read a book a month in 2008

~ Malcolm Godwin.

I bought this book when it came out more than 10 years ago. I used to have a fully fledged dream-life, and kept a dream journal (starting in the mid 80’s) for many years, but it’s been neglected for ages now. I stopped recording, so for the most part, I stopped remembering too. I miss it.

As this is something I want to try to reconnect with in the new year, I’m going over some old dream logs and books, including this one, which I found to be one of the best I’ve read. It’s a deeply profound book (full of beautiful artwork as well), and one I highly recommend to anyone interested in dreaming (lucid or otherwise), reality, and consciousness.

(Reviews here.)

Ten lost years: 1929-1939: Memories of Canadians who survived the Depression
~ by Barry Broadfoot

New month, new book. This is one Markus recommended after finding a nice first edition hardcover for pocket change at a used book store. A gritty but very engaging read so far.

Hundreds of ordinary Canadians tell their own stories in this book. They tell them in their own words, and the impact is astonishing. As page after page of unforgettable stories rolls by, it is easy to see why this book sold 300,000 copies and why a successful stage play that ran for years was based on them.

The stories, and the 52 accompanying photographs, tell of an extraordinary time. One tells how a greedy Maritime landlord tried to raise a widow’s rent was tarred and gravelled; another how rape by the boss was part of a waitress’s job. Other stories show Saskatchewan families watching their farms turn into deserts and walking away from them; or freight-trains black with hoboes clinging to them, criss-crossing the country in search of work; or a man stealing a wreath for his own wife’s funeral.

Throughout this portrait of the era before Canada had a social safety net, there are amazing stories of what Time magazine called “human tragedy and moral triumph during the hardest of times.” In the end, this is an inspiring, uplifting book about bravery, one you will not forget.

~ by Anita Diamant.

I’ve been wanting to read this for a while, and Elodie brought it by knowing I need to spend less time running around like headless chicken and more time doing things like… reading a really good book. A moment of sweet thanks for our literate friends who share the wealth in times of need. ( . . . )

Amazon.com Review:

The red tent is the place where women gathered during their cycles of birthing, menses, and even illness. Like the conversations and mysteries held within this feminine tent, this sweeping piece of fiction offers an insider’s look at the daily life of a biblical sorority of mothers and wives and their one and only daughter, Dinah. Told in the voice of Jacob’s daughter Dinah (who only received a glimpse of recognition in the Book of Genesis), we are privy to the fascinating feminine characters who bled within the red tent.

In a confiding and poetic voice, Dinah whispers stories of her four mothers, Rachel, Leah, Zilpah, and Bilhah—all wives to Jacob, and each one embodying unique feminine traits. As she reveals these sensual and emotionally charged stories we learn of birthing miracles, slaves, artisans, household gods, and sisterhood secrets. Eventually Dinah delves into her own saga of betrayals, grief, and a call to midwifery.

“Like any sisters who live together and share a husband, my mother and aunties spun a sticky web of loyalties and grudges,” Anita Diamant writes in the voice of Dinah. “They traded secrets like bracelets, and these were handed down to me the only surviving girl. They told me things I was too young to hear. They held my face between their hands and made me swear to remember.” Remembering women’s earthy stories and passionate history is indeed the theme of this magnificent book. In fact, it’s been said that The Red Tent is what the Bible might have been had it been written by God’s daughters, instead of her sons.—Gail Hudson

It’s been years (20+?) since I first read this. My old copy was pretty beat up, so Markus picked up a new one that I started reading when I was in the hospital. (I wonder how the upcoming movie will be?)

Amazon.com Review:

Has any comic been as acclaimed as Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen? Possibly only Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, but Watchmen remains the critics’ favorite. Why? Because Moore is a better writer, and Watchmen a more complex and dark and literate creation than Miller’s fantastic, subversive take on the Batman myth. Moore, renowned for many other of the genre’s finest creations (Saga of the Swamp Thing, V for Vendetta, and From Hell, with Eddie Campbell) first put out Watchmen in 12 issues for DC in 1986-87. It won a comic award at the time (the 1987 Jack Kirby Comics Industry Awards for Best Writer/Artist combination) and has continued to gather praise since.

The story concerns a group called the Crimebusters and a plot to kill and discredit them. Moore’s characterization is as sophisticated as any novel’s. Importantly the costumes do not get in the way of the storytelling; rather they allow Moore to investigate issues of power and control – indeed it was Watchmen, and to a lesser extent Dark Knight, that propelled the comic genre forward, making “adult” comics a reality.

The artwork of Gibbons (best known for 2000AD’s Rogue Trooper and DC’s Green Lantern) is very fine too, echoing Moore’s paranoid mood perfectly throughout. Packed with symbolism, some of the overlying themes (arms control, nuclear threat, vigilantes) have dated but the intelligent social and political commentary, the structure of the story itself, its intertextuality (chapters appended with excerpts from other “works” and “studies” on Moore’s characters, or with excerpts from another comic book being read by a child within the story), the finepace of the writing and its humanity mean that Watchmen more than stands up – it keeps its crown as the best the genre has yet produced. —Mark Thwaite

: The music and myth of Tom Waits ~ Jay S. Jacobs.

Because I adore Tom Waits. Paul lent me this ages ago but I haven’t read it yet. I picked it up last night after standing in front of my book shelf for a long while.

Review by Susan “Singed Cat” Hickey:

Waits’ fans are no strangers to paradox – his music, steeped in its own history yet undeniably original, deeply textured as corrugated steel yet with a compassionate heart that doesn’t quit, songs that reveal humanity’s every weakness, and in doing so somehow redeem it. His music revels in its own originality without falling prey to self-indulgence.

