Night Owl Night, by Susan Edwards Richmond, Illustrated by Maribel Lechuga
I have set myself a challenge to write 8 blog posts this month. This amounts to 8 times more than my current running average*. I have a couple of reasons, which are conspiring to be extremely complimentary.
First, I am a member of the Belleville chapter of Toastmasters, working through Level 4 of “Presentation Mastery”. For my second of three Level 4 projects, I have chosen to “Write a Compelling Blog” which requires me to write 8 blog posts in a month (I’ll leave it to you to judge the ‘compelling’ part). The only time I’ve ever come close to 8 posts in a month has been when we’ve been travelling, and as we have no vacation travel plans in the foreseeable future, I need another angle.
The angle: I am on the Board of Directors of the Bird Observatory where I also volunteer during banding season, and I have been invited to be interviewed by the County radio station in late November to recommend several books about birding that might make fun Christmas gifts. I’ll be recommending a total of 7 books and providing a synopsis of each. Since 7 is awfully close to 8, I decided to write a separate post about each of the books which will a) help prepare me for the interview and b) check several boxes on my Toastmasters project. Win Win!! Or, Lazy Lazy!! You pick.
Night Owl Night is the first of my book recommendations, a beautifully illustrated children’s book that explains the process of and science for banding Northern Saw-whet Owls. When I stumbled across this book in our local bookstore (Books & Company) I was amazed!
I wrote about bird banding back in March, and you can read about it here if you like. Owl banding is very similar except that it’s colder and darker because we band at night. The process of owl banding is EXACTLY how this book describes it. Out of curiosity, I did a bit of research and it turns out the author is a birder, naturalist, and teacher who lives in Massachusetts. Fun fact: Massachusetts is where one of our recaptured adopted owls showed up. So many worlds colliding!
The story in this book focusses on a young girl who wants to be taken out owl banding by her scientist mother. This night, “Night Owl Night”, is her first time being allowed to join her mother as she bands Saw-whet owls. It explains the process of capturing owls in the mist nets, banding them, taking their measurements, and releasing them. It also gives a bit of extra detail on 4 different species of owls at the end of the story: Eastern Screech owls, Barred owls, Great Horned owls, and of course, Northern Saw-whets.
Then we hear a swish through the darkness. A blur. The second net is suddenly alive!
Gently, Mama unwraps a feathery ball. My heart twists and thumps. A saw-whet owl. Tiny. Perfect. We carry it back to the cabin.
In the cabin, as Mama holds the owl securely in her hands, it ruffles its feathers and claps its bill. “It’s okay, little one,” I whisper. “You’re safe with us.” When the owl hears my words, its bill grows still. It’s feathers relax. “You have a way with owls, Sova,” Mama says. My breath catches as we measure and weigh it. I gaze at the heart-shaped face, at the speckles on the belly.
Mama fans out one of the owl’s wings, then shines a special black light on the underside of its feathers. “See the pinkish glow?” she says. “That means this owl hasn’t replaced any feathers yet. It’s young. This is its first migration.”
“Like me,” I say. “It’s my first owl migration, too.”
* if you are one of my five followers then I apologize in advance for the many alerts you are going to receive this month
Back in June I made the excellent decision to retire – good god I’m old – from the best job I’ve had in my entire 30+ year career. I have many things to say about not working in shitty jobs that undermine your self esteem and your self worth, but that’s for another time. When I retired, one of my favourite coworkers gave me this book, an incredibly thoughtful gift. It’s not a start-to-finish book for reading, but more of a carefully curated collection of interesting birds of North America, complied by David Sibley, one of the preeminent writers and illustrators in the field of ornithology. That said, the beginning of the book is a presented like story, collating bird facts such as how they fly, why they are colourful, how they reproduce, and what to do if a bird hits your window* or gets trapped in your house.
Here are some of the more interesting tidbits that I came across:
The colour of birds can be produced either by pigments or because of the nanostructure of the surface of feathers. See point #2…
There is no blue pigment in birds. I’ll say that again. None of the blue colours you see in any bird anywhere in the world is the result of pigment. Blue colour arises solely due to the microscopic structure of feathers. Simply put, feathers are structured such that blue light reflects off multiple surfaces in a way that causes the wavelengths to align in the same phase and add together, while all other colours reflect out of phase and cancel out. This is why you “see” blue even though there is no blue pigment. Crazy!
The Blackpoll Warbler is the long-distance migration champion, travelling as far as 11,000 km (7,000 miles) between Alaska and central Brazil each spring and fall.
Not all birds’ bills are rigid. The tip of a sandpiper’s bill can “flex” in order to grasp prey buried in sand or mud. Like lips. I find this extremely weird and kind of freaky.
The Common Loon needs a large stretch of open water to fly, because it needs to take a long running start in order to take off in flight. They can actually become trapped if they land in a pond that is too small!
Feathers can have growth bars similar to tree rings! The bars alternate between subtly lighter and darker lines, with each dark-light combination indicating a single 24-hour period of growth. Darker bands grow during the day, and lighter bands at night.
A whole bunch of things about birds are still a mystery!
Why do some birds hops and some birds walk?!
Murres commonly dive in the ocean to 600 feet or more to find fish. Nobody knows how they find fish at that depth, or even survive!
