Ambrose Zephyr has been told by his doctor that he has one month left to live. Ambrose has always loved letters and the alphabet, and so he makes a list, from A to Z, of places to go or things to see or do in the month he has left. He and his wife, Zappora “Zipper” Ashkenazi, then leave everything behind and travel from destination to destination to complete Ambrose’s list.

This was a well-written book, but it’s fairly depressing. Ambrose and Zipper have no one but each other (no kids, no relatives) which makes Ambrose’s imminent death all the more tragic as his wife will be left alone. I think that’s what got to me the most about this book. The sad realization for Zipper that the love of her life for so many years is dying and she will be alone to grieve him. It’s even more tragic that the death isn’t sudden, so they can prepare themselves for it, but it also won’t be far away, so there’s just not enough time left. I was just wiped out by the end, and this was a short novel, so I was surprised by how much of an emotional wallop it packed.

The Callan sisters are not much alike. Clara Callan is the responsible sister who stays on in her family’s little Ontario town and takes care of the house after her parents have both passed on. Nora Callan is the adventurous sister, who craves a more exciting life and moves to New York to pursue her dream of becoming an actress. This would be like many a sister story you’ve read before, except this novel is set in the 1930s, during a time when being a single woman in her 30s was not as glamorous as it is made to be today.

Instead, Clara Callan is categorized as an old maid; a spinster schoolteacher who prefers to stay home alone and read a good book than go out and socialize and find a husband. She thinks she’s too old now, and the chances of her finding a husband to marry and have children with are gone. And she’s right — being an unmarried, 30-something woman in a small town in 1930s Canada doesn’t give her many opportunities to find love at this already “late stage of life”.

Nora has it a little easier. Having moved to the vibrant city of NYC, fresh off the swinging heyday of the 20s, she’s free to date and work and enjoy her life more than her sister is in the the traditional, Puritan village they grew up in. Nora soon makes a name for herself as a radio actress, and with her success comes suitors and admirers. Trouble is, they’re usually married men.  (more…)

Seventeen-year old Alex Jackson is a history nut who loves everything to do with soldiers and war. He spends his time creating models of famous armies, and in particular, recreating replicas of the terra cotta soldiers buried with the dead Emperer Qin Shi Huangdi between 210-209 B.C. near Xi’an, China.

Alex’s father, Ted, works as news cameraman for the Canadian Broadcasting Company, and is offered an opportunity to travel to China and work with famous Canadian journalist Eddie Nowlan as they cover the historic 1989 visit of Russian Premier Mikhail Gorbachev. Knowing how much his son loves Chinese military history, Ted, decides to pull Alex from school for a few months to travel to China with him as he works on the story.

Alex is so excited, and before he knows it, he and his father have arrived in China and Alex is finally visiting the famous Terra Cotta army and the historic sites of the Forbidden City. With the help of his Chinese translator, Lao Xi, Alex even begins learning how to speak the language and behave appropriately in the new culture he is immersed in.

But Alex and his father don’t quite realize that they have arrived in China at a very dangerous time. It is the spring of 1989, and the students and civilians of China are beginning to protest the Chinese Communist Party, and demanding democratic reform within the government. What starts out as peaceful protests in Tian An Men Square escalates over months to student hunger strikes and civilian barricades that end in a government-ordered massacre as the People’s Liberation Army is instructed to end the protests and clear the square using whatever means necessary.

Being news journalists, Ted and Eddie are excited to cover the story, and they hurry out to the square along with Alex and Lao Xi to document the protests; but when the shootings begin, they are all separated from each other and must survive a night of death and chaos. They are in particular danger as the military is ordered to search out all foreign reporters documenting the massacre and prevent their footage from reaching the outside world. In all, nearly 3,000 people were killed on June 4th and in the days following the massacre on Tian An Men Square. Alex himself is injured, and with the help of some Chinese students who pull him to safety, he must find a way to locate his father, escape China, and smuggle all the videotape footage he took of the massacre to the rest of the world.

