Numeral X. The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs.

A.J. Jacobs is a writer for Esquire magazine. He has a previously published book called The Know it All which chronicles his attempt to read the entire Encylcopeida Britannica. He is a man who will go to extremes for his craft. He's a New Yorker, technically Jewish, but he goes through great pains to tell his readers that he is a very secular Jew, one for whom his religion hasn't figured very greatly in his life, he has long labeled himself as agnostic, but one day, he gets it into his head that for one year, he will live his life by taking the Bible as literally as possible.

His idea grew from a story he was told about an ex-uncle of his, uncle Gil, a man whom the family treats as a bit of a boogey man, someone whom has dabbled in many religions (Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism), and has in fact been a leader of a couple of honest to goodness cults. He was married to Jacobs' one Orthodox Jew aunt, and the family is overall very happy that Uncle Gil is no longer in the family. But Jacobs hears that one day, Uncle Gil decided to live the Bible literally, and from this story, A.J.'s decision is born.

It's harder than he thought, especially since some of the laws make no sense whatsoever, and some are very exclusionary. Of course, he finds all the big ones (the 10 commandments), but he finds a lot of smaller ones, about not wearing clothes of mixed fibres and wearing tassles on your clothes, and of course, all the various things you can not, or should not eat.

He has help of course, and consults all sorts of people; rabbis, Christian preachers, Creationsists, even (in a visit that is funny but also a little disturbing) the infamous Uncle Gil.

He grows his beard, he begins to wear only white, he starts to resemble those that get stared at regularly in NYC. And yet, through it all, he definitely starts to feel more spiritual, and he starts to feel kindred with those who are also spiritual; there's a lovely moment where he's on the subway, and across from him is sitting a Buddhist Monk, and they exchange a knowing nod; they understand where the other is coming from.

Of course, A.J. isn't perfect. He has problems getting rid of all the little white lies we tell daily. He doesn't like the whole treating your wife as unclean during her period (nor is his wife a big fan of this), but as someone who is a bit of a germ a phobe, he's ok with the not touching people he doesn't really know for fear of their being unclean.

He has a harder time with the New Testament section, he comes to admire Jesus and his teachings, but of course, he doesn't come to accept him as his saviour, but he thinks the man had some good things to say.

It is a very fascinating journey he's on and it does affect him in positive ways. He learns to let go of a lot of the anger we all have at small things throughout our day. He feels more peaceful. He becomes a big fan of the thanksgiving type prayers. He comes to a greater understanding of why people worship. He doesn't always agree with it, but he starts to understand it more. And through his journey, I think we do too. He makes the Bible sound like a very interesting place, where lots of good things are said, but well, he also points out how things are interpreted or misinterpreted. He cannot seem to fully grasp fundamentalism because we can never fully grasp the intent of God's words.

By the end of it, A.J is still agnostic, but he has become what one of his advisors calls a 'reverent agnostic', that whether or not there is a God, he does believe in the sacred. He believes in the sacredness of Life, the sacredness of the Sabbath and the ritual of prayer. It makes the everyday more transcendent.

And I think that's a nice way to look at it.

Number 9 of 2008 is The Island of the Sequined Love Nun by Christopher Moore. You got to hand it to Moore, he comes up with the greatest titles.

The other thing you have to give to Moore is that, despite writing really funny books, he also manages to imbibe them with some rather dark moments that don't manage to completely wreck the tone of the book, but rather contribute to the overall sense of zany. And Moore's books are zany. They're zany but strangely plausible. The man's brilliant.

In this book we meet Tucker Chase, 'geek in a cool guy's body'. Chase seems to be a bit of a loser, a womanizing drunkard who's background story sounds strangely like Hamlet's (but without the whole Danish royalty thing); a good looking guy who seems to just float through life. When we meet Tuck, he's romancing a girl in an airport bar. Tucker's managed to find a gig as a private pilot for the head honcho of a cosmetics company (Mary Jean a thinly veiled Mary Kay), but within the first chapter, he completely blows this as he takes the girl for a tryst on the company Learjet, crashes it and gravely injures his man parts in the process. Mary Jean, not wanting to deal with the negative press Tucker has so kindly provided for her, 'disappears' Tucker to a tiny island in Micronesia, where he will now be a pilot for a Methodist missionary, flying medical supplies to and from Japan.

So Tucker, after surviving a typhoon in a row boat with only a (talking) fruitbat and the last navigator, a transvestite named Kimi, finds himself on his new home, a tiny island called Alualu; home to Dr. Sebastian Curtis and his wife Beth, a bunch of ninjas and the island's idingenous folks, the Shark People.

The Shark People are a little primitive, living on a rather sequestered island, but the Western World forcibly forced itself on them during WWII, when the Japanese built a small outpost and airfield on the island, and then the Americans took it from them. Due to these experiences, the Shark People have become what's called a 'cargo cult', the worship the American airman (a flyboy named Vincent) as a god who delivered them from the Japanese, and who gives them treasures from the Sky Priestess (Vincent's plane).

But it doesn't take long for Tucker to see that all is not right on AlauAlau. He is paid an exhorberant amount of money to take Beth Curtis to Japan where she drops off a small cooler and then heads right back. And when Tucker sees Beth's performance as the Sky Priestess (the Sequined Love Nun of the title), where she 'chooses' one of the Shark People, well, Tucker knows he has to figure out what's going on. Of course, this urge to know also stems from the fact that he's not allowed to drink and he's bored.

But somehow, Tucker knows that the Shark People are being exploited, he's just not sure how. He and his navigator Kimi befriend the Shark People, and he soon discovers just how badly the Curtis' are exploiting the Shark People, they're harvesting organs from them and selling them in Japan. Something awakes in the normally selfish, sodden and pitiful Tucker, and he realizes that he must help these people.

And help them he does. In an extremely over the top ending (which is something Moore does so very, very well), Tucker steals a 747 (no, he doesn't hijack it, there's an important distinction) and relocates the entire tribe of Shark People. It's all terribly satisfying.

Tucker Chase is a great character in the mold of 'pretty normal guy that has all sorts of weird shit happen to him and still manages to come out all right'. His exploits are fun because they are so bizarre and you really can't help but wonder how he's going to get out of it. True he's a pilot, but that really is the only remarkable skill about Tucker Chase. He's not a spy, he's not a ninja, and other than his ability to get into trouble, he's pretty unremarkable. But still, by the end of the book, he has grown as a character. Not hugely so, but just enough.

It's a fun book, like all Moore's books, complete with good lines, laugh out loud sections and improbable action scenes. They're always a good read.

Ick. Number 8 this year took me far too long to slog through. It was The Language of Stones, by Robert Carter.

This is a slightly off-kilter telling of a re-born Arthur, one who shows up at the beginning of the War of the Roses in the 1300s. It has a Merlyn-type character, called Gwydion here, who has hidden away his reincarnated Arthur, a boy called Willand, in an unassuming place in what sounds like the north of England.

Now, the thing is, aside from using some actual dramatis personale from the War of the Roses (i.e. Henry VI), Carter doesn't use any real place names, and I found this hugely distracting as I was constantly trying to figure out WHERE the hell they were in this place. Had I known that the author explains this and gives you a bit of a 'key' in an afterword, I would've read that first and not been so distracted. Damn.

Carter also has a hate-on for the Catholic church. Not that he calls it the Catholic church, but that's definitely what it is. He states that it 'enslaves minds' and 'keeps the poor poor and enthralled to promises that never come true'. Which is all very true. He makes the Church sound truly scary though, and I did appreciate that.

