Read for: Canadian Book Challenge 4

Intended for recent graduates, this quick little read is a little bit funny and a little bit advice and insight.

Even though I’m not a recent graduate, I definitely found this book to be a worthwhile read. Despite dropping out of high school, Fox argues that he still managed to learn everything he needed from life.  As the subtitle suggests, he learned from the twists and turns.  And he takes this opportunity to share those lessons with the reader.  The thing that makes this book different than the 37 million other advice books out there is Fox’s humour and his attitude.  As we all know, Fox is funny, and this book doesn’t disappoint in that corner.  But what surprised me (but probably that’s just me – apparently he’s known for being an optimist?) was how positive he was about life in general and his in particular.  A lot of times I avoid advice type books because I wonder what makes this guy so great that he thinks he can give me advice?  (For example: I read The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch and while it had a lot of god stuff in it, it mostly just annoyed me.)  But something about Fox’s attitude and his sense of humour made this one readable and enjoyable.

Anyway, I need suggestions.  I need Canadian books to read! The challenge it to read books by Canadians or about Canadians, but my goal is to read 13 books written by Canadian authors.  (I’m also taking part in an Anne of Green Gables challenge so some of those books will definitely work for this challenge as well.

So, lay it on me.  What books by Canadian authors do I have to read?

Read for: Canadian Books Challenge

This book is about a teenage girl whose sister is seriously injured when she is hit by a car and the week immediately following the accident.  The book was really short and there really wasn’t much more to it.

I didn’t really like this book.  I think it needed more.  I think I know what the author was trying do with this novel but it needed more depth, more character development, more time.  After reading a book, I like to feel I’ve been entertained or that I learned something or that I gained some new understanding but after reading this one I felt none of that.  I don’t want to sound rude but I’m not really sure what the point of this book was.  It was well written and if there had been more depth of the characters and the story I could see it being a really good book.  As it is though, it just didn’t do anything for me.

Read for: Canadian Books Challenge and What’s in a Name Challenge

In Sarajevo a cellist is sitting at a window watching his friends and neighours in line for bread when they are all killed by a mortar.  He decides to go out into the streets every day at the same time for 22 days to play and Adagio for each person killed in the attack.  The novel tells the story of three people living in Sarajevo during the siege in the 1990’s.  Each of them is affected by the cellist and his actions.  I actually found that although the book was named after him, the cellist wasn’t actually the focus of the book.  It was more about living and surviving in the city during the siege.

It was interesting (that’s not quite the right term but it’s the best I’ve got right now) to read about living in Sarajevo at the time.  In the past few months I’ve also read Left to Tell about the Rwandan genocide and A Thousand Splendid Suns about the Taliban in Afghanistan (and last year The Book of Negroes about slavery).  I’ve known that these kind of things were happening in the world but reading about them inspires me to find out more about what really happened and why and because they are so much more modern than books I’ve read about WWII or other conflicts they hit so much closer to home.  I am consistently amazed at the incredible cruelty that human beings have the ability to inflict on each other.  It’s really disgusting.

I think it’s really important to read books like this and feel that disgust and anger about the atrocities that occurred.  We need to remember so we can try to prevent these kinds of things from happening in the future.  A common theme in these books is the people who never thought it could happen to them.  That really hits close to home because that’s what I’m constantly thinking as a I read these novels.  “That could never happen in Canada.”  But who knows, maybe it could?

Anyway, back to the book!  I thought it was well written but sometimes I felt it was a little contrived.  It just didn’t feel completely sincere to me at times.  Possibly that’s because it’s impossible to write a book about something you don’t know.  It sounds like Galloway did all the research he could but I just don’t think it’s possible to really understand what it’s like to go through something like this unless you’ve actually experienced it.  (Not that you’d ever WANT to!)

The thing that’s cool about this book is that there really was a Cellist of Sarajevo.  The details aren’t exactly the same but there was a man, Vedran Smailovic, who played Albinon’s Adagio during the siege.  Apparently Smailovic wasn’t too pleased about the book though!

Read for: Canadian Books Challenge

It is in the future (the near future according to the book jacket) and the bees have all disappeared.  Then randomly (or not as it turns out) five people across the globe are stung.  Each of them are then brought into special isolation rooms to be studied to find out why they were stung and how this information could be used to bring back the bees.  I found this part of the book interesting but then it took an odd turn.  After the stingees are sent back to their normal lives, they are again gathered up, and this time brought together on a remote island and told to tell stories to each other.  Then there are a bunch of their short stories in the book (which I’m sure had some deep meaning to the story but it wasn’t readily apparent and I just didn’t feel like thinking that hard to figure it out).    Then after all that weirdness, there’s some zombie references and then you find out why the bees disappeared and how the scientists plan on getting them back.

