Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne

Around the World in 80 Days (Extraordinary Voyages 11)
by Jules Verne, translated by Michael Glencross
Penguin Classics, 2004 (originally published in French in 1872)
248 pages

I feel kind of guilty, because a) I haven't been blogging, and b) I am cribbing a bunch of these notes from my book club notes and so am kind of not really blogging again. But at least there's some new material up here. It's not that I haven't been reading - I have - but more that I haven't been finishing much, and I have started quite a bit and either given it up for good or given it up for an indefinite period of time. It's also probably something to do with having a two-year-old who wants us to read and read and read, and who goes to bed late, and it's something to do with work changes that have been happening (good!) and spring! is! here! So we're spending lots of time outdoors and birdwatching and gardening and... not blogging.

Anyhow. So Jules Verne. This is the first thing I've ever read by him, though I recall that Journey to the Centre of the Earth was one of my favourite movies as a kid. The little bits of 20 000 Leagues Under the Sea that I used to catch while it was playing on repeat on one of the three t.v. channels we got when I was a kid used to scare the complete pants off me, so I never have seen the full thing. And I have somehow escaped seeing any of the adaptations of Around the World in 80 Days at all. Verne is a bit of a gap in my reading, being as he is often considered the grand-père of science fiction. Perfect, therefore, for my genre book club.

Around the World in 80 Days was originally published in 1872 as a serial in France, and collected into a novel edition in 1873. It is considered one of Verne's best works, though it contains none of the speculative technology that Verne employed in other works, and therefore can't really be considered science fiction. That said, it is speculative, in that no one had actually accomplished the feat (the first person to do so, in 1889, was Nellie Bly), and employs the best factual information Verne could get at the time; so it skims very close to science fiction. It is considered a classic of modern adventure fiction. The main character is Phileas Fogg, a rigidly eccentric, very wealthy British gentleman who takes a bet at his club one evening that he can circumnavigate the globe in 80 days. He drags his newly employed French valet Passepartout along for the ride (Passepartout, it could be argued, is the real hero of the story.) Along the way they rescue a maiden in distress, purchase an elephant, take a wind-powered sledge across the frozen prairies, are attacked by Sioux warriors and waylaid by an enormous herd of bison, arrested, and finally resort to piracy on the high seas to get where they are going on time.

I didn't really love it but I certainly didn't hate it either, and I'm quite glad I read it. I think the big hurdle for me (aside from some of the cringe-worthy and unhappily predictable racist bits, particularly in the section where the train across the American prairies is attacked by Sioux warriors) was Verne's pedantic style, and his habit of getting sidetracked by... uh, "interesting" technical details. He spent more time describing the shortcomings of the P&O ships than the rescue of Passepartout from the Sioux.

The characters were placeholders and occasionally totally inexplicable, and clearly there to serve the plot, though I will admit that this does leave the reader's imagination entirely free to fill in whatever gaps they would like, and mine generally did. It was interesting to read the portrayal of Phileas Fogg compared to Passepartout, knowing that certain French/British rivalries were still very much in force at the time of the book's writing: Fogg is completely unreachable; Passepartout, while more relatable, is often rather a puppy-dog-like dufus, though a very brave and agile one.

One piece of criticism I read suggested that none of the English translations available really do Verne's writing justice, which could be part of the problem, though part of me doubts that the translators can do much when he chooses to spend a bunch of time elaborating on the genius of American railway engineering instead of the inner life of his characters. If I had the patience I could see trying a different translation, and perhaps I will some day, but I thought Michael Glencross did quite a serviceable job with the material he had.

As an interesting side note: I had to see if wind-powered ice sledges actually existed, because I was pretty much thinking that was an invention straight out of Verne's very creative, very speculative, and very scientific mind. Apparently not. Right around the time Verne was writing this book they were making headlines for racing trains and beating them.

All in all, glad I read it, would recommend it to the right person (interested in historical adventure, perhaps, and in a light, quick read.) Not going to be considered one of my favourite books, but I do feel like Verne is part of the consciousness of our culture, and now I have a better background understanding of why. Would probably try Verne again, most likely Journey or 20 000 Leagues, though I'll admit Five Weeks in a Balloon rather tickles my fancy too.

Coal Dust Kisses by Will Ferguson

Coal Dust Kisses: A Christmas Memoir
by Will Ferguson
Viking Canada, 2010
57 pages

Evidence that science doesn't know everything: Science will tell you that the Northern Lights are silent, cherry blossoms have no scent, and the likelihood of Santa Claus actually existing is low, to say the least.

But in each case I can assert the opposite, just as firmly and with something approaching empirical certainty. For I have heard the Northern Lights, caught the scent of cherry blossoms on the wind, and seen the evidence for Santa Claus firsthand - in the mirror, written on my very skin, a faint but undeniable smudge, Christmas, made manifest.

So begins Will Ferguson's very short and very charming little Christmas memoir. The first thing that struck me was the writing. I've never read anything by Will Ferguson before, though he comes highly recommended by many both for his nonfiction and his fiction. The reputation, if this tiny slice of holiday life is to be trusted, is well-earned. Not only does he write with clarity and gentle humour, his turn of phrase is graceful. His writing feels good to read.

(Or perhaps I am just partial to it because in this little informal piece he uses a lot of parentheses, and we all know how fond I am of parenthetical asides.)

As one might expect from a book that is a scant 57 pages long, there isn't a lot here to write about. I read this with one of my book clubs and we didn't have a lot of discussion on the book itself, though we went a lot of tangential directions from it. Ferguson is talking about Christmases he remembers, tradition, and family; he is drawing a faint arc from his great-grandfather in Cape Breton, west with his grandfather, and around the world with Ferguson himself, then back to Western Canada with his own children. There is, because this is a book about family and tradition, a slight melancholy to accompany the sweet and the gently funny. One gets the impression that Ferguson is working through something, not just writing for the benefit of the holiday reader. Or solely for the benefit of his own boys, though one gets the impression that this is a book written specifically for them and the dedication confirms it.

This is, though, a book that couldn't have been any longer. I didn't really want more. (As one of our members said, "Sometimes I wondered... what's the point of this book?") Well, it's a memoir. It's someone telling stories and making that telling look very easy, writing with an ease that if I know anything about writing is anything but easy. But any longer would have been more than necessary, would have made it less enjoyable and more work to read. Its aim isn't just to entertain, though it does that, nor is it to make the reader think, though it does that too at points. It's a sweet little record, a sharing of something special. You are being let in on the story, allowed to peek through the frosty window, just for a little moment in time.

Enjoyable, not unmissable. If you like a little amusing holiday reading that won't take long (perfect for such a busy time of year, really) go ahead and pick this up. It's liable to make you laugh out loud, and it may make you think about the traditions that surround this time of year, that seem so vital to our own holiday experiences, and how those come about and how those change over time. I will certainly be reading more of Ferguson's work; perhaps one of his travel memoirs next.

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

Invisible Cities
by Italo Calvino (trans. William Weaver)
Vintage Classics, 1997 (original Italian published in 1972)
162 pages

I wish I had something beautiful to say to start this entry, but next to Calvino my writing feels pedestrian and my observations mundane. Invisible Cities is breathtaking. I don't think -- though I am not entirely sure -- that this book is genius or perfect, but it was a remarkable reading experience and I'm looking forward to going back in once my own copy arrives. I am looking forward to tracing threads and mulling over ideas and wallowing in the language.

