book review: fool

forgive the lack of links, i'm posting from the library where i can only have one window open at a time, and the internet is slower than a slug in molasses. ugh


i'm a longtime christopher moore fan, but his last few books have caused my faith in him to falter. fool, moore's interpretation of shakespeare's king lear, follows in the unfortunate recent tradition of mediocre books. you suck and a dirty job were
sort of funny, i guess. fool isn't as funny as them. it's not that moore isn't trying. he is obviously trying very, very hard. he just seems to have lost the spark
that made coyote blue, fluke and lamb three of my favourite books, both in terms
of hilarity and interesting treatment of an interesting subject.

when writing fool christopher mooreseems to have reverted to his 13 year old self. in a random sampling of 5 pages (16, 63, 98, 150, 199) i found:
sexual/ bodily function jokes/ mentions: 13
religion jokes: 2
other jokes (mostly monty python-type humour) : 4
3/4 of these were jokes were in the first two pages. even the author, it seems, got tired of the juvenile humour.

shakespeare's king lear is complicated enough without a bunch of 'funny' extra scenes and scenarios added in. the book is a confusing mishmash of historical periods, shakespeare quotes, (from his collected works, not just lear) comedic embellishments and added plot twists for the sake of added plot twists.

while reading fool i probably chuckled aloud five or six times, a pitifully small amount considering the book is 311 pages long. i had been hoping that this would be the book where christopher moore shook off his current slump and resumed his former brilliance, but alas, no. please try again, mr. moore.

book review: house rules

house rules by rachel sontag is a phenomenon. it's the autobiography of a young woman. more specifically, it's a memoir focused on sontag's family relationships.
one could say that this is yet another voice from the world of white, middle class girls claiming hurt because daddy didn't understand them and never really loved them. however, that would be neither accurate nor fair. yes, many parts of this tale fit the cliches, but the author's father was exceptionally cruel and controlling. her mother was exceptionally self-deluded and impotent. most importantly, the author herself is exceptionally skilled as a writer. her story is told as simply as possible, given the complex nature of familial relationships. i highly recommend this insightful, truthful, beautiful and heartbreaking book.

book review: oryx and crake

last night on the airplane i finished reading oryx and crake by margaret atwood. i was sad to see it end.

margaret atwood is a blatantly brilliant canadian author. her the handmaid's tale is her most famous book, but she has written a veritable library. her work is usually dark and visionary. oryx and crake is no exception.

i believe that atwood was trying to write a book that would belong on the shelf next to brave new world and 1984 when she wrote oryx and crake. her book shares their tone and vision, but her book is not quite as chilling as the others. on the other hand, i found oryx and crake to be more readable, with better characters. i'm actually quite torn when it comes to deciding if oryx & crake is on par with the other two books or if it falls slightly short. i couldn't tell you. you should read it yourself and let me know.

book review: the mercy rule

the mercy rule by perri klass is a great book. it's written in the most straightforward prose i've ever had the pleasure of reading. the book handles many sensitive topics with unsentimental truth and blatant elegance.

the protagonist, lucy, is a suburban mom of two. married, working, taking her kids to soccer practice and birthday parties. dr. lucy weiss is a pediatrician specializing in at-risk and foster children, and a nationally recognized authority on the subject. she is also a former foster child, herself. the book centres around two main subjects: lucy's complex relationship with her complex daughter, isabel, and her efforts to balance her difficult, often wrenching work and her home life.

there's a fine balance between being an evil babysnatcher, removing kids from bad homes to put them in worse ones, and being a rescuer of children at risk, removing them to safety. i once had a job where i had to make that call occasionally, and it is brutal. the home life is bad, but is it so bad that it warrants removal? at what point is the line crossed that necessitates breaking up a family? it's a hard, hard choice, and perri klass does an excellent job of articulating just how excruciating it is.

