Non-Fiction Pick of the Week: The Uses and Abuses of History

The Uses and Abuses of History by Margaret MacMillan 2008

History is something that has happened and cannot be changed! Oh yeah? The Uses and Abuses of History by Margaret MacMillan is a compilation of 8 lectures that examine the importance of history and the voluntary and involuntary biases that exist while history is being recorded. The culture of the time and the geographic location of an event influence how it is recorded;e.g., an Iraqi would describe the war going on in his country quite differently from an American. Biases can also be deliberate and world leaders have been known to falsify and conceal facts. As recently as the 1990s, history was manipulated in what used to be Yugoslavia. Subsequent discoveries sometimes can change our knowledge about the past. Bones discovered in Washington State have thrown earlier theories of North American settlement and migration into doubt. Because Dr. MacMillan is Canadian, many of the examples she gives are Canadian; many within our memory. Reading this book will perhaps make us more skeptical, but also more discerning in sorting out what we need to know.

Fiction Post of the Week: The Echelon Vendetta

The Echelon Vendetta by David Stone 2007

The Echelon Vendetta by David Stone introduces Micah Dalton, a new hero on the spy-thriller scene - I might suggest a comparison to Jason Bourne in the Ludlum series. He’s a CIA "cleaner," the guy who wipes away the mess after something goes wrong in the field. As Dalton follows a trail from Tuscany to London then to CIA headquarters and the Rocky Mountains, he encounters government spooks, Native American mysticism, hallucinogens, and gruesome violence with which he seems creepily comfortable. Stone not only knows the espionage scene but also how to plot a complicated, fast-paced thriller. David Stone is a pseudonym for a former military intelligence officer. A very strong debut!

Fiction Pick of the Week: Rules of Deception

Rules of Deception by Christopher Reich 2009

In Christopher Reich’s Rules of Deception, Dr. Jonathan Ransom, a surgeon for Doctors Without Borders, is climbing in the Swiss Alps with his wife, Emma, when she falls into a hidden crevasse and dies. As the plot unfolds, he discovers that his wife had a secret life. Step by step, he is drawn deeper into a world of spies, high-tech weaponry, and global terrorism - a world where no one is who they appear to be and where the end always justifies the means. The novel moves fast with twists and turns, just like the Swiss roads travelled throughout the novel. Satisfying to see the spy genre is still alive and well!!

Non-Fiction Pick of the Week: This Land is Their Land

This Land is Their Land : Reports From a Divided Nation by Barbara Ehrenreich

This Land is Their Land : Reports From a Divided Nation is a collection of previously published essays about the growing gulch between the haves and have-nots and what used to be the middle class in America. Full of wit and irony, the author, Barbara Ehrenreich analyzes how wealthy individuals and corporations are sadly broadening the gap by engineering social, political, and economic policies that continue to disadvantage the middle class and poor. She also darkly diagnoses other issues including illegal immigrants, military families, unemployment, health insurance, corporate spying, cancer, and more. It’s a real eye opener on a theme that is being touted more and more in the U.S. (and Canada!). Read an essay or two, give yourself time to digest the information, then try a few more. Most of her arguments are sound, her presentation easy to absorb.

Fiction Pick of the Week: Without a Backward Glance

Without a Backward Glance by Kate Veitch 2006
Without a Backward Glance is a thought-provoking novel about family ties and how these have an impact on a person’s psychological development. Rosemarie McDonald, a British-born mother of four is living in Melbourne and is very unhappy about her life. On Christmas Eve 1967 she leaves her home to run an errand and never returns. Her husband Alex, soon discovers that his wife has deserted them to return to England to pursue a career in fashion design. Forty years later, her son James meets someone who knows of his mother’s existence in England and this sets in motion a reunion of Rose (Rosemarie)with the family that she left.

All of her children have developed psychological and substance abuse problems due to the trauma of her desertion. The reunion is a bittersweet event and all of them seem to benefit from confronting Rose with their anger and sorrow. What I liked about this novel was how Veitch presented a realistic portrait of the trauma this family went through and how each adult coped with the reunion in a different way. Many family issues are brought forth in this novel, and I think it would make a good book for a book club.

Non-Fiction Pick of the Week: Payback

Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth by Margaret Atwood 2008

If bookmarks, leaves, stems of leaves, and bits of paper all mark pages that
a reader wants to return to when he/she is finished, then it must be a good book. If a book almost doubles its size with these markers, it surely must be a book to recommend. Since that was the case, I recommend Margaret Atwood’s
Payback: Debt and the shadow side of wealth Atwood’s timely topic of debt is all the more relevant with Wall Street’s demise,economic scandals and historic moves by the United States and countries of the world to avert a global Armageddon. Atwood says the balance of good and evil, debts and debtors, vengeance and forgiveness have more to do with our humanness than money. An example she uses throughout the chapters is that of the monkey studies which illustrate that when a pebble is used as a reward rather than a grape, monkey behaviour changes. They understand “it’s not fair”. From a child’s firm declaration to the Bible’s book of Deuteronomy, opera, poetry, literature of all kinds and a Jewish seder, Atwood demonstrates how debt and balance mean more than money. In the last chapter, Atwood quotes Charles Darwin when he said, “Wealth comes from nature. Without it, there wouldn’t be any economics”. Does that mean we are truly indebted to nature? How do we pay back our debt to bees?

Too many books; too little time!

So I did something today that I normally never do... I returned a book to the library without actually reading it all. I used to not really understand it when people said they couldn't get into a book and never finished it. I certainly understand not being too interested in a book, but I always wanted to find out what happened at the end. I felt that if I got to a certain point, I might as well finish it and at least I could say I'd read it!

But now, the books are piling up on my nightstand and on my list of things to read, and frankly, there's just no time to trudge along through something I have zero interest in. I also noticed that when I'm reading something I don't really like, I feel like I have no time to read, but if I'm reading something absorbing (like Tourists - see yesterday's post), all of a sudden, I'm reading that over my breakfast cereal instead of the paper or propping it up on a couch cushion while feeding my daughter her bottle.

So, I think I'm going to adopt that 50-page rule that some have... if it's not interesting within 50 pages, forget it. How about yourself? Do you tend to like to finish a book or do you leave it if it's not interesting to you? Take our poll above and let us know your thoughts!

Fiction Pick of the Week: Tourists

Tourists by Richard B. Wright, first published in 1984, acquired by the library in 2008
If you enjoy reading literary Canadian fiction with an element of dark humour, I have just the book for you! This past week, I read the novel Tourists, which has been newly acquired by the library although it was actually written in 1984. I had enjoyed reading Wright’s Clara Callan and Adultery, and despite the fact that Tourists is quite different from these other two works, I found I could hardly put it down. The story’s setting alternates between Ontario and Cozumel and is narrated by Philip Bannister, a prim and proper boarding school teacher who finds himself on a torturous holiday in Mexico with his vampy wife Joan and the boorish couple Ted and Corky Hacker from Nebraska. Early on we discover that murder has occurred and the rest of the book relays how it all unfolded. Despite the dark subject, it is quite comical to witness Philip Bannister’s reaction to the lascivious behaviour of his wife and their new friends. The suspense builds along with Bannister’s repressed anger and paranoia and the final chapters of the book develop into a real page-turner!