My Nerdy Friend

Rules of Civility, by Amor Towles

Want to read a book with notes of The Great Gatsby, but without the annoying characters and male-centric plot? Then Rules of Civility may be the book for you! Set in the late 30s instead of the heady roaring 20s, the story focusses on one year in the life of the main character, Katey Kontent (Kontent, as in satisfied versus something contained), as she navigates her way around and through the New York social scene. The novel is as much a love letter to New York as it is an engaging story about a beautiful young woman gifted with fierce wit and determination (AND is a voracious reader, thank you very much!). I loved Towles’ writing, and will be picking up more of his books! 10/10

The Women, by Kristin Hannah

On the other hand … I can’t for the life of me understand why people loved this book. Yes, Kristin Hannah chose to write about women who served in Vietnam, when an entire country pretended that women Vietnam Vets did not exist, and kudos to her for that. And in a minor defense, the parts of the book that were specifically about serving in Vietnam were compelling, page-turning chapters. But OH. MY. GOD. then you had to put up with cheesy and implausible romance story lines!!

[warning: spoilers coming!! You could skip the next paragraph, or on the other hand, if you, too, were planning to waste a few hours of your life reading this book, let this be my way of giving you back the gift of time.]

While serving in Vietnam, the main character, Frankie, falls in love with a doctor at her med unit. Sure, sure, I get that. I’d probably fall in love too, in the middle of an insane war when I might die at any minute. But he turns out to be married and she’s too moral to sleep with him but she continues to be agonizingly in love with him until he dies while returning from R&R. Then she meets and falls in love with another soldier, the best friend of her brother (who has already died in combat). He also is married (well, rats) but it’s okay because he dies too, so moral dilemma avoided. Except … we soon learn that many, many solders in Vietnam were captured as POWs and their families were told they were dead when in fact they were imprisoned and being tortured for years. For real. Several years after the end of the war, many of these POWs were released, to the shock and joy of the families who had already buried them. In the book, guess who turns out to not be dead? BOTH OF THESE MEN!!! That’s right. By sheer good/bad luck, both of her married heartthrobs return home alive to be reunited with … their wives. This is supposed to be very emotional, but I may have missed the impact of that while I was in the bathroom barfing. 2/10

Bad Cree: A Novel, by Jessica Johns

So far, this is one of my favourite books from my Amnesty Book Club (the other is the Sleeping Car Porter). It’s a good ol’ supernatural horror story set in first nations culture, with a set of characters you actually care about and a theme of sisterhood, family, and enduring friendship. As a bonus for Canadians, it’s set partly in urban Vancouver and partly in rural Alberta. Jessica Johns originally wrote this as a short story for her creative writing class, but felt compelled to delve more deeply into some of the details she had to leave out of the short version. Despite centering around themes of supernatural and family tragedy, the book is an easy read with a wonderfully feel-good ending. 8/10, since this is a debut novel and I have to save room for her to grow into a 10/10.

Unnatural Creatures, stories selected by Neil Gaiman

All the necessary details of this collection of unusual stories is covered in the Nerdy Friends Book Club posts.

The Immortal King Rao: A Novel, by Vara Vauhini

I have a confession. This is the very first audio book I’ve ever listened to. I didn’t understand it (the plot of the book, not the narrator, who was actually quite soothing to listen to) and I attributed the lack of understanding to my lack of attention span – when I listen to podcasts, I’ll often realize my attention has drifted away and I end up back-tracking 30 or 60 seconds to the last point when I was tuned in. I assumed that the book suffered from this same mind-drift and that perhaps it was actually really good. Then I went to my Amnesty Book Club and discovered that the other two attendees also didn’t get it. One stopped reading after Chapter 5 out of boredom and confusion and the other finished it but didn’t get the point. So maybe it wasn’t a listening issue at all, but a writing one instead. It’s a strange book, that suffers from trying to tell too many stories without really connecting the reader with any of them, to the point where I couldn’t figure out what happened to the main character at the end and I didn’t really care. 2/10 for effort. Apologies if you loved it.

Aside: this is the second book this month that includes the qualifier “A Novel” in the title. Weird!

