It was not an unhappy childhood, but Frost was unhappy when he recalled it.

Eleanor Catton – The Luminaries.

Not that we’re reading that series of books.

We have moved somewhat past the picture book stage. I always thought I liked picture books, but I’ve realized not as much as I thought. I like some of the earlier Beginner Books (those hardcovers with the Cat In the Hat on the upper spine), but other than that, I feel a bit like the children in Og who spent years having to read boring picture books about good little children who always help mummy in the kitchen.

But now, as my monthly reading lists have attested, we have moved onto Chapter Books. Huzzah!

I have a fifteen year gap in knowledge of children’s chapter books. Harry Potter came out during those years, and I read them, but I don’t have the rabid love of them that so many people seem to possess. I’m sure at some point I’ll read them to/with Tesfa, but I remember thinking how rushed the last two books were and how I would have edited them way down. And the earlier books were fine. Not great, definitely not horrible, just fine. Beach reads sort of.

At the library, I grabbed a Lemony Snicket All The Wrong Questions book. Lemony Snicket is another author that arrived while I was not in the stage of looking at children’s chapter books. I do recall going to the World’s Biggest Bookstore (RIP) in Toronto in maybe 2000 or 2001 and seeing one of the A Series of Unfortunate Events books, but I kind of just ignored it, figuring it’d be Harry Potter-lite. Maybe it is. I still don’t know.

What I do know is the two Lemony Snicket All The Wrong Questions books I’ve read are fun, as in adult fun, not I see the enjoyment in my child and that brings me joy fun. When we eventually read Harry Potter together, I know my fun will be of the second sort. But these Lemony Snicket books, they are clever and well-edited and sharp and pointy and funny all together. And it’s not just me. Tesfa, a little sick last week, fell asleep before dinner, only to wake up around nine at night crying “Lemony Snicket! You didn’t read me any Lemony Snicket today!”

Now if I could only get Tesfa interested in The Luminaries, which I was really drawn into at first and then my interest sort of petered out, we could read that together and I could finally finish it before it’s due back at the library.

I am always tickled to read books about places I know exactly, i.e. not just set in Calgary but set in the North Hill Shopping Center and the condos above it, a few blocks away from where I used to live. I wonder how much that influenced what I thought about 419 (although the Calgary parts are the weakest in the intertwining stories).

While the library lost its stand-alone copy of See You Later, I discovered that all was not lost:

See You Later is in a Christopher Pike omnibus that the library does have! I got it on inter-library loan last week and read it all and now I have re-read See You Later and my life is complete, if by complete I mean pretty much exactly the same as it was before.

The book was not as awesome as I remembered. Not even close. The first story in the collection, Spellbound, was pretty terrible (it has a magical negro so you can pretty much guess how subtle the rest of the story is). The stories have been “updated” in that characters talk about DVDs and Blu-Rays, yet they don’t seem to have cellphones and they are still buying video games at Future Shop-type places rather than Steam or EB or any of the other places people buy games. I don’t know what about See You Later lodged itself in my mind over any of the other Christopher Pike books I read – maybe because the protagonist designed computer games and I played computer games? Maybe how the love story plays out? I remember being so impressed by the depth and literariness of the novel at age twelve, which demonstrates how sheltered I was when it came to literary quality.

Still, every now and then I see a Christopher Pike book at a thrift shop or a yard sale and I contemplate picking them up as I see them for when Tesfa’s older. Maybe she’ll enjoy them or maybe she’ll just be confused as to why the main character didn’t just text whoever is being threatened by the ghost/spirit/were-creature/vampire/alien/etc. to warn them.

Pakistan: How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid

Synopsis: (from amazon) From the internationally bestselling author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, the boldly imagined tale of a poor boy’s quest for wealth and love . . .

