Non-Fiction Pick of the Week: Married to Bhutan

Married to Bhutan: how one woman got lost, said "I do", and found bliss by Linda Leaming 2011

How far would you go to be happy? For writer Linda Leaming, it was to Bhutan, the tiny Himalayan kingdom of which it’s said the most important thing is their Gross National Happiness.  In her late 30s, she went on a short side trip to Bhutan, fell in love with the country and spent the next two years trying to find a way to get back.  The result? She sold everything, uprooted herself, gave up her career, moved away from family and friends and began a new life, found love and a lasting relationship, and now, twenty years later, is still blissfully happy in Bhutan.  A thoroughly charming memoir, full of humour, pithy observation and interesting commentary on the choices we make in life.

Non-Fiction Pick of the Week: Let's Take the Long Way Around

Let’s take the long way home: a memoir of friendship by Gail Caldwell

This memoir speaks to the depth that friendship can take: how a friend can be a partner in life as much as any romantic relationship. In this writing, the author takes a look at how her best friend has proven to be the key figure in her life, both while the friend was alive, and even after her tragic death. The memoir quickly moves through the life of the author – both prior to and after meeting her best friend, and gives us a view to the character development of both these women. The cement of the friendship is explored and an unexpected joy in the book is the added relationship between these women and their dogs. The heartbreaking end not only looks at how a friendship gets transformed through death, but also the enormous impact of the death of one’s pet companion.  

Read-alikes: A widow’s story by Joyce Carol Oates

Non-Fiction Pick of the Week: Johnson's Life of London

 Johnson's Life of London by Boris Johnson 2011

Johnson’s Life of London is a very interesting and highly readable social history of one of the most exciting world capitals. Author Boris Johnson, the blond-mopped Mayor of London (you have seen him at the Diamond Jubilee and Olympics) presents a history of the city he so evidently loves.  Each chapter covers a different historical era and does this by focusing on a particular person. From Queen Boudica, to Keith Richardson, from Chaucer to Churchill, Johnson’s Life of London spans the eras from Roman times to the current day. Johnson writes with wit and insight. The book discovers London as none of us have seen it before and the journey is both surprising and exhilarating.

Non-Fiction Pick of the Week: The Tanning of America

The Tanning of America: how hip-hop created a culture that rewrote the rules of the new economy by Steve Stoute 2011
 
Stoute draws from his wide background in the music industry and brand marketing to bring us his thesis that hip-hop music is the major change agent in American society today.

Stoute chronicles how an upstart art form – street poetry set to a beat – came to define urban culture as the embodiment of cool.  His vision of hip-hop’s morphing into mainstream culture allows him to relate to a new generation of thinking. He illustrates his theory through conversations with and reflections on many well known names in this music genre who are driving the change. 

To his mind, the term ‘tanning’ reflects the mingling of racial characteristics to create an homogeneous economic and societal culture. He sees the streets of large urban centers on both coasts as the melting pot for modern American youth; and he sees this new society spreading across the country.

The Tanning of America is one insider’s close look at the changing mores of 21^st century American society and how a new generation interprets their American dream.

Non-Fiction Pick of the Week: Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson 2011

Steve Jobs wanted to change the world, "put a dent in the universe," and he did. This biography was an inspiring look at who Steve Jobs really was. In many ways a genius, and in others a very difficult person, he was above all an inspiration to anyone who has passion and vision! Very extensively researched, the interviews with Jobs are fascinating and revealing. We get a real sense of what it must have been like to be Steve, and to work with him.

It is extremely detailed yet easy to read. The author makes reading each sentence effortless. Every word and paragraph makes a contribution to the narrative. If you are interested in life and want to know how Jobs changed it, you should read this book. If you're interested in computers or business, read this book. If you understand how passion and design can make a good idea better, read this book. It's a long portrait, but definitely a worthwhile read.

