Booklouse Recommendations for April
March 30, 2010 by admin
Filed under Booklouse, Features, Main Content
My fellow insects,
Two extraordinary books, this time; one is fiction but has an amazing follow-up story in to-day’s world; and the other is a science based book which is very relevant to to-day’s world.
Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones.
This is the story of a little girl living on the island of Bougainville, to the North East of Australia. A revolution is in progress and all the whites have left the island except one man, Mr. Watt, who is married to a native girl. Mr. Watt decides to keep the school open for the children but has only a copy of Great Expectations from which to teach. You’ve guessed it, hence the name of the book Mr. Pip.
The story of the orphan Pip living in this mysterious city of London becomes so fascinating to the children, especially a 13 year old girl named Matilda, that all they want is to take shelter in their minds from the ravages of real life on the island and immerse themselves in Dickens’s story. But too much imagination can be a dangerous thing.
The story is well written in a very good story telling style that will keep you happily turning the pages. Lloyd Jones won the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize Best Book Award and was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize for this one.
And now to the modern day part of this story. On your computer, (don’t tell me you don’t have one; if so, go to the library and use one there because you must see this follow-up to the book.) Once in front of the machine, go to Google and type in the words: ‘Coconut revolution’. Up will come a page of listings on the top of which are the words: video results. Click on: Coconut Revolution (2001 50mins) and watch. What a fascinating story. You are now watching the BBC documentary from the very same island where the people have managed to win back control of the south where a huge copper mine had been established by RTZ, the world’s largest mining company. They started their fight back by firing arrows at the helicopter gun ships and making fuel for their truck out of Coconut milk!! There is even another update from when elections were being held on the island and even the rumour of a referendum to decide if they should declare independence from New Guinea.
I went back and read the book again with the video in mind. An interesting experience, to say the least.
Under a Green Sky by Peter D. Ward Ph.D.
More than a couple of hundred million years ago, there was a cataclysmic event which caused the extinction of nearly 97% of all species on earth. This event was called the Permian Extinction. All through the 1990’s and into this century, scientists have been arguing over whether or not this happened due to something large dropping out of the skies or was it caused by something much more sinister happening here on earth.
Don’t worry. You don’t need to be a scientist to understand this book. It is a fascinating chronological discussion by an expert Paleontologist who himself wrote this book, being fresh from his research and subsequent explanation of how the dinosaurs became extinct due to a 10kms wide meteor hitting the earth.
In Under a Green Sky, Peter Ward explains not only the Permian Extinction but also four others of a lesser nature, but none the less, disastrous. The evidence for these ancient cataclysms show very clearly that global warming should not be ignored. Once the oceans start belching the poisonous gas, Hydrogen Sulphide, into a poisoned atmosphere under a sky that is always slightly green and hazy, there is little left but the same dire fate that has overwhelmed this planet several times before.
Some of you may remember a while back when a whole group of people and animals living in the bowl of a long extinct volcano on the west coast of Africa were found dead one morning after the volcano had belched out a cloud of Hydrogen Sulphide during the night, killing every living thing in the area.
Now, once again you have the opportunity to see the essence of this book on video. Go to cbc.ca and click on documentaries. Now look for One Ocean Episode One. This is a fascinating film about this subject and a lot of it is narrated by Peter Ward as he goes about his studies, including some beautiful underwater filming.
Even if you don’t believe in anything to do with global warming, I would urge you to read this book and watch the video. Personally, and for the sake of my grandchildren and their future families, I would rather do something about this now, than leave it for them to have to deal with, by which time it could be a lot more serious.
These two should definitely give you some good chewing till next time,
The Booklouse.
Booklouse Recommendations for March
My fellow insects,
As I write this on St.Valentine’s Day, I am hoping that you are not expecting a review of a book about a passionate love affair. Oh, yes, both these books revolve around love, but love in its more diverse patterns.
The Lady in Blue by Javier Sierra
This is another of those fascinating books where the author takes a piece of history, does a lot of research and comes up with an enthralling story of historical fiction. Make sure you read the notes at the end of this book which give the background, including an amazing interview which Sierra had with a monk shortly before he died, to this extraordinary story.
