Canada Reads! Yes We Do!

It is Canada Reads time!

Five more books to add to my reading list.

One or two are twenty years old; several new to literature.

I love Canada Reads, in particular the radio debate.

Keeping books and radio alive!

The contenders:

(Excuse the fuzzy books.  Read them anyway.)

Sing You Home

Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

To be honest, I have never picked up a Jodi Picoult book as I always thought she wrote romance novels which are not my literary thing.  In the past few months I have joined a new book club and this was the first book I actually had time to read before I attend the club meeting, and at first I was not excited.  Romance?  Really?  I decided to give Picoult a chance, picked it up on a Saturday and had it read by Tuesday night, staying up late one night due to sleeplessness and wondering what would happen to this book's characters during the turmoil of their lives.

(Warning: contains a few spoilers.)

The book begins with Zoe and Max, a married couple, both working full-time jobs and trying desperately to become pregnant and carry a baby to term.  A fifth failure late in her pregnancy causes Max to leave the marriage as he feels second to Zoe's need to have children, a position he no longer wants to hold.  While recovering from the break-up of their marriage and the end of another pregnancy, Zoe and Max take two very separate roads.  Zoe finds and deepens a friendship with Vanessa with whom she begins dating and eventually marries, and Max joins his brother and sister-in-law's ultra-conservative Christian religion.  Zoe and Vanessa decide to have a child, with Vanessa carrying the three zygotes that Zoe and Max made while they were married.  Max is unsure what to do and confides in his religious leader who convinces Max to take Zoe to court to obtain the zygotes himself.  A vicious battle over the zygotes ensues as we see the rights of two lesbian women legally married (in a different state from which they live), pitted against the forces of  ultra-conservative Christian right-wingers whose belief structure slowly unravels in Max's head.

This is where I shall leave my review and encourage you to read this book.  The tapestry of characters who share the narrative of the book (it moves between Zoe, Max and Vanessa) present lives that have intersected, separated and intersected once more.  Much more than the romance (the ones that Picoult does not write), she takes the reader through a host of ideas and beliefs that people hold about challenging ideas, revealing the differing views of each person and their perspectives about life, love, self-understanding, legal rights and acceptance.  A beautifully woven novel, but not always easy to read.


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Twelve Drummers Drumming

Twelve Drummers Drumming by C.C. Benison
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A well written read by a Winnipeg author, C.C. Benison.  I would give this book 3.5 stars but that is not an option.  A tale of a pastor who has moved from London, UK to the more remote and quiet village of Thornford Regis, until a body turns up murdered and hidden in a Japanese drum.  Bringing back recent memories of his own wife's murder in London, Father Tom Christmas becomes the recipient and hunter of information to try to solve this crime.  With the help of a host of interesting, unique and well developed characters, the mystery is solved after the village has been turned topsy-turvy by the events surrounding the murder.  I will be awaiting C.C. Benison's next murder mystery, Eleven Pipers Piping as well as seeking out his other mystery novels.  A delightful read that gives one a glimpse into a small village in England that also has its drama.


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Gonna Be An Engineer

Cattle research done!
Thesis version two, almost done.
Sharing another video, below.

Last year I took the Smithsonian Folkways: American Roots Collection CD collection out of the library.  What a treat!  So many songs I had never heard but were the backbone of folk music, one of my favourite genres.  There were some really cool songs to listen to, some really weird ones, and one that I need to share with you.  It popped up on my playlist today while working and it makes me smile.

When I hear the lyrics I pretend I am a hippie woman at a Folk Festival with my long hair braided (its never long enough to do that, but hey, let me have my dreams), a daisy chain around my neck, a flowing hippie skirt, and maybe even a tambourine gently beating against my hip.  A woman by the name of Peggy Seeger appears on stage with a simple guitar.  She says hello at the microphone and dedicates this to all the women in the audience and beyond who want more choices in their lives.  Access higher (or well) paying jobs, be acknowledged for their intelligence and gifts, for others to see and thank them for their public contributions to the community, be provided with the space to make healthy choices, and live a full life in and outside their homes.

It is a sassy little ditty.

This is for all my engineering female family and friends out there (all 8 of you), and all the rest of us living better lives due to the work, lyrics, marches, sit-ins, folk festivals and potlucks of the 1960's.

I am now in graduate school due to your work.

Thanks!

