Reading Challenges

photo by Randall Edwards

The aim of reading challenges is either to discover new authors and genres, or to spur you into reading more (classics, intimidating tomes, translated works, more books in general, whatever), all while having fun by making a game out of it. I enjoyed playing the book bingo that Ann and Michael, of the now-defunct Books on the Nightstand podcast, promoted in 2015 and 2016. (Click here to see my book bingo posts.)

Over time, I've come to realize that I read widely enough without such challenges. What I've been doing instead is to check back on my year of reading, using Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge as a gauge. As described on their website, "Read Harder has 24 tasks designed to help you break out of your reading bubble and expand your worldview through books." I didn't look at the 2020 challenge categories until the end of December, then I checked if I'd read something in all of the categories. How well do you think I did?

1. Read a YA nonfiction book ✔ 

Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X Kendi. This was one of my top books of 2020.

2. Read a retelling of a classic of the canon, fairytale, or myth by an author of colour ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 

Library of Legends by Janie Chang, which combines historical fiction with Chinese mythology, plus 9 other books in this category.

3. Read a mystery where the victim is not a woman ✔ 

All the Devils Are Here by Louise Penny

4. Read a graphic memoir ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 

Good Talk by Mira Jacob (one of my top books of 2020) plus 9 others

5. Read a book about a natural disaster ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 

The End of Everything by Katie Mack (all the different ways that our planet Earth might come to an end -- you can't get more disastrous than that!) plus 3 others

6. Read a play by an author of colour and/or queer author ❌

If I really stretch this category, perhaps I could count Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu.

7. Read a historical fiction novel not set in world war two  ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 

A popular genre for me. My favourite out of 35 in this category is Hamnet and Judith by Maggie O'Farrell

8. Read an audiobook of poetry ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 

An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo, which is one of my top books of 2020 (I listened to this audiobook four times), plus 4 others

9. Read the LAST book in a series ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 

Most notable out of 8 is the long-awaited final book about the Logan family, All the Days Past, All the Days to Come by Mildred Taylor

10. Read a book that takes place in a rural setting ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 

Two that stand out in a crowd of 16 are both set in my home province of Alberta: Mad Cow by Alexis Kienlen and Watershed by Doreen Vanderstoop.

11. Read a debut novel by a queer author ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 

I've read at least 8 that I know are debuts and it's hard to pick which of those to mention. All I Ask by Eva Croker; Vanishing Monuments by John Elizabeth Stintzi; Nitisanak by Lindsay Nixon; Real Life by Brandon Taylor; and Butter Honey Pig Bread by Francesca Ekwuyasi

12. Read a memoir by someone from a religious tradition (or lack of religious tradition) that is not your own ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 

Angry Queer Somali Boy by Mohamed Abdulkarim Ali plus 6 others

13. Read a food book about a cuisine you've never tried before ✔ 

Meal by Blue Delliquanti and Soleil Ho (about insect cuisine).

14. Read a romance starring a single parent ✔ 

Song of the Sea by Jenn Alexander. Romance isn't my usual genre, but thanks to my lesbian book club, I have one in this category; book clubs are another way to stretch one's reading.

15. Read a book about climate change ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 

Out of 4, Hope Jahren's The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where We Go from Here is the most memorable.

16. Read a doorstopper (over 500 pages) published after 1950, published by a woman ✔ 

The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel. (Breasts and Eggs and Ridgerunner were both about 50 pages too short to count in this category.)

17. Read a sci-fi/fantasy novella (under 120 pages) ✔ ✔ 

Two gems: The Black God's Drums by P Djeli Clark and This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

18. Read a picture book with a human main character from a marginalized community ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 

I Will See You Again by Lisa Boivin, one of my top books of the year, (and which also counts in category #24), plus 8 others. Picture books, people! They are great.

19. Read a book by or about a refugee ✔ ✔ ✔ 

How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa, the Giller prize winner, plus 2 others.

20. Read a middle grade book that doesn't take place in the US or the UK ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 

The Girl and the Ghost by Hanna Alkaf (set in Malaysia), plus 6 others (set in Canada, Ivory Coast, Japan, Singapore, Mongolia and India).

21. Read a book with a main character or protagonist with a disability (fiction or non) ✔ 

Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability and Making Space by Amanda Leduc, which I highly recommend.

22. Read a horror novel published by an indie press ✔ 

Another category that's not my usual genre. Fortunately, as part of my Shadow Giller project, I read You Will Love What You Have Killed by Kevin Lambert, translated by Donald Winkler. It was published by Biblioasis (and the original French title was published by Heliotrope).

23. Read an edition of a literary magazine (digital or physical) ✔ 

I live with a writer, so we have a lot of these around the house. I read several issues of New Quarterly plus part of a back issue of Room.

24. Read a book in any genre by a Native, First Nations, or Indigenous author ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 

My top read of 2020, Noopiming by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, plus 20 others.

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23 out of 24. Yay! I feel confident that I'm doing well in choosing books that expand my worldview. Note to self: read more plays!

