Just a quick note to say Merry Christmas. This Christmas is going to be fabulous. I’ve been a bit preoccupied with wrapping, decorating and cooking, cleaning and baking I haven’t had time to write a decent review, but I assure you as soon as the holidays are over, the reviews begin.
Until then, Have a safe and joyous holiday and best wishes from my family to yours.
And don’t forget to read some great books during the holidays.
Happy Reading!!!
Friday, December 24, 2010
Sunday, December 19, 2010
A Tale of Sex, Birth, Love and Pain
The Birth House
Author:
Ami McKay
Published:
Knopf Canada (2006)
Number of Pages:
400
Review:
What started out as a fun Autumn read turned into an enlightening, nostalgic walk back in time. Here in the 21st century duties such as giving and aiding in birth is no longer a very feminine thing. Men are now aiding in the birth of babies and some men are even trying to have babies. The time frame that this novel takes place in is a time of innocence and strong female/male barriers. One that if crossed, the party involved would have to endure serious consequences, all of which are covered in this wonderful gem of a novel.
Set in the early 1900’s Nova Scotia in a time when women were not considered persons and feminism was an ideology away Dora Rare dares to become an independent female. An elderly midwife, Marie, takes Dora under her wing and trains her in her field of work only to leave Dora to deal with a loveless and burdensome marriage, a child left in her care after being abandoned by her parents and a university educated doctor that claims he can deliver babies “pain free.” Through birth, love, sex, and pain we see the development of a young naive child grow into a passionate feminist woman, a woman who first discovers what an orgasm is in the medical chair, a woman who joins in with the suffragette movement and a woman who had she have been living in the 21st century would probably choose the same path of life that she had lived.
Ami McKay’s The Birth House is a phenomenal piece of literature. Each sentence explodes with detail, emotion and history. Reading this book was like stepping into a journal, the narration is passionate and told by a young feminist who captures her audience with her charms, naivety, and wit. Humorous, and delightful, this colourful account of life and the collection of scrapbook type newspaper clippings to provide proof of her accounts of life leave the reader in awe of the main character: Dora.
This novel was clearly written by a strong feminist voice and it is evident in every sentence of the novel that women have a purpose in this world other than to serve men. “If women lose the right to say where and how they birth their children, they will have lost something that’s as dear to life as breathing.” McKay's Dora was a strong woman trying to live in a man’s world, a world which condemned her practise of birthing as a midwife as barbaric and immoral. Her birthing ways were passed on from generation to generation, from female to female, and was used to birth thousands of babies yet when compared to the new (man invented) way of birthing which is basically the basis of modern gynaecology, it was seen as unfashionable, dangerous and unsafe.
What I love about McKay’s novel is her approach to showing that what is old isn’t always bad; her character although facing ridicule and shame from the new doctors who claim their way of birthing is better than a midwife surpasses all of her obstacles and eventually shows the world that sometimes a man's way of running the world isn’t always the best way.
I also love the prose. It flows so beautifully from one sentence into another that it’s like watching ripples form in the ocean. It’s one of the most beautiful pieces of writing I’ve read in a very long time. So beautiful I found myself rereading certain phases and sentences. “Everything I’ve learned from Mother, every bit of her truth, has been said while her hands were moving.” This simple sentence holds so much beauty, thought and emotions that reading it could evoke the reader to cry tears of sadness or tears of joy for either emotion is very much present in this quotation. The sheer wonder of this novel lies within quotations like these. McKay’s writing is pure poetry at it’s best.
With unforgettable characters, illusive descriptive writing and historical value, McKay's Birth House is a priceless read. She has written a Canadian masterpiece that is likely to enlighten and entertain readers for years to come. I hope you decide to read this fascinating story.
Happy Reading!!!
Author: Ami McKay
Published:
Knopf Canada (2006)
Number of Pages:
400
Review:
What started out as a fun Autumn read turned into an enlightening, nostalgic walk back in time. Here in the 21st century duties such as giving and aiding in birth is no longer a very feminine thing. Men are now aiding in the birth of babies and some men are even trying to have babies. The time frame that this novel takes place in is a time of innocence and strong female/male barriers. One that if crossed, the party involved would have to endure serious consequences, all of which are covered in this wonderful gem of a novel.
Set in the early 1900’s Nova Scotia in a time when women were not considered persons and feminism was an ideology away Dora Rare dares to become an independent female. An elderly midwife, Marie, takes Dora under her wing and trains her in her field of work only to leave Dora to deal with a loveless and burdensome marriage, a child left in her care after being abandoned by her parents and a university educated doctor that claims he can deliver babies “pain free.” Through birth, love, sex, and pain we see the development of a young naive child grow into a passionate feminist woman, a woman who first discovers what an orgasm is in the medical chair, a woman who joins in with the suffragette movement and a woman who had she have been living in the 21st century would probably choose the same path of life that she had lived.
Ami McKay’s The Birth House is a phenomenal piece of literature. Each sentence explodes with detail, emotion and history. Reading this book was like stepping into a journal, the narration is passionate and told by a young feminist who captures her audience with her charms, naivety, and wit. Humorous, and delightful, this colourful account of life and the collection of scrapbook type newspaper clippings to provide proof of her accounts of life leave the reader in awe of the main character: Dora.
This novel was clearly written by a strong feminist voice and it is evident in every sentence of the novel that women have a purpose in this world other than to serve men. “If women lose the right to say where and how they birth their children, they will have lost something that’s as dear to life as breathing.” McKay's Dora was a strong woman trying to live in a man’s world, a world which condemned her practise of birthing as a midwife as barbaric and immoral. Her birthing ways were passed on from generation to generation, from female to female, and was used to birth thousands of babies yet when compared to the new (man invented) way of birthing which is basically the basis of modern gynaecology, it was seen as unfashionable, dangerous and unsafe.
What I love about McKay’s novel is her approach to showing that what is old isn’t always bad; her character although facing ridicule and shame from the new doctors who claim their way of birthing is better than a midwife surpasses all of her obstacles and eventually shows the world that sometimes a man's way of running the world isn’t always the best way.
I also love the prose. It flows so beautifully from one sentence into another that it’s like watching ripples form in the ocean. It’s one of the most beautiful pieces of writing I’ve read in a very long time. So beautiful I found myself rereading certain phases and sentences. “Everything I’ve learned from Mother, every bit of her truth, has been said while her hands were moving.” This simple sentence holds so much beauty, thought and emotions that reading it could evoke the reader to cry tears of sadness or tears of joy for either emotion is very much present in this quotation. The sheer wonder of this novel lies within quotations like these. McKay’s writing is pure poetry at it’s best.
With unforgettable characters, illusive descriptive writing and historical value, McKay's Birth House is a priceless read. She has written a Canadian masterpiece that is likely to enlighten and entertain readers for years to come. I hope you decide to read this fascinating story.
Happy Reading!!!
Saturday, December 18, 2010
The Long Wait to Reread
Titanic: The Long Night
Author:
Diane Hoh
Published: Scholastic (1998)
Number of Pages: 373
Review:
I remember stumbling upon this novel right after the big blockbuster movie Titanic hit the screens. I was not allowed to watch the movie at the time because it was rated 14A and my parents were very strict when it came to ratings (however they were very lenient when it came to novels, quite the hypocrisy I know). Not being able to watch the film when every one of my peers had seen it twice was condemning me to social outcast, thus when I saw this novel at my local bookstore I begged my mother to buy it for me, and buy it for me she did. At the time I fell in love with the plotline, the characters and the beautiful love stories that this novel entailed and I got many of my friends hooked on the novel as well. Reading it a second time reignited those feelings and for the next 3 years after I bought it (at age 12) I reread it at least once every 6 months. After moving to our new home I’d lost my copy and didn’t seek out to buy a new copy, in fact this novel completely slipped my mind until I ended up in a used bookstore and happened to find a copy of it in the Young Adult section. Needless to say I had to buy it, and buy it I did.
The novel chronicles the lives of five young adults – Katie, the beautiful Irish women who’s accompanied by Patrick and Brian in steerage, and Maxwell the dashing young artist who captures the attention of first class Elizabeth Farr - whose destinies led them to board the tragically fated Titanic. Katie boards the ship in steerage (third class) heading to America with her two childhood friends, Brian the handsome Irish bloke, and his brother Patrick who thinks that by falling in love with Katie he’s betraying his brother’s love and stealing the girl his brother fancies for himself. For Katie the ship and the move to America is the biggest adventure of her life, and embarking on this adventure with the boys she knows better than her own mother, she starts to develop feelings for Patrick, unbeknownst to Katie Patrick secretly loves her too, but his love for his brother and his pride soon sends Patrick down a path away from Katie and into anger and isolation. Elizabeth on the other hand has been cared for and waited on her entire life and never dreams or even dares to think of living any other way, until she meets Maxwell Whittaker. The man whom she once deemed as a third class citizen turns out to be a first class passenger and the son of an acquaintance of her father’s at that. Through his quirky habits, and his irritating conversations and his total lack of proper demeanour Elizabeth finds herself falling in love with this man who’s exiled himself from the community of debutantes and in doing so she awakens her own inner rebel.
Of course one of the main characters is the Titanic herself, her fate, as many people know as tragic, is pushed in the background of the novel until the last couple of chapters. The reader while reading this novel forgets that the Titanic is the ship that sinks because they’re so enthralled in the actual story of the novel to pay attention to anything else.
Reading the novel as an adult for the first time the story resonates within me a different interpretation of the text than I had reading it has a tween yet I still feel the same excitement and wonder I did as a child. Of course being older has put my perspectives on love and happiness in a more cynical and critical level than when I was a little girl hyped up on Disney romances and this idea that love can conquer all (or that the love one experiences will be exactly that found in the fairytales). So when reading Titanic I recognized it for what it really was, much like the trashy romance novels found in bookstores and drugstores alike, this novel was written to send cheap thrills and good chills down one’s spine and at the same time leave the reader desperately craving for more.
Like many romance novels the language is very simple. There are very little allusions or alliterations, very little metaphors and a solid yet focused plotline; however I’ve always said that writing simply doesn’t always insure the writing is simple. “Her knees felt as if they might buckle at any moment. But she kept her head held high and repeated to herself under her breath as she walked, ‘Not Paddy, anyone but Paddy. He’s a heartbreaker that one’” There are so many thrills and so many scenes that gave me butterflies in my stomach that even as an adult I still wanted to believe that fairytales really do come true. The love stories itself are enough to keep this novel afloat, add to it the sinking ship, and this novel very well sails into its horizon.
What I love best about this novel is the sense of suspense one feels while reading. Although predictable I still couldn’t help myself from wanting to find out when they were going to kiss for the first time, when will they tell each other they love one another, or my favourite when are they going to stop denying to themselves that they love one another. “It was all Max’s fault. He shouldn’t have been looking at her like that, shouldn’t have put his face so close to hers.” *sighs* I feel as if I’m melting into the love story that is Elizabeth and Max as I retype this quotation. I love stubborn women in romance novels, the ones who deny deny deny they have any feelings until everything becomes too overwhelming and they explode with emotions, such is the character Elizabeth and she made this novel so much more endearing and suspenseful.
