The Charming Quirks of Others, Alexander McCall Smith

Henry Raeburn, Mrs. Alexander Allan With Her Granddaughter, Matilda, 1815ish

(February 15) Love, love, love Isabel. But was a little disturbed in this book by how faithless she was about Jamie, and how she went to others first the moment she heard news that made her doubt him. Also noticing for the first time (or it feels like it) that Isabel is almost always 100 per cent wrong with her first conjectures. She is anti-Holmes, who always knows immediately who’s done the deed and only reveals it later. It’s a different way of keeping the reader in suspense, because you always want to agree with Isabel and her first conjecture.

Stories and misunderstandings were interesting as usual and Isabel is so charming in the way she thinks.

But she is always wrong and I think she always was and I just didn’t absorb it till now -- I gave her the benefit of the doubt.

Jamie cries a lot in this book. Thought that was going to come to something.

Also, garlic gets dwelt upon a couple of times, and I thought that was going to come to something, too.

Neither did.

And, in fact, a lot hinges on a visual impairment that we don’t know about till the very end... so... ::head tilt::.

Gunn’s Golden Rules: Life’s Little Lessons for Making It Work, A Guide to Taste, Quality and Style, Tim Gunn with Ada Calhoun, Kate Moloney

(February 4, February 16) I really like Tim Gunn -- he’s open, naive, he enjoys a good story, he loves pasta and meatloaf. In Golden Rules, he says he’s revealing his secrets for good manners, which surprised me -- I thought it was going to be a fashion book --, but really he wants to dish the dirt on people, well-known and anonymous, who have been rude. There is some anger there, some love of revenge, so it made me a bit squeamish... until this sentence at the end:

But let’s talk some more about the bad ones, because they’re the most fun to gossip about, and they deserve a little public shaming.

and he’s right, so, OK.

Contains the most unexpected sentence ever:

Sometimes it takes two years for these patients to build up the strength in their stumps so that the prosthetics will work.

O_o

A Guide to Taste, Quality and Style was much more the style guide that I expected with the other, but I still felt less style-guided than I did with the Nina Garcia books. This book is very witty and fun, like the other. His beliefs about posture jive with all my own beliefs about posture, and this was very gratifying.

The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley

The Forgotten Goddess, Blue Morgana

(February 19) This took months to read -- it’s an enormous book and I had to put it down several times to read other books that were on tighter deadlines at the library, but I kept on coming back to it enthusiastically.

What a saga -- not just because it’s long and has two or three perspectives (two major, one minor), but because Zimmer Bradley has incorporated all the old sagas known to English lit into one big ball of cohesive saga-material. I was really impressed by how she endeavoured to “make sense” of the many contradictions in Arthurian legends.

She tries to do the same with all Western religions while she’s at it.

I was also impressed by Zimmer Bradley’s ability to capture the “feel” of Old English narratives in speech and dialogue -- there was enough OE vocabulary and sentence structure to sound “right” but not so much as to become unintelligible or twee or ridiculous.

I called it “The Mists of Estrogen” in my head because it was dripping with '70s - '80s feminism -- the idea that women are run by (and have power because of) their menstrual cycles and birthing and breastfeeding and being receptacles of the creation of life -- the Gaia-Goddess-Fecundity-Vegetation Mystery Tour. From reading just a little background, I think she may in fact have had a big hand in creating that gestalt.

Anatomy of the Spirit, Caroline Myss

Fernando Vicente, Deslenguado, 2008

(January 19) This book was a roller-coaster ride, if a roller-coaster ride can be thought of as starting off in a mildly exciting way, then becoming totally disappointing, and then turning out OK.

A Greener Tea recommended this, and it sounded vaguely interesting (spiritual, in an Eat, Love, Pray kind of way), but when I got it home, it turned out Myss is an amazing mystic intuitive, able to diagnose illnesses and physical problems simply by meeting a person and even by just hearing about a person through a certain person. And she said that this book would teach you how to become one yourself!

But after a few amazing stories of her diagnoses and cures of various people, the book got severely disappointing. It suddenly appeared that she wanted to do an exercise in comparative religions -- she was going to show us how the seven Christian sacraments, the ten Jewish sefirot and the seven Hindu chakras were all the same thing. (She didn’t add in Islam because she doesn’t know anything about it. :/)

So she goes through all these moral truths and shows how they relate to the sacraments and the sefirot, etc., but she really isn’t teaching us to be medical intuitives! And some of the so-called parallelisms between the three religions were pretty forced. And what about those of us who don’t need to have ideas legitimized by Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism?

It was very strange. It was a sudden shift and a kind of incoherent one.

