Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw: Travels in Search of Canada by Will Ferguson

Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw: Travels in Search of Canada
Will Ferguson
(Alfred A. Knopf Canada, Toronto: 2004)

This edition includes "bonus" material, including a tongue-in-cheek "cheat sheet" for students, "outtakes", various suggested cover designs, and a list of Canada’s "big objects by the side of the road."

READ: May 2007

I've mentioned this before (twice, actually): Will Ferguson is a funny, funny man. And with the intriguing title of this book, which I'd picked up in Canada before leaving for Japan but had made myself wait many months before allowing myself to read it, I was expecting more belly laughs.

And boy, did it deliver! Ferguson spent a few years traveling back and forth, here and there, across Canada, and the result is a series of short stories about strange happenings while on the road. He peppers these humourous stories with a good dose of history - not enough to choke those who always fell asleep during Canadian history class in high school, and just obscure enough to keep those Canadian history keeners (myself included) listening and curious. He goes everywhere: Victoria, B.C., for a poetry slam; Churchill, Man., looking for polar bears; Saguenay-Lac St. Jean, Que., to find a lost kingdom; and even St. Thomas, Ont., just outside London, in search of "Canada". It's always interesting, often funny, and never pedantic. This is the kind of literature I wish we'd read more of in my Canadian literature classes. For starters, I don't think he mentions the name "Susanna Moodie" even once (though I think he does talk a bit about Catherine Parr Trail) - kudos all around right there.

Japan: Its History and Culture by W. Scott Morton and J. Kenneth Olenik

Japan: Its History and Culture
W. Scott Morton and J. Kenneth Olenik
4th edition
(McGraw-Hill, New York: 2005)

First published 1970; subsequent editions 1984, 1994. The 4th edition is the first to include Olenik as co-author.

READ: April-May 2007

This book is a great overview to anyone who has an interest in Japanese history, but doesn't want to get stuck in thousands of pages detailing the lives, hopes and dreams of the various emperors and shogun. It's concise and informative, always interesting, and really helps one get insight into why Japanese culture has turned out quite the way it has. I found the last few chapters, about contemporary Japanese political and economic developments (since about 1970), a little weaker than the rest of the book; however, I understand that the immediate nature of contemporary events sometimes can make it difficult to figure out what is noteworthy and what is not.

Shortly after finishing this book, I headed down to Kyushu, the southernmost island of "mainland" Japan (ie., other than the Okinawan islands), and found myself recalling the history I had just recently learned. Certain events in Kyushu were at the centre of the Meiji Restoration in the 1860s, which, in turn, had a profound effect in shaping the Japan that was to eventually attempt to steamroll over the rest of East Asia in the first half of the 20th century. All in all, a very, very interesting book.

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
John Perkins
(Penguin Group, New York: 2006, c2004)

First published 2004.

READ: April-May 2007

John Perkins worked for over three decades at the heart of an international business consulting firm, and claims that the modern American political/economic system is founded on a system which exploits and neutralizes developing nations in ways that force them to remain acquiescent to American economic policies. It's almost a Forrest-Gump-like story - Perkins seems to have been fairly intimately involved with some of the more important political upheavals of contemporary times, including the deaths of Panamanian leader Omar Torrijos and Ecuadorian president Jaime Roldós Aguilera in the early 1980s, and the (as an example of how the "EHM system" occasionally failed) overthrow of the shah in Iran in the late 1970s.

This has been quite a popular book over the last few years, and I don't know how much to believe and how much to disbelieve. The events in this book are either largely and/or entirely true, in which case we should be worried about the sham called democracy in which we participate, or it is the product of a conspiratorial and overly-fertile imagination. While many people, well-educated and otherwise, would argue the latter proposition, I have to admit I tend, most days, toward the former. I think Perkins does have a tendency to dabble in conspiracy theory (especially in other contexts outside this book (just do a Google search for his name)); however, I also think this is definitely a case of "where there's smoke, there's fire."

At the very least, some of the response to this book has at least raised a bit of a debate about global finance and the development of the Third World, bringing these issues beyond the confines of APEC and G8 protests. It's an interesting read, even if you choose to disbelieve most of what he says, and it's well-written, unlike many other books in this genre. It occasionally smacks of conspiracy, but at the very least, it will get you thinking and being more aware.

