  Stay warm and keep reading!

Bye for now...

Julie

Books, audiobooks and book club talk on a gorgeous morning...

I can’t help but quote Mr Rogers this morning… “It’s a beautiful day in the neighbourhood”.  The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, it’s mild and pleasant, a perfect “January thaw” day.  I’ve got a steaming cup of chai in front of me and a fresh date loaf in the oven, and while I have a million things to do today, I have to take time to write this post.  Last week I had a book club meeting, I finished an audiobook, and I read a Children’s novel, so I had to determine whether to leave something out of the post or just give brief sections on each.  I decided to touch on all three this morning.

For our Friends Book Club meeting on Monday night, we discussed Julia Keller’s novel, A Killing in the Hills, the first in the “Bell Elkins” mystery series.  Bell is a small-town prosecutor in Acker Gap, West Virginia, where poverty and desperation pervade.  Having grown up there and endured her own horrible past, she returns with her daughter to try to make a difference, to help those who seem to be beyond help.  When an unidentified gunman kills three elderly men in a downtown diner, Bell pairs up with her long-time friend, Sheriff Nick Fogelson, to find the killer.  Bell’s daughter, Carla, was in the diner when the shooting occurred, and when she has a chance to think about it, she discovers that she recognizes the killer as a guy who came to a party she was at where drugs and alcohol were plentiful.  She can’t tell her mom about this because then she would have to admit that she went to a party like this, so she determines to find the identity of the killer on her own and then ask for help.  Bell, meanwhile, has to deal with her own past demons, as well as work on a case where a developmentally challenged man killed a little boy as they were playing together in the boy’s basement, and to determine whether he should be sent to jail or institutionalized.  I thought the book was ok, but not as good as I expected from reading reviews and the front flap of the book.  I found it repetitive and overly descriptive, particularly when introducing new characters.  The author also described the town many, many times, emphasizing the desperation and poverty and hopelessness.  During our discussion, we agreed that she did a good job of comparing and contrasting the beauty of the natural surroundings, especially the mountains, and the hopelessness of the town and its people.  We felt that Bell was a strong female character, and that her relationships with her ex-husband, with Nick, with Carla and with other townspeople seemed mostly authentic.  But we generally agreed that the ending was so far-fetched as to be nearly unbelievable, and that it just ended too quickly and neatly.  We all thought that the subplot involving the dead boy deserved more attention and would have made a good novel, and also that of Bell’s relationship with her estranged sister, Shirley (this is surely explored in subsequent books) .  All in all, it was not the kind of book we usually read, and it was fairly well received, evoking a lively discussion about the novel and related topics.

I finished listening to I Am No One by Patrick Flanery last week, which sounded like a really promising book.  Jeremy O’Keefe is a history professor at NYU, recently returned from a decade living and teaching in Oxford after the breakup of his marriage and dismissal from Columbia, where he clearly did not receive tenure.  He is waiting to meet a grad student in a coffee shop on a Saturday, but she doesn’t show up.  A young man, a stranger, approaches him and begins making small-talk.  Jeremy leaves, and finds an email in his inbox from this student agreeing to reschedule their meeting, a response to an email supposedly sent from Jeremy making this request.  He does not remember any of this correspondence.  He later receives a box with no postage and no return address containing pages and pages of his internet searches over the past decade or more.  He finds these two incidences strange, and suddenly begins to wonder if some government agency is watching him, which doesn't make sense to him, as he repeatedly claims that he has done nothing wrong, that he is no one of interest.  Over the course of the novel, more of these incidents occur, and we the reader are offered small details about Jeremy’s life over the past decade, details that may make him the target of surveillance by American or British government agencies, or both.  The novel was an exploration of privacy and surveillance, what it means to be the watcher and what happens when the watcher becomes the watched.  Sounds riveting, right?  Not so, in this listener’s opinion.  I found the character of Jeremy so frustrating, so passive, I wondered how he ever became a professor in the first place.  And the writing went off in tangents on a regular basis, offering such lengthy segments of backstory that I forgot what the original point was, and was surprised each time when we returned to it.  The audiobook was divided into 10 parts, and I kept hoping that it would turn around and become the gripping, compelling story I thought it was going to be, but by the end, I felt relieved, knowing that this was about 12 hours of my listening life that I would never get back.  I would not recommend this novel, despite what the reviewers say.

And I finished The Grifiin of Darkwood by Becky Citra last night.  It is one of the Forest of Reading Silver Birch nominees, and I always try to read one or two of these each year, as well as one or two Red Maple nominees.  Will Poppy is a twelve-year-old boy whose mother dies shortly after completing her novel.  Will wants to be a writer, too, but after her death, he decides that he is done with writing.  When his horrible Aunt Mauve moves them to an old castle in a small village, he feels that his life is ruined.  Then he meets Emma and Thom, and learns of the curse on the woods behind the castle.  He discovers a photo of his grandparents and a small cloth ripped from a magic tapestry, and with the help of his friends, as well as Flavian, the bookshop owner, Will can begin to discover who he really is, to escape his horrid aunt, and to uncover the truth about the curse and hopefully lift it from the woods.  Oh, and he may be able to help catch the art thieves who have been roaming the country and evading capture at every turn.  This novel reminded me of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in a few different ways.  Not in complexity or depth, but in tone and also basic storyline: orphaned boy living with horrid relatives discovers magic all around him, resists magic but can’t escape it, finds new friends and must fight evil and allow good to triumph.  It certainly read like a first installment, and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the author is working on a sequel.  It was a light, interesting read that would appeal to both boys and girls in grades three to six, and I would happily recommend it to these classes at both my schools.