But then about two-thirds through, the stories about people who were sick or in trouble because of something they screwed up in their chakras seemed to become more interesting. So... OK.

Cool Water, Dianne Warren

Marlys Farn-Guillette, The Fence Is Down

(December 25) Got this when I heard it won a 2010 Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction. Can see why it won something -- it's very serious (reminds me of Ann Patchett) -- everything happens in one day and everything that happens echoes an event that occurred in the area 100 years ago (to the day) -- so the Saskatchewan landscape never changes and is the ultimate victor over puny human happenings à la Ozymandias -- and so on and so forth.

But a book like this -- you can never stop being aware that you are reading a book that has been carefully crafted to evoke all this symbolism -- it never lifts you out of yourself and out of the feeling that you are reading a carefully crafted book and into the realm of vicariously lived excitement, and that's what I really want from a book.

However, I was surprised and enchanted to learn that there's a desert in Saskatchewan. Everyone in the book acknowledges or comments fleetingly on the fact that no one knows there is a desert in Saskatchewan, and they are right. Which is kind of cool.

Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese

Aleka Gebre Selassie Adil, Mother Ethiopia, 1960

(December 6) Really liked it, especially at first: for about the first two-thirds, it was wondrous... vivid and evocative in a way that reminded me of Half of a Yellow Sun, with a mild hint of magic reality to it à la Gabriel García Márquez, which was lovely. (I'm thinking of the story of the parents, particularly.)

But then, once it left Ethiopia, the story seemed to think it was about medicine primarily; instead of being about people who also practiced medicine, it morphed into a creaking, artificial set-up for a medical drama. The symbolism groaned at you.

But the first two-thirds -- gold.

One Day, David Nicholls

Niki Sands, Love's Melody

(November 16) This book surprised me in two ways: first, I didn't realize it was a rom-com till I was well into it and really liking the characters. It was written by a man, after all! But it was totally rom-commy ... so light, so like a Sophie Kinsella book ... but with just a slight bit more.... complexity? I had to keep looking at the book jacket photo to make sure Nicholls was a man.

It was so likable. When at one point I had to return it to the library half-read, I really missed Em and Dex.

Second, this book blindsided me like no other in a long time. Well, Fingersmith blindsided me only six months ago... but, really, only those two books in my whole life, I think.

Ape House, Sara Gruen

Marc Johnson, Smoking Monkey

(October 21) She had me at "Ape," plus I already loved Water for Elephants.

This book was worth it for the information about bonobos alone, but Gruen also kept a few plot-plates spinning with great flair.

The book did devolve a bit into TV-sitcom territory eventually, but I was fine with that since the alternative might easily have been animal abuse and too much drama.

There were ironic-twist sub-stories showing how an L.A. lifestyle compels people to change everything that's unique and lovable about them (for example, the parallel between two characters who get a lot of plastic surgery, one because of injuries from an explosion and the other because she's trying to make it in Hollywood) and questioning whether prestige and integrity go hand-in-hand in the media (a writer only finds himself when he stoops to work for the worst rag in the country).

But mainly, it was the bonobos.

The Global Forest, Diana Beresford-Kroeger

Laura Milnor Iverson, Nature's Bright Peace

(October 13) Heard her interviewed on the CBC and was entranced with her descriptions of the biochemistry of trees, wanted to read more.

And this book is interesting, eventually... but I had a hard time getting past the style at times. She wants to invest her remarks with "ancient wisdom" and tries all sorts of methods of doing this -- writing in the style of fairy tales, children's readers, the Bible, and so on. (She even tries an erotic style once or twice.)

A favourite style is to machine-gun you with a lengthy series of short declarative sentences. I enjoy a short declarative sentence, but more than 10 in a row and you begin to think a writer's first language is not English. Sample:

There is a new violence in the world. This violence stands apart from all the other familiar forms. This one is silent and it shows no mercy to the young and the old. It is in the air we breathe. The air is no longer clean.

The new violence is measured in microns, a size smaller than a pollen grain. The violence is particulate pollution. This form of pollution is composed of tiny fragments of matter that will become airborne. Anything can become airborne if it is small enough or light enough or has the right kind of aerodynamic form to fly. These tiny particles are now finding a new name depending on their diameter, expressed as particle microns, or PM for short.

Size matters. Any pollution particles that measure PM 2.5 or less are lethal to the human body. They are also lethal to much of the rest of the animal kingdom.

The book is billed as a collection of essays, so I guess this entitles a writer to try different techniques of infusing grandiosity, but since none of the essays repeat information, you know they were intended to be published together, so "collection of essays" just becomes a license to not have a more intrinsic structural plan.

