It’s been a long while since I participated in Booking Through Thursday, so here we go!

How do you feel about illustrations in your books? Graphs? Photos? Sketches?

As long as they relate to the text and illuminate it in some way, then I am fine with illustrations. I really enjoy when they add to the reading, such as the illustrated Book of Negroes; you read about a plant you don’t know of in the story, and there is a lovely illustration of it. Where I didn’t enjoy sidebar images and asides was Generation X; some of the stuff were just little doodles, cartoons, random witty headings. The problem was they only made sense if you read the text, read the sidebar notes, then reread the text to see how it applied.

I love illustrated non-fiction. My favourite flipping/read-randomly book is The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. There are so many themes and play-on-words within Shakespeares’ plays as well as period-references that lend very well to an illustrated companion.

I don’t like illustrations when they dictate what the characters look like or exactly what a scene looks like. I think that the writing should be able to do this and stand alone. However, I recall my Literature 12 textbook having a number of illustrations, particularly for The Canterbury Tales. In this sense, I felt that illustrations of people were very poignant because the text itself is ironically flattering.

On the other hand, I also have to say that I would never buy a cookbook or knitting/craft book that didn’t have photos. And, in the case of illustrated young adult books, I think that it is fantastic to be able to visually balance the text, especially for reluctant readers.

I know this post should have gone up sooner since the debates for Canada Reads begin today… but I procrastinated reading Fall On Your Knees and procrastinating writing this review. Why did I procrastinate? Tammy kept saying, “It’s so depressing, I’ve put it in my basement and just want to forget it’s there.” Which made me not want to read a depressing book after finishing the delightful Nikolski by Nicholas Dickner.

I have to admit, yes it was a somber story, but it is quite brilliant writing. I enjoyed the characters, how honest they were, and how real they were. At times I felt the book dragged on, but by the end, I was fully satisfied. My favourite character is Mercedes because I think that she is an unsung hero of the family. I was also constantly in awe of how she maintains faith while questioning the ways of her God.

At the start of the 20th century, James Piper sets fire to his dead mother’s piano and heads out across Cape Breton Island to find a new place to live, eventually eloping with 13-year-old Materia Mahmoud, the daughter of wealthy, traditional Lebanese parents. And so, from early on, Ann-Marie MacDonald establishes some major themes: racial tension, isolation, passion and forbidden love, which will gradually lead to incest, death in childbirth, and even murder.

At the centre of this epic story is the nature of family love, beginning with the Piper sister who depend on one another for survival. Their development as characters — beautiful Kathleen, the promising diva; saintly Mercedes; Frances, the mischievous bad girl, who tries to bear the family’s burden; and disabled Lily, everyone’s favourite — forms the heart of the novel. And then there is James, their flawed father.

[From the publisher, Random House]

At our book club discussion we basically agreed that it was well written, depressing, and wasn’t going to win Canada Reads 2010. I know this sounds pessimistic, but honestly, Fall On Your Knees‘ somber subject matter is not for everyone. Ann-Marie MacDonald deals with incest, faith, murder, pregnancy, and racism. The book really crosses a number of terrains and comes out the other side.

Honestly, I don’t get what the big deal is about Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture. Although I found the writing witty I didn’t really get the point. Besides “understanding” the generation and telling these 20-somethings’ story, what was the point? Nothing really happens in the book and I’m not sure why it was picked for Canada Reads 2010.

I think my favourite thing about the book was the inscription; I picked the book up at a local secondhand bookstore (MacLeod’s in downtown Vancouver) and the following was written on the title page inside:

To Sean of:
Generation X

From Mom & Dad
of Generation Grey Hairs Remember

Easter 1995

At book club yesterday, there were a couple people who read and enjoyed it when it first came out. So I asked “why did you enjoy it so much?” One person said that it was probably something to do with feeling misunderstood, and Coupland, in talking to and about that generation, really identified with their feelings. Another common frustration was the side notes in the margins. The only time they seriously bothered me was when they didn’t relate back to the novel at all. Sometimes I could reread the asides and see how the witty definitions related to the story… but when it didn’t it annoyed me to a degree.

I think the main problem is that I’m from a whole different generation, not that unlike generation X-ers, but just different enough to not “click” with the book. I am now curious to read Generation A, Douglas Coupland’s latest novel (published September 2009 by Random House). Right now, we are living in a very digital and connected society and I’d be curious to read Coupland’s Generation A to see if I connect with the sentiments in a way that generation X-ers did with Generation X.

P.S. If you haven’t vote for your predicted win and your favourite book for Canada Reads at the Canada Reads Challenge, go vote! CBC also has a poll on their website. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast, or the videos, or listen live! The debates begin tomorrow, Monday, March 8th!