I have more, but I’m going to leave it here for now and just publish another blog next week.

Welcome, book club readers! I’m sorry for being so late this month! We have two short stories left, and these are actually quite short at 14 pages and 24 pages respectively.

The first is titled “Or All The Seas With Oysters”, by Avram Davidson 14p. Avram Davidson is another multi-award-winning SF & Fantasy author. He wrote prolifically, publishing a few series, several stand-alone novels, and over a dozen collections of short stories, none of which I’ve read or even heard of. I look forward to this interestingly titled story as an introduction to an untried fantasy novelist!

The second, and final in our reading series, is “Come Lady Death”, an ominous sounding tale by Peter S. Beagle. Beagle also has numerous writing credits to his name, only one of which I’m familiar with, which is his screenplay for an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (“Sarek”).

Happy reading!! Perhaps as part of this month’s comments, you could include your most and least favourite stories from the entire collection? Just for fun, don’t overthink it 🙂

I am on several waiting lists at the local Picton library, for both physical books and e-books when physical copies didn’t exist. And, as luck would have it, this month my number came up and up and up.! Day after day I was getting notified that a book I’d had on hold for weeks and weeks was ready for me to pick up or download. I’d even re-upped the hold on a few of them because I was too busy the last time they came in. This month, I decided to push through and read as many of them as I could just to get them off my list. Plus I suspect there is a limit to how many times you can re-hold a book… So here you go, the September library reads!

The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

An intriguing story about a young boy, Daniel, who discovers a book in a secret library known as the Cemetery of Forgotten Books (if only this really existed!). Daniel embarks on a quest to find the book’s missing author, Julian Carax, while being pursued by a mysterious stranger who is determined to destroy every copy of Carax’s books in existence. This book was written by someone who loves (LOVES) books and if you love books as well then I highly recommend it. It was suggested to me by my friend Chrystal, partly because it takes place in Barcelona right after the civil war, and we are heading there in a month for a vacation. To Barcelona that is, not to civil war. Although, we’ll be there during the US presidential election so who knows! BONUS: The locations in the book are real, and there is a walking map provided, just in case you happen to find yourself in Barcelona in early November looking for something to do.

How to Sell a Haunted House, by Grady Hendrix

You know that moment when you make the hard decision to finally sell your vacant family home only to discover that it is packed to the rafters with creepy, life-like dolls and puppets? And when you try to clear all the creepy stuff out, you find out that the house is haunted, not just by the tortured memories of your past but also by a very unhappy poltergeist who has no interest in leaving? That! Well, this book is here to help you! It checks a lot of boxes in my “no thank you” list (generational trauma, estranged siblings, haunted taxidermy squirrels) but I really enjoyed it. Hendrix has the ability to drop in just the right amount of dark humour to balance out the scary parts, and overall it makes for an entertaining read. I started reading a library book version, but I was so overloaded with books coming due that I caved and bought myself a copy instead. Grady Hendrix also wrote a book with the very intriguing title “The Final Girl Support Group” and I justified buying this book so that I can trade with my niece for the Support Group one.

The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig

A book about a library in a month of reading an excessive number of library books feels about right! In this particular library, visitors who linger in the space between life and death are given the opportunity to change the outcome of decisions that they perhaps regret making (“why didn’t I take that new job instead of staying in the job I hated” is one of mine). Then they get to live out that life in some kind of parallel universe to see how differently their life might have turned out. A similar concept is presented in the movie Sliding Doors, but in the movie we see only one other life, while in this book the number of lives that can be lived is infinite. I loved this idea, and any time the lead character is living a different life, I loved the book. However, what repeatedly took me out of the story was an excessive amount of exposition, drawing on physics and philosophy and whatnot to explain how the library worked, but honestly I didn’t really care. I just wanted the library to be magic, no explanation necessary. There was significant disagreement on this book at my neighbourhood book club, however. One woman loved it, and one found it kind of annoying. I find myself right in the middle.