This is a novel based on the well known legend of a young girl dressed in blue who appeared to the native people of South West America in the 1600’s and told them of the coming of the priests who would be spreading the Gospel amongst them, and how they should prepare themselves for baptism. The Lady in Blue who appeared in New Mexico in the 1600’s, had never, during her life time, left either the village in which she was born, nor the monastery that she founded in Spain.
Moving from a young girl in California, to a journalist in Spain, to a monk and several priests in Venice, all in the 1990’s, and back to the legend itself in the 1600’s, Javier Sierra weaves a mystical thread of evidence as to why and how this legend could have possibly been created. The historical characters believe that uncovering the secret behind The Lady in Blue’s bilocations (the ability to be in two places at the same time) will get them closer to their goal, but when one of the priests suddenly dies and a rare manuscript containing the nun’s secrets is stolen, the plot thickens! The conclusion might surprise you.
Javier Sierra is a well known Spanish historian and author who wrote, among other books, The Secret Supper which has been translated into thirty-five languages.
Kenneth Grahame – An Innocent in the Wild Wood
By Alison Prince
In reviewing this book, I have to admit to a bias; my first, and without doubt my favourite children’s book was and still is Wind in the Willows.
This biography by Alison Prince is a remarkably perceptive biography in which she uses previously unpublished materials to uncover the many layers of Kenneth Grahame’s character, ultimately that of Toad of Toad Hall. In writing Wind in the Willows, which is the most famous of his stories, Grahame seems to transfer his very muddled desires into the characters of his novel. He always had this longing to live freely, romping around the English countryside with out a worry in the wonderful world of nature that he so loved. But here we see him as Alison Prince carefully exposes layer upon layer of his character and we can see how his various traits are transformed into the characters of Mole (his son Alistair), Ratty, Toad (himself), Badger and the Weasels who try to take over Toad Hall. It is one of the great ironic twists in the tale of this story that Alistair, his son known as the Mouse, should commit suicide under a train, considering that Grahame had always described trains as the scourge of the countryside.
An incredible love/hate relationship between Grahame and his son Mouse, is exceptionally well portrayed in this biography from the first time that Grahame tells his son a bed time story, through the continuation of those stories all the time that the boy was away from home to the point in time when it is suggested to Grahame that these stories should be published as a book. Adding to the feeling of the unreality of their marriage is the impression that I got that Grahame’s wife, Elspeth Thomson, is simply around because he reluctantly agreed to marry her, against many of his friends recommendations; but, having said that, she is the one who is always there for Alistair and enjoys an intriguing correspondence with him from his boarding school and University. But, as I have mentioned, Alistair was unable to withstand the unreality of his upbringing by these two fantasists.
This is a fine biography well described by the Times Literary Supplement as… “a thoroughly sensible new account of this much-loved, but curiously un-lovable author.”
Happy chewing till next time,
The Booklouse
Great Books to Read for the New Year
My fellow insects,
I hope you all had a good Christmas holiday and a jolly New Year; I was in bed by 10:45 p.m. with a good book, and what a book……
Sashenka by Simon Montefiore
……… this is a big, sweeping, romantic adventure of half a century of turbulent Russian history. It is the story of a young girl living in St Petersburg who at the age of 16 becomes a Bolshevik revolutionary during the reign of the Czar in 1916. She has to be ‘bought’ out of jail by her father, the head of a wealthy family, but she continues to help the Bolsheviks, as her mother parties with Rasputin and her other friends. Sashenka marries and has two, children, but then embarks on a love affair that has dreadful consequences. The final part of the book takes place with the third generation in 1994 when a young historian eventually manages to get into the Stalin archives and unravels a horrendous story of betrayal and savage cruelty, but with an ending to the story that will stay with you for a long time.