So basically, the gist of the story is that Willand is a Child of Destiny, a reincarnation of Great Arthur (who has come back twice before) destined to save the world basically. In this case though, Willand doesn't seem destined to be king, nor to be a warrior, he is more... wizard like than anything. But, Willand does seem to have a natural harmony with the land (a theme often seen in Celtic and Arthurian legends, where the king is a relflection of the land itself), and he hones this and uses it to find the 'battlestones' that Gwydion says are scattered throughout the land. These battlestones (and their opposing 'good' stones) have been corrupted over centuries, by having the mana flow through the natural ley lines disturbed (mainly by the building of Roman roads, cutting off the natural flow) and these battlestones are now holding a great deal of harm, and projecting this harm so that the country itself is poised on the brink of war. So Gwydion and Willand traverse the country trying to find and neutralize these battle stones before war starts.

They aren't quite successful, for there is a huge battle at one point where the rebel troops (those of the house of York, the rightful ruling family) massacre the troops of the king (the house of Lancaster, the family of the usurper Henry IV), but Willand manages to shatter the Doomstone and avoid the worst of it.

Its an interesting book and the dynamic between Willand and Gwydion is a good one, Willand being quite reminiscent of Wart from a Once and Future King, and the idea of mana flow and ley lines is done very well, but it does start to suffer from techo-babble syndrome after awhile, where they go into so much detail that I just skip over it and block it out. It might actually be magical, but its still babble after awhile if you get bogged down in the details.

There are other books in this series, but I haven't decided if I want to read them yet.

Last night, I blew through a silly Harlequin romance novel (and I use that word lightly) in about an hour, so I admit, I am loathe to count it towards my tally. Not only was it very short, but I also wasn't reading it very closely, more like... scanning the pages. And no, I wasn't rushing to the sex scenes, I kinda scanned through those too.

So, why did I bother reading it? Because Nat lent it to me, it was on my bedside table and I was too lazy to get out of my nice, warm, cozy bed to get the actual book I'm reading, which was in my purse in the living room. Yup, I'm THAT lazy :)

Therefore, A Night With the Boss, written by Natalie Somebodyorother (sorry, forgot her last name) will be book 7.5 for the year. Heh.

It's your basic Harlequin, girl meets boy, girl has all sorts of reasons not to be with boy, they end up together anyway, break up for awhile and (here's the twist!) girl ends up pregnant, but they plan to get married at the end and live happily ever after. Nothing ground breaking or earth shattering happening here.

I admit, it did amuse me on the level that, well, I also dated someone I worked with. No, not my boss, but still, I did find some... universal similarties in the whole idea of inter-office dating. The keeping it low key thing, the whole trying to avoid the office gossip but knowing full well people are talking anyway thing, yeah, we had all that too. And yes, I did end up marrying my workplace romance, and we are living happily ever after. Heh.

Book 7 is The Shipping News by Annie Proulx. This is the first novel of her's that I've read, previously I've only been exposed to her short stories, and this only came about because I loved Brokeback Mountain so much, which was in her Close Range collection of short stories. So, I wasn't quite sure what to expect from a full-length novel of hers.

The Shipping News won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1994, so obviously some people thought it was a good book. And they are right, for I did enjoy it. I've often thought Proulx to be an American version of Alice Munro, another author whose short stories I really enjoy. Both are excellent at conveying a very set time and space, both portray small town life and all the quirks of character and life that go with it, and both have an... off-kilter style of writing that can sometimes leave you feeling... almost uncomfortable. But anyway, I bring Alice Munro up here as a comparison simply because she sets her stories in small town Canada (usually Ontario), whereas most of Proulx's stories I've read use Wyoming as a backdrop. But with the Shipping News, Proulx journeys to Canada as well.

The novel is set (mostly) in a small fishing village in Newfoundland. It is very much a 'fish out of water' tale, the main character, a rather pathetic individual named Quoyle, is taken advantage by pretty much everyone in his life. He doesn't have the best relationship with his family (his parents don't seem to really support him much, and the brother sounds abusive in that way siblings can be), he is repeatedly hired and fired from his job at a local newspaper, and his wife makes no secret of cheating on him and basically abandoning him to look after their two little girls, whom Quoyle dotes on. Problem is, he also dotes on his nasty wife, whom he always thinks will calm down and return the burning love he has for her. It's all quite sad really.

But Quoyle's life begins to change when his parents participate in a sucide pact (father loses his job and they have no savings), his horrible wife dies in a car accident (after kidnapping the two girls and selling them to a pedophile for a few grand) and Quoyle's tough old bird aunt arrives in his life and convinces him to accompany her to their family's ancestral home in Newfoundland. Acquring a job there in record time and realizing that there is nothing for him in the States, he agrees.

Slowly but surely, Quoyle does put his life together. He becomes good at his job (writing the Shipping News column for the local paper), his parenting skills are actually quite good, he is accepted by the town (he actually has a group of friends) and he slowly, but surely finds love with townie Wavey, whose treatment by her husband sounds rather reminiscent of Quoyle's treatment by his wife.

Proulx does a great job of portraying Newfoundland. She doesn't shy away from the social problems of living there, the lack of jobs due to government mishandling of our fisheries resources, the sexual abuse (this story was written not long after the Mount Cashel Orphanage story was already well known across Canada) and just the hardships associated with living on the Rock.

It's a hard place to live all right, constant storms, not a lot of arrable land, the fish stock so many of them depended upon pretty much depleted, and it would be easy to see that these people might be depressed or hopeless, but they're not. They're resourceful and they're pretty darn happy overall, and pretty fiercly devoted to their way of life. Its not a stubborn devotion either, but one fueled by love.

This book actually has a happy ending. Which kinda suprised me as so mahy of Proulx's short stories, well, they end badly. But here, things started badly and ended well, with a lot of weirdness on the way.

Books 5 and 6 this year are also by John Varley, the continuation of the Titan series, Wizard and Demon.

I enjoyed these books obviously enough to continue reading them, but they weren't... great.

In Wizard, we continue the story of earth-born astronaut, Cirroco Jones, and her sidekick, Gaby Plauget, about 100 years after the events of Titan. Cirroco is well-established in her role as Gaea's Wizard, basically being more of the public face of Gaea's 'rule' amongst the people of Gaea. Cirroco's most important, and soul-sucking, role though, is that she is the arbitrator of who amongst the Titanides are allowed to breed. In order to keep the Titanide population under some form of control (as they have no natural predators, they would quickly overrun Gaea if they were allowed to breed unchecked. So, every year or so, the Titanides hold elaborate 'Carnivals', where they all present Cirroco with their breeding plans (Titanide genetics are extremely complicated given that Titanides have both male and female genetalia, and Varley seems inordiantely pleased to explain just how complicated this whole thing is) and she decides who's breeding plan will produce the strongest offspring, and these pairings (or quartets or whathave you) are rewarded with a 'fertilized' egg. But the weight of having an entire species depend upon her for their existence has taken its toll on Cirroco, and she spends much of her time drunk so as not to have to deal with the pain she causes most of the race in denying them their right to procreate.

So this is the state that two newcomers to Gaea, Chris Major and Robin, find Cirroco in when they arrive. Both Chris and Robin have come to Gaea to be cured of their mental afflictions. Chris seems to be a bit schizophrenic, he has episodes where he can't remember what he did, but basically, during these episodes, he looses all his inhibitions and can become rather dangerous. Robin, a young woman from an all lesbian outpost called the Coven that is in Earth orbit, seems to have a severe case of epliepsy. Both of them have an audience with Gaea, where she basically tells them that she will cure them, but they have to do something 'heroic' first. Gaea only rewards heroes.

