I finished the final book of the Hunger Games trilogy in three days, about the same length of time it took me to read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I thought it was strong, powerful and a great end to the trilogy. I do have some more specific comments though, so SPOILERS BEHIND THE CUT!

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Things have been pretty busy here the past couple weeks at chez Monnibo. This post is going to be a mish-mash of many things.

We went to Spanish Banks on Saturday and met some Camp friends for dinner. When the tide was out, we went for a wander in the ocean. Gorgeous photos resulted (and I made a new Flickr set called Vancouver Beaches).

Spanish Banks at low tide

We went to Bard on the Beach on the weekend and saw Anthony & Cleopatra. I really enjoyed it and I have to say that Bard on the Beach is one of my favourite festivals. And of course there is a Bard Flickr set too, with various years’ photos.

Intermission at Bard on the Beach

Speaking of festivals, I sent The Word On The Street Vancouver program guide to the printer today (!!!). We’ve been working on this all summer. I’ve also got some other initiatives for the festival going: if you’re on Twitter, follow WOTSvancouver — if you’re on Facebook, “like” The Word On The Street Vancouver — if you’re on Flickr, share your photos on the WOTS Vancouver Group Pool — or add the WOTS Vancouver blog to your feed reader!

At BookCrossing Meetup the other night, we were talking about books (of course!) and then blogs and publishers and authors, etc. I mentioned I signed up for newsletters and followed publisher/publishing blogs. Dale and Marina instantly wanted me to write a blog post full of links… and this is just to say that yes, I intend to do that, but I don’t have time right now.

Philippa Gregory’s new book comes out this Thursday, August 19. The Red Queen is book two in her next series about the Houses of Lancaster and York. I enjoyed The White Queen (review) but wasn’t crazy about it. So, I don’t know how I feel about The Red Queen, but I’d like to give it a shot.

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins — book three of the Hunger Games Triology — comes out in one week (Tuesday, August 24)!! I’ve read (and reviewed) both The Hunger Games and Catching Fire and I’m really looking forward to the final installment.

Julie Forrest tweeted a link earlier today to an upcoming knitting book from Random House — Vampire Knits: Projects to Keep You Knitting from Twilight to Dawn by Genevieve Miller. There are many Twilight-inspired patterns on Ravelry already (including a leaked pattern from Vampire Knits), but it will be neat to see what other vampire-inspired knits are devised.

Okay, now one weird question… why are my house plants plagued by fruit flies?

I’ve been a fan of Stuart McLean’s Vinyl Cafe books since I was a kid. I was given Home From the Vinyl Cafe for Christmas when I was maybe 11 or 12. When I found out Stuart McLean also had a Vinyl Cafe show on CBC, I immediately subscribed to the podcast via iTunes. I’ve been listening to that for a few years and then in November last year I had a chance to see the Vinyl Cafe Christmas Concert when Stuart McLean was on tour. It was shortly after the release of Extreme Vinyl Cafe and the concert featured a couple stories from the book. I also got a chance to meet Stuart and have him sign my copy of Extreme Vinyl Cafe.

I’ve just finished reading the book, Extreme Vinyl Cafe, and while it’s classic Dave and Morley, I have to say I’m a bit disappointed. I think it’s the fact that I’m over-saturated by the podcast and reading so many of the books, but I’d already heard all the stories in Extreme Vinyl Cafe. I know two of them we heard at the concert, and I know at least another two (for certain) I heard on the podcast. They were great stories, and I enjoyed them, but it was disappointing because I was expecting new Vinyl Cafe stories. However, if you have never read The Vinyl Cafe or heard Stuart McLean’s stories, I strongly urge you to check out this quintessential Canadian storyteller. He is not only magnificent at weaving a tale but also has a lovely voice.

The thing that is so great about Vinyl Cafe stories is the humour mixed in with little life lessons. You’d never think of defrosting a turkey with a hair dryer, or sneaking into the school to free the janitor from “redundancy”, but there they are. Dave and his family, wife Morley, daughter Stephanie, and son Sam are all hilarious and yet vulnerable humans in their own way. While some of the stories may be a little wacky, they are all very real and honest, with genuine emotion.

Back to the book review: A neat touch to Extreme Vinyl Cafe is each story is preceded by a unique piece of fan mail that Stuart McLean has received. Each fan mail letter relates somehow to the following story. Sometimes a silly little letter simply preceding the story, other times the story serves as an insightful to the writer’s query. However, he has a new book coming out this fall — The Vinyl Cafe Notebooks — which is actually a non-fiction title about the making of the radio show. Even though it’s not Dave and Morley, I’m very interested to read this next serving of Vinyl Cafe stories.

Kathleen Winter’s first novel, with House of Anansi Press, is the story of a young Labrador family secretly raising their hermaphrodite child as a boy. Winters’ prose is lyrical and lonely, yet relatable. Wayne’s story is magnetic, powerful, and has an unexplainable energy.