All through the book, the background details of life in Russia at the time of the Czars and on through the revolution, right up to the collapse of communism, simply add to the enjoyment of Simon Montefiore’s fine writing. For those of you who do not know his work, he has had great success with his two outstanding biographies of Stalin and this is one of the main reasons for the authenticity of this, his first piece of historical fiction. When writing Sashenka, he used a lot of his research work from the Stalin books.
For lovers of historical fiction, and for those of you who, like me, like to learn more history through this fascinating medium – after all, he is a renowned historian – I cannot recommend this book strongly enough. Magnificent.
Corsair by Tim Severin
You may remember that back in October I recommended a book called White Gold by Giles Milton, a wonderful history of the white slave trade to Africa in the late 1600’s. Well, this is a fascinating piece of historical fiction which is centred around the same period in history.
Set in the late 1600’s, Corsair is the story of an Irish young man, Hector Lynch and his sister Elizabeth who are living in a village on the south coast of Ireland when they are both taken by Barbary corsairs and sold at auction in Algiers. At the time of their capture, the Slaves are separated by gender and, after converting to Islam to avoid the worst of the horrors of the slave trade, Hector and another slave, Dan, a Miskito Indian from the Caribbean who has become a friend, have to survive adventures peopled by a series of ferocious historical characters, by their quick witted actions as they become embroiled in the Mediterranean naval wars.
Hecctor’s main concern is the whereabouts of his sister and it is this need that drives him on through shipwrecks and, having escaped from the African slave trade, being re enslaved by French Christians. He eventually finds out the awful truth about what has happened to his sister when he is shipwrecked off the coast of Morocco.
Being written by another well known historian, this book will intrigue you, not only by its story, but also by the meticulous research that has gone into defining the extraordinary characters who are featured all through the book, from a power-crazed sultan through sadistic seamen to fanatical members of the Christian Knightly Orders. Be sure to read the historical notes that Tim Severin provides at the end of this excellent book.
Happy chewing till next time,
The Booklouse
Recommendations for Your Christmas Bookshelf
December 19, 2009 by admin
Filed under Booklouse, Features, Main Content
My fellow insects,
As this will be my Christmas offering to you, I am going to review three books each one of which would make a wonderful present. I believe that a book is such a good present, as it gives both the pleasure of reading to and excites the imagination of, the receiver. Here you have fiction, a memoir and historical fiction.
Imagining Don Giovanni by Anthony Rudel
This is a delightful book not just for those of you that appreciate classical music. This is a wonderful love story full of [passion and drama concerning the composition of the opera Don Giovanni. Knowing, as we do from papers, that Casanova was in Prague at the time that Mozart and his librettist Da Ponte were working on the opera Don Giovanni which was to be based on the scandalous life of Don Juan, Anthony Rudel, son of the famous conductor Julius Rudel, has written an excellent piece of historical fiction.
At the time, Mozart was having a little trouble with the cast of Don Giovanni and their interpretation of the love affairs as portrayed by his music and the words of Da Ponte. It took one of the world’s greatest lovers (if history is to be believed!) to go on stage during the rehearsals and demonstrate how to act out love and passion for your fellow actors. There are some wonderful scenes in this book when Casanova is teaching the actors, at the same time we are treated to Mozart’s strong feelings and longing to be with his wife, Costanze, and family back in Vienna.
This is a story full of passion for other human beings, music and the theatre; it is a marvelous piece of fiction based on fact from which a lot can be learnt and a lot imagined.
The Greek for Love by James Chatto
This is a memoir with a difference. James Chatto is an Englishman who fell in love with a Canadian, Wendy Martin, who became his wife, but not before a passionate and, at times, melancholy love affair takes place starting one summer many years ago on the island of Corfu. You may well have read some of Chatto’s writings in Canadian magazines and newspapers, as he and his family have lived for some time in Toronto as well as on Corfu.
James and Wendy were captivated by the way they were accepted so readily by the locals once they had bought and renovated a ruined house on Corfu, amongst the olive trees and grape vines. The way they did this is very different from certain other stories based in the south of France. They were on Corfu at a time when they could swim naked off a deserted beach which now is surrounded by villas and bijou hotels. The more they learned Greek, the more they enjoyed the social life of the local village and particularly the stories and myths as told by and about the locals on balmy evenings at a table outside the local taverna, where there was always much laughter and plenty of local wine. There are descriptions of wonderful meals (Chatto has published several cook books) of fresh sardines, lamb as only the Greeks know how to cook it and fresh fruit from the surrounding trees.