isabel and lucy are, like many mother-daughter pairs, both stunningly similar and amazingly different. their relationship is fraught with misunderstandings, but also has nuggets of harmony. it's complicated, painful, wonderful, and incredibly real. this relationship is so well developed it's almost like another main character. also beautiful is the way isabel, a pre-teen, isn't another faceless stereotyped young girl. she's got a fully formed personality, and she is an amazing, talented, messed up, neurotic kid, just like the ones you'll meet in real life. the depiction of isabel is hands-down the best character development of a minor i've read this decade. if for nothing else, read the mercy rule to see how well the author creates the characters of isabel and lucy.

i don't know if this book was better than the groom to have been, but it's at least on par. it is therefore now tied for best book of the year.

book review: last chance saloon

marian keyes' last chance saloon is the archetypal chicklit book. stock characters (the skinny, neurotic one, the chubby, bubbly one and the gay man, plus peripheral characters, equally predictable. all of them are in their early 30's and live in london and none have any real responsibility) shop, drink, diet, obsess, and go through crises. in the end they are happy, well dressed, well partnered, and well shod. not to belabour the point or anything, but the last pararagraph is

'to life!' seven glasses clinked in the middle of the tablewhile seven chorused, 'and men with big willies!'

i'm not deriding the book, though. not at all. fluffy, silly books like this serve a purpose. today i had two small, feverish bodies draped across me and i wasn't exactly about to read dostoevsky. similarly, when i was pregnant i couldn't get enough of the girly fluff. for people who don't watch sitcoms or chick flicks, these books are fantastic escapism. last chance saloon didn't change my life or teach me anything, but it entertained me through many tedious hours.

but before i let the book and the genre off the hook completely, i have a few questions.

• why are there never lesbians in these books? frequently a flamboyant gay man, but never a dyke.
• why are there no people with mental illness or physical handicaps?
• why are they all nonreligious? there's always one person who is investigating her spirituality, but she's the flaky, gullible one.
• why is no one non-mainstream? no goths, punks, hippies, never the most distant glimpse of a metalhead...

it's the homogenized humans that bug me. maybe what this genre needs, in order for me to embrace it fully, is a book proudly featuring a one-legged hindu lesbian with down's syndrome. her best friend would be a post-op trans man who works at walmart and listens to bluegrass. can anyone point me in that direction?

book review: the groom to have been

the groom to have been by saher alam is a fascinating, educating, fun read. i picked it up expecting something lighthearted and silly, since the cover describes it as 'a love story inspired by the age of innocence'. i've never read any edith wharton, but that description led me to believe that the book might be a comedy of manners. that description is misleading. this isn't a silly book at all, and it isn't a comedy of manners. it's a serious, interesting look at life as an idian-muslim immigrant in north america.

nasr, the protagonist, is looking for a wife. he wants a woman who can teach his children urdu, get along with his family and engage him, personally. obviously this woman is not to be found in a new york nightclub, so he enlists his mother, to her delight, to search for an appropriate bride for him. eventually the right woman is found and the wedding plans commence.

a few things make this book interesting and unique: nasr was raised in canada and is thoroughly (north) americanized, but respects his culture's traditions. he has to balance his western-ness with his eastern-ness, and the two sides often conflict. with his friends from work he goes to a bar and has a few beer, with his mother he eats halal and speaks urdu. nasr has to let go of the idea of romantic love in order to marry a stranger. also, he often has to translate his parents' culture to his friends, and in doing so explains it to the reader. arranged marriages, which seem so bizarre and outdated to me, begin to make sense when seen through his eyes. again and again customs that i had previously not understood or possibly even heard of are explained. ms. alam's writing is so elegant that this vast exposition of a culture isn't textbook-y or dense. rather, every so often i would realize that she had just taught me something new when i wasn't even aware that i was being taught. this author has not just grasped the concept of 'show, don't tell', she has mastered it.

the subjects that are touched upon are varied and often serious. life as a muslim in new york right after 9/11, the ongoing struggle to balance duty and desire, feminism and personal politics within islam, the deceptions that families build their lives on, being the victim of racism and hate crimes - it's all there, and more, eloquently expressed.

this is a book of generous depth and vibrant colour. i found reading it to be an enjoyable and rewarding experience. i highly recommend it.