Thanks to Aarti, I went into this book knowing what to expect. I knew I wasn't getting a novel, though there was a hint more of a narrative (though really, it's hard to call it that) than I did expect. But as she said, it was a series of very short pieces, some only a paragraph and at most three or four pages, each about a different fictional city or describing an interaction between Kublai Khan and Marco Polo. The pieces are each related to each other, though sometimes in very tenuous or subtle ways, and the interactions between Kublai Khan and Marco Polo bookend each of nine sections. There is an overall pattern, like a piece of music, and there are other, less obvious patterns at play throughout the book. It feels like the sort of book that I might actually want to read critical interpretations of, but at the same time I want to resist, so I can discover it for myself.

And I loved it. I loved every second of reading this book. I have no idea how to read it, I have no idea if I read it "right," but that doesn't matter at all. At its best, I think Invisible Cities taps into something universal. The rest of the time it is just gorgeous. Very, very rarely it may slip into a cliche or a pedestrian moment that seems a bit too... easy, perhaps. But that didn't happen very often, and maybe it didn't happen at all, and those moments will vanish upon rereads (it's possible, I suppose, that it could go the other way, too, and seem more cliched and pedestrian upon rereads; I hope not.)

Each city is its own entity, but each city is also every city. Some might say -- the blurbs do, Kublai Khan eventually does -- that it is just one city Marco Polo is describing; I have never been there, but I recognize it in the cities I do know. And yet they are strange and wonderful, too, each city described. And perhaps even better is to recognize cities that truly do exist today in the same strange and wonderful terms, a moment of sheer reading perfection when it comes about unexpectedly.

Sometimes I worry that I'm too much Mary Bennet, making my extracts and barely scratching the surface of meanings, living through my books and not enough through my experience. But I've made extracts, and here are a few to share.

The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.

and later:

So if I wished to describe Aglaura to you, sticking to what I personally saw and experienced, I should have to tell you that it is a colourless city, without character, planted there at random. But this would not be true, either: at certain hours, in certain places along the street, you see opening before you the hint of something unmistakable, rare, perhaps magnificent; you would like to say what it is, but everything previously said of Aglaura imprisons your words and obliges you to repeat rather than say. 

Therefore the inhabitants still believe they live in an Aglaura which grows only with the name Aglaura and they do not notice the Aglaura that grows on the ground. And even I, who would like to keep the two cities distinct in my memory, can speak only of the one, because the recollection of the other, in the lack of words to fix it, has been lost.

There is a lilt and a lull to the way Calvino writes that I find very pleasant. Maybe it's the original Italian, maybe it's just Calvino (I am not sure I have read anything else translated from Italian, at least not in recent memory.) And the end of the book felt just right to me, which is a rare and lucky and excellent thing. This book isn't for everyone, and at one point might not have been for me, but it was exactly the sort of thing for me right now and I am so very glad I read it. More Calvino in my future, for sure; I don't really care what form it takes as long as he wrote it.

Books & Islands in Ojibwe Country by Louise Erdrich

Books & Islands in Ojibwe Country
by Louise Erdrich
National Geographic, 2003
92 pages

Being among books is only half about actual reading, after all. The other part is talking about books with other people, a rich topic, and yet another is enjoying their presence.

Just to be clear about the labels on this post: I'm not claiming Louise Erdrich for Canada, as much as I'd love to do so. But a somewhat large chunk of the book takes place this side of the border so I've added the tag.

This was one of those serendipitous browsing things, though not in the sense of shelf grazing; more in the sense of I had looked up something in our library ebook catalogue and this popped up instead. I've always wanted to read Louise Erdrich (more so now) and I love the idea of the National Geographic Directions series, and ... well, I'm a little embarrassed to admit this: it was short. I wanted something short. Also, about books! So I downloaded this and here we are. A little ironic, as this book is at least partially about the love of books as physical objects. And rarely have I come across such a perfect defense of books as objects as the quote above. Hence, I'd love to have an actual physical copy of this.

The condensed version: as with all books in the Directions series, this is an extremely accomplished author taking a trip that investigates something dear to her heart, and then writing about it. In Erdrich's case, she's gone to do a tour of the rock paintings on the islands of Lake of the Woods, taking along her 18-month-old daughter, and then to visit the historic island home of Ernest Oberholtzer and his immense collection of rare books. Throughout the book we get discussions of books and their very personal appeal and importance to Erdrich, briefer discussions of islands and their importance, and lots of discussion of the meaning of the rock paintings and Ojibwe culture and especially the language, and occasional digressions into mothering.

I really loved this book. It's an important book, because of the notes on Ojibwe culture and language and because of the recognition that, in many ways, we're lucky either still exists -- she never harps on the role governments and the Catholic church (particularly the Canadian government) have played in the damage, but she doesn't shrink from pointing it out where necessary either. It's also a beautiful book, where it meditates on books and writing and language and the importance of all of these things, particularly to the author. And Louise Erdrich? Knows how to write.

The chapter on the language, Ojibwemowin, is intense, and it is beautiful, and fascinating. Six thousand different tenses of single verb are possible. Imagine the books you could write in that language. Imagine the poems! English is a fine language, never going to knock it except maybe an affectionate jab here and there. But imagine how much more precise, how much more vivid, a language like Ojibwemowin must be.

I also particularly enjoyed her description of Oberholtzer's island ("Ober's island") and its cabins and quirks of architecture, its library, the people and the food while she is staying there. Erdrich has an incredible grasp on descriptive language, and it shows to its best advantage here. I could visualize everything. And yet she is never purple in her prose, just perfectly eloquent. Makes for an absolutely delightful travel read.

More favourite bits:

We have a lot of books in our house. They are our primary decorative motif -- books in piles on the coffee table, framed book covers, books sorted into stacks on every available surface, and of course books on shelves along most walls. Besides the visible books, there are the boxes waiting in the wings, the basement books, the garage books, the storage locker books. They are a sort of insulation, soundproofing some walls. They function as furniture, they prop up sagging fixtures and disguised by quilts function as tables. The quantity and types of books are fluid, arriving like hysterical cousins in overnight shipping envelopes only to languish near the overflowing mail bench.

I want that house. I am working towards it. Yes, I work at a library. This is not enough.

Regarding summer trips, and don't I recognize this too:

Used to be, I'd pack six preteen girls, two dogs (large Aussies), and myself in along with a week of food, clothes, games, and drawing materials, for a trip to a whole other island in Lake Superior were I did research while the girls swam, screamed, ate, screamed, roasted marshmallows, screamed, read "Wonder Woman" and "Catwoman" comics, slept, screamed, and woke, screaming happily, for a week or two. I don't really know how I have accomplished anything, ever.

Lovely little book, well worth the time to find it and read it. Travel, culture, and lots of book talk. Highly recommended.

The Secret Life of Prince Charming by Deb Caletti

The Secret Life of Prince Charming
by Deb Caletti
Simon Pulse, 2009
336 pages

Having been working on this book for ages (it was my "at work book" -- read during fifteen minute breaks, mostly, with the occasional half-hour lunch thrown in), once I finally finished it I put down in writing that I'd like to read pretty much everything else Deb Caletti has written. This is not my usual response to YA books, which generally get me all excited to read them and then end up disappointing me something fierce. It is even less my usual response to contemporary lit, and even less my usual response to reading a book targeted so squarely at females only (my fondness for romance novels notwithstanding). I mention that this was my at-work-book only because those books have to hit a particular, rather challenging niche: they have to be light enough that reading them in fifteen minute chunks is not a detriment to understanding the story and getting things out of the book, but engaging enough that I a) remember what happened last time, and b) want to use my precious break time to read it.