Mightier than the Sword: "My Hero" by Tom Holt

Mightier than the Sword: "My Hero"
Tom Holt
(Orbit, London: 2002)

Mightier than the Sword is Tom Holt's Omnibus 2 which consists of the novels "Who's Afraid of Beowulf?" and "My Hero". "My Hero" first published by Orbit in 1996.

READ: April 2007

I read the other half of Tom Holt's Omnibus 2, Mightier than the Sword, "Who's Afraid of Beowulf?", in March.

Of the three books by Tom Holt that I have now read (the third is Falling Sideways, which I read back in January 2006), I think this one is the weakest. It is funny and entertaining, but it suffered from the same thing Falling Sideways did to some degree: too many characters and too many parallel storylines. Figuring out who everyone is and what their purpose is in the story, is all a bit unnecessarily exhausting. Even when they all come together at the end, it isn't all clear. I think what made "Who's Afraid of Beowulf?" so successful, in my opinion at least, is that it avoided this almost entirely, by having just two sets of characters (Good v. Evil, essentially), rather than a bunch who come together at the climax only. That can be done well, but in this case, it was just a bit too scattered.

That being said, I did enjoy the book. It was an interesting premise: Jane is an author whose fictional characters start to need her help, and then when she tries to help them, it turns out she needs theirs. Fiction becomes reality, and vice-versa.

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

Memoirs of a Geisha
Arthur Golden
(Alfred A. Knopf, New York: 1997)

This edition published by Vintage Contemporaries, New York, 2000.

READ: March-April 2007

I haven't seen the movie, but have wanted to read the book for a while. Initially, I was confused. I had always thought that Memoirs of a Geisha was a novel, but it began with a word from a translator who claimed to have translated Sayuri's words faithfully from the Japanese. I then realized that, of course, this was part of the novel, meant to give it an added aura of authenticity.

It's a wonderful book. Nitta Sayuri, a 9-year-old girl with unusual blue-grey eyes, is not born into the world of geishas, as most are, but is taken from her small village, after her mother dies and her father can no longer care for her, and sold to a geisha house in Kyoto. This is, effectively, akin to being sold into slavery. Many girls who trained to be geisha did not succeed, managing to incur substantial debts along the way, indebting them indefinitely to the geisha house to which they belong. For Sayuri, the story is, at least at first, much the same, but as she becomes more committed to the idea of becoming a geisha, things change.

A compelling read, I hated putting the book down at the end of a chapter, always wanting to read "just one more chapter". Though sometimes I lacked sympathy for Sayuri, I could not doubt that her story was a fairly common one in Gion, the famous geisha district of Kyoto. The book also spans a key point in modern Japanese history, from the late 1920s through the 1930s, to WWII and the post-war Occupation years. Arthur Golden apparently did a fair bit of research for the book, and as far as I know, his account of what it meant to be a geisha in those days is fairly accurate. I might see the movie now, to see how it compares.

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Love in the Time of Cholera
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
(Alfred A. Knopf, New York: 1988)

Translated from Spanish by Edith Grossman, 1988.

READ: March 2007

I'd read One Hundred Years of Solitude many, many years ago (back in high school, in fact), and really enjoyed it. This book was one of the few left to me by my predecessor, but I hadn't gotten around to reading it yet.

Now, I was feeling a bit down about Japan at the time I read it, so I think it was a bit of a relief to be so suddenly transported to Colombia. It is the story of Florentino Ariza and his lifelong wait for Fermina Daza, a beautiful, haughty woman who once told him she would marry him but then did not.

It was a compelling read. It was supposed to be the book I brought with me on my trip to Hokkaido, but I handily finished it in the 3 days before leaving. That being said, I started to be filled with dread sometime during the last 100 pages. The characters were starting to do and say things that I thought were leading to a dumb, Disneyfied, happy ending. While that's a bit harsh, I was disappointed in the end. I guess I just don't have any sympathy for Ariza, who spends his life in a weird fantasy world where everything is done with the intention that one day Fermina Diaz will come back to him, and when she does, everything must be just so. I see that as being a bit compulsive, in a creepy way rather than a cute, or devoted, way. Maybe I'm just too unromantic to appreciate it.

Vintage Murakami by Haruki Murakami

Vintage Murakami
Haruki Murakami
(Vintage Books, USA: 2004)

Includes the opening chapter of his novel Norwegian Woods; "Lieutenant Mamiya's Long Story: Parts I and II" from his novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle; "Shizuko Akashi" from his non-fiction book on the 1995 Tokyo subway attacks, Underground; and the short stories, "Barn Burning", "honey pie", and "ice man".

