Romantic Outlaws: Wollstonecraft and her Daughter Shelley

My Book Club's March 2016 read...

Full disclosure: I'm not of fan of historical reads. Although I was hopeful as I do enjoy biographies, unfortunately I was really disappointed by this one. 

A telling of the lives of both Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley. 

Sadly, this biography was especially challenging as it is greatly lacking a critical and effective editor. The author is clearly an expert on her subject, but she gets bogged down with the details and loses the readers. I found the work seriously confusing as it jumps between the two women and jumps back and forth in time--leaving the reader to remember who all the characters are and what they were doing when the last connected chapter ended. To complicate matters, the author bores the reader to tears with endless minute details that add nothing to the overall understanding of the circumstances. It didn't help matters with half of the characters having the same name or willingly changing their names half way through their lives. (Ok, so that's not the author's fault, and I can't possibly hold her responsible for my resulting confusion on this.)

Mary Wollstonecraft:
The Rebel

Clearly, the author has spent much time reading all of the correspondence of Wollstonecraft and Shelley. I was very disappointed that her endnotes are in fact, not noted throughout the text and as such are not helpful to the reader.  Gordon has lost perspective and the ability to focus on the formative events. This weakness undermines the effectiveness of this biography.  

Mary Shelley:
Author of Frankenstein

Overall confusing and unsatisfying. Here's a example of a great 350 page work that has been diluted with an extra 300 pages of confusion and boring detail. It's in need of a serious edit and overall tightening of details.

No spoilers in this one...It's spoiled before your start. It gets one star because there is no zero star option.

Canada Reads 2016: Book #2: The Hero's Walk

This year's Canada Reads theme is Starting Over.

Anita Rau Badami's novel is not only about starting over; it is a story of hope, renewal, forging on, and looking to the future. 

Here's a brief summary from Goodreads.com:

As The Hero's Walk opens, Sripathi's life is already in a state of thorough disrepair. His mother, a domineering, half-senile octogenarian, sits like a tyrant at the top of his household, frightening off his sister's suitors, chastising him for not having become a doctor, and brandishing her hypochondria and paranoia with sinister abandon. It is Sripathi's children, however, who pose the biggest problems: Arun, his son, is becoming dangerously involved in political activism, and Maya, his daughter, broke off her arranged engagement to a local man in order to wed a white Canadian. Sripathi's troubles come to a head when Maya and her husband are killed in an automobile accident, leaving their 7- year-old daughter, Nandana, without Canadian kin. Sripathi travels to Canada and brings his granddaughter home, while his family is shaken by a series of calamities that may, eventually, bring peace to their lives.  

A strand of Jasmine flower

This novel was a pleasure to read. It is beautifully written with rich, complicated characters. They are well developed and help create interest. There is a gentle plot that is enriched with a few other captivating sub-plots. Badami develops great setting: I could almost smell the strands of jasmine blossom and feel the breeze out on Sripathi's veranda. And while the initial conflict of the death of Sripathi's daughter is a tragedy, the novel does not wallow in doom and gloom.

It's a great read, and entertaining. 

One of the most beautiful scenes is that of the turtles laying eggs on the beach.

When I was a child, my best friends mother told us stories of her as a young girl in Pakistan and how her family would go to the beach to watch the turtles lay their eggs. 

The Value of Book Clubs

I'm not going to lie, sometimes the damn book gets in the way of a good Book Club meeting.

Love my Book Club friends!

Canada Reads 2016 First Read: Bone and Bread

I love the CBC!!!

I have begun my Canada Reads 2016 homework, and my first novel is Bone and Bread by Saleema Nawaz

Here is an excerpt from Heather Leighton's Globe and Mail review: 

In Bone & Bread, Beena and her younger sister, Sadhana, live in a tiny apartment above a bagel store in Montreal’s Mile End. Their father, Vishram Singh, the bagel-shop owner, dies suddenly, leaving the business to his younger and more traditional Sikh brother, Harinder. The Singh family in India had disowned their eldest son because of his marriage to a white American woman, Beena and Sadhana’s mother, in spite of her conversion to Sikhism.

After the father’s death, their apartment is set ablaze by neo-Nazis, and Sadhana soon shows signs of obsessive compulsive disorder. Tragedy strikes again when the mother dies, leaving the two young teens in the care of Harinder, the girls’ only living relative in Canada. Within a year, Sadhana is admitted to hospital for anorexia, while Beena finds herself pregnant. The child’s father, Ravi, a bagel-shop employee, is nowhere to be found.