Book Bingo Summer Reading Project 2016

The idea of Book Bingo is to have fun and expand your reading horizons. Michael Kindness and Ann Kingman of the Books on the Nightstand podcast created online bingo cards with all kinds of categories. If you want to play, go here: BOTNS and refresh the screen to get a new card. I decided to play two cards simultaneously, and started at the end of May. Card #1 is now complete - YAY! - with details below. There are 25 books, so I'll go row by row and make my descriptions brief.

Published the year you were born: The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, audiobook narrated by David Horovitch. English translation by Archibald Colquhoun published in 1960.
     - Unification of Italy in the 19th century, as experienced by a Sicilian prince. Tipping point of cultural and political change. Atmospheric with period details. Understated, elegant prose. Only book on my card that I would not have even known about if not for bingo-related research. It was a rewarding experience.

An academic/campus novel: Yabo by Alexis de Veaux.
     - Layered. Poetic. Mythic. Interwoven lives of two people existing across centuries, from the middle passage to colonial times to present day USA. Black women, lesbians, and a fabulous intersex character named Jules. So good! Parts are set at university in Buffalo, NY, where Zen has an affair with her professor, a Jamaican woman.

Published in 2015: You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine by Alexandra Kleeman, audiobook narrated by Kelly Pruner.
     - This satire of consumer culture is like a cross between Margaret Atwood's The Heart Goes Last and the Welcome to Nightvale podcast. Wonderful, weird, smart, funny. I remember bailing on this last year after a couple of pages because I wasn't in the right mood. So glad that I gave it another chance!

Recommended in a BOTNS episode: The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain by Bill Bryson, audiobook narrated by Nathan Osgood.
     - In episode 369, Ann said she had fun with this. So did I. Travel. Amusing trivia. Cranky humour. It's Bill Bryson, how can you go wrong?

Young Adult novel: Saving Montgomery Sole by Mariko Tamaki.
     - Monty is an endearing 16-year-old coping with mean girls and rude boys, making mistakes and finding forgiveness. Her parents are caring and in the forefront (rare in YA) and her parents are also lesbians (rare in any novel). I liked this a lot.

A novella: Trouble Is My Business by Raymond Chandler, audiobook narrated by Elliott Gould (who is perfect for this).
     - "I felt terrible. I felt like an amputated leg." Chandler's hard-boiled style cracks me up. "'...he should be there in 20 minutes.' 'Ok, that just gives me time to drink my dinner.'"

About a subject that challenges you: We Love You, Charlie Freeman by Kaitlyn Greening.
     - Wow. Thought-provoking and compelling. A Black family agrees to be studied while they raise a chimpanzee as a member of their family. Eugenics. Racism. Well-observed interpersonal dynamics. This one has zing and sting!

By any Booktopia* author: Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones, audiobook narrated by Heather Alicia Simms and Rosalyn Coleman Williams.
     - "My father was a bigamist." One father, two mothers, two sisters. Audio switches to a different narrator when the storytelling switches between the two sisters at the midpoint. Black lives. Bittersweet and satisfying.
*Booktopia events are like mini writers festivals hosted by Michael and Ann at various bookstores over the past few years. BOTNS podcast listeners know about them; I attended one in Bellingham, Washington in 2013 and wrote about it here.

Hated by someone you know: The Vegetarian by Han Kang, translation from Korean by Deborah Smith.
     - Poetic. Surreal. Disturbing. Haunting. A short novel about transformation and other heady things. International Man Booker prizewinner. Some people I know through the books social media app, Litsy, hated it, as did reviewer Tim Parks in The New York Review. Loved isn't the right word for how I felt, but it had a strong impact on me. Spent days processing it after it was done.

Speculative fiction: ODY-C Vol. 1 Off to Far Ithicaa by Matt Fraction, Christian Ward etc.
     - I like the idea of this gender-swapped science fiction retelling of Homer's Odyssey better than its execution. Shades of Paul Pope's 100% and Fiona Staple's planet Sextillion from Saga. Prefer Gareth Hinds' graphic novel rendition of the Odyssey.

Humour or satire: Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera
     - Gender pronouns. Radical queers. Racism. Intersectionality. Polyamory. So many issues, and yet this is a bubbly affirmation about finding one's truth. Delightful.

With an animal on the cover: Some New Kind of Slaughter, or, Lost in the Flood (and How We Found Home Again): Diluvian Myths from Around the World by Marvin Mann and A David Lewis
     - "Stories have the power to guide us through the dangers of the world to a fuller understanding of our place in it." Interwoven flood tales in graphic novel format. Powerful.

Free square in the middle: Kay's Lucky Coin Variety by Ann Y K Choi
     - Poignant coming-of-age, balancing traditional expectations of immigrant parents, long hours working in family's convenience store in dicey Toronto neighbourhood, and desire to assert independent identity. Well done. With "lucky" in the title, I had to use this for my free middle square!