book review: driving sideways

driving sideways by jess riley is a novel about a 20-something woman with a serious medical condition who heads out into the wild blue yonder, looking for adventure. leigh, the protagonist, is quirky, smart, funny, and has an endless supply of pop culture references with which to pepper her observations. she is dealing with heavy shit, but she does her best to stay upbeat in spite of it all.

the book is entertaining and educational. the characters are sympathetic and well developed. i wouldn't claim it's the best novel i've ever read, but it's the best one i've read so far in 2009. i'd give it 8/10. go ahead and read it. the book probably won't change your life, but you won't regret the time you spent, either.

yesterday my partner and i were driving around, running errands. we took turns sitting in the car with the babies while the other ran into the store/ library/ whatever and got stuff done. that way we don't have to pay for parking. i'd brought this book with me. my partner, naturally, asked about it. i started to summarize and review it for him, and he looked a little surprised. he'd assumed, from looking at the cover:
that it was a fluffy chicklit book with no literary merit whatsoever. that pissed me right off. not that he assumed that, since it was a pretty safe assumption, given the chicklitty cover, but that so often good books that happen to be written by women and feature women (especially if the protagonist is single) get given these covers and get marketed as fluff. plenty of men and women who would love the book skip over it based on the feminine cover. my partner would, he admitted. so would many of my female friends. it's sexist and screwed up that books about single women can't be taken seriously as mainstream fiction. grrrrr.

i used to get embarrassed about reading books with pink and/ or images of lithe, feminine body parts on the cover. i didn't want my partner, friends, or strangers on the bus to assume that i read brainless fluff.* it was a conscious decision on my part to stop hiding what i'm reading or skip over books with girly covers. the publishing world has set things up in a sexist, discriminatory way, and i won't go along with it. so now i proudly read whatever i want to and if anyone so much as raises an eyebrow at me i educate them about the sexism that is rampant in the publishing business. just like i've done here, in these two paragraphs. i call it lecture activism. or preachiness. or giving innocent victims an earful.

*i do enjoy the occasional foray into the world of true chicklit. i don't have tv and sometimes my brain needs a holiday. i have nothing at all in common with the shopaholic, for example, but do most viewers have that much in common with the characters on the sitcoms they watch?

a lazy sunday: book review, recipe & photos

yesterday it was -40 and my partner was stuck at work, thanks to car trouble. so from the time we woke up until bedtime, the boys and i were on our own, housebound. plus the internet was down.
it was cold. hell-ass cold.


and, as we all know, the best thing to do when it's cold is make some delicious from-scratch chili that simmers its way to perfection over the course of the day. mine was made with garden black beans, farmers market veggies and lots of love.

we filled our day. there were stories read, naps taken, snacks munched, tickles,


songs hummed, (ani's present/infant, from her new album) (<-- track 3) blocks stacked, star wars watched ( the return of the jedi. yoda, jabba, darth vader and ewoks all in the same movie? plus a space battle? my kids think they've died and gone to heaven) and coffee sipped thoughtfully. i also made farmers market/ garden salsa. here's how.

• in the summer i gathered cilantro, onions, garlic, lemon juice, salt and hot peppers and threw them all in the blender. when the mixture was liquefied and burned my sinuses if i inhaled too close to it, i divided it up into baggies and froze them.
• i also processed a mountain of fresh corn and tomatoes and green peppers.
• yesterday i thawed a baggie of the salsa base, plus tomatoes and corn and green peppers. if i could have left the house i would have gotten avocado.
• i chopped the green peppers and tomatoes and mixed them into the base with the corn. then i pulled out the tortilla chips. i also mixed in some blue cheese, but many people would find that gross. many people are wrong.

i've been reading a cure for grief by nellie hermann. i'm not sure if i'll finish it. it's a good book - the author is clearly well educated and an adept writer. the pace is good, the prose is sparse and direct, the characters are relatable... but i feel like a peeping tom. the book is obvoiusly a thinly veiled autobiography. (the author's biography and the book match nearly perfectly.)

