Book Bingo: Two Lines Complete

Ann Kingman and Michael Kindness, podcasters extraordinaire over at Books on the Nightstand, created Book Bingo to encourage listeners to have fun while broadening our reading horizons. I generated my own card on May 22 and started playing immediately.

Even though I have been reading with my bingo categories in mind, most of them have been books I had planned to read anyway. It was just a matter of slotting them into a relevant square, sometimes juggling placement for stragegic coverage when one book fit more than one category. But, in the spirit of the game, there are other squares that present more of a challenge. The following list of books are from the two lines that I've completed so far. (Pink X's, left.)

I've linked to my reviews, where applicable, although I haven't felt much like reviewing lately. Too much gardening - while listening to audiobooks, naturally. In fact, seven out of the following nine are titles that I've read with my ears.

BORROWED FROM THE LIBRARY: Republic of Dirt by Susan Juby
Sequel to The Woefield Poultry Collective (called Home to Woefield in the USA). You don't need to have read the first to enjoy this hilarious tale of misfits making a go at farming on an unpromising bit of land on Vancouver Island, told in shifting points of view with adept characterization. Kaitlyn Vincent, a marketing representative at HarperCollins Canada, offered me a review copy of Republic of Dirt, but I turned it down because I prefer to read library copies whenever possible. There is just no space in my house for all the books I read. (Every one of the titles in this list is from the public library.)

PART OF A SERIES: The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein [Blackstone audiobook: 19 hr: read by Hillary Huber]

I liked this even better than My Brilliant Friend, which was the first in the series about a complicated friendship between two girls from a poor neighbourhood in Naples whose lives take different paths. The voice and characterization are so strong that I was totally immersed in southern Italy of the 1960s, where violence was inextricable from intimacy. As with the first book, this one ends on a precipice.

FREE SQUARE: Single, Carefree, Mellow by Katherine Heiny
The free square in the centre can be used for any category, so I chose this entertaining collection of short stories about women falling in love at the wrong time with the wrong men.

TRAVEL WRITING: Phenomenal: A Hesitant Adventurer's Search for Wonder in the Natural World by Leigh Ann Henion [Books on Tape audiobook: 10 hr 40 min: read by Nicol Zanzarella]
This title was chosen especially for the bingo category. I read a lot of travel writing, so I scanned my TBR for something immediately available in downloadable audio. Phenomenal has been compared to Cheryl Strayed's Wild and Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love - but I didn't like it as well as either. The travel part was interesting, and I felt a vicarious awe as Henion witnessed various natural phenomena, but there was a little too much woo-woo and a self-congratulatory tone when she described personal insights.

HAS WATER ON THE COVER: Panic in a Suitcase by Yelena Akhtiorskaya [Blackstone audiobook: 9 hr 36 min: read by Stefan Rudnicki]
An engaging novel composed of episodes in the lives of members of a contemporary extended Russian family. Some have immigrated to Brooklyn, some remain in Odessa, and they occasionally visit each other. Akhtiorskaya's warm, satirical style and ear for dialogue grabbed my attention from the opening lines: "The morning was ideal, a crime to waste it cooped up. They were off to the shore. That means you, too, Pasha - you need some colour, a dunk would do you good, so would a stroll. Aren't you curious to see Coney Island? Freud had been. Don't deliberate till it's too late. Strokes are known to make surprise appearances in the family. Who knows how long...? Now, get up off that couch!"

BY OR ABOUT A CELEBRITY: Joni Mitchell: In Her Own Words in conversation with Malka Marom [Tantor audiobook: 7 hr 50 min: read by Carrington MacDuffie]
These interviews, which took place over four decades, are fascinating. Mitchell faced a lot of hardships in her early years, and in later years struggled with her mental health. One memorable anecdote (among many) credits a toy hurdy-gurdy that played 'London Bridge Is Falling Down' as her first musical influence: "I used to always play it backwards because backwards it rocked. It had a different rhythm. The melodic intervals were quite surprising. It was really entirely a different piece of music - almost African in its rhythm. Once I played it backwards, playing it forward was kind of corny." 

