HannahJo’s 2020 Challenge

My name is Hannahjo, and I am happy to be joining this group! I fondly remember doing an “8 categories for 2008” challenge when I was at home with 2 babies, and I figure that after a decade it’s time to try again.

I enjoy reading through all your creative and clever categories, but for now mine are going to be fairly straightforward. I think 5 books in each category is achievable, but I want to keep things flexible. I threw in some CATs and DOGs because I like being forced to read outside my comfort zone.

1) RandomCAT
2) GeoCAT
3) NonfictionCAT
4) BingoDOG
5) Urban planning/ improving cities
6) Interesting people
7) 1001 Books
8) Writers festival books (I attend 2 or 3 a year)
9) Canadian books
10) Prize winners and nominees
11) NYT Notable Books (any year)
12) Nature/Science/Environment
13) Iranian authors
14) Whatever I want!

RandomCAT

1) January (New Years resolution) = The Overstory by Richard Powers
2) February (published in leap year) = The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
3) June (Take to the Sea) = Into the Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver by Jill Heinherth
4) August (Get your groove on) = Jan in 35 Pieces: A Memoir in Music by Ian Hampton
5) September (Reccies) = The Colour of Law by Mark Gimenez

GeoCAT

1) January/ Asia = Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
2) May/ Any place you would like to visit= Heida: A Shepherd at the Edge of the World by Steinunn Sigurdardottir and Heida Asgeirsdottir
3)June/ Space = The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
4) February/ Europe = Outpost by Dan Richards

NonfictionCAT

1)January (journalism)= Rolling Blackouts: Dispatches from Turkey, Syria and Iraq by Sarah Glidden
2) February (travel)= On the Road With Francis of Assisi: A Timeless Journey Through Umbria and Tuscany, and Beyond by Linda Bird Francke
3) June (society)= A Million Years with You by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
4) July (Human Science) = Superior: The Return of Race Science by Angela Saini
5) August (History) = The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Kill3d by Jack the Ripper

BingoDOG



2) 3+ letters of “BINGO” = Rising: Dispatches From the New American Shore by Elizabeth Rush
3) Proper name in title= On the Road With Francis of Assisi: A Timeless Journey Through Umbria and Tuscany, and Beyond by Linda Bird Francke
5) Not set on Earth= The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
7) Red cover= Chop Suey Nation by Ann Hui
8) Small press or self-published= Dark Seed: No One Knows What Evil Grows by Lawrence Verigin
10) Published in 1820 or 1920= The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
11) LT Author= = The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
13) Read a CAT = The Overstory by Richard Powers
14) Mythology/Folklore= Disfigured: On fairy tales, disability, and making space by Amanda Leduc
15) “Library” or “thing” in title = 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act: Helping Canadians Make Reconciliation With Indigenous Peoples a Reality by Bob Joseph
16)Non-US/UK female author= A Better Man by Louise Penny
17) Set in Asia = Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
18) Mystery or true crime= Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz
19) About birth or death = Dear Scarlet: The Story of my Postpartum Depression by Theresa Wong
20) By journalist/about Journalism= Rolling Blackouts: Dispatches From Turkey, Syria and Iraq by Sarah Glidden
21) Weird book title= Small Game Hunting at the local Coward Gun Club by Megan Gail Coles
23) From a Legacy Library= Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier, once enjoyed a place on Astrid Lindgren’s shelves
24) Published in 2020 = they said this would be fun by Eternity Martis
25) Involves real historical event= The Gospel of Trees by Apricot Irving (Haitian earthquake of 2010)

Urban planning/ improving cities

1) Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life by Eric Klinenberg
2) Creation by Sylvia Nickerson
3) Eyes on the Street: The Life of Jane Jacobs by Robert Kanigel
4)
5)

Interesting people

1) The Gospel of Trees by Apricot Irving
2) We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir by Samra Habib
3) A Mind Spread Out On The Ground by Alicia Elliot
4) From the Ashes by Jesse Thistle
5) Our House is on Fire by Malena and Beata Ernman, Svante and Greta Thurnman

1001 Books

1) Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier
2)
3)
4)
5)

Writers festivals

1) Chop Suey Nation by Ann Hui
2) From the Ashes by Jesse Thistle
3) Disfigured: On fairy tales, disability, and making space by Amanda Leduc
4) Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club by Megan Gail Coles
5) A Killer in King’s Cove by Iona Whishaw

Sadly, it looks like in-person writers festivals might not be happening in this climate, so I’m doing my best with this category and including books from past years I never got around to reading.

Canadian books

1) A Better Man by Louise Penny
2) Dark Seed: No One Knows What Evil Grows by Lawrence Verigin
3) Dear Scarlet: The Story of my Postpartum Depression by Teresa Wong
4) 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act: Helping Canadians Make Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples a Reality by Bob Joseph
5) They Said This Would Be Fun by Eternity Martis

Prize winners and nominees

1) Older Sister, Not Necessarily Related by Jenny Heijun Wills (2019 Hilary Weston Prize for Nonfiction)
2) The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (2015 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel
3) Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler (1995 Nebula Award nominee for best novel)
4) Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World-and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling (2018 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Longlist)
5)

NYT notable books (any year)

1) Women’s Work: a reckoning with work and home by Megan K Stack (NYT 2019 notable book)
2) Thick by Tressie McMillan Cottom (NYT 2019 notable book)
3) Christmas Stories: 12 Stories and 12 Feasts for 12 Days by Jeanette Winterson
4)
5)

Nature, science and the environment

1) Rising: Dispatches From the New American Shore by Elizabeth Rush
2 The Inner Life of Animals: Love, Grief, and Compassion- Surprising Observations of a Hidden World by Peter Wohlleben
3) The Story of More by Hope Jahren
4) To Speak for the Trees by Peter Wohlleben
5) Invisible Women:Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed by Men by Caroline Criado-Perez

Iranian authors

1) The Ungrateful Refugee by Dina Nayeri
2) Aria by Nazanine Hozar
3) Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America by Firoozeh Dumas
4) Zahra’s Paradise by Amir
5) Divided Loyalties by Nilofar Shidmehr

Whatever I want!

1) Jamaica Inn by Daphne DuMaurier
2) Take Back the Tray by Joshna Maharaj
3)
4)
5)

Glad to have you on board! I'll be interested to see what pops up in your urban planning category!

Welcome back! In case you weren't aware, the group creates new Bingo cards every year, so if you'd like to take a look at the 2020 cards, here they are: https://www.librarything.com/topic/312084#6980121. But of course, using a previous year's card is also fine -- whatever works for you! :)

Welcome! 2008 feels so long ago. :) Looking forward to seeing what you read this year!

Oops! Thanks for the catch. I think I’ve got it right now

Good luck with your 2020 reading!

Welcome!! Hope you have a fun reading year@!

I look forward to following along with your reading.

My absolute favourite pick for urban planning/improving cities would be Retrosuburbia by David Holmgren, one of the founders of permaculture. Not readily available but worth it if you can get your hands on a copy.

Welcome back and good luck with your reading.

I hope your have a fantastic reading year.

Good luck with your categories.

Welcome back and best wishes for your 2020 reading!

Welcome back, you have a nice mix of categories.

My first read of the year! A little bit out of my lane...

Dark Seed: No One Knows What Evil Grows by Lawrence Verigin
BingoDOG: Small press or self-published

I picked this book up because the author is local to me. The story is labelled as an ecological thriller, a new genre for me. The story follows a writer and his female friend who become entangled with a agrochemical GMO-producing multinational clearly modelled after Monsanto. As in a John Grisham novel, they have to use their wits to escape the bad guys who want to destroy them before their dastardly plans to poison people and harm the environment are revealed.

The writing was not sophisticated, but it was fun in a campy sort of way. The book was heavy on conspiracy theories, including hand-drawn pyramids showing big-Pharma controlling the WHO. Lots of cliches, including villains laughing maniacally over snifters of brandy, and rather one-dimensional women.

I enjoyed reading an author who was clearly writing for the joy of it. I found myself pondering why I read the same two dozen famous authors as everyone else, and why I don’t seek out more smaller writers who are just writing their little hearts out. The experience made me want to read more small press publishing.

>28 HannahJo: That sounds like fun! Who doesn't enjoy a dig at Monsanto!

I agree that there are so many books out there and only a small amount of the talent is noticed.

Happy 2020 reading and welcome back!

