A Scanner Darkly - Phillip K. Dick

Another fabulous book.  The depiction of the entire drug world and the people in it is so rare in it's accuracy. Obviously the authour's experience helped with that.  Interestingly, in his authour's note he refers to it (all the drug activity) as 'playing' and includes a list of dedications - his friends' names and a brief description (ie. permanent massive brain damage, permanent psychosis, deceased, etc.).  I feel like parts of his life were probably very, very sad, but he's definitely given us some amazing work that will carry on.

Some themes: the relationship between cops and criminals, specifically drug addicts (though I don't know if you can just throw all drug addicts into a 'criminals' category, so we'll use that broadly), relationships between addicts and their drugs, addicts and other addicts, addicts and the world, drugs and capitalism, the right and left brain, identity, knowing/unknowing.

A vision of an alternate present that really isn't all that alternate.  I especially liked the ending, though the pace does taper off a bit, but the lines drawn (or circle drawn, you might say) between capitalism/greed/profit and drug addiction are ballsy and disturbingly clear.

The Crack in Space - Phillip K. Dick

Last week I went to the library looking for Variable Man because I want to see the Adjustment Bureau  movie (though I've since heard they have completely different plotlines).  The library didn't have it but I ended up taking home these two Phillip K. Dick books and loving them.

Crack in Space brought up really interesting ideas about what it means to be human and how we might react when confronted with another version of ourselves.  I liked how it took race issues one step further.  Planet of the Apes-esque, it's an eerie look at Dick's vision of our possible future.  Creepiest for me was the vision of warehouses full of row upon row of sleeping/frozen bodies, young people, waiting for an unknown time when a better life might be available for them.  The parallel-Earth thing was also a little mind-bending to think about.  However as far as I know many of our top academic minds do believe in that idea of there being infinite possible worlds/lives playing out kind of super-imposed on top of each other (From the Corner of His Eye is a cool Dean Koontz book I like that also explores this idea).

The book made me remember how much I like his writing.  Also made me want to learn more about prehistoric man. And parallel worlds.

666 Park Avenue - Gabriella Pierce

I brought this home from the communal cupboard at work thinking to give it to the two teen girls who live upstairs.  One day I had nothing to read and ended up reading this all afternoon.

I hate to say anything negative about anything (such as a novel) a person put so much time, effort and no doubt heart & soul into.  That being said, I can't really say this book is awesome.  It was not terrible, but not great either.

It's a story about a French girl who finds out she's a witch, then finds out her new finacee not only killed her grandmother  (whom she hadn't seen in 6 years anyway) but brought her to New York to marry because he's also from a family of powerful witches and his super-witchy mom made him do it.  Oh, but he really does love her and want to marry her.  On the upside, it only takes her a few days to go from not being able to use her powers at all to being strong enough to take on the evil witch mother-in-law.  However, the ending (involving a really creepy brother-who's-been-locked-in-an-attic-for-years, dungeon, wedding, a cab, and an uprooted tree)  falls really short of the fight you're expecting.  Surprise surprise.

I think I've made it sound a little more terrible than it is (sorry Ms Pierce).  The general idea and main character have potential, but the story could have been much fuller, more .... thought out? Still better than vampires but it felt like it had holes, or was written in a rush.

Waste of an afternoon.

A Note on the Walking Dead

If anyone's actually reading this, they might have noticed I'm catching up on a ton of entries tonight.  It's been so long since I was writing that I can only remember the order I read these books in, and my impressions (which, depending on book quality, linger accordingly).  So in amoung the various books of the past month or so I've been reading the Walking Dead, and I know it was after Sense and Sensibility that I was finally able to get my hands on Too Far Gone, which is volume 13.

I am so in love with the characters, the art, the story.  The worst part about it all is that now I have to wait for the next installment, and will have to keep waiting on and on as it is a continuing story.  I hate waiting.  In the meantime, I constantly recommend these graphics to people - most of whom make faces and say (either snobbily or with a whine) "I'm not into zombies."  To which I invariably want to respond - HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOU WON'T READ IT????  Besides, it's more about human nature/survival....the zombies are more of a....backdrop, if you will.  I didn't think I'd be into zombies either.  And now I'm dying for the next Walking Dead.

Hurry up Robert Kirkman!!

Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

Last year I read Mansfield Park and then, later, Emma.  I don't think I'd have ever really had the desire to start reading Jane Austen had my old roommate not owned several of the movies and made me watch them.  Thanks Liz.  Turns out I love Jane Austen.

Now, at work I've had a lot of conversations with customers about Jane Austen and it seems to be very much a love or hate kind of thing.  I myself was borderline but reading Sense and Sensibility has fully converted me.  How could you not love it?  These books were pretty much the invention of chick lit.

Anyway, I fully enjoyed the book.  It was much funnier than I expected; gave me a new respect for Ms Austen's wit. I particularly liked the contrast in the personalities of the two sisters, and the various themes of knowing/unknowing that run through the book - people believing they know the truth, when the truth is completely different. It happens a lot.

