Category: Book Reviews (Page 39 of 45)

Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin is the story of the King’s daughter who Aeneas fights to claim in Vergil’s The Aeneid. I know this sounds heavy, but it’s not. Le Guin does a fantastic job of bringing a tertiary character to life.

Lavinia is about the war that takes place for Lavinia’s hand in marriage (which is really about the amount of land and goats the boy gets). Lavinia is a head-strong girl who grows up during the peaceful reign of her father and has to endure the trials and tribulations of suitors, her crazy mother who wants to marry her off to a cousin (ok in those days), and the war that takes place when a foreigner (Aeneas) arrives on the scene just after an oracle declares that Lavinia must be married to a foreigner. Despite seeing the guy once from a hilltop, Lavinia is super keen to follow orders. I think she’s looking for an escape from the cousin.

Trojan horses, Vergil’s The Aeneid, ancient Italy, prophecies and quick witted maidens: Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin offers a lot to like.

I give it a 4 out of 5. High entertainment value. The beginning was a little difficult to get into. I was having troubles figuring out who was narrating, Lavinian, Vergil? I’m sure the blame rests with me and not with Le Guin.

Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin, published by Harcourt Books.

One of the great things about reviewing books is getting a chance to look at books that I wouldn’t normally choose for myself. For example, picture books. I have a small collection of picture books that I’ve bought because of the incredible artwork but these are not books I actively seek–unless I’m buying for my friends’ kids. (Ok, I secretly look at lots of picture books because I like illustration. I even hang out at “Make Things Night” with friends who are illustrators I just a hanger on.)

Raincoast Books recently sent me a couple of new Spring books from Chronicle Books that fall under the “beautiful artwork” category. They also have lovely stories.

Grandma Calls Me Beautiful by Barbara M. Joosse and illustrated by Barbara Lavallee
Team Barbara is well known to me because they previously published a very popular series called Mama, Do You Love Me and Papa, Do You Love Me. These were simple story books about a parents unconditional love. Barbara Lavallee’s watercolour illustrations are spectacular. In this book the setting appears to be Hawaii. I love the way she depicts Hawaiians and Alaskans in her paintings.

Wave by Suzy Lee
No text in this book. It’s a great graphic story book about a little girl playing in the waves. This is a fun book. Simple, beautiful. Black, white, blue and fun all over. I wanted to play in the waves after looking at this book. If I’m not mistaken this is the same Suzy Lee who published a very cheeky book called The Black Bird.

Little Hoot by Amy Krouse Rosental and Jen Corace
Amy and Jen are the creators of Little Pea, one of my favourite picture books of all time. Little Pea is about a little pea whose parents force him to eat all his candy. It’s horrible: candy for breakfast, sweets at lunch, treats at dinner. Little Pea just wants his veggies. Little Hoot has a similar problem. He’s a little owl and his parents won’t let him go to bed early. Owls stay up late! And that’s that.

Only in Dreams: a Paul Frank Book by Parker Jacobs
Julius the Monkey is brought to life in the Paul Frank Books. I love this monkey. Who doesn’t love monkeys? The colours are bold! In this story Julius is off to dreamland. My favourite page is Julius paddling down a strawberry-milk river, near a frosted-cupcake village. I like this dream a lot.

Chronicle Books isn’t the only publisher with great picture books that take an irreverent approach to kids books. Harcourt Books has a fab book this season too.

Help Me, Mr. Mutt: Expert Answers for Dogs with People Problems by Janet Stevens and Susan Stevens Crummel
“Are you always in the doghouse? Don’t yelp, get help! Write to Mr. Mutt, Canine Counselor … Speedy replies guaranteed, complete with diagrams and tips. Help Me, Mr. Mutt is a hilarious collection of letters from dogs seeking advice. Totally brilliant.

Enter the Harcourt Books Contest for a chance to win a copy of Help Me, Mr. Mutt.

Janet and Susan has have an interview about writing the book. Get the inside scoop. Mr. Mutt is super cute. Find out if he or any of the other pups are based on Janet or Susan’s pets.

Hannah Stephenson of GLOSS mag and I were talking about graphic novels the other day and here is her recent review of Skim, which is written by Mariko Tamaki with illustrations by Jillian Tamaki.

A totally gorgeous book, I was envious of her copy and only had a couple of minutes to “skim” the book, pardon the pun.