Dante thinks high school is an earthly version of hell. She hates her new home in the suburbs, her best friend has moved away, her homeroom teacher mocks her and her mother is making her attend a social skills group for teenage girls. When a stranger shows up at school and hands Dante a flyer that reads: Woof, woof. You are not a dog. Why are you going to obedience school?, Dante thinks she’s found a soul mate. Someone who understands. Someone else who wants to make real changes in the world. But there are all kinds of ways of bringing about change…and some are more dangerous than others.

[back cover copy, Orca Book Publishers]

This is an engaging book about a young girl (formerly named Emily) who is trying to find herself within an oppressive high school and disappointed mother. She has an interesting journey and although the content is a little mature (maybe 12+) the writing is very accessible. The book is written from Dante/Emily’s point of view which was bang-on for the voice and age of the character.

I don’t have much more to say without giving anything away; it’s really about Dante’s personal journey. I enjoyed the book and it was a quick, engaging read for me. The writing was fast-paced and the teenage voice was very real. I was also very impressed with how Robin Stevenson deal with the GLBT content and proud that a BC author and publisher put this in a YA novel.

Click here to read the first chapter (PDF link)

Some people have been disappointed with the Canada Reads 2010 list. Reasons include the authors/publishers/books being too well-known already. There are two new grassroots challenges called Canada Reads Independently and Canada Also Reads which aim to shed light on the lesser known titles/authors/publishers. How very Canadian of us! Personally, I haven’t read any of the books but I did know of Generation X and The Jade Peony already. I’m enjoying reading the Canada Reads list but also want to spread the word about these Canadian works too.

CANADA READS INDEPENDENTLY

When I first heard about Canada Reads Independently 2010, I thought it was a list of books from independent presses. Wrong. It turns out that Kerry Clare of Pickle Me This launched Canada Reads 2010: Independently for a different reason. Kerry says, “I’m not going to knock [Canada Reads] because I love the spirit behind the whole thing… but it just wasn’t the reading list for me. What I wanted was what I found from (most of) the 2009 lineup– book recommendations out of nowhere, books I’d never pick up otherwise, that challenge my sensibilities, and that I might just fall in love with.”

In an interview with Julie Wilson (aka BookMadam) at CBC Book Club, Kerry said, “I’m going to be reading the five books over the next two months, posting reviews as I go, and rating the books against one another. I’ll be inviting other readers to comment on my reactions to the books, perhaps have some guest posts and coverage of other readers’ reviews, and then I’ll choose my own favourite of the bunch, and we’ll have a vote to come up with a readers’ choice champion as well. And I’m hoping my “celebrity panelists” will be able to weigh in from time to time in their book’s defence, which should be fun.”

The books:

• Moody Food by Ray Robertson
  (championed by Steven W. Beattie of the Quill & Quire)
• How Happy to Be by Katrina Onstad
  (championed by author Rona Maynard)
• Wild Geese by Martha Ostenso
  (championed by Melanie Owen of Roughing it in the Books)
• Hair Hat by Carrie Snyder
  (championed by illustrator Patricia Storms)
• Century by Ray Smith
  (championed by publisher/bookseller/editor Dan Wells of Biblioasis)

CANADA ALSO READS

The National Post’s book blog The Afterword has released a selection of titles called Canada Also Reads 2010. When the Canada Reads list was released, they agreed with “many of the 140-character-or-less comments that appeared in the moments after this year’s crop was unveiled: these are great books, but haven’t they already been read?” And so Canada Also Reads was born. They are “a fan of what Canada Reads has done to promote CanLit, we figured this would be a great opportunity to help shine a light on some of the books sitting in the shadows. What books should Canada also read, we asked? We were immediately inundated with hundreds and hundreds of submissions from readers across the country.”

The books:

• My White Planet by Mark Anthony Jarman
  (defended by writer and critic Steven Beattie)
• The Day The Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan
  (defended by author Tish Cohen)
• Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis
  (defended by singer/songwriter Andy Maize)
• The Last Shot by Leon Rooke
  (defended by poet Jacob McArthur Mooney)
• Yellowknife by Steve Zipp
  (defended by blogger John Mutford)
• You And The Pirates by Jocelyne Allen
  (defended by author Lisa Pasold)
• Come Thou Tortoise by Jessica Grant
  (defended by author Neil Smith)
• Fear of Fighting by Stacey May Fowles, pictures by Marlena Zuber
  (defended by author Zoe Whittall)

Initially I was apprehensive about Nikolski, written by Nicholas Dickner, because it was translated from French. Translations can go one of two ways and I was worried that a lot would be lost in translation. However, I was pleasantly surprised as the translator, Lazer Lederhendler, transformed the French writing into eloquent English. This was very impressive because there are several plays on words as well as witty banter.