Non-Fiction Pick of the Week: Why we Get Fat

Why we get Fat: and what to do about it by Gary Taubes 2011

I started listening to this book thinking it might be just a good brush-up on common-held information on healthy eating, diets and exercise, but as it turned out, it almost completely derailed my belief system in basic nutrition and lifestyle decisions. Taubes reveals the bad nutritional science of the last century, none more damaging or misguided than the “calories-in, calories-out” model of why we get fat. He also refutes common doctors’ and government expert advice, claiming that science has been ignored. He also answers the questions: Why are some people thin and others fat? What roles do exercise and genetics play in our weight?

Taubes has done us a great service by bringing these issues to the table. This excellent book, built on sound research and common sense, contains essential information. His writing reflects his passion for scientific truth. There was so much new information I will re-read this in order to more fully grasp its impact.

Non-Fiction Pick of the Week: Bringing Up Bébé

Bringing Up Bébé by Pamela Druckerman

When American journalist Pamela Druckerman and her British husband Simon decide to settle in Paris and start their family, they begin to notice some big differences between American children and French children. It all starts to dawn on Druckerman when she and Simon take their eighteen-month-old toddler on vacation. As their little girl loses her mind while out for dinner at a coastal restaurant, Druckerman notices the French children are remarkably well behaved and even eating their vegetables!

By researching French parenting experts and interviewing parents on both sides of the Atlantic, Druckerman delves into the major issues and stages of raising young children from the French perspective. From hot topics like breastfeeding, early child care, disciplining children, and more – Druckerman offers the French view, which may seem like a dream come true for North American parents. Told in a humorous, storytelling manner, Bringing Up Bébé illustrates that values surrounding parenting are in many ways a cultural construct, and having alternatives will be appreciated by many parents and may be beneficial to the entire family.

Non-Fiction Pick of the Week: Soldier Dogs

Soldier Dogs by Maria Goodavage 2012

Soldier Dogs is an inspirational tale about the role of military working dogs (MWD) in the Afghan and Iraq wars. Many chapters describe the special bond of a military dog handler and his working dog. Some chapters deal with how the dogs are selected by the military and about the training centre for dogs and handlers, Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonia. Most dogs that are used in Afghanistan are dual purpose, patrol and sniffer dogs. These dogs have been trained for both aggression for patrol work and for detecting IED’s (improvised explosive device). There is also an adoption program in place for the dogs that are trained but not suitable to become MWD and dogs who have been deployed and have retired due to age or medical conditions. If you love dogs this book is a must read!

Non-Fiction Pick of the Week: Marriage

June is wedding month! Why not celebrate with:

Marriage, A History: from obedience to intimacy, or how love conquered marriage by Stephanie Coontz 2005

We have been led to believe that the Leave It to Beaver marriage of the 1950s is the most natural. However, if one looks at the institution over the ages, it is but a blip--and not necessarily natural. Throughout the ages, marriage customs have been influenced primarily by politics, economics, and social conditions. Marriages were often arranged to forge alliances between kings and nobles, or to acquire a neighbour’s field. Although love and passion were factors in the affair between Antony and Cleopatra, politics also played a large role. The roles of husbands and wives changed constantly. To be sure, sometimes love entered into the equation and, if lucky, the love was between spouses.

Stephanie Coontz describes the various types of marriages that have existed and the conditions that influenced them. She discusses how they were affected by religion and law, and how marriage, in turn, influenced religious tenets and laws. She often relates anecdotes of arrangements at particular periods in history based on diaries and letters written by men and women of that time.

Ms. Coontz talks about the evolution of marriage through to recent times, when the individual became important, and love in a marriage became a necessary ingredient. She is not judgmental, but presents the advantages and disadvantages of each model. She ends on the hopeful thought that we have learned from the past and that man/woman relationships will be more satisfactory to both.