So, how did I feel about this book?  I’m still not sure.  It’s taken me a while to get to this review because I’m still deciding what I think.  I did enjoy the first half and I was satisfied with the ending, but the middle part was strange.  And I can’t decide if the beginning and the ending make up for the strangness of the middle. you know?

As always with Coupland, though, there were definitely parts that made me laugh out loud and many of his characters were pretty witty which made for enjoyable reading even in the weird parts.  I think overall it was a decent book and it wasn’t too long or deep so I can see past the middle part (which wasn’t bad – just different and isn’t that just typical Coupland?)

Note: I’m labelling this as dystopian fiction because it kind of has that feel, but it’s not typical dystopian either.

Read for: Global Reading Challenge 2010 – US, North America (I chose to include this as one of my NA books because I haven’t read that many books about the South and that seems to be a major theme in this novel.) Reviews by Lola’s review

Cecelia (CeeCee) Honeycutt has a crappy life.  Her mother suffers from psychosis and her father has pretty much washed his hands of the whole situation when her mother is killed by a car while crossing the street.   Her great-aunt Tootie shows up to rescue her.  She takes her to live with her in Savannah, Georgia.

First, what I liked about the book.  I really enjoyed the writing.  Hoffman can write!  I actually felt like I was sitting in the lush gardens and beautiful homes with the CeeCee.  The way she describes the scenery was amazing.  Every time I opened the book I felt like I’d been scooped up and plunked down right in the middle of Savannah.

I also enjoyed the story.  It was a light, cute coming of age story about a sweet young girl who really deserved a better life.  And here’s where I talk about the things I didn’t like.  At times I  found the story to be too sweet and even bordering on cheesy.  I also felt that certain parts lacked depth.  I can’t quite put my finger on what exactly but at times I found myself hoping for more, you know?  I also found some of the characters (and some of the traits of the characters) to be a little unbelievable.  Once again, I can’t exactly pinpoint specifics – I just had a vague feeling of dissatisfaction with some of the characters.  I think the biggest offender was CeeCee.  I found her to be really inconsistent.  Likable, but just a teeny bit unbelievable.

However, my biggest complaint about the book was really not related to the story at all.  There were some major editing issues.  Misspelled words, incorrect punctuation and sentences that were missing words or had extra words.  I know this is not a problem for some readers but it really bothers me when a book has this many errors.  I hope they can get that fixed for future editions.

Overall, I really did enjoy the book.  I know it sounds like I had lots of complaints but really these things were just minor distractions for me.  It definitely wasn’t a book that I couldn’t put down, but I think that goes in hand with the type of book it is.  It has a lilting, lyrical feel to it that just calmed and soothed me whenever I picked it up.

Read for: Newbery Honour Book 2010, Global Reading Challenge – China, Asia

This is the third in my quest to read all the Newbery Honour Books and the Newbery winner from 2010.  To be honest, I don’t think this one is at the same level as the other two I’ve read.  I enjoyed it, but it just doesn’t compare to the first two.

This one reads like a fairy tale or a fable (I should sign up for Once Upon a Time – this would be a perfect read!) but it also contains other tales within the text.  I believe that most of these are based on traditional chinese folktales.  Minli, a young girl who loves stories, lives in the shadow of Fruitless Mountain – a mountain that will allow nothing to grow.  Of course there is a story to explain the fruitlessness of the mountain!  Minli’s mother is unhappy with their fortunes and isn’t afraid to let it be known.  So Minli decides to go in search of the Old Man of the Moon to ask him to improve their fortunes.  As she journeys she meets many people who all have lessons to teach her.

I actually did enjoy the story and the lessons contained within it but I’m not sure it’s all that great for children.  I don’t know if it’s just because I read it over a longer period than I normally read a book or if I was just distracted this week, but I found the tales within the story caused confusion.  I’m just not sure a child would be able to follow and make the connections between the tales and the main storyline.

I did love the illustrations though.  You can see that the cover is beautiful and there were several colour illustrations in the book that are gorgeous.  Over all, I liked the book but I’m not sure I agree with it’s being included as a Newbery Honour Book this year.

Read for: Global Reading Challenge – Scotland

This is the 5th book in the 44 Scotland Street novels, which were originally written as a serial in The Scotsman newspaper.  I absolutely love these books.  I love the short little chapters and I love the characters.  They are so entertaining to read about.  I wouldn’t recommend reading this book before reading the first four though.  It’s not that you’d have a hard time following the plot, but there is so much character development that goes on in the previous novels that you’d just be missing out on so much of the fun!