Revolves around a holiday: From the Cutting Room of Barney Kettle by Kate De Goldi
     - I'd planned to use this for the 'Gifted to you' category - it's from my dear friend Claire in Auckland - but it turns out that this quirky tale of a New Zealand boy obsessed with filmmaking begins and ends with Christmas holidays one year apart. Took a while to draw me in, but things fell beautifully and cogently into place. The final 30 pages are outstanding and I cried at the end. So worthwhile!

With a mythological creature on the cover: Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho, audiobook narrated by Jenny Sterlin.
     - Battling for women's rights... to perform magic in an alternate England. Excellent historical fantasy with people of colour as main characters.

Gifted to you: Public Library and Other Stories by Ali Smith.
     - Passionate about books and reading. Loops together unrelated thoughts into creative, profound fiction. Humane. Genius wordsmith. Ali Smith never fails to astound me. My friend Kathy ordered this direct from the UK in order to give it to me at Christmas six months ago. Somehow it got lost in my piles of books until now. So happy that book bingo made me go looking!

With a protagonist/narrator over the age of 50: Gourmet Rhapsody by Muriel Barbery, translation from French by Alison Anderson, audiobook narrated by Norman Dietz and five others; I love it when audio productions do this, especially when the narrative switches between points of view (including, here, a cat).
     - This short novel about a despicable restaurant critic longing for just the right taste before he dies is all about food. Since I've used a different book for that square, I'll  count it here. If there was a square for "made you salivate while reading" this would be perfect.

Recommended by a librarian or bookseller: The Regional Office Is Under Attack! by Manuel Gonzales, audiobook narrated by four different narrators as the perspective switches around; all are good and Natasha Soudek is my fave.
     - It's girls with superpowers trained as assassins, or not that but a secret organization battling evil, or not that exactly but fireballs of love and revenge, or maybe it's not that but something else entirely. Wild. Genre-bending. Loved it. Liberty Hardy from All the Books podcast recommended this.

With food as the theme: Love, Loss and What We Ate by Padma Lakshmi, audiobook narrated by author.
     - Memoir. Immigrant/international fashion model/celebrity chef/former wife of Salman Rushdie. Cooking has helped Lakshmi cope with hard times and she includes recipes. I'd like to try making her kumquat chutney when the fruit is in season.

A literary magazine or journal: Geist, Fall 2015.
     - This issue has an excerpt from Ivan Coyote's latest: Tomboy Survival Guide. It wasn't hard to get my hands on something for this category, since we have stacks of Geist, Eighteen Bridges and Room Magazine around the house.

Poetry collection: Shift by Kelly Shepherd.
     - Humble things: animals, trees, rubber tires, manual labour, even in the oil camps of Fort McMurray - all are transformed by grace in these compassionate, intimate poems. So lovely. "close to a fire, we no longer / see the night sky; we / are seated around a star."

A dark, upsetting, or sad book: The Lightkeepers by Abby Geni, audiobook narrated by Xe Sands.
     - As melancholy as can be (in the best possible way). Elegiac. Atmospheric. Nature, red in tooth and claw. A wildlife photographer mourns her mother during a year on an island bird sanctuary. Human behaviour is as interesting as that of any other creature.

With a blue cover: Sistering by Jennifer Quist.
     - (Trust me, the cover in person looks more blue than the image above.) Dark comedy. Chapters alternate between five sisters' points of view. Lots of domestic drama in my hometown, Edmonton. At one point, a sister was doing something that made me want to put my hands in front of my eyes so I didn't have to witness it, like I was watching a movie, saying no no no no no!

Sports-related: Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems by Randall Maggs.
     - Powerful and compassionate narrative verse captures soul of mid-20th century hockey and glimpses into psyche of one goalie. Terry Sawchuk takes stitches to his mouth without anaesthetic in order to stay in the game; hit in the shoulder by a 120 mph slapshot, he stands up and keeps playing; blocks all but 3 of 108 shots in back-to-back games (losing both) then is too tired to lift his hand to smoke; gets traded and traded again; plays for two decades. I felt something change inside me as a result of reading this book. That was unexpected, because I'm not a hockey fan.

Manga: Planetes, Vol 1, by Makoto Yukimura, translated by Tokyopop.
     - The opening scene in this character-based manga takes place on July 13, 2068, my 108th birthday! Three garbage collectors working in space. Traditional right-to-left Japanese comic format. Solid writing and appealing art.
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Thank you for reading this very long post! I hope you will return for bingo card #2.

Book Bingo, Second Card, Black Out!

These are the final three categories on my second Books on the Nightstand Book Bingo card. The project, which started on the May long weekend and ended on Labour Day, was created by Ann Kingman and Michael Kindness and promoted on their delightful weekly BOTNS podcast. Links to all of my book bingo posts are here.

A BANNED BOOK: Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel.

This multiple award-winning memoir has received much acclaim since it was first published in 2006. It has also been adapted into a Broadway musical that won five Tony awards in 2015. It's the story of a complex relationship between a closeted gay or bisexual father and his lesbian daughter. The main ingredients that have made it a target for censorship are its queer content and comics format, plus its wide popularity. That makes me sad. I love this book so much!