This was a great story. I wasn’t sure I was going to like it, because I’m not a fan of historical fiction, especially when it documents war or military events, but this story was riveting. Told from the point of view of Alex, I learned a lot more about the Tian An Men massacre and the brutality of it all. And it was brutal — what Alex sees and how he reacts to it is realistic and graphic, and I’m glad for it. I think if William Bell had written this story and toned it down for the YA audience, it wouldn’t have been nearly as good. Definitely a good read.

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Knocked Up is a novel based on journalist Rebecca Eckler’s real life pregnancy. On the night of her engagement party (which her friends will later jokingly refer to as The Conception Party), Eckler and her fiance get drunk, and go home to a night of unprotected sex. She wakes up the next morning absolutely positive she’s pregnant, and it turns out she’s right. What follows is an account of her pregnancy as she prepares herself for parenthood with her fiance.

This book is funny — very funny. I rarely laugh out loud when I’m reading, but I did numerous times with this novel. I’d recommend it to anyone looking for a light, fun read.

In related news, there is some controversy brewing over Rebecca Eckler’s novel and the movie of the same name starring Katherine Heigl that was recently released. Eckler believes the movie is based on her book, and she should be credited for it. I haven’t seen the movie yet (I’m going to see it with my book club later this month when we gather to discuss this book), but if it IS true that the movie based itself heavily on Eckler’s book, then yes, she should be credited for it. Though, with the media attention given to this controversy, I’d think Eckler has already been (unofficially) credited and she’s gotten some great promotion for her book –enough to prompt at least one book club to read her novel and then go see the movie for comparison. So I’d say she came ahead in that respect. But as someone with aspirations to write a novel of my own one day, I can understand why she’d be unhappy about it and that the extra promotion her novel is getting isn’t really the point here. So despite my general dislike of Katherine Heigl, I’m looking forward to seeing the movie and looking for the similarities. I’ll update this post with my thoughts when I do.

Update (July 30, 2007): Saw the movie with my book club and the consensus was that the movie and the book share pretty much nothing in common but the title. Honestly, I don’t see how Eckler can claim that she should be credited. I think this article says everything I think about the matter (thanks to my friend Deb for the link).

By the way… the movie is hilarious. I laughed a lot, as did pretty much everyone else in the theatre. I’d watch it again.

The majority of the books I’ve had my nose in lately haven’t been fiction. Instead, I’ve been studying some non-fiction books about gardening, something I’ve really come to enjoy in the last few years since we bought our house and have been doing all the landscaping from scratch. Now that we’ve built the garage and put up the fences and laid down the pavers and put down some sod, I can turn my attention to the fun stuff… making it look really pretty :)

I have some big plans. Last year I only put in a few plants because a) I hadn’t researched what would work for the conditions in my yards, and b) we spent a lot of money on all that landscaping and building we did and I thought I might take it easy on the pocket book for a year. So this year, I’ve started drawing up plans for vegetables, herbs and annuals to plant in my tiered retaining wall gardens, perennials and annuals to plant in my flower beds, bushes and trees to plant in the yard, and (at least) 4 containers to fill with bright annuals. Oh, and I can’t forget the container water garden I’m putting together, complete with fountain, plants and fish. And I’m thinking about getting some hanging baskets and/or some planters to go on the railings on my front porch. Yep, I’ve got big plans. It could get a little expensive, but I’ve (luckily and happily) got a few transplants coming my way from family members, and I started up a bunch of plants from seed weeks ago that should be ready to plant out in another couple of weeks. Now, if only the weather would cooperate. The snow has only just melted away up here and it’s looking like we might (finally!) be done with the snow and rain storms.

Anyway… what I’m getting at is that I’ve put the fiction aside for now in favor of these books:

All of these books are published by a local publisher called Lone Pine Publishing. They’re all excellent. In addition to these local gardening books, they also publish gardening books for many other regions, including those in the USA, as well as many non-gardening books. I own most of these books, which just goes to show how much I like and use them as reference materials, as I rarely buy books anymore and get everything from the library.