Quinn Hunt's parents are divorced, and she and her little sister Scout live with their mother, their mother's sister, and their mother's mother. After a significant period of time not seeing him at all, Quinn pushed her mother to allow her to reconnect with her father, a performer/manager/owner of a Vaudevillian stage act. The divorce was messy and the relationship between their parents continues to be acrimonious, but Quinn is desperate for a relationship with him, wants to know him and be known to him, so her mother allows it. Five years later, seventeen-year-old Quinn is generally happy with the way things are going -- she thinks. But then, during one visit, something happens. Something that changes everything, even though she desperately wants to ignore it. And suddenly Quinn finds herself on a mission with Scout and her estranged half-sister Frances Lee to meet the women of her father's past, and hopefully discover the truth of who her father is.

So we have here a tale generally about love and integrity. I've seen some people around the webs complain that it's "anti-male" and a bit heavy-handedly negative, and I find I can't quite agree. It's not even that obviously didactic in most places -- though it is didactic, and occasionally does slip a bit into blunt-force. But overall the story is so well done, and the characters so vivid, that the message(s) that Caletti wishes to convey are pretty well incorporated. That is, this is an Issues book that doesn't feel so much like an Issues book that I couldn't read it for the story and the characters. It's also the sort of Issues book I'd like every young woman in my life to read.

The topic of "love" doesn't just extend here to romantic love, though that is something of a focus, particularly of the didactic bits. But it's also a lot about familial love -- love between sisters, between parent and child, between absent parent and child. It has a lot to say about what constitutes a family. It has a fair bit to say about divorce (neither pro- nor con-, though it's clear that Caletti would like to encourage young women to avoid divorce by the dint of not letting a relationship that isn't working or isn't healthy get so far as marriage in the first place). As someone who has been extremely fortunate to grow up with an intact, generally very functional nuclear family, I learned -- grew to understand -- a lot about the challenges of kids of divorced parents. Granted, in this case, one of the parents is a tremendous asshole, and that's not always the case, but there are things I think must be common to kids who have two parents who split amicably, too. In particular the way Quinn describes the way children of divorce are expected to cope with their parents' new relationships and all that comes with them really struck me.

As to "anti-male," it's not terribly. There are a couple of examples of good, healthy, lovely relationships in the book, too -- each different from the other, but present. But anti-asshole this book definitely is. It's also very clear that while some guys are assholes, women need to take responsibility for their relationships, too. Not in a shaming sort of way, but in a way that recognizes that everyone makes mistakes -- it's about correcting that mistake, and not letting it define you or ruin your life out of some misplaced sense of obligation, fear, or shame. The book is pretty clear on the kind of damage a bad relationship can do, the consequences it can have, even when it's not technically "abusive" in the obvious meaning of the word. I wondered, as I read, where the line between just being a bad father or husband and being emotionally or psychologically abusive is. There is no answer to this in this book, but the damage done is clear and present.

Quinn is a great character; a bit of an every-girl, with a professed love of math (not explored nearly enough for my taste, barely makes a dent in the book proper) and a deep desire to do things right. She's also one of those people (I know this, because I am one) who desperately needs approval, even when its source isn't necessarily the right one. She wants people to like her, she wants to be a good daughter, she is absolutely a good sister. But she's also brave, in an accidental kind of way, and I like that it is accidental, and then she just goes along not necessarily for bravery's sake but because she's committed and doesn't want to back down. She is relatable, but not completely without her own personality; she has a strong voice, at times humourous, at times raw, always easy to read.

Not a perfect book, and not for everyone, but highly enjoyable if you enjoy contemporary women's fiction and don't mind a young adult narrator. Low-key romance, and occasionally a bit didactic, but never dull. Often funny, often touching, often thought-provoking. And both heavier, and lighter, than I've made it seem here. Looking forward to more Caletti in the future.

The Island of the Colorblind by Oliver Sacks

The Island of the Colorblind
by Oliver Sacks
Alfred A Knopf, 1997
298 pages

There is something about the way that Oliver Sacks writes that I find both enchanting and vaguely uncomfortable. His narrative is always intensely personal in a way that can be delightful -- accessible, charming, and incredibly smart -- but also slightly uncomfortable, because, as he admits himself, he can be querulous and anxiety-prone, and the reader can't help but pick up on that sometimes. His writing reveals a rather intimate portrait. It's not annoying, but it's the sort of thing that we're conditioned to politely look away from, I think? But Sacks always lays it all out there on the line, without drawing undue attention to his neuroses. I suspect, being a neurologist, he's more aware than most of his own tendencies.

Island of the Colorblind is a travel journal, more like Oaxaca Journal than The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, which is rather the opposite of what I was expecting. Unlike Oaxaca Journal, though, the purpose of Sacks' travel in this case was based in his job as a neurologist. It's split into two parts, the first being a chronicle of his journey to the titular island, a tiny atoll called Pingelap, and the second being a chronicle of his unrelated journey to Guam. The thread holding the two together is very thin indeed, but could be identified as his interest in islands and the biological consequences of isolation. In both cases, he made his journey to investigate a neurological phenomenon present in abnormally high numbers on their respective islands: on Pingelap, achromatopia, a complete colourblindness; on Guam, lytico-bodig, a serious and extremely complicated neurodegenerative disease showing remarkable likenesses to his post-encephalitic patients back in New York. However, don't let the fact that he's there as a neurologist fool you; Oliver Sacks is in love with plants, so we get plenty of information and exposure to the botanical life on the islands as well. Overall, it's a fascinating melding of neuroscience, botany, history, and culture that makes for really interesting reading.

Interesting, but not always comfortable. The first chapter, "Island Hopping," sounds like it might be a relatively pleasant way to start the book, but it was easily the most depressing chapter. It's not Sacks' fault, as he's working with the material he's given: specifically, a rather arduous airplane journey through the Marshall Islands before they get to Pingelap, in the Carolines. These were inhabited at one point, many of them, pre-American nuclear testing. Some of the experiences Sacks has on his way to tiny Pingelap are harrowing (from a damaged plane to an enforced landing on a brutally military island) and the brief notes he makes about some of the islands are extremely unsettling. Throughout the book there are often small hints of bleakness; discussing the diet of the islanders and its reliance on Spam, melancholy notes about environmental degradation, comments on the historical treatment of the island cultures by various colonial powers.

And when I say notes, I also mean endnotes; some of the bleakest stuff has been relegated to the [wonderfully eclectic and comprehensive] endnotes. I usually prefer footnotes, but some of these are so long as to be completely unmanageable. I tended to read the full chapter, then read the notes for the chapter second; they were almost a full chapter in themselves. None of them are, by definition, integral to the narrative or the understanding of the book, but they make the reading a richer experience.

Interesting to think that this was published nearly twenty years ago now, with the trips themselves being earlier; many of the people Sacks met are likely dead or retired, and many of the environments he saw are likely changed beyond recognition; one wonders, for example, if Pingelap can survive a sea-level rise? A sobering thought amongst several sobering thoughts brought to light by this book.

Sacks is especially good when he gets talking about his passions. The entire last chapter of the book, "Rota," is basically about cycads. Along with ferns, these are a particular passion and fascination of Sacks', and in this chapter he is both whimsical and whip-smart, so incredibly learned that he talks well above this reader's head, but I didn't mind. His enthusiasm carried me along. He takes much knowledge on the reader's part for granted, without making one feel stupid if one didn't follow exactly what he was talking about. In fact, it got this reader more excited about looking things up than frustrated with my lack of knowledge. I'm more excited than ever, too, about reading Darwin, which I have been meaning to do for ages. Leading a reader to want to learn more, in a passionate and immediate way, is a special gift that some nonfiction writers have, and some don't. Sacks has it in spades.