Quote: Skim is an astonishingly genuine portrayal of a teenage girl dealing with an absurd range of problems in high school.

GLOSS Magazine review of Skim

Yahooo, my friend and business colleague Susannah Gardner (aka Super Susie) is launching her latest book tomorrow night at the Railway Club in Vancouver. The book is Blogging for Dummies, 2nd Edition, which she wrote with Shane Birley.

Tomorrow we are having a party for the book, which I am excited about. If you are interested in blogging and book launches, let me know and I might be able to score you a ticket. If you’ve wanted to start a blog and haven’t because you’re unsure of how to start, where to start–or if you are a blogger and you want some great tools, tips and ideas–then this is the book for you.

I like Susannah so much that I’ve also done a press release for the book.

Susannah is great, she and I have been on Lab with Leo together and today we did an interview with Paul Grant for the CBC Arts Report. Every time I am amazed at her ability to speak coherently about technology. It’s a true skill–being able to avoid jargon and relate to people and not geek out to the point of intimidating people.

Congratulations Susannah on the latest book. Yay!

I’m claiming this as a 2007 read although I did save 20 pages for this morning. What a great book.

In 2003 Gruen was working on another book when the Chicago Tribune ran an article on Edward J. Kelty, an American photographer who followed travelling circuses in the 1920s and 30s. She did a bunch of research on train circuses of the times and came up with Water for Elephants.

The premise of the story is that a young Jacob Jankowski, under extreme duress due to the accidental death of his parents, flees his veterinary exams and jumps on a train. The train ends up being the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. Jacob spends 3 months on the circus as the vet, falls in love with his boss’s wife, acquires an elephant and almost gets thrown from the train several times.

The story is as fun as going to the circus.

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen is published by Harper Collins Canada.

Ani DiFranco Verses is a book of DiFranco’s poetry and paintings. What I like most about the book is the discussion at the end between Ani DiFranco and Sekou Sundiata, who is a spoken-word poet and teacher of literature at The New School.

l have a hard time reading poetry. Sometimes I understand it too literally and sometimes too figuratively. The conversation with Sekou at the end of the collection of verses really helps ground my reading of the poems. It’s the insight into the work that I wish all poetry volumes held.

One of my favourite poems in this collection is a short poem called Akimbo. It starts “what dreams cause me to abandon my pillow each night?”

Opening lines of poems are important to me. Either I get into it or I don’t.

Ani DiFranco Verses is published by Seven Stories.

The Hermetic Code is a Dan Brown-esque expose of the secrets of the Manitoba Legislature Building.

Frank Albo is a visiting lecturer at the University of Winnipeg and a specialist in ancient religions and western esotericism. His research concerns the influence of Freemasonry in public architecture from the 18th century to present.

Frank’s interest in ancient religions, magic and present-day architecture led him to the Manitoba Legislature Building, when one day, he was driving by, and glanced up at the entrance and noticed two sphinx.

Sphinx on the roof top. Temple guards. Ancient symbols. Fibonacci series. The Ark of the Covenant. The Legislature is packed. And it clearly is not by accident.

The Hermetic Code is a fast-paced read. It’s a coffee table book that packs a lot of punch.

The text plays on Dan Brown’s characteristic writing style, which helps move the narrative along at quite a clip.

This is a 5-star book for anyone interested in magic, architecture, Egyptology and Canadian history.

The Hermetic Code is published by Winnipeg Free Press.

Cartoonist Paschal Blanchet’s White Rapids is an absolutely beautiful book. It’s Art Deco, 1950s commercial design meets quaint story about a town built-up around a hydro dam.

This is the first English translation of Blanchet’s graphic novel about the rise and fall of the small northern Quebec town of White Rapids.

White Rapids was founded in 1928 and was the brain child of the Shawinigan Water & Power Company. It was a fully-equipped, self-contained community for workers of the dam and their families.

Pascal Blanchet’s illustrations are incredibly refined yet astonishingly simple.

PDF Preview of White Rapids by Pascal Blanchet

White Rapids by Pascal Blanchet is published by Drawn & Quarterly.

Sir Charlie Stinky Socks and the Really Big Adventure by Kristina Stephenson is a pretty fun picture book with a couple of lift the flaps.

Sir Charlie is a very brave, boy knight, who is super curious about a rather tall tower in a dark, dark wood. The dark wood, of course, is rife with beasties and a witch. But like all good fairy tales, Charlie gets to the tower top and has a wonderful surprise.

