Category: Book Reviews (Page 37 of 47)

Back in December I previewed The Dread Crew, and I’m thrilled to say that it’s every bit as wonderful as I’d hoped. The Dread Crew are a bunch of wily backwoods pirates who go around mucking up the place and being general nuisances and bullies. They take what they want and do what they want and are rather miserable about it all.

The Dread Crew are what Max and the Wild Things would have become if Max stuck around as their king.

Thankfully, good ol’ junk collector Joe knows just how to turn a brawling bunch of junk-hunting pirates into eccentric, and adored, members of the community.

The Dread Crew is a funny book that’s good for little people who like to be read to and big people who like a good laugh. For example, the most feared pirate punishment is office work.

If your kids are still enough to enjoy chapter books, then they should be game for this one. There’s nothing about it that reminds me of Charlotte’s Web, but I feel like it’s that kind of book, one to remember and to read and re-read.

I adore the Dread Crew: Hector the Wrecker Gristle, Slime Bucket Sam, Cranky Frankie, Fetchin Gretchen, and the whole pirate gang.

The Dread Crew: Pirates for the Backwoods by Kate Inglis
Published in Canada by Nimbus Publishing

Click the cover to browse inside (opens new window).

I came to know Chuck Klosterman through his fiction work, Downtown Owl,. Because I loved his novel so much I started seeking out his other works, which seemed to be nonfiction essays. Eating the Dinosaur is one of those collections and it’s brilliant. Not a day goes by that I don’t quote something from this book.

Eating the Dinosaur is the Chicken Soup for the Smarty-pants Soul.

I used to be annoyed when James constantly quoted or mentioned essays in this book. He read the book first, But I adopted these habits after finishing the book. Dammit, Klosterman is smart, or at least his ideas are compelling, which makes him seem smart, and by default makes me feel smart. Hence the smarty-pants comment above.

Chuck Klosterman has good journalist written all over him. He’s covered music, film, and sports, and remembers the details. He dissects pop culture the way miners pan for gold. After clearing away the dirt and shifting away the common things, Klosterman holds up the nuggets. And those nuggets are the totality of perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that make up our understanding of the world, and by world I mean world of culture consumption.

He talks about why music fan’s hate their favorite bands. Why superstars aren’t paid enough. Why singers are compelled to try out different personalities. Why interviewees want to tell the truth. What the truth is. Why Germans don’t laugh at nervous North American laughter. Why North Americans laugh. Why Ralph Nader is a literalist and how that makes him unlikeable. How the Unabomber could be wrong in his actions but right in his thoughts. Why TV is bad and the Branch Dividian not so bad. And why politicians are terribly sorry, and alcoholic.

This is my favourite nonfiction book of 2010. (The Waterproof Bible is my favourite novel, in case you’re asking.)

Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman
Published in Canada by Simon and Schuster in hardcover, paperback and ebook.

Sarah Waters is a lovely writer. She has written four bestselling novels: Tipping the Velvet, Affinity, Fingersmith and The Night Watch. Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith were by far my favourites, and those rankings stand.

The Little Stranger is a dark, and maddeningly compelling, read. Set in post-World-War-I rural Warwickshire, the dumpy, semi-successful bachelor Dr. Faraday has the hots for plain-Jane, fallen-from-riches Caroline Ayres. It’s an Austen-esque affair with a Mary Shelley monster story as a plot driver.

The Austen Element: Dr. Faraday becomes interested in Caroline Ayres, or perhaps the status she represents (even though she’s poorer than a church mouse). Caroline is interested in Dr. Faraday as an exit route from her dire circumstances and family burdens. I won’t spoil the romance tale by telling you what happens here.

The Shelley Element: Hundreds Hall has been home to the Ayres family for centuries. It’s a grand mansion that’s crumbling without dignity. An eyesore, a money sinkhole and an emotional burden (how can you give up the family home even as it drags you down), the home has personality and character in ways that become hauntingly evident throughout the novel.

As sinister things occur to each family member, it is Dr. Faraday, our trusty narrator, who is left to rationalize the happenings. But is he so endearing? Is he an infallible narrator?