READ: March 2007

Reading this collection of works from Murakami, who is apparently one of Japan's top contemporary authors, was a bit of a tease. I'd just start getting into a story when it would end, leaving me wanting more. Luckily, many of these stories are, of course, parts of longer novels, and so someday, more I can get!

His style is sparser than I normally like (sometimes I wonder if that's more of a translation thing, though I guess the trick to being a good translator is to use a style consistent with the author's style in their original language), but they are interesting and insightful. The excerpts from The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle in particular still leave me shuddering while thinking about them late at night (almost a month after I finished reading the book!), and I may definitely have to read that entire book someday, if none other, in order to exorcise those memories.

The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham

The Moon and Sixpence
W. Somerset Maugham
(Penguin Books, London: 1944)

First published in Great Britain by William Heinemann Ltd. in 1919.

READ: March 2007

I hadn't read this kind of book in a while (you know, "real" literature) and wasn't sure what to expect, but it had an interesting premise as being loosely based on Paul Gauguin's life.

Well, once I picked it up, I almost couldn't put it down, and finished it in a compulsive burst of reading. I think it took me three days, and only then because I had to stop reading for sleeping and working. The narrator, a writer (go figure), is likeable enough, but the main subject, Charles Strickland, is a thoroughly disagreeable, unlikeable man. Yet somehow it didn't matter. The book is cleverly written in such a way that I spent my time not wondering what is going to happen to Strickland, which would have held much less interest for me (we know the outcome from page one anyway), but in a way that compelled me to see how the narrator learned more about Strickland. It's really quite good. Disappointing lack of anybody resembling Vincent van Gogh, however. ;)

Wild Grass: China's Revolution from Below by Ian Johnson

Wild Grass: China's Revolution from Below
Ian Johnson
(Penguin Group, London: 2004)

Some of the material previously appeared in a slightly different form in the Wall Street Journal .

READ: March 2007

Here's an excellent example of how a well-respected journalist should write a book based on his columns and expertise in a particular area.

Ian Johnson is a roving correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, and lived in Beijing for seven years. In his book, Wild Grass, he tells the stories of three people in China, three stories of people who tried in little ways to resist the corruption and oppression of the Communist Party. The first is a paralegal who is jailed for having helped peasants mount a legal battle against illegal taxes. Second is an architect fighting to save Beijing's historic buildings, which are being destroyed at an alarming rate. The last is a daughter who has been jailed and running into difficulties with authorities because she tried to find out answers about her mother's death in prison (where she was jailed as a Falun Gong practitioner).

I know shamefully little about China and its politics, and understand even less. I was depressed for at least two days straight after finishing this book. That being said, it was an excellent read and I strongly encourage anyone with any interest in the outside world (esp politics) to read it. Johnson knows his subject, he knows how to make a story interesting, and he knows how to make things resonate on a personal level. There were a few "of course Communism is bad and of course it is failing" moments, but overall, he does a good job of exposing the Chinese government's current weaknesses in policy and strategy without devolving too far into the land of democracy-and-market-freedom-is-great. It is well-written, and the endnotes put Thomas Friedman to shame.*

* Not that that is very hard to do.

Mightier than the Sword: "Who's Afraid of Beowulf?" by Tom Holt

Mightier than the Sword: "Who's Afraid of Beowulf?"
Tom Holt
(Orbit, London: 2002)

Mightier than the Sword is Tom Holt's Omnibus 2 which consists of the novels "Who's Afraid of Beowulf?" and "My Hero". "Who's Afraid of Beowulf?" first published by McMillan (London) Limited in 1988.

READ: March 2007

Hildy Frederiksen is just your average archaeologist until the day she accidentally awakens King Hrolf Earthstar and his twelve companions from their centuries-old sleep. King Hrolf is determined to carry on, and finish once and for all, his war against the Sorceror King.

This is only the second book of Tom Holt's that I have read. I quite enjoy his style so far, and plan on reading more (including, of course, the second novel that is included in this book, "My Hero"). He's a bit of an oddball, an interesting mix of scifi-meets-fantasy-meets-humour. Anyway, this book was quite enjoyable; a quick, easy, entertaining read (just over 200 pages), and made me laugh out loud at a number of points.