I've read it multiple times and each time I notice new things. This time, one of the scenes that caught my attention was related to the current adult colouring book craze. When Bechdel was a child, she had a "huge oversize colouring book of E.H. Shepard's illustrations for The Wind in the Willows."

"Dad had read me bits of the story from the real book. In one scene, the charming sociopath Mr. Toad purchases a gypsy caravan. I was filling this in one day with my favourite colour, midnight blue."
Alison's father says, "What are you doing? That's the canary-coloured caravan! Here. I'll do the rest in yellow, and your blue side will be in shadow. Look, by adding thin layers of goldenrod and yellow-orange, I get a richer colour." Alison, meanwhile, has wandered off. "It was a crayonic tour de force."

LAST BOOK OF AN AUTHOR BEFORE HE/SHE DIED: Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die; Cherish, Perish by David Rakoff.

This is Canadian gay humourist David Rakoff's only novel and it was published after he died. I reviewed it in 2013, and re-read it this year for the July meeting of the Jasper Place Library book club. Rakoff's skill as a wordsmith was widely praised. The format of the book provided us with almost as much to talk about as the content. There was near unanimous agreement in the contention that it was not a novel at all, but rather a collection of interlinked short stories. I was in the minority, finding that the short stories - told in rhyming couplets! - interlink individual lives over the course of the twentieth century and encompass a larger social commentary. That makes it a novel, as far as I can tell.

At the same meeting, the reasons people have for attending the library book club came up, including the broadening of one's reading horizons. This title is a good example, because participants said they never would have picked it up otherwise, yet were surprised by how much they enjoyed it. Stretching my book horizons is also the reason that I enjoy playing Book Bingo.

MANGA: Library Wars, vol. 1. Love and War. Story and art by Kiiro Yumi, original concept by Hiro Arikawa, translation by Kinami Watabe.

I read a lot of western-style graphic novels, but not many Japanese-style comics. Links to some of my earlier manga reviews are here.

The premise of Library Wars is pretty cool. In near future Japan, under the Media Betterment Act, the federal government creates a Media Betterment Committee that "seeks to exercise censorship over all media, including restricting offensive books." Armed units have been set up under local governments to fight censorship under the Library Freedom Act. "Working for the Library Defense Force is considered even more dangerous than being a police officer or in the army."

In the first volume of Library Wars, we meet a young Defense Force recruit, Iku Kasahara, whose parents think she is studying to be a librarian. Iku and her drill instructor, Atsushi Dojo, are obviously attracted to each other but they act like they can't stand each other. Their relationship drove me nuts.

What I did not take into account when I picked this up is that it's shojo manga. The target audience for shojo is teenage girls and there tends to be too much romance in the storylines for my taste. I won't be continuing with the series, even though the art is pretty and I've heard that the pace picks up after the first volume.

The English edition of Library Wars preserves the traditional right-to-left layout. Volume 14 is due to be published by Simon Schuster in October 2015. The full story is serialized over 15 parts in Japan, according to Wikipedia.

Book Bingo, Second Card, Sixth Line

My book bingo card is now complete, but I'm going to separate the final two lines into two separate posts, just to keep it manageable. It took me so long to get the last few squares that I managed to read additional titles for several other categories in the meantime.

ABOUT A DISEASE: The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe [Books on Tape: 9 hr 37 min: narrated by Jeff Harding]. Bonus title: On Immunity by Eula Biss.
(Intersection. See previous book bingo post here.)

A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS: A Bone to Pick: The Good and Bad News about Food, with Wisdom and Advice on Diets, Food Safety, GMOs, Farming, and More by Mark Bittman [Books on Tape: 8 hr 42 min: narrated by Robert Fass.

Social justice, public health and the environment are all addressed in Bittman's passion about food issues. This collection of about 60 short articles was originally written for his column in the New York Times. The subtitle is a good indication of the breadth of topics, as are the subheadings in the table of contents: Big Ag, Sustainability, and What's in Between; What's Wrong with Meat?; What Is Food? And What Is Not?; The Truth About Diet(s); The Broken Food Chain; and Legislating and Labeling. Thought-provoking and entertaining.

Bonus title: Selfish, Shallow and Self Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids, edited by Meghan Daum.

I already knew and loved Meghan Daum's writing and now I know that she's great at getting other writers to contribute to an anthology on a controversial topic. It is top notch! Here's just one example, from Geoff Dyer, in 'Over and Out':

"To be middle-aged and childless is to elicit one of two responses. The first: pity because you are unable to have kids. This is fine by me. I'm always on the lookout for pity, will accept it from anyone or, if no one is around, from myself. I crave pity the way other men crave admiration or respect. So if my wife or I are asked if we have kids, one of us will reply, 'No, we've not been blessed with children.' We do it totally deadpan, shaking our heads wistfully, looking as forlorn as a couple of empty beer glasses." (The second response is "horror, because by choosing not to have children, you are declining full membership in the human race.")

Selfish, Shallow and Self Absorbed would make an excellent book club choice, because there are many different views expressed and it's a hot-button topic.

SPORTS-RELATED: Lost Canyon by Nina Revoyr.