That looks interesting! I’ll try to locate a copy. I hadn’t thought about permaculture in that category, but it’s right up my alley.

I completed interpreter of Maladies for the January GeoCAT (India)

A book of short stories set in the Indian community both in India and abroad. Lots of struggling with life and relationships quietly breaking down due to cruelties big and small, spoken and unspoken.

Such well-crafted writing. I found the misinterpretations and misconnections between characters so true to life that it was a little unsettling. Not a very hopeful book.

I am glad I read it, and some of the stories will stay with me, but I don’t think I will return to the author again.

I am changing my “revisiting” category to Iranian authors.

I live in a community with a large Persian community that suffered losses from the recent plane crash in Tehran. An Iranian category seems important.

A BingoDOG read in the journalism square!

In the graphic novel Rolling Blackouts: Dispatches From Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, Sarah Glidden details her trip with her friends reporting on the human toll of war in the Middle East. Accompanying them is another friend who fought as an American soldier in the Iraq War.

Reading the account through illustrations was interesting. The juxtaposition of the sometimes bleak stories and the soft, lovely watercolours was compelling, and helped liven up the discussions about journalism ethics and the long periods of a lack of anything much happening. On the other hand, much of the action is just people talking (in a kitchen, on a train, in a living room, around a different table...). It seems a waste of the power of art.

It did drag on a bit, and seemed to lack focus. I would become invested in a storyline, such a Sam the Iraqi refugee who settled in Seattle before being deported in ambiguous circumstances, then have to move on to the American veteran’s childhood upbringing, then follow the crew on a travelogue trip through a museum. I found the discussions about journalism and how to coax out a good story were interesting and I wish there were more of them.

In the end, though, I keep thinking about the book, so it has grown on me!

I feel privileged to have read Rising: Dispatches From the New American Shore by Elizabeth Rush.

Rush addresses rising sea levels through weaving together science, personal vignettes, memoir and philosophical musings. She has such an elegant, poetic writing voice that softens dry science,, and is a good example of the best that can happen when art and science meet.

One of the striking points of the book is that sea level rise is not something that will only happen sometime in the future, but rather is having real consequences already. She goes to affected areas in Louisiana, Florida and Staten Island, as well as San Francisco and Oregon. The affected communities are already marginalized by class and race. She is invariably empathetic, helping readers understand the impossible choices residents face.

The author returns to several times to a quote from the Indigenous scholar John Bear Mitchell referring to petroglyphs that have been claimed by the waters. “The losses have been slow and multigenerational. We have narrowed our spiritual palettes and physical palettes to take what we have.”

Rush does not just explain the science behind the rising waters, but she also gives a requiem for all that is lost to the sea. All that gives richness to our lives - the cultural history, the beauty, the nostalgic places, the connections we have to our neighbours and ancestors- are being lost right now and require sober lament.

I very much enjoyed The Ungrateful Refugee by Dina Nayeri for my Iranian authors category.

As a girl, Nayeri fled Iran as a refugee due to the threat of religious persecution. She eventually ended up settling in America, making her way to Princeton and becoming a writer. I found it quite interesting hearing a refugee story as remembered through the eyes of a child, including memories of growing up in a refugee camp in Italy, then trying to assimilate to American culture and facing the added burdens of expectations on refugees by the host country. Her quirky childlike memories help lighten what coukd have been a depressing book.

Nayeri is thoughtful and nuanced when describing the complexities of moving forward as a refugee. She has the opportunity as an adult to volunteer with refugees and retrace her childhood steps, and it was interesting seeing both empathy and frustration arise.

She interlaces her own stories with those of others. One chapter juxtaposed two refugee men with very different paths- one successful, one despairing- with the difference being almost a flip of a coin in who would be believed by beaurocrats.

I especially liked her musings on how refugee stories were believed or not believed, how refugees are encouraged to tell the “right” kind of truth, and how refugees themselves were disadvantaged by the differences in storytelling culture between the Dutch (straightforward) and Iranian (proud and epic). “You can lie with sloppy facts. And you can tell the truth with well-crafted fiction”

Good to read in this time and age, and I’m a little embarrassed that I haven’t thought to read more (any?) refugee memoirs.

Just wanted to drop a note to say I love your reviews -- such an clear taste of what's on offer in the book and the parts that spoke most to you.

How kind! I have been finding this group to be very positive and encouraging.

When I was younger I used to read many mysteries as I enjoyed the puzzle aspect of them. Over time I stopped, though, as I started questioning what I found entertaining about them. The blood and gore started getting to me, as did the awful treatment of women in many stories. I tried some cozy mysteries, but the ones I read were so trite and dumb. It was a strange feeling to fall out of love with a genre.

Louise Penny has filled that void for me with her Inspector Gamache series. I think of her books as well-written cozy mysteries. They take place in the village of Small Pines in Quebec, filled with local history and culture. The small town characters are delightful, and her description of the food in the cozy bistro is always a detail I anticipate. Gamache is thoroughly decent and clearly cares for his loved ones and colleagues. Tragedies happen, police make difficult decisions, loved ones hurt each other, but through it all there is a thread of humanity, forgiveness and redemption that is makes Penny’s writing surprisingly hopeful for a mystery.

A Better Man is the 15th book in the series. Gamache is still dealing professionally with the fallout from previous cases. A distraught father alerts the police that his daughter is missing, and the husband is the main suspect. Clara, the village artist, is crushed by the weight of critical reviews of her new show of miniatures. (I wish Penny had drawn more of a connection between the value of the miniature paintings and that of people considered small or ordinary). Domestic violence is a theme, as is the power of social media and he danger of misreading people. A spring flood caused by ice jams threatens catastrophic flooding to the area surrounding Three Pines. Poring over this book on a stormy February night with my own neighbourhood under a flood watch certainly heightened the reading experience!

This was not quite my favourite Gamache title. I found that there were a few loose ends at the end of the book that I would have tied up differently, and the way the solution to the mystery unfolded did not quite strike me as authentic. Gamache is perhaps a little too good and wise, and maybe ready for retirement? Still, I love Penny’s style and always enjoy spending time in the world of Three Pines. It’s an almost spiritual experience that provides a little bit of faith in humanity in dark times.

A Better Man is my sixth book of the year. It fits in my Canadian authors category as well as the BINGOdog square for female authors not from the US or UK.

>39 HannahJo: I love the Gamache series too! Squinting at your review of A Better Man because I haven't read the book yet -- I only just finished Kingdom of the Blind over Christmas. I am looking forward to getting caught up though :)

>39 HannahJo: I enjoy the Gamache series. Have you tried Deborah Crombie's Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James series?

Ooh, that looks interesting. One of the reviews says “cozy mystery with an edge” which sounds like it might be the comfortable-and-interesting-yet-not-nightmarish level I’d like.

Thank you for the suggestion!

>42 HannahJo: If you begin with the 1st book in the series, it gets much much better. You'll be fine starting with the 3rd, if you wish.

For the February Non-Fiction CAT travel challenge, I read On the Road With Francis of Assisi: A Timeless Journey Through Umbria and Tuscany, and Beyond by Linda Bird Francke. I chose this book because journeying through Italy sounded like a pleasant way to spend cold February evenings. What I knew of Saint Francis was that he had a special heart for nature and animals and wrote the “make me an instrument of thy peace” prayer. A peaceable kingdom awaited!

Kind of. While this was not a bad book, I’m not sure I was the intended audience. Being Catholic would have helped, as the many anecdotes would have been more familiar to me. Having been to Italy would have enhanced the experience, as the stories of the little villages tended to blend together to my non-travelled eye.

I had expected Francis to be more winsome, but I found him to be difficult to like. He often wielded cruel punishments and penances to monks, he had awful ideas about women, didn’t really seem to like people at all... he seemed so damaged. In addition, the passages about Saint Clare living a life of perpetual starvation were exasperating to me.

The writing could have been a little more colourful. Some of the ancient stories were quite wild, such as Saint Francis fighting off the devil with a family of snowmen, but the author passes by quite matter-of-factly in a sentence or two. I also would have appreciated some interviews with the monks and fellow travellers regarding what drew them to follow Saint Francis. How is he relevant in today’s world beyond some pretty pilgrimage sites?

