Category: Book Reviews (Page 42 of 46)

UPDATE: When I posted about this the widget would take you to the HarperCollins book detail page. From that page there was a link to BookBrowse. Those links no longer appear on the website. I’m not sure why. So the coolest feature ever appears to be disabled 🙁

Craig Miller of LibreDigital is here presenting on online marketing technology and he is showing an example of a widget that they’ve created for publishers who are storing their digital assets with LibreDigital.

And, LibreDigital is super cool. If I could use this type of widget for all the books I review, I would be a very happy reader and reviewer.

Why because I can tell you how good the book is, but it’s my subjective opinion. It would be great if I could give you a link to look inside yourself.

I am salivating, this is so cool.

Publishers–please start thinking about how to empower me as a fan of your stuff. This is one way to do it.

Every Labour Day Weekend since 1977, writers have gathered to sweat, cry and produce amazing 3-day novels. This “trial by deadline” is going on right now. www.3daynovel.com

But I have other things to do this weekend, like making peach pie, so instead of whipping off a novel, I’m reading The Convictions of Leonard McKinley by Brendan McLeod, a recently published winner of the 3-Day Novel Contest.

McLeod’s protagonist Leonard is a crazy piece of work. I imagine he was born amidst too much caffeine and too little sleep.

In some ways The Convictions of Leonard McKinley is a morality play. Wikipedia defines this as “a type of theatrical allegory in which the protagonist is met by personifications of various moral attributes who try to prompt him to choose a godly life over one of evil.”

For Leonard the morally bad take the form of round-bottomed cute girls, his desires to achieve NBA fame, and his increasing interest in deviance.

There is certainly a secular nature to Leonard’s desires that conflict with his visions of martyrdom. He promises God that if he performs well at basketball try-outs that he’ll open up an adoption agency when he’s older.

But what starts as innocent questioning of God and morals in the 6-year-old Leonard, even in the teenaged Leonard, gives way to a form of religious fanatisism that cripples him.

The Convictions of Leonard McKinley could be renamed The Ethical Trials of Leonard McKinley. As a child Leonard executes ethical trials for himself: if he is good, his father won’t have another heart attack. As a teen he believes that saying the Lords Prayer and volunteering at the Red Cross will ensure his mother’s safe return home from late nights at the office. But as Leonard enters university his convictions that well being is a reward or punishment determined by God lead to darker thoughts about homosexual yearnings and pedophilia. He creates trials for himself that were funny child-like behaviour earlier but are now disturbing.

Leonard is pretty creepy but the novel is good.

I agree with the quote by author Terence Young, “Brendan McLeod presents us with a protagonist who is at once mesmerizing and ridiculous, charming and offensive … He draws our attention like a really good house fire.”

And with kind permission from 3-Day Books, here is a short excerpt:

Quote: The Convictions of Leonard McKinley by Brendan McLeod.

PART ONE
When Leonard turns six, his father buys him a bike without training wheels because he wants to learn to ride like he is escaping from assassins with lasers. Leonard’s father shuffles him up and down the street, breathing hard at his side until he sustains heart palpitations and Leonard takes off on his own. He flies around the suburban streets of Calgary until he can no longer see his house and has to stop at a store for directions.

“I can’t tell you unless you buy something,” says the clerk. Leonard has no money, so he kicks down the newsstand outside and rides away crying. Two hours later a policeman finds him sulking against a tree and puts his bike into the backseat. He drives Leonard halfway home, but pulls a U-turn after hearing the whole story. They return to the convenience store and the policeman disappears inside for ten minutes. When he comes back out Leonard asks him what happened.

“I gave the bad man a ticket,” says the officer.

“What for?”

“Being a dick.”

“Awesome,” says Leonard.

The policeman pulls away. “Did you kick down his newsstand?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

When the policeman pulls up in front of Leonard’s house his father is being wheeled away on a gurney. The large lights of an ambulance reflect off the gleam of the neighbours’ gaping mouths behind their windows. Leonard’s older brother Steve is standing on the walkway, his hands over his lips as though afraid something will escape from him.