I have to say that I am glad I reread this novel. Not only did it bring back so many memories of my childhood reading, it also didn’t fail to send shivers down my back even though I knew what was going to happen. I’m almost positive that if you read it for the first time you too might experience the feelings I felt and might bring back a sense of nostalgia, back to those days of innocence when you thought love was exactly like a fairytale and that there is indeed a Maxwell and a Patrick out there for everyone.
Happy Reading!!!
Author:
Diane Hoh
Published: Scholastic (1998)
Number of Pages: 373
Review:
I remember stumbling upon this novel right after the big blockbuster movie Titanic hit the screens. I was not allowed to watch the movie at the time because it was rated 14A and my parents were very strict when it came to ratings (however they were very lenient when it came to novels, quite the hypocrisy I know). Not being able to watch the film when every one of my peers had seen it twice was condemning me to social outcast, thus when I saw this novel at my local bookstore I begged my mother to buy it for me, and buy it for me she did. At the time I fell in love with the plotline, the characters and the beautiful love stories that this novel entailed and I got many of my friends hooked on the novel as well. Reading it a second time reignited those feelings and for the next 3 years after I bought it (at age 12) I reread it at least once every 6 months. After moving to our new home I’d lost my copy and didn’t seek out to buy a new copy, in fact this novel completely slipped my mind until I ended up in a used bookstore and happened to find a copy of it in the Young Adult section. Needless to say I had to buy it, and buy it I did.
The novel chronicles the lives of five young adults – Katie, the beautiful Irish women who’s accompanied by Patrick and Brian in steerage, and Maxwell the dashing young artist who captures the attention of first class Elizabeth Farr - whose destinies led them to board the tragically fated Titanic. Katie boards the ship in steerage (third class) heading to America with her two childhood friends, Brian the handsome Irish bloke, and his brother Patrick who thinks that by falling in love with Katie he’s betraying his brother’s love and stealing the girl his brother fancies for himself. For Katie the ship and the move to America is the biggest adventure of her life, and embarking on this adventure with the boys she knows better than her own mother, she starts to develop feelings for Patrick, unbeknownst to Katie Patrick secretly loves her too, but his love for his brother and his pride soon sends Patrick down a path away from Katie and into anger and isolation. Elizabeth on the other hand has been cared for and waited on her entire life and never dreams or even dares to think of living any other way, until she meets Maxwell Whittaker. The man whom she once deemed as a third class citizen turns out to be a first class passenger and the son of an acquaintance of her father’s at that. Through his quirky habits, and his irritating conversations and his total lack of proper demeanour Elizabeth finds herself falling in love with this man who’s exiled himself from the community of debutantes and in doing so she awakens her own inner rebel.
Of course one of the main characters is the Titanic herself, her fate, as many people know as tragic, is pushed in the background of the novel until the last couple of chapters. The reader while reading this novel forgets that the Titanic is the ship that sinks because they’re so enthralled in the actual story of the novel to pay attention to anything else.
Reading the novel as an adult for the first time the story resonates within me a different interpretation of the text than I had reading it has a tween yet I still feel the same excitement and wonder I did as a child. Of course being older has put my perspectives on love and happiness in a more cynical and critical level than when I was a little girl hyped up on Disney romances and this idea that love can conquer all (or that the love one experiences will be exactly that found in the fairytales). So when reading Titanic I recognized it for what it really was, much like the trashy romance novels found in bookstores and drugstores alike, this novel was written to send cheap thrills and good chills down one’s spine and at the same time leave the reader desperately craving for more.
Like many romance novels the language is very simple. There are very little allusions or alliterations, very little metaphors and a solid yet focused plotline; however I’ve always said that writing simply doesn’t always insure the writing is simple. “Her knees felt as if they might buckle at any moment. But she kept her head held high and repeated to herself under her breath as she walked, ‘Not Paddy, anyone but Paddy. He’s a heartbreaker that one’” There are so many thrills and so many scenes that gave me butterflies in my stomach that even as an adult I still wanted to believe that fairytales really do come true. The love stories itself are enough to keep this novel afloat, add to it the sinking ship, and this novel very well sails into its horizon.
What I love best about this novel is the sense of suspense one feels while reading. Although predictable I still couldn’t help myself from wanting to find out when they were going to kiss for the first time, when will they tell each other they love one another, or my favourite when are they going to stop denying to themselves that they love one another. “It was all Max’s fault. He shouldn’t have been looking at her like that, shouldn’t have put his face so close to hers.” *sighs* I feel as if I’m melting into the love story that is Elizabeth and Max as I retype this quotation. I love stubborn women in romance novels, the ones who deny deny deny they have any feelings until everything becomes too overwhelming and they explode with emotions, such is the character Elizabeth and she made this novel so much more endearing and suspenseful.
I have to say that I am glad I reread this novel. Not only did it bring back so many memories of my childhood reading, it also didn’t fail to send shivers down my back even though I knew what was going to happen. I’m almost positive that if you read it for the first time you too might experience the feelings I felt and might bring back a sense of nostalgia, back to those days of innocence when you thought love was exactly like a fairytale and that there is indeed a Maxwell and a Patrick out there for everyone.
Happy Reading!!!
Thursday, December 16, 2010
The Children of PD James
Children of Men
Author:
PD James
Published:
Vision (1994)
Number of Pages:
241
Review: We live in a society that measures success in three ways: a. The material belongings of a person, b. the fame of a person, and c. the number of a person’s offspring. Now what if one day we wake up to find that no human (none) would ever get the chance to procreate, that the human race will become extinct because no one can reproduce, how will our world react? What will become of our species? What would then be considered valuable? These questions are asked in PD James’ novel Children of Men.
Theodore Faron lives in a world where no human can procreate. It happened suddenly and with no explanation. Through the depressing blow to all humans that they can never be parents again and the chaos that occurs Theo feels the need to document his life in a diary on the death of the youngest human alive, 25 year old Joseph Ricardo, the last human who’s birth was the last ever to be recorded. As he starts to document his feelings for the first time in fifty years he is suddenly thrown into this chaotic world of secrecy when he meets a young woman named Julian and vows to protect her and her secret. Throughout the novel’s progression one sees the fight for survival intensify, the destruction humans are able to create, the political chaos that can occur within our species, and the beauty, love, compassion and care our species is able to portray at even the most desperate and evil of times.
This novel is FANTASTIC! It has suspense that would make Alfred Hitchcock shiver and the concept is very unique and daring, after all who would ever dream that a scenario would occur where humans could never reproduce again. That concept is ridiculous and even laughable when you think about it, and yet it is not impossible either. Improbable maybe but not impossible.
The language is beautiful. James does a wonderful job to describe the collective feelings the human species share while living in a scenario where no human being feels safe or protected. “We are outraged and demoralized less by the impending end of our species, less even by our inability to prevent it, than by our failure to discover the cause… Western medicine haven’t prepared us for the magnitude and humiliation of this ultimate failure.” This sentence sequence alone shows the contempt, the fear and the disappointment the species as a whole feels for the situation they find themselves in. Once thought to be the masters of the universe, the inventors of machines, a God among nature, humans have failed to stop or even recognize their own demise.
What James does best in this novel is build suspense. There were moments when as I was reading my thoughts of serenity turned into total fear and chaos just from her words and unexpected fearful events that happen. “And in that second the Omegas were upon them. Horribly, they came at first unheard, in total silence. At each car window the painted faces stared in, lit by flames of torches. Miriam gave a short involuntary scream.” The narrator is just as unaware of the events to come as the character and the readers. In some parts of the novel the plot line was completely unpredictable which helped keep my attention and kept me in suspense throughout the novel.
What James does exceptionally well throughout this novel is describing this essentially doomed and post-apocalyptic world. “The old were too weak for the work, the middle-aged, on whom the burden of maintaining the life of the State largely depended on, were too busy, the young cared little for the preservation of the countryside.” We see a world where everyone gives up all hope of keeping the world politically and morally/ethically in check. They give up living life for they know that their species will not carry on, and really there’s no reason to look after the world (and especially the world of their species) for there’s no one to leave it too when they’re gone. It’s basically a world lost. A world no longer worth fighting for.
This novel, at it’s worst, was probably one of the best science fiction novels I’ve read in a long time. The concept was unique, the prose nothing short of perfect and the plot line: breathless. It’s a great book to keep you occupied during the long fall nights, and to keep your mind occupied as you try to make sense of the world she’s created and as you try to imagine what it would feel like for you to live in such a situation. As for myself, if I were to live in such a situation, I’d probably still try to live my life the best I can. Of course I say that now but who knows what I’d think if I found out no human being could ever reproduce again. I might very well live the life Theo Faron did.
Happy Reading!!!
Author:
PD James
Published:
Vision (1994)
Number of Pages:
241
Review: We live in a society that measures success in three ways: a. The material belongings of a person, b. the fame of a person, and c. the number of a person’s offspring. Now what if one day we wake up to find that no human (none) would ever get the chance to procreate, that the human race will become extinct because no one can reproduce, how will our world react? What will become of our species? What would then be considered valuable? These questions are asked in PD James’ novel Children of Men.
Theodore Faron lives in a world where no human can procreate. It happened suddenly and with no explanation. Through the depressing blow to all humans that they can never be parents again and the chaos that occurs Theo feels the need to document his life in a diary on the death of the youngest human alive, 25 year old Joseph Ricardo, the last human who’s birth was the last ever to be recorded. As he starts to document his feelings for the first time in fifty years he is suddenly thrown into this chaotic world of secrecy when he meets a young woman named Julian and vows to protect her and her secret. Throughout the novel’s progression one sees the fight for survival intensify, the destruction humans are able to create, the political chaos that can occur within our species, and the beauty, love, compassion and care our species is able to portray at even the most desperate and evil of times.
This novel is FANTASTIC! It has suspense that would make Alfred Hitchcock shiver and the concept is very unique and daring, after all who would ever dream that a scenario would occur where humans could never reproduce again. That concept is ridiculous and even laughable when you think about it, and yet it is not impossible either. Improbable maybe but not impossible.
The language is beautiful. James does a wonderful job to describe the collective feelings the human species share while living in a scenario where no human being feels safe or protected. “We are outraged and demoralized less by the impending end of our species, less even by our inability to prevent it, than by our failure to discover the cause… Western medicine haven’t prepared us for the magnitude and humiliation of this ultimate failure.” This sentence sequence alone shows the contempt, the fear and the disappointment the species as a whole feels for the situation they find themselves in. Once thought to be the masters of the universe, the inventors of machines, a God among nature, humans have failed to stop or even recognize their own demise.
What James does best in this novel is build suspense. There were moments when as I was reading my thoughts of serenity turned into total fear and chaos just from her words and unexpected fearful events that happen. “And in that second the Omegas were upon them. Horribly, they came at first unheard, in total silence. At each car window the painted faces stared in, lit by flames of torches. Miriam gave a short involuntary scream.” The narrator is just as unaware of the events to come as the character and the readers. In some parts of the novel the plot line was completely unpredictable which helped keep my attention and kept me in suspense throughout the novel.