Non-Fiction Pick of the Week: Maonomics

Maonomics: why Chinese Communists make better capitalists than we do by Loretta Napoleoni 2011

In her book Maonomics: why Chinese Communists make better capitalists than we do Napoleoni examines the present political and economic conditions by comparing those of the West, primarily the American and British, to those of China. She points out the biases and baggage in our interpretation of words such as “communism” vs “capitalism” and of “democracy” vs “dictatorship” and how they influence our perception of the world.

Napoleoni goes back to the basics: the early philosophers that influenced the thinking of the West vs the East, Machiavelli vs Confucius. Using past and recent events, and stripping away some preconceptions, she compares how the lives of everyday people are affected by globalization in China and in the West. It is not always the way that it seems.

The book constantly asks questions: Is our multi-party electoral system truly the expression of the majority? Was Marxism ever applied as Marx intended? Where did the theory of supply-side economics come from? How free are we really? What are the long-term effects of Reagan and Thatcher’s economics?

This is a book that makes us truly examine what is going on in our world at present. You may not always agree with Napoleoni, but she will make you think.

Non-Fiction Pick of the Week: The Big Short

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis 2010, Reviewed as a Book on CD

What a great title to be held captive with on a recent road trip!

This book might be called required reading for anyone with an eye on the stock market and a desire to understand causes and effects of the Great Recession of 2008. The author, Lewis, is very “hot” right now, with a past and current portfolio of books on various financial events and topics. In this book, he explains how the financial industry obscured credit risk by packaging and repackaging low-quality subprime mortgages into complicated securities that would receive secure, high credit ratings. Included are the main players and banks, and sadly it leaves you believing there are few honorable players in the industry. The audio version contained a bonus interview with the author on the aftermath of the collapse. I’m now looking forward to reading the author’s next book, Boomerang, a travelogue about the European debt crisis.

Non-Fiction Pick of the Week: Breakfast at the Exit Café

Breakfast at the Exit Café by Wayne Grady and Merilyn Simonds 2010

Each chapter either starts with a W word or an M word depending on which person is writing the chapter. Breakfast at the Exit Café is a personal story told in alternating voices by two writers/travelers (the authors). They go on a road trip from British Columbia around the rim of the U.S.A. The journey helps them find their family roots as well as to explore the impact of geography on culture. The Americans they meet inspire them greatly. They learn a lot of history and geography. The book is comical at times and well written. They run into several problems during their travels but everything comes together in the end. Well written, an interesting read.

Non-Fiction Pick of the Week: Packing for Mars

Packing for Mars: the curious science of life in the void by Mary Roach 2010

As you read this, the Curiosity rover is travelling towards Mars, and is expected to arrive next August. If there were humans aboard, things would be even more complex. Our bodies are not designed for weightlessness, or extra gravitational forces. We need to bring our air along with us. We may not get along with one another if we’re confined in close quarters for too long. Using extensive interviews with astronauts, cosmonauts, scientists and NASA officials, science writer Mary Roach has a written a gossipy history of space flight, while describing the anticipated problems of future space flight.

Selected for San Francisco's 'One City One Book'

Non-Fiction Pick of the Week: Honeymoon in Tehran

Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran by Azadeh Moaveni 2009

Born and raised in the United States, Moaveni is the daughter of two Iranian immigrants. Throughout her reporting career, she has repeatedly travelled to Iran to explain its politics and religion to the outside world. In this book, Moaveni has opted to begin a family and marry an Iranian man. She must decide if Iran, with all its beauty, culture, and extended family, is the place in which she can live out her dreams. This book focuses heavily on the details of Moaveni’s daily life and her point of view as she encounters a repressive regime that is increasingly omnipresent and omnipotent. It is a moving portrait of a beloved country struggling to retain its culture and character.