AN AUDIOBOOK: Kindred by Octavia Butler [Recorded Books audiobook: 11 hr: read by Kim Staunton]
One of my colleagues started a feminist book club (yay! I work with cool people!) and this was Amanda's inaugural selection. I thought that I had read it years ago, but when there weren't any spaceships in this one, I realized I was remembering an entirely different Butler novel. In Kindred, a Black woman time travels between 1976 and 19th-century Maryland. It's an exploration of the dynamics of power, gender and race that remains relevant, even though it was first published in 1979. Our next book club selection is my choice: Artful by Ali Smith. In addition to being a huge fan of Ali Smith, I'm pleased that I'll be able to count that one for the essay collection bingo category.

SET BEFORE 1800: My Guardian Angel by Sylvie Weil, translated by Gillian Rosner [Blackstone audiobook: 4.5 hr: read by Vanessa Benjamin]
Some parts of Kindred are set in the early 1800s, but that's not quite early enough for this category. I looked through my TBR and found one set in the 11th century. 12-year-old Elvina describes the threat Crusaders bring to the Jewish inhabitants of Troyes, in northeastern France, in the spring of 1096.

ROMANCE OR LOVE STORY: The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
At first, I thought I was going to have trouble finding a book to fit this square. The plot of a traditional romance has two people who initially dislike each other, and then get together at the end. It isn't a plot that appeals to me, whether the protagonists are gay or straight. Rebecca Schinsky over at Book Riot recommends Sarah MacLean to fans of literary fiction who want to give the romance genre a try. So I read A Rogue by Any Other Name. Nope, not for me. My mom recommended one of her favourites, Blue Dahlia by Nora Roberts. Nope. But never mind all that, because this bingo category is more broad. There are plenty of love stories in the books I read and this one by Nancy Mitford even has the word in the title!

I still have eight empty squares left. I've got titles in mind for all but one: Western. I feel like I gave traditional westerns a fair shake by reading Louis L'Amour three months ago. I don't feel up to facing another one like that. I can think of two nontraditional westerns I've loved: True Grit and The Sisters Brothers. Aside from rereading one of those, the only appealing book I can think of for this category is Lonesome Dove, which is on my TBR, but I already feel like whining about the page count (850+). A graphic novel might be what I need, come to think of it. I've already read Cow Boy by Nate Cosby, Pretty Deadly by Kelly Sue DeConnick et al, Bloody Chester by JT Petty, Daisy Kutter by Kazu Kibuishi, and lots of Lucky Luke comics. Does anyone have other suggestions?

Recently-Read Children's Books Round-up: June 2015

This is a quick round-up of some children's books I've read recently that are suitable for all ages. Adults, don't miss out on great books just because you're taller than you used to be.

Nicola Griffith (author of Hild, etc.) looked at what kind of books have won literary prizes and found that books about women and girls are less likely to win, regardless of the author's gender. See more about this enlightening study online here. I'm going to champion books about girls here today, plus one about lesbians, gays and queers of every sort.

Nimona by Noelle Stevenson
You know the fantastic Lumberjanes comics, right? About five best friends who battle mythological beings at summer camp? (Did you know that it's going to be a movie too?) So, anyway, Stevenson is one of the creators of the Lumberjanes series. She is also the sole creator of Nimona, which started as a webcomic (view some of it here). Nimona is a kickass heroine, a sturdy girl with a pink punk hairstyle, and she can shapeshift into absolutely any form she wants. This makes her the ideal sidekick for a supervillain, Lord Ballister Blackheart... who may not be such a bad guy after all. You know it's all in good fun when the knights have names like Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin, Sir Coriander Cadaverish and Sir Mansley Girthrod. Fun, and loyal friendships. (Grade 5 and up.)

The Story of Antigone by Ali Smith
The Baileys prize for women's fiction is one award that by its nature bucks the trend towards male-dominated fiction. I am so pleased that Ali Smith just won the Baileys prize for How to Be Both! It was my favourite on the Baileys list. How to Be Both is partly set in 21st century England and partly in 15th century Italy. Smith goes back even further in time to retell the Greek myth of Antigone. A brave preteen girl risks death when she takes a stand against injustice. Smith adds humour to this poignant story by choosing a crow as narrator and including a bumbling chorus of elders who speak in mawkish rhyme. This is a beautifully-designed book with evocative illustrations by Laura Paoletti. (Grade 4 and up.)