My Sweet Curiosity

Amanda Hale
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Once again, I found this book walking back from the bathroom to my study carrel at a University library.  Two books caught my eye, both by the same author, this one called, My Sweet Curiosity.  Blending the history of Andreas Vesalius, the author of De humani corporis fabrica (On the Structure of the Human Body), who is considered the founder of modern human anatomy; with the story Natalya, a medical student and her tumultuous relationship with her mother beginning with a bizarre birth story; and Dai Ling, a gifted cellist studying music in university with parents who sacrificed their lives in China to bring her to Canada.  Natalya and Dai Ling find each other and fall in love, and Dai Ling has to work through this revelation of being a lesbian within a traditional Chinese family structure.  Lost in tumultuous history's, each character, Natalya, Dai and Andreas, must navigate a labyrinth of ancestral choices that influences their current conditions, and reminds the reader that we come from a place we may not have chosen, but this history filled with people is desperate to hold on to us, despite our attempts to set ourselves free.

I will be looking for more Amanda Hale books as the intense research she completes on topics that I am unfamiliar with, teaches me about subjects I don't have time to research, as I turn each page.  Sounding the Blood, her first novel, is next.

http://amandahale.com/


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Out of Oz

Out of Oz by Gregory Maguire
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My entanglement with the Wicked series began over a decade ago, and after reading the first instalment, Wicked.  I quickly began to spread the word of an author who took fairy tales we all knew, and provided a deeper story to reveal characters who ethics and morals governed their choices to reveal inner worlds that no writer had attempted to explain.  Maguire's ability to provide fictional, historical reasoning for the characters we all think we know provides the reader with brilliant insights into good, evil, bad, nice, decent, and all the other lessons fairly tales are meant to teach us.  Liir (Son of a Witch) and Brrr (A Lion Among Men) are joined by a host of characters as the story of Oz continues.  Caught in a war between Ozians and Muchnkinlanders, two key elements become the object of desire on both sides, Liir (or Rain) and the Grimmerie.  Even when these two objects are attained, Maguire does not present one side as good and the other as evil, the reader is left simply to follow the choices of each character, wondering what will be the results in the end.  A magnificent ending to a tale that has taken over a decade of my life, and introduced me to an author whose skill I deeply admire and characters that are complex and change with every experience.


One thing I do find difficult about Maguire's writing is that he mixes the fantasy world of Oz with real life references.  At times this is confusing as the two world's are so entwined that a word, a reference, or sentence is at hard to understand as I wondered if I had missed a pop culture or historical reference, or if I was back in a space of fantasy.  This made reading this book more complicated but I learned to press onward and enjoyed these works.

The parts of the book I want to remember:

"Prophecy is dead, and conscience is dead too...If there's no good conscience to trust...no Lurline, no Ozma, no Unnamed God, no standard of goodness, then we have to manage for ourselves.  Maybe there's no central girl in some hall in the Emerald CIty, all bronzed and verdigrised, all windswept hair and upthrust naked breast, lots of bright honor carved in her blind and focused eyes.  No conscience like that, no reliable regula of goodness.  So it's up to us, each of us a part.  A patchwork conscience.  If we all make our own mistakes...we can all make amends too.  No one of us the final arbiter, but each of us capable of adding our little bit.  We're the patchwork conscience of Oz, us lot." p. 182


"The sweet accident of coincidence is the best foundation on which to build." p. 407


"She would make no plan but this: to move out into the world as a Bird might, and to perch on the edge of everything that could be known.  She would circle herself with water below and with sky above.  She would wait until there was no stink of Oz, no breath of it, no sight of it on any horizon no matter how high she climbed.  And then she would let go of the book, let it plunge into the mythical sea.


Live life without grasping for the magic of it.


Turn back, and find out what that was like; or turn forward, and learn something new." p. 563

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Master's Thesis

This morning at about 3 am I sent in my first draft of my thesis to my professor.  Knowing that I still have another 4-6 drafts to write, that I have just started the beginning, and that the research then subsequent analyzing of this research will take time, it still felt good to press send.

My Articles
My Mascot (Funshine Bear)

My thesis is all about the relationship between serious leisure, hobbyist-cultural tourists, and amateur travel bloggers and photographers and their opinions of how their work is influencing tourism.  I have been reading for one year (articles, books, websites), and writing for eight months.  The pictures in this post provide a wee peak at most of what I have read to prepare myself to write.

Leisure, Recreation, Tourism Anyone?