Again, I won’t spoil it by telling you my thoughts here. Instead I’ll say that although the narrative was eerie and formed a great literary suspense story, I found Dr. Faraday exasperating. Not enough to stop reading, but enough to feel like he was an unwanted guest at an afternoon tea party from which I couldn’t extract myself.

If you like Sarah Waters, definitely give this one a read. If you haven’t heard of her before, start with Tipping the Velvet or Fingersmith, then make your way to this novel.

www.sarahwaters.com

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
Published in Canada by McClelland & Stewart in hardcover, paperback and ebook

Not only does Greystone publish beautifully written books, they design them beautifully. This petite package is absolutely lovely. The Amazon thumbnail below does not do it justice.

One word review: Eloquent

Crozier is a fine, fine writer. Her memoir’s style is like a novel, or a Canadian long poem for those of you who know what that is. The vivid narrative, wistful poetry and snippets of daily life take us to Crozier’s childhood and adolescence in Swift Current, Saskatchewan. The poverty of the prairies is mixed with the stoicism of prairie folk, hard-working toilers of the land who love to stand in the wheat, feel the wind in their hair, and can’t imagine a better place. (And, of course, there are the town drunks, the self-righteous, the nosy neighbours, and all variety of friends.)

Small Beneath the Sky was a slow read for me, each sentence so tightly crafted that I needed to savour it like a popsicle on a hot summer day.

Andrew Kaufman is one of my favourite writers, even though he’s only written one book, All My Friends Are Superheroes. But that changes this month with the publication of his second book, a novel called The Waterproof Bible, and I’m meaning that what’s changed in the number of books published, not my fandom.

The Waterproof Bible backcover has one of those descriptions that either impresses you or frightens you.

Quote: A magical story of love and the isolation that defines the modern condition – Andrew Kaufman pulls off the near impossible and creates a wholly original allegorical tale that is both emotionally resonant and outlandishly fun.

Rebecca Reynolds is a young woman with a most unusual and inconvenient problem: no matter how hard she tries, she can’t stop her emotions from escaping her body and entering the world around her. Luckily she’s developed a nifty way to trap and store her powerful emotions in personal objects – but how many shoeboxes can a girl fill before she feels crushed by her past?

Three events force Rebecca to change her ways: the unannounced departure of her husband, Stewart; the sudden death of Lisa, her musician sister; and, while on her way to Lisa’s funeral, a near-crash with what appears to be a giant frogwoman recklessly speeding in a Honda Civic.

Meanwhile, Lisa’s inconsolable husband skips the funeral and flies to Winnipeg where he begins a bizarre journey that strips him of everything before he can begin to see a way through his grief, all with the help of a woman who calls herself God.

What the hell, right?

This is a book about what we think about before we die: who has a score to settle, who needs to say farewell, who needs forgiveness, who needs forgetfulness. In the case of The Waterproof Bible the characters are all tied in some way to the death of Lisa.

Lisa’s husband Lewis needs to deal with his grief through flight. Flight in a twofold way in that he chooses flight vs. fight and flight as in he jumps on an airplane to get far away. Far away from himself, I believe.

Lisa’s sister Rebecca has so much emotion that she doesn’t know what to do with it. She’s a woman with a lot of baggage. As she physically and metaphorically lets go, she’s able to come to terms with herself.

Lisa’s brother-in-law Stewart is estranged from Rebecca and is living somewhere in the middle of the Prairies, where he’s building a boat. Landlocked and oh so misguided, or so it seems.

Margaret and Aby are two Aquatics whose lives intersect with the other three. Aquatics are those who are meant to live underwater, according to the laws of the Aquatic Bible. But Margaret has chosen another path, much to the chagrin of her daughter Aby who, in making her way to her mother’s home on the Prairies, has a run-in (in the literal sense) with Rebecca and Lewis. Oh and Margaret runs the hotel where Stewart works and is building the boat.

I know it’s all bizarre, but truly, this is my favourite book of 2010.

Kaufman writes literary fantasy the way that Gabriel Garcia Marquez writes magical realism. Where indeed is the line? The Waterproof Bible is a crazy, magical story of love, the beginning, middle and end, and life, the beginning, middle and end. I loved it.

Andrew Kaufman’s writing is completely sensible, even with the greenskined Aquatics floating around on the Prairies. Andrew, thank you so very much for giving us a second book that rivals the first. It’s lovely and brilliant.