I think this book would be a good read for a sweet Catholic couple doing a pilgrimage to Saint Francis’s Italy. It is more in depth than a tour book, and gives personal descriptions of what makes each space special. My favourite part of the book was the travel notes at the end, in which the author earnestly lists the services she used to book villas, cars, etc. I found it quite touching that she enjoyed her journey so much that she wanted the reader to benefit from the same experience!

The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie was my read for the February RandomCAT (published in a leap year- 1920) as well as a BingoDOG square (published in 1820 or 1920. As with all my reviews, I’ll try not to give away any spoilers that would ruin the fun for anyone.

I think Agatha Christie was a genius, and have had some of my favourite reading experiences with her books, so I was a little surprised to realize that I had never read her first book. I wouldn’t say it was my favourite Christie mystery, but it is noticeable how confident she already was in her writing. I would say her characters were a little flat, but the people are always secondary to the puzzle, no? I haven’t read a Poirot for many years, and I must say I had never noticed how irritating the detective was!

Poirot: “That explains everything!”
Everyone else: “Huh? What do you mean?”
Poirot: *10 minutes of silence and eyebrow wiggling*
Poirot: “No matter!”

I suppose if Poirot gave straight answers the book would be very short.

So interesting revisiting a Christie book. The structure is always the same, but Christie never repeats with the same twists. Any of the cast of characters could be the murderer. Unsettling, isn’t it, that any one of us could do great evil. The setting at an Edwardian manor during WW1 is also disquieting, all manners and genteel politeness on the surface while both the global and personal stages are decaying.

This being the 100th anniversary of the book, it was interesting in a the-more-things-change-the-more-things stay-the-same way. The story and characters have aged well. There were references from the period which were notable, such as small talk early in the book about everyday household items from which poison could be extracted. How interesting that this was common knowledge! And a delightful conjecture that a murderer could travel 15 miles in 30 minutes if they had access to a motorcar.

I enjoyed telling my kids that I was reading a book where the detective happened to be a Belgian refugee. I think it is still unusual, even today, to find a refugee cast as a hero in a book not directly about war or immigration. That led me down an Internet rabbit hole reading about British attitudes towards Belgian refugees in WW1 vs 2020 Belgian attitudes towards refugees entering their homeland. Certainly Christie’s characters exhibited distrust of the stranger. I was reminded of The Ungrateful Refugee, a book I read earlier this year, which criticized host countries of tolerating only a certain type of refugee, one that is forever grateful and willing to give up the past. I wonder what Poirot would have thought of that book.

The edition I read included two endings: the original one written by Christie, and the one eventually written with changes urged by her publisher. It was an interesting window into the writing process. I expected to like the original better, and anticipated something controversial or edgy. Instead, I found the edited version made for a better ending, helping the characters respond to the conclusion and making for a now classic way to end a whodunnit. I also was touched that (no spoilers I hope) at least for some of the characters, Christie made a point of opening a door of hope for them in the last chapter.

>45 HannahJo: That's a great review which makes me want to revisit the book!

>45 HannahJo: That is the book I am planning to read for the 1920 Bingo square. Very much looking forward to it now, especially as it will be my very first Christie read!

Lucky you to have so many Agatha Christie books ahead of you! This was certainly not her best book, but I found it enjoyable enough. Some of her books still thrill me just thinking about them!

If anyone is new to Christie, I would suggest not googling the titles or reading the introductions. They really really really are best read without the inevitable spoilers.

>45 HannahJo: Great review! Styles was my first Christie many years ago, so it is a sentimental favourite :)

One more quick BingoDOG read for the birth/death square.

Dear Scarlet: The Story of My Postpartum Depression was longlisted for the 2020 CBC Canada Reads competition. Canada Reads is an inspired idea, and I love the thought of the whole country reading a range of authors new to them. I also enjoy listening to the unlikely celebrities championing their selected books- I imagine it is hard for, say, Olympians and interior decorators to speak passionately outside their comfort zone.

Dear Scarlet did not quite make the shortlist, which is a shame because I think many women could relate to having a harder time dealing with birth than expected. This graphic novel is just over 100 pages, but really hits with a punch. The illustrations are quite minimal, but I found the economy of words was powerful, as the emotional drain of a new mother dealing with postpartum depression leaves no room for flowery flourishes. Wong makes good use of the medium, using pictures to convey the thousand different kinds of acedia washing over her.

I never struggled with depression after my deliveries, but I remember it being a very stressful and emotionally charged time. Reading this book affected me viscerally. She writes of fantasizing about driving away and never coming back, or going to sleep forever, or climbing into a bin at a grocery store and letting apples rain down on her (hence the beautiful cover). Her imagery brought back memories of the vivid hormonal dreams I had as a new mother, and made me empathize enormously with her.

Especially moving was when she recognized loved ones were being supportive, but felt too far gone to be helped. I have always thought that the Asian tradition of confining a new mother to the house for 40 days and not letting her lift a finger was a gracious practice to aid recovery, but Wong found it isolating. Wong’s husband was enormously kind and patient (Teresa, if you are reading- he’s a keeper!)

In the end, Wong is able to move forward and provide some hope, and it seems that the steady love of her community was a constant that helped her pull through. What a gift she has given her daughter in this thoughtfully illustrated record of a difficult time in her mother’s life, and how she came out alright in the end. Everyone has dark times in their lives, and surely speaking about them helps us carry each other through to the other side.

Recommended!

For my prize-winner category, I read Older Sister, Not Necessarily Related, awarded the 2019 Hilary Weston Prize for Nonfiction in Canada.

Jenny Heijun Wills, adopted as a baby to white Canadian parents, gives her haunting account of reconnecting with her Korean birth parents. I came to the book without expectations, interested in the subject because I had spent time in Korea and had known some transnational adoptees. Wills is a gifted writer, carefully patching together scenes, moments, turns of phrases, and letters in such a way that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. The storyline sometimes descends into stream of consciousness, a very effective way of showing the shattering of her life, and the many facets of pain she felt.

I found this a very readable yet difficult memoir. I found it interesting that Wills was prepared perhaps more than many in her shoes in that she had an academic background in adoption. She seems aware beforehand of the many potential pitfalls of pursuing birth parents who may be in a very different place in their lives, as well as the cultural and language gulf that may be too hard to cross. Yet even so, and even with a cautiously open birth family, the experience unravels Wills completely.

There were hints of light in the story. I thought Wills’s effort to find a way to love her Korean family was amazing, much more than I think I would have been capable of. Her connection with her half sister, who came to live with her in Canada, was very interesting. I hope the process of writing was cathartic for the author, but wonder if perhaps it was not good for her mental state.

This was a memoir that felt like it was a little too personal and raw for me, a stranger, to read.

>37 pammab: I second this comment! Just got done catching up on your thread (I'm always behind and still have some threads to check in to this year!) and I really enjoyed your reviews.

And I'll take a book bullet for The Ungrateful Refugee.

Thank you for wading through my babbling!

It’s enjoyable reading everyone else’s reading journeys, isn’t it? Next year I might just have one big category of recommendations from other readers here.

The Ungrateful Refugee was good! The author also wrote A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea, and I’m looking forward to seeing what her fiction writing is like.

In another life, I think I would enjoy being a city planner. Thinking about improving streets and communities has become a side hobby of mine. My first book in my urban planning category is Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life by Eric Klinenberg.

The title comes from Andrew Carnegie, who called his libraries “palaces for the people” - a term that I am going to endeavor to work into my everyday vocabulary! Klinenberg loves libraries, using them as a prime example of social infrastructure that strengthens bonds between people. Klinenberg also loves museums, public parks community gardens, rec centres, daycares, and other places that are free and open to all, giving opportunities for all kinds of different people to mingle and enjoy public services together.
Klinenberg makes good use of scholarly studies that prove his point.

One example that struck me was how the decline of manufacturing in the rust belt destroyed a kind of social infrastructure I had not considered: factories. Historically, factories provided a way for those in racially segregated cities to work side by side and build relationships with people from different racial and religious backgrounds. As factories failed, people grew apart from each other and became more polarized again.

I found this book to be a very positive, hopeful read. The world can be a very dark place sometimes, but this book offers tangible, achievable ideas that can improve the lives of everyone. There are not a lot of easy fixes for the big problems around us, but creating spaces where we can freely connect with a wide range of people is an easy start.

>54 HannahJo: A BB for me!

