The Quickie Book Review

Downtown Owl

2009-07-13T18:25:00.000-07:00

a novel by Chuck Klosterman.

Quickie Recap: Owl is a tiny mid-western town stuck in the rut of mediocrity. Nothing big ever happens there and the people are just limping through life, never imagining anything bigger. But then one day, something big blows in, and as you might imagine, many are unprepared.

Quickie Review: Let`s just forget that I love everything that Klosterman does. This is different. This is fiction. And yet: still totally awesome! Win!

Quickie Recommendation: Oh yeah, I was seriously impressed. Yum!

Girl In A Blue Dress

2009-07-11T21:15:00.000-07:00

a novel by Gaynor Arnold.

Quickie Recap: Alfred Gibson is a celebrated author revered by his public and he'll do anything to keep their unblemished impression of him - including betray the woman who has cared for and loved him for years.

Quickie Review: Although this is a work of fiction, it is based on the life and marriage of Charles Dickens. It's easy to see the similarities if you're at all familiar with his work, and it's lump-in-the-throat-ish even if you aren't. It's a fascinating and intimate portrait of life behind closed doors, all the more so because Gibson\Dickens took such pains to always present a certain image to his adoring audience. It definitely stands on its own as a novel but as a glimpse of the man, the talent, the hypocrite, it's even better.

Quickie Recommendation: A brilliant insight.

The Blue Notebook

2009-07-08T18:13:00.000-07:00

by James A. Levine.

Quickie Recap: Batuk is a young girl sold into prostitution by her father. Her only escape is via the nub of a pencil she managed to pilfer from her madam and whatever scraps of paper she can keep hidden in her cage. She writes of violence, savagery, and dehumanizing acts as if they were merely a way of life, and for her, they are.

Quickie Review: Haunting, devastating, heart-breaking, hopeful. I don't know how he did it, but Levine writes beautifully and manages to present to us a face and an issue inside a story that you cannot put down. I blew this one out of the water, staying up past the wise hour in order to finish it all in one sitting. It's painful, but it's good. It makes you really think about the magic of words.

Quickie Recommendation: Please, yes. Levine is donating proceeds to help exploited children, so by buying his book you not only help, you have an inspiring and inspired piece of writing.

Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?

2009-07-05T18:04:00.000-07:00

The play-at-home companion book to the hit TV show! by Michael Benson.

Quickie Recap: 75 quizzes, two questions per grades 1-5 with a follow up $1 000 000 question (all answers are of course provided in the back) and plenty of "Did you know?" factoids to keep things interesting.

Quickie Review: I bought this because I was going to be spending over 2000km in various cars with various people and I thought it would be a good way to pass the time. It was. I never knew how competitive my coworkers were until we were a little bit lost coming home from a punk show in Toronto at 4 in the morning and solving 4th grade algebra suddenly became more important than finding gas when the tank was empty.

Quickie Recommendation: Only if your ego can take it.

Something Rotten

2009-07-02T17:53:00.000-07:00

4th in the Thursday Next series, by Jasper Fforde.

Quickie Recap: Thursday Next, literary detective and fiction crime fighter, is on yet another mission, and this time, the fate of the world depends on it.

Quickie Review: By now everyone knows I have a Ffordian crush that appears to be unrequited. And though this novel had a couple of cliched moments, overall I just feel like this guy goes to a place that I've never read of before. It's exciting to see what he'll come up with next. It's a whole other universe, and yet it feels oddly familiar.

Quickie Recommendation: He does it well. Very, very well.

Would You Rather...?

2009-06-29T16:15:00.000-07:00

Love & Sex: Over 300 amorously absurd dilemmas to ponder, by Justin Heimberg & David Gomberg.

Quickie Recap: Authors ask if you'd rather fuck the tin man, or the scarecrow, or if you'd rather breast implants made of Nerf, or Play-doh. The catch of the game is: you must choose.

Quickie Review: It's exactly what you think it is. Some questions you'll skip over, others will leave you giggling for a long, long time. I played it with my mother on a road trip (true story! I now know her preferred blowjob soundtrack), and around a campfire with 20 acquaintances. Both times were good times.

Quickie Recommendation: Oh, it serves its purpose all right.