In 1968, into the beautiful, spare environment of remote coastal Labrador, a mysterious child is born: a baby who appears to be neither fully boy nor girl, but both at once. Only three people are privy to the secret — the baby’s parents, Jacinta and Treadway, and a trusted neighbour, Thomasina. Together the adults make a difficult decision: to raise the child as a boy named Wayne. But as Wayne grows to adulthood within the hyper-masculine hunting culture of his father, his shadow-self — a girl he thinks of as Annabel — is never entirely extinguished, and indeed is secretly nurtured by the women in his life.

Haunting, sweeping in scope, and stylistically reminiscent of Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex, Annabel is a compelling debut novel about one person’s struggle to discover the truth in a culture that shuns contradiction.

From the Publisher, House of Anansi Press

The novel raises a lot of questions about who people are, and why you choose the paths you choose. Each central person (Wayne, Thomasina, Jacinta, and Treadway) considers life’s purpose in a different light. Each character examines how they are connected to the world, Labrador, and the animals and society around them. One of the best quotes is from Thomasina: “Everyone is a snake shedding its skin… We are different people through all our lives.”

Central to the story is everyone’s influence on Wayne. He knows something about him is different, and the three people that know his secret keep it from him at all costs. We follow Wayne on his journey through childhood, puberty, and young adulthood. In each his parents try to nurture and encourage the person they think he should be; his father tries to get him to become the boy he was, his mother tries to hide and stifle his feminine side lest his father find out, and Thomasina blatantly calls him ‘Annabel’ after her own deceased daughter.

Overall I found the book lyrical and well-written. I felt it dragged a little near the end and was difficult to come to an end. I think that perhaps Kathleen Winter didn’t know how to finish the book, because it’s hard to say where Wayne may end up. It’s difficult to tell Wayne/Annabel’s entire life story and satisfy all the readers. It’s one of those rare books where the open-endedness bothers you, but feels like the right decision at the same time.

In an interview in House of Anansi Press, Kathleen Winter was asked, “What do you hope readers will take away from their experience with Wayne and his shadow-self, Annabel?” Winter’s reply really hit home with me about understanding why someone acts the way they do:

I’d like readers to see Wayne/Annabel the way they see themselves, and look at the “other” gender within themselves. I feel point of view is everything, in life and in literature, and I hope the book treats the points of view held by its divergent characters with equal respect. In many ways, this book is, for me, about suspending judgment. When you understand why someone acts the way they do, even if the actions cause sadness or difficulty, then I think you can redirect your energy to something more fruitful than judgment. I also hope the reader will have the kind of reading experience I think books are really about: a connection with the characters and a suspension of the loneliness of being human. I hope this story, like all good stories, might give the reader a kind of relief and a joy.

Now, I have taken to ending my reviews with additional links for interested readers. Well here is something really interesting: Bill Douglas, graphic designer, talking about his design for the cover of Annabel. I think Douglas did an incredible job of capturing the lonely, cold feeling in the book about Labrador. And I lovelovelove the hidden meaning behind the imagery chosen: “The caribou, you see, is the only member of the deer family in which both male and females grow antlers.”

• Kathleen Winter’s blog
• Kathleen Winter on Twitter
• House of Anansi Press on Twitter
• Kathleen Winter is a guest poster on The National Post‘s blog, The Afterword. Read her essay on “Loneliness and the Book” (part 1 / part 2)
• Salty Ink’s profile of Annabel, as defeded by Laura Repas of House of Anansi Press

The Book of Awesome is actually not that awesome. Some blog-to-book stories have been very successful and some blogs sell a lot of funny merchandise, but The Book of Awesome doesn’t stand up.

Based on www.1000awesomethings.com, Neil Pasricha started the blog to celebrate the little things in life. While this is theoretically a great idea — everyone needs to think positive and take joy in the little things — it just doesn’t work as a book. To start, even though the blog touts over 10 million hits, Neil hasn’t even reached #1 of his “awesome” list; the blog counts down from 1000 and (as the time of this review) is on #452.

And the book… I picked it up during a gathering of bookish folks for Books on the Radio. Yes, we may have ridiculed the book more than necessary, but it still isn’t all that “awesome”. I started flipping through it and reading the chapter titles out, and AnnMarie would declare “awesome” or “stupid” or “gross” and we’d move onto the next one. I have to say it was great for a laugh and a conversation starter, but I wouldn’t have ever paid $28.50 for this book.

• “When someone offers to toss your dirty clothes in with their load of laundry” — No, that’s just gross, unless you’re dating. I wouldn’t even touch a roommates laundry, much less let someone touch mine!
• “Sneaking under someone else’s umbrella” — If someone did that to me, I’d elbow them in the face. Is a black eye awesome?
• “Blowing out all the candles on your first try” — Maybe if you’re 3 years old.
• “Old folks who sit on their porch and wave at you when you walk by” — No, that’s creepy. There is this guy that sits at my bus stop all day and when the sun gets too high, he transfers to the other side of the street and sits on the wall of someone else’s garden.
• “Wearing sandals when you shouldn’t be wearing sandals” — Who the hell gets to say what you should wear? If you wanna freeze your toes off, go for it.
• “The pushoff” — This is actually is talking about learning to ride your bike alone for the first time. I thought we were taking joy in simple pleasures in life, not reliving childhood memories.
• “Really, really old Tupperware” — This one describes the ‘burping seal’, but did you know that after a certain period of time plastics start leeching harsh chemicals into your food.
• “Scraping all the lint off an overflowing lint trap” — No, that’s just good housekeeping, and safe so it doesn’t catch on fire.