Read-alike: Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

Non-Fiction Pick of the Week: Finders Keepers

Finders Keepers by Craig Childs 2010

In this book, Craig Childs puts the reader into the middle of an ethical dilemma: Is it better for archeologists to preserve the history they find around the world, or should they leave it to the land and the people it belongs to? While no easy answers are found, Childs takes the reader on an adventure through the seedy underbelly of archeology through to its most noble aspirations. We see how museums get caught up in a world of subterfuge, what happens when history is taken from the place it originates, and how people can be the heroes and villains of history at the same time. The author is most familiar with digs in the Southwest United States, but does take touch upon both major archeological events and major cultural institutions.

Non-Fiction Pick of the Week: Sweater Quest

Sweater Quest: my year of knitting dangerously by Adrienne Martini 2011

Can knitting generate philosophical discussions? Adrienne Martini certainly thinks so. Sweater Quest: My Year of Knitting Dangerously, is a quirky romp through her adventures of knitting a Mary Tudor sweater designed by the reclusive knitter Alice Starmore. This project is Martini’s holy grail and she interviews some of the best known knitters in the United States and Canada to discuss the deeper questions of knitting such as, who owns a piece of work – the knitter or the pattern maker? Is knitting done for the pleasure of knitting itself, or the final product? And, can knitting save your sanity? This is a cozy, leisurely read written for knitters or knitter wannabes.

Read-alikes: The Knitting Diaries by Debbie Macomber

Non-Fiction Pick of the Week: Made to Stick

Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath 2007

Why do some ideas thrive and others die? This is the question posed by brothers Chip and Dan Heath. In researching this question, the authors have come up with 6 principles that are foundational for making ideas memorable. From education to business to non-profit, this book is a must-read for those hoping to make a big impact with their ideas and plans. Communication can involve anything from a simple memo to an advertising campaign – and we all want the ideas involved to remain with people afterward. This quick-paced, insightful read is guaranteed to give the reader something to think about and challenge them to make their ideas stick.

Read-Alike: The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

Non-Fiction Pick of the Week: There are Things I Want you to Know about Stieg Larsson and Me

There are Things I Want You to Know about Stieg Larsson and Me by Eva Gabrielsson 2011

Everyone knows the Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson with the books The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo; The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. When Stieg Larsson died unexpectedly in 2004, he was just in the process of getting his first book published and didn’t live to see the huge success that his books would become, translated into many languages and made into films, both in his native Sweden and in Hollywood.

What many people do not know is that this was only one facet of his life. Many people do not about his life as an activist and his relentless pursuit for social justice and human rights. Who better to tell this story but his partner of 32 years Eva Gabrielsson. This is a fascinating book about both Stieg and Eva and the incredible life and drive they both shared. Since his death she has struggled to survive without him and to obtain control over Larsson’s literary estate. It is an easy read, written in chapters like snapshots of their life. You will come to appreciate just how truly driven and talented Stieg Larsson was and how together, he and Eva created the Millennium trilogy.

And for those who are interested in knowing more about the fascinating life of Stieg Larsson, swing by the library on January 19th to view the film Millennium: The Story.

This is a free screening. To register, please call 905-639-3611 Ext. 1321.

Non-Fiction Pick of the Week: My Lucky Life in and out of Show Business

My Lucky Life in and out of Show Business by Dick Van Dyke 2010

Legendary actor Dick Van Dyke’s memoir of his extraordinary life makes a fast and entertaining read. Who doesn’t remember his character Rob Petrie from the Dick Van Dyke show and Bert from Mary Poppins? These characters still entertain today just as they did in the 1960s.

His memoir traces his public and personal life from his first job at 17 as a part-time radio announcer for the local CBS radio station, to his ongoing projects in which he is currently involved. It doesn’t appear that he has any plans for retirement! Van Dyke also discusses his 36 year marriage to his wife Margie, his children and his 35-year relationship with Michelle Triola.

The library has this book available in a variety of formats; print, book on CD, and downloadable ebook and audiobook! Pick your favourite format and enjoy reading about one of North America’s favourite entertainers.