This was one of the three final categories that snagged my progress. I had it on my first card, where it also created a hindrance, until I read a great nonfiction book about soccer. It took me a while to realize that I could count Nina Revoyr's brand new novel, Lost Canyon, for this category. It's about four people who know each other only through their trainer at a Los Angeles gym, and their planned four-day backpacking trip through strenuous mountain terrain.

As it happens, I've had an advance electronic copy of it since mid-June, thanks to Akashic Books. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the pdf to open in the reading app on my iPod. Every time I wanted to read it, I had to scroll to the message in my email, open the pdf, and then advance page by page to my last stopping point. Quite a nuisance... until I came to a point in the narrative where the hiking adventure went completely sideways and the story switched gears into thriller mode. I didn't stop again until I was finished. (Format problem solved.)

The viewpoint in Lost Canyon rotates between the multi-ethnic cast of believable protagonists. If you are familiar with Revoyr's previous work, you won't be surprised that issues of race and class are explored within a compelling plot. Lost Canyon is her most adrenalin-fueled novel to date.

HISTORICAL FICTION: Graffiti Knight by Karen Bass.
(Intersection. See previous book bingo post here.)

AT LEAST 800 PAGES: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, translated by Louise Maude and Aylmer Maude - 880 pages [Blackstone Audio: 33 hr 34 min: narrated by Wanda McCaddon].

Audio is my favourite way to experience classic literature. Skillful audiobook narrators make complex sentence structure easy to understand. In the past three years, I've had the immense pleasure of listening to works by Shakespeare, Charlotte Bronte, Edith Wharton, Jack Kerouac, Chinua Achebe, Beryl Markham, Ann Petry, E.M. Forster, P.G. Wodehouse, Wilkie Collins and George Eliot. Another great thing about audio is having someone else do the work of pronouncing unfamiliar names, of which there are plenty in Tolstoy.

My choice of this particular version of Anna Karenina was all about the voice narrator, Wanda McCaddon, and not about the translators. McCaddon, who also records under the names Donada Peters and Nadia May, is a sure bet. I did find some interesting articles online, however, that made me aware of the linguistic differences I would have encountered if I had listened to a different translation. (See examples in The Guardian and the New York Times.)

As with pretty much any novel that uses a person's name as the title, Anna Karenina is character-based. I didn't have a lot of patience for Anna. Her tragic romance bored me, although I felt some sympathy for the societal restrictions placed upon Tolstoy's women strictly because of their gender. My favourite character is definitely Konstantin Levin. I adored the descriptive passages about the Russian countryside and found the ideas about social, agricultural and educational reforms intellectually engaging.

One thing that still mystifies me is why the men would be so keen to shoot snipes rather than ducks. Are snipes so much tastier? Are they a more challenging target because they are smaller? If you know the answer, please tell me!

Bonus title: Seveneves by Neal Stephenson - 861 pages.

After I'd read (listened to) Anna Karenina, someone gave me a raised eyebrow about counting it for this category, since an audiobook technically has no pages at all. I still think it counts, and Ann and Michael of BOTNS concur, but since then I've read another long book, and this time it was proper paper door-stop.

Seveneves begins in the near-future, when something collides with Earth's moon and causes it to break up into seven large chunks. This in turn has a big effect on our planet. One of the most memorable points in the book is the line that begins: "Five thousand years later..." An impressive narrative leap! Some parts were a little too science-explainy but that didn't stop me from loving this overall.

Coming up next: Black Out! My final book bingo post for 2015.

Book Bingo, Second Card, Fifth Line

So much reading, so little blogging. I started my first Book Bingo card on the May long weekend and I've finished 84 books since then, so you would think that I'd have completed three cards by now. But the final four squares on this card just haven't matched what's been on my reading pile. The stumper categories have been: a banned book; sports-related; manga; and borrowed from a friend. Thanks to my dear friend Amy, I've completed another line.

YOUNG ADULT: Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman [Listening Library audiobook: 18 hr, 10 min: narrated by Mandy Williams and W Morgan Sheppard].
(See previous Book Bingo post.)

THAT INVOLVES MAGIC: Uprooted by Naomi Novik [Books on Tape audiobook: 17 hr, 47 min: narrated by Julia Emelin].

Uprooted is an outstanding fantasy novel that combines elements of traditional Russian or Polish fairytales with the freshness of realistic characters. It's told in the voice of Agnieszka, who is not your average village maiden.

"Our Dragon doesn't eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley. We hear them sometimes, from travellers passing through. They talk as though we were doing human sacrifice, and he were a real dragon. Of course that's not true: he may be a wizard and immortal, but he's still a man, and our fathers would band together and kill him if he wanted to eat one of us every ten years. He protects us against the Wood, and we're grateful, but not that grateful."

I love that Novik doesn't ignore the reasons why people would choose to remain living in a place that isn't safe. She also reveals the origins of the situation - why it became dangerous in the first place. It's a compelling and satisfying tale.

WITH AN UGLY COVER: Switch by Douglas Davey (with honorable mention to Graffiti Knight by Karen Bass, which I used for the Historical category instead; see previous Book Bingo post.)