I finally finished my New Years resolution read for the January RandomCAT, a book that also fits in the prize winning category. The Overstory by Richard Powers was challenging for a number of reasons. There were many holds for it at the library before me, so simply accessing it was difficult. It is over 500 pages with smallish type. Mostly, though, it had so many ideas in it that it was a little overwhelming.

The book is structured like a tree, with sections for roots, trunk, crown and seeds. There are a dozen characters that circle around each other like tree rings- scientists, ecoterrorists, video game designers, etc. The structure reminded me of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas with its Russian Doll structure. The people and the plot are not even the centre of the story, and frankly I didn’t really care about them, as trees are such a force in the story that it seems that they are silently controlling the whole world. Time shifts away from the human-scale hours and minutes into the centuries and millenia that trees and forests witness.

It is such a vast book that it is hard to know how to write about it. I feel that what I will remember decades from now is how trees saturate the book in such a way that every page of it references a way trees touch our lives. Sometimes the references were physical trees (one of my favourites was a tree that frat boys had festooned with toilet paper- a whimsical, random image all of us understand that shows the trees joining in the party). Sometimes the trees are idiomatic, such as when characters “live in the sticks” or are “barking up the wrong tree”. People are rooted at the spot like trees, trees branch out like adolescents- there is such a blurring between humankind and its arboreal cousins that is somewhat disorienting.

I suspect this is a love it or hate it kind of book. I think I loved it.

>56 HannahJo: I just bought this one. Someone told me you really need to give this book time so I will need to find a calm, quiet time to read it. It sounds fascinating.

It’s a lot of a book, that’s for sure! Not a beach read. Still, if you want to keep it light, I had fun locating the wood references! It certainly helped me pay attention to the many ways trees infiltrate my life. “Even the pages of the book in my hand” said a review I read.

>56 HannahJo: I loved it till the last 25% of the book, and then its tone changed so much I had to force myself to finish it.

I agree, I thought it could have been better with 100 fewer pages, and the framework of the book appealed to me more than the various plots.

Chop Suey Nation by Ann Hui is my BingoDog read for a book with a red cover. I have a writers festival category which was intended to cover various author readings I was looking forward to, but sadly it looks unlikely there will be any to attend in the near future. Chop Suey Nation was a book from a festival last year that was on my TBR pile.

I was hoping for a light read during the Covid-19 quarantine, and I thought this was tangentially timely without being apocalyptic. When the coronavirus first hit China a few months ago, Chinese restaurants in my city really struggled, and there is one I walk by which was quick to close down. I realize the reasons behind this may be complicated, including Chinese customers themselves choosing to stay home, but I do wonder if subtle racism could also be a factor.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this charming, thoughtful book. Ann Hui and her husband take a road trip across Canada visiting Chinese mom-and-pop restaurants in small towns, talking to the owners about their lives and how they ended up in, say, very remote Fogo Island, Nova Scotia. She alternates their stories with that of her own parents, who came from China to Canada in the 70’s and ran their own Chinese restaurant. The road trip, a genre of writing which I generally dislike, was secondary to the human stories, but helped add a touch of personality to the spaces.

Hui starts out with an anecdote about always feeling a little foreign as a Chinese Canadian girl growing up, and being excited about a Chinese day at school where everyone would enjoy Chinese food together. She was baffled when they were served Chop Suey, which was nothing like the authentic cuisine she enjoyed at home. Why was food at Chinese Canadian restaurants like this?

Her investigation shows the hustle and adaptiveness of immigrants. I learned about the ingenuity that spurred the invention of ginger beef in Alberta to suit western palates, and chow mein in Newfoundland made with thinly sliced cabbage due to difficulty sourcing noodles. Some areas with older populations could not deal with chewy meat, so new cooking methods were devised. There were so many delightful details, including Hui’s father’s thoughts when first tasting the “Chinese” food he was expected to cook, to her mother’s first taste of pizza, to Ann’s husband’s reaction to bulgogi pizza. Hui comes to appreciate the food she once considered fake to be very real with a rich history.

The families- and she did emphasize that these were above all family businesses- shared a lot in common. The hope for a better life for their children. The loneliness of working in the restaurant all day every day of the year. Most of the families did end up better off in the end. I usually am annoyed by books where the narrative is broken up by personal memoirs, but Hui uses her own family’s history to great effect to bring a measure of empathy. How touching that her writing gave her a greater understanding of her parents, especially her father who had rarely talked about his past.

Very happy to have read this, a book full of humanity in an era of isolation.

Great to hear your comments on The Overstory; I have that on my TBR and I remember either hearing someone tell me about it or reading some comments by someone here that had me thinking I would put it off a bit longer. I think I will like it when I get to it. And I'll take a BB for Chop Suey Nation.

>61 HannahJo: I'll take a BB on that one, too! And now I want Chinese food...

Another BingoDog read, Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz for the mystery square. As always, it’s hard to write about mysteries without spoiling the fun, but I’ll do my best to be as vague as possible.

The story is an interesting piece of metafiction, including a book within a book. The narrator is Susan, an editor who says in the first few pages that the novel Magpie Murders changed her life. There is some flipping back and forth between the thoughts of present-day Susan and the text of Magpie Murders, which is set in a quaint English village after WWII.

This book is an homage to the genre of classic mystery writing, and is best enjoyed by Agatha Christie enthusiasts. The detective Atticus Pünd, for example, is a German refugee who survived concentration camps, and is clearly modelled after Hercules Poirot.

I especially appreciated how Susan, the editor, imagines what it would really be like to be in the mind of a detective, an accused person, a victim, etc. More than once I was reminded of Christie’s quote about Poirot being a “detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep.”

While Horowitz does not quite compare to Christie, I did delight in a writer clearly being self-aware and having fun with all the mystery tropes. He is constantly winking at the reader as he flings around small-town secrets and poisons (and poison pens?). I found myself prompted to think about how difficult it would be to write a completely original mystery, as all the same stories have been told over and over, and thought once again how Christie is in a league of her own.

I was a little bored in the middle, wondering where the story was leading, but found the ending quite clever and satisfying.

The Gospel of Trees by Apricot Irving
Interesting People category, Bingodog read for “involves real historical event” (Haitian earthquake of 2010)

I appreciate failed missionary stories, as they indicate growth, developing empathy and humility that we should all desire to have. Apricot Irving writes her story of growing up as a missionary kid in Haiti. Her parents were somewhat counterculture, and stumbled into missionary service where they worked at an agricultural centre in Haiti serving God through reforestation programs. Irving writes from her viewpoint as a child, yet with the hindsight of an adult, making use of her diaries, old missionary fundraising letters, and interviews with her family many years later. She also tells of returning to Haiti years later as a reporter after the 2010 earthquake, revisiting some of the people she knew growing up.

Irving can write beautifully, and some of her lyrical phrases evoking the beauty and difficulty of Haiti knocked my socks off. While not like The Poisonwood Bible, where the missionary father came off as villianous, this book does show the unravelling of good intentions when met with reality. Looking back, so many mistakes were made (not knowing the language or history of Haiti, not recognizing their privilege, not treating Haitian workers as their equals...) It really did read as though they accomplished very little good, and really made things worse in many ways. Returning to Haiti after the earthquake was illuminating, with both lots of despair and shoots of hope.

Irving is nuanced and thoughtful, understanding that everything was complicated and tangled. She writes about her father’s anger and hardheadedness, for instance, but as an adult realizes how much she is like him, entangled like roots.

Interesting reading, and I imagine it would resonate with many third culture kids grappling with affection for their family versus cross-cultural problems viewed with the wisdom of retrospect.

I’ve really enjoyed reading your reviews this evening especially the one on The Overstory.

Thank you for your virtual company! I’m quite happy with my reading this year. Books have been a bright spot for me in these strange times.

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

Not Set on Earth category for BINGOdog
Award-winner category (Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel 2015)

It has been a long time since I’ve read a fantasy novel. I used to read a lot of fantasy as a girl, but somewhere in my teens I lost my taste for it. I remember the disorientation of unexpectedly disliking Lord of the Rings- the longwindedness of it, the battles I didn’t care for, the male-orientedness, the names I couldn’t remember.

I picked up The Goblin Emperor because I found it on a list of uplifting fantasy. The main character, Maia, unexpectedly is thrust into the role of emperor when his estranged father is killed. It is very much a coming of age story, as he learns how to carry out his role while being keenly aware that he is out of his depth. There is political intrigue as he works out who he can trust, the mystery behind his father’s death, and how to unite the conflicting factions of various elves and goblins in his kingdom. In the beginning, he is completely dependent on his advisors to help him untangle the right way to move forward, and it is rewarding seeing Maia slowly learn to make wise decisions independently.