Birds radiate heat through their bills so bird with bigger bills live in warmer climates. Except Puffins. How do Puffins survive in very cold water with such large bills? Unknown!
And finally, a fascinating tale about Chimney Swifts, a threatened species in Ontario:
The high, sharp twittering of Chimney Swifts is a common sound over eastern towns in the spring and summer, but you will never see one perched. These remarkable birds spend the entire day high in the air, and spend the night clinging to the walls inside a chimney. Before the advent of chimneys, they roosted and nested in large, hollow trees, or even on the bark of large trees protected by an overhanging limb. Exactly how they spend their winters is not known. Once they start migrating in September to the wintering grounds in South America, it’s possible that they stay in the air for the entire time, until they return to their nesting chimney the following April. Recent research has documented that some other species of swifts stay airborne, flying continuously, for up to ten months. How and when they sleep is still unknown, but a study of frigatebirds showed them flying continuously for weeks at a time, and that the time spend sleeping each day during continuous flight was only 6 percent of the daily sleep they get when they can perch. Like other birds, they can sleep one side of their brain while the other side is still alert, but flying frigatebirds actually spend about one-quarter of their sleep time with both sides of the brain asleep!
* You can choose to prevent birds from hitting your windows at all by purchasing and installing these feather-friendly collision prevention dots on the outside of your windows. These dots break up reflections that cause birds to strike windows in the first place. You can also hang strings, decorate your windows with soap, or apply your own decals but these options must be no more than 2 inches apart. I’m passionate about this, and I apologize in advance for how many times you are going to hear me talk about it.
In my mind, this book was stacking up to be a dry treatise on the scientific orders* of owls (Tytonidae, the barn owls, and Strigidae, all the other owls). Case in point, it is subtitled “The New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds.” Now don’t get me wrong, I love a good science-y book as much as the next nerd, but I have to be in the right mood to read one, and when this book came up in my To Be Read (TBR) list, I just wasn’t. But I couldn’t slide it back into the bottom of the pile because the bird observatory, where I now sit as a board member, had arranged a Webinar presentation with the author and I was facilitating the afterward Q&A. So, I had no choice but to just put on my science-reading hat and get to it.
Surprisingly, this is the least science-y science book! Ackerman shares amazing personal stories of people who dedicate their time to the study of owls, either as a career or as volunteers. Her stories range from people who have studied owls all of their lives, to people who fell into owling through serendipity, to owls themselves who live in captivity (due to an inability to survive in the wild) and have become ambassadors of learning.
In my favourite story, she introduces us to Marjon Savelsberg, a classically training musician who studied with members of the Johann Strauss Orchestra. When Marjon developed breathing and muscle control problems, and was subsequently diagnosed with Idiopathic Cardiomyopathy, she was forced to abandon her musical dreams. After a period of despondency, she found her way to a research group studying owl vocalizations and has become an expert on Eurasion Eagle Owl, being able to identify individual owls by their particular calls. It is her innate musical talents that makes it possible for her to differentiate even the most subtle differences in owl calls, and has given her a new lease on life.
In another story, owl scientists figured out that they can locate owl roosting and nesting sites by using “detective dogs”, increasing their success rate from 59% to 87%. And in very remote areas, drones are being used to help locate particularly elusive owls. Locating owls helps scientists monitor populations and behaviours.
Ultimately this book was a joy to read and I recommend it to anyone. If you don’t already love owls to death, you surely will after reading it.
It’s late summer in the southern Appalachian Mountains. A narrow trail winds between oaks and hickories tinged yellow and, higher up, through spruces, pines, and firs. No owls in sight, but I know they’re here. These woods are full of them. Barred, Great Horned, Eastern Screech, and now – I realize – Northern Saw-whets.
Owls have changed the way I see this landscape, the snags and felled trees not as debris but as nurseries and ramps for branching owlets, the scrubby gullies not as ecological wastelands but as hide-aways for roosting owls. I think I spot a screech owl nestled in a snag, but it’s only a stubby broken limb doing a credible owl imitation. Ha! Turnabout is fair play.
I stand and listen. It’s daytime. The owls are quiet. They see me but stay unseen, so well hidden t hey escape my eye, even thought they may be yards away.
Writing this book has grown my wonder at these birds. Owls see what we don’t see. Hear what we don’t hear. Invite us to notice sights and sounds that might otherwise go unnoticed. With their quiet, subtle presence and cryptic coloring, they point to the value of not standing out in the world but fitting into it. For owls, invisibility is a defense or a disguise; for us, it’s a privilege, on that – if we’re lucky – my yield an owl sighting.
*as in “Kingdom Phylum Class Order Family Genus Species”, not as in “One Two Three Four Five …”
My friend CP gives thoughtful gifts. Not everyone fully appreciates the thought behind these gifts, and that’s ok. But if you are looking to build meaningful connection, and you’re not sure about the gift you’ve been given, you may want to consider asking yourself “how does receiving this gift make me feel” and then having a conversation about it. At least, I think that’s what Brene Brown is trying to say in here.
Atlas of the Heart is … well … an atlas of human emotion and experience. With a very accessible and meaningful approach, Brene breaks down the nuances between emotions such as Happiness versus Contentment, Belonging versus Fitting In, Pity versus Empathy or Sympathy, Shame versus Guilt, Humiliation, or Embarrassment. She provides foundational language that you can use to connect more deeply with people about how you are feeling and why you might be feeling that way.