Expanding and Hurting My Brain
(all at the same time)

So much information that my brain started to hurt when I thought about my thesis for the millionth time in February.  To push through, I gave up much of my life over the last three weeks and focused on reviewing my readings, synthesizing information, writing, thinking, reviewing, then writing more.  Forty pages later, I have the first three chapters of my thesis done with 8 pages of references (70 in all) backing up what I have written.  It is my hope that I did not go completely off the rails and that most of what I wrote is usable.

The Articles Organized

Here are the websites I cited in my thesis.  I don't know if they will go or stay but take a peek and perhaps a thing or two may be learned.

Brigitte Eaton

Eatonweb Portal 

http://portal.eatonweb.com/

Blogpulse

http://blogpulse.com

(Site being retired January 13, 2012.)

CamWorld

http://camworld.org/

Gadling

http://www.gadling.com/

Hello British Columbia Blog

http://www.hellobc.com/british-columbia/blog.aspx

Hole in the Donut Cultural Travel

http://holeinthedonut.com/

In The Know Traveler

http://www.intheknowtraveler.com/

Jaunted

http://www.jaunted.com/

Adventures for Singles

Jesse James Garrett

Infoshift 

http://blog.jjg.net/

National Post: Travel

http://www.nationalpost.com/life/travel/index.html

Online Journalism Review

http://www.ojr.org/

Rebecca’s Pocket

http://www.rebeccablood.net/

Solo Traveler

http://solotravelerblog.com/

Technorati

http://technorati.com

TravelPod

http://www.travelpod.com/

Viator

http://www.viator.com/

Visit Winnipeg Blog

http://www.tourismwinnipeg.com/pegcity-lounge/winnipeg-insiders-blog

So many travel websites out there, this is just a peak.  I feel like I have learned so much that one thesis just does not cover what I have observed (mostly) in my brain.  I will keep you posted as to the next stage of this whole process.  Until then, yahoo me!  

The Reddening Path

The Reddening Path by Amanda Hale
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was walking from the University bathroom back to my study carol when this book and another by the same author, Amanda Hale, caught my eye.  After reading the back and flipping through the book, I decided this would be a nice diversion from the non-fiction, travel, walking books that I have been reading for several years now.


Hale intricately creates a narrative that includes 2 separate stories, then 3, then 4, and as a grande finale, links all the stories and characters together.  The breadth of the stories, which range from the 1500's to the 1960's and the 2000's, leaves the reader sleepless, turning pages, wondering what will happen to this list of unique characters.  The stories are set in Guatemala, Toronto, and the Kingdom of Spain shortly after its creation in the late 1400's and into the early 1500's.  Characters from South America's colonial past inspire a young Guatemalan-Canadian, Pamela, to trace her roots and briefly leave her two loving mothers, Hannah and Fern, in Toronto, in order to find her biological mother back in a country which she left after her international adoption.  She travels in body and finds friends, old acquaintances and adventure, but also travels back in time in her mind as she prepares a paper and completes research in order to understand her country of birth.  Her travels take her to meet some interesting people, but her plans take a divergent turn when she attempts to impose her Canadian upbringing on a set of people and in a country that has survived generations of war, torture, and trauma.  Pamela has a wishful, hopeful spirit and teaches the reader that taking chances may provide you with different answers than the ones you had been looking for.  Great read!  


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The Tao of Travel

The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives on the Road by Paul Theroux
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Just picked this up in the library and it is a GoodReads book of 2011.  Very cool!  I shall keep you abreast of my opinion.


My assessment of very cool turned into a disappointment that this is a book of quotes and quick verses on travel writing.  Had I not taken it out of the library I believe I would have enjoyed it more.  This is a book that you can pick up, open to a random page, then read quotes and snippets until you are ready to do something else.  As this was a 'return in three weeks' book, it did not suite my current reading requirements.  Perhaps with a personal copy, or a time when I need short bits of inspiration, but not right now.  I might like this book more another day.


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All Books Are Not Created Equal

The post below may have just been qualified.  Please take the time to select books that enlighten and enlarge the mind, rather than those that reinforce stereotypes, old notions, and inequality.

Awful Library Books

PS.  Don't forget to check out the disturbing books on the website above titled I'm Black & I'm Sober, The Right Touch and Why Do People Harm Animals and Beefcake.  Yikes!

I Don't Buy Books, Thank You Libraries!