Fifteen Dogs, by Andre Alexis

What would happen if a bored and frankly amoral god, Hermes, were to wonder aloud “what would it be like if animals had human intelligence?” and an equally bored and amoral god, Apollo, wagered a year of servitude that animals would be even more unhappy than humans if given human intelligence? Well, what might happen is that these same reckless gods could decide to grant 15 random dogs with human intelligence and frame the wager around whether any of the 15 dogs will die happier with said intelligence than without. Why this happiness quotient is measured at the time of death is, really, just the kind of thing you’d expect a foolish and alarmingly idle god to do. Of course, the only way to complete this wager is for ALL THE DOGS TO DIE. (……. oops …. spoiler …….) And because they are also asshole gods, sometimes they interfere in the process, in order to try and win their thoughtless bet, and in doing so create immense and unnecessary suffering for the dogs. I’ll go out on a limb here and say that this is a terrible book written by a man who knows literally nothing about dogs. Give it a wide berth and go hug a dog instead.

Artemis, by Andy Weir

Andy Weir can write a captivatingly fun and suspense-filled story! What I appreciated in this book was that the protagonist, Jazz Bashira, was female and Saudi Arabian. Was she a little too much of a mouthy brat and too smart for her own good? Yes, yes she was. But the story was entertaining, and high-energy, and mostly funny (although some of the jokes were a little boy-ish for my taste). The plot is a “caper” and many aspects of the caper adventure defy logic and believability, but just like in the Martian, I suspect the science is sound, even if many of the coincidences that create the need for the science are a stretch. So yeah. Lots to criticize, but lots to enjoy.

Only two books this month due to the usual September demands, but both were excellent books! Of course, if family drama and/or trauma isn’t in your wheelhouse, you may want to give these careful consideration.

Close to Hugh, by Marina Endicott

I found this to be one of the more peculiar books by Marina (not in a bad way!) It’s hard to describe this book and do justice to it at the same time, but here goes nothing. A group of aging artist friends with much drama and a group of young-adult artist friends with much drama interact in ways that are very …. familiar. Teachers, students, mentors, proteges, parents, children, all trying to move forward in a complicated and anxiety-filled world. It’s a book that I had to work to stay with because it draws you into other people’s, well, drama, and I find that emotionally tiring at the best of times. It pays off, though, if you can hang on and live with these people for the week that the book spans in their lives. Also, I guarantee some of these people are part of your real life and there’s some fun in trying to figure out who they are.

Medicine Walk, by Richard Wagamese

Franklin, a first nations man, is asked by his estranged, alcoholic, and dying father, Eldon, to accompany him on a journey, both physical and spiritual, to a sacred place in the mountains where the father can be buried in a traditional Ojibway manner. Along the way, Eldon tries to make amends by sharing the tragic stories of his own past, while Franklin works to better understand his own backstory. If you’ve ever wondered how someone can repeatedly ruin their chances at a better life through alcohol abuse, this book provides some poignant possibilities. It’s a solid book, but our little local Amnesty book club agreed that we’d have appreciated a bit more depth on a few key characters that were left fairly undeveloped. For example, the father and son stop off at the cottage of an elder woman who saves them from starvation and she gets minimal page time. Of course, she is also not the key focus of the story, so perhaps that was an active choice by the author.

Let’s get moving on the September stories, mostly because the first one is another long one, at 77 pages. It’s (hopefully) about a werewolf though, so I’m good with it! Oh, and don’t forget to add your comments to the Month 6 post!

The Compleat Werewolf, by Anthony Boucher. I had to google this (I know, sad…) but “compleat” is a valid, albeit archaic, spelling of the word “complete”. Perhaps this gives us a clue as to the setting of this story? An interesting tidbit about Anthony Boucher is that he was a friend and mentor to Philip K. Dick, of “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” fame (which became the movie Blade Runner). He wrote mystery, SciFi, and horror (horror! my pick for this story!), and he co-created The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. The Compleat Werewolf was written in 1942.

The Smile on the Face, by Nalo Hopkinson. Nalo Hopkinson was born in Jamaica in 1960 and so frankly is not that much older than me. Her stories often draw on Caribbean history, and I really hope this one does!!! She has received numerous nominations and awards for her speculative fiction, including being nominated for a Hugo in 2001, which is impressive considering it’s a significantly male-dominated award. Disappointingly, she lost to the now extremely problematic J. K. Rowling for Goblet of Fire.