And a final note:  My Friends Book Club has been getting together for nearly six years, so I made a list of the books we’ve read over these past years, which I’m including here.  These books are not in chronological order.

Half-blood Blues - Esi Edugyan

Saturday - Ian McEwan

The Help - Kathryn Stockett

Tell it to the Trees - Anita Rau Badami

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

The Silent Wife - A S A Harrison

How to be Lost -Amanda Eyre Ward

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The Sweet Hereafter - Russell Banks

The Elegance of the Hedgehog - Muriel Barbery

Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen

The Painted Bird - Jerzy Kosinski

Big Brother - Lionel Shriver

The Mistress of Nothing - Kate Pullinger

The Bookseller - Cynthia Swanson

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig

Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro

The Story Hour - Thrity Umrigar

The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The Husband's Secret - Liane Moriarty

What Alice Forgot - Liane Moriarty

Defending Jacob - William Landay
Ruby - Cynthia Bond

The Illegal - Lawrence Hill

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers

The Green Road - Anne Enright

Be Frank with Me - Julia Claiborne Johnson

The Secret Keeper - Kate Morton

Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler

The Silver Star - Jeannette Walls

The Woman Upstairs - Claire Messud

A Killing in the Hills - Julia Keller

Sisterland - Curtis Sittenfeld (upcoming)

That’s all for today.  Get outside and enjoy the gorgeous weather!

Bye for now...

Julie

Books, audiobooks and treats on a foggy morning...

It’s foggy and mild this morning, and with threats of freezing rain tomorrow, I’m trying to savour the warm, dry comfort of my home as I sip my steaming cup of chai tea and nibble on a delicious Date Bar.

I have two books to tell you about today.  I’ll start with the audiobook I finished listening to last week, The Litigators by John Grisham.  I don’t think I’ve ever read anything by this bestselling author, as his books have never really held any appeal for me.  But I have enjoyed the narrator of this book, Dennis Boutsikaris, in the past, so I decided to give it a try, and while it was the kind of non-stop, action-packed, “all plot, no character development” legal thriller that I was expecting, it was really quite an enjoyable listening experience.  The novel opens with David Zinc, a young lawyer working in a huge firm in Chicago, deciding he can’t stand another 18-hour day in his dark, windowless cubicle.  He turns around, gets back in the elevator, heads to the first open bar he can find at 7:30 in the morning, and proceeds to get very, very drunk.   Finally, in the middle of the day, the bartender puts him in a cab, and, not yet ready to head home and face his wife, he sees an ad on the side of a bus for “Finley and Figg”, a small law firm not far from where David’s cab is, so he asks the driver to take him there.  Oscar Finley and Wally Figg run a two-man operation (they refer to themselves as a “boutique” firm) based mostly on cases acquired through less-than-honourable means.  They can barely keep their heads above water, but Wally thinks he’s found yet another (sure-to-fail!) get-rich-quick mass tort lawsuit against a big pharmaceutical company over Krayoxx, a drug designed to lower cholesterol, but whose side effects, Wally believes, may increase the risk of heart attack.  When David stumbles into the offices of “Finley and Figg”, totally inebriated yet wanting a job, Wally thinks they could use an extra body to handle the huge case that is sure to develop over Krayoxx, so they take him on.  What ensues is a classic story of David and Goliath, and the reader is treated to a fast-paced legal battle whose outcome could go either way and the tone is suspenseful right up to the proclamation of the verdict.  It was fun to listen to, not serious in any way, and sometimes that’s what we need, right?  Something that doesn’t make us think too hard or contemplate life’s deeper issues.  If that’s what you think you need, then this is the book for you!  I can’t compare it to any of his other books, but it was enjoyable enough, and the narrator really brought the story to life.  

A light audiobook offered the perfect balance for the book I was reading last week, Coming Down from Wa by Canadian author Audrey Thomas.  I read another book by this author a few years ago, Local Customs, which I really enjoyed (I liked it so much I bought it new and paid full price!), and I noticed this book as I was wandering around in a used book store a few weekends ago.  I ended up borrowing it from the library, and read it in just a few days.  In this novel, we follow William Kwane MacKenzie as he searches for the answers to the questions his parents refuse to discuss, namely, what happened in Africa when William was just a baby to make them loathe each other.  Growing up in Victoria, BC, he has always noticed the way his parents could barely stand to interact with one another, and he got away as soon as he was old enough to do so, heading to Montreal to go to university and spend time with his paternal grandfather, who can provide little information to enlighten him about his past.  Determined to pursue this quest, he travels to Africa with his model-girlfriend, and while she heads off on a modelling shoot on the Ivory Coast, he heads north, towards Wa, which I gathered is near Ghana, to visit the school where his parents first worked as volunteers, and where they met and fell in love.  His journey is not without challenges, many of them bizarre and unusual, and he meets many different characters along the way, some that help and some that hinder, but all important parts of this journey not only to discover his past, but to discover himself.  I can’t say I loved this book, but it was an interesting and worthwhile read, a window into that time period (set in the 1980s), one that causes the reader to reflect upon the many difficulties in Africa, and what, if any, are the solutions (this is why a light, frivolous audiobook was a good balance!).  I was in a bit of a hurry to finish it because I had to get started on the selection for my Friends’ book club meeting tomorrow night, so I couldn’t spend as much time thinking about these as thoroughly as I probably should have, which is funny, as I still haven’t finished my book club book, and we may need to postpone our meeting due to the weather tomorrow.  Anyway, Coming Down from Wa was an interesting read, and while the ending did not leave this reader feeling completely satisfied, it was certainly not a waste of my reading time.

That’s all for today.  Try to get outside before the freezing rain starts!

Bye for now…
Julie