Leonard’s younger brother Nick is wandering around outside wearing his costume from his fourth birthday party last week. Their mother had allowed him to dress up as the sheriff, so he locked his friend Pete in the laundry room after he hadn’t given him a present that involved the California Raisins.

Now, Nick moseys up to the police car. Leonard and the officer quickly get out.

“You killed Dad!” Nick shouts at Leonard. Then he shoots the police officer full of imaginary bullets and dives behind a bush.

“Shut up, Nick!” Steve yells.

Their mother runs up to Leonard and holds him tight to her waist. Then she smacks him on the bum for going missing and kisses his forehead to assure him their father is going to be okay.

Mrs. Shelbourne from next door comes over to look after them while their mother follows the ambulance to the hospital. They eat dinner in silence. Steve, who is in grade six, won’t talk to Leonard because he is just a stupid little kid who still gets lost. Nick won’t speak to Mrs. Shelbourne because she beat him at Hungry Hungry Hippos, except to briefly accuse her of cheating. Mrs. Shelbourne threatens to send him to his room for being impertinent, so Nick says he was just worried about their dad in the hopes that she’ll feel sorry for him and give him a cookie. She doesn’t fall for it and Nick refuses to eat his peas in protest.

Brendan McLeod is a writer, musican, spoken word artist, former Canadian SLAM poetry champion, and previous winner of the 3-Day Novel Contest.
www.brendanmcleod.ca

Jumping the Queue is Mary Wesley’s celebrated first novel.

While in McNally Robinson Booksellers in Winnipeg, I came across a display of Mary Wesley books, all of which have been re-issued with new cover designs.

Wesley started writing at the age of 70 and published a number of books, Jumping the Queue being the first and The Camomile Lawn being her big commercial success. What the Beeb says about Mary.

The opening scene of Jumping the Queue is Matilda writing instructions for her friends and family on how to dispose of her belongings and of the house. She has reached the end of her rope with life and is happily ready to shuffle off with a mortal dose of pills and a nice swim into a strong tide that will pull her out to sea. All is very well with this plan, except the pet gander keeps pecking at her, and when she finally gets to her beach spot there are a bunch of rowdy kids there. No problem. She goes immediately with Plan B and finds a bridge to jump from. Just her luck, there’s a wanted murderer also trying to jump.

Never one to pass by adventure, Matilda invite him home, reprimands him for his behaviour and sets him up in the spare room. The reprimand is for being in her jumping spot, not for murdering his mother, which she is sure her children have thoughts of many times.

Wesley is a fine writer and Matilda is a fine character. I enjoyed this book and am looking forward to reading more of her work.

Like Matilda, Mary was a bit of a wild one (she died in 2002). She married early for money and societal pressures. She had a unsatisfying relationship with her mother, which definitely comes out in her work. But with wit and style she managed to free herself from those constraints and find love with a second husband and satisfaction writing. There is a biography available called Wild Mary, but none of these books seem to be promoted widely in North America.

Wild Mary is available from McNally Robinson. I love the store. The website could use some work. More on that later.

The Book of Stanley by Todd Babiak is one of the funniest books I’ve read all year.

There’s something about books about God that really tickle me. I suppose it’s repressed anxiety from attending the Catholic Church as a kid.

Stanley Moss is an average man. He’s a retired florist, diagnosed with cancer. He’s a putterer and his wife’s the same. They live in Edmonton, across the way from a car dealership, and sometimes in the clear, summer afternoons they can hear the receptionist announcing calls over the PA. It’s the prairies.

So what happens to Stanley Moss? How does he become my hero and favourite character of 2007?

Like this.

Stanley is stricken by … well, we’re not sure, but afterwards things are different. He’s different.

Stanley can hear what people are thinking. He can convince them of things. He can lift heavy objects. He can throw himself from a cliff.