My Guardian Angel by Sylvie Weil, translated by Gillian Rosner
12-year-old Elvina tells about her life in the year 1096, when Christian crusaders threaten her small Jewish community in northeastern France. I listened to the audiobook narrated by Vanessa Benjamin [Blackstone: 4.5 hrs]. Engaging historical fiction. Readalike: Catherine, Called Birdy (and others) by Karen Cushman. (Grade 5 and up.)

Sidewalk Flowers by JonArno Lawson and Sydney Smith
In this wordless Canadian picture book, a modern girl dressed as little red riding hood accompanies her father on errands through the city. There is no wolf, unless it is sleepy urban indifference. The girl notices and picks flowering weeds, then distributes the flowers wherever she sees the need. Splashes of bright watercolour enliven the mostly black and white ink artwork more and more as the story progresses until the artwork is in full colour. Happy-making! (Preschool and up.)

This Day in June by Gayle Pitman and Kristyna Litten

The annual Pride parade took place in Edmonton a few days ago. Place a child on your lap and together you can relive the magic with this picture book set in San Francisco and told with sparse rhyming text. "Rainbow arches / Joyful marches / Motors roaring / Spirits soaring / Voices chanting / Doggies panting / Clad in leather / Perfect weather..." I love the cheerful illustrations, with so much happening on every page. "Love beats hate" is just one of the many slogans portrayed. (Preschool and up.)

The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford

Front cover illustration
by Roland Pym.

I picked up Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love because of Simon's enthusiasm over at Savidge Reads, where he calls himself a Mitford maniac, and also because it pops up on lists with names like 1001 Books to Read Before You Die.

Verdict: enjoyable.

An upper-class family of siblings come of age in England in the 1930s. It's sort of like a shorter, fluffier version of George Eliott's Middlemarch. It also brought to mind aspects of Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle - especially the setting and the romance; and (in the early part) Jeanne Birdsall's The Penderwicks, for the pleasant sense of nostalgia and the relationships between siblings while they were still quite young. The Pursuit of Love has been compared to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, but I'm somewhat abashed to admit I've only read a graphic novel adaptation of that classic, so I can only say that sounds about right: young women, skilled in the art of conversation, have romantic notions and run off with unsuitable men.

First published in 1945, the edition that I read - The Folio Society, London 1991 - has a dozen whimsical, stylish illustrations by Roland Pym. I do love to see pictures in books for adults.

The humour is what I liked best about The Pursuit of Love. Here's a bit where the sheltered eldest daughter Louisa, raised on a country estate, meets foppish men for the first time.

Back cover illustration
by Roland Pym.

   "The house party, when they finally appeared (some of them shockingly late) from their bedrooms, smelt even more delicious that the flowers, and looked even more exotic than the birds of paradise. Everybody had been very nice, very kind to Louisa. She sat between two beautiful young men at dinner, and turned upon them the usual gambit:
    'Where do you hunt?'
    'We don't,' they said.
    'Oh, then why do you wear pink coats?'
    'Because we think they are so pretty.'

Even though I enjoyed the book, I doubt that I'll read the companion novel, Love In a Cold Climate. I feel like I've been there, done that. There are at least 1000 more books to read before I die.

Single, Carefree, Mellow by Katherine Heiny

When Katherine Heiny's short story collection, Single, Carefree, Mellow, came in on hold for me at the library, I couldn't remember where I had heard about it. There's a blurb from Lena Dunham right on the front cover that would have made me pick it up in any case: "Gives women's interior lives the gravity they so richly deserve - and makes you laugh along the way."

The women in these stories are sort of hapless, and they share a tendency towards extramarital affairs. They have little self-control. Yet, somehow, they are endearing. Heiny treats her characters with warmth and so I can't help feeling sympathy, no matter how unwise their actions.

Female friendships are important to these women. In "The Dive Bar," Sasha has a (married) lover but her housemate Monique is single.

    "Sasha and Monique show up at the brownstone for the singles volunteer day, along with about thirty other people. The renovation is being run by a short and short-tempered redheaded man named Willie, who seems ready to shout at any of them with the slightest provocation. Sasha can understand why he's so grouchy, though: he has to oversee a bunch of volunteers who are all busy checking one another out instead of doing home repair. She almost feels a little sorry for the needy family who is going to move in, picturing the very low standard to which their new home will be refurbished." 

