Book Log: 2004

In Summary

• Books Read: 70
• Juvenile: 12
• Non-fiction: 30

December

• McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales edited by Michael Chabon
  In the introduction to this book Chabon complains that all modern short stories are "plotless and sparkling with epiphanic dew". I couldn't agree more ; I dread the summer fiction issue of Toronto Life because I know all the stories will be about someone's miserable Feelings and Woe and horrible childhood and so on, and nothing will actually happen. I like things to happen in my stories and so does Chabon, except instead of sitting around pissing and moaning, he did something about it, he put this collection together. (Well, as I understand it he pissed and moaned first.)
  I kind of ploughed through this because it was my holiday light reading, and that was a mistake -- I should have spread it out more so I wasn't reading a whole pile of exciting plotful stories in a row, because after a while you get exciting plot fatigue, but almost all the stories were good. There was one called "The Albertine Notes" by Rick Moody which was incoherent and confusing and really really long; I skipped most of it. (To be fair it was towards the end of the book and I was getting a little sick of it all by then.) Otherwise, good. How can you go wrong with Neil Gaiman, Elmore Leonard, Nick Hornby, Stephen King, Michael Crichton, Harlan Ellison, and of course Michael Chabon himself.
• The Final Solution: A Story of Detection by Michael Chabon
  This is a little book about a boy and a parrot and an old detective. It was a quick read and went down easy, like everything Chabon writes. Good ending.
• Last Chance to Eat: The Fate of Taste in a Fast Food World by Gina Mallet
  Last Chance To Eat is a book about how the taste of food has changed as it is increasingly industrialized. For example, apples are no longer bred for flavour, but for shippability and for sweetness. The book is compelling and readable, and includes recipes, always a bonus. I didn't like the histrionic epilogue, though.
  One thing that struck me when I was reading this book was how much people seemed to eat back in the olden days. Apparently a family would eat a whole huge wheel of brie in one evening -- I know families were bigger then, but even if you have eight kids that's still a lot of brie; a traditional English upper-class breakfast included eggs and bacon and porridge and fish and kegeree and sausage and on and on and on. It makes me think that today's obesity problem is less about how much we eat and more about the systemic sloth of our society.
• Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes by Stephen Jay Gould
  This is a collection of some of Gould's essays on evolution. It was interesting and I learned some stuff, although I don't find Gould as readable as some other science writers.
• The Memory Man by Lisa Appignanesi
  This is a book about a man whose late-life return to Vienna stirs up a lot of memories. It's was a good story. I think the memory stuff was overplayed (the main character is a memory researcher and one of the other characters is losing her mother to Alzheimer's) but that could just be that I'm not such a good reader.
• Kalyna's Song by Lisa Grekul
  Kalyna's Song is a book about being Ukrainian-Canadian, and about what it means to be any kind of hyphenated-Canadian. It's set in the Prairies in the late eighties and early nineties and the protagonist is around the same age I was then, although way more mature. I love being able to read books about stuff I can relate to so this book is a treat (not that I'm Ukrainian, but Ukrainian culture permeates my hometown in Saskatchewan). The protagonist is refreshingly self-confident, and (unlike me) a hard worker with ambition to match. I learned a bunch of history reading this book (that's assuming the author isn't making it up -- how can you tell?) and it got me thinking, which is always good. I look forward to Grekul's next book.
  I think this would be a neat book to read if you're an immigrant to Canada from Ukraine. I often wonder what new Ukrainian-Canadians would make of the third-generation Ukrainians on the Prairies.
• The Linnet Bird by Linda Holeman
  This is a book in the same vein as Goat Song, action-packed, full of tragedy and hurdles for our protagonist to overcome, set in exotic locales. The difference is I enjoyed this one, although I couldn't tell you why other than that it lacks the things I complained about in the other book. I guess I'm better at seeing why I don't like something than why I do.
• And All Through The House by Ed McBain
  A tiny little Ed McBain book, as good as any other Ed McBain book (so, agreeably good), with a refreshingly ascerbic ending.
• Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll, illustrated by Stéphane Jorisch
  This won the GG for illustration, and again I would have to agree with the Governor-General. Or, you know, whoever actually picks the winners. Jorisch's illustrations add whole new layers to the poem. The only problem is I misinterpreted the last page so more or less missed the whole point, until Blake explained. I dispair of ever being smart.