Belonging is being accepted for you. Fitting in is being accepted for being like everyone else.
If you are of my generation (X-ish), you may remember a phase, back in the 90’s maybe, where we were taught a new way to address conflict. It was the framing of our feelings in sentences structured as “when you … I feel …”. This was supposed to be followed with an expression of what you thought your partner was struggling with themselves, then a clarification of your own needs, and finally a concession to work together to do better. In the workplace, at least, this process of structured communication quickly deteriorated into a method of demanding what you wanted in a way that allegedly prevented the other person from being able to counter, because you would lead with your feelings and “nobody could argue” that your feelings weren’t real. So imagine this intended structure: “When you are late for our meetings, I feel frustrated like my time isn’t important. I can imagine you are overly busy and juggling many things, but I really need a partner who can help me with managing my time in a reliable way. Can we work together to come up with a better strategy for meeting the respects both our needs?” Suddenly it becomes this: “When you are late for meetings, I feel frustrated and disrespected, and therefore I need you to start being on time.” And the person speaking thinks their case is won, because “feelings”. Those were not good times for meaningful communication, I’m just going to say! I’m pretty sure this all set me back at least a decade in my own communication skills! now that I think about it, I’m also convinced that this time also saw the rise of the annoying and belittling phrase “I’m sorry you feel that way.”
This beautiful book doesn’t try to structure your sentences or words, or point you down a pre-built road you are expected to follow. One of my favourite things about Brene is that she wants and encourages you to explore your own path, while simply giving you tools that might come in helpful along with way. In fact, the more you fumble around, trying a screwdriver when you should be using a chisel, the more you learn and grow.
What I love most about this book is that it have given us (me and my friend) a common language on which to set our conversations. I, in particular, struggle sometimes to name the emotion that I might be feeling, and I have used this book several times to either look up the emotion and see if it aligns, or to ask my friend “I think I am feeling ashamed” and she can reflect and suggest that perhaps what I might actually be feeling is guilt. Understanding more clearly the emotion I am feeling directs me to the right tools to address it. If I feel guilty, then I suck it up and apologize for my actions. If I feel ashamed, then I need to exercise self-kindness and share my experience with someone empathetic.
Empathy … is understanding what someone is feeling, not feeling it for them. If someone is feeling lonely, empathy doesn’t require us o feel lonely too, only to reach back into out own experience with loneliness so we can understand and connect. Affective empathy, feeling something along with the person who is struggling, is a slippery slope toward becoming overwhelmed and not being able to offer meaningful support.
Empathy Misses in Brene language
The best thing I took away from this book was that we can explore emotions with curiosity instead of fear or embarrassment (or shame). For example “I feel this emotion and I am curious about why” versus “I feel this emotion and I am angry and embarrassed by it”. I reference it often – it lives now on my living room coffee table – and receiving this gift makes me feel grateful for the thoughtfulness of my friend.
Better Living Through Plastic Explosives, by Zsuzsi Gartner
Has anyone actually read this book? If so, what is it about????
What I know for … sure? It’s a collection of short stories. Although there is a cross-over scene involving a missing Japanese exchange student reappearing riding on the back of a giant tortoise in North Vancouver, so maybe they are all connected???? Many, many question marks. It’s possible that the lead story is about a home dweller in a North Van cul-de-sac who is a motorcycle-worshipping … werewolf? Who lures the neighbourhood wives into his cult of nightly … meat-eating? Until the neighbourhood husbands … kill him? I don’t know!!! In another story, entire houses disappear into the North Shore mountains in a matter of seconds. Like, literally get slurped into the earth in the 30 seconds that your back is turned. It doesn’t appear to be science fiction. In yet another, a woman quite possibly rigs a high-tech bomb to blow up a car that chronically speeds through her subdivision, and although I am unsure, her son may have ended up as collateral damage? Maybe?? Maybe not????? (although I enjoyed this one for the fact that she is referring to as “the recovering terrorist” and attends a recovering terrorist support group). Most of the rest of the stories are dark, and confusing, and what I did understand was sad and/or tragic.
My favourite of the collection was “Floating like a Goat”, subtitled “Or, What we talk about when we talk about art”. It is written in the form of a progressively more hilariously aggressive note from a mother to an elementary school art teacher who graded her 6 year old daughter “not yet meeting expectations” when the daughter breaks an art class RULE by drawing a goat whose feet do not touch the ground. I feel like every parent has had a child taught by this teacher and has wanted to write this note. No disrespect to teachers in general, but isn’t there always one in every crowd, whose principles make absolutely no sense, but on whose good graces your child’s passing grade depends??
Summary: ????????????????????
The Witches Are Coming, by Lindy West
Lindy West has an issue, and frankly so do I. The expression “Witch Hunt” has become a favourite among fretful rich white men who seem to feel that the power they hold over virtually everyone (and their freedom to commit heinous crimes) is under threat whenever they are asked to reconcile their massive wealth with the ongoing erosion of a functioning and just society (or to simply obey the law). The irony is that those accused of leading the hunt are the very witches who were once hunted. And, of course, burned. Well, how the tables have turned! It seems the hunted have become the hunters! It’s ludicrous. But Lindy has decided to go all in, as should we all, and this her (our) rallying cry: Beware! The Witches are Coming! And she does all of it with her razor-sharp sense of wit and humour, as exemplified by such chapter titles as “Ted Bundy was not charming: are you high?” and “Obsolescence is a preventable disease”. You should absolutely read this book ASAP. Bravo, Lindy!