Not just for the topics, either, but also for words themselves. Sacks has a remarkable vocabulary and he's not afraid to use it. My favourite word from the book, favourite enough that it has entered my functional vocabulary, is "horripilation" -- synonymous with, but so much more delicious and specific than, goose bumps, and obscure enough that I haven't found a spellchecker familiar with it yet.

"At one point," he added, "people wondered if the lytico might be caused by some similar kind of fish poisoning -- but we've never found any evidence of this."

Thinking of the delectable sushi I had looked forward to all day, I was conscious of a horripilation rippling up my spine. "I'll have chicken teriyaki, maybe an avocado roll -- no fish today," I said.

It is interesting to me that overall the sections on botany and culture made far more of an impression on me than the neuroscience parts of the book did. I think the second part, set on Guam, is a stronger piece overall than the first, set on Pingelap; the first seemed a bit more rambling and less focused, and also one gets the faint impression that Sacks, while he enjoyed himself, wasn't quite as engaged. On Guam, however, he unfolds the mystery of lytico-bodig disease for the reader with careful precision, making connections and sharing his admiration for his host. And the final chapter, as mentioned above, deals with lytico-bodig not at all, but with cycads, which Sacks clearly loves and thinks are utterly worthy of everyone's attention, interest, and respect.

I don't think this is the best Sacks I've ever read, but it was thoroughly enjoyable, and I'm very glad I read it. Chewy without being intimidating, and very very readable, as Sacks always is. Recommended for popular science junkies, people with an interest in islands, armchair travelers, and anyone who is open to learning something new.

Lakeland by Allan Casey

Lakeland
by Allan Casey
Greystone Books, 2009
352 pages

If it is a wizard you seek, find one who has seen enough for his hair to go grey.

I placed the e-copy of this on hold quite a while ago in the hopes of reading it at some point. It's the One Book One Community book for my region this year, and I'd been thinking of reading it anyway after hearing Allan Casey interviewed. It's kind of a brave choice for OBOC, though it's not out of line from some of their earlier choices (ie. The 100-Mile Diet). To get a whole community to read a non-fiction book isn't easy, but this is an excellent choice. Perhaps I'm only saying that because it's right up my regular reading alley anyway, though.

Casey has structured this book as a sort of travelogue; he undertook to visit important Canadian lakes (excluding the Canadian lakes we always think of, that is, Erie, Ontario, Huron and Superior, which aren't exclusively Canadian anyway) and write one chapter per lake. He looks at the environmental context and also the cultural importance of the lakes, in some cases their economics, in others their biology, and often both. Each chapter introduces us to at least one person with life-long ties to the lake in question, and sometimes to others with more fleeting ties.

It's not always a comfortable or comforting book to read, in that Casey is a clear-eyed and practical recorder of events, people, places, and problems. He's not unrealistically optimistic. He's also not gloomy, either, which can be the other (and more common) problem with books of this sort. This book is also not a call-to-action, which are the sorts of environmental reads I hate most, because they tend to get me all fired up and then, almost immediately, I feel desperate and guilty, impotent and ashamed. Lakeland more of a call to awareness, and a very effective one at that. What this means is that I often think about the book, and the lakes, and our relationship to them, in ways that I haven't done before, without becoming mired in that perennial environmental problem of apathy born of a feeling of hopelessness.

I can only speak for myself, but the kinds of problems Casey identifies suggest that the fact that I am not the only Canadian out there to take our lakes for granted. It's a problem of abundance. We have so many, we are so used to them. They are a part of our psyche, our cultural unconscious. So we don't recognize how incredibly lucky we are to have them. I can't imagine living in a country without easy easy access to lakes. This week I'm spending by one of the Muskoka lakes (I am one of the fortunate to have access to these from the comfort of a building without a million dollars burning a hole in my bank account) and I read this book sitting on the shore of Georgian Bay, which is my lake, the lake that I judge all other lakes by. 

I think Lakeland is saved from becoming too gloomy or strident by Casey's excellent writing skills, and his excellent sense of proportion. The book is not unrelentingly about the problems. It's often funny, often beautiful, and his turn of phrase is almost poetic at points. His love for the country he calls Lakeland is transparently visible, his desire to bring all of us along with him is infectious. He looks at the problems and then finds the good, the little toeholds where things might take off for the better. It's a friendly book, and much of what he writes is familiar to a long-time lake-lover like myself.

I think this is one of those books that every Canadian should read -- new Canadians, to orient them to a vital part of the psychology of their new home, and Canadians from families that have been here for generations, to remind us of just how lucky we are to have our lakes. It's a worthwhile read for others, too; I'd wager a guess that not a few Americans understand how wonderful a Canadian lake is, or have a special American lake of their own. As a primer for anyone interested in Canada or travelling to visit us, one could do far worse. It's a uniquely Canadian book, but I think its appeal is wider.

Longtime readers know I don't normally highlight causes here, but the Canadian government has decided we don't need to bother with lake research in this country any more, which is completely baffling. They are shutting down the world-renowned Experimental Lakes Area to "save money" (it will cost several billion dollars to shut them down properly) and we will lose a vital part of our scientific, and dare I say, cultural heritage. Be aware.

The Marriage Bureau for Rich People by Farahad Zama

The Marriage Bureau for Rich People

by Farahad Zama

Amy Einhorn Books, 2009

293 pages

I came across this title first in the Guardian, which was reporting that it had won the Melissa Nathan Award for Comedy Romance in 2009. I like comedy romance. Plus it was set in India, plus it was written by a man. Both are rather unusual characteristics for romance, or at least the romances I usually read, so I thought I'd give it a shot. I am not sure I'd read it again, but I'd recommend it to someone who wanted a light romance that was a little different.

Mr. Ali is a retired gentleman who has decided, because his wife needs him to be doing something other than hanging around the house making her life difficult, to open a marriage bureau. Chapter by chapter we meet the characters who need his help finding a suitable match, as well as his wife, his son, and some of his friends. As he becomes busier, he needs some help around the office, and Mrs. Ali finds him an assistant in the young, talented Aruna. Aruna has her own troubles and own story.

I think the major problem was that, once again thanks to stupid blurbs, I was expecting something that this book simply is not. One of the blurbs on the back of the book suggests that "If Jane Austen had been lucky enough to set foot in modern-day India, she would have written The Marriage Bureau for Rich People." Which... no. Just no. It's an incredibly different piece from anything Austen wrote, different in style, different in feel, different in plot, different in character. It bears almost no resemblance to Austen aside from the fact that there is a romance between two young people and it's complicated by social mores. And maybe the fact that we don't get to the romance until much further along in the book.

My first impression was that The Marriage Bureau for Rich People reads like a book about India written for people who aren't from India, which I suspect is not far off the mark. It can be a little explainy: of customs, of behaviours, of attitudes, of religions, of foods, of daily life in the city of Vizag. Since I'm not from India, nor at all familiar with really any of it except the North-Americanized version of delicious Indian food and a very little bit of surface knowledge about some of the other aspects, I actually quite enjoyed this primer. I just wasn't expecting a primer, so it took me some time to get into it. And sometimes the book was a bit heavy on the telling versus the showing in general, as though the descriptions of Indian life spilled over into the descriptions of character and plot.