My favourite aspect of the book was the in-depth look into Maia’s thoughts and feelings with every encounter and decision. He really was kind and thoughtful, and his decentness was his power. The story follows how each good choice is a building block that ultimately results in good character and respectability. Maia is kind to those he doesn’t need to be, like servants and children, so much so that the recipients of his considerateness are often taken aback. It reminded me of a quality of my husband that made me fall in love with him. I also appreciated how Maia’s reign was one of peace, and I didn’t have to wade through the typical fantasy battles I dislike.

I still resented having to keep track of all the hundreds of names, but after a while I just focussed on the main characters and let the others wash over me. Another point that annoyed me was that while the women introduced were pointedly accomplished, it was still very much a male-dominated story. Maia’s sister, for example, has to depend on her brother to release her from an unwanted engagement so she can study the stars. She then.. sort of disappears? If I were the author inventing a new world, surely women would hold up half the sky?

Overall, I found this a very hopeful read. In this time of self-isolation, I enjoyed being transported to a place where goodness repairs the world.

>68 HannahJo: I ended up liking The Goblin Emperor a lot too. I felt it was difficult -- the formalized speech patterns, the complex names, and the fact that readers are thrust into the world with little background -- but definitely worth it in the end.

Yes, I agree it was worth reading. I think it hard to write about goodness triumphing without sounding trite or naïve, but I thought Addison did so with intelligence.

Women’s Work: a reckoning with work and home by Megan K. Stack

NYT Notable Book category (2019)

Megan K Stack is a reporter who writes about her experience living in China and India and relying on nannies to help raise her children. She wants to tackle the ethical quandries and human cost of this low-cost labour in such a personal field, I expected the book to be much more about the nannies. I thought that Stack would use her reporting skills to interview a variety of nannies, agencies, employers, maybe human rights organizations, immigration lawyers, poverty groups, etc.

The book was quite different from what I imagined. Most of the book reads like a mommy blog documenting her difficulties with The Help, Stack is either brutally honest about her deepest weaknesses, or rather more likely completely unaware of how she and her husband come across as unlikable. She does not treat her nannies very nicely, and complains about them throughout (this one is lazy, this one drinks too much, this one only cooks Chinese food we don’t like...) Stack seems overly involved in the personal lives of her staff, stalking them of facebook, interfering with their relationships, questioning their purchases. When one of her nannies asks for a day off to see her own daughter who has been hospitalized, the response is no. Stack seems to lack any self-awareness of her privilege.

At the very end of the book Stack interviews the women who raised her babies. The truths of some of the nannies are difficult to pin down, probably because their lives are messy and complicated. Stack’s interviews are short- in coffee shops or markets- and it is clear that the nannies don’t feel comfortable being completely frank with their former employer. It felt exploitative to me, maybe to them, too.

Honestly, much more interesting would be a memoir written by the nannies about their lives. I bet they would have juicy stories about how they were treated by their employers.

Not sure why this made the NYT Notable Book list. While the topic is important, the execution was a bit of a mess, and while readable in a guilty pleasure sort of way I feel it was written by the wrong person.

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

Prize winner or nominee category (1995 Nebula Prize nominee)

I put this book on hold at the library before Christmas, not knowing I would be reading it during a global pandemic. That was unfortunate timing.

Butler details a dystopian world marked by an environmental disaster resulting in shortages of water, food and supplies.
I found this to be well-written, but decidedly grim, with civilization unravelling into a violent world with no one to trust. The dog-eat-dog nature of the book really wore me down, and in the current environment I just did not have the emotional capacity to deal with that weight. I confess I skimmed through the end of the book, as it felt a bit too nightmarish to me.

I found the writing to be a bit on the nose for today, includigg President Donner promising to return America to its golden age, and the lack of opportunities for job-seekers except in company towns with few protections for workers.

I did appreciate the concept of hyperempathy being both a weakness and a strength, and like the thought that if we could feel the pain our actions caused our actions may be different. I also respectedl the Earthseed religion, characterized by the tent “God is Change”. It seemed so organic and natural, fitting to a time when adaptability is life.

Don’t think I’ll read more Butler as I found her emotionally exhausting, but she was so clever and I’m glad she wrote her ideas for us to read.

>72 HannahJo: I've read 2 of Butler's book and I do love her! I'm putting this one on my wish list.

The Inner Life of Animals: Love, Grief and Compassion- Surprising Observations of a Hidden World by Peter Wohlleben

Not quite as memorable as Wohlleben’s book about trees where he details how trees communicate with each other, this is still a charming little book offering short chapters on the emotional lives of animals. Quite calming and uplifting compared to my previous reading of Octavia Butler!

A little too calming- perhaps slipping into the boring side? A chapter about bees, for instance, details how bees dance to communicate the location of flowers, and the bees not only remember the information but can calculate where one stand of flowers is compared to a previous one. Is that interesting? Maybe it’s a matter of personal taste.

We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir by Samra Habib

Interesting people category

This book had been trapped on hold at my library since the middle of March. It was a finalist for CBC’s Canada Reads contest. Poor Canada Reads had to be postponed, and I feel sorry for all the authors who had been anticipating a bump in publicity. I felt a little like I had travelled back in time when my library finally opened with limited service and I dusted off this poor forgotten book.

Samra Habib came to Canada as a child as a refugee from Pakistan. She writes about her life growing up, being a child bride at 16, breaking free from her family’s expectations, and finding her own voice as a queer Muslim.

I found the tone quite interesting, as she lays down her somewhat traumatic childhood in a very matter-of-fact way, not full of emotion as one would expect. I don’t know if Habib’s personality is just naturally objective, or if it’s her way of processing what happened, but it was curious. Quite readable, and I was reminded of The Ungrateful Refugee which I read earlier in the year, which was full of childhood memories which breathed an extra degree of humanity into the book.

I especially appreciated Habib’s thoughtfulness in seeing each person and action in her life as a stepping stone to where she is today. Even when people such as her parents and ex-lovers cause hurt, Habib is gracious and appreciates that they, too, are on a journey. I am happy to see that she has a relationship with her parents and Muslim community now, and was surprised at how positively the book ended.

A special note that I enjoyed reading about the importance of books in Habib’s formation. One memory that will stay with me is when Habib cut off contact with her parents after a failed marriage at 16, her mother, frantic to find her, searched libraries knowing that her daughter would surely be found in books.

A Mind Spread Out on the Ground by Alicia Elliot

Interesting people category

I had heard Alicia Elliot from time to time on CBC, but had never really paid attention to her.

What a great writer! A Mind Spread Out on the Ground exploded out of her, covering the question “why can’t Indigenous people just forget about the past and move on?” She covers the ongoing, deep-rooted influence of colonialism, racism, poverty, mental health and abuse and how it affects every facet of her existence.

Her chapter on living with lice for 10 years as a result of poor housing, lack of running water, and poverty in general was something to read. Her parents had to constantly be aware of avoiding calls from child protective services, as First Nations kids are still taken away from their homes at greater rates. Her diet is affected by food deserts, her sexual assault is entangled with a court system which does not give justice, her career is affected by the whims of CanLit... it is endless.

She writes about dark matter and racism- it can’t be seen, but its affects are everywhere and alter the universe. I thought that was an powerful connection. I also appreciated how seemlessly Mohawk language and Indigenous philosophy fit into the book. “A mind spread out on the ground” or “a mind hanging by a thread” is a translation of the Mohawk word for depression. The concept of our actions affecting seven generations beyond us gives us a way to understand generational trauma.

The book is wide-sweeping, as it has to be as the issues are so messy and toxic to individuals, families, communities, and Canada as a whole. I hope Elliot writes more- really looking forward to reading her again.

Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier
1001 Books to Read Before You Die category
Legacy Library square for BINGOdog

Some books on the 1001 booklist I’ve found disappointing. They have been dated, or important but boring, not my style at all, or included for reasons other than quality. Happily, I can say that I loved Rebecca, and feel like I found a treasure.