It has now been about a decade since I discovered that sharing books through a public library keeps money in my pocket and less heavy clutter in my life.  Since my conversion to the public and academic libraries and the wonderfullness of their existence, I visit at least 1 day per week.  When is the last time you visited your local library?  Read an actual book?  Touch and smelled the pages of a good read?  May I suggest you give it a whirl.  Find your local library.  Walk, bike, drive to it.  Walk the isles and peruse the possible books to read.  Try a new genre.  If you don't have 3 -10 books as possible reads at the end of your visit, look a little harder and the library will deliver.  Pay your $10 fee for a card.  Take them home and dwell in happiness as you expand your own mind.  I also discovered the art of books on CD which are also available from the library.  I know, I know, kinda old school with podcasts, Kindles, and other electronic devices but you can't beat the smell, touch and enjoyment of a good, physical, delightful read.

If you live in Toronto, you may want to jump on the rescue project to save public libraries as their budgets are about to be cut and a petition has started.  Keep in mind, what happens in major cities like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver often become the trends seen in less large cities in a few years.  Therefore, people in Winnipeg, Regina, Calgary, Halifax, etc will want to start visiting their local libraries if you love libraries and want to continue seeing them as part of the public spaces available to citizens.

I do enjoy electronic media and it is important to acknowledge change and progress but I don't want to cuddle up with a Kindle, I want paper, printed words and a cover I may or may not have judged well.

New Mantra

As I work on my thesis I am finding that I am drawn towards travel and tourism via the internet.  How people gather information about an upcoming trip; whose stories do we read and whose do we believe; is there a community to be found on websites such as Matador, Gadling, and Offexploring, how is the community shaped and what influence does it have on the industry; what about those people who quit their lives to travel and experience, what kind of people are they and why do they do what they do; why do they recount their travels through blogs and websites?  All questions I have, not all of them I can answer it is only a thesis remember, not a lifetime of work....not yet....

In taking a Sociology class in Media and Consumer Culture with Dr. Sonia Bookman my ideas have been opened in the ways in which we communicate through objects and symbols, the ideas we perpetuate in our consumptive practices, and the theories that surround the identification of self with a group.  Incredibly interesting course, kick-your-mind-in-the-brain-until-it-hurts readings, and a amazing weekly discussions, I want to take pieces of this course into my thesis research.

I gravitate to the library and find the following book:  Blog Theory by Jodi Dean.  Having now consumed the inside words I am amazed at how much I did not understand, how I will have to read it again, and wonder who might this critical look at communicative capitalism within the sphere of blogs influence how we look at travel, tourism, our expectations, experiences, and shared stories of far-away lands.  I also found a new mantra:

Speaks to my heart.  Always question.  Always wonder.  Do not accept that you hear, see, think and feel at face value.  Dig deeper.  Demand more information and explanation.  Think it through.  Work it out.

Choosing to go back to school, taking inspiring classes, heading to the library every week, and extending my learning from books to the online world has lead to changes.  Change is good.

Critical and Structural Theory

This is my brief distraction from the paper I am writing at the end of my first term at Grad School.  It has been a huge intellectual learning curve and I am loving every minute my brain takes on the challenge to advance itself.  To be honest, not nearly as physically, emotionally or psychologically taxing as teaching Division 2 in Elementary School, but my level of stress will probably escalate when I begin actually writing my thesis next term.

In the meantime I have been reading about different methodologies of research.  For my part, I am currently having an intellectual crush on Critical Theory and Structural Feminism (no surprise in the latter).  While writing the larger portion of my paper, I am to dive into the world of various methodologies and methods of research, pick the ones that most match my topic of choice, then describe how they will all fit together.

In reading a certain book I came across a quote that I do not want to forget:

Politics is pervasive,

Language is constitutive, 

Truth is provisional,

Meaning is contingent,

Human nature is a myth.

Summarized by Peter Barry (2009, p. 35) in his book Beginning Theory (which has be updated and re-printed three times), he summarizes Critical Theory into these statements to prepare the reader for the meat of the book: Literary and Cultural Theory.  Structural theory (of which I am also learning) purports that meaning is not inherent in a word or in language, but that these meanings are brought to the text from the outside structures by the reader, which are culturally, morally and politically biased.  As my paper is based on Canadian cultural representations created through text and image for international tourists, so these methodologies of research will be of great use as I return to my writing.  So far, lovin' it!

Off to read more!

Barry, P. (2009).  Beginning Theory: An introduction to literary and cultural theory.  Manchester: Manchester University Press.