What James does exceptionally well throughout this novel is describing this essentially doomed and post-apocalyptic world. “The old were too weak for the work, the middle-aged, on whom the burden of maintaining the life of the State largely depended on, were too busy, the young cared little for the preservation of the countryside.” We see a world where everyone gives up all hope of keeping the world politically and morally/ethically in check. They give up living life for they know that their species will not carry on, and really there’s no reason to look after the world (and especially the world of their species) for there’s no one to leave it too when they’re gone. It’s basically a world lost. A world no longer worth fighting for.
This novel, at it’s worst, was probably one of the best science fiction novels I’ve read in a long time. The concept was unique, the prose nothing short of perfect and the plot line: breathless. It’s a great book to keep you occupied during the long fall nights, and to keep your mind occupied as you try to make sense of the world she’s created and as you try to imagine what it would feel like for you to live in such a situation. As for myself, if I were to live in such a situation, I’d probably still try to live my life the best I can. Of course I say that now but who knows what I’d think if I found out no human being could ever reproduce again. I might very well live the life Theo Faron did.
Happy Reading!!!
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
You Know You’re Obsessed With Twilight…
As the movie Breaking Dawn is set to hit theatres sometime soon and as a big supporter of twilight and its help in the rising number of teen literacy I found this list of how to know when you are a little bit too obsessed with Twilight.
Enjoy!
You Know You’re Obsessed with Twilight When…
Your mom has to remind you that the book is fiction.
You compare every guy you meet to either Edward and/or Jacob and come to the conclusion that he’s never going to be them.
You know what the term “twilighter” means.
You randomly insert quotations from the novel into everyday speech.
ie: Friend 1: Hey is that a new perfume you’re wearing? It smells like peaches.
You: *sigh* It’s an off day when I don’t get somebody telling me how edible I smell.
Friend 2: Fucking Freak!
You are planning on filling your new iPod with the playlists on StephenieMeyer.com, Debussy, and Linkin Park.
You want to break Jacob Black’s jaw.
When your friend’s sister bought the book because it “sounded interesting”, has had it for well over a year, hasn’t read it yet and you’re planning on stealing her copy because it’s too good to gather dust.
You keep trying to convince your friends that they HAVE to read these books although you know they won’t…you keep trying.
You’re driving your friend crazy by asking her where she is in the book when she’s had it for two weeks and she’s not done yet (trust me, she gets mad)
You get depressed when you think that if Twilight were real, you would just be another Jessica to Edward.
You get uber-mad at your mom when she reads Twilight and New Moon and says that they were fine but “just for teenage girls.” Helloo. Everyone should read them! Including guys- they can take a lesson from Edward.
You get so excited when you see somebody else reading it, you have to talk to them even if you don’t know them.
Almost every conversation you have with your friends leads back to the ever lasting Edward vs Jacob debate.
Your friend finally decided to read it, just so she could keep up with the conversations.
Your favorite font on your computer is Edwardian Script.
You ask your boyfriend to dye his hair “bronze.”
Wow there’s like 400 of these found on the web! LOL some of them are downright funny. Click HERE to read more
Happy Reading!!!
Enjoy!
You Know You’re Obsessed with Twilight When…
Your mom has to remind you that the book is fiction.
You compare every guy you meet to either Edward and/or Jacob and come to the conclusion that he’s never going to be them.
You know what the term “twilighter” means.
You randomly insert quotations from the novel into everyday speech.
ie: Friend 1: Hey is that a new perfume you’re wearing? It smells like peaches.
You: *sigh* It’s an off day when I don’t get somebody telling me how edible I smell.
Friend 2: Fucking Freak!
You are planning on filling your new iPod with the playlists on StephenieMeyer.com, Debussy, and Linkin Park.
You want to break Jacob Black’s jaw.
When your friend’s sister bought the book because it “sounded interesting”, has had it for well over a year, hasn’t read it yet and you’re planning on stealing her copy because it’s too good to gather dust.
You keep trying to convince your friends that they HAVE to read these books although you know they won’t…you keep trying.
You’re driving your friend crazy by asking her where she is in the book when she’s had it for two weeks and she’s not done yet (trust me, she gets mad)
You get depressed when you think that if Twilight were real, you would just be another Jessica to Edward.
You get uber-mad at your mom when she reads Twilight and New Moon and says that they were fine but “just for teenage girls.” Helloo. Everyone should read them! Including guys- they can take a lesson from Edward.
You get so excited when you see somebody else reading it, you have to talk to them even if you don’t know them.
Almost every conversation you have with your friends leads back to the ever lasting Edward vs Jacob debate.
Your friend finally decided to read it, just so she could keep up with the conversations.
Your favorite font on your computer is Edwardian Script.
You ask your boyfriend to dye his hair “bronze.”
Wow there’s like 400 of these found on the web! LOL some of them are downright funny. Click HERE to read more
Happy Reading!!!
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
A Garden To Remember
The Lost Garden
Author:
Helen Humphreys
Published:
Phyllis Bruce Books (2004)
Number of Pages: 212
Review: Across Canada today millions of civilians will share a moment of silence to honour those that have fought for our country in the countless of wars in which Canada was involved and is currently involved. And as we remember our veterans on this day we must also honour the lives of those our country has lost as well as the common workers, the nurses, the farmers, everyone who was involved in providing our country with the freedom we all relish in. It is in their honour I chose to read and review The Lost Garden.
Written in first person narrative, the novel focuses on 35 year old Gwen Davis, the lonely horticulturist whom has never been in love, in fact she’s never had any real relationships her entire life except for her relationship with plants, books and one author’s books in particular Virginia Woolf. After hearing of Mrs. Woolf’s disappearance and in a desperate attempt to escape her loneliness and the burning city of London (during the raids of 1941) she joins the war effort, planting food for the allies and babysitting the young women appointed to help. Her life takes a turn for the better when she discovers a lost garden and the secret behind it’s existence. She’s also able to form relationships with two of the people she meets during her journey: the fiery life loving Jane who teaches Gwen that life doesn’t always have to be centered and balanced and the dashing young Canadian solider Raley who, while being posted at her station, opens her heart to new experiences and love.
I think what I love most about this novel is the language it portrays. It is beautifully written with poetic sensibility and lucid prose. “This is what I knew about love. That it is tested everyday and what is not renewed is lost.” The loneliness this character feels is evident in this sentence as well it speaks of her view of life: “what is not renewed is lost” as if this escape to the army is actually a way to renew herself so that she doesn’t become lost in the war that surrounds her.
Her loneliness is evident throughout the novel, her relationship with her co-workers, her relationship with the soldiers and even her relationship with her late mother - “I wasn’t there when my mother died,” - shows how isolated she keeps herself from everyone. Even her childhood memories are thickly covered in loneliness and isolation except for the plants and the darkness with which she surrounded herself.
The garden itself is a beautiful metaphor. When she first stumbles upon it she realizes that “the garden has been purposely planted” and as she prunes, snips and replants the garden she also prunes, snips and replants her life. As the garden grows so does she, the gardens eventual beauty is manifest in her relationships with her friends and her relationship with herself.
The author’s metaphors are some of the best I’ve read in a while: “My discovered garden are really three gardens. They are joined together, each naturally flowing out of the other. But the other two are not yet in bloom so it feels wrong to explore them until they have fully revealed themselves.” The three main characters are all evident in this quotation and Gwen’s hesitation to plough and prod through the actual garden shows how she approaches people on a daily basis as well. She would never enter into their space until they reveal themselves to her. As this quotation shows, the author’s language is so rich and beautiful you can’t help but fall in love with the prose.
I loved reading this novel. It’s meticulous approach to life during war is exquisite. Humphrey’s symbolism is perfect, her tone uncanny and she tackles many different issues, from war and isolation to lost love and homosexuality. It truly honours those that fought and still continue to fight for our freedoms. It shows that those on the front line are still human with flaws and fears and while we honour them to the highest regard we must also remember them as they were: beautifully isolated individuals.
Happy Reading!!!
Author:
Helen Humphreys
Published:
Phyllis Bruce Books (2004)
Number of Pages: 212
Review: Across Canada today millions of civilians will share a moment of silence to honour those that have fought for our country in the countless of wars in which Canada was involved and is currently involved. And as we remember our veterans on this day we must also honour the lives of those our country has lost as well as the common workers, the nurses, the farmers, everyone who was involved in providing our country with the freedom we all relish in. It is in their honour I chose to read and review The Lost Garden.
Written in first person narrative, the novel focuses on 35 year old Gwen Davis, the lonely horticulturist whom has never been in love, in fact she’s never had any real relationships her entire life except for her relationship with plants, books and one author’s books in particular Virginia Woolf. After hearing of Mrs. Woolf’s disappearance and in a desperate attempt to escape her loneliness and the burning city of London (during the raids of 1941) she joins the war effort, planting food for the allies and babysitting the young women appointed to help. Her life takes a turn for the better when she discovers a lost garden and the secret behind it’s existence. She’s also able to form relationships with two of the people she meets during her journey: the fiery life loving Jane who teaches Gwen that life doesn’t always have to be centered and balanced and the dashing young Canadian solider Raley who, while being posted at her station, opens her heart to new experiences and love.
I think what I love most about this novel is the language it portrays. It is beautifully written with poetic sensibility and lucid prose. “This is what I knew about love. That it is tested everyday and what is not renewed is lost.” The loneliness this character feels is evident in this sentence as well it speaks of her view of life: “what is not renewed is lost” as if this escape to the army is actually a way to renew herself so that she doesn’t become lost in the war that surrounds her.
Her loneliness is evident throughout the novel, her relationship with her co-workers, her relationship with the soldiers and even her relationship with her late mother - “I wasn’t there when my mother died,” - shows how isolated she keeps herself from everyone. Even her childhood memories are thickly covered in loneliness and isolation except for the plants and the darkness with which she surrounded herself.
The garden itself is a beautiful metaphor. When she first stumbles upon it she realizes that “the garden has been purposely planted” and as she prunes, snips and replants the garden she also prunes, snips and replants her life. As the garden grows so does she, the gardens eventual beauty is manifest in her relationships with her friends and her relationship with herself.
The author’s metaphors are some of the best I’ve read in a while: “My discovered garden are really three gardens. They are joined together, each naturally flowing out of the other. But the other two are not yet in bloom so it feels wrong to explore them until they have fully revealed themselves.” The three main characters are all evident in this quotation and Gwen’s hesitation to plough and prod through the actual garden shows how she approaches people on a daily basis as well. She would never enter into their space until they reveal themselves to her. As this quotation shows, the author’s language is so rich and beautiful you can’t help but fall in love with the prose.
I loved reading this novel. It’s meticulous approach to life during war is exquisite. Humphrey’s symbolism is perfect, her tone uncanny and she tackles many different issues, from war and isolation to lost love and homosexuality. It truly honours those that fought and still continue to fight for our freedoms. It shows that those on the front line are still human with flaws and fears and while we honour them to the highest regard we must also remember them as they were: beautifully isolated individuals.