Everything I Never Told You, by Celeste Ng
Things that I would include in my doghouse (themes in a book that would be a Hard Pass for me):
Generational trauma
Family dysfunction
Children used to fulfill the dreams of parents
Things that describe Everything I Never Told You
Generational trauma
Family dysfunction
Children used to fulfill the dreams of parents
And yet … I could not put this book down! I thought maybe I just wanted to know what happened to daughter Lydia – the opening sentence of the book is “Lydia is dead, but they don’t know this yet.” – but the book skims the surface of this (potential) crime and instead delves more deeply into the family events that led to this point. I can’t say why I liked it – the writing? the story-telling? the characters (no, not the characters, I’m pretty sure I didn’t really like any of them except maybe the poor girl who died). Whatever the reason, I did like it. A lot! I have enjoyed all three of Celeste Ng’s books and look forward to a fourth.
Atlas of the Heart, by Brene Brown
This book was an incredibly thoughtful gift from my friend Chrystal, and I have been savouring it over a period of several months. It is too much to include here and, at any rate, I feel it deserves a dedicated Blog. Stay tuned.
It’s a bit late in the year for this, but in order to confirm that I’ve checked items off my 2023 reading challenge, I should probably share what the challenge was that I set for myself! With credit to the podcast Reading Glasses, I separated my challenge list into two parts: “books” and “activities”. This is how it fell out:
Books:
Read a favourite book of a close friend or loved one
Read a graphic novel
Give a book a second chance (basically, try again to read a book I previously abandoned)
Read a book by a non-cis-white author
Read a book by a local PEC author
Activities:
Figure out my wheelhouse and my doghouse (a fun list coming in Dec, and yes, “wheelhouse” will definitely include murder mysteries!)
Write a blog about the books I have read (since you are reading this, check!)
Read at least 2 books per month
Buy books from independent booksellers, ideally local stores OR borrow from the library
Read more diversity
If you haven’t heard of or listened to the Reading Glasses podcast, I encourage you to check it out. There is plenty of range, and you should be able to find a reading topic that appeals to you. Beach reads, anyone? How to give up on a book that you are hating? How to bust out of a reading slump? You name it.
Better Living Through Birding, by Christian Cooper
You all know Christian Cooper. Think back to the early pandemic days of May 2020, when a Black man went birdwatching in Central Park and encountered a Karen* by the coincidental name of Amy Cooper who was walking a dog off-leash in an on-leash area. Short version: Christian asked Amy to put her dog on a leash and Amy told Christian she was going to call the police and tell them an African American man was threatening her life in the park. On the same day the George Floyd was murdered the police, I am not sure how this can be construed as anything other than a threat to cause harm or even death. There is no excuse for her behaviour. She is a terrible person.
[Aside: as a now-avid birder, I can attest that during migration season, which May certainly is, migrating birds are looking for places to stop on their journey to fuel up for the next stage of flight, and several species of birds are ground-foragers. Which is partly why there are on-leash areas in parklands, and which is why I’m sure Christian wasn’t taking “no” as an answer. I’ve had my own run-ins with off-leash-entitled dog-walking Karens*, and those people suck. Just put your damn dog on a leash!]
Irrespective of the viral park incident, Christian Cooper has led a very interesting and colourful life. His book is not a response to the park incident (although he does cover it in the second to last chapter), but the park incident may well have sparked the writing of it. Ultimately, it’s a biography of his life, growing up a gay, nerdy, Marvel-loving, Black man who finds himself enamored with birding at a young age. He sprinkles life lessons as well as birding pro-tips throughout, and segues elegantly between his birding experiences and what birding brings to his life. (This is what the book “Field Notes from an Unintentional Birder” wanted and failed to be.)
Although I bought this book for the birding (and to support Cooper, who absolutely deserves to have us all buy his book), it turns out that it also checks a box for me: read more diversity.
*With sincere apologies to my cousin Karen, who is one of the nicest people I know, and is most definitely not a “Karen”!
Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
This is my “give it a second chance” book. My wonderful Vancouver book club chose this book back in 2015 and I gave it up mid-way through. There is no particular reason other than I just couldn’t stay interested. There was SO MUCH talk about Ifemelu getting her hair done!
For this second chance (check!) I borrowed an e-copy from the library (check!) and read it over a couple of weeks. It was still a slog for me, TBH, but this time I did finish it and I’m glad I did. Truthfully, I didn’t love it, but I didn’t hate it, either. I suspect that it was too much a character-based book and I am mostly a plot-based reader. There are moments that I did love – when Ifemelu is writing her blog. And there are moments that I did not love – when the characters are sitting around talking philosophy. In fact, I’m going to just go right ahead and add “characters discussing philosophy” to my doghouse right now!
And that’s it for August. Stay tuned for September, when I read a book that makes NO SENSE to me whatsoever. Revel in my bookish ignorance!
Well, I am still largely favouring fun murder mysteries, however July did see a bit of branching out into adventure, a First Nations reckoning, and the annihilation of the universe! Cool!