Heiny's style is fresh and witty. In "Andorra," Sadie is a mother of two young children, and having a long-distance affair with Marcus, which means a lot of phone sex.

   "'Anyway,' Marcus said, his voice deepening, 'What are you wearing?'
    'What are you wearing?' Sadie said later to Rufus when he ran through the kitchen in his underpants, and she said, 'Good... good... ' to Leo when he helped her mix the cake batter, and 'I'm coming,' to Nelda when she said that the UPS man was there, and 'I wish you were here,' to her mother on the phone and 'Oh, fuck me,' when the dog threw up on the carpet. She didn't say 'I want you in my mouth right now,' to anyone, but it occurred to her that she could get through most days with only a limited number of phrases, that it was how you said them and who you were at that moment that mattered."

   "This was how Sadie's life ticked along, not like a finely tuned engine, but like some other thing that ticks: noisy pipes, or a bomb."

Single, Carefree, Mellow is Heiny's entertaining debut. I look forward to more.

Readalikes: Anything by Alice Munro; Bobcat and Other Stories (Rebecca Lee); Sleeping Funny (Miranda Hill); and And Also Sharks (Jessica Westhead).

The Tusk That Did the Damage by Tania James

The Tusk That Did the Damage by Tania James has such a strong sense of place that I felt immediately transported to the rural setting in Kerala in southern India. The story centers around an elephant called the Gravedigger. He was orphaned by poachers as a calf and sold into labour. Later, he escaped and became a killer of men. Part of the narration is from the elephant's point of view, a stylistic feat that James pulls off nicely. She uses a close third person, close enough to glimpse inside the alien brain of another species.

"The flames of tiny lamplights trembled down the road to the temple. The Gravedigger could smell the hot oil, the chili-rubbed corn, the ice cream and peanuts, the plastic of inflatable toys, the petals of flowers, marigolds and rose water, all these shifting, rippling scents, and beneath them all, a heavy silt: the smell of people."

Images are from postcards I got in Sri Lanka in 1978. Copyright Ceylon Pictorials, Colombo.

The point of view shifts with different narrators, allowing a complex picture to emerge. The following is from the publisher's description on the dust jacket:

Transplanting rice (in Sri Lanka).

"Manu, the studious younger son of a rice farmer, loses his cousin to the Gravedigger's violence and is drawn, with his wayward brother, Jayan, into the sordid, alluring world of poaching. Emma is a young American working on a documentary with her college best friend, who witnesses the porous boundary between conservation and corruption and finds herself in her own moral gray area: a risky affair with the veterinarian who is the film's subject. As the novel hurtles toward its tragic climax, these three story lines fuse into a wrenching meditation on love and betrayal, duty and loyalty, and the vexed relationship between man and nature."

Even the minor characters seem very real, making it easy to feel swept up in their lives. The story is a gripping and immersive experience. I cooked rice and curry after I had finished, as a way to linger in the world of The Tusk That Did the Damage.

Readalikes (with links to my reviews): Fauna (Alissa York) for realistic fiction about humans and wilderness coexisting, while incorporating some animal viewpoints; and two layered, sensory novels by Ru Freeman that are set in Sri Lanka: On Sal Mal Lane and A Disobedient Girl.

A Bunch of Pretty Things I Did Not Buy by Sarah Lazarovic

In A Bunch of Pretty Things I Did Not Buy, Toronto artist Sarah Lazarovic rethinks her buying habits and her attitude towards owning material goods. Paintings and hand-lettered text make a charming memoir-cum-meditation on consumerism.

Two-page spread from A Bunch of Pretty Things I Did Not Buy. 

The two-page spread above is a good example of Lazarovic's witty style and judicious use of quotes from other sources. "Writing recently in Scientific American, Sonya Lyubomirsky says that one of the most effective ways to achieve happiness through money is to spend on small pleasures instead of big-ticket items." I'm sorry that my photo is fuzzy; the text on the bottom right (next to "After") says "flowers/$3." I love the way the blue wash spreads across to the lefthand page, visually linking the rectangle of the text box to the two images of rectangular furniture in a pleasing, sturdy tripod. The smiley handle on the chest of drawers makes me smile, too.

