My top 5 books of 2011

December 31, 2011 Leave a comment

Last year I attempted to to read 26 books in 52 weeks, but unfortunately life got in the way and could only manage to get through 16. This year I contemplated doing the same challenge, but figured I’d just read as much as I could and not look for a goal, but I managed to read 16 again this year anyway. Oh, these are my favourite books that I’ve read this year, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they were published this year:

5. Between the Assassinations

Between the AssassinationsAravind Adiga’s Between the Assassinations was the second book I reviewed this year and I was really pleased with his second output.

The book features a series of ‘day in the life’ stories from people of (fictional) Kittur, India, shortly after the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984. With that lens it looks at many issues including: caste, sexual disease, drug problems, political corruption, the influx of villagers seeking a better life in the city, and much more.

As with many of the books that really speak to me, this one has very strong characters whose stories stick with you long after you’ve moved on from their tale.

4. Fall of Giants

Fall of GiantsIt seems like I’ve only read the biggest books by Ken Follett; first there was Pillars of the Earth, then World Without End and now Fall of Giants. Each of these were either a bit less or a bit more than 1000 pages, so they weren’t all that fun to read on public transit, but they were all very well written.

Fall of Giants is a fictional story based on history and takes place during the 13 1/2 years leading up to the First World War and it’s end. Each character introduced in the book cross paths at one point or another, whether it be an American diplomat coming to the aide of two Russian slum-raised teenagers, or Ethel the former housewife of Earl Fitzherbert of her village rising up in the political ranks and making an adversary of him in the process.

3. The Given Day

The Given DayWhen I saw The Given Day by Dennis Lehane I immediately picked it up. I’d read two of his other novels, Mysic River and Gone Baby Gone and really enjoyed his writing style. This one was a bit different though – still set in Boston the others, but this time in the 1930s.

The novel follows the two main storylines. The first is that of Danny Coughlin, a Boston police officer; the second follows Luther Lawrence, an African American man who just can’t seem to stay out of trouble. The two become intertwined as we see them separately take on issues of unions and race. Lehane does wonders with mingling the two lives and his writing is full of imagery and the words jump off the page to take you back in time.

2. Steve Jobs: Biography

Steve Jobs I managed to get through Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson rather quickly (for my standards) and just posted my review for it a couple days ago, so have a look:

Review of the Steve Jobs biography

I was thinking it would make a great movie. Do you think any director could do it justice and live up to Jobs’s standards? There was a movie called The Pirates of Silicon Valley in 1999 and it starred Noah Wyle as Jobs. I haven’t seen it but I think this biography would make a bit more of an interesting story since so many of Jobs’s friends and enemies have spoken up about him. I also think Christian Bale would make a great Jobs.

1. The Help

The Help

The Help is set in the 1960s and looks at the issue of race relations in Jackson, Mississippi. The premise is ‘Skeeter’ a white woman is looking to the maids of the city to help her write a story from the point of view of ‘the help’. You just have to do a Google search and you’ll see it’s a book that has gotten as much flack as it has praise.

One interesting news article from September says Stockett stole her identity for the character of Aibileen. Her name is Abilene Cooper and she was the maid to Stockett’s brother for 12 years. Much of the similarities are the same, but the case was thrown out.

I feel at the very least the book is a great starting point for race discussions.

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The Peep Diaries: An eye opening look into how much we share online

December 27, 2011 5 Comments

PeepingHave you ever wondered why you bother to share things online? People complain about privacy issues all the time, yet willingly post every facet of their lives on sites that are designed to have that content shared.

The Peep Diaries by Hal Niedzviecki was sitting on my bookshelf for quite a while after I’d won it in a contest run by the CBC show The Passionate Eye. I originally watched the documentary Peep Culture, which is a great example of looking into why we do what we do online. The book, while covering many of the examples in the documentary, delves deeper into the subject.

The Peep DiariesNiedzviecki defines “peep culture” early in the book:

“Peep culture is reality TV, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, MySpace and Facebook. It’s blogs, chat rooms, amateur porn sites, virally spread digital movies of a fat kid pretending to be to be a Jedi Knight, cell phone photos – posted online – of your drunk friend making out with her ex-boyfriend, and citizen surveillance. Peep is the backbone as Web 2.0 and the engine of corporate and government data mining. It’s like the famous line about pornography: you know it when you see it. And you do see it. Al the time, every day, everywhere.”