We are up to stories 11 and 12 out of 16! On to August’s reading assignments. Note that the first one is longer than the 25-page average length, coming in at 50 pages. It’s short, just not as short as you may be expecting. Still, you have probably fit it in between Olympic gold medal events coverage. Enjoy, and chat soon in the comments!

Prismatica (Hommage a James Thurber), by Samuel R. Delany. Samuel Delany is an award-winning contemporary American writer. Between 1962 and the present, he has written at least 2 dozen novels and an even greater number of short stories, novellas, anthologies, and essays. Prismatica was first published in 1977 in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. I have thoughts on it, since I accidentally read ahead last month, but will wait a few weeks to share them.

This story has been subtitled by Gaiman as an homage to James Thurber, who wrote (among other things) The Secret Life of Walter Mitty which you might recall as a movie starring Ben Stiller, or perhaps as a movie starring the delightful Danny Kaye. He also wrote a book called The 13 Clocks which Gaiman names as one of his all-time favourites, and is perhaps a book I need to track down!

The Manticore, the Mermaid, and Me, by Megan Kurashige. I had trouble finding information about Megan Kurashige, and it’s because she is firstly a professional dancer, working with her sister in San Francisco. Together they co-founded the dance company Sharp & Fine, where they use dancing to tell stories. I really hope this is a story about dancing.

A reminder and a warning.

Reminder: If you are joining us for the Nerdy Friend book club, remember to read the next two stories and add your comments here.

Warning: This is a longer one than usual! I had an extremely productive month of reading, and you are being subjected to write-ups on 6 books. Next month migration season opens so it will likely even out.

In The Woods, by Tana French

I include Tana French among my favourite authors, along with Guy Kay (who needs to write another book!), Emily St. John Mandl, and Marina Endicott. In The Woods is her debut novel, and introduces detective partners Rob Ryan and Cassie Maddox. Tana is a master at writing characters who are complex and flawed and lost, who make bad decisions and are trapped inside their inability to make them right, who negatively alter the course of their life through stubbornness and hurt feeling. Like me. Like any of us. (Trigger: relationship problems.)

Tiny Beautiful Things, by Cheryl Strayed

I might be the only person who didn’t *love* Cheryl Strayed’s book Wild, which I found a bit self-indulgent and tedious. But I read Tiny Beautiful Things on the recommendation of one of my neighbourhood book club members and because I didn’t have to wait 37 weeks for it on Libby. And I have to say I liked it better, for the most part. For a short-ish stint, Cheryl played the role of a school-of-hard-knocks advice columnist named Sugar, during which time she doles out advice in the form of harsh truths like how to break up with a long term friend who is holding you back, or how you deserve to find love but might not find it if you don’t first love yourself. She tempers this advice with her own extremely personal and moving stories which help soften the blow, so to speak. My complaint is that by the end of the book it felt like way too many stories were of people struggled to find (or feel deserving of) love and it started to feel like just a medium for Cheryl to share her own stories over selecting the best letters to provide a broad range of other people’s struggles. Maybe this is just a reflection of the lonely world we now live in, thanks to (anti)social media, but it did feel like this is yet another book that could have been 50 pages shorter. (Trigger: lots of relationship problems.)

The Story of Us, by Catherine Hernandez

To be right upfront, I didn’t like this book, and I am a bit surprised at all the accolades it received! There were some odd (to me) creative choices, the most troublesome one being that the story is narrated by a character, MG, who is a baby/fetus/”maybe baby”(a “maybe baby” is an unfertilized egg). I didn’t love this narrative choice, but I didn’t hate it so much as I hated the idea of it. In a world where women are denied access to pregnancy-termination health care because religious wackos and alt-right control freaks argue that a “fetus” is a “baby”, this seems like an irresponsible choice.

But still, I honestly enjoyed the first half of the book quite a bit, with its peek into the lives of Filipina nannies. It was especially interesting, and sometimes not so easy, to read the perspective on how Canadians take advantage of their nannies (backing them into working for free on their days off, for example) and also on the way our speech forces people to repeat themselves when we use expressions like “are you kidding me?” 