Happy Reading!!!
Monday, December 13, 2010
The Depressing Bones
The Lovely Bones
Author: Alice Sebold
Published:
Brown and Company (2002)
Number of Pages:
328
Review:
”These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections - sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent - that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it. The events that my death wrought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future. The price of what I came to see as this miraculous body had been my life.” At first I didn’t want to touch this novel because of the depressing issue of rape and murder (both of which have affected many members of my family, myself included) and I did not want to face up to haunting memories that I had put behind me, but I did put this on my TBR challenge (that I started before I started this blog) because I wanted to read it for a while I just never had the courage to. Not only did the novel put me past my demons, but I also enjoyed reading something of spectacular prose.
Sebold was quoted as saying (and I paraphrase), she wanted to write a novel about violence because it is all around us. She herself was a rape victim and therefore fitting that she included this plot line in her first novel.
The main character, 14 year old Susie Salmon, is dead and lives her afterlife in “heaven” a place where everyone has their own sanctuary, hers is much like the schoolyard she left behind. While she spends the remainder of the novel coming to terms with her death, her family spends the time trying to piece together the mystery of her disappearance. Through their grief, the Salmon family grow and learn to accept her death while learning to come to terms with the emptiness of their lives. While the hole, that was Susie, never quite mends their lives continue to the best of their ability and one sees a broken family survive the best they can.
While the novel touches on themes of grief and loss, it also brings to the forefront a topic that one doesn’t like to dwell upon often: murder and rape. The murder scene is raw and unforgiving, and it’s what makes the reader so much more sympathetic for the main character. Sebold was BOLD when it came to writing out this scene for many people would not want to hear or read about a child brutally raped and murdered, however bringing this issue to the masses and merging it into a plot line is probably, however extreme, the best way to address the real horrors it is to experience rape. There is also a scene where Susie’s sister also experiences sex for the first time. “At fourteen, my sister sailed away from me into a place I’d never been. In the walls of my sex there was horror and blood, in the walls of hers there were windows.” The contrast of the two scenes is brilliant. In one you see horror, violence, the evil humans are able to commit and in the other scene you see beauty, love and the tender gentleness that comes with human affection.
There’s also this underlying feeling- throughout the novel but also evident in this quotation- that Susie doesn’t want to let go of her family, the experiences she’s never going to get to experience, or of life itself. In one scene -“When the dead are done with the living, the living can go on to other things,“ Franny said. “What about the dead?“ I asked. “Where do we go?”- the conversation she has with one of the inhabitants of heaven clearly shows that she is confused about where she belongs and that she clearly longs to be in the world of the living to experience what she’ll never get the chance too. The vast spectrum of human emotions and their capabilities that Sebold plays with is nothing short of brilliant.
Throughout the novel the child is sometimes sympathetic towards her killer. Going into the minds of a psychopath as Sebold attempts to do is risky however, she does it tastefully. The reader is angry at the Murderer but also feels somewhat sympathetic towards him, for he’s a man possessed who desperately wants to break out of the mental frame he finds himself in yet doesn’t want to end the pleasure he gets from murdering his victims. You also see how complicated the character of Mr. Harvey really is. His isolation from the rest of the neighbourhood, his quirky habits, his internal confliction, he really is a complex character to analyze. One quotation I loved was: “He wore his innocence like a comfortable old coat.” An observation that Susie makes which implies that Mr Harvey, who’s gotten away with so many killings in the past actually believes in his innocence and portrays this innocent act to whatever community in which he happens to find himself.
The characters in the novel all deal with the disappearance of Susie in different ways: her father becomes obsessed with finding the Murderer, her mother becomes a shadow, her sister suppresses all emotions, and her neighbours eventually get over it. She becomes “the girl who was murdered,” not even her name is remembered in that statement. The one person she affected the most was Ruth, whom she passed (her ghost) as she was exiting the world. Ruth later becomes possessed by women victims of murder and starts to see them everywhere and befriends Susie’s only boyfriend Ray.
The book, however well written it is, is not without flaws. The ending is drab as the author tries to give Susie a coming-of-age type of epiphany. This scene is not necessary and seemed a bit rushed and to me the ending doesn’t seem that fulfilling… the irony of the bones I guess is what disturbs me. All in all it was a well written story and I was glad I got the chance and the courage to read it.
Published:
Brown and Company (2002)
Number of Pages:
328
Review:
”These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections - sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent - that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it. The events that my death wrought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future. The price of what I came to see as this miraculous body had been my life.” At first I didn’t want to touch this novel because of the depressing issue of rape and murder (both of which have affected many members of my family, myself included) and I did not want to face up to haunting memories that I had put behind me, but I did put this on my TBR challenge (that I started before I started this blog) because I wanted to read it for a while I just never had the courage to. Not only did the novel put me past my demons, but I also enjoyed reading something of spectacular prose.
Sebold was quoted as saying (and I paraphrase), she wanted to write a novel about violence because it is all around us. She herself was a rape victim and therefore fitting that she included this plot line in her first novel.
The main character, 14 year old Susie Salmon, is dead and lives her afterlife in “heaven” a place where everyone has their own sanctuary, hers is much like the schoolyard she left behind. While she spends the remainder of the novel coming to terms with her death, her family spends the time trying to piece together the mystery of her disappearance. Through their grief, the Salmon family grow and learn to accept her death while learning to come to terms with the emptiness of their lives. While the hole, that was Susie, never quite mends their lives continue to the best of their ability and one sees a broken family survive the best they can.
While the novel touches on themes of grief and loss, it also brings to the forefront a topic that one doesn’t like to dwell upon often: murder and rape. The murder scene is raw and unforgiving, and it’s what makes the reader so much more sympathetic for the main character. Sebold was BOLD when it came to writing out this scene for many people would not want to hear or read about a child brutally raped and murdered, however bringing this issue to the masses and merging it into a plot line is probably, however extreme, the best way to address the real horrors it is to experience rape. There is also a scene where Susie’s sister also experiences sex for the first time. “At fourteen, my sister sailed away from me into a place I’d never been. In the walls of my sex there was horror and blood, in the walls of hers there were windows.” The contrast of the two scenes is brilliant. In one you see horror, violence, the evil humans are able to commit and in the other scene you see beauty, love and the tender gentleness that comes with human affection.
There’s also this underlying feeling- throughout the novel but also evident in this quotation- that Susie doesn’t want to let go of her family, the experiences she’s never going to get to experience, or of life itself. In one scene -“When the dead are done with the living, the living can go on to other things,“ Franny said. “What about the dead?“ I asked. “Where do we go?”- the conversation she has with one of the inhabitants of heaven clearly shows that she is confused about where she belongs and that she clearly longs to be in the world of the living to experience what she’ll never get the chance too. The vast spectrum of human emotions and their capabilities that Sebold plays with is nothing short of brilliant.
Throughout the novel the child is sometimes sympathetic towards her killer. Going into the minds of a psychopath as Sebold attempts to do is risky however, she does it tastefully. The reader is angry at the Murderer but also feels somewhat sympathetic towards him, for he’s a man possessed who desperately wants to break out of the mental frame he finds himself in yet doesn’t want to end the pleasure he gets from murdering his victims. You also see how complicated the character of Mr. Harvey really is. His isolation from the rest of the neighbourhood, his quirky habits, his internal confliction, he really is a complex character to analyze. One quotation I loved was: “He wore his innocence like a comfortable old coat.” An observation that Susie makes which implies that Mr Harvey, who’s gotten away with so many killings in the past actually believes in his innocence and portrays this innocent act to whatever community in which he happens to find himself.
The characters in the novel all deal with the disappearance of Susie in different ways: her father becomes obsessed with finding the Murderer, her mother becomes a shadow, her sister suppresses all emotions, and her neighbours eventually get over it. She becomes “the girl who was murdered,” not even her name is remembered in that statement. The one person she affected the most was Ruth, whom she passed (her ghost) as she was exiting the world. Ruth later becomes possessed by women victims of murder and starts to see them everywhere and befriends Susie’s only boyfriend Ray.
The book, however well written it is, is not without flaws. The ending is drab as the author tries to give Susie a coming-of-age type of epiphany. This scene is not necessary and seemed a bit rushed and to me the ending doesn’t seem that fulfilling… the irony of the bones I guess is what disturbs me. All in all it was a well written story and I was glad I got the chance and the courage to read it.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
The Devil Would Not Wear This Book!!!
The Devil Wears Prada
Author: Lauren Weisberger
Published:
Anchor Books (2003)
Number of Pages:
432
Review:
After falling absolutely head over heals in lust with the movie The Devil Wears Prada, I decided to give the novel a try. My friend was always on my case to read it, saying it was “the best novel ever” and I honestly never had the chance to read it besides I thought it would be superficial, shallow and stupid… and I was right.
Although the movie focuses on the actual characters, the novel focuses on clothes. The amount of times I had to read what each character wore for each day was disgusting. I would say 1/3rd of the novel was used to describe clothes. If I wanted to know what clothes looked like I would stand in front of a Holt Renfrew window.
The story is about a young fresh out of university woman, Andrea Sachs, who wants job in publishing, where she can do what she does best, write. It’s in first person narrative and I honestly believe that some words written in the novel were put in after using a thesaurus. Andrea lands a job at a fashion magazine, Runway, where she is constantly told “a million people would die for your job”
She ends up working as an assistant to one of the cruellest workaholics in the industry, Miranda Priestly, the editor-in-chief of Runway. As the story progresses we see Andrea caught in a situation where her personal life merges with her work life until work becomes her life. Aside from the two main characters we get the supporting characters, Alex, the understanding boyfriend, Lily, Andrea’s best friend, Christian, Andrea’s “work crush” and Emily, Andrea’s co-worker along with other meaningless and pitiful characters not worth mentioning. There was no major makeover, nor was there really any character development. The characters all pretty much remained the same in the end just a little more angry and self centered.
The plot line is atrocious, the main character is annoying, and the only thing that saves this novel is Miranda Priestly who is wonderfully callous and believable as the “bitch-boss” from England. Perhaps if I read the novel before I watched the movie I would not be so biased and I would appreciate the novel more, however I cannot appreciate something that is so overwhelmingly shallow as this novel was. But that’s my opinion anyway.
Happy Reading!!!
Author: Lauren Weisberger
Published:
Anchor Books (2003)
Number of Pages:
432
Review:
After falling absolutely head over heals in lust with the movie The Devil Wears Prada, I decided to give the novel a try. My friend was always on my case to read it, saying it was “the best novel ever” and I honestly never had the chance to read it besides I thought it would be superficial, shallow and stupid… and I was right.
Although the movie focuses on the actual characters, the novel focuses on clothes. The amount of times I had to read what each character wore for each day was disgusting. I would say 1/3rd of the novel was used to describe clothes. If I wanted to know what clothes looked like I would stand in front of a Holt Renfrew window.