He’s God.

But he’s also human in a way to which we can relate. Stanley’s nervous about his new self. He’s unsure of what to do. He wants to use his power for good, but he’s surrounded by bad. He makes decision by committee. He gets confused. He starts losing himself.

I think we have these worries whenever we take on new challenges and that’s what is great about Stanley. Stanley’s not a leader. The Book of Stan. Come on. But they do, people come in droves to hear what he has to say, to try to silence him, to try to follow his teachings. It’s a behemoth mess as far as his wife is concerned.

You have to love her for that.

The Book of Stanley is Canadian satire. It’s not British and definitely not American. It’s perfectly Canadian.

I’ve been telling people that The Book of Stanley is “Gabriel Garcia Marquez meets Michael Winter.”

Read the book and let me know if you agree.

Todd also has a smart ass blog at ToddBabiak.com, last I checked he was trying to replace Rabinovitch as president and CEO of CBC. He’s definitely an author to watch out for, I mean, watch.

Cross-posted on Work Industries blog.
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Beyond Buzz: The Next Generation of Word-of-Mouth Marketing by Lois Kelly is about learning to create meaningful dialogue about organizations and products, instead of marketing blah blah blah.

If you are the lone evangelist in your organization–the one who gets it–print out a copy of the Executive Summary of Beyond Buzz and get it in front of as many managers as possible, especially those in communications, marketing and PR. (Tip from a former lone evangelist: I know, the summary is electronic. You could email it. In my experience, paper in front of nose is more effective.)

There are 5 reasons why conversation is important.

1. Because The Cluetrain Manifesto tells us markets are conversation.

Ok, that’s not one of the 5, but it’s definitely the starting point to understanding #1.

#1. People don’t trust marketing and sales information.

We have trusted advisors. They are our friends and family. We’d rather believe Tom, who’s just bought a new digital camera, than Best Buy who wants to sell us a camera for 20% off.

#2. People are overwhelmed with information.

We trust our friends and family because we can have a conversation with them. They help us make sense out of the information. They are not trying to sell us anything. They have our best interests at heart.

#3. Beyond products, people want to know what it’s like to work with your company.

We want to know that we’re spending our money with the right people.

#4. Explosion of new “talk” communications channels.

There are many, many ways for us to search online for product reviews. In fact, we don’t just check “Ford + reviews”, we check “Ford + repairs” and “Ford + broken”. If you’re not part of that conversation, we’re less likely to care about great reviews, especially if your company is the source of the reviews.

#5. People want to be heard and have a say.

Be an advocate on behalf of customers. Listening and talking can take you a long way.

The Foghound > Beyond Buzz website has lots of other incentives to buy the book:

• Subscribe to the podcast
• See the Table of Contents
• Read the Author Q&A

Buy a copy of Beyond Buzz today.

Enter to win a free copy.
I’ll do a random draw in one week.

Young-Ha Kim has published four novels and numerous short stories. His latest novel is I Have the Right to Destroy Myself.

I’m not certain that we do have the right to destroy ourselves, but the narrator of Young-Ha Kim’s novel feels so.

Quote: I don’t encourage murder. I have no interest in one person killing another. I only want to draw out morbid desires, imprisoned deep in the unconscious.

The unnamed narrator is a bit of a contract killer, but the contract you take out is on yourself instead of on someone else. He wanders the city of Seoul, looking for the lonely. There he finds Judith and Mimi, both women who happen to become in some way involved with the same man, C.

In the Judith story, C and his brother K both fall for Judith. Judith uses them both and eventually leaves them both. In the Mimi story, Mimi is a performance artist who becomes involved with C, who is a video artist. As with Judith, C is unable to connect with Mimi and she too eventually leaves.

The subject matter of the novel is a tad sketchy, especially since it’s being recommended for older teen reading. I’m not sure that I’d want teens reading this type of novel and identifying with any of the characters. At the same time, the writing is highly dreamlike and cinematic. There’s a certain dark brilliance in the writing and how Young-Ha Kim has captured the tone of these listless characters.