November

• Goat Song by Frank Yerby
  Where to start? The unconvincing dialogue? The blatant homophobia? The gratuitous gore? The Forrest Gumpian references to every Greek philosopher ever? The love at first sight (I hate that)? The obnoxious use of Greek words where English ones would do (iatros for doctor, porna for whore)? The heavy-handed foreshadowing at the end of each chapter? ("But Chryseis was not dead. Neither the Fates nor the Furies were that cruel. Or, if you will, that kind." Bum bum bum!)
  I found this book while on a wild goose chase for a different book for my mother. I was intrigued by the prolificness of the author and the wide range of milieu he covered, and how I had never heard of him before, so I thought I would check out one of his books and see if I was missing anything. (I chose this one because the name was funny.) Not so much, unless you're into books where someone gets eviscerated or beheaded every other page, and where the characters talk like Globe Theatre rejects.
  Interesting. I just Googled to see if I shed any light on this dude and apparently he's black, the first black bestselling author, the first black person to have a book purchased by a Hollywood studio for a film adapatation. Apparently "Yerby was often criticized by blacks for the lack of focus on or stereotypical treatment of African American characters in his books". He argued in response that "the novelist hasn't any right to inflict on the public his private ideas on politics, race, or religion". Which means either he's full of shit, or homophobia was so rampant in 1967 that statements like this don't even qualify as political:

  Ariston looked from Pandoros, his gray beard elaborately curled, perfumed, all his gestures mincing -- Athena in her wisdom inform me how such a thing ever sired children! he thought -- to Brimos, his heavy, grossly muscled body melting into fat; to Chalcodon, clearly his father's sun, even to the trace of rouge on his lips, the languid gestures, the blurring of the lines between the sexes, the ultimate outraging of life, of nature, the final destruction of the identity and continuity of man.

• The Consumer's Good Chemical Guide by John Emsley
  This is pretty much the same book as the Emsley book discussed below, covering mostly different chemicals but with the same message and format. Apart from some truly dismal diet advice, the review is the same: interesting, eye-opening but occasionally dry.
• Shake Hands With The Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda by Lt.-Gen. Roméo Dallaire
  Holy shit, this book took me a long time to read. It was only a couple of weeks but it seemed like months. (In the time it took me to read it, in fact, Dallaire won the richly deserved Governor General's Literary Award for Nonfiction.) It took me a long time to read because some days I couldn't drag myself back to it; I would make up excuses to avoid it or just not find the time. Not because it's a bad book -- it's a very good book, a beautiful and important book -- but because it's so extraordinarily painful. I really would like to hide my head in the sand and pretend that horrible things like the genocide in Rwanda don't happen, but as a citizen and a human being I should at the very least bear witness to this kind of evil. It was an act of tremendous courage for Dallaire to write Shake Hands With The Devil and I am glad that he did. I can't seem to find the words to express how this book moved me; suffice to say I will be thinking about it for a long time.
• A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper by John Allen Paulos
  In this book Paulos uses mathematics to talk about the various sections of the newspaper, and uses the various sections of the newspaper to talk about mathematics. There's no particular point or thesis to it all, it's just conversational blahdiblah, more like a bunch of columns than a book. It was quite enjoyable but a little dry in parts, kind of like the beef I roasted last week.