Cutting for Stone

2009-06-26T16:44:00.000-07:00

by Abraham Verghese.

Quickie Recap: Marion and Shiva are twins born of an Indian nun and a British surgeon. Their birth parents disappear very suddenly from their lives and they are raised in a mission hospital in Africa.

Quickie Review: This book was beautiful and incredible in ways I hadn't really anticipated. To call this book compelling would be to sell it short. It juxtaposes culture and brutality while hinting at the great things to come. It's a literary page-turner that I felt privileged to read.

Quickie Recommendation: Oh yes.

The Thing Around Your Neck

2009-06-24T16:11:00.000-07:00

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Quickie Recap: These 12 stories span between America and Africa, and offer up a variety of experiences but are linked by their intimacy, their excellence, their fine detail.

Quickie Review: This was my first taste of Adichie and it was quite satisfying. The stories are powerful, offering careful slices of lives worth observing. 'The American Embassy' was for me particularly memorable but each story gives a taste of culture and humanity in stirring ways.

Quickie recommendation: Yes.

Six Months in Sundan

2009-06-20T02:39:00.000-07:00

A young doctor in a war-torn village, by James Maskalyk.

Quickie Recap: Dr. James Maskalyk spends 6 months in an isolated hospital working for MSF and the people of the small town Abyei in southern Sudan, practicing the medicine of poverty.

Quickie Review: Delicious, and I'm not just saying that because I probably fell just a tiny bit in love with Dr. James while reading his book. This book is surprisingly introspective and personal. It's not preachy, it's not bloated with a sense of purpose, and both of those things are almost forgivable when a doctor returns from a Doctors Without Borders mission. Instead, what he does is opens an intimate window on what it's really like to be an aid worker in a foreign country, trying to do what's best, and struggling to define what that even means. It's sad at times, as it must be, and the sense of struggle is often so strong that I wish I could climb through the pages and give the poor guy a hug.

Quickie Recommendation: Of course the work of Medecins sans frontieres is commendable, but this book seems to me to be first and foremost a tribute to the Sudanese people. It is not without heartbreak, and I admit that my copy is somewhat tear-stained, but that's because it's a beautifully written treasure. My favourite non-fiction of the year so far.

Border Songs

2009-06-17T16:25:00.001-07:00

by Jim Lynch

Quickie Recap: Brandon is the newest member of the border patrol, and his extreme height and autistic tendencies make him possibly the most notorious and most maligned. But it's soon apparent to everyone that he has a sixth sense for detecting things that shouldn't be - bombs, drugs, illegal aliens. This makes him good at his job but unpopular in a town along the border where his own father is being offered huge amounts of cash and the girl across the border that he's crushing on is part of the biggest North American grow-op.

Quickie Review: Lynch is an American, so I felt like I was reading a story that had been flipped because it's not everyday when Canadians are portrayed as the bad influence. At the heart of the book, though, is Brandon, and he's a great character that makes you feel so much more forgiving of everything else. His sympathy is so far-reaching it even leaps up off the pages and extends to the reader. The genius of the book is how under-the-radar the satire is, but you can feel it like a light buzz that once perceived becomes hard to ignore.

Quickie Recommendation: One of the most striking and unforgettable characters makes this book one not to be missed.

My Father's Tears

2009-06-15T16:59:00.000-07:00

and other stories, by John Updike.

Quickie Recap: In this collection of short stories, Updike is in the mood for reminiscing. They look back at past loves, high school, raising families, travels, surviving suburbia.

Quickie Review: Although these stories do focus primarily on aged characters, you never get a morbid feeling. These people are living. They are remembering, and taking stock. They have learned from life even if the reader sometimes has to infer the lessons. I fell in love with Updike for his short stories more than a decade ago and every time I get my hands on more I do my own remembering: that he is a master of this medium.

Quickie Recommendation: Always a delight.

The Neighbor

2009-06-12T16:34:00.000-07:00

by Lisa Gardner

Quickie Recap: It's a "detective" novel, so I can't give too much away. Let's just say that a wife disappears in the middle of the night under suspicious circumstances, leaving behind not just her cash and ID, but also her young daughter. The police identify two suspects very quickly: her husband who is clearly hiding something, and the convicted sex offender down the street who is guilty just by virtue of his record. Now the squeeze is on to find her body and make the arrest - but which one will it be?

