Red Cedar

after this i am making a resolution to keep up to date with my book blogging.

Interface
Neal Stephenson & J. Frederick George
fiction

this was published several years ago under a nom de guerre, and i guess now re-released because stepheson has become popular (or at least has a recognized name now). part spy novel, and part political crit – this book is premised on a senator who has a stroke which allows government manipulators (who seem to be comprised of shadowy groups of those who have large money interests) to hardwire his brain permanently into a “focus group” that represents the cross-section of the american public. whatever the senator says gets immediate feedback, and allows the controllers to change his story. rife with guns, chase scenes, and some dubious medicine, interface is not at all plausible, but very entertaining.

A Complicated Kindness
Miriam Toews
fiction

you know, it’s really too bad that rohinton mistry won the governer general’s award for a fine balance a few years back because now i expect every gg winner to be that good, which is why i picked up this book. having said this, a complicated kindness is a somewhat enjoyable read about a young woman marooned in mennonite town in manitoba while her family disappears, one by one, from around her. no doubt, this book stands in the canadian tradition of flat external landscapes with which tumultous internal landscapes are contrasted – and in this case the land is wide open while the characters are constrained by their religion, their community and their pasts. also like a lot of canadian fiction is a distance in the writing that makes one feel as though youa re viewing the scene from afar, which is not really the relationship i want with a story. in the end, i’m not so interested in her main character, but much more those who have disappeared, particularly the father who is quirky in a sad and interesting way. i wouldn’t buy this book again, but i would take it out of the library.

A Short History of Progress
Ronald Wright
non-fiction

the massey lecture series (sponsored by cbc radio) has produced a number of slim after-the-fact volumes of note, and this is definitely an interesting addition to the collection. really, this is a short version of jared diamond’s recent book collapse and the five essays within explore the collapse of civilizations historically (easter island, rome etc) and the very real possibility that the western empire could also be on the verge of collapse for similar reasons (environmental, political excesses). i don’t really agree with all of his conclusions – particularly that our society has a possibility of reversing the collapse scenario we currently find outselves in – but i think wright does a good job of summing up in an accessible 136 pages the crux of the arguments for potential collapse and change.

All About Love: New Visions & Communion: The Female Search for Love
bell hooks
non-fiction

hooks is not only an activist for change, she is an activist and a believer in the right to and power of love – and her recent trilogy on the subject explores this eloquently. when i was in california back in february, a friend recommended these to me, and i’m so glad. definitely these are some of the best and most progressive books i have read on defining, understanding, and looking for love within the patriarchal morass we often find ourselves in. love, she posits, is subverted by popular notions of love on television and in the movies – and it is a radical act to reclaim love, and to be open to it, and to live it. i found these books hopeful and moving and they made me realize my own rights to love free of coercion and violence, and that this is as worth a goal as any.

After Goodlake’s
Terence Young
fiction

terence young was my favourite teacher in high school. from him i took classes in english lit, creative writing and french. he was also the teacher-sponsor for the peace club, and if the truth be told, i had a small crush on him in the way of girls who have uber-cool teachers (but then again, i also had a crush on his wife – celebrated poet patricia young). back then he wasn’t published yet, but in the last few years there have been three books, two of short stories. after goodlake’s is his first novel, and although i’m not sure i liked it as much as his short fiction, there were many touchstones in it i found vaguely comforting, and his characters are so very – real. the plot concerns one fergus goodlake, deli-owner and owner of a midlife crisis that results in an affair that slowly unravels his life. the honest representation of the people involved is waht makes this an interesting (if not familiar to life) read. really just a slice of life, a falling crucifix represents the undoing as the lives of the goodlakes are forever subverted, as so often quirky or random moments can do – and it’s up to fergus to try to pick up the pieces and try to make ammends. somehow this rang a little too close to home for me – as it’s a subject matter i try not to read about too much… but it also made me realize how predicatble we humans are….

these days i read a lot – partly owing to the fact i commute 3 and a half hours a day, and partly because i spend more time alone. one of the main reasons i started this blog in the first place is because a friend at one time commented to me that he really wanted to get ahold of my reading list because he wanted a reference point to some inteteresting reads – but despite that, i have not book blogged at all in several months. since my last book-blog installment, i have read at least 20 more books and i can’t even remember what all they are, but today i decided to catalogue the ones i could remember and start reviewing them for the blog. the handful below are the start, another 2 installments will follow in the next few days as i get the brief reviews to them written. i didn’t want to overwhelm the blog with a 10-page post, so i figured spacing it out would be better than not posting at all.