The story is about a young fresh out of university woman, Andrea Sachs, who wants job in publishing, where she can do what she does best, write. It’s in first person narrative and I honestly believe that some words written in the novel were put in after using a thesaurus. Andrea lands a job at a fashion magazine, Runway, where she is constantly told “a million people would die for your job”
She ends up working as an assistant to one of the cruellest workaholics in the industry, Miranda Priestly, the editor-in-chief of Runway. As the story progresses we see Andrea caught in a situation where her personal life merges with her work life until work becomes her life. Aside from the two main characters we get the supporting characters, Alex, the understanding boyfriend, Lily, Andrea’s best friend, Christian, Andrea’s “work crush” and Emily, Andrea’s co-worker along with other meaningless and pitiful characters not worth mentioning. There was no major makeover, nor was there really any character development. The characters all pretty much remained the same in the end just a little more angry and self centered.
The plot line is atrocious, the main character is annoying, and the only thing that saves this novel is Miranda Priestly who is wonderfully callous and believable as the “bitch-boss” from England. Perhaps if I read the novel before I watched the movie I would not be so biased and I would appreciate the novel more, however I cannot appreciate something that is so overwhelmingly shallow as this novel was. But that’s my opinion anyway.
Happy Reading!!!
Saturday, December 11, 2010
How Opal Mehta Made Me Sick
How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life
Author: Kaavya Viswanathan
Published: Alloy Entertainment 2006
Number of Pages: 314
Review: Opal Mehta is the nerd you knew in high school, the nerd who always dreamed of getting into the top university of her country, (in Opal’s case Harvard) and the nerd who would do anything to secure an admission to that particular university. Basically Opal Mehta is me. However, unlike Opal I didn’t sacrifice who I am to ensure myself a spot at UofT.
Opal is conniving and manipulative and assertive and ambitious, all qualities I utterly loved about this character. It was her immaturity and her amateurish behaviour that drove me into insanity. The narration, in first person, was unbearable at times. It was like reading the high school version of The Devil Wears Prada. I could not believe I’d picked another book to read that focused primarily on clothes and television shows and pop culture. This is the crap that our youths are exposed to today that makes authors “think” they can “appeal” to the masses by adding juvenile and atrocious allusions to their writing. Does it help that the author herself is a youth? Well I could cut her some slack but if you consider yourself a successful and professional writer, one that is good enough to be published, then you better write a novel that is worth the ink on paper and this novel was not one of them.
It primarily deals with a Desi family living in New Jersey: Opal, and her two annoying and dauntingly immature and pervasive parents, Amal and Meena Mehta. Opal has the highest GPA in her school and yet when she goes to her interview she is told that they’re not just looking for a GPA but an all-around well rounded person. How crushed she was to find out that her GPA didn’t matter if she was an android and thus began her mission of HOWGAL: How Opal Will Get A Life, in which she were to become popular by befriending the Haute Bitchez, get a boy to kiss her and turn into a wild child so that Harvard will accept her. Now I don’t know about the majority of teen students out there today, but in my school there were no popular students, everybody got along with everybody and nobody in University cares if you were the hottest person on the cheer-leading squad. University and the real world is not a popularity contest.
Now being from a dominant Indian culture I was expecting to find this book loaded with familiar cultural references, thus when I saw that during the Hindu festival of Diwali her family ordered mutton curry to serve, disgusted me. What happened to fasting and respecting the religion enough to not eat meat? And her father was really annoying with his “ghetto” talk and constant pressure he was putting on the poor teenager -no wonder she went insane- kind of like the pressure I get from my parents about Med School.
Anyways, back to the book… Opal clearly doesn’t love the fact that she is from an Indian family. The way she dismisses her aunties and uncles, the way she describes the parties and festivals, the way she bluntly told her dad she will not play Indian music at her party, the fact that she doesn’t even like the FOOD… it shows her disdain towards her culture. What I did like about her though was her physics ability. At least she was science smart… and the whole thing with the Fermeculi formula was very smart on the author’s part.
Although the book was written for teenagers, I had expected more from it. I thought it resembled Mean Girls almost to the point of them being indistinguishable from one another, but just almost. The message was common, the plot line predictable and in the words of a teenager “it’s all been done!” The buzz behind it when it first came out was undeserving and the fact that the novel was practically plagiarized just goes to show that the novel isn’t worth the ink on paper. I guess the only other thing I can say is: read it on your own discretion.
Happy Reading!!!
Author: Kaavya ViswanathanPublished: Alloy Entertainment 2006
Number of Pages: 314
Review: Opal Mehta is the nerd you knew in high school, the nerd who always dreamed of getting into the top university of her country, (in Opal’s case Harvard) and the nerd who would do anything to secure an admission to that particular university. Basically Opal Mehta is me. However, unlike Opal I didn’t sacrifice who I am to ensure myself a spot at UofT.
Opal is conniving and manipulative and assertive and ambitious, all qualities I utterly loved about this character. It was her immaturity and her amateurish behaviour that drove me into insanity. The narration, in first person, was unbearable at times. It was like reading the high school version of The Devil Wears Prada. I could not believe I’d picked another book to read that focused primarily on clothes and television shows and pop culture. This is the crap that our youths are exposed to today that makes authors “think” they can “appeal” to the masses by adding juvenile and atrocious allusions to their writing. Does it help that the author herself is a youth? Well I could cut her some slack but if you consider yourself a successful and professional writer, one that is good enough to be published, then you better write a novel that is worth the ink on paper and this novel was not one of them.
It primarily deals with a Desi family living in New Jersey: Opal, and her two annoying and dauntingly immature and pervasive parents, Amal and Meena Mehta. Opal has the highest GPA in her school and yet when she goes to her interview she is told that they’re not just looking for a GPA but an all-around well rounded person. How crushed she was to find out that her GPA didn’t matter if she was an android and thus began her mission of HOWGAL: How Opal Will Get A Life, in which she were to become popular by befriending the Haute Bitchez, get a boy to kiss her and turn into a wild child so that Harvard will accept her. Now I don’t know about the majority of teen students out there today, but in my school there were no popular students, everybody got along with everybody and nobody in University cares if you were the hottest person on the cheer-leading squad. University and the real world is not a popularity contest.
Now being from a dominant Indian culture I was expecting to find this book loaded with familiar cultural references, thus when I saw that during the Hindu festival of Diwali her family ordered mutton curry to serve, disgusted me. What happened to fasting and respecting the religion enough to not eat meat? And her father was really annoying with his “ghetto” talk and constant pressure he was putting on the poor teenager -no wonder she went insane- kind of like the pressure I get from my parents about Med School.
Anyways, back to the book… Opal clearly doesn’t love the fact that she is from an Indian family. The way she dismisses her aunties and uncles, the way she describes the parties and festivals, the way she bluntly told her dad she will not play Indian music at her party, the fact that she doesn’t even like the FOOD… it shows her disdain towards her culture. What I did like about her though was her physics ability. At least she was science smart… and the whole thing with the Fermeculi formula was very smart on the author’s part.
Although the book was written for teenagers, I had expected more from it. I thought it resembled Mean Girls almost to the point of them being indistinguishable from one another, but just almost. The message was common, the plot line predictable and in the words of a teenager “it’s all been done!” The buzz behind it when it first came out was undeserving and the fact that the novel was practically plagiarized just goes to show that the novel isn’t worth the ink on paper. I guess the only other thing I can say is: read it on your own discretion.
Happy Reading!!!
Friday, December 10, 2010
The Novel Stripped Yet Still Fully Clothed
The Bride Stripped Bare
Author:
Anonymous aka Nikki Gemmell
Published:
Harper Collins 2003
Number of Pages: 374
Review: Aside from the bright colours of the novel’s front cover and the basic synopsis found on the inside jacket, what made me even more eager to read it as I browsed the Brampton Library shelves was the fact that it was written by an author who decided to publish her manuscript anonymously. A daring choice it was for the author to publish a manuscript in the 21st century and not put her name on it especially when we live in a time where instant fame = success.
The novel starts off relatively slow. A modern woman, Elizabeth, the age of 36 has discovered a daunting secret about her husband while on a belated honeymoon. This secret shatters her whole life and ultimately becomes the driving force and the reason on which all her decisions are based. The story is focused on her infidelity with a young virgin actor whom she teaches the art of sex to while in addition she teaches herself about her own sexuality. With the help of an anonymous Elizabethan “woeman’s” manuscript outlining how women are superior to men Elizabeth is able to achieve an orgasm and reach her sexual peak all without her unsuspecting husband knowing.
This novel is cheeky. It sucks you in with it’s unusually short chapters (all labelled lessons) and its raunchy sexual plot line. The sexuality found in this book borderlines erotica and will have you blushing in public (beware reading this book on the commute home). It is written in a second person narration; it was almost as if I were reading a dictation, a story for all women, about all women everywhere, addressing the reader and making the reader feel as if this is their memoir of their life or makes the reader feel as if they’re sneaking a look into a secret life; the life of sexual fantasies that one only dreams of but doesn’t have the guts to live. It is a different take on narration and deliciously so; one that I found unique and sets the novel apart from others.
Elizabeth draws you into her life. She allows you to believe that her infidelity can be justified and you forgive her for it:
“you tell yourself your husband deserves your unfaithfulness because it keeps you with him”
The author’s (Nikki Gemmell as I found out after reading the novel) narration effectively puts the reader in the driver’s seat. Gemmell’s raw, uncanny, truthful and erotic story probably would not have been written as frank and daring as it had been had she decided to put her name to it. In fact she has said that remaining anonymous allowed her to have “exhilarating freedom.” The novel is worth a look at, even if the language is slightly average it still borderlines poetic prose and the rawness of the language is definitely something that will enlighten a reader.
Happy Reading!!!
Author:
Anonymous aka Nikki Gemmell
Published:
Harper Collins 2003
Number of Pages: 374
Review: Aside from the bright colours of the novel’s front cover and the basic synopsis found on the inside jacket, what made me even more eager to read it as I browsed the Brampton Library shelves was the fact that it was written by an author who decided to publish her manuscript anonymously. A daring choice it was for the author to publish a manuscript in the 21st century and not put her name on it especially when we live in a time where instant fame = success.
The novel starts off relatively slow. A modern woman, Elizabeth, the age of 36 has discovered a daunting secret about her husband while on a belated honeymoon. This secret shatters her whole life and ultimately becomes the driving force and the reason on which all her decisions are based. The story is focused on her infidelity with a young virgin actor whom she teaches the art of sex to while in addition she teaches herself about her own sexuality. With the help of an anonymous Elizabethan “woeman’s” manuscript outlining how women are superior to men Elizabeth is able to achieve an orgasm and reach her sexual peak all without her unsuspecting husband knowing.