My favourite character is still Bertie – a six-year-old with an extremely overbearing and slightly crazy mother.  He is constantly baffled by her behaviour but because she is his mother, he goes along with her strange ideas.  But there are other familiar faces as well – Bruce, the narcissist, Domenica and Angus who begin to realize they are lonely, Matthew – newly married and Big Lou with her Jacobite boyfriend.

The book is, as always. light and fun and the characters get themselves into some pretty entertaining circumstances.  Anyone who has enjoyed the previous four books will definitely like this one.

Read for: Global Reading Challenge

Wow, was this one ever intense!  Immaculée was a university student who had travelled home for easter in 1994 when the Rwandan genocide began.  As a Tutsi, she and her entire family were in danger.  She managed to make it to a neighbour’s house where he hid her and several other women in a tiny bathroom for over 100 days while the country literally went insane killing over a million Tutsi people.

I had heard of the Rwandan genocide before but I didn’t really know anything about it.  As I was reading this book, not only was I disgusted by the attitudes of the people responsible for the genocide, I was amazed by how quickly the general population adopted those same attitudes and joined in on the killing.  I am astonished by the capability of human beings to act in this manner, to be so cruel to each other.  In many cases, Tutsis were hunted and murdered by people who had been their neighbours and close friends.  And what they did to children?  Unforgivable.

I think what bothers me the most about the whole thing though is that we, the so-called civilized nations just sat back and allowed this to go on.  We knew what was happening but it took over three months before anyone was willing to enter to country to try and stop the slaughter.

This book made me so angry and sad.  It’s especially saddening to know that this is not a unique circumstance.  It happens all the time.  Why do we as humans feel the need to divide ourselves along racial lines?  Why do we have to feel superior to other races, sexes, religions?  And why does that feeling of superiority give us permission to imprison, enslave, torture and kill those we view as inferior?

I think this book (and others like it) are so important for us to read so we can take steps to prevent these kinds of things from occurring.  What struck me most was that Immaculée’s father was so confident that nothing was going to happen.  On the eve of the genocide, his children tried to convince him that they should leave but he wouldn’t believe that anything could go wrong.  How often do we think that way about where we live?  How often to we read books about the terrible things that go on in the world and think “That could never happen here.”?  “It’s ok for me to be a little bit racist because that could never happen here.”  These are the kind of attitudes and thoughts that eventually lead to hate crimes.

The subtitle for this book is “Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust”.  I think this is a little misleading because Immaculée was already very religious before the genocide began.  There is definitely a lot of religion in the book as she is a very devout Catholic but it never bothered me.  It wasn’t preachy or in your face religion.  It’s just what got her through this difficult time in her life.  Because she was able to forgive the killers (which I am astounded at – I can’t even forgive them and it didn’t happen to me!)  she was able to move on and get past this terrible thing that happened to her.  She was able to be happy again.  Amazing.

This is a book I think everyone should read although you may not enjoy it!

Read for: Banned Books Challenge

I’ve been meaning to read this book for a very long time.  It’s been sitting on my night stand (where I keep my TBR in the next month pile) since September because I planned to read it for Banned Books Week.  But I just never got around to it.  But then a friend told me that I had to read When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead, but that I should probably reread A Wrinkle in Time first.  So I finally picked it up.  I remember loving this book when I was younger.  In fact, I remember it as one of the books/series’ that made me love reading!  I read it several times and loved it every time, but I was worried that I wouldn’t enjoy it as much as an adult.  But I did!  I think I may like it even more now because I think I have a deeper understanding of the novel now.

I’m surprised that this book has been challenged/banned because it apparently has anti-Christian ideas.  I found it just the opposite.  I think it has very strong religious themes.  People may have been offended by the “witches” and I’m not sure that if this book were published today it would have any problems with it.  They have their hands full with all those evil Harry Potter and Twilight novels!

There were a few things that bothered me about the book but I think it’s mainly because I am not the target audience.  The pacing of certain events were a little too fast for me, with not enough character development but I know it’s perfect pacing for a younger audience.  I think children need the story to happen faster, but they also have a better ability to accept the characters relationships without a whole bunch of lead-up.

I’m so glad I was able to enjoy this book as much as I did as a child and I can’t wait to reread the rest of the series.  I also can’t wait until my oldest is mature enough to read it to him.  I love reading to him my favourites from when I was young and I really hope that by doing this I can teach him to love reading and books as much as I do!  (This is the cover of the copy that I had as a child.)