The story itself is more of a character journey than a standard plot-based story (as many of these Canada Reads books seem to be). I loved all the little details that would crop up later as well as the decisions of these unique and surprising young characters.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last year when I posted about Canada’s Freedom to Read Week, I was trying to read The Handmaiden’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and/or Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov as part of the challenge. Unfortunately, I haven’t read either book as I got distracted by my huge TBR Pile. However, this year, I’ve got more exciting news: my friend Diane has begun a challenge on BookCrossing to Release Challenged Books as part of Freedom to Read Week 2010. The challenge to release banned/challenged books, or books by persecuted/jailed authors (especially Canadian) during the month of February.

Freedom to Read Week is from February 21-27, 2010 and lots of Canadian libraries celebrate with special events and challenges. Make sure to check out the Calendar of Events on the Freedom to Read website to see if your local library is planning anything. If they aren’t, why not ask if they will!?

Can’t think of any banned or challenged books or authors? You’ll be surprised by some of the names on these lists.

• Freedom to Read Week has a list of Challenged Books & Magazines
• Wikipedia list of books banned by governments around the world
• Amnesty International USA has updates on Banned Books each year
• PEN Canada helps to protect and aide persecuted writers

Please release your Canadian banned or challenged books and authors via BookCrossing and help spread the freedom to read.

The W2 Real Vancouver Writers’ & Culture Series is happening every Wednesday in February at the W2 Culture + Media House. W2 is located across from the refurbished Woodwards Building in Downtown Vancouver. The four weekly events will showcase local Vancouver writers, publishers and creative literary artists, giving guests a chance to rub shoulders with local talent.

“These evenings are designed to show the city and the world real and diverse Vancouver culture and real creative individuals in the literary and publishing communities at a time when the eyes of the world are on our city.

Each night will showcase local writers doing short readings their work and/or interacting with a moderator, taking questions from the audience and will include book sales, signings, a multi-media component, music, cash bar, raffles and give-aways.

Every night will consist of writers that will give the in-house audience a glimpse of the variety of cultures, ethnicities, forms and skills of writers living and working in Vancouver.

It will showcase the writers, their books, their publishers and other support structures within the local community and the larger culture and publishing communities.“

Organized jointly by Books on the Radio and Geist Magazine, the talent line-ups each week are phenominal. Make sure to follow @W2Woodwards on Twitter for all the latest updates.

http://realvancouverwriters.com/

The Jade Peony by Wayson Choy will be defended by Samantha Nutt during Canada Reads 2010.

I finished this book several weeks ago but wanted to wait until after I met with our book club to discuss it. I missed the last discussion for Good to a Fault, so I was very excited to join in on The Jade Peony gathering. I’ve just returned from our discussion, but I will do my best to convey my before, during, and after feelings. It’s amazing how much your ideas can change once discussing a book!

My initial impression of the book was general enjoyment and actually a little bit embarrassed for the way Canada treated immigrants. I enjoyed how Wayson Choy examined Vancouver’s Chinatown from the perspective of three young children, as each take their turn to narrate the novel. I thought the novel was well-written and had some valuable insights into living in Vancouver as a Chinese person in the ’30s and ’40s. We got to see how a girl-child was treated, the middle-boy, and the youngest boy.

Chinatown, Vancouver, in the late 1930s and ‘40s provides the setting for this poignant first novel, told through the vivid and intense reminiscences of the three younger children of an immigrant family. They each experience a very different childhood, depending on age and sex, as they encounter the complexities of birth and death, love and hate, kinship and otherness. Mingling with the realities of Canada and the horror of war are the magic, ghosts, paper uncles and family secrets of Poh-Poh, or Grandmother, who is the heart and pillar of the family.

Wayson Choy’s Chinatown is a community of unforgettable individuals who are “neither this nor that,” neither entirely Canadian nor Chinese. But with each other’s help, they survive hardship and heartbreak with grit and humour.

[from the publisher, Douglas & McIntyre]

At book club, we started by talking about all our favourite characters. The discussion was very organic and sometimes we strayed far from topic (which I enjoyed too). I think my favourite was Jook-Liang and Monkey King (Wong Suk) and their relationship. A lot of people really liked Poh-Poh (Grandmother) as she is a very strong character and represents “old China” as well as being part of Vancouver. I think Stepmother is a very underrated character. There was some discussion about her role and position in the family as “second wife” and even her own birth children call her “Stepmother”.

Should this book win Canada Reads 2010? My first, gut response was no. My thought-process was: The Jade Peony won the City of Vancouver Book Award in 1996 and I think this book would be a great selection for the Vancouver Public Library’s One Book One Vancouver... but I don’t think that it is something that all Canadians “need to read”. I think that this is definitely something that Vancouverites and Lower Mainland residents should read and reflect upon.