This novel is cheeky. It sucks you in with it’s unusually short chapters (all labelled lessons) and its raunchy sexual plot line. The sexuality found in this book borderlines erotica and will have you blushing in public (beware reading this book on the commute home). It is written in a second person narration; it was almost as if I were reading a dictation, a story for all women, about all women everywhere, addressing the reader and making the reader feel as if this is their memoir of their life or makes the reader feel as if they’re sneaking a look into a secret life; the life of sexual fantasies that one only dreams of but doesn’t have the guts to live. It is a different take on narration and deliciously so; one that I found unique and sets the novel apart from others.
Elizabeth draws you into her life. She allows you to believe that her infidelity can be justified and you forgive her for it:
“you tell yourself your husband deserves your unfaithfulness because it keeps you with him”
The author’s (Nikki Gemmell as I found out after reading the novel) narration effectively puts the reader in the driver’s seat. Gemmell’s raw, uncanny, truthful and erotic story probably would not have been written as frank and daring as it had been had she decided to put her name to it. In fact she has said that remaining anonymous allowed her to have “exhilarating freedom.” The novel is worth a look at, even if the language is slightly average it still borderlines poetic prose and the rawness of the language is definitely something that will enlighten a reader.
Happy Reading!!!
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Confessions of a Sophiaholic
Confessions of a Shopaholic
Author: Sophie Kinsella
Published: Dail Press, 2001
Number of Pages: 336
Review: “OK. DON’T PANIC. Don’t panic. It’s only a VISA bill. It’s a piece of paper; a few numbers. I mean, just how scary can a few numbers be?“ I’ve been here before (in fact I’ve just found myself here again), I’m sure you’ve been here before, perhaps all of the western world has been in the shoes of Rebecca “Becky” Bloomwood, except maybe your shoes were not Jimmy Choo’s. This novel was recommended to me by my friend aka “all I ever read is chick lit material” and after I gave in with The Devil Wears Prada (which was also her suggestion) I was hesitant to start this book which also looked quite shallow, but instead what I found was a great read and confidence in my friend’s suggestions once again.
The novel starts off with a series of collection notices, which introduces the main character; it’s a smart way to introduce a novel and it also introduces the main character. We know that she’s flawed and in major debt and has a serious shopping problem, without even meeting the main character. Becky at the age of 25 has found herself in major debt with overdrafts, credit cards and store credits all building up to catastrophe. Ironically, Becky works full time as a financial journalist. She lives in a swanky flat in London with her socialite best-friend, Suze, and she’s often late with the rent. Her spending habits are outrageous; this is a girl who spends £1000 in shoes alone. The main characters are all flawed in some way except for the perfect, dashing, (predictable) Luke Brandon, owner of Brandon Communications, whom Becky meets while trying to buy a scarf for £125 and embarrassing herself when she finds out that all of her credit cards are maxed and she has only £100 in cash thus borrowing money from Luke. Throughout the novel we see her spiral into deeper debt and battle with her addiction to shopping.
This novel strikes a cord in my heart for I feel at times I am Becky Bloomwood myself. Spending dollars I don’t have on pens and pretty notepaper, books and hats and especially CLOTHES. The main character is easy to relate to and you almost feel guilty for enjoying her debt and the fact that she’s not as perfect as she seems. Her logic is lacking but her closet definitely isn’t; I often found myself envious of this fictional character and her ability to hold her head up high while she asks for more money on her overdraft while battling with Luke Brandon on TV, not to mention her massive closet.
The novel is what it is and doesn’t shy away from that or try to discourage you from the fact that this is a novel about shopping. You know what the plot line is about from the title alone. It’s realistic, witty and charming and just good fun. The narration is okay, the tone light-hearted, the language: adequate, but Kinsella never wished to win a Booker Prize for this novel, it’s supposed to be a fun read and fun it was indeed. So go ahead and pick up a copy of this book and don’t be afraid to “Charge it” after all that’s what Becky would do!
Happy Reading!!!
Published: Dail Press, 2001
Number of Pages: 336
Review: “OK. DON’T PANIC. Don’t panic. It’s only a VISA bill. It’s a piece of paper; a few numbers. I mean, just how scary can a few numbers be?“ I’ve been here before (in fact I’ve just found myself here again), I’m sure you’ve been here before, perhaps all of the western world has been in the shoes of Rebecca “Becky” Bloomwood, except maybe your shoes were not Jimmy Choo’s. This novel was recommended to me by my friend aka “all I ever read is chick lit material” and after I gave in with The Devil Wears Prada (which was also her suggestion) I was hesitant to start this book which also looked quite shallow, but instead what I found was a great read and confidence in my friend’s suggestions once again.
The novel starts off with a series of collection notices, which introduces the main character; it’s a smart way to introduce a novel and it also introduces the main character. We know that she’s flawed and in major debt and has a serious shopping problem, without even meeting the main character. Becky at the age of 25 has found herself in major debt with overdrafts, credit cards and store credits all building up to catastrophe. Ironically, Becky works full time as a financial journalist. She lives in a swanky flat in London with her socialite best-friend, Suze, and she’s often late with the rent. Her spending habits are outrageous; this is a girl who spends £1000 in shoes alone. The main characters are all flawed in some way except for the perfect, dashing, (predictable) Luke Brandon, owner of Brandon Communications, whom Becky meets while trying to buy a scarf for £125 and embarrassing herself when she finds out that all of her credit cards are maxed and she has only £100 in cash thus borrowing money from Luke. Throughout the novel we see her spiral into deeper debt and battle with her addiction to shopping.
This novel strikes a cord in my heart for I feel at times I am Becky Bloomwood myself. Spending dollars I don’t have on pens and pretty notepaper, books and hats and especially CLOTHES. The main character is easy to relate to and you almost feel guilty for enjoying her debt and the fact that she’s not as perfect as she seems. Her logic is lacking but her closet definitely isn’t; I often found myself envious of this fictional character and her ability to hold her head up high while she asks for more money on her overdraft while battling with Luke Brandon on TV, not to mention her massive closet.
The novel is what it is and doesn’t shy away from that or try to discourage you from the fact that this is a novel about shopping. You know what the plot line is about from the title alone. It’s realistic, witty and charming and just good fun. The narration is okay, the tone light-hearted, the language: adequate, but Kinsella never wished to win a Booker Prize for this novel, it’s supposed to be a fun read and fun it was indeed. So go ahead and pick up a copy of this book and don’t be afraid to “Charge it” after all that’s what Becky would do!
Happy Reading!!!
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
And Gayby Makes Controversy
And Tango Makes Three
Author:
Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
Published:
Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing 2005
Number of Pages: 34
Review: “There they snuggled together and like all other penguins in the penguin house, and all the other animals in the zoo and all the families in the big city around them, they went to sleep.”
After listening to a CBC Radio One’s interview with the authors of this beautiful story and hearing that it was the most controversial book of this century I would say (in fact it’s the most banned book of 2009) I went and bought myself a copy to read to my little cousin who was coming over that weekend. Needless to say, with the simplistic words, engaging story line and vivid pictures she was enthralled and rightly so. It is enchanting and charming and most importantly true. Yes my friends, this story is indeed based on real life events about two loving homosexual male penguins and their quest for a family.
The penguins, Roy and Silo, fell in love at a very young age, and while there were many female companions available at the zoo they only had eyes for each other. They were partners for 2 years before they tried to build a nest, and following their natural instincts they tried to hatch an egg, but of course the egg was just a rock (for two male penguins cannot produce an egg). Seeing their heartbreaking efforts to start a family the zookeepers brought them an egg that was no longer being cared for and both males nurtured and cared for the egg until it hatched. The female, Tango, certainly made this family of three complete.
I am a huge advocate for this picture book. It teaches compassion, it teaches love, diversity and most importantly it teaches that not everyone lives in the “nuclear” family (perhaps we can call gay families secular families?). Of course after reading this book to my cousin she had many questions. How can she have two daddies? Where is her mommy? Does she have two mommies too? I proceeded to answer, to the best of my abilities. It is so important for people to teach their children that not everyone is exactly like them, that they will come into contact with someone who is homosexual eventually in their life and that they should not judge them but instead embrace them.
The book itself is aesthetically pleasing. The pictures illustrated by the wonderful Henry Cole are vivid and appealing for the younger reader. They capture your attention but they don’t distract from the story and the story itself is very readable for a young reader, easy to follow and understand and enjoyable for both the young and old. It’s an over all cute book that should be read to every child to enlighten them on this very taboo topic.
Happy Reading!!!
Author: Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
Published:
Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing 2005
Number of Pages: 34
Review: “There they snuggled together and like all other penguins in the penguin house, and all the other animals in the zoo and all the families in the big city around them, they went to sleep.”
After listening to a CBC Radio One’s interview with the authors of this beautiful story and hearing that it was the most controversial book of this century I would say (in fact it’s the most banned book of 2009) I went and bought myself a copy to read to my little cousin who was coming over that weekend. Needless to say, with the simplistic words, engaging story line and vivid pictures she was enthralled and rightly so. It is enchanting and charming and most importantly true. Yes my friends, this story is indeed based on real life events about two loving homosexual male penguins and their quest for a family.
The penguins, Roy and Silo, fell in love at a very young age, and while there were many female companions available at the zoo they only had eyes for each other. They were partners for 2 years before they tried to build a nest, and following their natural instincts they tried to hatch an egg, but of course the egg was just a rock (for two male penguins cannot produce an egg). Seeing their heartbreaking efforts to start a family the zookeepers brought them an egg that was no longer being cared for and both males nurtured and cared for the egg until it hatched. The female, Tango, certainly made this family of three complete.
I am a huge advocate for this picture book. It teaches compassion, it teaches love, diversity and most importantly it teaches that not everyone lives in the “nuclear” family (perhaps we can call gay families secular families?). Of course after reading this book to my cousin she had many questions. How can she have two daddies? Where is her mommy? Does she have two mommies too? I proceeded to answer, to the best of my abilities. It is so important for people to teach their children that not everyone is exactly like them, that they will come into contact with someone who is homosexual eventually in their life and that they should not judge them but instead embrace them.
The book itself is aesthetically pleasing. The pictures illustrated by the wonderful Henry Cole are vivid and appealing for the younger reader. They capture your attention but they don’t distract from the story and the story itself is very readable for a young reader, easy to follow and understand and enjoyable for both the young and old. It’s an over all cute book that should be read to every child to enlighten them on this very taboo topic.
Happy Reading!!!
Monday, December 6, 2010
A Fantastic Job
A Dirty Job
Author: Christopher Moore
Published:
William Morrow (2006)
Number of Pages: 400
Review:
“So now you’re death…” and you have the daunting task of visiting every dying person in San Francisco and collecting their soul vessels all the while being attacked and followed by death demons in the form of giant birdlike creatures - Sewer Harpies (complete with skulls and chicken legs) - and as if that wasn’t bad enough your only daughter is death’s spawn! For all you desk hoggers out there who think your job is bad, just think of poor Charlie Asher – the quiet, spineless beta male - who following the death of his wife found himself to be a death merchant.