His first two novels established Mohsin Hamid as a radically inventive storyteller with his finger on the world’s pulse. How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia meets that reputation—and exceeds it. The astonishing and riveting tale of a man’s journey from impoverished rural boy to corporate tycoon, it steals its shape from the business self-help books devoured by ambitious youths all over “rising Asia.” It follows its nameless hero to the sprawling metropolis where he begins to amass an empire built on that most fluid, and increasingly scarce, of goods: water. Yet his heart remains set on something else, on the pretty girl whose star rises along with his, their paths crossing and recrossing, a lifelong affair sparked and snuffed and sparked again by the forces that careen their fates along.

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia is a striking slice of contemporary life at a time of crushing upheaval. Romantic without being sentimental, political without being didactic, and spiritual without being religious, it brings an unflinching gaze to the violence and hope it depicts. And it creates two unforgettable characters who find moments of transcendent intimacy in the midst of shattering change.

Thoughts: I picked this book up because I had read The Reluctant Fundamentalist in one setting way back in January 2008. This one, I would pick it up, be entranced for a few pages, then lose the thread. Maybe because of the style (second-person singular) and me very much not being the “you” in question (male, south Asian, Muslim, etc.), I had trouble relating. The novel takes place over sixty or seventy years, but at the same time always in the present, which sounds like it shouldn’t work, but it ingeniously did (perhaps something I’ll steal and try out myself this month).

I just feel like I’m almost loving books lately, but I just can’t seem to get the whole way there. I wanted to like this book more than I did.

Rating: 3/5

Previous Readings Around the World.

Netherlands: The Dinner by Herman Koch

Synopsis: (from amazon) An internationally bestselling phenomenon: the darkly suspenseful, highly controversial tale of two families struggling to make the hardest decision of their lives — all over the course of one meal.

It’s a summer’s evening in Amsterdam, and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant for dinner. Between mouthfuls of food and over the polite scrapings of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of polite discourse — the banality of work, the triviality of the holidays. But behind the empty words, terrible things need to be said, and with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened.

Each couple has a fifteen-year-old son. The two boys are united by their accountability for a single horrific act; an act that has triggered a police investigation and shattered the comfortable, insulated worlds of their families. As the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches on their children. As civility and friendship disintegrate, each couple show just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.

Tautly written, incredibly gripping, and told by an unforgettable narrator, The Dinner promises to be the topic of countless dinner party debates. Skewering everything from parenting values to pretentious menus to political convictions, this novel reveals the dark side of genteel society and asks what each of us would do in the face of unimaginable tragedy.

Thoughts: I’ve complained enough about Breaking Bad and how it seems we’re now equating repulsive with depth and interesting. Maybe if I wasn’t tired of the male, jerk protagonist, I’d have more patience for this book. You know where something can be done well, but you’re just so sick of similar things, that’s how I feel about this book – a pop song you loved the first five or six times, but after the thousandth you are so sick of it you want to throw the radio out the window (or just never listen to the radio in the first place as I do with my radio-hatred). I guess unreliable narrator too, I’m just a bit bored with that.

I also didn’t really find the wife Claire believable, but I guess that’s sort of the point: how much of this is real versus in Paul, the narrator’s, mind.

Goodreads has a good convo going about the ending the ending of The Dinner for those interested. Reading through some of the ideas made me appreciate the novel more, but I guess I was expecting the novel to be a lot heavier than I found it.

Rating: 3.5/5

Previous Readings Around the World.

Switzerland: The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair by Joël Dicker

Synopsis: (from amazon)

August 30, 1975. The day of the disappearance. The day Aurora, New Hampshire, lost its innocence.

That summer Harry Quebert fell in love with fifteen-year-old Nola Kellergan. Thirty-three years later, her body is dug up from his yard along with a manuscript copy of his career-defining novel. Quebert is the only suspect. Marcus Goldman-Quebert’s most gifted protégé-throws off his writer’s block to clear his mentor’s name.

Solving the case and penning a new bestseller soon blur together. As his book begins to take on a life of its own, the nation is gripped by the mystery of “The Girl Who Touched the Heart of America”.

But with Nola, in death as in life, nothing is ever as it seems. Joël Dicker’s phenomenal European bestseller is a brilliantly intricate murder mystery, a hymn to the boundless reaches of the imagination, and a love story like no other. Nothing you’ve read or even felt before can prepare you for The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair.