It isn’t until near the end of the book that a tragedy occurs that brought tears to my eyes for the first time in many, many years of reading all different types of books. Tragic as this part of the book is, it in no way detracts from this wonderful story; indeed, it gives one tremendous faith in human kind and the ability of all of us to survive unwanted and unwarranted tragedies in our lives. This is a delightful memoir, superbly narrated, funny, imaginative and very, very readable.
Angel’s Game by Carlos Zafon
For those of you who haven’t read any Zafon, give yourselves an early Christmas present and go and buy a second hand copy of Shadow of the Wind by Zafon, you will love it. Carlos Ruiz Zafon is a very well known Spanish writer of historical fiction in Europe and has been translated into about 40 languages. As a historian, there is much that can be learnt in a most pleasant way from reading his books.
Angel’s Game is another of Zafon’s books translated by Lucia Graves, Robert Graves’s daughter, and it is this translation that makes for such a fine book for those of us reading it in English – unlike certain other Spanish writings which have been translated using modern idioms even in 18th century dialogue.
This is the story of a young man, David Martin, who lives in a dark and mysterious house in the centre of Barcelona and spends his time writing cheap and gaudy novels under a pseudonym. He is visited by a French editor who decides to make him an offer. If he will write a most extraordinary book, the like of which has never been seen before, he, the French editor will give David Martin a fortune to do with as he pleases. The house itself features strongly in this story because of its previous owner whose personal belongings are still to be found in a locked room at the back of the haunting house.
Needless to say, not everything is as it seems in this gothic universe of romance, tragedy and mystery all surrounding the passion of books. This is a masterful story and, yes, the Cemetery of Forgotten Books does appear again in this intriguing and well written book.
I wish you all a Very Happy Christmas and good chewing amongst the pages as well as at the festive table. Here’s to 2010!
The Booklouse.
Booklouse Book Reviews for December
November 30, 2009 by admin
Filed under Booklouse, Features, Main Content
Image Credit: Chud Tsankov Illustrations
My fellow insects,
I hope you have been enjoying my recommendations and this time I have two books for you, both of which have something of a nautical theme.
High Endeavours by Miles Clark
This book has just about everything anyone could want to chew on between the two covers of any book; adventure, intrigue, an elicit love affair and drama, all laced with an unending inquisitiveness about our world. I am talking about the lives of Miles and Beryl Smeeton, who as I’m sure many of you know, lived for a while on Salt Spring Island.
Written by Miles Clark, who was one of the editors of Yachting Monthly, High Endeavours chronicles the lives of the Smeetons before they fell in love and continues afterwards with their adventures around the world together. By the time they were both fifty, they sat down with a world atlas and discovered that they had crossed every page either together or separately.
This is an amazing story of endurance, courage and a sense of fun, in other words a true sense of adventure, which at one point took them on an eighteen month voyage on their yacht Tzu Hang out of Victoria, BC to Australia which turned into a ten year adventure, with a couple of dismastings thrown in, but they still managed to return and tie up in front of the Empress ten years to the day after they had left.
I will leave you with a note that I found in the front of my second hand copy:
“Dear ….
I’m sure you will find this one of the most interesting, enchanting and inspiring accounts of how life can (sic) be lived! Merry Christmas.”
Kydd by Julian Stockwin
Here we have a wonderful, relatively new, author of the Napoleonic days of naval antics. Different from Forrester, Alexander Kent, Patrick O’Brian, Pope et al, in a major way and that is that the hero in this series, Thomas Kydd, is a wig maker from Surrey who is in a bar one night with a friend having a quiet drink when the press gang arrive and he is swept up and lands on the deck of Duke William, an old line-of-battle ship of the Royal Navy.