YA novels with ugly covers are one of my pet peeves. Even with a good pitch, it takes extra effort to convince a teen to read something with an unattractive cover. Without an advocate promoting them to readers, these books sit on library shelves unread for months and even years. It makes me sad when I'm performing collection maintenance tasks and find books that have never been borrowed. They are nearly always from Canadian publishers. Sigh.

Inside its unfortunate cover, I found Douglas Davey's Switch to be an enjoyable surprise. The title refers to an ambidextrous switch hitter, someone who "plays for both teams." It's a term that's had derogatory connotations for bisexuals, but the portrayal in this case is positive. Switch is a first-person account about a bisexual high school student, set in the 1980s. Circumstances have the protagonist Sheldon coming out to his entire school, an unusual experience for that era. Copious wry footnotes, written as if from a much older version of Sheldon, add a perspective that makes this novel particularly interesting for both teen and adult readers. Just ignore the cover.

I'm grateful to Red Deer Press for providing a review copy of Switch.

BY OR ABOUT A CELEBRITY: The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl by Issa Rae [Simon and Schuster Audio: 5 hr, 50 min: read by author].
(See previous Book Bingo post.)

BORROWED FROM A FRIEND: Ariel: Poems by Sylvia Plath

Amy Willans (a headliner at the Edmonton Poetry Festival earlier this year) kindly loaned me her copy of Ariel. I've read it through several times and feel like I've barely begun to understand its layers. Poetry is such a potent form of language.

"The vivid tulips eat my oxygen." - Tulips

"I am mad, calls the spider, waving its many arms. / And in truth it is terrible, / multiplied in the eyes of the flies." - Totem

My feminist book group will be discussing Ariel next week. It's the first time we've done poetry, and that's only one of the reasons I'm excited. I want to talk about the foreword by Robert Lowell (from 1966) and how it got my back up, because of the way he writes about gender. I want to talk about the poems I loved from the very first reading, and about those that still have me puzzled after three or more readings. I want to talk about mental health. I want to compare the contents of the edition I borrowed (original copyright 1961 with Ted Hughes as editor) with differences in the edition some other book group members are reading, one that restores Plath's original selection and arrangement. It should be a great discussion!
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If you want to see all of my Book Bingo posts, click here.

Book Bingo, Second Card, Fourth Line

Four out of these five books were published in 2015 and I'm pleased that I managed to get two Edmonton authors in this line! (Catch up on previous book bingo posts via this link.)

THAT YOU SAW SOMEONE ELSE READING: Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee.

This square intersects with the first row that I completed on the card. Haven't yet got around to writing a full blog post about this hot title, but the following passage confirmed my realization that there would be no way to untangle my reading of GSAW from my fond memories of hosting a To Kill a Mockingbird costume party to celebrate its 50th anniversary, my knowledge of Harper Lee's life, the story of how GSAW came to print, and my own inclination to tease out lesbian subtext from between the lines.

In the first chapter, Jean Louise (AKA Scout) decides she will not marry her boyfriend. "For the present she would pursue the stony path of spinsterhood." There may be a lot that is autobiography in GSAW. It's a book that made me feel very sad.

Party invite designed by my sweetie. (Click to enlarge.) Everyone came in costume on that memorable evening.

POETRY COLLECTION: The Pemmican Eaters by Marilyn Dumont.

I grew up on an Alberta farm in a francophone community that was originally called St Paul-des-Métis. When I was younger, I thought all Canadians considered Louis Riel to be our greatest national folk hero. And that Gabriel Dumont, Riel's general in the 1885 rebellion, was famous too.

When I began working at Edmonton Public Library in 1989, I signed up a brown-skinned young woman for a library card and made a comment about her historic family name, "Dumont." She looked at me blankly. I said, "Gabriel Dumont." Still nothing. After telling her we had books about him in the collection, I proceeded with the library card. Later, I quizzed new friends and colleagues and discovered that Dumont, and even Riel, were not as well-known as I had assumed.

There are other books about Riel and Dumont, but Marilyn Dumont's latest collection of poetry does something different. With potent, dexterous verse, it connects contemporary lives to Canadian history.

"Upon discovery that our Gabriel, Gabriel Dumont Senior, our great-great-grandfather and uncle of the famous Gabriel, had held the position of leader at Lac Ste. Anne, I finally understood why our family's annual summer visit to the pilgrimage was so important to us."

In Dumont's poems, Louis Riel is sometimes 'Louis' and sometimes 'Riel,' but Gabriel Dumont is either 'Gabriel' or 'Gabe.' Riel is 'Our Prince' - "Louis / the one who gave us Manitoba / brokered pluralism / and language rights."

Women are in these pages too, nurturing other humans and the earth, their needlework like prayers.

Elizabeth Brass Donald. Photo source:
https://www.epl.ca/edmonton-history/

A photo of Elizabeth Brass Donald is referenced in 'The Land She Came From.' She was one of the victims of land swindles in Edmonton's early history: "crow woman dig down / scrape away the layers / of sleeping memory / down to the stake lines of river lots / in Rossdale and beyond / far down to the Métis family names / still breathing there: Donald, Bird, Ward [...]" 'To a Fair Country' is about wholesale land thefts through "official trickery:" "I want to forget the number of Métis / less than one percent / who hold property from that scrip today."