Chris and Robin set off on an epic journey with Cirroco and Gaby to basically circumnavigate Gaea, as Cirroco, in her duties as Wizard, must touch base now and then with Gaea's 'sub-ordinate' brains, one governor for each region. Some of these regional brains are now openly hostile to Gaea (the one called Oceanus having led a rebellion against Gaea some eons ago), while others are allies of Gaea, and some are just insane at this point. But Cirroco must visit them all, and it turns out they are being visited for another reason as well, Cirroco and Gaby are thinking about instituting their own rebellion and would like Chris and Robin to be a part of it.

So, its basically another epic journey where we learn more about Gaea (specifically her regional brains), meet some new Gaean creations (buzz-bombs, which are like organic, WWII fighter planes) and are given yet more insight into Titanide sexual practices, including human-titanide relations. Also along the way, a main character is killed and Cirroco resigns her position as Wizard, killing Gaea's 'earth mother' incarnation of herself.

Book three in the series, Demon starts on Earth, where a particularly vicious nuclear war is raging, killing most of the Earth's population and rendering the planet pretty uninhabitable. No one really knows how or why the War began, but it doesn't really show any signs of stopping. We meet Conal, a young Canadian who is going to Gaea for one purpose; to kill Cirroco Jones.

He doesn't manage to do this of course, in fact, he finds Cirroco fairly quickly, but she gets the best of him, and after a round of 'torture', she also wins his undying loyalty. Cirroco is no longer the Wizard of Gaea, she is now in fact Gaea's sworn enemy, and given how insane and senile Gaea's acting of late, this is probably a good move. Gaea has become obsessed with movie making and watching Earth movies. She has adopted, as her latest incarnation, the form of a 50ft tall Marilyn Monroe, sexy and frightening at the same time. She has created countless new creatures all for the purpose of making movies. She doesn't seem to care about anything else. Cirroco knows Gaea must be removed.

Rejoining us again is Robin, this time with her two children in tow; Nova, 19 and Adam, 18 months old. Both are basically 'virgin' births, as Robin went back to the Coven, where everyone is a lesbian. But the fact that Adam is a boy is problematic and he (and Robin) are viewed as abominations. Knowing that Gaea is somehow responsible for both pregnancies, Robin returns to Gaea for some answers.
So basically, this novel deals a lot with sprituality, belief, free-will, and what to do when 'god' is insane. There is a lot of war in this novel, from the backdrop of the devestating nuclear war on Earth (discovered to have been manipulated by Gaea) to the overthrow of Gaea herself through Cirroco building herself an army of Earth refugees and Titanides, there is a bit of 'might makes right' questioning as well. But of course, there is a happy ending and Gaea is overthrown and basically a lot of questions are asked, but some are never answered, but that isn't annoying as you might think.

They're a good read overall, not too science fictiony for me and decent enough characters. Varley's internal consistency is well done though, he's obviously put a lot of thought into the world of Gaea, and it shows.

Book four! Whoohoo!

Book 4, which is Titan by John Varley, came about because, as I put it to my husband, "I've read all my Christmas books." This earned me a moment of disbelief, then an exasperated roll of the eyes, and then Titan and its sequels appeared on my bedside table.

These were books Graig purchased used, recommended by someone, but put aside by him as not really liking them too much, there was too much fantasy, not enough sci-fi for him, so he thought I might like them, seeing as how I like fantasy literature.

True enough, but upon reaching the end of it I smiled and said, "yeah, not bad, but there's too much sci-fi and not enough fantasy in it".

The gist of Titan is simple, group of astronauts are on mission to Saturn, discover something strange near one of Saturn's moons, are taken 'prisoner' on strange celestial object, discover it is an entire organic world/alien, make friends, have adventures and talk to 'god', or rather, the entity known as Gaea, the alien world itself.

The main character of this book is the Earth ship's captain, the oddly named Cirroco Jones. She's not a bad character, strong-willed, smart, not gorgeous, not infallible, she kind of puts in mind of the Ripley mold of space heroines. Jones and her crew all go through a lot upon their arrival on Gaea, some come through it ok, some not, and one completely looses her humanity.

The greatest discovery Jones and her crew makes though is of a race of natives called Titanides. They are pretty much like centaurs of Greek mythology, human heads and torsos attached to the torso and hindquarters of a horse. They are a friendly, complex people whose speech is all done in song, which is something Cirroco instinctively (she's not sure how) understands.

Cirroco and her remaining crew members settle in with the Titanides for awhile, but eventually, they are restless, not necessarily wanting to leave Gaea, but to get some questions answered, so, in undoubtedly what is the most fantasy like trope in this book, she and two companions go on a quest, a quest to come face to face with Gaea herself. This quest involves the extremely difficult journey up one of Gaea's support cables (think of a cable on a suspension bridge, except it would reach outerspace, and not just the top of the Golden Gate Bridge) to Gaea's central hub, basically on the roof of the world. Along they way are many trials and tribulations, suitable for an epic journey. In fact, once Cirroco and her remaining companion Gaby reach Gaea, Gaea is sufficiently impressed by Cirroco as to give her a job as Wizard to the world, basically Gaea's emissary amongst the people. Cirroco agrees (cue sequel).

Overall, its a pretty good book. Enough mystery and character development, but as I said, there is a little too much sci-fi in it for my liking. The descriptions of the ship and the structure of Gaea herself leave me a little uncertain, and after too much of the techo-babble, I start to tune it out.

There is a lot of frank talk about sex in this book. Not so much descriptive sex scenes or anything like that, but all the characters are comfortable with it, have it and think about it. Homosexuality is not presented as much of a taboo at all, and it is nice to read that Varley obviously thinks that society will be much more open minded in the future. However, there is also a double rape in the book, and that's the sort of (non)sexuality I can always do without.

So yeah, I did enjoy this enough to move onto the next book in the series, Wizard. Titan is nothing spectacular, but its a good quick read with enough going on to keep me interested.

Book three of 2008 is The Children of Hurin by J.R.R Tolkien.

Ok, it's really only kinda written by Tolkien, especially since he's been dead since the 70s. This, like the Simalrilion was cobbled together by Tolkien's son Christopher from unfinished writings Tolkien left behind. I don't actually have a problem with this, if you're named the executor of your father's literary estate, why not try to continue to publish as much stuff as you can? Although sometimes, it does make me wonder if Christopher does this because he has a gambling problem or something and needs an influx of cash every now and then.

I jest. Anyway, the Children of Hurin is a collection of stories Christopher basically took from an unfinished epic poem Tolkien had been writing. And not only writing, but he was writing it in the meter that was commonly used by Old English epic tales such as Beowulf or the Battle of Maldon. There's an excerpt of the poem in the book's appendix, and I was shocked at how well Tolkien was able to mimic the style of those poems. Although, I now realize I shouldn't have been shocked, after all, the man was a scholar in Old English.

But yes, reading this book was like a journey back to John Chamberlain's Old English class in second year university. I felt like I should be translating these lines as I read them, full as they are of strange (yet tantalizingly familiar) place names riddled with awkward combinations of consonants and vowels. The pronunciation guide at the beginning of the book was pretty much identical to the one at the beginning of my Guide to Old English. Of course, this means I knew I was pronouncing all those names correctly.

This book is not for fans of sword and sorcery fantasy. Heck, I wouldn't even completely recommend it to those who usually read high fantasy, the very genre Tolkien himself pretty much invented. The Children of Hurin is more like an epic historical legend, something from the Icelandic or Norse sagas, complete with ogres and dragons and tragic heroes who are at once noble and brave, but oh so flawed as well. They win the day, but are still brought low by much adversity.