As you can tell by the MySpace reference, the book is a tad dated. It can be distracting in some cases where he discusses numbers or tools like MySpace which are no longer popular. Regardless of the tools, the examples he uses still make sense.

Throughout the book Niedzviecki looks at many different ways in which “peep” is invading our lives. From online voyeurs creating a separate identity, to reality TV and how surveillance has evolved from taboo to downtown streets to fodder for YouTube viewers.

He paints an interesting picture to show that through these different outlets we’re looking to build that sense of community that was lost in the age of “me”. When communities were closer knit, privacy didn’t exist nearly as much as it does today, if at all. We always had someone to share with, or protect us from bad seeds, but now that’s all changed.

He brings up a great point in that we’re putting out all this content in the context of connecting with like-minded individuals, but in reality the info we post is used by larger companies to make money. Why must we share everything online? What did you do before blogs, Facebook and Twitter started invading your life? Could you stop today if you had to?

The more I read, the more I thought about why I like to participate in online communities. While I do keep a lot offline, I’m open about who I am and the issues I believe in. I like to share that with others online who are willing to have a conversation about any of those topics. I’m not about having a double identity or someone that posts daily videos of themselves; it’s just simply connecting with others and learning from them, or sharing my own knowledge/experiences.

The Peep Diaries does a great job of starting the conversation about privacy and how much we’re willing to give up for a sense of community. It would seem that society is moving toward that Big Brother scenario, except we’re all watching each other, and more and more people are willing to go along with the ride without questioning it. I give it a 4/5.

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Review of The Best Laid Plans and The High Road

December 21, 2011 Leave a comment

The Best Laid PlansThe High RoadSince I read both The Best Laid Plans and The High Road by Terry Fallis back-to-back, I’ve decided to give a 2-for-1 review.

In the first book, we’re introduced to Daniel Addison, who through a series of unfortunate events, decides to leave Ottawa politics. One condition of his career change to professor, is that he must find a Liberal candidate in his extremely Conservative riding just outside of Ottawa.

After a long search and a lot of persuasion, Daniel convinces the grizzly professor, Angus McLintock to run (in name only) for the spot. Much to the dismay of both men, Angus comes into power and Daniel has to jump back into the fold of politics as his campaign manager, though this time his stay in Ottawa is anything but ordinary.

Angus is a great character in the sense that he has no favours to return, no hidden agenda and wants to actually do what’s best for Canada – imagine that! It’s funny to picture this grumpy, hairy Scotsman in his 60s causing such a ruckus in Parliament, but it’s also refreshing. What I loved both about the books is for a few hundred pages I could actually picture a politician not caring about his own personal agenda. After a few painful Federal, Provincial and Municipal voter turnouts it made me wonder if people would actually start feeling positive about politics again if the majority of candidates were like Angus. Don’t think that’ll ever happen though.

In this National Post article from February 2011, CNN broadcaster Ali Velshi sums up what makes the story so compelling:

“This is a book that speaks to the frustration and the disenfranchisement of people all across the world right now. We’re seeing it playing out. All people want is fairness in democracy. We’re not as bad off as other societies are, but we are certainly in a place where people don’t think they’re heard by their elected officials. This book speaks to all of those people and says to people ‘You have an opportunity to be heard.’”

While I did enjoy both storylines, the first with Angus getting into politics and the second with him running for a snap re-election, I did have a few concerns.

It was too clean: Every issue the McLintock team faced always seemed to have a convenient solution, or something tended to work in their favour completely by chance.

Too much exaggeration: Would Canadians really care about every little thing that was going down in this small riding? Yes, the politician was a wacky character who made for great TV, but I could never picture national coverage going to a little town’s election results, or the United States President hearing about him and wanting to make a visit.

Grammar Police: The grammar corrections were kind of funny to begin with but it got played out real quick. I get it was just how their characters were, and I respect that, but that type of person really grinds my gears.

Overall I enjoyed the books. They were easy reads and I’m happy Terry is having success (CBC is making The Best Laid Plans into a miniseries – my vote is for Paul Gross to play Daniel and Brendan Gleeson to play Angus), but I’ve come to the conclusion that I humor in novels just isn’t for me. I give each book a 3.5/5.