The vantage point of the common sailor makes for an excellent twist to the normal stories of this very popular historic fiction genre. It is a while before Thomas Kydd finds out that he loves the life of a sailor but with the help of his friend, who has a very different reason for going to sea, he is soon noticed as a competent seaman who can command the respect of others, except for the usual officer or two who have managed to buy their way into positions of authority, and use it for nefarious purposes.
Julian Stockwin is himself ex Navy and he is one of the few who made it from the lower decks to officer during his time of service which is certain to help in his expression of the feelings of his hero throughout this series.
At the moment there are ten books in this excellent series with the latest having just been published – Invasion.
Good chewing till next time,
The Booklouse.
Booklouse Review For November
November 8, 2009 by admin
Filed under Booklouse, Features, Main Content
Image Credit: Bill Mayer at flickr.com
My fellow insects,
Here are (or is, depending on your approach to collective nouns) another couple of books to add to the pile that you are hopefully enjoying.
The Dream Life of Sukhanov by Olga Grushin
Olga Grushin was born and lived for the first 18 years of her life in Moscow. This is her first novel after settling in America and marrying an American.
This is the story of the Editor in Chief of the main Arts magazine in Moscow who always has to publish glowing critiques about Russian Art whilst secretly admiring works by Van Gogh and others. He spends his evenings alone in his apartment painting in the style of Van Gogh and hides his works, until such time as his cousin turns up unexpectedly for a visit and stays in the apartment.
What is amazing about this book is that, despite being brought up and educated in Russia, Grushin wrote the manuscript in English and the resulting book has been compared to Nabokov and Bulgakov in its style of writing; personally, I never quite understood all the excitement about Nabokov, apart from his unbelievable arrogance concerning other writers. So, Lolita; I remember paying 5 shillings to borrow an illicit copy of Lady Chatterly’s Lover when their Lordships had been locked into the House of Lords to see if we youngsters should be allowed to read it!
Anyway, this is an excellent read concerning life and the Arts under the Communist regime in Russia and being a shorter book, is perfect for those boring lunch breaks. Grushin has another book coming out this fall, Concert Ticket, and I am greatly looking forward to getting my hands on that one.
Speaking of Communists, here’s a great read for the lovers of James Bond, who wondered just how much fiction there was in those stories (personally, I couldn’t have cared less, as long as Bond got the girl, got the villain and still managed to get his hat on the hat stand at the first throw!
Secret Asset by Stella Rimmington
Stella Rimmington was the Head of MI5 or, in other words, she placed real life James Bonds around the world as M. She held this position for around 5 years, so you know that you are reading about authentic situations that are close to the truth when you read her books.
This is an exciting story based on a terrorist plot driven out of an Islamic bookstore in North London, and, in passing, you get a good idea how a surveillance operation works. But this one turns even more interesting when there is a tip-off that a mole is at work in British Intelligence. Will MI5 manage to trap the mole before he/she is able to carry out the terrorist plot? Stella Rimmington writes very well in this genre and certainly has the knack of creating a page-turner based on authenticity.
Funnily enough, her first book At Risk also caused their Lordships some excitement, as they were asked to consider, by the Lower House, whether this book could be published in view of the Official Secrets Act; as if she was about to put her compatriots in danger!
Good chewing till next time,
The Booklouse.
Ripsnorting Reads Recommended by the Booklouse
October 5, 2009 by admin
Filed under Arts & Culture, Booklouse, Features
Image Credit: Illustration by Baldinger
My fellow insects,
Here are a couple of books that I thoroughly enjoyed reading and hopefully you will enjoy them too, as we cruise into the fall.
The Island by Victoria Hislop
This is a debut novel about a girl, Alexis, who is madly in love but at the same time wants to find out about her mysterious family history which mainly took place on the Greek island of Crete. Hislop has obviously done a great deal of research on the island of Crete and its much smaller offshore neighbour, Spinalonga, the once Greek leper colony.