There's actually lots of characterization in this book, but its almost hard to discern because you're tripping over so many names. Names of people, places, things. Damn Tolkien liked to name things. And he had a name for everything. But hey, you develop your own language, you should be allowed to show it off. I say there is characterization because the main child of Hurin, Turin, is almost unlikeable. He's such a prat sometimes you just want to slug him. He comes across as self righteous and with absolutely zero ability to take criticism. Unfortunately, he's also right a lot of the time, and somehow, he does manage to inspire loyalty and love from followers. Of course, he also manages to piss people off nearly as often as he gains respect though. He meets a suitably tragic end, although its also one that's very uncomfortable, but completely in line with type of legends that Tolkien was trying to write here.

As a literary work, The Children of Hurin is a masterpiece. I don't think it ever aspired to be anything else really. It certainly isn't like the majority of fantasy fiction out there, inspired by the author's earlier works. I know people often complain that the Lord of the Rings is nearly inaccessible, well, The Children of Hurin make LotR look like Harry Potter.

Second book of 2008 is Dave Bidini's Around the World in 57 1/2 Gigs .

First things first, by gigs, he means musical gigs, not computer terminology gigs.

I'm a big fan of Bidin's writing. In fact, at this point, I've read every single one of his books except Baseballissimo because I generally find Baseball boring. But I imagine if I did read it, I'd probably enjoy it because Bidin's style is very engaging. He has great sense of metaphor and also a wonderful sense of humour.

This book basically takes place over parts of 2006 and 2007, where Bidini finds himself facing the breakup of his long time band, the Rheostatics. The Rheostatics are a Canadian band of (as Bindini himself puts it) moderate success. They've been together for over 20 years at this point, have had highs, and a bunch of lows, and one of their main members, has just said he's quitting. Which causes another member to quit. Bidini has to decide if he should fight for the Rheos, or finally let them go.

He chooses the later.

As a way to continue in music and perhaps as a way to get over the breakup, he embarks on a whirlwind world tour, playing solo stuff, mainly of his own composition, but also a variety of Rheostatic tunes. Bidini's never really embarked on a solo tour before, so his nerves are high and his confidence low as he travels to Finland for his opening gig.

He obviously enjoys his time in Finland, where heavy metal is alive and well, the crowds restrained (he basically calls Finns 'everything that Canadians think we are, but aren't really'.) and the people friendly but reserved. He plays some successful gigs and works out some of his pre-jitters and realizes that he can do this and have fun.

Over the course of the book, Bidini intersperses tales of his own life (including the account of saving Gord Downie of the Tragically Hip's life), his introspection over the breakup of the Rheostatics and the history and impact of rock and roll not only on his own life, but on that of the world.

He travels to Russia, to China, to Liberia and Sierra Leone, places of poverty and recently stricken by war, all of whom searching for their own rebellious rock n' roll voice, some not finding it easily, some doing so. In China, there isn't much rock at all, but they do revere some Beatles tunes, while in post-communist Russia, there is a lot of rock n' roll being made, and there, the impact that the Beatles had was increadibly huge.

In Sierra Leone, he meets two young boys who lost large parts of their families in the recent civil war, who have been forced to grow up way too fast, and who are finding their voices through hip-hop and rap, singing about the state of their country and the hope they have for its future. Bidini is obviously very greatful to be there for this.

Overall, an enjoyable book, mainly for the tour of world music, both present and historical, told through the voice of a Canadian hoser.

First book of 2008 is the third book in Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, The Amber Spyglass.

It took me a little longer to get through this one because, as I discovered reading the back of this book, Pullman took some inspiration from Milton's Paradise Lost for this puppy, so I was sort of mentally cross-referencing stuff that happened in Spyglass with stuff that happened in Paradise Lost.

A large part of Amber Spyglass takes place in the alternate world Dr. Mary Malone found her in, living with mulefa and trying to solve their world's problems, specifically the dying trees (which the mulefa depend upon) and the dwindling amount of Dust in their world. Mary has supposedly been cast as the Serpent in the Garden of Eden (the mulefa's world) who will tempt Lyra, but honestly, I didn't really see it. Oh sure I could see the Garden of Eden comparison, but Mary not so much in the role of the Serpent.

And it is not that Lyra and Will are so much cast out of Eden, but they have to leave it as they (or anyone really) cannot survive for long out of the world that they were born into. They leave due to nessecity, not out of any wrong doing or transgression. Although, in Pullman's world, as there are characters trying to 'kill' God (or the Regent in this case), there really isn't any Authority to rebel against in this Eden.

So, anyway, the overall story though? Good, but bittersweet. Pullman kills off characters left and right with an abandon I haven't seen since George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire opus. And its cool. I always think characters should die during these large, fantasy epics. Its what makes them epic. And Pullman doesn't disappoint, killing off many, many characters, and always at times that make sense and are not just for shock value.

I also liked his 'redemption' of Mrs. Coulter. She's been one of the hardest characters ever to figure out, and right down to the last moment, Pullman did a really excellent job of making you wonder 'will she or won't she"? Its been difficult for two whole books to figure out whose side she was really on (other than her own), and when the answer is finally known, it doesn't feel forced either.

But its the overall ending that is the most bittersweet as Lyra and Will are not only forced to leave Eden, but they are forced to leave one another as well. Due to more circumstances beyond their control, they choose to live apart from one other, despite their great love, and live out their days in their respective home universes. It really was quite sad and I did feel myself choking up a little.

On the whole, His Dark Materials is a coming of age story. Lyra goes from child to young woman and her epic journey is vastly harrowing and difficult. I like stories like this one and the characters are all well done, as is Pullman's internal consistency. Everything is connected and tied up together very well.

Here we are, 2008. Another new year, another new bunch of books.

In 2007, I still did not manage to read 50 books. I have excuses though, as to why I only managed to read 30. I volunteer for the board of directors at my son's daycare, which amounts to a (non-paid) part time job on top of my regular job, we travelled to San Diego this year, oh and I got married, and between that and moving my new husband's myriad of belongings into our house, it was a pretty busy year.

So as we look upon 2007, what were those 30 books I read? Let's list 'em shall we?

The Golden Compass and the Subtle Knife by Phillip Pullman
Touch Wood: Confessions of an Accidental Porn Director by Anoymous
Yes Man by Danny Wallace
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier by Alan Moore
Making History by Stephen Fry
Cthulhu Tales by H.P. Lovecraft
Shock Doctrine: The Rise and Fall of Distaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
The Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
Fluke by Christopher Moore
Late for the Wedding by Amanda Quick
Love of a Good Woman by Alice Munro
Fall of Knight by Peter David
Wilson: A Consideration of Sources by David Mamet
Mordred: Bastard Son by Douglas Clegg
Alice in Sunderland by Bryan Talbot
Curse of the Narrows by Laura M. MacDonald
Give Our Regards to the Atom Smashers: Writers on Comics by Various
Serpents Garden and Oracle Glass by Judith Merkle Riley
Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts
Anasasi Boys by Neil Gaiman
Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay
Bitten by Kelly Armstrong
Inheritance by Devin Grayson
Five Hole Stories by Dave Bidini

It's a nice cross section I think, of things I usually read. A smattering of horror (Bitten, the Night Watch, Cthuhlu Tales), some Arthurian Legends (Mordred:Bastard Son, Fall of Knight), some historical non-fiction (Curse of the Narrows, the Shock Doctrine), stuff written by people who also write comic books (Anasasi Boys, Inheritance), some funny stuff, both fiction and non (Fluke, Yes Man, Touch Wood), some 'serious literature' (For Whom the Bell Tolls, Rebecca) and of course, some fantasy (Ysabel, Harry Potter, The Golden Compass).

Some highlights? Any year where Guy Kay has a new book come out is a spectacular year as far as I'm concerned, and Ysabel did not disappoint. I was both inspired and entertained by Danny Wallace's Yes Man, educated about my own country with Curse of the Narrows, and made increadibly angry (in a good way) by The Shock Doctrine.