Charlie Asher was as normal as a man can be, living in San Francisco and married to the beautiful Rachel Asher who was pregnant with her first child. He owned a small used clothing shop which employed a young Gothic girl named Lily and a pornographic obsessed ex-cop named Ray. Aside from his wife there were no shining beacons in his life, until the death of his wife brought him face to face with Death – well actually his minion who in turn somehow initiated him into the death business and opened his eyes to the millions of shining beacons across the city. And all of these beacons shined red. As a newly appointed minion of death along with your death manual, you soon find out that you must scour the city of the left over souls of dead people and ensure that they are given to their new rightful owner.
Christopher Moore has written a hilarious and unapologetic tale of good vs evil. You cannot help but fall in love with the world he has created in this novel. Charlie is hilarious and his sidekicks Minty Fresh, Ray and Lily carry the story beyond just a hunt for souls but a quest for survival. Sophie is tres adorable, her killer word was a wacky twist added to the plot and you can’t help but love her even though she is death in the flesh! Her babysitters are stereotyped galore and I didn’t care because it was so damn hilarious. His quirky sister, Jane (the true alpha male in the family) looks better in his pant suits than he does and is portrayed as the butch lesbian she is, which makes the reader, even a conservative one, fall for her. Moore is who he is and plays women as sex objects and plays on stereotypes and yet doesn’t take it to an unhealthy and insulting extreme.
Moore uses the subject of death as a focus on the light instead of the darkness of it. He throws in humor, puns and ironic situations that will have you laughing at death and leave you looking forward towards living your life. The throwaway humour and wordplays on life are wonderful and reading this book does in fact challenge you to look at life and death different, not in a sense of doom but to laugh at death and live your life the way you want too. He takes a simple concept and turns it into an adventure, for that is truly what death is… an adventure.
Happy Reading!!!
Author: Christopher Moore
Published:
William Morrow (2006)
Number of Pages: 400
Review:
“So now you’re death…” and you have the daunting task of visiting every dying person in San Francisco and collecting their soul vessels all the while being attacked and followed by death demons in the form of giant birdlike creatures - Sewer Harpies (complete with skulls and chicken legs) - and as if that wasn’t bad enough your only daughter is death’s spawn! For all you desk hoggers out there who think your job is bad, just think of poor Charlie Asher – the quiet, spineless beta male - who following the death of his wife found himself to be a death merchant.
Charlie Asher was as normal as a man can be, living in San Francisco and married to the beautiful Rachel Asher who was pregnant with her first child. He owned a small used clothing shop which employed a young Gothic girl named Lily and a pornographic obsessed ex-cop named Ray. Aside from his wife there were no shining beacons in his life, until the death of his wife brought him face to face with Death – well actually his minion who in turn somehow initiated him into the death business and opened his eyes to the millions of shining beacons across the city. And all of these beacons shined red. As a newly appointed minion of death along with your death manual, you soon find out that you must scour the city of the left over souls of dead people and ensure that they are given to their new rightful owner.
Christopher Moore has written a hilarious and unapologetic tale of good vs evil. You cannot help but fall in love with the world he has created in this novel. Charlie is hilarious and his sidekicks Minty Fresh, Ray and Lily carry the story beyond just a hunt for souls but a quest for survival. Sophie is tres adorable, her killer word was a wacky twist added to the plot and you can’t help but love her even though she is death in the flesh! Her babysitters are stereotyped galore and I didn’t care because it was so damn hilarious. His quirky sister, Jane (the true alpha male in the family) looks better in his pant suits than he does and is portrayed as the butch lesbian she is, which makes the reader, even a conservative one, fall for her. Moore is who he is and plays women as sex objects and plays on stereotypes and yet doesn’t take it to an unhealthy and insulting extreme.
Moore uses the subject of death as a focus on the light instead of the darkness of it. He throws in humor, puns and ironic situations that will have you laughing at death and leave you looking forward towards living your life. The throwaway humour and wordplays on life are wonderful and reading this book does in fact challenge you to look at life and death different, not in a sense of doom but to laugh at death and live your life the way you want too. He takes a simple concept and turns it into an adventure, for that is truly what death is… an adventure.
Happy Reading!!!
Sunday, December 5, 2010
The Book of Hope
The Book of Negroes
Author:
Lawrence Hill
Published: HarperCollins Publishers 2007
Number of pages: 384
Review: “Sir Hastings presents me with a new quill and a glass inkpot decorated with swirling lines of indigo blue. I love the smoothness and the heft in my hand. I rub the surface but the indigo is buried deep in the glass. Englishmen do love to bury one thing so completely in another that the two can only be separated by force: peanuts in candy, indigo in glass, Africans in irons.” The sheer brilliance of Lawrence Hill’s writing cannot even begin to be summed up by this one quotation alone. The entire novel is renowned and transcendent, and truly one of the best female voices I’ve read in a long time.
The story follows Aminata Diallo, a young Muslim woman born in Africa, who finds her world completely thrown into chaos when a group of men come into her village and sets her on the path to America. Where the country is the land of opportunities for white settlers, it is the country of damnation and hell for the Africans. As she grows older she learns from the people around her and fights to survive in the country that condemns her as the lowest of the human species. Through her struggles you feel hope, sense loss and see victories, and never once do you question the fact that the narration is larger than life. Her heroism sets forth an unforgettable epic into a history of which many people are ignorant or choose to ignore. Like the notable characters of Anna Karenina, Scarlett O’Hara, and Offred the handmaid, Aminata Diallo is timeless, relatable and authentic.
Hill’s narration is preeminent within literature. Like Wally Lamb’s She Comes Undone, and Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha, Hill was able to capture the essence of a woman and form a character that was nothing short of real. The narration was so believable, I forgot the novel was written by a man. The character was completely and utterly genuine. Hill also didn’t glorify Canada as do many novels about slavery; in fact it showed Canada as being as bad as the Americans. Canadians were racist towards those who managed to escape from slavery and just because the slaves were free, doesn’t mean they were respected.
I enjoyed every syllable of this novel. It is truly a masterpiece of historical fiction and places Hill among the great storytellers like Edward P. Jones, Margaret Attwood and Diana Gabaldon. I recommend this book to everyone who asks me “what book should I read?” which is a question I get often. Don’t miss out, trust me, you’ll love The Book of Negroes.
Happy Reading!!!
Author:
Lawrence Hill
Published: HarperCollins Publishers 2007
Number of pages: 384
Review: “Sir Hastings presents me with a new quill and a glass inkpot decorated with swirling lines of indigo blue. I love the smoothness and the heft in my hand. I rub the surface but the indigo is buried deep in the glass. Englishmen do love to bury one thing so completely in another that the two can only be separated by force: peanuts in candy, indigo in glass, Africans in irons.” The sheer brilliance of Lawrence Hill’s writing cannot even begin to be summed up by this one quotation alone. The entire novel is renowned and transcendent, and truly one of the best female voices I’ve read in a long time.
The story follows Aminata Diallo, a young Muslim woman born in Africa, who finds her world completely thrown into chaos when a group of men come into her village and sets her on the path to America. Where the country is the land of opportunities for white settlers, it is the country of damnation and hell for the Africans. As she grows older she learns from the people around her and fights to survive in the country that condemns her as the lowest of the human species. Through her struggles you feel hope, sense loss and see victories, and never once do you question the fact that the narration is larger than life. Her heroism sets forth an unforgettable epic into a history of which many people are ignorant or choose to ignore. Like the notable characters of Anna Karenina, Scarlett O’Hara, and Offred the handmaid, Aminata Diallo is timeless, relatable and authentic.
Hill’s narration is preeminent within literature. Like Wally Lamb’s She Comes Undone, and Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha, Hill was able to capture the essence of a woman and form a character that was nothing short of real. The narration was so believable, I forgot the novel was written by a man. The character was completely and utterly genuine. Hill also didn’t glorify Canada as do many novels about slavery; in fact it showed Canada as being as bad as the Americans. Canadians were racist towards those who managed to escape from slavery and just because the slaves were free, doesn’t mean they were respected.
I enjoyed every syllable of this novel. It is truly a masterpiece of historical fiction and places Hill among the great storytellers like Edward P. Jones, Margaret Attwood and Diana Gabaldon. I recommend this book to everyone who asks me “what book should I read?” which is a question I get often. Don’t miss out, trust me, you’ll love The Book of Negroes.
Happy Reading!!!
Friday, December 3, 2010
From Harlem to the Himalayas
The Inheritance of Loss
Published:
Penguin 2006
Number of Pages:
324
Review:
For a book with “loss” in the title I was expecting to end this book with a sense of nostalgia, sadness and fall into an ultimate depression for the two and a half days it would have taken me to recover. Surprisingly this is not the case with Kiran Desai’s novel “The Inheritance of Loss.”
A winner of the Man Booker Prize for 2006, although I have not read the other novels short listed, I do believe Desai has written a book worthy of that title (despite the controversy surrounding a fixed vote by her mother). Loss is present in every city, in every character, in every chapter; however, it is often offset with dry humour and wit. Appropriately titled, the sense of loss is being passed down from one generation to the other.
The story starts off in a Darjeeling, India during the Gorkhaland Movement in which the conflicts of the Nepali-Indians have escalated into a civil riot and takeover of the city in which our two main characters live: the sixteen year old orphan Sai and her android-esque grandfather Jemubhai the Judge. When Sai’s parents unexpectedly died in a car crash in Russia her only family left alive was her grandfather who grudgingly took her into his home. The judge is often left in a state of hatred for all things Indian which in flashbacks reveal that he was in fact often ridiculed and ignored in Britain as he studied law at Cambridge. At the time of his arrival in England, the British were not in favour of those with coloured skin and he was often the scorned victim of brute jokes about his smell or colour. This hatred of himself has been implemented to the point that hatred defines his character, passing his hatred on to those whom are closest to him, especially his wife.
“By the year’s end the dread they had for each other was so severe it was as if they had tapped into a limitless bitterness carrying them beyond the parameters of what any individual is normally capable of feeling. They belonged to this emotion more than to themselves, experienced rage with enough muscle in it for an entire nations coupled in hate.” Sai, on the other hand, is young and naive and her liveliness is a bright point in the novel. Her intrigue in the world, in people and in love makes this story what it is. Her curiosity shifts the focus from hatred to budding life and intelligence. Her love of National Geographic and literature has made her ideals and morals childlike, romantic and not yet matured. Yet despite the childlike innocence surrounding Sai, it is clear that she is inevitably doomed to live a life of loss, like her grandfather.“Sai thought of how it had been unclear to her what exactly she longed for in the early days at Cho Oyu, that only the longing itself found its echo in her aching soul. The longing was now gone, she thought, and the ache seemed to have found its substance.”
The supporting characters each have their role to play and provide a further sense of loss to the audience reading. The cook, lost in his memories, lives and cares for Sai and her grandfather and provides Sai with the support and comfort of a caretaker. He often reminisces about the past and his mind wanders to that of his son Biju, who is lost in the city of opportunities. Biju is a continent away, trying to survive as an illegal immigrant in New York. He is bullied, exploited and alone in the fast paced city, away from everything he knows, he is almost a mirror image of the younger Jemubhai, alone and ridiculed in a foreign country. There is Gyan, Sai’s first love interest. Gyan is smart, witty and misguided in his priorities when he gets sucked into the Gorkhaland Movement and eventually loses himself in the politics. And then there is India herself, lost in independence and freedom, she is unravelling without the guidance, intelligence, political stability and longevity of fellow independent countries.