This is a saga of ruined relationships, resurrected love affairs and a wonderful insight into the all too complex feelings of various family members over two generations. Hislop writes with true feelings for her characters, both from their points of view as well as her view through the sharp lens of history. There are absorbing comparisons made between the Cretan characters and those who have been cast out to the leper colony. It never fails to amaze me how history can still cause dramatic effects on later generations.
The British newspaper, the Observer, said of this book: “At last – a beach book with a heart.” Believe me, it reads just as well in front of a roaring fire with or without a glass of Domestica.
There is another very good book by her based on the Spanish civil war which I have just finished reading and I will be writing about in a later blog posting.
And now for a little non-fiction:
White Gold by Giles Milton
I have to confess that this is written by one of my favourite historians. This is the story of the more than one million slaves of Islam in the 18th century, and it centres around the history of a cabin boy named Thomas Pellow who was captured by the Barbary pirates in 1716. Milton used the published versions of Pellows diaries and notebooks and those of others, on which to base this factual history.
This book is an incredible account of a little known piece of history about white slaves under the Islamic regime of the sultans in Morocco in Africa. The sultan of the Imperial Moroccan court is a man who had 2000 horses in stables alongside his palace, where the horses could enjoy stained glass windows in their stables and crystal fountains in the stable yard. He had an army of some 10,000 men in the same palace that was surrounded by a wall which he attempted to build, measuring 300 miles long.
This is a fun and fanciful story, but at the same time a disturbing account of what it was like to be a white slave in Africa, where the characters of the minor players are as colourful as the events in which they take part. They even managed to keep the flag of Islam flying for six months on the island of Lundy off the North coast of Cornwall – so much for to-day’s concerns about Islam.
For those of you who might not know the marvelous work of this intriguing historian, he is also the author of Nathaniel Nutmeg and Big Chief Elizabeth, amongst other good non-fiction reads.
Good chewing till next time,
"The Booklouse" - A published children’s author and former James Bay resident who now works at Russell Books on Fort Street in Victoria, BC
Fellow Insects
September 15, 2009 by admin
Filed under Arts & Culture, Booklouse
Image Credit: Lindedesign at flickr.com
The reason why this column is not called "Bookworms" is as follows:
No single species may properly be called the bookworm because a large number of insects feed upon dry, starchy material or paper amd may damage books.
(The above was extracted from the Encyclopedia.)
Each month I shall be reviewing a couple of books that I think will be of interest to you; if they are not , please do not chew on them in your fury as they will probably taste revolting. Also, a number of the books that I recommend, some of you may well have read, as I shall not necessarily be reviewing NEW books all the time.
If you would like to ask for suggestions in a given genre, please feel free to contact me via the contact form on this website.
Here’s a couple for you to enjoy in the meantime:
The Meaning of Night: A Confession (by Michael Cox)
I love the opening of this book:
‘After killing the red haired man, I took myself off to Quinns for an oyster supper.’
You guessed it, this is a Victorian thriller written in Victorian English. This book is an absolute delight to read and has an excellent plot line as told by a male protagonist (stay with me). This is one of those books where you think you have nailed the plot early on, but there might just be a few twists and turns before you realise that you weren’t quite right. The writing is old fashined enough to be wonderfully descriptive, but not so old fashioned as to be difficult to read or in any way affect your enjoyment of the story. Watch out for the fun historical notes at the bottom of some of the pages, which all end with the letters: Ed (see my final paragraph).
Sadly, Michael Cox died of a rare form of cancer about three months ago, but not before he heard from his publisher that they were going to publish the sequel, The Glass of Time. Let me tell you, there had to be a sequel, you will know what I mean when you finish The Meaning of Night.
The Glass of Time: A Novel (by Michael Cox)
Here is another excellent read, but this time with a female protagonist. It is 22 years later, and again the plot is one of those that seems so simple at the beginning; but just you wait. Whatever you do, be sure to read these in order.
If you are wondering about the late Mr. Cox’s credentials for this type of writing, he was the Editor at Oxford University Press for many years, specializing in Victorian matters, including crime.
Happy chewing till next time,
"The Booklouse" - A published children’s author and former James Bay resident who now works at Russell Books on Fort Street in Victoria, BC