The disappointments? The final installment of Harry Potter fell a little flat. The promising Five Hole Stories by Dave Bidini, a collection of short, erotic hockey stories (sex and hockey, two of my favourite things), wasn't as... erotic as I hoped, and Alan Moore's the Black Dossier was nearly impenetrable in parts.

But as I did manage to read more new books than I did last year (and with nearly as many re-reads), I feel 2007 was a winner overall reading-wise and I look forward to 2008, which already sees me half way through the final book in Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, and on my nightstand, presently in queue are Dave Bidini's latest book, J.R.R Tolkien's Children of Hurin and Michael Palin's diary from his Monty Python years. All reads I'm looking forward to.

Well, you can tell I've been home for the holidays and that I got a whack of new books to read, because I've managed to polish off two more in the last couple of days. Of course, they're not what you'd call difficult reads, as they are techincially 'children's' books, but whatever, I'm enjoying them.

So 29 and 30 of the year are The Golden Compass and The Subtle Knife by Phillip Pullman. Yup, since the movie has come out, I've been curious about these puppies, and my wonderful husband, knowing this, got me the three books for Christmas.

Of course, part of my curiosity also comes from the fact that a couple of Catholic school boards in Canada have banned these books from their school libraries as basically not being something that upholds the values of the Church, or some such nonsense, so yeah, you bet I wanted to read them at this point. I think their dislike of the books also comes from the fact that Pullman is a self-avowed atheist, and isn't really shy about proclaiming himself as such.

Well, I guess, reading these books as an adult, I can kinda see why Catholic school boards MIGHT have a problem with these books, but I still think book banning at all is a lousy, lousy thing. One of the main characters, Lord Asriel, certaintly looks like he's launching a campaign to kill God, and the Church (or Magestirium) is pretty much the big bad guy in this.

But the funny thing is, I find these books very spirtual overall, but of course, its not a Catholic Church approved spirituallity, it is more... Native American or shamanistic-type spirtituality. Everyone on Pullman's version of Earth has what is called a daemon. This daemon is the physical expression of a person's soul, and it always takes the form of an animal. The daemon's animal form is fluid when a person is a child; the daemon able to take on many animal forms, but once the person reaches adolescence, the daemon settles on one animal form, and that form is refelctive of the person themselves. So basically, the daemon is their totem animal.

The main character of the book is a young girl, Lyra, and her daemon Pantalaimon. Lyra has been raised by Scholars at Oxford University, and, like a lot of fanatsy novel heroines, has grown up half wild and free-spirited. She's saucy and brave and streetwise, not ladylike in the least, a hell of a liar and a tactician, but not particularly polite. She's a handful, and while she annoys those raising her, you also know they wouldn't have her any other way.

Lyra's world starts to change one night when her Uncle Asriel (and just from his name, obviously a derivative of the demon Azreal, I could see where his part in the story was going) arrives at the College with some very startling information; information that nearly gets him poisoned for his troubles. It's only because Lyra eavesdrops on the whole thing and is able to warn him from drinking poisioned brandy that he is saved. This night she hears for the first time of the magical properties of Dust, and hears about the ideas of other worlds you can see through the Aurora Borealis in the North.

Also she finds out about the Gobblers, a scary group of individuals who are snatching children from the streets all over England, for some nefarious purpose that can only be speculated on. In charge of these Gobblers are the beautiful, mysterious, and unmistakably evil, Mrs. Coulter.

Eventually, Lyra heads North to rescue Lord Asriel and all the children snatched by the Gobblers. She travels with a motely crue of gyptians (gypsys), a Texan aeronaut, and a sentient polarbear who has been exiled by his own people. They reach the Gobblers experimental station in the North and find out the they're attempting (and succeeding) in physically separating the taken children from their daemons. By this point, as we've met so many daemons and because Pantalaimon himself is such a major character, Pullman does an excellent job in making us understand just how abhorrent this practice is to the people of this world. The separated children stumble around like they're half dead, and in fact, most die right from the offset of shock. It's a terrible, terrible thing, and it seems that the Church is behind this. Is this Pullman's position on the Church that it is attempting to sepearate its worshippers souls for its own benefits and not really care about their spirituality? Ah, who knows. I can't say I really thought deeply about the whole thing throughout, I just enjoyed it for the story it is.

So while in the North, Lyra finds that she can use the aliethometer (the 'golden compass', a truth telling machine), rescues the children, meets witches, restores the rightful polar bear king to his throne, rescues Lord Asriel, and eventually, finds her way into another world after Lord Asriel creates a rift between the worlds.

Pullman starts the second book The Subtle Knife in our own world, where we meet twelve year old William, who is despereately trying to hide his mother so he can go on the run. William's mother sounds a little schizophrenic, although after a while, well, are you crazy if they really ARE out to get you? It seems William's father was an explorer of some renknown who disappeared twelve years ago on an expedition to the Arctic, and a lot of different people are very interested in what he may have discovered. William, while trying to get away from some men, inadvertantly kills one of them, and he knows that he has to get far, far away. Well, where better than another world? He crawls through a door he finds (quite by chance, but of course we know that nothing happens by chance in all of this) and ends up on world pretty much completely inhabited by children because the adults have all been affected by Spectres, creatures which seem to feed on adult souls and leave them indifferent and infectual in the world. Rather put in me in the mind of Rowlings' Dementors actually.

Anyway, while in this world, William of course meets Lyra and all sorts of hijinks ensue. She finds out that she is supposed to help Will find his father, but she doesn't do this very well, and ends up briefly loosing the aliethometer when its stolen in our world by a man actually from Lyra's world. Lyra doesn't deal as well with our world as it is much nosier, and busier, the terminoligy for things quite different. Lyra's earth puts one in mind of early 20th century Earth; just before WWI when there is techonology, but it hasn't advanced to what we have today. There's still something... quaint about Lyra's world, that quaintness ours lost long ago.

Some of the bouncing back and forth between worlds (and everyone gets in on it really) gets a bit confusing, but its somewhat made easier when Will becomes the bearer of the subtle knife, a knife that can literally cut anything, electrons, atoms, doorways into other worlds, etc. Its a hotly contested item, but can really only be used properly by the bearer. It also carries the name Aesirhaettir, which means god killer, and so Lord Asriel wants it for his campaign against God, or the Authority, as they begin to refer to him here.

The Subtle Knife is definitely more... upfront about its anti-organized religion sentiments, as it has Lord Asriel (off panel the entire book) gathering a vast army so he can re-wage war against the Authority, and win this time. Basically, in Lyra's world, the right side won (ie not the rebels) and so the Magesterium have been stifling human advancement since the beginning of time, and Lord Asriel wants to do things 'right' this time. Of course though, the 'right' side won in Will's world as well, and they (us) haven't been tecnologically stunted. Although, as we have no visible daemons, we may be spiritually stunted somehow... dunno.

Anyway, overall, I'm really enjoying these books. The overall feel of Lyra's world is a very interesting one, its got that nice famliarity with enough differences for it to still feel "other", and the characters are interesting and diverse. Mrs. Coulter is a hell of a bad guy, in some ways even more scary than Voldemort or Sauron, and hey, any world that has sentient polar bears, I'm all for that.

I find it sad these books are banned in certain schools. I don't think there's a need for that.

Wow, what do you know, I managed to sneak one last book in this year. Number 28 is Touch Wood: Confessions of an Accidental Porn Director by Anonymous.

Now, we should probably just get it out of the way right now that I don't have a problem with porn. In fact, I rather enjoy it in small doses. I look at porn as a nice little appetizer before the main course, if you get my drift.