a cure for grief is 272 pages of pain. the protagonist lives through tradgedy after tradgedy, and every moment of her agony is expressed on the pages. it's not melodramatic or cheesy, at all. heartwrenching is more the word. and intensely personal. i feel guilty about reading something so private. hermann is a master of the english language andhas phenomenal skill as a writer, but this book is too visceral and too real to be read as entertainment.


of course, i can't read and drink coffee (and red wine mixed with cranberry juice) without knitting. my first project of 2009 was chosen to test my knitterly skills. i'm making hedera, from knitty. i'm over the moon that they're turning out. keeping track of a 4-row lace pattern when the little dudes are calling my attention away from the needles every few seconds is a real feat, i believe. on top of the complex stitch pattern, i though i'd try knitting these socks two at a time, toe-up. that's working out so far, too. and after so long using yarns i didn't like, dream in color's smooshy is pure bliss. the yarn is sproingy and soft and knits up quickly into a dense, smooth fabric with a subtle sheen. i'm not crazy about the colour, but the yarn itself is fantastic.
i haven't decided yet who i am making these for. on the one hand, i would love to show them off to everyone i see the way i've bragged on them here. then again, i don't have any nice shoes that would showcase them and so i'd have to pull off my boots or runners every time i wanted people to see them, and people might view me askance if i started pulling off my footwear on the bus and in the library and post office and grocery store. plus i'm not crazy about the colour. i don't have to decide just yet, i have a few more hours' work until i'm at the point where i decide what size they will be. you have until then to state your case in the comments.

four book reviews for the price of one

the library hasn't seen my face in weeks. in fact, the only outings i've gone on in the past few weeks are to the grocery store and to the drug store. food and cold meds, that's all my house needs these days. books can wait. *sigh*

but my compulsion to read hasn't disappeared just because my source of reading material is temporarily out of reach. so i've made do. and between the internet and the shelves of books i've picked up at thrift stores and never actually read, i'm doing ok, i guess. i'm writing this so i must not have become illiterate during my holiday from new, interesting books.

books reviews 1, 2 and 3: the twilight series by stephenie meyer
my friends were raving about them so i gave them a shot. i thought they might be like the harry potter books, which i think mostly lived up to the hype. i don't feel like these books did. they just didn't grab me. i think a 15 year old version of myself would have been spellbound by them, (and not allowed to read them) but it just didn't feel like the books reached across the aisle to the adult audience the way rowling's books did. they were enjoyable, but not particularly gripping or memorable. obvoiusly many readers feel differently from the way i do, but that's cool. i can live with that. too bad those other readers are wrong.

book 4: i am not spock by leonard nimoy
i got it in a thrift store for a dime and gave it to my partner for xmas. leonard nimoy's autobiography - what's not to love?
a fair amount, actually. this isn't a book that will be showing up in literature anthologies, hundreds of years from now. but, to be fair, for a celebrity author he's not bad. granted, i'm comparing him to pamela anderson, but still.
i think trekkies probably love this book and people who have a good grasp of sci-fi tv culture would enjoy it, but i've only seen an episode or two of star trek and only have the vaguest grasp of the whole thing. so when nimoy started talking about some klingon death pinch, i got confused, which led to boredom, which led to me putting the book down and going to bed early.
meh, it'll get a chuckle out of the people who are browsing the livingroom bookshelf.

book review: the 351 books of irma arcuri

the 351 books of irma arcuri by david bajo

math, literature and sex dovetailed in a tight, complex narrative. the rare kind of book where if the reader zones out for a few minutes she needs to go back and re-read what she missed. not (always) because it makes gaps in the plot, but because otherwise she will miss out.

the writer obviously thinks, obviously reads, and obviously fucks. there is not a word of falsehood in this book - everything it contains has been felt and seen and experienced, and can be again.

it is my hope that this book is considered literature by the finest sort of readers, a century or two from now.

book review: rapture ready

i recently read rapture ready by daniel radosh, and it was good.