A young woman, with little future beyond working as a companion for an elderly lad in Monte Carlo, is suddenly proposed to by a dashing widower with a mysterious past. They return to England where she feels very out of place as the new lady of the house, facing hostile servants, a brooding house, and ghosts of the past. There is mystery afoot, though it takes some time for her to realize it, and an ending that will stay with me forever.

What I most enjoyed about this psychological thriller was that it was enjoyably subversive just below the surface. Why was the main character unnamed, with the dead wife enjoying the title? Was this a daring romance or something else? The young bride was given a new husband and a beautiful house, but it seemed a nightmare from the start. “How Hitchcockian,” I thought before discovering it was indeed made into a Hitchcock film, which I enjoyed after finishing the read.

I also very much enjoyed the setting of Manderley, looming and stormy and broody. The azaleas were blooming in my garden at the same time as that garden’s, and I found it very atmospheric. I remember reading Sarah Water’s The Little Stranger with its groaning, drooping ghosty house, and I now understand from where she drew her inspiration.

Great read, looking forward to more DuMaurier in the future

Aria by Nazanine Hozar
Iranian Authors category

Aria is a sweeping saga that follows Aria, abandoned as a baby, as she comes of age during the tumult of the Iranian Revolution, starting in the 50’s and ending in the 80’s. Aria is both plucky and strong, as well as helpless as the winds of change blow both her personal life and the trajectory of her nation. She has a changing parade of people caring for her, from all different walks of life, including the soldier who first finds her in the street, his cruel wife, the compassionate Fereshteh, and the impoverished Mehri.

While I feel that Hozar is a good writer, I’m afraid I didn’t completely click with the book. I might have enjoyed it more if I were more familiar with Iranian history, though I did feel that it was approachable enough for a novice like me. When all the storylines of the characters collided at the end, I didn’t feel I liked any of them enough to care that much. I liked the first half of the book better than the second half, although I suppose the endless frustration and failed dreams would very much echo what it was like living through the Revolution.

What I enjoyed most about the book was how it showed the diversity and complexity of Iranian culture. I was driven down a number of rabbit holes, including reading about Jews, Zoroastrians, and Christians living in Iran. I also found myself wanting to know more about Persian gardens and art. The characters were never black and white, and even the ones who are detestable had their own reasons. There is a love for Iran, but also a realization that “when something is that old it begins to crack”

Maybe a good read for an Iranophile?

>78 HannahJo: This sounds very interesting! Thanks for the review.

Thick by Tressie McMillan Cottom
NYT Notable Book category (2019)

I was not familiar with Cottom’s writing before I put this book on hold at the library many months ago. The book looked slight, and I must admit I expected a light breezy read when I saw that the first essay had to do with Miley Cyrus.

What I discovered instead was that Cottom is whip-smart and quick witted, packing so many ideas into her essays regarding how black women experience the world. I had to pause reading several times as if to gasp in air, as the the thoughts came thick and furious.

One thing Cottom does especially well is demonstrate her theoretical ideas with concrete examples from her own life. Her Miley Cyrus essay about the heirarchy of beauty and the objectification of black women is not just philosophical when she demonstrates its truth with her many experiences with black beauty vs white beauty. Her essay involving how black women are not seen as competent included her own nightmare story of losing a baby after being ignored for days by medical staff- then having the nurses blame her for not speaking up. Her essay calling for a black woman NYT op-ed writer was an eye-opener for me, as she pointed out how few black women were followed on twitter by some of the most influential opinion writers in America. It is as though there is no black woman worth listening to for them. Why had I not considered that before?

A little sad that this book has been so timely with racism very much on the front page right now, but I am happy to have discovered a new-to-me writer, and I look forward to reading more of her.

A Million Years with You by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
June Nonfiction CAT (Society)

I did not know Elizabeth Marshall Thomas before reading this memoir, so watching her life unfold was particularly delightful as there were so many interesting turns! A self-taught anthropologist with a special interest in animals, her life takes her from living with the Bushmen in the Kalahari desert, to an encounter with an ascendent Idi Amin in Uganda (who she makes a point of NOT thanking in her acknowledgements!), through a coup in Nigeria, her travels through alcoholism, her extraordinary family... what a life!

She comes across as one of those women of a certain age who traveled and pursued a career fearlessly, taking hold of every opportunity life threw her way. Her writing about the Bushmen showed great respect, and I was impressed by how often she talked of how sensitive and empathetic she found them. She talked the same way about animals, including comparing her feelings first meeting with the Bushmen with those of Arctic wolves meeting with her, their first ever encounter with a human. She also compares AA meetings with Savanah meetings bringing a community together with common understanding. What an interesting perspective!

Some parts of the book were more successful than others. She devotes a whole chapter to her childhood cats, and I must say I almost gave up after reading about how she drew a cat in Grade 2. Likewise, I found her chapter about her writing rules unnecessary. Thomas considers herself a writer, but I think most of her stories would be more natural in oral storytelling, under the stars in the Kalahari.

Christmas Stories: 12 Stories and 12 Feasts for 12 Days by Jeanette Winterson

NYT Notable Book Category (2017)

I picked this book on a whim as a bit of escapist literature. It feels like Winterson enjoyed herself writing these light, somewhat fantastical tales. They have a read-aloud quality, nice when gathering around the fire.

Each story is accompanied by a recipe and a Christmas memory from Winterson’s life. These were delightful! I especially enjoyed reading about Ruth Rendell pickling rabbit, and Shakespeare and Company offering Christmas food for whatever writers happened to be straggling around.

I’m not sure why this qualifies as a notable book, honestly. There was one memorable gothic story, and some clever details (the Santa who instead of giving, takes away unwanted things), but most of the stories were not especially memorable. Not everything we read has to be life-changing, though, and it was a pleasant enough read.

The Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt’s New World by Andrea Wulf

Science, Nature and Environment category

I greatly enjoyed this well-researched, readable biography of the scientist Alexander Von Humboldt. I learned about this vibrant, big-picture man who introduced the world to the concept of Ecology and the Web of Life. He seemed to be born at just the right time, and influenced politicians (Jefferson, Simón Bolivar), naturalists (John Muir, Henry David Thoreau), writers (Goethe, Wordsworth, Mary Shelley), and of course scientists, including Darwin who would come to eclipse him. At the time, he was rock-star famous, causing traffic jams on days he would give public lectures. I wish we had more charismatic scientists around nowadays.

The author clearly loved the Humboldt, and included many little anecdotes that humanized the subject. For example, Humboldt grumbled that his barometer was not bought for very much money, but ended up costing him very much indeed because some poor porter had to be paid to carefully carry it up and down volcanoes for him. At the very beginning of the book Wulf recounts climbing that same Venezuelan volcano herself, an homage to the great efforts of Humboldt himself.

Humboldt’s work seems so timely today as he was one of the prophets warning of the wide-ranging effects of the destruction of the environment, but I don’t remember learning about Humboldt at all in school. I was reminded of Machu Pichu and the Terracotta army in Xian, treasures of the world which had been forgotten by the world for centuries. It is humbling, and reminds me of how limited my knowledge is and how important it is to be always learning.

>83 HannahJo: Great review! I just read this myself and I found her description of the celebration of his 100th birthday across the world fascinating. He fell victim to the Germanophobia of the First World War in the English-speaking world, but in Germany nearly every big city still has a high school named after the brothers.

Yes, the role of post-war anti-German sentiment in marginalizing Humboldt’s contribution to science made an impression on me. Another casualty of war. i think what I will remember about this book years from now is the sadness of the “extinction” of Humboldt’s fame.

Jamaica Inn by Daphne DuMaurier
Whatever I Want category

After having such a good time reading Rebecca, I was looking forward to reading Jamaica Inn, the gothic story of an orphaned young woman who goes to live with her relatives in an inn of ill-repute. She must deal with her truly creepy uncle and his band of thieves, and use her wits to come out alive.

The first chapter was highly readable as Mary loses her mother, then her home, and we see how this horrible world is thrust upon her. DuMaurier is so good at atmospheric places, and I will remember the unsettling carriage rides through stormy moors, with the drivers refusing to go near Jamaica Inn. I also appreciated DuMaurier’s depiction of an abusive relationship. When Mary arrives at the inn and finds her aunt a shell of her former self, then finds herself shell-shocked by the inhuman conditions, she chooses to stay to protect her aunt with plans to escape together. I thought this reasoning for staying in such a damaging place felt authentic.