The Demon Haunted World, Science as a Candle in the Dark
Carl Sagan
non-fiction

this book sets out to debunk a lot of the crop-circle, ufo, faith-healer mythology that is out there in the world, and i picked it up for precisely this reason. it’s not that i don’t want to believe on some level, but i also am interested in all explanations for phenomena, particularly about some things. sagan spends most of his time in this book examining ufo claims, but also ventures into other subjects, and ends the book by criticizing the lack for solid education (and specifically science education) available in modern america. really, to accept sagan’s argument, you have to accept a whole paradigm that says science is right and civilization is always good, and if we can’t prove it through civilization’s scientific methods, it doesn’t exist. there is no room in this exploration for intuition, and certainly no acceptance that indigenous mythology may contain truths we don’t understand in our current state. an interesting read, for sure, but sagan’s scientific ego is large and unfortunately this causes him to stop short of going to the lengths he needs to in order to “prove” his arguments.

Memoirs of a Geisha
Arthur Golden
fiction

i picked this up at the ferry bookshop one day months ago for something to read, and couldn’t put it down once i did. of course, this caused a media sensation when it first came out in the mid-nineties because the writing is so superb and the subject matter fascinating (the life of a pre-world war two geisha). most surprising to me is golden’s ability to write in the female voice as convincingly as he does, and his attention to the details of the times (which i understand are very accurate and gleaned from a geisha who provided a lot of information to golden for his book). this is a wistful fictional memoir about a time of artisanal mistresses, which of course can be viewed through the feminist lens as both a positive and negative place for women to have been in this society – it was a hard life in many ways, but also afforded some freedoms that married women did not have. i would like to read an actual geisha’s memoir in addition to this to get the whole perspective at some point.

A Natural History of Love
Diane Ackerman
non-fiction

diane ackerman takes on the subject of love, much as she has taken on other subjects as an author of creative non-fiction over the years, and explores the history, physiology and mythologies of this romantic subject. as always, ackerman proves that the world of nonfiction need not be non-literate or staid, as her writing carries a certain lyrical quality and poetic sensibility i always enjoy. this was not my favourite of her books, and it may be that the subject matter is just not that interesting to me (though bell hooks wrote a series on love i very much enjoyed – so i’m not sure this is true), but i much preferred a natural history of the senses to this.

In Plain Sight: Reflections on Life in Downtown Eastside Vancouver
Robertson & Culhane
non-fiction

not another sensational read, culhane and robertson chronicle the lives of seven women in the dtes who are living with addictions, poverty and prostitution, in an empathetic and honest way. interviews comprise the bulk of this book, and for people interested in the real lives and struggles of people in the dtes (as opposed to the media hyped version we are fed on global night after night), this book is a good and often moving introduction.

The Trouble With Music
Mat Callahan
non-fiction

this book arrived as part of my “friends of akpress” shipment a few months ago, and is a must-read for musicians and artists seeking some analysis about the damage corporatization has done to the creation of authentic, community-driven music over the past few decades. mat callahan writes as a person with decades of experience as a musician, composer and music producer which gives his ideas about where things have gone addition emphasis. the question now is – where do we go as artists and musicians to change this paradigm and take back our creativity?

Snow Crash
Neal Stephenson
fiction

i realized when i read this book that pretty much everyone i know read it years ago – which made me feel behind the times, but not at all sorry i finally picked it up. snow crash (for you few who have not read it) is a fast-paced, cyberadventure that will keep you gripped from start to finish. set in both the *real* and *virtual* landscapes of the not so distant corporate-controlled future, hiro protaganist and his skate-courier sidekick – yt, this book contains both the best and worst plotlines of the cyberpunk genre, a sideline into sumerian history, and a prophesy for the future that is extreme yet believable. what blows me away is that the book was written in 1992, and a lot of the technology that stephenson references was really only in it’s nascent form now and is only today being realized as a real potential for the future (ie – the metaverse and second life have a lot in common, if only we could live within second life via headsets and googles). anyhow, it’s definitely book porn (ie, more contrived gratuitousness than actual plot) but really very literary and political for what it’s worth.