October

• Emil in the Soup Tureen by Astrid Lindgren
  I loved this book as a child so I took it out of the library and I still like it. It's funny and sweet and slightly subversive. I also got Meal One by Ivor Cutler, which I loved all over again for the relationship between the Mum and the boy, and for its simple surreality.
• Trees Make The Best Mobiles: Simple Ways to Raise Your Child in a Complex World by Jessica Teich and Brandel France de Bravo
  The underlying message of this book, that you should treat your child with dignity and respect, is undermined by the amount of ridiculous advice and ponderous opinionating. I wish I hadn't already taken it back to the library so I could do it justice by quoting it, but at one point they advise you to tell your toddler to touch a flower gently with a full paragraph of explanation. Any toddler worth her salt would be two flower beds away beheading daisies before you got halfway through your sermon. Oh, and there's a chapter about how pacifiers are bad and thumbs are good, which to me is so much a matter of opinion that to devote an entire chapter to it is absurd.
• The Baby Bistro Cookbook: Healthy, Delicious Cuisine for Babies, Toddlers and You by Joohee Muromcew
  Lots of great recipes in this book, from breakfast to dessert. The recipes are quick, easy, healthy and well-presented. The prologue was a little annoying with its emphasis on organic food and her saintly references to low-sugar cookies and homemade crackers (see media, perfect mothers, myth, below) but the quality of the recipes more than makes up for it. I will probably buy a copy of this book.
• The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined Women by Susan J. Douglas and Meredith W. Michaels
  A thought-provoking and sometimes funny discussion of how the media sets mothers up for failure by promoting an ideal of mothers as perfect teachers, nurturers, child psychologists, doctors and nutritionists while the government provides no support. This book made me glad to live in Ontario, where parents get a year of paid leave after having a child, and where daycare is at least available and regulated, if not plentiful. And of course there's that health care thing. The only problem I had with the book was the short, flippant "what can you do to solve this problem" chapter at the end.
• The Human Factor: Revolutionizing the Way People Live with Technology by Kim Vicente
  This is an interesting, sometimes chilling, book about how technology and processes are often not designed with humans in mind, expecting us to be endlessly adaptive and never make mistakes. Vicente proposes a Human-tech revolution (he put a whole lot of thought into that name) in which designers would study the way their designs are actually used, and learn from near-misses and mistakes how to improve them. He discusses how this has already been done in some industries (nuclear power) and how badly it needs to be done in others (medicine). Again, a little dry in parts, but generally readable and informative.
• Vanity, Vitality, and Virility: The Science Behind the Products You Love to Buy by John Emsley
  This is an introduction, for non-scientists, to a few chemicals we encounter on a daily basis. It's interesting, albeit a little dry at times, and eye-opening in that it reveals the truth behind a few common chemical misunderstandings. Trans fat? Not so bad. Aluminium? Does not cause Alzheimer's. Emsley has a "Why People Believe Weird Things" chapter of his own, including a short discussion of the misuses of statistics in the media. I wouldn't mind owning a copy of this book as a reference.
• Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time by Michael Shermer
  I love a good debunk as much as the next girl, but this book goes one better. As well as demolishing such nonsense as Holocaust denial and creation science, Shermer discusses the logical fallacies people use to prop up their crazy ideas, and what aspects of human nature cause people to believe this foolishness in the first place. He also has some thoughts on how we can make society as a whole more critical and skeptical.
• 365 Toddler Tips: A Helpful Handbook for the Early Years by Penny Warner with Paula Kelly, M.D.
  Helpful indeed -- a book of one-page (give or take) tips on various toddler-related topics; health, safety, food, development, games, discipline, and so on. I wouldn't use it as a comprehensive reference, but it's good for flipping through. Actually, it reminded me of one of those Reader's Digest "700 Helpful Household Tips" books, only for toddlers.
• Tears of the Giraffe by Alexander McCall Smith
• A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
  A very depressing read -- it's one thing when bad things happen to people because of stuff like hurricanes or car crashes, but it's another when the bad things are caused by malice and greed. There is a lot of the latter in this book; every time the characters catch a break some other shitty thing happens to them. I hope India isn't still like this, but even if it isn't, some other place probably is. It makes me very sad and angry, and also very grateful that I live in Canada.