basically, a jewish writer explored the alternate universe that is christian pop culture. i liked it for many reasons:

• it was a blast from the past. as a teenager i was steeped in christian pop culture. if music was secular or a book mentioned inappropriate topics i had to enjoy it secretly. as an alumni of christian youth culture, i can tell you that radosh was spot-on with his observations. also very evenhanded, given the occasional ridiculousness of his subject.
• he's a fantastic writer. he has the rare gift of being able to step back and let people tell their own stories. huge chunks of the book are simply quotes from people he was interviewing. instead of taking what he was told by all these people and writing things up from his point of view, he just recorded their words. it made the book seem more objective and made the people he met easier to relate to - i could hear their voices and understand where they were coming from. yes, a christian pro wrestling circuit is ridiculous from almost anyone's standpoint, but after hearing from the guy in charge, i understood why he felt what he was doing was important.
• the writer's jewish perspective added to my understanding of the world of christian culture. there were so many things that i took for granted when i was younger, then forgot when i became an apostate, but now i see them through daniel's culturally sensitive eyes and i realize how bigoted and hurtful so many evangelical assumptions and attitudes are. if he had been writing from a secular or christian viewpoint i would have probably failed to notice some of the institutionalized xenophobia.
• it's laid out so clearly. each chapter is about one area of christian pop culture. the whole thing is arranged like an essay, but with chapters instead of paragraphs. it's all very clear and informative and definitley entertaining. it's similar in subject to a j jacobs' year of living biblically, but with less emphasis on the humour and the personal, and more emphasis on a comprehensive understanding of the topic on hand. radosh's clarity makes jacobs' writing seem like a chaotic mishmash. which it is not.
• the faux-interview with stephen baldwin. freaking awesome. if you can't afford this book, just walk into a bookstore and turn to page 143 and read to the end of the chapter, piss your pants laughing, and walk back out.
• it really is very funny, with flashes of dry humour and some outright silliness. don't let my extended ranting about the way he takes his subject seriously make you think that it isn't a fantastically funny book.

overall, i give the book ***** out of five stars. two thumbs up. i only wish it could have been longer.

book review: supreme courtship

i love a good christopher buckley book. and i liked this novel.

mr. buckley, in my mind, is the author of brilliant, cutting, hilarious books about american politics and commerce. little green men, florence of arabia and boomsday are witty, clever, and informative. the chuckles kept coming as the pages kept turning. i highly recommend all of them.

supreme courtship is about an honest but unpopular president who, to spite washington, elects a tv judge to the supreme court. things get a little convoluted, but eventually the president end up campaigning against his will and fighting for a presidency he doesn't want. a respected politician goes from being the chairman of the senate judiciary committee to being the president (on tv) to running for president to...
read the book.

it should all be there. the plot is fascinating, the characters good, the pace just right, the writing intelligent. but it's not as sharp or clever as buckley's previous work. i can't put my finger on exactly what's missing. i still think it's worth reading, but i'm not as evangelical about my recommendation as i would be if i reviewed his other work.

so go ahead, read it. supreme courtship won't hurt in the slightest and you'll probably really enjoy it.

book review: in search of april raintree

in search of april raintree by beatrice mosionier is freaking intense. it's like the colour purple or i know why the caged bird sings in that it's the based-on-a-true-story account of a little girl becoming a woman through the most incredibly brutal circumstances. i actually prefer it, since it's more relevant to my culture. i've never experienced firsthand racism towards black people, but i have witnessed some of the scenes described in this book.

april raintree is the daughter of a couple of alcoholics and the older sister of cheryl raintree. they are a metis (part native) family living on the canadian prairies. the story is april's account of the girls' removal from their parents' home and placement in various foster homes. april fights valiantly to survive, rise above her miserable circumstances, and protect her sister. it's terrifyingly honest, showing the girls not as brave little survivors or victims, but as human beings who make bad choices and suffer the consequences, and are seriously messed up from all the evil that is done to them. the protagonists are complex and real. they aren't innocent by any means, and i, as a reader, didn't like them at certain points in their development, but it was a damned good book.