I Have the Right to Destroy Myself is well worth reading, but I’d be careful recommending it to anyone lacking strong convictions. It’s not a glorified suicide book, but the intensity and aimlessness of the characters is alarming and the ease with which they seem to destroy themselves is unnerving.

The cover is gorgeous.

Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky was recommended to me in 2006 when the hardcover was released. The book was on all the major bestseller lists. It was picked up by countless bookclubs. It was a Heather’s Pick at Indigo. For these very reasons, I avoided reading it.

Books to me are not like movies. I don’t want to read what everyone else is reading. I do like bestsellers, but I like to read them before they become bestsellers. That’s why I love getting advance review copies from publishers. I like to determine before the book hits the market whether it’s great or not. Stuck up, I know.

But I also like to read books that are never going to make a bestseller list but should. The small, quiet books that find a place in the market because someone recognized their greatness.

Suite Francaise was one of those books that I missed reading at an early stage, and once it became big, I wanted to wait until the hype died down.

In many ways, I think Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky became such a hit because of the back story.

When I teach online book marketing, I always talk about publishers and booksellers being storytellers. We have to go beyond the book. The book itself is not the product we’re selling. We’re selling entertainment, education, storytelling.

Here’s the story.

Irene Nemirovsky was born in Kiev in 1903. In 1918, her family fled the Russian Revolution and ended up in France, where she later became a bestselling novelist. When Germans occupied France in 1940, Irene was in the precarious position of being Jewish and Russian. It did not matter that her children were born in France, that they were baptized as Catholic, that Irene had no sentiments towards her Jewish heritage or the Bolshevics. No matter. She was arrested on 13 July 1942, deported to Auschwitz and sent to the gas chamber.

What remained of Irene’s last novel was carried across France and eventually to North America by her two surviving daughters. What they thought was the personal diary of their mother ended up being the notations for a novel in 5 parts.

Irene intended for the novel to be composed much like a piece of music, hence the name Suite Francaise. She wanted the experience of reading about the occupation of France to be like music “when you sometimes hear the whole orchestra, sometimes just the violin.”

Irene was writing about the history of the world, in particular the relationship between charity and greed that befalls even the best of us in dire times. The 2 parts of the novel that exist portray the mass exodus of refugees from Paris. The mass invasion of France by the German army, and the tyranny that followed. That tyranny was, for the most part in the novel, amongst the French. The betrayals in the war that interest Irene are of the government to the people, the army officers to the soldiers, the greedy boss to the impoverished servant, the wealthy landowner to the tenant farmer, the mother-in-law to the daughter-in-law, the pious neighbour to the anti-German neighbour.

Suite Francaise is the beginnings of a masterpiece. It is unfinished. There are chapters that Irene, no doubt, would have continued to modify, and there are 3 sections missing. What makes it a masterpiece are the appendices that fill in the missing sections, that show the parallels in the novel to Irene’s life, and that give us an insight into Irene as a character in this great epic novel.

The appendices by far are what make this book feel whole.

I will likely read Suite Francaise again in a couple of years. It’s almost too much to think about after only one reading.

Zoe Elias dreams of playing the piano.

Quote: The piano is a beautiful instrument. Elegant. Dignified.
With the piano, you could play Carnegie Hall.
People wear ball gowns and tuxedos to hear the piano.

Instead of buying her a piano, Zoe’s dad gets conned in by the Perfectone salesman and brings home an organ instead of a piano.

Quote: I play the organ.
A wood-grained, vinyl-seated, wheeze-bag organ.
The Perfectone D-60.

The organ isn’t Zoe’s only problem. Wheeler Diggs has started following her home from school. He’s become a fan of her dad’s baking. Mr. Elias, having troubles with the outside world, prefers to stay in the safety of his home, acquiring Living Room University certificates. So far he has 26 framed diplomas for courses such as “Roger, Wilco, Over and Cash! Learn to Fly Like the Pros” and “Rolling in Dough: Earn a Dolla’ Baking Challah”.