I was SO disappointed as I read on and found the book getting worse and worse. The clever Hitchcockian suspense of Rebecca were missing, and it reminded me of a badly written budget movie. Instead of offering chilling thrills, some scenes were full of just unpleasant gore. None of the characters were likeable, and there was one relationship which made me want to throw he book across the room. The ending was telegraphed pretty early on in the book by way of lazy writing.

I won’t be trying DuMaurier again. I loved Rebecca, but may have hated Jamaica Inn more.

From the Ashes by Jesse Thistle
Writers Festival category

I had had this book on hold at the library since the beginning of the year, so it is evident that this book had moved many people. Thistle recounts his journey from a rough childhood, through homelessness and drug addiction, and out the other side as he becomes sober and starts anew.

I was reminded of Alicia Elliot’s descriptions of generational trauma in A Mind Spread Out on the Ground. Jesse is Métis, but growing up feels that is a source of shame rather than pride. His parents are not capable of providing him with stability, the foster care system damages him, the school system does little for him and his lack of reading skills sets him up for failure. His grandparents are overwhelmed, and their tough love hastens Jesse’s descent into ten years living on the streets and prisons. He makes use of poetry when prose fails to capture the full reality.

Jesse manages to pull himself out of that life, and his simple description of the steps taken belie how difficult it must have been. Key to his restoration was learning about his Métis identity and connecting to his community and traditions. Education was central, specifically learning of the historical abuse of his people. He learns how the personal and the historical mix, as he comes from a long line of chiefs and resistance fighters who were left treaty-less and landless, left to squat in ditches. He now works on Indigenous homelessness , his understanding of the issue enriched by his life experience. The love and support of a good woman is sunlight and warmth to him.

A hopeful book, but also a reminder of the amount of damage caused by Canadian history, and the complications of homelessness and poverty.

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
GeoCAT for June (Space)

Science Fiction has never been a great fit for me. While some of my most memorable reads come from this genre, I tend to find them...dark. I chose this particular book as it seemed light and happy.

I did find the purposeful inclusiveness refreshing, and seeing different species going out of their way to be kind and understanding to each other was quite sweet. I am a novice to sci-fi, but this kind of cute, endearing take on inter-planetary travel was new to me. Very much a character-driven comfort read, a little like a cozy mystery set in a small town.

As I began the book I had high hopes, but I’m afraid I found it disappointing. Nothing really happens for most of the book, there is little tension or development, the characters are a little too light.

That said, I’m sure this kind of read is just the thing for somebody out there. A different kind of science-fiction, comforting in strange times.

Creation by Sylvia Nickerson
Canadian books category

I was looking for a book about gentrification, and found this graphic novel, written from the point of view of a new mother with a art studio in a changing neighbourhood. A quick read, with Nickerson capturing with sparing words and blobby art the grinding depression of life in Hamilton, Ontario (“the armpit of Ontario”).

More a collection of impressions than storylines, we see glimpses of what life if like in a poor neighbourhood. The industrial smells, the lack of beauty and badly maintained buildings, the toxic waste that poisons the population, floaty ghosts of broken dreams. One page shows the impossibly limited hours of the food bank. The one piece of a storyline involves a woman who dies in a snowbank, largely forgotten and neglected.

Nickerson does touch on the complicated tensions of gentrification, with various populations laying claim to the blocks and the grand dreams of the urban planners excluding large segments of the community. I wish there was more, though. I was left with the sensation of leafing through the journal of a not-very-happy artist.

Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability and Making Space by Amanda Leduc

Mythology/Folklore square for BINGODog
Writers Festival category

I found Disfigured to be fascinating and eye-opening. Leduc, a writer with cerebral palsy, has a fresh perspective on fairy tales through the lens of disability. She does not pretend to be a scholar, and she has a broad view of fairy tales, from lesser-known Brothers Grimm tales like Hans the Hedgehog (half-man, half-hedgehog), to Disney, through to Marvel Comics. How do the stories we grow up with shape how we view the “other” in our world?

Leduc successfully intertwines her own story of growing up with analysis of different fairy tale conventions. For example, one of the key stories for her growing up was that of Disney’s Little Mermaid. As a little girl, Leduc was very much like Ariel, unable to walk and dance like her friend due to her lack of well-functioning legs. Reading about the bullying and ostracizing was difficult. In the rules of a fairy tale, the only two options are the happy ending with the mermaid changing and becoming a part of another world, or staying without legs and dying lonely and suffering. In a fairy tale ending, the individual transforms to fit society, never the other way around.

When I picked this book up, I was expecting it to be a one-note gimmick. Leduc is such a thoughtful writer, though, and every page was filled with new insights and challenging takes. One aside that made me gasp was the remark that the trope of fairies counting gold pieces is not dissimilar to autistic stimming behavior. It took me a long time to read this short book as I had to keep putting it down to digest new-to-me ideas.

Leduc calls for a wider variety of stories and characters, allowing for different ways to move through the world and a wider spectrum of endings. There should be an emphasis not on defeating obstacles by individual transformation, but rather on the community embracing differences and helping everyone flourish.

(As an aside, I had to chuckle that the author is from Hamilton, Ontario, as the author of my last read referred to it as the “armpit of Ontario”. Good things can come from Hamilton!)

Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club by Megan Gail Coles
Writers Festival category
Weird Book Title category for BINGOdog (more memorable than weird, but better this than an overly-quirky book!)

Fabulous writing from Megan Gail Coles! Newfoundlanders are known for being able to spin a good yarn, and this book blew me away. Dark but readable, Coles examines power structures circling around a St Johns restaurant in a snow storm on Valentine’s Day. The characters are all entangled with one another, with stratified levels of control over their world. Men vs women, gay vs straight, townie vs baymen, rich vs poor, Indigenous vs White- after a while I started seeing hierarchies in everything, every page.

People in this book are violent towards one another, in ways that are physical, emotional, psychological. Women especially bear the brunt. Coles does a masterful job of showing the inner dialogue of the characters. Tragedy was to be expected, and as I was reading I felt an uneasiness understanding how events would unfold based on where people fit in the food chain. I understood how things would play out, as did every character in the book. I could almost predict the dialogue, as it was so sadly familiar.

There was only one act of kindness in the book, noticeable because of its contrast to the cruelty of the book. Usually I am put off by such bleak writing, but Coles is so sharp and engaging that I could not put this book down.

I wonder what Newfoundlanders feel about Coles. Maybe she is celebrated as a clearly talented bright light, but she sure doesn’t paint her province in a very good light.

>90 HannahJo: Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability and Making Space sounds very intriguing! I'll have to see if it's accessible through the library. It seems like it might be a relatively rare book.

(Oy, it's an Early Reviewer book from 6 months ago! I'm betting the library doesn't have it yet...)

Intriguing is the word- such a serendipitous find!

I borrowed the book from my Canadian library, and other people had holds on it, so it seems to have found an audience. I first heard the author on a podcast, so if you can’t find the book right away give her a listen!

Heida: A Shepherd at the Edge of the World by Steinunn Sigurdardottir and Heida Asgiersdottir

GeoCAT category (May/a place you would like to visit)

A lovely, charming read about a woman running a sheep farm in a rugged corner of Iceland, standing up against a power company that wants to build on the land of her ancestors.

The book is not quite what I expected. It was advertised as the story of a former model who gave it all up to return to farming. I expect the publishers thought that would drive readership. Heida’s modelling only takes up a page or two, with the book focussing on her day-to-day shepherding and side-foray into politics.

It reads much like a diary, which depending on your taste can be a pro or a con. Heida’s unique voice and quirky humour comes through loud and clear. One of my favourite passages involved the community voicing their concern that the power company’s planned reservoir would bring about the end of their beloved river, beautiful and teeming with life. “It’s also our chief landmark and, after all, how are we who live ‘beyond Fljot’ supposed to complain about the laziness of those living ‘east of Fljot’ - and vice versa, of course- if there’s no Fljot anymore?”

It was refreshing to read the memoir of such a strong, self-assured woman living in a community that did not place any limits on her. Interestingly, she still faces some gentle pressure to marry and have kids, as running the farm singlehandedly does sound exhausting for anyone, man or woman. Still, what a healthy atmosphere, knowing that women are perfectly competent. Such a difference to the last book I read!

There were areas of the book that could have been improved. The farm life writing did become a little repetitive, though I imagine someone with a soft spot for sheep would find it delightful. The poetry fell flat for me, though I expect something may have been lost in translation. I also expected the environmental activism to be better fleshed out- and I wanted to be on her side!