Quickie Review: It's a mystery, and it bears some reference to her last fare, Say Goodbye, which I read and reviewed last summer. My sister considers Gardner to be at the top of her game in this genre, and I suppose she must be right. After all, The Neighbor did have that page-turner quality. Bonus points that I found this one to be a little less predictable and it attempts to touch on some real-life issues in a not insensitive way.

Quickie Recommendation: A book to read while floating in the pool.

Brooklyn

2009-06-09T18:18:00.000-07:00

by Colm Toibin.

Quickie Recap: Eilis leaves Ireland for America, away from her family, but also towards opportunity and independence. She finds both, and in them she comes to realize that maybe they're not exactly what she wanted.

Quickie Review: I immediately had the sense that I was reading something very special. It was beautiful and captivating. I devoured it, but come the last 15 pages or so, I dreaded the reading, not just because I didn't want it to end, but because I was so enthralled with the main character that I didn't want to see her get hurt. Faced with a tough choice, I was rooting for Q but fearful she'd opt for P. I read it as if she were my friend, as if the outcome mattered to me personally. This felt more like a letter to me than a novel. I fell in love.

Quickie Recommendation: This is the other book I referred to as most likely not moving from my top 5 of 2009 - along with The Good Mayor and Come Thou Tortoise. Loved it.

The Story Sisters

2009-06-07T10:32:00.000-07:00

by Alice Hoffman.

Quickie Recap: After suffering some trauma, the Story sisters invent a fantasy world complete with their very own language. But as they grow through adolescence and beyond, they learn that their other world can't keep them safe.

Quickie Review: Of course I wish this book was better than it was. I breezed through it of course, because it's "easy-reading" and it has a huge readership I'm sure. At least one seems to be the better sort for its genre, and I didn't dislike it. In fact, I read it knowing exactly who it would be perfect for. It's the kind of book that would be great to throw in your beach bag for the summer.

Quickie Recommendation: Not for serious readers.

The Good Mayor

2009-06-05T08:57:00.000-07:00

a novel by Andrew Nicoll.

Quickie Recap: Tibo Krovic does his job with zest; the town cannot help but dub him the "good mayor" and he lives up to that title every single day. That he is such a competent mayor is a true testament to his will, because Krovic is tortured at work. He is in love with his married secretary.

Quickie Review: Breath-taking. The jacket refers to Nicoll as a former lumberjack, which completely blows away every lumberjack stereotype you thought you were comfortable with. This novel is subtle, sensitive, beautiful. It's a love story, in a way, that veers toward the Kafkaesque toward the end. This too will probably stay in my top 5 for all of 2009 - which means beware the remaining 6 months' worth of books, there are only 2 spots left! Bring your A game, because Nicoll certainly has, despite this being his first novel. You just get swept along into such sweetness and tenderness, yet also fantastic and funny.

Quickie Recommendation: Not to be missed!

The Devil's Tickets

2009-06-03T14:46:00.000-07:00

A night of bridge, a fatal hand, and a new American age, by Gary M. Pomerantz.

Quickie Recap: Two couples - first, Ely and Jo, who become celebrities through their thrilling bridge playing and their pioneering of the system, and then Jack and Myrtle, whose marriage is as troubled as their bridge game, until a passionate game has fatal results.

Quickie Review: Is it weird that I really liked this? Yes, it's about bridge. But it's also about the time, the politics, the depression, the emancipation of women, and it's oddly titillating. Both couples followed in the story and worthy of our attention, and the author does a very good job of showing how their lives intertwined even if they never met. It's hard for me to imagine a card game meaning so much that I might fire bullets into my spouse's chest, but Pomerantz does an awesome job of painting a picture of a period when this was unreasonable, yes, but not unimagineable.

Quickie recommendation: Fascinating.

Die For You

2009-05-27T07:23:00.000-07:00

by Lisa Unger

Quickie Recap: Isabel's husband goes missing, but that turns out to just be the tip of the iceberg. She finds out she's been married to a stranger these last 5 years - and not a very nice one. Not content to just let him get away, she chases after him, unadvisably, of course.