Much hardship is summed up in a few words in 'Letter to Sir John A. MacDonald' - "we were railroaded / by some steel tracks that didn't last / and some settlers who wouldn't settle."

Language is another aspect of Métis culture: "neither Cree, Salteaux nor French exactly, but something else / not less / not half / not lacking" - 'These Are Wintering Words'

The Pemmican Eaters is a history book with so much heart, and it's one I would have loved to suggest to that young library patron back in 1989. I will recommend it widely from now on.

Books On The NightStand BOOK BINGO FREE SQUARE: The Social Life of Ink by Ted Bishop.

Micro-history; memoir; travel writing; nonfiction; local author: if I wasn't using a free square for this, it could have fit into any of these categories (none of which happen to be on my card). The book taught me new things (i.e. Winston Churchill's mother had a snake tattoo) and made me think.

"The work you're reading is simply black marks on a page. The text that derives from it takes shape in the mind. Thus all texts are shaped by experience and context, and are always different, even for the same reader." That's exactly what I was talking about in my comments regarding Go Set a Watchman, above. More quotes and notes are included in my earlier review of Bishop's book.

The Social Life of Ink: Culture, Wonder and Our Relationship with the Written Word is a finalist for the 2015 Alberta Readers' Choice Award. Online voting is open until August 31, 2015.

WRITTEN BEFORE 1700: The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare.
Intersecting square: see previous post.


WITH A HAPPY ENDING: Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertelli.

Set in Atlanta, Georgia, the angst in this up-to-the-minute YA novel derives more from the social politics of high school relationships than from the fear of coming out. It's witty and sweet and includes an ensemble of realistic characters. Suitable for readers in Grade 7 and up.

Readalikes: Boy Meets Boy (David Levithan) and Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (Benjamin Alire Saenz).

Book Bingo, Second Card, Third Row

HORROR: Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk [Recorded Books audiobook: 7.5 hr, narrated by Richard Poe].

I've been meaning to read something by Palahniuk for a long time. What I expected was dark satire and that's pretty much what I got with Lullaby. The premise is that a journalist investigating crib deaths discovers that there's a culling song in a book of collected poems from around the world. The song has the power to kill. The journalist has rage issues. Do you see where this is going?

There's also a realtor who flips haunted properties. "Blood running down your kitchen walls? Well, of course you shouldn't have to live with that." (Nor a severed head that bounces down a stairway at night, nor a biting phantom doberman, nor a severed hand that crawls out of the garbage disposal...)

The realtor's secretary is a flaky new-ager. Mona made a Hopi medicine bag using a design in a book called Traditional Tribal Hobby-Krafts. "The fun part about primitive crafts is they're so easy to make while you watch TV," Mona says, "And they put you in touch with all sorts of ancient energies and stuff."

I listened to the first 15 chapters in audio, but then switched to the print book for the rest. The first person narration in the crass voice of a boorish man - "she had a decent little pooper in tight jeans" - was a bit too full-on with the addition of audio's visceral quality to the reading experience. In the end, I was surprised by how much I liked the book.

HISTORICAL FICTION: Graffiti Knight by Karen Bass

Here's another book that surprised me, mostly because the cover doesn't do it justice. ("With an Ugly Cover" is actually one of my categories on this bingo card, but I found one that was even worse than this. Stay tuned.)

Canadian author Karen Bass set this realistic page-turner in post-WWII East Germany, where a 16-year-old boy dangerously rebels against the Soviet occupation in Leipzig. My YA book club will be discussing this soon, and I've heard positive feedback from other members already.

WRITTEN BEFORE 1700: The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare [Arkangel Complete Shakespeare audiobook: 3 hr, full cast recording].

The reason I chose to listen to this play in particular is because I saw that Jeanette Winterson's new book coming out in October, The Gap of Time, is a retelling of The Winter's Tale.

In Shakespeare's version, there's a king whose jealousy gets so out of hand that he imprisons his wife and orders their newborn daughter killed (because he believes she is a bastard). And another king who gets bent out of shape because his son has fallen for a shepherd's daughter (who is actually the baby princess, all grown up). The shepherd's daughter is so beautiful and so well-mannered because of course her royal breeding comes through. (Yeah, right.) Anyway, it's entertaining and even the tyrants get to live happily ever after.

Full cast audio recordings are the best, by the way. I felt like I was at the theatre, totally engrossed in the fancy language. Music between scenes was a nice touch.

A PARODY: Fun with Kirk and Spock by Robb Pearlman.
(See previous Book Bingo post.)

BY OR ABOUT A CELEBRITY: The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl by Issa Rae [Simon and Schuster Audio: 5 hr, 50 min, narrated by the author].

Authors narrating their own memoirs are also the best, especially when they are like Issa Rae, who has oodles of comedic talent. Her essays in this book draw on her experiences growing up in the USA with an African American mother and Senegalese father. Check out her show on YouTube.