Furbidden Fatality, by Deborah Blake
According to the fun, bookish podcast “Reading Glasses”, Furbidden Fatality is a “cozy mystery”. A cozy is more or less defined by the fact that all the nastiness, like murder and swearing and sex, takes place off page, and the detectiving is carried out by an amateur sleuth living in a small community. It’s possible that a pun-based title is also a necessary attribute. Basically it’s the Harlequin Christmas Movie of the reading world.
In this case, our smalltown amateur sleuth is super-cute Kari (even her name is cute), who uses a modest* lottery win to buy a local pet sanctuary, only to find herself embroiled in a murder investigation that she must solve herself because the local police just don’t seem to be trying all that hard. She is aided by a super-cute kitten and the super-cute local vet, as well as a refreshingly assorted group of girlfriends and sanctuary volunteers. I have no prior experience that allows me to rank this against other “cozies”, or even against any Harlequin Christmas Movies, but I can say it’s a very satisfying read. I’d argue it’s best enjoyed while wearing woolly socks, drinking hot chocolate that’s overflowing with mini-marshmallows, and sitting in front of a fire on a snowy winter day.
*modest by today’s billion-dollar Powerball and Mega Millions examples
Living with Cannibals & Other Women’s Adventures, by Michele Slung
Every now and then, a book comes along that underscores the disservice done to women over the centuries, from the belief that we aren’t strong enough to carry a firehose that therefore should not be permitted to be firefighters to the accepted position that monthly menstrual cycles make us prone to hysteria and lack of pragmatism and therefore should not be trusted with truly important things like leadership and decision-making.
Enter Living with Cannibals, a book that tells the stories of 16 adventuresome women – 8 from centuries past and 8 who are, as of the time of writing, still at the height of their extraordinary achievements. Here are a few of the women chronicled in the book. Louise Arner Boyd who, in the early 1900s, travelled extensively through the Arctic, including exploring and surveying Greenland. Fanny Bullock Workman who, in the late 1800s, travelled eight times to climb and mountaineer through the Himalaya. Catherine Destivelle who is a renowned free-soloing mountaineer and was not only the first woman to complete many climbs, but in fact the first person, male or female. Ida Pfeiffer, who in the late 1700s, travelled twice around the world, journeying an estimated 32,000 km by land and a staggering 240,000 km by sea. Isabella Bird Bishop, who in the mid 1800s, road horseback 800 miles through the Rocky Mountains despite suffering from chronic spinal ailments.
If I could add one more woman to the list of adventurers, I would choose Jade Hameister, who skied to both the North and South Poles by the time she was 16 years old, making her the youngest person to have completed this “Polar Hat Trick”. And yet still, after posting a Youtube video speaking about about her desire to achieve this goal, a multitude of misogynistic comments were posted, including “make me a sandwich”. FFS. But, not one to let this go unnoticed, when she did finally reach the South Pole, she uploaded a picture of herself on Facebook offering up a sandwich to anyone willing to come and get it. Jade is my hero.
Magic for Liars, by Sarah Gailey
What a good book this is! Think Veronica Mars drama blended with Harry Potter magic. Drama means a murder mystery, and our private detective in this case is “muggle” Petunia Dursley Ivy Gamble, a melancholy, functioning alcoholic who’s twin sister is a magically gifted teacher at Osthorne Academy for Young Mages. Ivy is called upon to investigate when a murder occurs on the school property. Given that Ivy dislikes her twin and loathes all things magical, you just know that fun times are in store. Mix in some magical tropes like prophecies and a Chosen One with some YA tropes like teenage angst, immaturity, and confused sexual identity. Blend it all up with wonderfully precise writing and you have a triple-layer chocolate fudge cake of a book!
Five Little Indians, by Michelle Good
In May 2021, the remains of 215 children were found on the site of the Kamloops Indian Residential School in BC. On June 23 of the same year, 751 unmarked graves were found on the site of the Marieval Indian Residential School in SK. On June 30, 182 more unmarked graves were found near Kootenay Indian Residential School in BC. To date, more than 2,700 unidentified suspected graves have been located. It is Canada’s great shame. We Canadians need to remember that this was allowed to happen, and that for many of us, it was still happening in our lifetime. The last residential school in Canada closed in 1996. 1996!!! It is estimated that there are 80,000 survivors alive today, who suffer from trauma that we can’t even imagine.
Michelle Good’s book provides an navigable path towards understanding just a few of the long-term impacts of the residential school system on survivors, and their friends and families. The story is told through the lens of 5 First Nations teenagers as they “age out” of the residential school system, and attempt to find healing. It is masterfully written in a way that makes it easy to understand and empathize with these characters, when in fact I suspect the full extent of survivor trauma is actually unimaginable. This is an important book, and a step towards understanding reconciliation from a different perspective than we might be used to or be comfortable with.
The End of Everything (Astronomically Speaking), by Katie Mack (@AstroKatie)
Capping off the month is a book that looks, with refreshing humour, on the various ways in which our universe could eventually meet its demise. Will it collapse under its own weight in a reversal of the Big Bang that started it all? Will it continue to expand, getting colder and darker until it becomes a uniform sheet of nothingness? Or will something even more insane occur that changes all of the physics in the universe such that nothing that exists today could continue to exist, including us? I’m sure you’re thinking this all sounds very science-y, or worse, very quantum-y, but let me assure you that Katie Mack has physics story-telling abilities that rival Carl Sagan. I promise you that if you read this book you will a) laugh a lot and b) understand more than you are probably thinking. Happily, there’s no need to worry. With one possibly alarming but unlikely exception, the astronomical end of everything is billions and billions of years away.