However, I felt, in the second half, the book lost its way, when MG finds work caring for a transgender woman with Alzheimer’s. At this point, it couldn’t seem to settle on a theme. Is this a book about a Filipina nanny dealing with the insensitivity and culture shock of living far away from home? Is it a book about caring for someone with Alzheimer’s? Is it about realizing one’s own transphobia? Is it about the sacrifices we make for family that maybe aren’t as appreciated as we think they should be? Is it about community? Is it about generational trauma? Is it a story about sexual assault? What the heck, Catherine! Make up your mind!! It seemed like any time there was a deeply compelling line of story-telling, she skipped right onto resolution and acceptance. For example, one minute the nanny, MG, is disgusted by the idea of Liz, a “man who pretends to be a woman”, and practically one paragraph later she’s picking out dresses for her to wear to the market. In another paragraph-long bit of growth, MG transitions from discomfort to acceptance in referring to a nonbinary person, Ash, as “they/them”. I would have appreciated more depth to the inner reflections MG must have gone through to come to terms with these very foreign ideas. It was also in the second half of the book that the narration lost its charm for me. Here we have a baby narrating not to us, the reader, but to Liz (using “you” pronouns) and referring to her (the baby’s) mother MG in third person (using “she” or sometimes “MG” or sometimes “Ma”) and then throwing in Ash who is referred to as “they”. I don’t have any issues with the pronouns of any of these people (you, she, they) except that because of the way the writing was structured it was often extremely confusing to figure out what or who was being talked to or about. And significantly, if I was transphobic, nothing in this book would make me re-evaluate my views because she doesn’t stay with the topic long enough to compel it. (Trigger: too many to mention.)

A Pitying of Doves, by Steve Burrows

Burrows’ second book, and while the first one was enjoyable, I found this one much more satisfying. He’s smoothed the edges off his between-chapter leaps in time and place, and he’s starting to round out his cast of characters, giving them more depth and complexity. His main character, Domenic Jejeune is still a bit overly introspective, and I look forward to him starting to open up a bit more to his colleagues as he becomes more comfortable with them. Otherwise, eight books of Jejeune’s reticence is going to become tiresome. (Trigger: relationship problems.)

A Man Called Ove, by Fredrik Backman

After being recommended by two of my fellow readers, I happened to find a copy in a church book sale for a dollar so I caved and bought it. I was promised laugh out loud along with some sad parts that might make me cry and that’s pretty accurate. Maybe more smiles than actual LOLs, but close enough. Ove is suicidal, dreaming of the day he joins his deceased wife in some better place, but don’t worry, his suicide attempts keep getting interrupted by his overly gregarious neighbours. I was surprised that the book didn’t come with content warnings, since that seems to be the way especially where themes of suicide are concerned. That said, listen to the podcast Search Engine, episode titled “What do trigger warnings actually do” to find how, in many cases, they are actually increasing anxiety rather than reducing it. (Trigger: suicide.)

Mother-Daughter Murder Night, by Nina Simon

I was going to comment about how one of the main characters is undergoing chemotherapy to treat lung cancer but still manages to have the energy to primp, dress in Armani suits, and click around on kitten heels. Then I read in the epilogue that the writer was dealing with her own mother going through chemo treatment while writing the book and then thought who the hell am I to judge what someone dealing with cancer and chemo can and wants to do to feel like a human being! Don’t be so judgmental, Risa!!

Reading this book clarified a few wheelhouse things for me. Detectives doing a less-than-bang-up job, for whatever reason, and being shown up by amateur sleuths .. like it. If the detective in question is a man and the amateur is a woman … even better (because frankly, we all know that men ignore women ALL THE TIME and it’s satisfying to watch vicariously as a man gets upstaged by a woman. Sorry. No, wait, not sorry.) If there is a second, insider detective who secretly sides with the amateur … excellent! There is a caveat, however. I like this in a one-off book, but hate it in a series, because eventually I want to yell at the characters just get over yourselves and get along for pete’s sake! (Trigger: men yelling like big babies.)