I hardly even re-read books, but this one is back in the nightstand pile.

The Waterproof Bible by Andrew Kaufman
Published by Random House in ebook and hardcover on Feb 23, 2010.

Thank you for the advance copy!

Tea Time for the Traditionally Built by Alexander McCall Smith is the New No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Novel. And it came from Santa.

In short, Mma Ramotswe walks to work to eschew laziness. Mma Makutsi worries about the new saleslady at her fiance’s furniture store, and the ladies look for a soccer traitor. It’s typical McCall Smith and it’s wonderfully comforting to partake in the ebb and flow of this series.

Author Kate Inglis is one of those people who you meet and never want to leave. I’d move in next door if she didn’t live on the opposite coast. But aside from being lovely, she’s a great author.

Her first book, The Dread Crew is an imaginative tale of filth, friendships and backwoods pirates. It’s the story of a boy, a crew of dirty, warty, natty, rude, pugnacious, revolting, disgusting pirates who show up demanding things from the villagers that they hoard.

The Dread Crew is one of those tales that starts in the woods when a mother is walking with her restless tot, home is still a ways away, and there’s nothing fueling the walk expect whatever story she can pull from the air. Anyone who’s a mom knows how this works, but few of those stories actually find their way to the published page.

As Kate says, “it occurred to me that writing something silly was highly speculative, a debatable spend of martial and mothering time. I shrugged. I kept it to myself because I thrive in the pressureless void of low expectations. I hadd 15,000 words before telling my husband–with my mouth full, behind my hand–that I was writing a novel. A three-year spell of insomnia was my groundswell. Getting published was an accident.”

Listen to my audio preview of the book: (MP3 6 MB should play with Google Reader)

I had a sneak peak at some new books from Random House of Canada Ltd. and these are my favourites:

See the list on Amazon’s Listmania

1. Ossuaries by Dionne Brand (poetry)
“Dionne Brand’s mesmerizing new collection of poems is about human zoos; bones, culture, the fabric of our times.”
Brand is awesome, I’m sure to love this one.

2. Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen (poetry)
“Leonard Cohen’s classic book of contemporary psalms is repackaged. As lovely as the first publication 25 years ago.”
It’s a beautiful package.

3. Tea Time for the Traditionally Built: Book 10 by Alexander Mccall Smith
“The 10th Precious Ramotswe novel is as adorable as the first.”
Precious is precious. I love this series.

4. The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
“Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, this bestselling tale of a family haunted by the past – and perhaps more – has received ecstatic reviews around the world: Waters is exceptional!”
I really, really liked Fingersmith and have been meaning to read more Sarah Waters. This is it!

5. Slow Death by Rubber Duck: How the Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Life Affects Our Health by Rick Smith
“How the toxic soup of our lives is killing us.”
Do I need a book to tell me this? No, but it would be interesting to know how to better navigate the world.

6. Grow Great Grub: Organic Food from Small Spaces by Gayla Trail
“Good food grown in small spaces.”
I have herbs on the balcony and am ready for more.

7. Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd
“A heart-in-mouth conspiracy novel about the fragility of social identity, the corruption at the heart of big busunderbelly of the everyday city.”
A dark, twisted book with quirks that are sure to be my style.

8. The Waterproof Bible by Andrew Kaufman
“Kaufman can’t be missed.”
All My Friends Are Superheroes is a brilliant book. I must read this one.

9. Angelology by Danielle Trussoni
“Angels are big this year. A book to watch.”
Monique’s prediction: angels, oil an religion. We’ll be as fascinated by these things in 2010 as we were by vampires in 2009.

10. The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag: A novel by Alan Bradley
“Flavia is back.”
For Sweetness at the bottom of the pie, this young detective is by to thrill me with her fascination of poisons.

11. Dahanu Road: A novel by Anosh Irani
“Anosh is dark humored but one of my favs.”
Gawd, I love him.

12. Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel
“Taxidermy!”
Life of Pi guy gets every stranger with taxidermy in this novel. Yes, please.

13. Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath
“Nobody likes change but a wet baby–and even then.”
From Made to Stick comes Switch. I won’t switch. I’ll stick.

14. I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced by Nujood Ali
“The internationally bestselling true story of the remarkable ten-year-old Yemeni girl who dared to defy her country’s most archaic traditions byfighting for a divorce.”
This story just seems unbelievable!