my culture is profoundly racist towards native and metis people, but after years of seeing it i had become desensitized to it. this book reopened my sense of outrage that people could treat other people so very badly. after crying my way through segments of the book i wanted to go kick the shit out of some white people.

as a white person i want to apologize with every fibre of my being for all the disgusting, horrific, insidious wrongs people of my skin tone have perpetrated upon pretty much every other people group on the planet. we suck. please forgive us.

book review: not buying it

every night this week after the babes have gone to sleep i've settled down on the couch with my knitting and not buying it: my year without shopping by judith levine.
i like it. it's honest, witty, cohesive, applicable - all the things i like in a book, and i tend to agree with her fairly constantly. judith and her partner, paul, go a year without shopping. they buy groceries, home repair stuff, etc, but the endeavour (with varying success) to not spend money as entertainment. they don't go to movies, don't eat out, and don't indulge in 'retail therapy'. judith is a politically active non-republican and the book is written about the year that bush was re-elected. she is passionate about ousting bush from his (usurped) role and deeply affected by his election. (not reelection)

she is excellent at articulating something that i have felt for a while about opting out of consumerism. it's green party fundraisers, vegan collective job applications (declined) and fitting in with the geez and adbusters crowd. (which i probably would, if i ever left the house) it's occasionally raising one's voice with rev. billy and the church of stop shopping on buy nothing day. (which she does) but 99% of the time it is boring and inconvenient and a real drag. it's walking in car-centric strip malls. it's arriving home starving and having to actually cook dinner, instead of pulling out a tv dinner or picking up some mcdonald's on the way home. it's scouring the earth for the least harmful way to clothe, feed, shelter and entertain oneself instead of turning on the tv and zoning out. it is tedious. but i'm not going to stop.

the nonconsumerism and politics combine to make it an informative, enjoyable read, one i can really relate to. i'm definitley borrowing her other books from the library.

but reading about not buying frivolities has had an unexplainable effect on me. each evening as i have enjoyed the book, the knitting, and the silence, i have had a nearly uncontrollable urge to order pizza. i can't get it out of my head. it's like that youtube video - clinging to my brain like a toddler with illicit candy - i can't pry it loose. i'm not hungry. i can't afford pizza. i don't even really like pizza that much. there is no good reason for this pizza fixation, but i desperately want a pizza guy to show up at my house with a fragrant box of grease. in an effort not to delve deeper into my psyche, i am going to just blame the book. all this talk of not buying has made me crave pointless consumerism. damn you, judith levine.

well, not really. actually, i think you kick ass. come for coffee sometime.

book review: the omnivore's dilemma

the omnivore's dilemma by michael pollan is my kind of book. i don't think my mom would like it at all (she doesn't like being questioned on the ethics of her choices) and not my dad's kind of book (no gun fights or intrigue) but i suspect that barbara kingsolver, david suzuki and i all deeply enjoyed the omnivore's dilemma.

the book traces four meals to their sources. a meal from mcdonald's, a meal from whole foods (an american organic/ natural grocery chain) a meal from polyface farm (only sells locally, all organic) and a meal that the author hunted, foraged and grew himself.

a book this informative can't help but have some dry parts. pollan writes clearly and eloquently, but on occasion he goes on for too long. i found 90% of the book fascinating, exciting and inspirational. some of the information he had on factory farms, corporate policies, environmental impacts, agricultural techniques and so on blew my socks off. this isn't stuff you'll find advertised on the walls of your local burger king. it's alarming, troublesome and incites both thought and change.

if you want to eat more ethically and tread more lightly, this is the book for you. one warning, though: you can't read it while eating at mcdonald's. (i had to leave it at home and take my knitting instead. but seriously, why doesn't a more ethical eatery have a playplace? i only go there so my kid can run around without too much supervision and i can enjoy the air conditioning. someone please start a local, organic restaurant with a playplace and a/c. near my house. thankyou.)

book review: the know it all

the know it all: one man's humble quest to become the smartest person in the world by jacobs, a. j.

this book was found in the bargain bin at munro's books for 6.99$. sorry, mr. jacobs, you probably didn't make much money off me. but it was a fantastic holiday read. it's the travelogue of a man reading the encyclopedia britannica, cover to cover to cover to cover to cover... here are two excerpts.