Thoughts: From above, nothing could prepare me? Yeah, I’m pretty sure every cheap thriller from the past thirty years has prepared me for The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair.

This is a book about America by someone I’m not convinced has ever been to America. It seems like a book about America by someone who has watched Die Hard and read a great number of John Irving novels, which would give someone a very skewed view of America. This book was on the shortlist for the Prix Goncourt, which baffles me as it is not a very good book. It isn’t a bad book, but it’s an airport paperback thriller at best, unless a great deal is lost in translation. The excerpts from the “masterpiece” within deserve the quotations I put around masterpiece; the book within a book, the one written by Harry Quebert (there is more than one book within a book in this story), is flat and trivial.

I read this book and I read to the end to see what would happen. It is a good thriller and characters do things that only make sense within the world of thrillers, but I keep seeing this presented as some sort of literary piece of art and for me, it was not that. Good for the beach, good for summer, good for me reevaluating the Prix Goncourt, but otherwise, sort of a tepid sort of book.

(I’m considering this under Switzerland since it was written by a Swiss author, which seems as good a reason as any.)

Rating: 2.5/5

Previous Readings Around the World.

A horseman riding by would never know the difference.

You totally made that up Geoff said.

Did not. My grandmother used to say that her mother said it.

Whatever Geoff said. You totally made it up.

Then, reading Ramona and her Father, page 59 in my edition: It will never be noticed from a trotting horse.

And, on page 166: Those pink bunnies will never be noticed from a trotting horse.

Thank you Beverly Cleary for vindicating me in my unending fight to be perpetually right against Geoff.

South Africa: Who Was Nelson Mandela by Meg Belviso

Synopsis: (from amazon) As a child he dreamt of changing South Africa; as a man he changed the world. Nelson Mandela spent his life battling apartheid and championing a peaceful revolution. He spent twenty-seven years in prison and emerged as the inspiring leader of the new South Africa. He became the country’s first black president and went on to live his dream of change. This is an important and exciting addition to the Who Was…? series.

Thoughts: I had thought I’d read a book about South Africa for my Readings Around the World, but I guess the last few books I read about South Africa were before I started trying to read my way around the planet, so this is sort of late, since I read this book in April.

I bought this book for Tesfa for Easter because Supermom made me feel bad about not having any presents for Tesfa (Supermom is someone I know, not an amalgam of great parents or something). I felt bad, but not bad enough to go anywhere other than the grocery store where I was already going. The previous week, the grocery store had a huge stack of Roald Dahls, but they vanished and the only children’s books not involving hypersexualized Bratz or Monster High dolls were either this one about Nelson Mandela or a book about Pokémon. Easy choice.

I’m sure this whole series of Who Was books skirts some sort of copyright or trademark issues – I don’t think it was authorized by the estate of Nelson Mandela (which reminds me of an episode of Made In Canada when Alan wants to make a movie about a conman but the lies the conman told so that it would still be fiction and he wouldn’t have to buy the rights). I’m also pretty sure this book was published to capitalize on the emotion following Mandela’s death in December.

All that being said: it’s a good book. Obviously aimed at the younger crowd, and Tesfa at five may have been a bit too young to grasp some of the more salient points other than that apartheid means separating people based on skin colour and if your skin was dark, you were treated poorly. But she was interested in reading it and seeing what happened. The book didn’t seem to sugar-coat the situation. People were shot at. There were riots. Nelson Mandela wasn’t readily available for his family.

Most importantly, unlike many books that discuss race relations in terms of the benevolent white savior (The Help, To Kill A Mockingbird), Nelson Mandela and his black South African compatriots are the focus of this book. It’s probably sad that I have to be excited when a book about a POC is actually about said POC.

Random fact: Nelson Mandela’s birthday was the same day as my birthday (is? I don’t know the correct verb tense when comparing the dead to the living).

Rating: 4.5/5

Previous Readings Around the World.