But upon discussion with the book club, it was brought up that the books that win Canada Reads don’t necessarily have anything to do with Canada, they are just written by Canadian authors. With further discussion, I came to feel that this could be a good book for all Canadians to read… because really, who is Canadian? It is one of the points brought up by the children: “Am I Chinese or am I Canadian?” One of the great things about Canada is that we are a mosaic, you can be Canadian as well as something else — Chinese, Japanese, Ukranian, Croatian, Korean, etc.

The Jade Peony is all about characters and their environment. You would have a very different story if you took the book to Eastern Canada and tried to make it work there. Because it is a story of immigration and being from somewhere — a story of identity — you’d be hard-pressed to change the location. I think that it works and it opens your eyes to a whole different side of Canada and the government’s treatment of immigrants during this era. It is a story that would touch many Canadian people, whether they were born here or not, or their parents immigrated here or not.

The question of identity is never really answered by Wayson Choy in the novel, and I think that is okay. It is a continuing struggle to find out “who am I”, not just as an immigrant, or a Canadian, but as a person. At book club, one person teaches ESL and she related a story where her students were talking about a Canadian person they saw on the bus. She asked the students, “what made the person Canadian?” and they couldn’t really answer. To open their eyes to the lesson, she brought in several other teachers with different heritage and backgrounds and asked if they were Canadian or not.

I don’t really have an answer for “what is Canadian” or which book should win Canada Reads (I haven’t even finished all the books yet)… but I will say that The Jade Peony certainly opened my eyes to a part of Canadian history that I had forgotten. I was reminded about what I learned about the Cariboo Goldrush and the building of the CPR, and the Chinese Head Tax, and the Japanese Canadian internment… but it really is a different fact when you read a novel from the point of view of child experiencing these things within their own family. It’s an honest, yet confused portrayal of the time and the experiences of the people. I really enjoyed The Jade Peony for those reasons.

In addition to our “real life” book club, I’ve also joined the online Canada Reads Challenge! [Fun fact: another person from "real life" book club also joined the online challenge!]

I have been intending to read Jane Austen for many years, and with my recent trip to Bath I thought I should read some as soon as possible. Jane Austen spent a great deal of holiday time in Bath as a young woman, and then lived there for several years with her mother and sister after the death of their father. Austen’s experiences in Bath greatly influenced her novels, and both Northanger Abbey and Persuasion take place in the city of Bath.

The local library branch in Manchester only had Pride and Prejudice, but as this is one of Austen’s more well-known works, I didn’t think anything of it. I began reading immediately and found it slow for the first hundred pages. The language is certainly a hurdle (having just finished reading something more modern and for a younger audience), but after a while I began to enjoy Austen’s style of writing and subtle humour.

For those who don’t know anything about Austen (I was one of them), Pride and Prejudice was written in 1796-97 (originally called First Impressions) and published in 1813. It is the story of the Bennett family, particularly Elizabeth Bennet, our outspoken heroine, and the second-eldest daughter of five. As the novel opens, a wealthy gentleman rents the estate near the Bennet’s and we are shortly introduced to Mr. Bingley, his sisters, and his friend Mr. Darcy. As time progresses, Elizabeth’s older sister Jane and Mr. Bingley begin to fall in love. When Mr. Darcy (who comes off as cold, privileged, and superior) realizes his friend fancies someone not on par with their rank, he removes his friend back to their London home.

This is where the book begins to pick up. A local regiment is stationed in town and Elizabeth becomes friendly with Mr. Wickham, an officer. It turns out he grew up with Mr. Darcy and that there is much behind Darcy’s cold demure. As the novel progresses, there are many letters and excursions as Jane and Elizabeth travel (separately) with their aunt, uncle, and visit their cousin near London. Elizabeth keeps running into Mr. Darcy at every turn, who cannot help but become infatuated with Elizabeth. When he proposes, he declines vehemently due to his aloof actions thus far as well as his ‘injustices’ towards Mr. Wickham. Deeply affected by Elizabeth’s accusations, Darcy writes her a lengthy letter explaining his positions. The next time they meet, Darcy is much changed and Elizabeth soon realizes that she has deeply misjudged him.

It was at this point that I found the book difficult to put down. Whenever I wasn’t reading, I kept feeling like I was missing or forgetting something. At times (earlier in the book) I felt that the writing was extremely passive; most of the interactions and conversations took place without direct confrontations, or it was via letter. Once certain events occurred, it felt like the urgent letters and the female’s passive actions were more suspenseful than annoying. I really came to like the characters, particularly Elizabeth, and felt that Austen was able to portray everyone with both pros and cons. This honest portrayal of characters really resulted in a compelling novel as characters interacted with one another. I definitely intend to read more by Jane Austen.