This book is nothing like I expected. Somewhere between the title and the book jacket summary (“for years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove … she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand”) I expected this to be a modern day Jungle Book, with the “marsh girl” being raised by animals. Which, frankly, barf. BUT … an injustice has been done! The “marsh girl” has a real name that isn’t Mowgli, it’s Kya. And she wasn’t raised by animals, she was raised by her dysfunctional family who abandon her one by one, leaving her to be looked after by her abusive father until she is reasonably old enough to know how to take care of herself. On her own, she associates with people from the nearby town as little as possible: Jumpin’, who sells Kya gas and buys mussels from her; Tate, who teaches her to read and to count; Mabel who provides clothes and feminine products (can I just say, thank GOD for a book that acknowledges that young women need feminine products on a very regular basis, regardless of their heroics volunteering as tribute in the hunger games, or casting spells, or dating vampires?? FFS)
Anyhoooo …. The book quickly becomes a satisfying murder mystery intertwined with Kya’s efforts to just survive, all the while documenting the local flora and fauna to surprising success. I recommend it!
Blackwater Bluff, by S. M. Hurley
I picked this book up at the local Local Store from a display stand of Prince Edward County authors. Mostly I picked it because I’ve been to the bluff featured on the cover (yes, that’s how I pick books, by the familiarity of their cover art.) It’s actually called Little Bluff Conservation Area, and you can google it to see what I mean.
Blackwater Bluff is the first book for writer Shelagh Mathers, a former PEC lawyer. She is currently working on book 3, featuring her main character, Augie de Graaf, an enjoyably aggressive PEC Crown Attorney. In this first book, Augie has to solve the murder of her friend and mentor before the police arrest the wrong person and abandon the investigation. Meanwhile, she has to stick-handle her a-hole boss, who is working hard to sideline her. (I know how it feels, Augie.) Two thumbs up for this one! I look forward to reading the next two books in the series.
Shit, Actually; by Lindy West
A quick aside. It occurs to me that I have no idea when to use a colon versus a semi-colon. I seem to remember some grade-school rule-of-thumb about “upgrading” the punctuation if you are using a comma to separate details, when the individual details you are separating also include commas. But truthfully, I have no idea. So I’m just making it up.
Aside over. Lindy West has wasted 46 hours of her life revisiting popular movies from the 90s so that she can generously gift us with 23 glorious essay take-downs, and for that I am grateful. This book made me laugh and laugh and laugh. She starts off with The Fugitive, deemed to be the perfect movie (incorrect: The Princess Bride* is the perfect movie. however I give her some leeway because it’s an 80s movie and she is focused on the 90s). Lindy ranks the remaining 22 movies on a 1-10 Fugitive-DVD scale, validating my own movie-rating strategy of using other movies as yard metersticks**.
I didn’t always agree with her – she gives Face/Off a ridiculous 6 Fugitive-DVDs when it clearly deserves zero, and that’s being generous, because the scale doesn’t appear to allow for negatives. But I forgive her because she rates Shawshank Redemption at 11/10. Hilariously bad reviews include Love Actually, The Notebook, Titanic, The Santa Clause, and American Pie. Don’t get me wrong, there are good reviews as well (Top Gun, Speed, Terminator II, Jurassic Park, The Rock), but all of them have extremely funny bad bits that don’t escape Lindy’s laser eye.
WARNING: If you love love LOVE Love, Actually, then be prepared either to hate this particular essay or to rethink your relationship this movie. Me? I chose the latter. In the end, Lindy gives it 0 out of 10, which seems about right. I would have once said this movie doesn’t age well, but in hindsight that would suggest that it did, once upon a time, have some 90s-specific redeeming qualities. I’m no longer sure that’s the case.
*Musings on The Princess Bride
The Princess Bride is a wonderful, and wonderfully funny, movie. Dare I say it’s one of my favourites of all time! That’s right, I said it. And I’ll tell you what, I’m awfully sick of people judging me for it. I once was chatting with a couple of coworkers in my office at work, and one person asked us what our favourite movie was. When I said The Princess Bride, she literally laughed in my face. For giving my OPINION, which she ASKED FOR. You know what? If there was a wrong answer, maybe you should have told me up front instead of being a dick about it, or perhaps made it a multiple choice question (“What’s your favourite movie? a) Heat, b) Casino, c) the Usual Suspects, or d) If you didn’t choose a, b, or c, you obviously have bad taste in movies and can no longer be permitted to engage in this conversation”).
What makes The Princess Bride so great? Peter Falk describes it best to Kevin from the Wonder Years, playing his grandson: It has “fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles…” He did forget hilarity, but he’s Peter Falk and he’s forgiven.
Here’s a short list of other great reasons to love this movie:
Peter Falk (“when I was your age, television was called books”).
Kevin from The Wonder Years playing Peter Falk’s grandson with perfection (“that doesn’t sound too bad, I’ll try to stay awake”)
ALL THE REST OF THE CAST. There is no bad casting in this movie. None at all.