I don’t often give a book this bad a review. If you see it in the bookstore, have a flip through and see if you find it “awesome”, “heart-warming” or leave you “looking for new joys”. [quotes from reviews].

Now, I mentioned book-to-blog stories and blog merch. Here is some of the stuff out there:

• Sh*it My Dad Says (Twitter first, book is actually funny)
• I Can Haz Cheezburger (blog first, first book 2008, second book 2009, third book 2009. The books are more humour books written in LOLspeak)
• Cake Wrecks (blog first, book and calendar)
• Stuff on my Cat (blog first, merch rocks, first book in 2006, second book in 2008). Second blog: Stuff on my Mutt
• The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks (blog first, book out July 2010 from Chronicle Books… the same people as Stuff on my Cat.)

Soon we’re going to look at some books and think, “What came first? The Book or the Blog?”

Christopher Moore is a hilarious fiction writer. The first novel of his I read, A Dirty Job, had me laughing out loud. Then I picked up Fool, a satirical comedy loosely based on Shakespeare’s King Lear, which I also enjoyed. With the recent release of Bite Me, I was really interested to read the first book in Christopher Moore’s vampire love story, Bloodsucking Fiends .

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I’ve been meaning to read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon for a few years because I’ve heard extraordinary things about it. It came out in 2003, was a #1 international bestseller, and received numerous book awards. The book is covered in review quotes of praise: dazzling, brilliant, original, addictive, inspiring, captivating, moving… etc.

Christopher is 15 and lives in Swindon with his father. He has Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of autism. He is obsessed with maths, science and Sherlock Holmes but finds it hard to understand other people. When he discovers a dead dog on a neighbour’s lawn he decides to solve the mystery and write a detective thriller about it. As in all good detective stories, however, the more he unearths, the deeper the mystery gets – for both Christopher and the rest of his family.

From the publisher, Random House UK
[Note: Cover image shown is the Canadian/US paperback]

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I enjoyed the second book in Larsson’s Millenium Trilogy in a different way than I enjoyed The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (book review / movie review). In the first book, it’s very much about the mystery at hand, and through solving it, you come to care about Lisbeth Salander. Even though she’s odd, anti-social and a bit weird, she has morals and integrity. The second book, The Girl Who Played With Fire , takes places after the first book, but delves more deeply into Lisbeth’s past.

A few weeks before Dag Svensson, a freelance journalist, plans to publish a story that exposes important people involved in Sweden’s sex trafficking business based on research conducted by his girlfriend, Mia Johansson, a criminologist and gender studies scholar, the couple are shot to death in their Stockholm apartment. Salander, who has a history of violent tendencies, becomes the prime suspect after the police find her fingerprints on the murder weapon. While Blomkvist strives to clear Salander of the crime, some far-fetched twists help ensure her survival.

[From Publisher's Weekly]

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If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world. After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud. Try them yourself. [I found this at Julia Likes To Talk.]

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week Craig and I went to Value Village to look for some books for him. Value Village has secondhand books priced on a sliding scale which depends on the original cover price. All hardcovers at $3.99, and then fiction paperbacks that were originally $8+ are sold for $4.99, anything that was $6-8 is now $3.99 and so on and so on. Children’s books and non-fiction are flat prices. Sometimes you can get a good deal.

My only beef with the system is downstairs (where the books are at my local Value Village) the signage says, “Buy 3, Get The 4th Free” but upstairs at the till (for the employees) it says, “Buy 4, Get the 5th Free”. They didn’t believe me and although I am stubborn enough to make a staff member go check, there were other people in line so I didn’t push it. We had four books (I had three, Craig had one) and the people behind us at the till had one. They suggested we get their book for free and they would give us $5 for it. Problem solved.

Now, the books. Craig got a copy of Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind, the first book in the Sword of Truth series. This is his favourite series and we each have a copy of the entire series (his is in England, mine is here). We also have several extra copies that Craig likes to lend to friends but the first book in the series is MIA.

I picked up three books: The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards; Come, Thou Tortoise by Jessica Grant; and Secrets from the Vinyl Cafe by Stuart McLean.

Why did I pick up these books? I heard good things about The Memory Keeper’s Daughter when it first came out. Come, Thou Tortoise is the first novel by Canadian author Jessica Grant, and was getting gushing reviews. Also, she just won Amazon.ca’s First Novel Award. I am a big Stuart McLean fan and Secrets from the Vinyl Cafe is one of the (few) Vinyl Cafe books I don’t yet own.