Although it is set in a political conflict the novel fails to take sides in the argument and thus it portrays a clear and objective look at India as well as its characters. Beautiful prose, wonderful descriptions and intelligent insight, Desai has created a masterpiece, a piece of Desi literature that will forever enlighten intellectual thinkers regardless of ethnicity or race.
Happy Reading!!!
Author:
Kiran DesaiPublished:
Penguin 2006
Number of Pages:
324
Review:
For a book with “loss” in the title I was expecting to end this book with a sense of nostalgia, sadness and fall into an ultimate depression for the two and a half days it would have taken me to recover. Surprisingly this is not the case with Kiran Desai’s novel “The Inheritance of Loss.”
A winner of the Man Booker Prize for 2006, although I have not read the other novels short listed, I do believe Desai has written a book worthy of that title (despite the controversy surrounding a fixed vote by her mother). Loss is present in every city, in every character, in every chapter; however, it is often offset with dry humour and wit. Appropriately titled, the sense of loss is being passed down from one generation to the other.
The story starts off in a Darjeeling, India during the Gorkhaland Movement in which the conflicts of the Nepali-Indians have escalated into a civil riot and takeover of the city in which our two main characters live: the sixteen year old orphan Sai and her android-esque grandfather Jemubhai the Judge. When Sai’s parents unexpectedly died in a car crash in Russia her only family left alive was her grandfather who grudgingly took her into his home. The judge is often left in a state of hatred for all things Indian which in flashbacks reveal that he was in fact often ridiculed and ignored in Britain as he studied law at Cambridge. At the time of his arrival in England, the British were not in favour of those with coloured skin and he was often the scorned victim of brute jokes about his smell or colour. This hatred of himself has been implemented to the point that hatred defines his character, passing his hatred on to those whom are closest to him, especially his wife.
“By the year’s end the dread they had for each other was so severe it was as if they had tapped into a limitless bitterness carrying them beyond the parameters of what any individual is normally capable of feeling. They belonged to this emotion more than to themselves, experienced rage with enough muscle in it for an entire nations coupled in hate.” Sai, on the other hand, is young and naive and her liveliness is a bright point in the novel. Her intrigue in the world, in people and in love makes this story what it is. Her curiosity shifts the focus from hatred to budding life and intelligence. Her love of National Geographic and literature has made her ideals and morals childlike, romantic and not yet matured. Yet despite the childlike innocence surrounding Sai, it is clear that she is inevitably doomed to live a life of loss, like her grandfather.“Sai thought of how it had been unclear to her what exactly she longed for in the early days at Cho Oyu, that only the longing itself found its echo in her aching soul. The longing was now gone, she thought, and the ache seemed to have found its substance.”
The supporting characters each have their role to play and provide a further sense of loss to the audience reading. The cook, lost in his memories, lives and cares for Sai and her grandfather and provides Sai with the support and comfort of a caretaker. He often reminisces about the past and his mind wanders to that of his son Biju, who is lost in the city of opportunities. Biju is a continent away, trying to survive as an illegal immigrant in New York. He is bullied, exploited and alone in the fast paced city, away from everything he knows, he is almost a mirror image of the younger Jemubhai, alone and ridiculed in a foreign country. There is Gyan, Sai’s first love interest. Gyan is smart, witty and misguided in his priorities when he gets sucked into the Gorkhaland Movement and eventually loses himself in the politics. And then there is India herself, lost in independence and freedom, she is unravelling without the guidance, intelligence, political stability and longevity of fellow independent countries.
Although it is set in a political conflict the novel fails to take sides in the argument and thus it portrays a clear and objective look at India as well as its characters. Beautiful prose, wonderful descriptions and intelligent insight, Desai has created a masterpiece, a piece of Desi literature that will forever enlighten intellectual thinkers regardless of ethnicity or race.
Happy Reading!!!
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Hey Coupland!
Hey Nostradamus!
Author:
Douglas Coupland
Date Published:
Random House; 2003
Number of pages:
244
Review:
With melancholy, wit and a lot of personality, Douglas Coupland has rendered another marvellous piece of literature. In Hey Nostradamus, we see the budding artist mature and tackle the task of writing multiple perspectives in narration and it works out brilliantly in his favour.
Taking place in Vancouver, Coupland starts his novel with a school shooting in the cafeteria of Delbrook Senior High School in the year 1988. Four people over a span of 25 years are each affected by the trauma and the loneliness that ultimately follows. Divided into 4 parts, the plot flows smoothly from one narration to the next, each section representing a new narrator. Each narrator has their own voice, their own prose, and their own thoughts and memories are captured by a brilliant author.
The first narrator Cheryl, an abiding Christian, faces oblivion in the beginning of the novel being a victim of the school shooting and often questions her ideals, her beliefs and her religion as she takes her last remaining breaths. “[Dear Lord] A massacre in a high school cafeteria can only indicate Your absence” she utters as she is dying and leaves behind a bloody binder which she wrote:
“GOD IS NOWHERE GOD IS NOW HERE.”
Her words haunt her husband and fellow schoolmate, Jason, who is often accused of being a part of the adolescent team that shot his wife and is the second narrator in the novel. He narrates 10 years after the shooting and is often nostalgic and distant. His narration is quick and jumpy much like his personality. His thoughts often trouble and elude him from his potential; his past affects his ability to create a thriving future.
“In the end, we are judged by our deeds, not our wishes. We’re the sum of our decisions.”
In which, his decisions cause him to disappear leaving behind a girlfriend, Heather, the third narrator being stalked by a psychic.
A stenographer by profession, her narration, in the form of a journal, is organized in thought as well as being articulate. She is left wondering where Jason disappeared to and is contacted by a psychic claiming to have telepathic messages sent to her from Jason. In the end she realized that she often attracts people of a lonely nature.
“Did I unwittingly send out the sort of signals that attract desperate souls?”
One of these desperate souls she attracted, while trying to find comfort for the disappearance of Jason was the 4th narrator, Jason’s father Reg.
Reg writes in the form of a letter as well, tying up the novels loose ends and often jumping from 3rd person narration to 1st person. His confused and pleading form of writing is very much associated with his personality. He ends the novel beautifully.
Each character has a sense of loss and yet they have a deep understanding of what it is to be a human, in touch with emotions and living off of memories in a culture and society moving forward while they are being left behind. Every character is relatable because every character is real; their emotions, their actions and their life can be found in any home in any city, regardless of the shooting. Everyone questions their beliefs and everyone feels a sense of loneliness, of loss.
Coupland has written a novel of nostalgia on a subject often considered faux pas. With the recent shootings at Virginia Tech and here at home with Dawson in Montreal it’s important to see how one senseless act can affect the lives of dozens of people. Whether they are people who witnessed the shooting or those who interacted with the victims or even those who watched a broadcast of it on national television, everyone is affected. This novel clearly illustrates this point. Smart, witty, fantastic, Hey Nostradamus is a modern classic and a pop culture haven. Coupland never ceases to amaze me.
Happy Reading!!!
Douglas Coupland
Date Published:
Random House; 2003
Number of pages:
244
Review:
With melancholy, wit and a lot of personality, Douglas Coupland has rendered another marvellous piece of literature. In Hey Nostradamus, we see the budding artist mature and tackle the task of writing multiple perspectives in narration and it works out brilliantly in his favour.
Taking place in Vancouver, Coupland starts his novel with a school shooting in the cafeteria of Delbrook Senior High School in the year 1988. Four people over a span of 25 years are each affected by the trauma and the loneliness that ultimately follows. Divided into 4 parts, the plot flows smoothly from one narration to the next, each section representing a new narrator. Each narrator has their own voice, their own prose, and their own thoughts and memories are captured by a brilliant author.
The first narrator Cheryl, an abiding Christian, faces oblivion in the beginning of the novel being a victim of the school shooting and often questions her ideals, her beliefs and her religion as she takes her last remaining breaths. “[Dear Lord] A massacre in a high school cafeteria can only indicate Your absence” she utters as she is dying and leaves behind a bloody binder which she wrote:
“GOD IS NOWHERE GOD IS NOW HERE.”
Her words haunt her husband and fellow schoolmate, Jason, who is often accused of being a part of the adolescent team that shot his wife and is the second narrator in the novel. He narrates 10 years after the shooting and is often nostalgic and distant. His narration is quick and jumpy much like his personality. His thoughts often trouble and elude him from his potential; his past affects his ability to create a thriving future.
“In the end, we are judged by our deeds, not our wishes. We’re the sum of our decisions.”
In which, his decisions cause him to disappear leaving behind a girlfriend, Heather, the third narrator being stalked by a psychic.
A stenographer by profession, her narration, in the form of a journal, is organized in thought as well as being articulate. She is left wondering where Jason disappeared to and is contacted by a psychic claiming to have telepathic messages sent to her from Jason. In the end she realized that she often attracts people of a lonely nature.
“Did I unwittingly send out the sort of signals that attract desperate souls?”
One of these desperate souls she attracted, while trying to find comfort for the disappearance of Jason was the 4th narrator, Jason’s father Reg.
Reg writes in the form of a letter as well, tying up the novels loose ends and often jumping from 3rd person narration to 1st person. His confused and pleading form of writing is very much associated with his personality. He ends the novel beautifully.
Each character has a sense of loss and yet they have a deep understanding of what it is to be a human, in touch with emotions and living off of memories in a culture and society moving forward while they are being left behind. Every character is relatable because every character is real; their emotions, their actions and their life can be found in any home in any city, regardless of the shooting. Everyone questions their beliefs and everyone feels a sense of loneliness, of loss.
Coupland has written a novel of nostalgia on a subject often considered faux pas. With the recent shootings at Virginia Tech and here at home with Dawson in Montreal it’s important to see how one senseless act can affect the lives of dozens of people. Whether they are people who witnessed the shooting or those who interacted with the victims or even those who watched a broadcast of it on national television, everyone is affected. This novel clearly illustrates this point. Smart, witty, fantastic, Hey Nostradamus is a modern classic and a pop culture haven. Coupland never ceases to amaze me.
Happy Reading!!!
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Bree's Very Own Book Blog
For the longest time I have been contemplating starting a book blog, to review the books I read and post the reviews on a blog so that someone may find the reviews helpful to their reading decisions. But with the ever growing community of book blogs and with reviews that are probably more precise and respected than mine I put off the daunting task of starting my own blog until I realised that I should not start a blog to compete but I should blog because I want too. Thus I have started my own book blog and I shall be trying, to the best of my ability, to update as frequently as possible and to provide the world of blogging my take on books that I loved (or didn't love) reading. So I thank you for visiting and urge you to comment on my reviews both positive or negative I take criticism very well, and keep checking back for some awesome reviews about some awesome books.
Happy Reading!!!
Happy Reading!!!
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