I get the sense from her writing that she put a lot of herself and the people around her into her novels - I don't know why, it's not based on anything, it's just my impression.  As such it somehow comforted me to know that some guys were still wankers even back in the day.  Or at least had wanker potential.  Also I was amused to recognize in the malicious character of Lucy a girl I knew in high school.  Nice to know some things never change.....probably part of the reason Austen's books are still beloved by so many.

That timeless  quality.

The Chrysalids - John Wyndham

I don't know how I'd managed to never read this book before - I understand a lot of people end up reading it for school but I guess none of my teachers ever chose it.  So I'd heard it was great but didn't have a real idea of what to expect. 

First of all, I thought it was great that the story took place in Labrador.  I don't think I have ever in my life read the name Labrador in a piece of fiction before, and it's not a place you generally come across in everyday life anyway.  Poor Labradorians.  I bet every school-age kid there has read this; if only for the novelty of actually seeing their province represented somewhere.  Anyway, it struck me as random but cool.  Though not so obscure as Labrador, the same theme applies to New Zealand as it appears in the novel.  A seemingly odd choice of a saving grace that makes perfect sense in the context of the world as it is portrayed in the story. 

The story itself is brief and moves along quickly, with everything coming to a rapid climax and the ending tying up neatly.  A good, straightforward novel that I really enjoyed.  Classic science fiction is awesome science fiction. 

The Secret Lives of Dresses - Erin McKean

After two heartbreaking books in a row I needed some lightness.  I brought this book home mainly because of the absolutely gorgeous dress showcased on the cover.  It ended up being a good choice.

Authour Erin McKean keeps a website chronicling a dress a day, writing little stories about each.  This led her to create the novel, in which a girl returns home to run her grandmother's vintage clothing store.  Sadness and happiness follow, leaning more on the happiness side. Plus a huge dash of amazing clothes.  Definitely a 'girl' book, it was exactly what I needed and made me vow to wear my dresses more often this summer.

An interesting addition to the book came in the form of many little stories told from the point of view of the dresses themselves.  I thought it was an original touch, loved it.  Made me think of all the stories various items in my own closet could be telling.

A nice, fun, easy, satisfying book; what my mom would have called 'a beach read,' but with a bit of extra depth.

Fifteen Days - Christie Blatchford

This was a book I kept picking up at work, reading the back, talking about it with different people...I don't know what took me so long to read it but I finally brought it home and was transformed.  Moving, intense, enlightening, so, so vivid...a book of many wonders.

Its hard to get a clear picture of what is going on in this war, what has gone on, why we're there, what we're doing.  The day-to-day lives of Canadian soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan seem to be a mystery to the general public (myself included, obviously).  I think this is partly due to the inability of the media to capture something so broad in a 3-5 minute segment on the evening news; the difficulty in saying everything one might want to in a newspaper article that has to take up exactly three-quarters of a page....I can see how it's hard.

This novel is able to give scope and depth to the war, to the soldiers, to Canada's role in the whole thing.  It is told in segments detailing fifteen days that all represented in Ms Blatchford's opinion/experience some kind of turning point or momentous event in the war to that point.  Together the stories form a complete picture I feel is somehow lacking in our collective Canadian consciousness, a picture of what we have accomplished so far in that godforsaken desert - and what it has cost us.

I was seriously impressed by the authour herself.  I could tell as soon as I started reading the acknowledgements in the front of the book I was going to love her voice (plus she seems to swear as much as I do, which is awesome).  She does not pull punches, does not lack in empathy, does not flinch in the telling.

This book wrecked me. This book enlightened me. This book made me rethink war, Canada, peace. Soldiers.  It made my heart pound while I followed the soldiers through firefights in my mind, and almost every  chapter left me teared up (and I'm really no pansy).  It has won a Governor General's award - so I'm not the only one who has some serious respect for this achievement of a novel.

Side Note -- I really feel this should become part of the high school curriculum.  When you learn about the big wars of the last century in high school, the majority of material available refers mainly to the US and British roles, which is a shame.  Books like this can prevent it happening now.  This is a perfect compilation of Canadian success and loss to bring home the realities of this war when we teach future generations about it.

Side Side Note -- I would also love to see this as a play.  It would translate amazingly well to the stage and it would reach a wide audience.  This would be a perfect project for the Canadian Stage Company.

A Woman in Berlin - Anonymous

So this was a re-read; pulled it from the shelf in my bedroom.  Picked it up again to read a bit while I was in between books and ended up reading the whole thing again.  This book is so astounding.  I guess I've read it a few times now and every time it just rocks me.

A Woman in Berlin is actually a journal kept by a woman from April - June 1945.  She chronicles the chaotic last few weeks of the siege on Berlin and the first few weeks of the Russian occupation.  When I'm reading her words I'm always reminding myself - this actually happened.  These are real people she saw die, real people who raped her, real people who suffered.  It's very, very rare to come across an eye-witness account of the second World War like this.  It is unusual also to find something from the time written by a regular Berliner...albeit an uncommon woman such as this who can write with such unflinching clarity about the insanity happening all around her.  She was a journalist before and after the war, which lends a completeness to her observations.

There's a lot more I want to say about it, but I can't put it properly into words, so I'll settle for this. This unknown woman is a hero of mine.  Her story is a priceless document.  It's a perspective of war everyone should see.