There's another comparison on the back of the jacket, this one to Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, and this is much more apt. There is an episodic feel to the book: Mr. Ali, our matchmaker, meets prospective clients in each chapter and so we meet them too, and he solves a problem or finds a match or just generally interacts with them. Many of them pop up again later, but some don't. Then, in addition to these little vignettes, there are two overarching plots that get their starts early in the book but don't come to fruition until the end. Well, and one of the plots doesn't really resolve, exactly, though one thinks there might be a resolution on the horizon. I would definitely recommend this book to people who have liked Mma Ramotswe and the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series.

Overall, a sweet story with interesting flavours, a pleasant pace, and a satisfying ending. Light but not necessarily fluffy, this is a charming book to while away an afternoon or three for someone looking for a romance that's a little different from the usual fare and not the central aspect of the book, or for those of you who really like descriptions of food, or someone looking for a window into daily life in Visakhapatnam, India. 

The Bafut Beagles by Gerald Durrell

The Bafut Beagles
by Gerald Durrell
Rupert Hart-Davis, 1954
232 pages

I find this book a little hard to review. It is third in my quest to read all of Gerald Durrell's autobiographical animal stories, and I am glad I read it; it had moments in it I would have been sorry to miss. The man writes beautifully. He has a great turn of phrase, a beautiful knack for description, and a dry, self-skewering sense of humour. These early books of his, at least, are a rich tapestry of love of place, love of animals, and deep curiousity about the world around him.

The Bafut Beagles, though, is a product of its historical moment; published in the early 1950s, the edition I have from the library is a first printing. He spends a lot more time here documenting the people around him than in the previous two, and not always to his credit in a contemporary light. As stated before, I do think that Durrell was likely extremely progressive given his station (a well-enough-off white British male) and I do think he had a healthy dose of respect and affection for the people he met and worked with in the British Cameroons; one realizes this as one reads, and it is quite clear. One also gets vaguely uncomfortable as one identifies a very faint paternalistic colonialism and a definite streak of sexism that rears its head every once in a while. I found it particularly jarring in The Bafut Beagles, thanks largely, I think, to one rather ugly incident that Durrell relates and plays a bit for laughs (though he is laughing at himself, mostly, and his own romantic colonialism, I think). I think also it's because he did spend less time talking about the animals, which is what I read for anyways. That said, as before, I was reading it knowing that it is a snapshot of a fascinating profession in a particular time, and so I was able to enjoy the best parts of the book, and move past the parts that occasionally made me cringe.

It does make me wonder if, when I was reading some of these books for the first time (this was not one of them; of the three I've read so far, only Three Singles to Adventure was a reread) some of the historical tenor of them was present but I missed it, or whether it was removed for political correctness in later editions (I am not sure how I feel about this), or whether his underlying, and (I suspect strongly) unconscious, attitudes changed as the times did -- most of the others of his that I've read were from the late 60s and 70s.

Anyway! As always, my favourite parts of this book were to do with the animals, and particularly the parts in which he is describing a behaviour or a proclivity that a particular animal has, rather than a capture. The simple pen-and-ink illustrations that accompany the text are actually quite helpful in showing the physical characteristics of the animals Durrell describes. He is clearly fascinated -- enamoured, really -- by animals in all of their forms, from the tiniest insects to the largest predators, and it shows. I think part of the reason I didn't like this book quite as well as the first two is that there was less of the animals than there had been previously. He is at his strongest, writing-wise, when he is talking about them, too.

I won't recommend this book, even in Durrell's canon, but I'm not sad to have read it, if that makes any sense. I think it could have been skipped comfortably and I wouldn't have missed too terribly much. It's an interesting read both for the intended subject matter and as an historical exercise, but reader beware, that's all. Aside from my squirming, politically correct caveats, I just don't think it's as strong a book as the previous two in the chronology.

The next book in the chronology is The New Noah, a book I can find very little about. I'm not even sure if I can find it, period, but I'll do what I can and I'm interested to see where -- and when -- Durrell takes me this time.

Other Durrell books reviewed here so far:
1. The Overloaded Ark
2. Three Singles to Adventure

Three Men in a Boat (to say nothing of the dog) by Jerome K. Jerome

Three Men in a Boat (to say nothing of the dog)

by Jerome K. Jerome

Collins Classics, 1970 (originally published in 1889)

222 pages

It has taken me quite a while now to finish this book, wanting to read it before I delve back in to Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog. I have enjoyed it, but found it slow. I think it is maybe one of those books that get better with sitting. I like it more now that I've had time to think on it. I'm not going to offer much of a summary, because there's not much to summarize, other than perhaps point to the title, and mention that the boat is on the Thames, and the time is Victorian. That's about it, really.

There are a lot of references to places and history I know nothing about, and most of the time it makes me wish to know more, and very occasionally I had trouble discerning between what's exaggerated for fun and what might actually be historically accurate. Also, while I do find Jerome's sense of humour to be funny, I did find a lot the humourous parts to be a little samey. On the other hand, there are some flashes of brilliance both when he's being funny and when he's being serious that have made me very glad to read this book. For example, upon stepping out into the night:

They awe us, these strange stars, so cold, so clear. We are as children whose small feet have strayed into some dim-lit temple of the god they have been taught to worship but know not; and, standing where the echoing dome spans the long vista of the shadowy light, glance up, half hoping, half afraid to see some awful vision hovering there.

Just for that passage alone I am glad to have read this book.

In the same way that much of the description and humour is overstated, much of the action is understated. One gets the impression that J. and his friends George and Harris (to say nothing of fox terrier Montemorency) are on their way down the Thames, and that things are happening, but one is never quite sure until very occasionally something of note happens. And once I realized that it was going to continue in that vein, with more asides about stories J. has heard and flights of fancy about history and a few memories, the happier I was to just settle in. It has a bit of a feel of a long dinner-table conversation, over which plenty of delicious food is consumed and the wine glasses keep getting refilled. Some things get mentioned that I wish were filled out a bit more, and other stories take strange but almost always amusing and interesting tangential turns. I got a tantalizing taste of the Victorian, in a way that makes me feel steeped in that moment. This is a relaxed read with almost no plot, and when approached that way is very satisfying.

One thing of note, that made me realize just how human this book is and that not much fundamental has changed: How many of us have, when confronted with a series of symptoms, looked up those symptoms on Wikipedia or some other internet site? And then read on, convinced that one has contracted something absolutely horrifying and likely exceedingly contagious? I've heard it mentioned that this is a particular problem of the internet: it feeds hypochondriacs. Not so. There is an extended moment (they usually are) near the beginning of Three Men in a Boat in which the narrator, upon looking up a condition in a medical tome in a library, becomes convinced that he has everything in the book, save housemaid's knee. It was a passage I recognized myself in, even if my tools are different.

Overall, it's an excellent armchair travel book, both in time and in geography even if you're not familiar with the locations Jerome talks about, although it wouldn't hurt to be prepared that you might feel a bit lost every once in a while. It's charming (and the illustrations by Elizabeth Odling in my edition add to that charm), it's very readable, and it makes me wish quite strongly for a river trip. We don't have a navigable Thames here in Canada, but I've heard good things about the Rideau...

A thanks to Nymeth, who originally brought this book to my attention well before I was told to read the Connie Willis. If you want to read it and can't find yourself a paper copy, which proved rather challenging for me, the Gutenberg Project has a copy online for free.

A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail
written and read by Bill Bryson
Bantam Doubleday Dell Audio, 1998
5 discs (abridged)

Soooo. This was not at all what I expected. This is another one of those "It's on the list! You must read it!" books, and knowing I was short on time, and knowing it was one of the few on the list that my library has in audiobook, I decided to go that route. Which was, I think, an excellent decision. I am kind of on an audiobook roll here, my friends. This makes two audiobooks that I have listened to the whole way through in less than a month.