With dad and Wheeler in the kitchen baking cookies, Zoe is left alone to master the Perfectone D-60, in preparation for the Perform-O-Rama.

Quote: When you play piano, you don’t go to Perform-O-Ramas. You give recitals.
A recital is a dignified affair.
There are candelabras at a recital.
People site in velvet chairs and sip champagne and look over the program. There are always programs at a recital.
At a recital, you play Mozart and Beethoven and Strauss and Bach.
You do not play Hits of the Seventies.

Zoe is too funny for words, my words any way, Linda Urban has managed to perfect capture the sense of hilarity in all of her words.

A Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban is perfect for readers 8-12, but I say Zoe’s perfect for anyone with a sense of humour and a recollection of the Perfectone organ. If you’re from the Prairies, you’ll know what I’m talking about for sure, boom-pa cha-ka, boom-pa cha-ka.

Zoe in A Crooked Kind of Perfect is the next Little Miss Sunshine.

I’ve been reading Alexis Kienlen’s LiveJournal blog for several years now, and I was excited when she announced that her book of poetry had been accepted for publication by Frontenac House. Having worked for a book publisher I know how difficult the acquisition stage is, how much work goes into deciding whether a book is the right fit or not, and here was a wonderful example of someone I knew making it through that process–a process, which at times, can be as hard as writing the book in the first place.

Maybe Alexis will re-tell the story in the comments about what that process was like and how excited she was to hear that her book was going to be published.

I was determined to blog about her book, and because Alexis is my friend, I wanted to do a good job. Instead I procrastinated and now She Dreams in Red is published and several people have reviewed it and I’m still working out the best way to talk about it.

I don’t know why I try to make thing harder than they need to be. She Dreams in Red is a beautiful book of poems.

In university I never understood poetry, and I still feel nervous about it. But I have found poets whose work I enjoy, Dennis Cooley in particular. Alexis’ poems are as inviting and as evocative.

The poems are divided into the following sections: Chinese Cafe, Indonesia, Mongolia, Tibet, and Love and Lust.

Each time I pick up the book, I find a new favourite. I’ve been reading the poems in chronological order because I feel there is a greater story that the collection is telling, at the same time, every time I wander by my book stack, I pick it up and randomly flip to a new poem. It’s a great way to discover this book, and I’m very glad that Alexis has published a book of poems because it gives me an entry back into the world of poetry.

If you haven’t picked up a book of poetry in a while, I suggest She Dreams in Red. It’s good to re-discover this writing form and I guarantee you’ll find something that grips your imagination in this collection.

You can purchase a copy from Frontenac House by emailing the editor or by visiting one of the stores listed. I say, get on it though, poetry runs are often small so if you want a copy, now is the time. I found the fastest, non-procrastinating way was to email the editor and send in a cheque. Old school, I know. But we’re talking about poetry. In some ways I think it demands a handwritten note.

No quite a book review.

I can’t tell you about this book yet because it’s not in the stores. But really, once it’s there, you must go get it.

Todd Babiak is my one of my favourite Canadian authors. He is satirical in a Canadian way. Not too British, not too American. Just plain Canadian funny. I’ve tried to describe this book to others as “Gabriel Garcia Marquez meets Michael Winter”. I hope that’s flattering to all involved.

I am a huge fan of The Garneau Block, Babiak’s first novel, which is now out in paperback.
Here’s my review.
Buy it on Amazon: The Garneau Block in paperback.

I was really excited to meet Todd at Book Expo Canada. And I was even more excited to open up the book.

Stanely Moss is an average man. That is until God tells him to go to Banff. Of course, it’s much more complicated than that. But the short and long of it is that Stanley goes to Banff looking for answers and finds a hell of a lot of questions.

If you want an early peak, it won’t make much sense but you can watch some LeapTV.com or watch my teaser.