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The Given Day offers a glimpse into America’s past

August 24, 2011 Leave a comment

the given dayI’ve said it in my reviews of Boston-based movies like The Fighter or The Town, but there’s something about stories set in that city that draw me in – that’s what happened with The Given Day by Dennis Lehane.

When I saw this one the first thing that caught my eye was the time period – post-World War One America (mostly Boston). I thought I’d give it a try because I haven’t read too many books from that era and I’ve enjoyed Lehane’s writing (Mystic River is one of my favourite books).

The novel follows the two storylines. The first is that of Danny Coughlin, a Boston police officer. He’s caught in a battle to follow his father, Captain Thomas Coughlin’s wishes and rise through the ranks with his guidance and sway on the force, or be his own man and join the less popular, but more righteous fight to unionize the force (BPD strike, 1919)

The second storyline follows Luther Lawrence, an African American man who just can’t seem to stay out of trouble. After getting a chance to start a new life with his pregnant girlfriend in Tulsa, Oklahoma he gets caught up in the wrong crowd. Eventually Luther has to escape, by himself, to Boston where he finds work with the NAACP and Danny’s father, Thomas and on a mission to turn his life around.

In Danny’s story, I enjoyed the insight into how the Police operated as individual departments, and how officers were treated. In 1919, officers were expected to provide protection without question while going underpaid, living in dilapidated rooming houses and working with very little time off, among other issues. The powers that be justified it by saying they were public servants and should just accept it. It’s so astonishing to see how far as a society we’ve come. Unions now hold all the power in cases like the Police force, and the public servants are far better off than many private citizens.

Luther was a character I kept rooting for. No matter how much he wanted to succeed, some innate negative force just kept pulling him back. As soon as he thought he’d escaped his problems in Tulsa and was doing the right thing in Boston, Eddie McKenna, a dirty cop and friend of the Coughlin family decided to dig into Luther’s past. Over time, Luther became stronger, and through his relationship with Danny he developed the strength necessary to overcome – though it wasn’t by taking the high ground, necessarily.

My favourite part however, was a side story featuring baseball great, Babe Ruth. Throughout the book, we’re given a fictional glimpse into what his life may have been like during his time with the Red Sox. At the beginning, however, he comes upon Luther playing a ball game with some African American players. Ruth, along with other major leaguers having broken down in Ohio on their train ride to Boston, play a pickup game that leaves the two men with sour tastes in their mouths, and Ruth with lasting memories of Luther.

The Given Day is a lot to take in, in terms of storylines, but it’s such an appealing read. Lehane’s writing is full of imagery and the words jump off the page and take you back in time. At 733 pages, it’s a bit of a time consuming read, but I enjoyed every second of it. The Given Day gets a 4/5.

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What the Dog Saw: Reviewed

May 25, 2011 Leave a comment

What The Dog SawHow does society solve its homeless problem? What do job interviews really tell us? These are just a couple of the many questions that Malcolm Gladwell tries to find the answers to in What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures, using a collection of articles written for The New Yorker over the years.

The best way I can describe this book is by saying that it’s about problem solving on various levels. Gladwell seeks answers from the experiences entrepreneurs, a dog whisperers, a profiler, and a number of other people and organizations.

The first part looked at Obsessives, Pioneers, and Other Varieties of Minor Genius was the least interesting part of the book for me, with the exception of the final two pieces taking a look at the invention of birth control, and the profile of Cesar Millan, which was the inspiration for the book title. The reason why I did not like this section as much was that it was too focused on specific businesses and how they solved their particular industry’s problem. I’m sure it’s interesting to many, but reading about it was not really for me.

The second part highlighted Theories, Predictions, and Diagnoses. It definitely upped the interest for me with articles on the downfall of Enron, solving the homelessness problem, and plagiarism, among others. Looking at societal issues and the human psyche is something I can sink my teeth into all day, so these pieces really stood out for me.

The third part discussed Personality, Character, and Intelligence which again took a look at the human psyche and how we make snap judgements of people. This section reminded me a bit of Gladwell’s Blink, so while I enjoyed reading the examples, the subject matter was repetitive.

In the end What the Dog Saw just doesn’t compare to Blink and The Tipping Point. With the lack of connection between each story, it had a more text book feel, and therefore I wasn’t as motivated to keep reading. With the other two books, I couldn’t put them down because there was such a great flow. I give What the Dog Saw a 3/5.

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