The entire essay, with illustrations, can be viewed online here, but it is such a sweet, small-format hardcover to handle in its physical form. It is the size that I think of as a gift book - the size for impulse purchasing - which in itself offers a certain amount of irony. In any case, it would make a lovely gift. If it is for someone who has been talking about The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, even better.

In her annotated bibliography, Larazovic includes titles I've previously reviewed: The Thoughtful Dresser (Linda Grant) and Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion (Elizabeth Cline).

Readalike: for another whimsical illustrated essay/memoir, try My Favorite Things (Maira Kalman). For another personal exploration into consumerism, I suggest Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping (Judith Levine).

PS - I would like to thank the inimitable Shelagh Rogers and her CBC podcast, The Next Chapter. That is how I first heard about this book, and about many more Canadian titles too. Love that show!

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

When her father dies, Helen Macdonald retreats from the world into her childhood passion for falconry. She gets a young goshawk and her grief is subsumed in the long hours spent training it. H is for Hawk is a masterpiece of nature writing and literary memoir. It's a book I want to hug. It also makes me want to feel the weight of a raptor on my fist, something I'd never imagined would interest me.

Some of the reasons I loved this book:

• Macdonald, who doesn't like to kill, showed me something new: an appreciation for hunting, seen from a hawk's perspective.  
• Macdonald's thoughtful re-examination of a book she had found infuriating when she was a child: T.H. White's The Goshawk. 
• The specialized vocabulary of falconry, which Macdonald describes as one of the aspects that attracted her to this sport from the start. 
• Macdonald's struggle through grief and mental illness into healing.
• Beautiful, beautiful prose.

Not a falcon, but still.
Photo taken at Bojnice
Castle in Slovakia.

"Hunting with the hawk took me to the very edge of being a human. Then it took me past that place to somewhere I wasn't human at all. The hawk in flight, me running after her, the land and the air a pattern of deep and curving detail, sufficient to block out anything like the past or the future, so that the only thing that mattered were the next thirty seconds. [...] I looked. I saw more than I'd ever the seen. The world gathered about me. It made absolute sense. But the only things I knew were hawkish things, and the lines that drew me across the landscape were the lines that drew the hawk: hunger, desire, fascination, the need to find and fly and kill."

Macdonald writes that the "ability of hawks to cross borders that humans cannot is a thing far older than Celtic myth, older than Orpheus - for in ancient shamanic traditions right across Eurasia, hawks and falcons were seen as messengers between this world and the next."

There's a time when Macdonald was writing her father's eulogy and wanted to check a fact and so she reached for the phone to call him... "and for a moment the world went very black."

Siobhan, one of the other
wwoofers I worked with,
 whitewashing in Spain.

My own father had been dead for 10 years when I had a similar experience. After a disorienting couple of weeks spent uprooting brambles from a mountain slope while wwoofing* on a rustic farm in Spain, I was given an easy job: whitewashing a plaster wall. My father would do things like spend an afternoon while on a Hawaiian holiday helping a crew install tile on a roof simply because he had never done that before. I planned to write to him, describing the fat round brush and the paint mixed from a powder... and then came a sudden remembering that I would never write to him again. A sorrow that I thought was long finished. If only a falcon could have carried a message on my behalf.

Falconry is described as "a balancing act between wild and tame - not just in the hawk, but inside the heart and mind of the falconer." In time, Macdonald finds her equilibrium.

H is for Hawk is one of my favourite books so far this year.

Readalikes (with links to my reviews): The best I can do for comparison is to combine the meditative nature writing and memoir in Robert MacFarlane's The Old Ways with Cheryl Strayed's grief process in Wild and the intimacy of living with a wild bird in Stacey O'Brien's Wesley the Owl, (mouse carcasses and all).

*Wwoofing is a verb formed from WWOOF = World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, an organization that links volunteers with organic growers.

NOTE added May 24, 2015: Today I listened to Mary Oliver in conversation with Krista Tippett on the On Being podcast episode "Mary Oliver - Listening to the World" from February 5, 2015. I was struck by a similarity in one aspect of Macdonald's and Oliver's experiences. Both had found themselves too much captivated by the natural world and eventually had to learn to fully embrace the human world. It's a great interview, by the way.