Plus, overall, there is this cliché of "we are destroying the planet" at every turn. I could maybe forgive her if the book were five years old, but the publishing date is 2010, and, lady, we've heard this refrain.

Don't know why the biochemistry of trees can't be treated as interesting for its own sake.

Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert

Pablo Picasso, Girl Before a Mirror, 1932

(September 29) Read this to be able to join in on the general sneering, for that's the only reaction to it I ever saw on my internet travels. Case in point: it was endorsed by Oprah, in some ways the worst thing that can happen to a book's credibility (though it means it will sell well).

But I liked Eat, Pray, Love quite a bit. I liked Gilbert's voice, I identified with her quest, I laughed out loud many times.

The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins

(September 15, September 20, September 25) This "Young Adult" series was getting all kinds of hype because Mockingjay came out in August... so I took it up in hopes it was the next Harry Potter or Golden Compass.

The Hunger Games was a bit disappointing, at first, because nothing can be Harry Potter or The Golden Compass or even Twilight, after all, and also because I found it really Young Adult, really teenagery... with teenage preoccupations (dating, clothes, rejecting authority). Collins worked hard to come up with a story that would allow her heroine to balance two amazing love interests forever.

But then, by Catching Fire, the story had built up momentum for me, despite the Contrive-o-matic Machine lumbering along in the background. It was interesting to see what Collins was going to do with this love triangle, after all.

Mockingjay took the series into darker and more horrific territory than I ever would have imagined. There were some really interesting points made about how a rebel movement can be just as corrupt as the government it attempts to overthrow; it wasn't just a Star Wars-style battle between good and evil. But the final book is one long blood-bath and the resolution of Katniss's love troubles is very anti-climactic.

Year of Wonders, Geraldine Brooks

Hendrik Kerstens, Shopping Bag, 2008

(September 5) I enjoyed this quite a bit, even though it is a tad grisly in its descriptions of plague victims and the day-to-day brutality of 17th-century village life.

It's a little like a Sarah Waters novel, in that the first-person narrator is crafted to have the preoccupations and language of a bygone age -- but Brooks is not as convincing with this as Waters was with her Victorians. On the other hand, if Brooks did try to make it as authentic as possible, no one would be able to understand it. See Pepys' Twitter account.

This is also a little like Diana Gabaldon's 18th-century novels with all the interesting details about medical knowledge and superstitions of the time.

What I really liked about it was that it set up certain expectations about the outcomes for certain individuals -- and then did not take us there at all! Quite surprising! In fact, the way the novel ends is basically a bolt from the blue. But an interesting bolt -- for our heroine is much better off and more empowered in the culture of "our enemy" than she ever was before.

What I found hard to take: all the sad dying. But, what are you gonna do? It's a novel about the Plague Year.

The Amazing Power of Deliberate Intent; Ask and It Is Given, Esther and Jerry Hicks

Goddess Selket, Pharaoh Tutankhamun, Egyptian Museum, Egypt, 1323 BCE

(August 31, February 20) This is another version of The Secret and The Science of Getting Rich; this one is a lot more sure about the way things are, especially death.

I really like Abraham's voice, actually -- "they" are very no-nonsense, balls-to-the-wall about everything.

Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov

Polixeni Papapetrou, Olympia as Lewis Carroll’s Beatrice Hatch before White Cliffs, 2003

(August 25) I am so surprised to be saying that this is a great book and that I enjoyed it. I never wanted to read about pedophilia and believed I'd never read this novel, but Lolita is always included on "best" book lists, including recently a "30 books to read before 30" -- which is really cutting it fine, right? -- so I gave in.

And so it is a great book -- an amazing book, all the more amazing because it makes an unsavory subject completely enjoyable. As Stephen Metcalf says, "with Lolita, you must work past its beauty to recognize how shocking it is", and it is sometimes very hard work to get past the beauty.

The Little Stranger, Sarah Waters

Bsidez, Photo of the Chateau de Miranda

(August 3) This is Waters’ fifth and most recent book; ::sigh:: now I will have to wait two and half years for the next one.

Like Night Watch, this is set in post-Second World War England; like Affinity, there is a supernatural element; like the first three (Tipping the Velvet, Affinity and Fingersmith) it is a first-person narrative.

But unlike them all, the narrator is a heterosexual man... and there is no lesbianism in it at all... unless you count the very slight hint that Caroline might be lesbian. (This is never resolved, nor in some ways even relevant.)

AND.

There’s no plot twist! Unless the lack of a plot twist is the twist!