Now, no, this wasn't what was advertised to me when I first came across this title. I've been lead to believe that Bryson is hilarious, laugh-out-loud funny, that this was a sort of slapstick comedy of errors. I also thought this was the unabridged version, and suffered the same sort of unpleasant shock as Nan when Bryson calmly announced the name of the abridger at the end of the final disc. Well damn, I thought, no wonder I was sorry it was over so soon. At 5 discs, this audiobook is very much on the light side for adult-length audiobooks. And I really was sorry it was finished, experiencing an almost physical pang when I slipped that last disc out of the player.

So no, it's not LOL hi-larious, though there are points where I admit to a surprised guffaw. I did smile an awful lot, for someone on an hour long commute desperate to get home. Bryson's sense of humour is not slapstick or obvious. It is dry, subtle, gratifyingly humble, and self-deprecating to the extreme. I think I only had trouble getting used to it because I was expecting something much different. Also, Bryson spends much of the time being quite earnest and serious, though never entirely humourless, about his topics: the trail itself, hiking in general, bears, the devastation wreaked in the name of the US Forest Service and the US Parks Service, the lack of pedestrians and pedestrian-friendly spaces in the US, and you get the idea. These musings on the State of the Union as Bryson saw it (the book was first published in 1999) and in particular on the Environmental State of the Union are interspersed generously between the narrative from the Bryson's move back to the US after decades in the UK through the end of his summer of dedicated AT hiking. And all of it, bar perhaps a few paragraphs where the statistics and facts get a bit mind-numbing, is absolutely fascinating.

One of my pet peeves in books about nature (as discussed before) can be an authors' tendency to slip in a horribly depressing fact ("this beautiful bird, a warbler of some sort AND WARBLERS ARE VANISHING FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH DUE TO HUMANS, YOU BASTARDS is eating spruce budworm and calling to its mate") right in the middle of describing some experience or another. The first time Bryson switched into fact-relating mode, out of the narrative, I thought, Oh jeez. Not again. I got over it, though, largely because Bryson actually delves into the facts, fleshes them out, and creates a chapter of it; I don't feel ambushed, just enlightened. As I've said before, I have no problem with relating these facts -- it's just I don't like the way its normally done. I think Bryson's got the right idea: be clear about your intention, give me enough information to make an informed judgement, and for heaven's sake don't interrupt a narrative to scold me for a sentence before going back your merry way.

His narration on this audiobook also took me a bit of getting used to; he has a very odd accent and his delivery seems at first almost unbearably flat. Stick it out, because there's something about his reading that is deeply approachable and very genuine, when it's not downright hypnotic. I can hear his voice in my head this minute. I suspect, though I can't know yet, that this audiobook has changed something about the way I experience hiking fundamentally. It's also made me think seriously about trying some backwoods hiking myself because I actually think I probably could do it. I've camped before, I've done canoe trips (without portages) before, I've done a bit of hiking though never more than day-trips. Bryson doesn't make backwoods hiking sound appealing, exactly, so much as magnetic. He gets to the heart of the difficulties, the long stretches of monotony, the real and imagined dangers, and the flashes of absolute brilliance that make backwoods trekking so captivating to a certain crowd.

I really, really loved this audiobook, and I'm very grateful that having it assigned for reading meant I actually listened to it. I'm keen to read the unabridged version at some point, but I think I'll probably find myself looking for more of Bryson's audiobooks, abridged or not, in the meantime.

Three Singles to Adventure by Gerald Durrell

Three Singles to Adventure is the second in my somewhat daunting attempt to read all of Gerald Durrell's autobiographical books. I've read this one before, but it was years and years ago, and it wasn't until I was most of the way through that I remembered at all. There were a couple of stories that tweaked my memory; but otherwise it was like a fresh read for me.

This book starts out promisingly, with four men in a bar in Georgetown (in what was then British Guiana, and is now simply Guyana):

"Well sir," he began, in his incredibly cultured voice, "I think you'd do well if you went to Adventure."

"Where?" asked Bob and I in unison.

"Adventure, sir," he stabbed at the map, "it's a small village just here, near the mouth of the Essequibo."

I looked at Smith.

"We're going to Adventure," I said firmly. "I must go to a place with a name like that."

Which would totally be my reaction, too. Thus begins a book that sometimes felt like it was so close to home I could have written it. Sometimes. Overall this book is just as entertaining and enlightening as The Overloaded Ark. I'm not going to go into my discussion of the discomfort-inducing colonialism that I did in my review of that book, but suffice to say that it was certainly present here too at times.

It also contains hints of the same enthusiastic description of place that I loved in The Overloaded Ark, although one does get the feeling that the jungles of Guiana weren't as eye-opening or as beloved as their African counterpart -- that, or Durrell had a stiffer word count, and I can't quite decide which. Three Singles to Adventure just didn't seem as richly descriptive as I had hoped, although what it lacks in description of place it makes up for in natural history tidbits. In particular, Durrell goes into a detailed (and humourously scathing) repudiation of the "common knowledge" about sloths, mentioning offhand how he's nearly sliced from ankle to hip by the two-toed variety somewhere inbetween discussing their virtues. Or take this passage, about the noble capybara, the largest rodent in the world:

This enormous rodent is a fat, elongated beast clad in harsh, shaggy fur of a brindled brown colour. Since its front legs are longer than its back ones, the capybara always looks as though it is on the point of sitting down. It has large feet, with broad, webbed toes, and on the front ones the nailsare short and blunt, looking curiously like miniature hooves. Its face is very aristocratic: a broad, flat head and the blunt, almost square, muzzle giving it a benign and superior expression like a meditative lion. On land the capybara moves with a peculiar shuffling gait or a ponderous, rolling gallop; but once in the water it swims and dives with astonishing ease and skill. A slow, amiable vegetarian, it lacks the personality displayed by some of its relatives but makes up for it by a placid and friendly disposition.

Can't you just picture it? Durrell introduced me (in this book, I think) to the capybara when I was a kid, and for a long time they held an almost mythic status in my mind. I couldn't quite believe there was something quite like a real capybara in the world, and for years I wasn't sure whether they were real, or if they were, whether they still existed in the wild. I know now that they do, in numbers no less, but I'm still inordinately fond of them, thanks largely to Gerald Durrell. If I ever see one in the wild, the squeeing will be heard in Antarctica.

The story that reminded me that I'd read this book before, though, was the story of the pipa toads and their "birth" in a kerosene tin halfway across the Atlantic Ocean, and the five fascinated sailors who preside, along with Durrell, over the event. I can't reproduce it here (it's a chapter long) but it encapsulates everything I love about nature, human nature, and nature interpretation -- I related so closely to it and recognized that I got into outdoor education largely because of the type of wonder and connection Durrell describes in this chapter. He captures it perfectly. And it made me a little sad that I never did have the chance to meet him, or even write to him. He was the sort of person I would really have enjoyed, even if I was too tongue-tied to speak when he was in the room. (Yes, I would have been. I don't react well to Authors; they make me nervous because I am in awe.)

The next book in the timeline is The Bafut Beagles which I know for sure I have never read. I would remember a title like that.

The Overloaded Ark by Gerald Durrell

I am managing to peel myself away from my next read for long enough to write this review. It's not that I don't want to recommend The Overloaded Ark; quite the opposite, in fact. But my next book is really, really good and very gripping, and I've been having the privilege of multiple consecutive uninterrupted hours to read it.

But enough about other books.