More book bingo posts can be found here.

Book Bingo: Second Card, Second Line

There are some tricky categories on these book bingo cards. Out of the following row of five, three required special effort to track down a suitable title. That's what makes this reading game an interesting challenge.

BY AN AUTHOR BORN THE SAME YEAR AS YOU: Resurrection by Wolf Haas, translated by Anne Janusch (see previous book bingo post).

THAT YOUR PARENTS DIDN'T/WOULDN'T HAVE LET YOU READ AS A KID: Exquisite Corpse by Penelope Bagieu, translated by Alexis Siegel.

I called my mom about this category because I couldn't think of a single book I had been denied as a kid. She confirmed this. She let us read anything we wanted, including novels from her bookshelves. I was about 11 when I read and loved Herman Wouk's Marjorie Morningstar.

Mom recalled an incident when I and two of my siblings told our youngest sister (who might have been in Grade 2) that The Wizard of Oz was too difficult for her. Mom said we quizzed her and then were satisfied that she had indeed not only read but understood the story.

I told Mom about the Sex Criminals comics by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky. (A librarian's orgasms stop time and she uses that power to rob banks--for a good cause. A lot of the funniest stuff is in the porn shop scenes.) Then I asked if she would have been comfortable having us read them when we were kids. She sounded a bit flabbergasted when she said, "I don't think they had books like that when you were kids."

The cute, cartoony style on the cover of Exquisite Corpse accurately reflects the sweet and funny story it is, but there is also a lot of nudity and sex inside. While it isn't quite as raunchy as Sex Criminals, I wouldn't recommend this for readers under 16. (I'm surprised that Edmonton Public Library has shelved it in the teen section.) A French woman on her lunch break from her trade show booth job meets a reclusive author when she asks to use his bathroom. It's lust at first sight. Her boorish boyfriend and his ex-wife be damned. Or not. This is a light-hearted look at the tension between the creative process and making a living.

BY OR ABOUT A MEMBER OF THE LGBTQ COMMUNITY: Adult Onset by Ann-Marie MacDonald.
Funny and devastating and healing. This is one of my two favourite books so far in 2015. I wrote at length about it here.

For me, the easiest categories on this bingo card are LGBTQ, Historical, Poetry, YA, Essays, and Involves Magic. Ann Kingman and Michael Kindness have been discussing individual bingo categories and making suggestions on their Books on the Nightstand podcast. Kingman was poised and gracious as she spoke about feedback, specifically about their episode that dealt with the LGBTQ category. She gently suggested that it wasn't necessary for people to write to let them know that the reason for unsubscribing from the podcast was because they didn't want to hear about LGBTQ books. If you haven't been listening to Books on the Nightstand, why not start?

A PARODY: Fun with Kirk and Spock by Robb Pearlman.

The nostalgic-style illustrations in muted primary colours evoke the original Fun with Dick and Jane series. This book warmly pokes fun at the costuming and plots of the original Star Trek episodes. For example, the way it's always a guy in a red shirt who doesn't make it back to the ship. There are so many passages that made me chuckle that it's hard to choose just a few.

"See Khan wake up. 

Khan is cranky. 

Khan wants to take over the Enterprise. 

Mine! Mine! Mine! 

Khan wants to take over the universe. 

Mine! Mine! Mine! 

Khan is not a morning person."

detail from Fun with Kirk and
Spock by Robb Pearlman.

"See the Gorn.
The Gorn is tall.
The Gorn is green.
The Gorn is wearing a one-piece sleeveless tunic with brocaded accents and matching gauntlets.
The Gorn is fashion-forward."

George Takei, the gay actor who played Mr. Sulu, gets a ribbing too:
"See Sulu's sword.
Sulu's sword sure is sharp!
Sulu's sword goes swish!
Swish swish swish!"

Some jokes will go right over kids' heads, but that doesn't stop me from recommending this for all ages.

"Go go go, Enterprise!
Go boldly!"

AN AUTHOR'S DEBUT: Unbecoming by Rebecca Scherm [Books on Tape audiobook: 13.5 hr: narrated by Catherine Taber].

New voices add variety and spice to my reading diet, so I'm often excited by an author's debut novel. This one is a thriller about an art heist and the central protagonist is a young American woman who is living under an assumed name in Europe. I listened to the audiobook 6 weeks ago and the story has stuck with me, although I wasn't wild about it at the time. Haves and have-nots, envy, greed and deception. It reminded me of Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch and I felt similarly lukewarm about it when I was done. But both books made an impression, so there is that.

Scherm's opening lines sucked me in and I still find them compelling: "The first lie Grace had told Hanna was her name. 'Bonjour, je m'appelle Julie,' Grace had said. She'd been in Paris for only a month, and her French was still new and stiff. She'd chosen the name Julie because it was sweet and easy on the French tongue--much more so than Grace was. The best lies were the simplest and made the most sense, in the mind and in the mouth. These lies were the easiest to swallow."

If you liked The Goldfinch, then this is for you.