Fux, Johann
I'm proud of myself. When I saw the name Johann Fux - an 18th century Austrian composer - I didn't giggle. Sure, there was a faint smile, but I'm getting better, I tell you. I didn't ask myself whether Johann Fux on the first date or whether Johann Fux while wearing proper protection. I didn't secretly think that "Fux You" would make a cook T-shirt.
The more i progress in the alphabet, the more successful I am at stifling that eleven-year-old boy inside me, the one that still thinks a good Beavis-and-Butthead-style scatological pun is a cause for great joy.
It's not easy. Just the number of asses alone will tempt even the most evolved mind. I've learned about The Golden Ass (a book by a Platonic philosopher) and The Wild Ass's Skin (a novel by Balzac). I've read about the half ass (a type of mule in Asia) and Buridan's ass (an animal in a philosophical parable). But it goes way beyond asses. Asses are just the start. You can also take a trip to the river Suck (in Ireland), where you could fish for crappies (a freshwater bass) while you drink some Brest milk (a town in Belarus known for its dairies). If you're bored, you could have a stroke-off (while playing bandy, a version of ice hockey) and fondle a bushtit (a small bird). If you're feeling smart, you might want to argue the impact of Isaac Butt (an Irish leader), or debate the merits of the Four Wangs (Chinese landscape painters), who might have been collected by the Fuggers (an art0loving family). Or else, just take a flying Fokker (a German airplane)

~*~

But we were born of risen apes, not fallen from angels, and the apes were armed killers besides. And so what shall we wonder at? Our murders and massacres and missiles, and our irreconcilable regiments? Or our treaties whatever they may be worth; our symphonies however seldom they may be played; our peaceful acres, however frequently they may be converted into battlefields; our dreams, however rarely they may be accomplished. The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen. We are known among the stars by our poems, not our corpses
-Robert Ardrey*

this book covers an incredible breadth. pop culture, ancient culture, collecting sperm samples, being a son and a father... Jacobs writes like a human being on a multitude of (alphabetical) topics. he informs, entertains and enriches his readers.
i wholeheartedly endorse it.

*this is actually me quoting jacobs' book quoting the encyclopedia quoting ardrey. but this is my favourite new quote. i'd write it on the walls in jiffy marker if i was still living in my old house, where we did stuff like that.
oh, and it's interesting to note that the book's index, which includes such listings as ''life, chaos of' and 'meaningful cross-referencing, see cross-referencing, meaningful' and 'mensa(ns): obesity of', there is no listing for quotes, forcing me to flip though the book looking for this one. it took longer to find the thing than to type it out.

review of the film club

david gilmour (his face, if not his name, would be familiar to most canadians. he's been a fixture at cbc for years and years) recently published the film club. there is a review on the back that says that it's about what happens when the author decided to homeschool his teenaged son by watching movies with him. i thought 'great! a book about unschooling!!'. but i was wrong. it isn't a book about homeschooling or unschooling or anything else like that. it's a book about a guy watching movies with his son.

what gets me about this book is the way the author looks at his son. he sees his boy the way i see mine. that kid is golden. he has flaws and shortcomings and he screws up but he is the best thing, ever. when it comes right down to it, the book is a love letter to gilmour's son. it's beautiful and it rings true.

i don't know much about movies and haven't seen most of the films mentioned in the book. the book was obviously meant for someone who has seen them or at least wants to, so i think my partner got a lot more out of it. i probably missed 1/3 of the content of the book just because i don't really care about cinema. so people who have kids and love movies would get the most out of this book. people with no kids who aren't interested in movies would simply be bored.

the year of living biblically

a j jacobs once read the encyclopedia brittanica. he wrote a book about it. i haven't read that book.