The Overloaded Ark is the first of a great number of autobiographical tales written by Gerald M. Durrell. Many years ago, in my pre-teens and teens, I read everything by Durrell I could get my hands on. Which I am realizing wasn't that much, looking at his bibliography. I'd never heard of The Overloaded Ark, but I was feeling nostalgic the other day, so I looked up Durrell and settled on reading all his autobiographies, in publication order.

To understand this book, I think it's really important to first put it in context. Durrell went on several "collecting" expeditions for British zoos in his life. As far as I understand, this sort of expedition just doesn't happen anymore and for very good reason. It's not considered good zoo behaviour to be sending minions out to pull live specimens out of their habitat, unless it's to establish captive breeding programs for a seriously endangered species. But back in the 1940s, when Durrell's first expedition took place, it was a commonplace activity. And as Durrell says in his prologue, part of what he is trying to do with this book is set the record straight -- collecting expeditions were neither unending drudgery nor unending danger.

The time period is part of what makes this book so fascinating, but it also causes some serious cringing on my part. There's overtones of -- and sometimes overt -- racist colonialism and even hints of sexism, all of which at the time would have been considered normal for a white, British man visiting British Cameroon at the time the book was written. Much of the time I think Durrell was ahead of his time as far as racism and environmental concerns, but sometimes he'll write something really jarring in an otherwise splendid book. So my suggestion would be to read this book, but read it with the historical context in mind. It doesn't make any of the colonial overtones right, but it is an interesting historical exercise to read this book and realize just how deeply embedded some of this objectionable stuff was in society.

Moving past the issues (which I will admit was, for me, very hard to do at first; I don't read a lot from this time period and so it was an exercise in not being massively put off), Durrell is underrated as a writer, I think. His style is poetic, often quite funny (usually at his own expense), and thoughtful. He wants his readers to fall in love with the African jungle, and with passages like the following, how could I not?

The most notable feature of the forest was the innumerable tiny streams, shallow and clear, that meanered their way in an intricate and complicated pattern across its floor. Glinting and coiling around the smooth brown boulders, sweeping in curves to form the snow-white sandbanks, busily hollowing out the earth from under the grasping tree roots, shimmering and chuckling, they went into the dark depths of the forest. They chattered and frothed importantly over diminutive waterfalls, and scooped out deep placid pools in the sandstone, where the blue and red fish, the pink crabs, and the small gaudy frogs lived.

He has a turn of phrase that is both dryly amusing and wonderfully descriptive, as when describing a bicycle trip he takes with one of his assistants sitting on the handlebars, where they "shot out onto the high road like a drunken snipe." Or that section I mentioned in my teaser, with the naked ant battle. Actually, Durrell seemed to have a number of naked encounters... another one I laughed at went as follows:

It stood quite still, regarding me thoughtfully, and the tip of its tail moved very gently among the grass stalks. I had seen domestic cats looking like this at sparrows, twitching their tails, and I did not feel very happy about it. Also, I was stark naked, and I have found that in moments of crisis to have no clothes on gives one a terribly unprotected feeling. I glared at the Serval, wishing that I had my shorts on and that I could think of some way of capturing it without the risk of being disembowled.

Because yes, Durrell goes to some enormous lengths to catch his critters. It's always top of mind -- even when staring down large cats, or faced with a Gaboon Viper (a rather deadly snake, as he might say) in his living quarters, or falling down a hillside onto the back of an enormous Monitor Lizard which has already taken a nasty strips out of a dog. What amazes me most about this book, though, is that one never ever loses sight of the fact that Durrell loves these animals. He loves the forest, he loves the flowers, the beetles, the birds, reptiles, mammals -- he loves it all. And to him, capturing and attempting to keep these animals alive is part of loving them. One doesn't have to agree with his methods, but I know that love of nature. I have it myself.

He includes a couple of notes about failure, too. He's very conscious of mentioning that though he's included the exciting bits in the book, most of his time on a collecting trip is spent in animal care. And much of that is quite boring. He also tells us where things go wrong, as with animals he simply can't figure out how to keep alive in captivity; and there's one really lovely, touching chapter about Chumly the chimpanzee. It's a very sad story, and he never lays blame or points fingers for Chumly's demise, and leaves the conclusions to the reader -- and this reader came out feeling really horrified by human stupidity and laziness.

There are a lot of things about this book to recommend it, if you are aware of the time period it's written in and prepared to take that as it comes. I am going to continue with my plan to read Durrell's autobiographical works in order, but I'm also thinking I might throw his book The Stationary Ark in there as well, in which he talks about zoos and their relationship to the natural world, and his philosophy of effective and ethical zoo management. I've never read it, but heard good things.

If you're reading Durrell for the first time, I don't know that I'd start here. It's his first published novel and it's not quite as polished as some of the others, although at points it is really, blindingly beautiful. So, very recommended, with caveats.

Apples to Oysters by Margaret Webb

Canadian farmers are suffering through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Shockingly, few of us know that crisis even exists. Fewer still understand how that crisis is affecting us, not just farmers, but us.

This has been one of the harder reviews I've ever written. I have a lot to say about this book. I did not love it. At times I didn't even like it. But I think it's an important book, and it was definitely good enough that when I didn't like it I still kept reading. I think every Canadian should read it, and I think every country in the world should have a Margaret Webb who visits the farmers where they are and writes about them. The basis for this book was that Margaret Webb took recommendations from chefs, friends, and locals and traveled from her home in Toronto across Canada to visit, one per province, a small farmer producing one of this country's iconic foods. It's a brilliant concept and largely well-executed.

The book's overarching themes are lofty, and she does a good job of illustrating her points. The story of Canadian farming should be inspiring and impressive. Instead, it's largely frustrating and depressing. Family farms are disappearing across Canada, farmers unable to support themselves or their families on the meager living they make running a farm. Rural communities are depopulating. City sprawl is gobbling up prime farmland. And fewer and fewer people understand where their food comes from, how it's grown, and who grows it. This country was built on the backs of families of farmers, fishermen, and ranchers, and nowadays those people are largely invisible unless it's a bad news story. Webb argues that it shouldn't be this way.

There is so unbelievably much wrong with our food systems in Canada, and Webb has done a laudable job of showing what is wrong and why. She points the finger squarely at big agribusiness, chemical companies, and often at our own government for this sorry state of affairs, and thus far I can't find any reason to argue with her on that. One of the farmers she talks to (who is able to view the situation from a position of prosperity and comfort, due to a lot of hard work, good planning, and superlative marketing) also points the finger at farmers themselves:

[Paul Stark of Henry of Pelham winery] has little patience for farmers who refuse to change their practices when the model is no longer working. "Farmers fight things like waterway management and pesticide control and traceability ... Those farmers would do themselves a big favour if they would just get on with environmental sustainability. That's just entry-level. The next step, they have to make a really good product, then explain why it's the best. ... I think you can make a pretty sexy demonstration of why we need to pay more for a food, and farmers need to show us why we should."

Aside from my discomfort with laying the problems on the backs of farmers themselves (although I think there's unfortunately something to that, too), this quote also illustrates one of the major problems I had with this book. Webb has a tendency to put this food out of people's reach. One of the problems with our food systems overall is that there are lots of Canadians who can barely afford to eat at the prices they pay for food now. Raising food prices to allow farmers to be both environmentally and fiscally sustainable within the current system would mean a large cost-of-living increase, one that Canadians already living in poverty cannot afford. Often the recipes she chooses to include are esoteric and completely out of reach -- how many of us ordinary Canadians have a local fishmonger to ask for dry scallops or farmed cod, for example? And even if we do, how many of us can afford it?