The hilarious battle of wits between Vizzini and The Man in Black / Dread Pirate Roberts / Westley the Farm Boy. “I clearly cannot choose the wine in front of me!”
Hello! My name is Inigo Montoya! You killed my father. Prepare to die. (Count Rugen: “Stop saying that!”)
…OK OMG I’m laughing just thinking about this …
Andre the Giant rhyming. It’s the best. I mean it! (“Anybody want a peanut”).
INCONCEIVABLE! (“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means”).
Mawage is wot bwings us togevver today.
The choreography of sword fight between Inigo and Westley is just the absolute best! (“I am not left handed either”).
Kevin from The Wonder Years continually interrupting Peter Falk’s reading (“Is this a KISSING book????”)
Inigo being given a new purpose in life after finally achieving avenging his father (honestly, most stories just leave the avenging hero with nothing else to do).
The way the movie rewinds the water chase scene when Peter Falk is trying to figure out where he left off in the story.
The introduction of Robin Wright, before she meets Sean Penn.
The sweet, sweet ending, when Wonder Years Kevin asks Peter Falk to come again the next day to read the book again, and Peter Falk answers “as you wish”.
HOW CAN YOU NOT LOVE THIS MOVIE??? That’s MY judgement. But I’ll at least try not to be a huge jerk about it.
**My Movie-rating movie scales:
The Old Yeller Scale – how much a movie makes you cry. Nothing over a 7 for me, thanks very much.
The Prometheus Scale – how much a scifi movie sucks to death. A bit counterintuitive because the best scifi movies score a 1 on this scale.
April was a slow reading month so I combined it with May to appear more impressive. Also because I’m a procrastinator.
Ottawa Rewind 2: More Curios and Mysteries, by Andrew King
Andrew King is an avid amateur historian, whose obsession with Ontario history compels him to research library archives, review satellite photos, and hike through forests in search of foundational remnants of past architecture and settlements. And by foundational, I mean he searches for evidence of literally the foundations of old buildings in the forests and parks of the greater Ottawa area. He does this in order to piece together a narrative positing what might have become of some past historical sites. He compiles his obsessions into fascinating, short-story-sized accounts of his findings and theories. If you are from, or at all familiar with, the Eastern Ontario region, particularly the Ottawa valley, you will likely find this book interesting, and in some cases amazing!
Coincidentally, as I was reading this book (this is his second book – I haven’t read book 1), I noticed some artwork on the cover that looked oddly familiar. In Prince Edward County, where I now live (fondly referred to as “The County”), there is a year-round self-guided Art Gallery tour called the “Arts Trail”, and each year a guidebook in printed, featuring a local artist from one of the member galleries as its cover artwork. Take a look at the guide for 2022-2023 and the cover of Andrew’s book and see if you notice anything interesting.
Right??!! It turns out that Andrew King is also a very popular artist whose work is represented by Mad Doc Gallery in Picton, here in The County. He is so popular, in fact, that he work sells out within a couple of weeks of a show being launched. It turns out he himself is as interesting and curious as the histories that he writes about!
Field Notes from an Unintentional Birder, by Julia Zarankin
I have a tattoo of a red-winged blackbird on my left shoulder. I got it in my 40s, and it is in recognition of the fact that the red-winged blackbird has been my favourite bird for most of my life. (Two quick answers to the question “why”: 1) when I first learned about red-winged blackbirds as a child, I couldn’t believe such a stunningly coloured bird existed in nature and then I SAW one in real life and 2) I love the way they hide their beauty until they fly, and they they are breathtaking.)
This book first caught my eye because I also consider myself to be an Unintentional Birder. This is 100% me:
Imagine, then, my reaction when I read this inside the front cover flap: “When Julia Zarakin saw her first red-winged blackbird, she didn’t expect that it would change her life.” WOAH! This book was obviously written exclusively for me! I knew I would love it, so much so that I bought a copy to keep. Because I knew. I KNEW.
And I tried really, really hard to love this book. And when that started to fail, I tried really, really hard to like it. But it just didn’t live up to my desperately desired expectations. I can’t say exactly where it failed. It might be the clumsy segues between her life, being born in Russia and growing up in Canada, and the emergence of her interest in birding. Or maybe it’s the way she bandies about names of birds often without bothering to give you one iota of an idea of what they look like or why you should also be interested in them (many times I stopped reading to google a particular bird just to get a sense of what she was talking about). Or when she accidentally breaks the leg of a bird she is trying to extract from a mist net (what the hell???). It could also have been her list-writing, where she just rhymes off a list of birds in a way that annoys the crap out of me. Consider: “… the names I had longed to pronounce aloud delighted me with their sound: Cape May, Blackburnian, Wilson’s, northern parula, scarlet tanager, indigo bunting, Baltimore oriole, and yellow, bay-breasted and black-and-white warbler.” Gaaaak. Nothing takes me out of story like coming across a lengthy, comma-delimited list.
In summarizing this book to the people who also really, really want to love it, I would just say that it should have been much better than it was.
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
I had forgotten most of the important plot points of The Great Gatsby, and instead of watching the DiCaprio movie I decided to just re-read the book after coincidentally encountering a number of Gatsby references over a short time. Isn’t weird coincidences just how life works?