When Heather over at A High and Hidden Place posted the American cover art for the last Harry Potter book, I had to go in search of the Canadian and British covers over at Canadian publisher Raincoast books, and at British Bloomsbury, and here they are:

I don’t know about you, but I’ve really liked the adult covers for the Harry Potter books. However, when I bought the first books in the series, they were only available in the children’s covers, so, if you’re anything like me, you’ll know I can’t just buy up the other set… I have to buy the same series of covers because it looks better on the shelves that way :) Anyway, if you’re interested in knowing what the blurb on the back of the book reads, click here.

By the way, I’ve always thought that artists of any kind should be recognized for their work, and while most children’s picture books will credit the author and the illustrator on the front covers of the books, the majority of books bump acknowledgment of the illustrators to the inside or back of the book. So can I just mention: Jason Cockcroft (Canadian and UK), Mary Grand Pre (the American cover not pictured here) and photographer Michael Wildsmith (adult cover) for these covers.

BTW, looking at the children’s cover… I’m thinking Harry, Ron and Hermione are in Gringotts? And as for the adult cover… a medallion with S for Slytherin? Snape? Snake? Scary? So sad because it’s the last book? ;)

There is a quote on the front cover of this book made by the author Susan Wiggs, who says that The Tin Box is “feel-good fiction at its best.” This makes me scratch my head a bit because this was quite a depressing novel. Which isn’t as bad as it sounds, because this is also a very good novel.

When we first meet Kenly Lowen, we discover that she’s been keeping a secret from her husband. The secret is small enough to fit into a tin box, but large enough that it has the potential to rip their family apart. Before we find out what the secret is, we are transported back in time to when Kenly was a teenager living in Montana with her alcoholic father, who has just been let go from yet another teaching position. (more…)

Any of you out there with teenaged daughters? Worried about them engaging in unsafe sex? Well, get them a copy of this book and make them read the first quarter. They don’t even have to finish it, the first 50 pages will be enough to put them on the right path. Not only will they get an excellent representation of what life as a young, single mother is like, they’ll be horrified to see what I’m taking to be a pretty accurate description of life “on the dole”.

This is a novel with a premise that is so depressing, yet at times it was so comical and light. Meet the protagonists, Lucy and Lish, two women living in Have-A-Life public housing in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Yes, that is what it’s called. Its tenants have alternate names for their housing, everything from Have-A-Life? Have-A-Light? and Have-A-Laugh?, which you have to admit is pretty amusing and being able to laugh at it probably makes them feel a little better about their living situations. Anyway, Have-A-Life is the most oddly-named government-funded housing for young, single mothers on welfare, and man… does it ever sounds like it sucks to live there. I would never, not in a million years, wish this sort of living arrangement on anyone I know.

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This was a great story to read. It is witty, smartly-crafted, and a clever contemporary reimagining of the myths of Odysseus and Penelope. The story is told from the points of view of Penelope and her twelve doomed maids and in various formats of prose, poetry and song. Penelope always speaks in the first person, sometimes in the present from Hades’ underworld, and at other times in the past as she remembers her time on Earth. The twelve maids tell their parts of the story through songs, poems, and fun things like mock court trials (they sue Odysseus for their murders) and lectures (they interpret the events of their lives for university students). This method works very well for the story and makes the reading lively and quite humorous. I was impressed with Atwood’s creativity. I was impressed with this story altogether.

This is the story of Penelope’s childhood and marriage to Odysseus. She gets married at the young age of fifteen and joins her new husband on the island of Ithaca. Just barely are they into their married lives together when he leaves because of what else? Another woman. (more…)

The choice for this month’s book club read is The Summer of My Amazing Luck, by Canadian writer Miriam Toews. Being Canadian, it’s hard for me to admit this, but I still think of Canadian writing as boring and my first instinct is to run away. Yes, even with such amazing novels as Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, and highly successful writers like Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro to claim as Canada’s own, I still hesitate to read Canadian fiction. Particularly writers from the Prairies, which is where Miriam Toews comes from. I think it’s because it makes me think of the Canadian Literature courses I was required to take in University as part of my English major degree. Those were 2 semesters of the most difficult reading I’ve ever forced upon myself. They got better once we reached modern era choices, but not by much and the boredom and pain of it all still sears in my brain.

But I will give it my best try, and I may even (and hope to) be pleasantly surprised.