ANYWAY, G found this book while we were out shopping for Christmas gifts, and thought it looked amusing, so we picked it up. The book details one British man's foray into the world of adult entertainment. He knows that there is money to be made in porn, so darnit, why shouldn't he be able to get a share of that money?

He sets about starting up his company, Touch Wood, secures loans, the help of friends, etc. But of course, the course of true smut never does run smoothly.

The book is pretty hilarious. It details all the things that could possibly go wrong while filming a porn film and do. From two stars who don't want to fuck one another because they've done so many time that they feel like 'brother and sister', to diva pornstars, to getting busted by various people who 'know what you're up to'.

Basically, this whole book is a Danny Wallace/Dave Gorman 'stupid boy-project' taken to the Nth degree. (Oh, and to take the 'stupid boy-project' analogy a little further, the unnamed narrator even has a disapproving, Norweigian girlfriend. It really made me want to know if Ana and Hanne ever met and just how they'd be able to bond over their dislike of 'stupid boy-projects'.)

Of course, for the most part, what this book does is take all the 'romance' (hah!) out of porn and boil it down to its most clinical aspects. This is porn deconstructed all right. Its still amusing, but there really is nothing sexy about it.

In what is likely to be the last book I read this year, we come to number 27, Yes Man by Danny Wallace.

It was probably late 2005 when G introduced me to Danny Wallace and his cohort Dave Gorman as they embarked on a world-wide journey to meet 52 other people named Dave Gorman. I thoroughly enjoyed Are You Dave Gorman, and so when G offered me other books written by one or the other, I read 'em. But funny enough, neither of Dave or Danny's solo efforts wowed me as much as AYDG did.

Until Yes Man.

Danny Wallace, after having a conversation on a bus with a mysteriously wise man, takes up the man's challenge to 'say yes more'. At this point in Danny's life, his long time girlfriend has broken up with him (she'd had enough of all the 'stupid boy-projects' in his life) and he just wasn't going out at all. He was saying no to everything.

So, for a good chunk of a year, Danny decides to say yes to everything. He says yes to buying a car, he says yes to journeying to Amsterdam to help out the son of an imprisoned sultan (yes, it is an internet scam), he says yes to going out with friends, he says yes to flyers and freaks he meets on the street, he says yes to a new job, he says yes to everything.

And mostly, everything turns out well. Indeed, Danny seems much happier with everything. Oh he goes through some ups and downs and at times he desperately, desperately wishes he could say 'no' (one of the biggest ones being when he runs into his ex-girlfriend and her new beau on a date, and when the guy asks Danny, out of sheer politeness, if he'd like to join them, Danny of course says yes), but overall, it sounds like saying yes more definitely turns out to be the positive experience he hoped it would be.

Of course, it also does leave him in some debt, but due to his new job at the BBC, he seems to be able to handle it again.

Its interesting to read this and think about your own life and all the things you say 'no' to. No to going out to friends, no to travelling to places you've always wanted to go, no to various opportunities etc. We say 'no' a lot because, as Danny discusses, it is easier than 'yes' most of the time. No can be a lot safer than yes. I'd like to be able to say yes more, but sometimes, I also think I say yes enough. But Danny did also prove that no is necessary.

Necessary, but oftentimes overused. It is something we should all think about using more judiciously, and not just out of habit.

I'm going to count another graphic novel as book number 26, mainly because its by Alan Moore and its a dense little piece of work. So yes, number 26 is League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier.

As I said, its a dense thing, full of large blocks of text interspersed throughout the main story. To me, this book felt like Planetary meets Fables filtered through the weirdness of Alan Moore's brain. Of course, he has already introduced us to his world of the League in two previous tomes, but this one attempts to give us more of the world's 'history' I guess, which is why it seems to me to be rather like Planetary. Especially since it seems like its the world's 'hidden' history.

Which I admit, is where I got a little lost.

We pick up the story in 1953, following a still young Wilhelmina Murray and a rejuvenated Allan Quartermaine, setting up a secret agent named Jimmy Bond. Mina gets Bond to take her to an abandoned intelligence base, where she beats him up (and deservedly so) and is able to find the Black Dossier, a dossier on the various members over the years of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and the hidden workings of the world. Mina and Allan it seems broke away from the government intelligence service, for reasons we're never really fully given.

But I was never really able to figure out if the workings were hidden? Is the actual nature of the world something that's hidden from the average folk or is the fact that Faeries were common until 1617 and that vampires do exist, etc. etc. common knowledge? I never really felt it was decided one way or another.

Anyway, the text pieces througthout the book are supposed to be sections of the Black Dossier itself. They are very well done pastiches for the most part, where Moore apes the writings of Shakespeare (not perfectly of course, but not too badly either), HP Lovecraft, Virginia Woolf, John Cleland and Jack Kerouac amongst others. Some of the characters who are also members of the League through the years are pretty obscure, and it really is only by the dint of my English Lit degree that I know who Orlando and Fanny Hill are. Not to make myself sound like a snob or anything, but that sort of thing is going to be right over a lot of reader's heads. Heck, there were some characters I had no idea who they were either. Some of the pastiches make for difficult reading, especially the one written like a 50s beat poem. If you don't know the parlance of the time, its increadibly hard to understand and even I gave up after a bit.

There's also a LOT of sex in this book. Which doesn't bother me, but makes me think Alan Moore's becoming a dirty old man. Which is also fine I guess. The ending though, felt to me kinda Fables-esque, but in reverse. While Willingham's collection of public-domain literary characters have been exiled from their home dimensions and now live amongst us on Earth (unbeknownst to us), Moore's collection of public domain literary characters are leaving their home dimension of Earth and going to live in another dimension, unbeknonst to us.

I'm not entirely sure what exactly I got out of this book. There didn't seem to be much of an actual plot like there were in the previous volumes. There was some action inbetween readings of the dossier, but I just was never sure what anyone was really trying to achieve in this. Yes, Mina and Allan wanted the Dossier because they were in it and they were afriad that the government had figured out that all these beings were leaving the world for this alternate dimension? But I never really understood why the govenment had this dossier in the first place, nor, why once it was stolen, they needed it back again so badly since the thing wasn't in a very secure location in the first place.

Basically, to me, the Black Dossier just felt like Alan Moore playing in his sandbox, but not being entirely sure what he was building.

Number 25 is Making History by Stephen Fry. This is one of G's books that I noticed sitting on the shelf, and I noticed it mainly because G and I were watching Stephen Fry's 'game show', QI, which was a lot of fun, interesting, but also kind of silly. I had no idea who Stephen Fry was previous to watching QI, although I did recognize his name, and afterwards discovered that it was because he was the narrator of the children's show, Pokoyo, which is a terribly sweet little show. I also found out Fry is a good friend of Hugh Laurie's, who is someone I know from watching a couple of season's of House.

So anyway... Making History. I'm not entirely sure why I picked it up, other than because I did enjoy the sense of humour Fry displayed on QI, as you see, Making HIstory is about timetravel, and timetravel is generally a genre I stay far away from. I'm not fond of timetravel tales, in either books, comics, movies or role playing games. Strange thing though, is while I don't really like timetravel stories, I'm quite fond of alternate timeline stories. I LOVE the Elseworlds comics from DC, where they take the known timeline and tweak it just so, and tell a story spun out from the differences in the new timeline. I find that stuff fascinating.

So, while I don't like time travel, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the timetravel stuff was relatively low key and not headache inducing, the story was really more about the alternate timeline that is created.