At any rate, I have to admit that at first I was a bit off-put by FSF’s play-by-play of the lavish and drunken world that his characters inhabit. He is unfortunately also a fan of the aforementioned and hated list-writing, but SO much worse, when he takes a page and half to name all of the people who attended a party at Jay Gatsby’s (none of whom ever appear in the novel again). GAAAAAK!!! But ultimately, the book kind of grew on me. Most surprising was how timeless it felt. The parties and escapades and fancy cars could be dropped into almost any modern-day event or movie with barely a notice. Think of the parties in Weekend At Bernie’s, Office Christmas Party, and every James Bond movie ever made. All told, it was worth re-reading, and now I might even go watch the movie.
Why Birds Sing, by Nina Berkhout
Every spring, The County holds an event called The County Reads, at which four community residents each choose a book by a Canadian author and defend it as the “must read” book of the year. I attended this year because it seemed like a fun way to spend an evening (remember, I live in the middle of the country). Why Birds Sing was one of the selected books (spoiler: it didn’t win). An opera singer who tanks her career by pushing too hard on her boundaries is relegated to teaching a group of Roger-Whittaker-loving whistlers to, well, whistle. In the meantime her husband’s estranged brother moves in with his temperamental African Grey parrot while he undergoes cancer treatment. The writing is a little jumpy but I eventually settled into it and ended up enjoying it. If character-driven stories are your wheelhouse, then you’ll probably like it as well, although be aware that the parrot might be the most well-developed character in the book.
An eclectic month, in which I surprise myself by reading four books, all very different!
Such a Quiet Place, by Megan Miranda
Megan Miranda has a style. Her stories often (or even always?) take place in an isolated, sort-of-close-knit community where one of their own dies/disappears/reappears and another of their own is suspected/arrested/runs off. In Such A Quiet Place, it’s all of the above. A year after one of the neighbour couples dies in a tragic murder (or accident?) and another neighbour is arrested and imprisoned for the crime, the convicted woman is released from prison on appeal and returns to hang out with all her old frenemies. Megan has a crafty way of making you continually rethink “who dunnit”, Wheel-Of-Fortune style, until the end of the book, where you find out maybe the wheel stopped on the right wedge or maybe it didn’t. I like her books but I’m starting to find that I need some space between the “I am a major mental case” story-telling style of her narrators.
Killers of a Certain Age, by Deanna Raybourn
Four women go on a vacation cruise to celebrate their upcoming retirement. Pretty normal! I’m thinking of doing that myself! Except these four are trained assassins for a secret British organization known only as “The Museum”. And unfortunately, someone at the organization has decided they are a liability and need to be eliminated, which kind of ruins the party. And ruins the retirement, frankly, because they now have to eliminate the elimination-order-giver in order to save themselves. So it’s back to work! A recurring and, frankly, satisfying theme is that because they are lucky enough to be women, it’s pretty easy to be underestimated and to go unnoticed (or to be noticed for the wrong reasons). This all leads to a fun and murderous romp that is totally worth the read.
Briefly, A Delicious Life, by Nell Stevens
If you like stories that take factual history events and fill in the blanks to create a narrative, then this might be a book for you. Think “Zelda” by Nancy Milford which fictionalizes an account of what Zelda Fitzgerald’s life may have been like, based on research of letters, interviews, writings, and so forth. I personally am not a fan of this type of book. I think I just dislike made up versions of people who actually existed. Or something. Whatever. However, I didn’t hate this book, which similarly fills the gaps in an essentially true story. In this case, the story is about George Sand, her two children, and her lover Frederic Chopin during a winter stay in a drafty monastery in Mallorca. What makes the book readable (to me) is that it is narrated by the ghost of a 14 year old girl who died 400 years ago and has been incorporeally hanging around the monastery ever since. The brilliance of this seemingly random narrative choice is that the ghost can inhabit the bodies of the characters and not only feel/hear/taste/smell what they experience, but also “see” into their past and their future. It’s extremely clever.
I would be remiss, however, if I didn’t mention a couple of points made by one of the ladies in my neighbourhood book club: none of the characters in this story, except for the ghost, are compelling, likeable, or sympathetic in any way. Sand is selfish and unaware of the strain the drafty monastery (in winter!) is putting on Chopin’s health, Chopin does nothing but whine about his missing piano and cough up blood, and the children dislike everyone including each other. And all of the villagers and servants of Sand and Chopin hate them. Fun! As far as a recommendation goes, if wonderful writing is enough for you, then borrow this one. But if characters you are bound to dislike is a turn-off, then just give this a pass.
Sea of Tranquility, by Emily St. John Mandel
Emily is back and I love her so much! She has such a talent for telling stories that intertwine unexpectedly and ultimately come full circle to tie the ending back up to the beginning. Sea of Tranquility is her latest and it has added an extra surprise – she has picked back up with characters from The Glass Hotel and references the pandemic that takes place in Station Eleven. Similar in execution to Cloud Atlas, events take place forward and then backward through time: in pre-war 1900s, somewhere around the present day, the early 2200s, and the early 2400s, all linked together by a strange anomaly. This is definitely worth reading, but I would recommend reading The Glass Hotel and Station Eleven first.
And once again, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that my very good friend just finished reading One Night In Montreal and strongly suggests skipping that one. I happened to notice that it is not in my Emily collection, so I suspect I felt the same. I guess not all books can be 10/10!