Quickie Review: Lisa Unger is like mousse cake. Not junk, but a treat. Indulgent. I read this to pre-screen for my mother, who will love it. I can picture her now, on the hammock, in the sunshine, with a frosty drink by her side.

Quickie Recommendation: Total tub book! It's a bit of a guilty pleasure, but guilty-light. :)

Pygmy

2009-05-25T04:25:00.000-07:00

by Chuck Palahniuk.

Quickie Recap: Pygmy is a highly trained child terrorist who has infiltrated the US disguised as an impoverished foreign exchange student. He is there to rape, impregnate, and ultimately kill many, many capitalist pigs.

Quickie Review: Whoa whoa whoa. Palahniuk is one of those writers that generate a strong response in most readers. I loved Rant, hated Snuff and couldn't wait to see how I felt about his newest, Pygmy. But 50 pages in, I still didn't know on which side of the divide I sat. First off, it's not reader friendly. It's written in broken English that WILL frustrate you. After the first chapter or so I found my rhythm and it got easier, but never easy. And I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. I couldn't quite believe the narrator, and I wasn't sure he was who he said he was. I was suspicious. I was also enthralled. I sure sped through it if I didn't like it, so I must have liked it quite a lot. It's definitely original, anyhow, and Palahniuk does an indictment of the American culture like nobody's business. This we knew already. I guess I can't really tell you if you'll like this book. I feel like people need to read it for themselves. I snorted several times, and it definitely was a conversation spark, so to me, it was worthy.

Quickie Recommendation: Tell me what you thought!

Why Socrates Died

2009-05-20T04:49:00.000-07:00

Dispelling the myths, by Robin Waterfield

Quickie Recap: Socrates was put on trial and sentenced to death by his peers - this book gives the real reason behind the death sentence, and puts an uncomfortable spotlight on Athens.

Quickie Review: Evidently I thought this book might be good because I did choose to pick it up. But I was pleasantly surprised by how much I got involved in it. Waterfield has exactly the right scope for this book - it puts Socrates in context. It's also about Athens vs Sparta, the Pelopennesian war, the political and religious and judicious climate of the times, and the people who stood on either side of the issue. It doesn't just list the charges against Socrates (mainly, impiety and the teaching\corruption of young boys) but explains why these would suddenly be brought to attention when they'd been largely ignored for years (not just in terms of Socrates, either).

Quickie Recommendation: Very interesting stuff.

The Little Stranger

2009-05-15T08:06:00.000-07:00

by Sarah Waters.

Quickie Recap: A small town doctor, Faraday, is called up to a crumbling old mansion to help proud but failing family who still inhabit it against all odds. The family fortune is gone, and they suffer set back after set back. But the family is oddly compelling, and Dr Faraday can't seem to stay away, even when things start to get very unsettling...

Quickie Review: The make or break of this book lays in the creepiness factor. It`s an old house with a history. Possibly, it`s haunted. There are unexplained happenings, mysterious deaths, and lots of dark corners. Either the author can pull this sort of thing off, or not. And this case, it was a resounding yes. I remember at one point it being maybe past noon, I was hunched over my desk at work, with another person in the office, our reading lights on, and I was still getting goosebumps.

Quickie Recommendation: Well executed. Find out more about it here.

Nocturnes

2009-05-10T08:01:00.000-07:00

Five Stories of Music and Nightfall by Kazuo Ishiguro.

Quickie Recap: 5 short stories, each related in some way to a love of music, some stories overlapping briefly, if not in content then in theme.

Quickie Review: Beautiful. I found it absolutely lovely that there stories each had a similar feel to them. Each one was precious - each, I felt, deserved to stand alone, could have been fleshed out into whole novels, could have held my attention for oodles longer. And that`s not to say that I felt unsatisfied by any of them, because they were perfection as they were.

Quickie Recommendation: For me, this is a rarity - short stories that I really loved.

Sweetness in the Belly

2009-05-05T07:51:00.000-07:00

by Camilla Gibb

Quickie Recap: Lilly is a white Muslim in Ethiopia just beginning to find love when revolution tears her away. She becomes a refugee in England where she struggles to fit in and find her footing while every day her thoughts remain in Africa.