Now, I can understand that she might not address this because it's a huge issue and mostly outside the scope of the book. But by not addressing the problem of affordable healthy and ethical food, even in passing, she appears to be either oblivious or underestimating the problem; at worst, she appears uncaring or even callous.

While we're looking at things that bugged me, let's do a couple more. Webb is enthusiastic about food. She's enthusiastic about the people she meets. This is good. What caused me more than a little consternation every once in a while was her tendency to hyperbole. She is so bloody enthusiastic at times that she seemed irritatingly naive. But her worst transgressions are when she's lambasting some part of the food chain that she sees as failing farmers and/or consumers, as when she's taking on the issue of raw milk.

The whole issue is a bit of a sore point with me, because our local Ontarian raw milk crusader, Michael Schmidt, has been painted as a victim by the media. Webb follows this trend, suggesting that the government and medical establishment had an "hysterical" reaction, that they suggested that raw milk is some "virulent, plague-infested stew." Really? They did?

Raw milk can indeed be perfectly safe. However, as Webb herself says, raw milk can also contain any number of vicious pathogens like tuberculosis, listeria, and E. coli. Therefore, there is a law that all milk sold to consumers in Canada must be pasteurized. When Mr. Schmidt broke that law, the establishment reacted to what they saw as a threat to food safety. Regulators don't think the risk posed by raw milk is acceptable; for them to allow the sale of raw milk in Ontario under our current regulations and testing apparatus would be irresponsible. Why that makes the establishment "hysterical," I don't know. And that kind of hyperbole is present throughout the book.

She also has some factual errors: "little penguins" are not present in Quebec, though Webb blithely tells us that they are on page 230. I think she must be referring to the penguin cousins by convergent evolution in the auk family; perhaps puffins, murres or dovekies. Or maybe she is translating from a French term for the mystery bird? Perhaps a small detail, but again, it irritates me.

But enough about what I didn't like. I think I am particularly hard on this book because I think the concept is so great, and because it's a subject dear to my heart; but also because there are many, many things to like about this book too, and it makes the not-so-good things more painful. She describes the farmers and their farms in loving detail, takes us through why their food tastes better, and gives us recipes. She gets the reader excited about food, and farming.

I particularly, and predictably, enjoyed the chapters where she looks at farmers who are doing well the best. I loved the chapter about apples in British Columbia, because it is such a good news story. The chapter on flax in Saskatchewan is fascinating, and despite the melancholy and horror found in the Manitoba chapter on hog farming, I learned a lot and again thought it was really interesting and even a little hopeful. Plus I love pigs. But perhaps the best chapter in the book was the one on scallop farming in Nova Scotia.

This is not a good news story, yet. Scallop farming is not done, according to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Nova Scotia, and yet Webb was able to find one scallop farmer who is doing it, and doing a good job of it. He's not really making money yet and he's been at it for many, many years -- but he's dedicated and determined to make it work (like every other farmer she interviews). What makes this chapter better than the rest is that she makes a concerted effort to see things from the conventional side, as well. With scallops, that means spending a day on a dragger, a ship that scrapes a giant net across the bottom of the Bay of Fundy and scoops up everything in its way. Webb's description of these conventional scallop fishermen is staggering and vivid, and extremely sympathetic to the fishermen. This understanding of what the conventional guys are going through, rather than lumping them in with the problem, is rare throughout the book and it added a beautiful depth and urgency to this chapter. She doesn't just tell us that scallop farming is the better way to go -- she shows us. And she leaves us to draw our own conclusions as to why scallop farming hasn't caught on in Canada's fishery.

Webb is really good at showing us the heart of Canadian food. As advertised, it makes me want to hug a farmer. It also makes me want to be a farmer, but I think we all know I'm really not cut out for it. I like sleeping in and having vacations. So instead I have my little vegetable garden and I'll make a much more concerted effort to find ethical, local producers for things I can't grow here myself. This book made me ill, made me happy, frustrated me and occasionally infuriated me. But most of all it made me think, and for that I'll be recommending it to everyone I know.

Oaxaca Journal by Oliver Sacks

Before we went to Cuba, I had been intending to read Oliver Sacks' Oaxaca Journal. I had it sitting on my desk for an unreasonably long amount of time. I brought it with me with the vague idea that I might read it, and it turned out to be an excellent choice. It's not very long and it is, like anything I have ever read by Sacks, a very engaging read. The man is brilliant at both observation and at making his observations accessible to the masses in writing.

On the third page, this stuck out for me, as I was enjoying the rarefied atmosphere of an all-inclusive, five-star resort:

How crucial it is to see other cultures, to see how special, how local they are, how un-universal one's own is.

We stayed at a resort, but the last time I was in Cuba I didn't. And this time we did get out to see a [surprisingly] large portion of the countryside for a day. I always have this uncomfortable feeling about traveling as a tourist anywhere. Especially Cuba, because I frankly adore the ideal of the place (there is food, shelter, education and medical care for every single Cuban, and what a necessary thing) but I also recognize that there are significant major problems with the way the system actually works. I dislike what the American government has done to Cuba, but I'm not sure that as a Canadian tourist I'm all that much better, coming to gawk at the wonderful old buildings and romanticize Castro's Revolution. I don't know how to feel about a place where everyone has the basics for a good life but they don't have the freedom to travel the way I do, or read the way I do, or express their own views the way I do. I don't know the answers, and it does trouble me. Especially because I do love Cuba so much, and the time I spent there this time didn't lessen that (I have an acute case of wanting to be in Cuba all the time now). It adds tension to what would otherwise be a really lovely, relaxing vacation. But I'm glad I have that tension.

All of that said, Cuban culture is completely, completely different from Canadian culture and there's a lot to be said for it, and how is it my place to condemn a way of life that I have very limited understanding of? And that is what the quote above reminded me to be aware of, that obnoxious colonial tendency to try to evaluate and "fix" cultures that are different from our own.

Mexico has different problems, the main being the massive amounts of poverty and governmental corruption. Sacks doesn't dwell on this but he does give it a mention. And it's nice to see the same sort of ambiguity I have about traveling to places as a relatively wealthy tourist, just expressed from a different angle and much more eloquently than I could. It was somewhat comforting to read, not because it resolved any of my thoughts but because it did clarify them somewhat, and made me relax a little knowing that I'm not alone.

All right, that's probably enough angst. On to the book itself:

The things Sacks has to say about Oaxaca are fascinating, and now I would very much like to go to that area myself (tourist-guilt aside). We get glimpses of his travel companions, and the novelty of traveling with a group of naturalists. Make no mistake -- it's a novelty. I really enjoy it, myself. There is something great about being able to shout excitement about a bird to a bus full of people and have them scramble all over eachother to get to the windows to see for themselves. In any other case, your fellow passengers would stare at their books or their shoes in embarrassment for you and hope for your sake that you keep quiet next time. But Sacks captures the thrilled naturalist-tourists quite well.

The journal is, as I suppose I should have expected, even more personal than his memoir. There were points where I was occasionally even a little uncomfortable with how personal it was, because I don't like to pry into other living people's thoughts (despite what some of my readers might think). It's not that he says anything specifically -- it's just that put all together, and probably because I have also recently read Uncle Tungsten, one gets a much fuller picture of Sacks than I was expecting, and sometimes it make me wonder if he realized quite how much of himself he was exposing.

Overall, a highly recommended book, for anyone at all because it's so quick and easy to read. But especially for anyone who is traveling to Mexico or Latin America, or anyone interested in ferns, nature or culture. I'm curious now to see about some of the others in the National Geographic's literary writers on travel series, of which Oaxaca Journal is part.