Michael Young, a young PHD candidate at Cambridge University, England, answers for us, the age old question (well, age old since the late 1930s), what would happen if HItler was never born? Young, whose PHD thesis is all about Hitler's early childhood, runs into a scientist, Leo Zimmerman, whose father was an SS officer at Auschwitz. Consumed by guilt over his father's actions in the second World War, Zimmerman (whose name is actually Axel Braun), invents a machine that lets him 'look' into the past. So he and Michael hatch a plot to introduce a pill into the drinking water of Hitler's hometown that will render his father sterile. The plan works perfectly, but unfortunately, the world doesn't become what Michael (and Leo) invisioned.

"Nature abhors a vaccuum" is the old rule, and in the case of Germany after WWI, this would seem to be true. Another man, one Rudolf Golder, steps into the spot Hitler historically filled and still manages to perpetrate the Holocaust on the Jews of Europe, as well as starting WWII. How is this worse than HItler, well, Golder does what Hitler couldn't manage; he wins WWII. All of Europe, Russia and Great Britian fall before the German war machine. Jews are completely eradicated from Europe, the only Jewish population remaining in the world is that which escaped to the USA and Canada during the War. Germany becomes the other world Super Power and eventually enters the Cold War with the US.

The world Michael finds himself in, where he's an American now, his parents having fled England in the 60s, is not necessarily a better one; fewer Jews, a conquored Europe, a USA where homophobia and racism are tolerated and accepted. There was no black rights movement in the 60s, and the US seems to be stuck in the rather puritanical 50s, never to move to equal rights for African Americans, women or gays. Being a homosexual is tantamount to being an enemy of the state.

So of course, Michael, when he realizes what he has done, immediately sets out to make the world 'right' again, by ensuring that Hitler is born.

Its a very... Marxist idea that if something is meant to be, you can remove one certainty, but another will always take its place. You remove Hitler from history, but there is someone to take his place. But, its also a rather interesting book that way, as most of the 'what would the world be like if there was no Hitler' always seems to take for granted that the world would be a better place, which , as this book demonstrates, may not neccessarily be the case.

Michael Young is a likeable character, if a little flighty, but he means well. He is very endearing this way, and his internal monologues are very funny. The ending of the book, as Michael embarks on his plan to set the world right again, is very well done, with tension actually mounting nicely. Its not that you doubt he'll change things again, but you wonder if he'll be able to change them to what had been, or has he irrevociably broken the timestream?

I think though, that what drew me in, happened a few pages into the book, when Fry basically made fun of my university degree:

You could only write successfully about books and poems and plays if you didn't care, really care about them. Hysterical school boy wank, for sure, an attitude compunded of nothing but egotism, vanity and cowardice. But how deeply felt. I went through all my schooldays convinced of this, that literary studies were no more than a series of autopsies performed by heartless technicians. Worse than autopsies: biopsies. Vivisection.

I had to laugh out loud at this paragraph, because while I could see his point, I also know that I (and most English majors I know), were drawn to literary studies precicesly because we loved literature. We wanted to wrap ourselves in it, immerse ourselves in it, find out how it worked, what made it tick. We wanted to examine it becuase we had a deep love for it. I know that the best papers I wrote in school were on books or poems or plays that I was most passionately interested in. If I attempted to write a paper on a work I didn't really care about, well, it generally showed. You couldn't be dispassionate about literature while studying it so intimately.

So screw you Stephen Fry :)

Numero 23 and 24 have now been completed. Yeah, I'm so not reading 50 books this year... ah well.

Numero 23 is a collection of Cthulhu Tales by the master himself, H.P. Lovecraft. Before I read this collection, lent to me by my friend Troy, who is a HUGE Cthulhu fan, my entire exposure to the Cthulhu mythos was a couple of mentions of things in Stephen King short stories, a Batman Elseworld's mini-series, and quite a few rousing games of Arkham Horror. Heck, it wasn't until we first played Arkham Horror a couple of years ago that I found out that this is the inspiration for the Arkham Asylum that is a permanent fixture in Batman comics.

So, being the English major that I am, when faced with something that I like that has 'source material', I try to read the source material. Plus, I generally like short stories.

Upon reading these, I can see why they stuck with people. They're not striving for out and out 'horror', nor are they going for the gross out, which, especially in this day and age I find terribly refreshing. No, the overwhelming sense and tone I got from Lovecraft was a serious sense of dread. Lovecraft was really big on the whole idea that he cannot possible explain just how terrifing or horrible something is; he'd rather leave it to your imagination, and I think that's great. What I can conjure up in my little ol' brain is going to be more frightening to me than pretty much anything he (or anyone else) can come up with because I am going to frame it in the context of something that definitely scares me. If I'm not told exactly what it is, there's no sense of disappointment, I can never be let down by the reveal.

Of course, Lovecraft does have a distinctive style, and this does become repetative upon a lot of reading; he really does like the twist in the last line sort of reveal, and that's fine, but after awhile, you start to see the twist coming. Kind of like watching to many M Knight Shayalaman movies in a row I imagine.

But his characters are a wonderful combination of the absurd and the absolutely normal, juxtaposed beside one another as two worlds that shouldn't meet invariably do. He does a very, very good job at imposing his monsterous creations on a very normal countryside and making everything seem bizarre and uncomfortable.

My favourites? "The Rats in the Walls", "The Colour Out of Space", "The Dunwitch Horror" and the "Music of Erich Zann".

Number 24 was a... difficult book. Not only for the subject matter, but also for the fact that it would often make me so angry that I would have to put it down for a while. Not angry at the book mind you, but angry at the world it talks about. Number 24 is Naomi Klein's the Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. This book follows the adherents to Milton Friedman's so called Chicago School style of economics, the utlimate in free-market capitalism, through the 30 years of its initial birth at the University of Chicago. She tells us how it was implemented in violence and chaos in countries such as Chile, Argentina, Indonesia, Russia, Iraq, Sri Lanka and in the USA. She tells of harmful economic policies shoved through on nations where the populace is currently 'in shock', whether through a change in government, war, or a natural disaster, the market is thrown open to foreign investors who come in and reap billions of dollars, while the bulk of the population finds itself worse off economically than they were before. Its a frightening, maddening look at globalization and big business and all the dirty things the CIA have done. It makes you think the IMF and the World Bank are nothing more than robber barons, set up to supposedly help countries facing a financial crisis, but setting such hard rules for the countries that they must follow Chicago-style rules to qualify for aid, and once again, no one is seemingly helped except huge multinational corporations. Honestly, reading this book made me want to move away to some remote place in Canada where I wouldn't have to rely on government (much) or deal with any big business. But that's not realistic and I accept that. Klein has scrupulously backed up her argument (there are pages and pages of notes stating exactly what her sources are) and she's going to need them, as her book has already come under fire from such right-wing publications here in Canada as the National Post, and I imagine she's also unpopular in other places too. But there seems to just be too many similarities in what all these countries have faced who have been forced to go to a free-market economy to completely discount her theory. A good disaster is good for business, that's all there is to it.

Well , that's really sad. My last completed book was nearly two months ago now. Sheesh... I really have got to stop reading multiple books at once. Nothing gets read quickly then.

Number 22 is For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway. (hereafter abreviated as FWtBT)

One of the benefits of an English degree earned at a Canadian university is that you don't have to read a lot of American literature. Of course, you have to read a lot of stuff written by dead British guys and insufferable Canadians, but that's not really a surprise.

So, because I only had to take one half credit in American Lit, my exposure to Papa Hemingway has been rather limited. Limited to one short story actually, The Snows of Kilimonjaro. It wasn't until well out of university that, upon a friend's recommendation, I delved into a Hemingway novel, The Sun Also Rises. Which, I did enjoy, as there was a weirdly autobiographical element to it that I won't get into, but suffice to say it's there.