Overall, I was very happy to be transported to Heida’s world, and wish her continued success.

21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act: Helping Canadians Make Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples a Reality by Bob Joseph

Canadian book category
BINGOCat (“library” or “thing” in title)

Reading this, I felt very angry that growing up I was never taught about the effects of the Indian Act. The biggest gap in my education was never learning about residential schools. Our ‘Native Studies’ in grade 4 consisted of making teepees out of popsicle sticks- how useless was that?

This book is a very readable, accessible entry into a topic that could be intimidating. Excluding the appendices, it is only 100 pages, and each topic is only a couple of pages long. While I knew some of the information, it helped connect the dots for me. For instance, until recently a woman would lose her Indian status if she married a non-Indian man, and if she left the Reserve to, say, escape an abusive relationship, she risked losing her home. Even after amendments to the Act, navigating the process to reinstate status for individual women is difficult and complex. It is easy to see how the Indian Act can place women in harmful, unjust positions.

I appreciated the concrete list of actions to promote healing at the end of the book, and it’s hopeful that action has started on some of the ideas. One easy change is racist sports mascots, something that is in the news today. Also, I find it encouraging that my children are gaining a more complete education about Indigenous relations than I ever did.

Bob Joseph is such a great communicator, both in writing and as a presenter. his company has a wonderful blog. The video of his 45-minute presentation that he gave at the Vancouver Board of Trade conference back in 2014 is both humourous and informative: https://www.ictinc.ca/blog/aboriginal-opportunities-forum

Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World-and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling

Prize Winners and Nominees category (2018 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Longlist)

I picked up this book because I had enjoyed Hans Rosling’s TED talk, and Bill Gates said it was one of his favourite books.

The book is anchored by the 13 question multiple-choice quiz at the beginning of the book testing assumptions about global development. Where is the global population concentrated? Is global poverty increasing or decreasing? How is the state of female education and vaccination rates? Because I was a little familiar with Rosling, I did OK on the test, but it was humbling thinking how I should know such basic information better. My 13-year-old got 2/13. Rosling has given the test thousands of times, and most people not only fail but, as he delightfully points out, do worse han chimpanzees randomly pressing buttons. Not only do we have no clue, but we have actively incorrect knowledge. Huh.

Rosling is a very good storyteller, and brings boring numbers to life. He paints a sunny picture of the way the world is going- poverty is falling, birth rates are becoming manageable, education is increasing, etc. Many helpful graphs illustrated his statistics, which were certainly eye-opening to me. I especially liked his photographs showing the differences in lifestyle between 4 levels of income ($1/day, $2/day, $16/day and over $32/day). The pictures of meals, beds, drinking water, etc. showed how a small difference in income can make a huge difference in quality of life.

I did find Rosling a little overly optimistic at times, and I found myself feeling that he may have been carefully choosing data which fit his thesis. His thoughts about the environment, for example, seemed to be counterintuitive on purpose and at the very least should be a starting point for a discussion, not a definitive conclusion (ex- these three species did not go extinct! DDT is great! Chernobyl was no big deal!)

>97 HannahJo:
I like the idea of a "pre-test" to help inform where biases are!

I suspect a lot of consternation is from local conditions deteriorating even when overall conditions are improving, so I worry a bit about statistical misrepresentation from subtly altering which groups are being discussed, but at the same time I would love an optimistic take on people and the future, so I'll keep an eye out for this book as well.

Eyes on the Street: the Life of Jane Jacobs by Robert Kanigel

Urban Planning/ Improving Cities category

Jane Jacobs was at her height a bit before my time, and discovering her a few years ago was eye-opening to me. Her basic rules for healthy neighbourhoods (mixed-use, mixed-age, short blocks and enough density) changed the way I look at cities around me. I vote in local elections differently because of her ideas. I looked forward to reading Eyes on the Street as a way to understand Jacobs better.

I was a little intimidated by the book at first, as it did look potentially dry with its many pages and voluminous endnotes. It was quite readable, though, helped by Jacob’s larger-than-life personality. The book is full of lovely anecdotes such as young Jane’s refusing to bend to her third grade teacher as a prelude to her lifetime’s work of protesting against power brokers planning expressways and towers that would kill communities.

I was interested to learn that Jacobs was one of those interesting women who did not come into her own life’s work until middle age, and that she had no traditional education or experience in urban planning. Eyes on the Street shows step by step how she became an expert in a non-traditional way.

Also enjoyable was reading about the variety of reactions to Jacobs. I had never thought about her as a voice for NIMBYism, for example, but I can see how that could be the case. One of the loveliest quotes in the book was from a PhD student who compared Jacob’s ideas in The Life and Death of the American City to a liturgy, built around recurrent cycles of death and rebirth, with many actors contributing their own visions to a greater whole, in community. What a beautiful way to think about a city.

Eyes on the Street was enjoyable to me, but really I came away from the book wanting to read more of Jacob’s original work.

Into the Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver by Jill Heinherth

June GeoCAT Category (To the Sea)

Into the Planet is the autobiography of Jill Heinherth, a renowned Canadian cave diver. This is a world new to me, and I found it a spellbinding read.

Heinherth’s dives are extreme, pushing the limit of science and human endurance. The writing is much like an astronaut explaining the reasons behind exploring new planets. She describes her deepest and longest dives, as well as a very unpleasant sounding Antarctic dive. I was unprepared for the degree of constant danger that was described, and it kept me at the edge of my seat. The first sentence reads “If I die, it will be in the most glorious place that nobody has ever seen.” Such a gripping storyteller! The colour photographs greatly enrich the reading experience.

Heinherth is a nice balance of action-oriented and introspective, and I enjoyed her musings about the role of fear, how she found purpose in her passion, ethics of diving teams, the personalities who are drawn to peril, and how her work affected her relationships. Often these kinds of books about explorers pushing the limits become grandiose motivational tomes, but I found Heinherth well aware of the limits of her life’s work (one of the chapters is titled “My Dead Friends”). I glanced at some reviews that mentioned that they wished she had left out her personal life, but I greatly appreciated how she did not separate the technical side with the humanity.

Highly recommended!

They Said This Would Be Fun: Race, Campus Life, and Growing Up by Eternity Martis

BINGODog (published in 2020 category)
Canadian Books category

I have to admit, when I heard this book was about the author’s experience with race at the University of Western Ontario, my first reaction was “how bad could it have been?” While racism can be found everywhere, I would have thought a Canadian university campus would not be that bad.

Martis begins the book with her telling of a first year Hallowe’en party. Even before reading it, my heart sank thinking of all the ways it could go wrong for a black woman. As I read on, a flood of memories came back to me of my student days- slave day fundraisers, wildly inappropriate remarks by professors, men acting like creeps around women of colour, UWO’s professor Phillippe Rushton who ranked races according to IQ...it was all there, just like Martis said, but I had not fully processed it.

Martis gives examples from her own experience as a black student dealing with pervasive racism in friendships, dating, relationships, sexual violence, classwork, etc. She then very effectively ends each chapter tying her experiences together with larger trends in society. Very sharp, very readable.

The book could have been quite dark, but I appreciated the glimmers of supportive people highlighted who helped Martis through. Her grandfather very sweetly kept clippings of book reviews of South Asian authors to encourage his granddaughters writing aspirations. A Black Women’s History course was the backdrop for classmates to share common experiences.

This is the sort of book with a black feminist point of view that I can see my teenaged sons reading, as it is in a world they are interested in.

I finish the year having read 55 books, roughly half of my usual yearly average. This was surprising, as I had felt like I had read a lot, including some great books, but apparently my pandemic reading involves a lot of holding books in my hands and rereading the same paragraph over and over and over...

I enjoyed this group and the challenges. I have not been very vocal in other threads, but I have greatly appreciated your positive energy and thoughtful recommendations!

>102 HannahJo: I think a lot of us can relate to that feeling of rereading the same paragraph over and over! Congrats on your 2020 challenge reading!

>102 HannahJo: "apparently my pandemic reading involves a lot of holding books in my hands and rereading the same paragraph over and over and over"

Ha! Yeah.... I found myself doing more rereading this year than others, precisely for this reason, I suspect -- easy to still follow the story even if I zone out for a page or two.

Happy new year to you!