For, knowing Waters, I paid careful attention all through the book to any doubts or suspicions hanging vaguely around a character’s words or motives, and yet none of the “planted” clues -- the narrator’s early destructive act in the house and his latter despair and recklessness over his broken engagement, Seeley’s pompousness, Caroline’s hardness, Mrs. Ayres’ snobbishness, Roderick’s shell-shock, Betty’s acting skills... and dozens of other little sinister moments -- none of them congealed into a villain responsible for a number of deaths.

The house was tagged as the villain from the start, and that is how it is left. In fact, it is a little alarming at the end that the narrator is still hanging about the house, although Waters doesn’t make him seem insane.

Nonetheless, I expected till the very last page that there would be a rational explanation, since Affinity created the same air of the possibility of supernatural events and then quite dashed it in the end.

Here it was not dashed; this time there is no real explanation. And, really, it’s the house that dominates the story like a lead character. The house has amazing presence for an inanimate object.

Atmosphere is everything in this story, and is actually very rewarding despite the absence of a neat tying-up of loose ends. It’s spooky and suspenseful... haunting... the more so because of those loose ends, really.

Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century, Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger

Howard Terpning, detail of art for Cleopatra movie poster, 1963

(July 22) It took two people to write this? Heh.

Actually, it was really professionally written -- really easy to breeze through, with lots of timely repetition and signposting so you don’t have to think too hard about anything.

The book doesn’t surprise with more inside dirt than I remember from the gossip mags of the time, which built an industry on Liz’n’Dick stories (today’s “Brangelina” phenomenon is a mere shadow in comparison). Still, it’s good at organizing everything into a linear narrative, drawing parallels and pointing out significant turning points.

It was surprising to get to the end of what is touted as the story of a romance and find out the book was really meant to be a biography of Richard Burton -- at least that’s apparently what the authors let on to Elizabeth Taylor it would be, since she wanted a memorial to Burton.

But I guess that’s not a cheat -- it’s clear Burton’s whole life was affected by Elizabeth Taylor, right down to how he’s memorialized.

The Night Watch, Sarah Waters

Clive Branson, Blitz: Plane Flying (1940)

(July 18) I’m still binging on Sarah Waters. This one is set during the blitzing of London in World War II and is third-person... so a departure from first-person faux Victoriana. The structural twist is in the sequence of the narrative; you know you’re going to find out why all the characters are behaving the way they do, and it’s fun to speculate on what those psychological turning points will be.

“Night watch” turned out to mean many different things, none of them dwelt on in a LOOK AT THIS SYMBOL way, which was a nice subtlety.

I liked it a lot, but Fingersmith is still my favourite.

Tinkers, Paul Harding

Dale Mathis, David Mechanica

(June 30) This is really a long poem, or that’s, at least, the kindest way of describing it... it’s another Housekeeping style description of lost souls, with the same aimless cataloguing of feelings and impressions as they wander in the wilderness. These people always wander in the wilderness for good lengths of time.

The thing is, it’s not a novel.

No wonder Marilynne Robinson is quoted on the cover (her comment: “Tinkers is truly remarkable”).

This is about the deaths of three generations of fathers and sons, all telescoping into one another. Because each of them tinkers in one way or another, I hoped that the climax of the “story” might be some tour de force of literary clockwork mechanics, something impressive in the invention of narrative. Alas, that was not to be.

Many BookCel members raved about it.

There were many beautiful moments in it; don’t get me wrong.

Tipping the Velvet, Sarah Waters

Portrait of Vesta Tilley, 1901 (artist unknown)

(June 11) This is Waters' first novel and is quite different from the second and third. The latter were more carefully structured and full of clever twists, and lesbianism was incidental; here, the narrative is a picaresque life, with wildly disproportionate pacing (like life), and lesbianism is first and foremost.

Also, the "voicing" of the Victorian narrator is not trying to be as authentic as it is in Affinity and Fingersmith; in fact, the narrator sounds quite modern.

But these are just differences I didn't expect. I can see why Tipping was an impressive first novel and won prizes, but I think Waters' best was yet to come.

It's odd to have read the second and third novels first, I suppose, but I don't think I would have been so keen to read more Waters had I read Tipping first. So... lucky for me.

Affinity, Sarah Waters

Evelyn Pickering De Morgan, Hope in the Prison of Despair

(June 1) Like Fingersmith, another well done twist... oh, Waters is good at making unreliable narrators seem reliable. Everything is so plausible. And this was a fascinating exposé of spiritualism. A little darker than Fingersmith in some ways -- different kind of dark, anyway... so interesting how one is quick to identify with a first-person narrator and see all her good points and empathize with her struggles, and ignore her weaknesses and illusions, even though they are all there for the observing.

Waters so authentically captures the way Victorians thought and expressed themselves. She has read a shit-ton of diaries, letters and novels of the period, fo sho.