Quickie Review: Sigh. I loved this. Loved it. I have never read such an impactful account of immigration. You feel her sadness, her struggle, the urge to make a new home for herself while still yearning for the home she left behind. It feels real and it feels tragic. The contrast between the two countries is brilliant. It touches on war and politics as it must, but they are lived and felt, not just discussed. Acceptance is a struggle for Lilly no matter where she is, and her tenacity is tremendous. She is an interesting character, so much so that I forgot that she was a character and not a real person, and that's a huge compliment to Gibb.

Quickie Recommendation: Breathlessly, yes.

Lost in Cyburbia

2009-05-01T13:22:00.000-07:00

How Life on the Net Has Created a Life of Its Own, by James Harkin.

Quickie Recap: The internet's powerful social networking webs have been 70 years in the making - Harkin traces the path from WW2 until now, and delves into all the www's nooks and crannies along the way.

Quickie Review: Confession time. When you pick up a non-fiction book that's going to be on a certain topic, it is usually written by an expert in that field - maybe a physicist, or a paleontologist. These people are knowledgeable, and sometimes they convey the material in really engaging ways. But they aren't usually english majors, and that usually shows. This book, however, seems to have been written by a writer. Call me a cynic, but to find this book so thoroughly well-written was a surprise, and a good one. And yes it was interesting, and topical, and I loved the way Harkin explores the commonalities between what's happening now in cybernetics and the counterculture of the 1970s. Norbert Wiener and Marshall McLuhan are also compared, and it's fascinating to watch the internet and its offshoots spring up around these men who predicted the things to come more accurately than even they could have guessed. Harkin does a wonderful job weaving all of these things cohesively, and then presenting them with a wink.

Quickie Recommendation: I have to give this one a yes.

The Kindly Ones

2009-04-27T18:48:00.000-07:00

a novel by Jonathan Littell; translated from the French by Charlotte Mandell

Quickie Recap: Max Aue is an SS soldier not particularly interested in killing, but involved in the mess anyhow.

Quickie Review: First, let me tell you that though this was a translation, it never felt like one. Kudos to both Littell and Mandell for such beautiful language. This book took me months to get through, no kidding, and not just because it's nearly 1000 pages long (and probably doesn't need to be, if I'm being honest). It's just painful, repellent, sickening. And not just for the brutality, but also for the lack of it, the deliberateness, the cold pursuit. Yes, there are blood thirsty soldiers who enjoy, relish the killing. And there are people who are following orders, people who want job security, people who are just along for the ride. But they all do it. And maybe at the end of the day, apathy is just as bad as evil. There are scenes of blood and piss and shit, but the enormity is more bureaucratic which is even more maddening. You watch the decisions being made, the ones that could either make or break a genocide, and so little consideration for the actual people. Politically, it's very interesting, those who believed that the "Jewish question" should be made the first priority, and those who felt that winning the war should come first. And indeed, you do see how using the Jews as labour may have contributed to success, but how they kept taking off work in order to be exterminated...and how that need to wipe out a people pretty much led to the nazi downfall.

Quickie Recommendation: It's not for everyone, but it's a great piece of historical fiction that put a lot of thoughts into my head. If you were German, if you were in those shoes, what would you have done? Aue insists that he is like us, and we have to ask ourselves how much of that is true. It's fucking hard to read, but it's meant to be. This is not fun stuff. Gird your loins, but I think it does exactly what it's supposed to.

The Children's Book

2009-04-22T23:01:00.000-07:00

by A.S. Byatt

Quickie Recap: Olive Wellwood is a writer of children's fairy tales who is surrounded by a large family and an entourage of friend. Everyone has a story. Not all of them end happily ever after.

Quickie Review: I like what I read from the get go. There are so many characters to follow that at moments I felt it difficult to sort out who was who, but a little bit of persistence paid off. We follow them over a number of years, through an idyllic childhood, troubled times, the wisdom of children and the ignorance of their parents, all culminating in the one thing the reader knows is coming better than the characters do: WWI. And boy does it come.

Quickie Recommendation: Absorbing.