The illustrations are vivid and offer a lot to look at, however, I found that the story is a bit hard to read. There are some awkward lines. It also felt like it was a long read. This picture book is one for older kids who are willing to pay attention rather than younger bustlers.

Again, it’s a fun story, But I disliked that the stinky socks never play a role in the drama of getting to the tower top. What’s the deal?

Overall, this is a 2-3 stars out of 5.

Sir Charlie Stinky Socks and the Really Big Adventure by Kristina Stephenson is published by Egmont.

Everyone I know has a bedside table piled with books they intend to read. So do I. Usually I can keep it down to 5 titles. I often have multiples on the go. But this year, there was a rich crop of new titles that I did not manage to read.

I’ll see how many I can get to in the fading days of 2007.

1. The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill (HarperCollins)
My mom loved this book about a slave who forges her way to freedom and back to her homeland. I’m looking forward to reading it.

2. The Eye: A Natural History by Simon Ings (Bloomsbury)
Science, math, philosophy, history, neuroscience, anecdote and language theory. This is a crazy book about the eye. There’s a story about a guy who wears upside down glasses and eventually his brain “rights” the situation, i.e., the image flips the right way up. Can’t miss this book.

3. Other Colors by Orhan Pamuk (Knopf Canada)
Essays and a story by Orhan Pamuk, an awesome Turkish writer. I’ve wanted to read his stuff since my trip to Turkey in 2005.

4. Untapped: The Scramble for Africa’s Oil by John Ghazvinian (Harcourt Books)
Africa is rich in oil but extracting it hasn’t seemed worth the effort, well, until now. Untapped is about the heavy price Africans are paying/about to pay for the West’s obsession with oil.

5. The Immortal Game by David Shenk (Bond Street Books)
A history of chess. I just lost 3 speed chess games over the holidays. Quirky, absorbing look at how chess has captured the minds of many.

6. Here There Be Dragons by James A. Owen (Simon & Schuster)
Set in WWI London, this is a fantasy, dragon book. Fallen kingdoms, legendary heroes and towers. The next book is out in January. I have to hurry on this one.

7. Cathy’s Book by Stewart, Weisman, Brigg (Running Pressing)
A super cool, interactive book. The fictional journal of Cathy is lost. You’ve found it and by reading the journal, can try to figure out where Cathy has disappeared to. All the emails and phone numbers are functioning. I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while.

8. Getting to Maybe by Frances Westley,Brenda Zimmerman and Michael Patton (Random House Canada)
If you want to change the world, this appears to be the book to read. Thoughtful, insightful, sobering and inspirational ideas for business, government, not-for-profit and individuals. Something I should definitely read for the new year.

9. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield (Bond Street Books)
An antiquarian bookshop, a hand-written request and a bit of mystery/history detective work. This was a very popular book in Canada and I’m disappointed that I didn’t get a chance to read it earlier.

10. Falling Man by Don DeLillo (Penguin Books)
Keith emerges from the World Trade Center and makes his way to his ex-wife and son’s home. It’s a novel about the devastation of 9/11 and the moments of after-the-event reflection of this man. It received a starred review in Booklist and I’ve been unsuccessful in making time to read this book, but I definitely will get to it.

11. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen (Harper Collins Canada)
Runaway bestseller about a guy who runs away with the circus. Looks fantastic.

12. House of Meetings by Martin Amis (Knopf Canada)
Described as haunting! I love Amis. Conjugal visits in the labour camps of the Soviet Union. This is the story of one of those meetings, and a problematic love triangle. I really should have read this one asap. James just noticed it and I’m sure it will disappear from my shelf.

13. The 100-Mile Diet by Alisa Smith and JB MacKinnon (Random House Canada)
I know enough about this book that I feel like I’ve read it. James read it and failed to write a review, but he does talk about it non-stop so there’s hard-core word of mouth happening there. This is the book that inspired, or rather reinforced, our habit of eating locally.

14. The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland (Random House Canada)
Sounds hilarious, and I’ve never read a Coupland book. Honestly, how can that be? I know. This is a love story set in an office supply store. It’s right up my goofy alley.

15. A Covenant of Salt by Martine Desjardins (Talonbooks)
1791. This is a novel of Quebec and Irish legend, stonecutting, and family grudges.

Any thoughts on which ones I should read first?