I'd been meaning to pick up FWtBT for sometime, having enjoyed my first dip into the Hemingway pool enough to go back again, and came close to picking up a cheap copy of it at a discounted/used book store. How fortunate I didn't, as I discovered a copy down in the basement amongst my brother's books.

I really liked it. It's an... odd book to get the feel of because its mainly written from the pov of Robert Jordan (the main character and not the fantasy author of the same name), who is an American ex-pat acting as a guerilla fighter for the Republic during the Spanish Civil War. So basically, none of the dialogue is actually in English, and Hemingway captures the slight disconnect between the American and his Spanish comrades. Jordan speaks Spanish, but its not his native tongue of course, so now and then, he and his comrades don't understand one another. And the speech is actually simplistic sometimes as they try to get their points across to one another (this is especially noticable when Jordan goes to meet one of the rebel leaders El Sordo. El Sordo, not realizing (or perhaps caring) that Jordan can speak Spanish very well, speaks to him almost as one would a child, in a strange, simplisitc patois).

I also like how all the characters swear a lot (especially the Spanish ones), yet Hemingway only inserts "obsenity" in place of the actual swear word. One of the more common curses was "I obsenity in the milk of thy..." whatever they were describing. I found it became a fun game to mentally puzzle in which curse word was most appropriate in the sentence. I'm not sure if this was a stylistic choice of Hemingway's or simply because, when he was writing, you just didn't write down the swear words. Either way, I actually found it fun.

But overall, FWtBT is not a fun book. It is a graphic, brutally honest depiction of war. It tells of close comradeship, betrayal, competence, incompetence, love, hatred, attrocity, everything that goes on in a war. Even the tactical writing is extremely well done, from El Sordo's last stand to the blowing of the bridge, the reason that Robert Jordan meets up with the guerilla band in the first place. And the description of what Pablo did to the Facists in his village was just... hard to read. But it was an excellent, scary and probably disturbingly realistic portrayal of mob rule and brutality.

The ending's not exactly a happy one either. I don't know why I really expected there to be one, and I guess, its open ended enough that you could shoehorn one in there if that's what you really need to do... but that wouldn't work for me. I think Robert Jordan took a few of the enemy down with him at end, but I don't think he survived either. And I think he was very accepting of that.

Number 21 this year is Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. Its a 'classic' novel, written in 1938. I've heard about it for years and years and thought about reading it. I know that Hitchcock made a movie from the novel, but I've never seen it either.

The novel, told in first person, is from the pov of the nameless narrator, the second Mrs. De Winter. She's a young girl, barely out of university, travelling as a paid companion to an older, British woman in Monte Carlo, when she catches the fancy of the mysterious, and much older, Maxim De Winter. De Winter, it turns out, is in Monte Carlo to get over the events of the past year, where he lost his beautiful, accomplished wife Rebecca, in a sailing accident.

When the narrator's companion catches a bad case of influenza, she and De Winter hit it off, so much so that he ends up marrying her rather than have her go off to New York with her employer. The sudden marriage takes everyone by surprise, and in fact, the most people seem to be able to say is that she is so very 'unlike Rebecca'.

The couple return to De Winter's majestic, Cornwall estate, Manderly, and it is there that the narrator is beseiged with the memory and presence of the late Mrs. De Winter. The servants constantly tell her that 'that was not how Mrs. De Winter did it'. She only hears about how beautiful and wonderful Rebecca was. And most of all, the head housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, was extremely devoted to Rebecca, and seems to go to great length to keep her memory alive, including setting the narrator up for a very great faux pas on the night of the newlywed's first fancy ball.

The narrator's despair at Manderly grows greater and greater as the gulf between she and her husband grows greater and greater. The more she hears of Rebecca, the more she is convinced that De Winter is still in love with his late wife, that Rebecca will always be between them.

And Rebecca is between the narrator and her husband, but not in the way the reader thinks.

The truth comes out one terrible night, allowing the narrator to finally put Rebecca's ghost behind her, but, De Winter's actions regarding the late Rebecca threaten to tear their world apart anyway, and De Winter can only say that Rebecca has indeed won, even after her death.

The book is gorgeously written, the Cornwall country-side written with loving detail. The characters are interesting, from the sinsiter Mrs. Danvers, to the naive narrator, to stoic De Winter, to the enigmatic Rebecca.

Its very much shaped like a mystery, or a throwback to the old, gothic romances, and in fact, had Rebecca turned up as an honest to goodness ghost, I would not have felt that out of place. But this is more a mystery than anything, as the narrator tries to piece together the life of her predecessor, only to find out, like everyone else, had Rebecca completely wrong.

It's an interesting thing, reading a book told by a character who has no first name. Its an intimate narrative point of veiw from someone we're not even on a first name basis with. I had thought this might make me think the narrator was unreliable, but I don't think that was the case, rather, she was simply mislead, just as everyone else was. Our journey to know the truth is pretty much the same as the narrator's.

There is intreque and blackmail and murder and everything that makes a good mystery. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would like to check out the Hitchcock movie now.

We're out of the teens and onto number 20 now!

Number 20 is The Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko. It's a translation of an extremely popular Russian novel. In fact, the movie that went on to be made from this became the top grossing movie in Russian history.

G saw this movie some time ago (I guess when it came out over here a few years back) and so, finding out that my mother was a big horror/vampire/werewolf officionado, decided to give this book to her for Christmas. Mom enjoyed it (although, typical of my mother, she had a hard time remembering the foreign names), so G decided to pick it up (and its sequel, The Day Watch)and read it as well.

So of course, having been raised on horror/vampire/werewolf literature myself, I also decided to give it a go.

Lukyanenko has built himself an interesting world. Its set in modern day Moscow, but, unbeknownst to most, the world is also populated by the supernatural 'Others', the vampires, werewolves, magicians, sorceresses etc. of the old tales. For the most part, these Others exist pretty much alongside hjmanity, but some Others, the Dark ones, will use their powers for their own gain, and kill humans for food or sport, or sometimes both. However, there are also Light Others, who use their powers for the greater good, or to heal or whatever. At some point, a Treaty was struck between the two groups of Others, and the Night Watch, consisting of Light Others who police the Dark ones, and the Day Watch, consisting of Dark Others to police the Light ones, were born.

The world itself is well crafted and has good internal consistency. Powers are never totally, clearly defined, but they are all 'graded', and the two Watches give all the mystical stuff a nicely done bearucratic feel. It makes sense that magic and powers and monsters would have to be governed in the modern day.

The book itself is told mainly through the POV of one Anton Gorodetsky, a smart, earnest Night Watchman with a decent amount of power, but not a heck of alot. At the start of the first story, he's just been promoted to field duty and is still finding his way about. The first story deals with him mainly meeting two other characters, Egor, a young Other who has not yet made his choice between the Light and Dark, and Svetlana, a woman who will become a rare, Great Sorceress, and whom also falls in love in Anton.

Anton's an interesting character, but I did find him to get a little too 'emo' sometimes, especially in the final story, where it all becomes clear what Svetlana was being groomed so quickly for by the boss of the Night Watch. Anton struggles throughout the final story with his feelings for Svetlana and the entire struggle between Light and Dark, which is undoubtedly a normal thing, but it just got tiring after awhile. Don't get me wrong though, he's nowhere near as whiney as Lestat gets...

I think it was the second story that was my favourite, where Anton has to track down and capture a Maverick Other; an Other that neither the Night Watch or the Day Watch had previously found, who is running around killing Dark Others. To make matters more interesting, the Day Watch is subtely framing Anton for the murders as well. It was a nice mystery/cat and mouse story.

I enjoyed the book overall and will continue on with the Day Watch.

Oh, and because I watch a lot of hockey, the Russian names didn't really throw me for a loop like they did my mom :)