but i have read the year of living biblically. the name might tip you off as to what, exactly, he did. yup. and, as you might think, trying to follow every biblical law and precept makes for a damned interesting book. growing a beard, helping old ladies across the street, getting a chicken slaughtered... all sorts of random stuff, just like the bible says.

it's even more interesting than that, even. if he spent a year systematically working through the bible's laws, finding ways to follow them while living in new york, that would be a good stunt and make for an interesting book. but this is more than that. it's the spiritual journey of an agnostic who is trying to stay openminded in the face of fundamentalism and figure out if there is anything to religion. he doesn't take the bible lightly or treat it irreverently. on the contrary, he earnestly tries to find what rings true to him, even in the most ridiculous of fringe faiths. if he were tom robbins he would be making his audience piss themselves laughing as he wittily tore the bible's odder sections and stranger followers to shreds, but jacobs isn't robbins. instead, he aknowledges that his subjects are indeed strange too the (secular) observer, but that amid the snakehandling and dietary laws there are deep and valuable truths.

it's a tricky dance he does, being a funny, critical-minded guy respectfully investigating western civilization's most revered book and its followers. he could so easily become sappy, preachy, cynical, mean... there are many ways he could have written a book that made me despise him. but he didn't.

i also loved all the times he mentioned his wife's reactions to the strange things he did. i really like that woman. i suspect that in the right circumstances my parter and i would be good friends with he and his wife. plus our kids are the same age and every time he mentioned his toddler i looked fondly at mine.

before reading this book i assumed that the kind of man who would write for esquire would be shallow, materialistic and mean-minded. i was wrong. i think i need to read his other book. and maybe start reading the mens' magazine he writes for.

lamb review

christopher moore is awesome, and lamb: the gospel according to biff, christ's childhood pal is his best work. witty, irreverent, slightly think-y and still surprisingly respectful. for the first third of the book or so it's a laugh or two a page. biff and josh (jesus) circumcise a statue of apollo, investigate the fairer sex, develop a taste for bacon... i really, really love the book.

right up until around the time they join a monastery, actually. around 1/3 of the way into the book it starts to lose momentum. it gets less and less funny and less and less interesting. it's still a great book, but it starts a lot better than it ends. still, even at its least inspired moment lamb is funnier and smarter than carl hiaasen's best moment, and i'm very fond of mr. hiaasen. even if his name is damned hard to spell.

don't let that last paragraph deter you, read the book. you'll be glad you did.

fluke

review of fluke by christopher moore

i've read all his books before, and some of them aren't worth a second read, but this one is awesome. it's my second favourite of his books. first comes the gospel according to biff, but that is a review for another post.

fluke is golden for many reasons. the plot chugs along nicely, the characters are likeable, moore has wit and humour to spare, quirkiness abounds... what's not to like? but the thing that makes me love this book is kona.

pelekekona keohokalole, born preston applebaum, is a white kid from jersey who is also a dreadlocked rastafarian living on maui. he says stuff like

"Oh, she a blackheart thief that would take a man's Snowy Biscuit to have a punaani nosh. That Snowy Biscuit belong our tribe."

just for fun, let's dissect this. 'oh, she a... to have a' is piratespeak crossed with jamaican pidgin. snowy biscuit, allegedly, means pale, attractive woman. i'm not sure if that's surfer lingo or more jamaican. google tells me that punaani means vagina in jamaican. whatever. but nosh??? what is the yiddish word for snack doing here???

the marvelous mr. moore is known for having characters make appearances in multiple books. so far kona is only in fluke, but i keep hoping he'll pop up in another book... or ten. are you listening, author guy?

two more for the road.

"Rum," said Kona. "Too much hostility in dat buzz. Rum come from da cane, and cane come from slavin' the people, and dat oppression all distilled in de bottle and come out a man mean as cat shit on a day."

"Ya, mon. Kona can spark up a spliff and calm down that bumpy brine for all me new science dreadies. We can take the boat no matter what the wind be," Kona said. He was thinking, I have no idea what the hell I'm talking about, but I really want to get out there with the whales.

need i say more?