September

• The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith.
  I really liked the vivid picture this book painted of life in Africa. I think I will send a copy to my mother for her birthday, since she likes mysteries and loves Africa. I'm glad there are more books in the series.
• The Frumious Bandersnatch by Ed McBain.
  Standard Ed McBain goodness. I was struck by how he keeps his books so up-to-date whilst never apparently aging his characters.
• Downtown by Anne Rivers Siddons.
  I picked this up at my parents' place. Not great literature, but it painted a vivid picture of the shit women had to put up with in the working world in the seventies: harassment you were supposed to tolerate with a smile, getting lousy assignments, having your boss and your fiance confer on what projects you can and cannot work on. Life is better now, at least in software.
• Due Preparations for the Plague by Janette Turner Hospital.
  I'm not loving this book; the characters are whiny and consumed by their own victimhood. I am enjoying the mystery element of it, but I just tried to renew it and found out I couldn't because it's on hold for someone else, so I will have to return it unread, mystery unsolved. Actually I think I will skip to the end, because I'm not enjoying it enough to take it out again.
• Everybody's Pepys: the diary of Samuel Pepys, 1660-1669 by Samuel Pepys.
  I started reading this as a regular book, and as such it's kind of lame -- lousy character development, no plot as such, lots of discussion of what Pepys wore, how good he looked, what he ate, and so on -- like a one-man Lobby. Once I gave up on reading it straight, and instead shamelessly skimmed and dipped and skipped to the good parts (the plague, the fire, the affair -- why are the good parts to read the worst parts to live through?) it got much better. This is more a book to own and enjoy in bites than to take out of the library and try and devour all at once.
• About a Boy by Nick Hornby.
  Very funny.
• The Brothers K by David James Duncan.
  I love this book, except I lost a bunch of sleep because I kept staying up really late to read it. That part sucked.

August

• Absalom Absalom by William Faulkner.
  I gave up on this because it was too long-winded and wordy and convoluted, and I am just not that smart.
• Stonebrook Cottage by Carla Neggers
  Crap
• Clare Callan by Richard B. Wright
• Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis De Bernieres
• Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley
• Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in the Markets and in Life by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
• Still Lake by Anne Stuart

July

• A Rulebook for Arguments by Anthony Weston
• Classical Music for Beginners by Stacy Combs Lynch
• Seven Seasons of Buffy: Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Discuss Their Favorite Television Show, ed. by Glenn Yeffeth
• Scary! 2: More stories that will make you scream, ed. by Peter Haining
• Firewing by Kenneth Oppel
• Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss

May, June

• Beach House by Mary Alice Monroe
• Leslie's Journal by Allan Stratton
• numerous books on sleep including but not limited to:
  • Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems by Richard Ferber
  • The No-Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley
  • Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth
• magazines (as usual):
  • Today's Parent
  • Real Simple
  • Toronto Life
  • New Scientist
  • Parents

April

• Are We Having Fun Yet? The 16 Secrets of Happy Parenting by Kay Willis and Maryann Bucknum Bailey
• Worried All The Time: Overparenting in an Age of Anxiety and How to Stop It by David Anderegg
• Stealth Health: How to Sneak Nutrition Painlessly Into Your Diet by Evelyn Tribole
• Jennifer Government by Max Barry

March

• Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale edited by James B. South
• Lyra's Oxford by Philip Pullman
• Five to Eight by Dorothy Butler

February

• Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife by Peggy Vincent
• Fast Women by Jennifer Cruisie
• Count Karlstein by Philip Pullman
• The Boggart by Susan Cooper
• The Secret Under My Skin by Janet McNaughton
• Babies Need Books by Dorothy Butler (recommended)
• Feed Me! I'm Yours by Vicki Lansky (not recommended)
• Did Adam and Eve Have Navels?: Debunking Pseudoscience by Martin Gardner

January

• The Hungry Gene: The Inside Story of the Obesity Industry by Ellen Ruppel Shell
• Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon
• Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke
• That Scatterbrain Booky,
  With Love from Booky, and
  As Ever, Booky by Bernice Thurman Hunter
• Fox Evil by Minette Walters

Previously

• 2003