Beena tells their story from the present as an adult living in Ottawa with her now 18-year-old son, Quinn. Sadhana, the actress, dancer and political activist, has died, and Beena must return to Montreal and empty her apartment. In the process, she uncovers evidence that raises suspicions about the circumstances surrounding her sister’s death. She also discovers that Sadhana had secretly contacted Ravi, now a rising right-wing political star.

I had difficulty with this novel. Bone and Break is suffused with strife and misery, cruelty, grief and despair--not a light read. Nawaz’s narrator, Beena, is plagued with tragedy: her ungrateful, anoretic sister Sadhana is emotionally manipulative, her father and mother pass away leaving them orphaned, and their only relative--their uncle-- is repressive and unable to love them.

The writing is a challenge too. The story skips in and out of the first person singular into plural. Stylistically, I believe that this is a problem. Although there were moments of beautiful prose, there were moments that I found myself confused by Nawaz's writing.  

Farah Mohamed will be defending Bone and Bread. She is a very interesting women in her own right. Here's a link for more info on her unique perspective on life: http://www.cbc.ca/books/2016/01/farah-mohamed.html

Farah Mohamed will be defending
this novel

I don't believe that this novel truly hits the theme of "Starting Over" for CBC's competition. Without question, this novel has many losses, and forces it's characters to adapt to change and challenge, but it's not inspirational or overly memorable.

I suspect that this isn't this year's winner. We will see if others across Canada agree. 

Here's another blog that I enjoyed reading about this novel:

http://schatjesshelves.blogspot.ca/2016/01/review-of-bone-and-bread-by-saleema.html

Canada Reads: 5 Books, One Contest. Let's get at it!

This year, I resolved to participate in the Canada Reads challenge. With the 5 finalists selected, I am away to the races with the required reading. This year's theme is "Starting Over", or transformative events that create a new beginning.

In addition to the fun reading, I secured tickets for two of the four debate days; I will be attending on Tuesday March 22, and Wednesday March 23 at the CBC Broadcasting Centre in Toronto. What fun! Sadly, Wab Kinew will not be hosting this event, as his political aspirations have forced him to step down from this project. I wish him well with the political race. (Not sure who the host will be in his stead.)

Now let me get back to my reading!

Here are the final 5 books that I will be reading:

Farah Mohamed defends Bone and Bread

Vinay Virmani defends The Hero's Walk 

Bruce Poo Tip defends Birdie

Adam Copeland defends Minister Without Portfolio

Clara Hughes defends The Illegal

Here are the authors and the celebrity personalities that will be defending their novels:

No pressure, but the Celebs better bring their A game!!!

This One Might Bug You: Cockroach...

Book Club Book #2 for 2016...Wonder how many members will make it through this one?!?

One of Canada Reads 2014 finalist, Rawi Hage's Cockroach is the story of an impoverished Iranian immigrant who is struggling with many issues in Montreal. The theme of 2014 for Canada Reads was: "One Novel to Change Canada". Having read this novel, I'm not sure that Cockroach is far reaching enough to carry that title.


Here's Goodreads' summary:

The novel takes place during one month of a bitterly cold winter in Montreal's restless immigrant community, where a self-described thief has just tried but failed to commit suicide. Rescued against his will, the narrator is obliged to attend sessions with a well-intentioned but naive therapist. This sets the story in motion, leading us back to the narrator's violent childhood in a war-torn country, forward into his current life in the smoky emigre cafes where everyone has a tale, and out into the frozen night-time streets of Montreal, where the thief survives on the edge, imagining himself to be a cockroach invading the lives of the privileged, but wilfully blind, citizens who surround him.

The main character who remains nameless struggles with:

mental health--he is delusional, and has episodes of believing he is half human, half cockroach.
financial--living in poverty, struggling with hunger, holding down a job, securing clean housing.
historical conflict--his past haunts him, he has memories that revisit him.
social problems--his friends who owe him money, and are owed money, have questionable loyalties.
cultural conflicts--these are really hi lighted by the interactions between him and his psychiatrist, Genevieve.

So how many women in the group read it? ALL OF THEM READ THE BOOK THIS MONTH!!!!! That has to be a first!!!