15. Boom! by Mark Haddon (young adult)
“I’ll have whatever Mark’s having. Love his work.”
Positioned for young adults, I think this will be a killer hit with adults too.

When Langdon Cook’s book came across my desk, I immediately wondered why James and I hadn’t written this book. But now that Langdon beat us to it, I’m happy to simply tell you that Fat of the Land: Adventures of a 21st Century Forager is a fascinating look at how foraging for your food can be shocking to your friends but also deeply satisfying.

Langdon Cook was a senior book editor at Amazon.com until 2004 when he fled corporate life and shacked up in a little cabin in the woods. Fat of the Land is about how he lived off the grid and foraged for food.

• Free-diving in icy Puget Sound in hopes of spearing a snaggletooth lingcod.
• Picking mushrooms.
• Fly-fishing for sea-run trout.
• Collect stinging nettles.

The prose is a mix of literary humour and travel writing. The chapters are divided up by the seasons and each features some type of foraging for wild edibles and ends with a recipe. The first chapter I read was on crab catching.

James and I regularly go crab catching. And by crab catching, I do not mean with a trap, I mean with a wet suit and cooler. James is the catcher and I’m the keeper. He swims out and dives down for the crabs. When he has more than he can hold in his hands, we meet in the shallow water. I wade out with the cooler, he puts the crabs in, and I snuggle them in ice and then wait for the next two.

In BC, you can keep 4 crabs per license and they have to be 6.5 inches across the carapace (don’t quote me on that, get the ruler) and male.

Various friends have come with us to participate in the catching. They enjoy the eating and, if they are fast learners and get the hang of spotting the crabs in the sand, then they also enjoy the catching. It’s tricky. I can spot the crabs but I can’t hold my breath or dive down in a controlled way. I float like a cork.

After we have our limit, there are two options. Cook them on the beach. Or take them home and cook them on the stove. Either is acceptable.

Reviewed from Uncorrected Proof

Friends with Benefits
A Social Media Marketing Handbook by Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo is coming out this November. Just in time for my birthday.

Lucky for me, their book publisher, No Starch Press, understands geek entertainment and they sent me an advance PDF. Yahoo!

Friends with Benefits is the best book on social media marketing that I’ve read to date. Why is it so great?

Reason 1
My friends wrote it and 3/4s of the way through there’s a screenshot that includes one of my Facebook updates.

Ok, no really, there are better reasons than that.

Reason 2
Friends with Benefits is one of the few books that offers social media marketing case studies with accompanying stats. Although every company has to set their own baseline for metrics, having a reasonable idea of what to expect is critical. Much of this private info is never shared, which means it is hard for a marketer who’s new to social media to answer the boss’s question, “what do I get for this investment in social media.”

Reason 3
There are great passages and quotes.

“The connections we make with other people online are real.”

“The Internet has become a public venue where the audience responds to news reports, suggests stories to cover, and even reports on stories.”

“Marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. A successful campaign is usually the result of a hundred correct decisions and actions.”

Reason 4
Friends with Benefits answers the question, “Why would I want social media when my standard marketing practices are safe and known?”

If you’re a marketer dependent on mass media, then understanding web 2.0 as explained by Barefoot and Szabo will shoot you light years ahead of your competition.

The quick history in the first chapter helps establish the customs and culture that make up the web today; and how PR professionals can work within that framework.

Friends with Benefits is a must-read for social media marketers and those new to the field. There’s stuff for everyone, including the case studies I mentioned above, the reasonable expectations set around metrics, the how-to checklists and the great tips on the tools.

Who is Friends with Benefits for?
Anyone who wants:

• More website visitors
• More incoming links
• More subscribers to your RSS feeds
• More views of your content on video- and photo-sharing sites like YouTube and Flickr
• More references to your company, products, and services on blogs, podcasts, Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, …
• More followers on Twitter
• Better search engine optimization
• More genuine interactions with your customers

Good job Darren and Julie! I look forward to seeing the book in stores.

Darren and Julie with Andre Charland from Nitobi at IMC Vancouver 2008

Download Chapter 4 from the No Starch site: “Netiquette: Miss Manners for the Web” (PDF)