So it shouldn’t have surprised me that Tom Wait’s biographies have been as badly written, speculative, and poorly directed as his music has been insightful and original. From his early years Waits portrayed the piano playing drunk, the street poet, the loser with dreams, and seemed to love using that voice to speak to the press. Interviewers were treated to long yarns about his life, loves and friends, yarns spun from a humorous imagination by a private man. Books trying to build on this paper foundation have fallen flat as last night’s beer, and if some fans (and reporters) were annoyed by his evasions and stories, more were entertained by the them, and willingly accepted Waits as the character he portrayed, a seedy addition to American mythology.

Waits is not the first artist to use a stage persona as a privacy screen, but he was one of the most successful. It is my opinion that this avoidance was not so much a personal aversion to the limelight, but a desire to protect his music from himself. To that end, he only revealed the parts of himself that supported his music, and, like any good thespian, hid the machinery with the scenery.

Finally, someone got the point. Jay S. Jacobs writes about Waits from a thoughtful perspective unseen in previous biographers. Guiding us with a wink and a smile past the many myths and tall tales, Jacobs brings us backstage to the artist without knocking down his front door. Those looking for juicy details and scandalous stories will be disappointed—the basics of his private life are related only in context of his musical career. Jacobs makes no attempt to analyze or interpret Waits’ personality.

That being said, those looking for a portrait of Waits the artist will be amply rewarded. The details of his career are recorded here as nowhere else; details of projects he’s worked on, creative decisions and how they related to his goals and situation at the time, inspirations for songs both factual and fantastic, interviews with producers and musicians he has worked with broaden our view. Here too we see that the easygoing streetpoet is defended by an uncompromising artist who picks his fights carefully: his refusal to sell his music rights to sell products; his lawsuit against Frito Lay; his legal action against police officers who mistook him for someone they could abuse.

With each successive project, with each professional decision, we are given a block-by block construction of a remarkable career, which fell short (or steered clear?) of the commercial fast track in favour of a more winding road to a more unique, enduring and (I suspect) satisfying destiny.

I know that Waits himself does not approve of projects directed at his life; nevertheless as a musician I am deeply grateful to Jacobs for giving us biography. In the past I was moved and shaken by his music; now I am proud to count him as a role-model.

I’d heard about this book, but I missed the launch and was wondering where to find a copy. Tuesday I went for a walk and ran into a DTES resident who was selling them, so I immediately bought one (which seemed to please him immensely). After finishing my previous book, I started this one last night. It’s beautiful and brutal so far. I’m so happy to see they actually pulled this project together!

The hopes and dreams of the people behind the beautiful photographs that come from the annual photography contest are the focus of the new Hope in Shadows book to be launched at Gallery Gachet.

Published by Vancouver-based Arsenal Pulp Press, and edited by Brad Cran and Gillian Jerome, the book focuses on the lives of 33 people who took winning photographs in the annual Downtown Eastside photography contest run by Pivot Legal Society.

The authors, Cran and Jerome, interviewed winners from the contest’s first five years, resulting in a coffee-table book which not only tells the stories of the photographers in their own words, but has beautiful reproductions of their photographs.

Just as with the Hope in Shadows calendar, the book will create much needed income for residents of the Downtown Eastide. Local people will be able to sell the book and keep 50 % of the sale price. Individuals whose stories are featured in the book also will receive the royalties from book sales.

“The strength of the annual photography contest is the benefit it provides to the local people in the Downtown Eastside,” says Paul Ryan, director of Hope in Shadows. Whether it is having a winning photograph exhibited in a gallery, or having their story published, or earning income ”’Hope in Shadows’ really means ‘Empowerment and Confidence.’”

The book launch will be held at Gallery Gachet (88 E. Cordova) and will feature some of the original images from the original exhibitions from the past five years. Local MP Libby Davies will address the opening along, with Pivot Legal Society executive director John Richardson. The authors as well as many of the subjects in the book will be there to talk about their experience.

Half of the books printed will be available for purchase by local residents for $10, who will then be able to sell it for $20, in the same way the annual Hope in Shadows calendar is sold. The remaining half of the books will be sold in bookstores across Canada by Arsenal Pulp Press.

Article from The Province

Yeah… hellova fun book! I’m devouring it (nearly whole, I’m halfway through since last night). I love her drawings & the stamp art garnishes, her prosy way of writing and dark, dirty wit. Yummy!

Review from “A customer” on Amazon.com:

Recently, on my own book tour, I happened to ask a sales guy at Shaman Drum Books in Ann Arbor if he could help me. I was an English grad student, I said; I was trying to draw up a syllabus for a course I hoped to teach in a year or two, on the American Road Novel. I’d come up with a handful of obvious titles—ON THE ROAD, ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTAINANCE, LOLITA, TRAVELS WITH CHARLIE, even THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ. But all of them were by white guys, and I was looking for the rest of the picture. Was there, I asked him, a literary equivalent to “Thelma and Louise”? He handed me FLAMING IGUANAS. “Here,” he said.

A woman on a motorcycle takes on America.

This is a great book. Erika, I am in love. It is an infectious, cheerful, honest, ragingly sexy – but never prurient – book. It is very much within the tradition (Kerouac, Henry Miller, and several other sex-and-road dudes are mentioned explicitly, as sort-of precursors; Erica Jong’s FEAR OF FLYING is a good point of comparison, too), but it also extends the tradition, and gloriously so. At moments Lopez makes the confessional-thing look so effortless you’re tempted to try it yourself, but such ruthless self-exposure, no matter how fictionalized, is its own stringent discipline.

This is a soaring, liberating read. Week 12 on the twelve-week American Road Novel syllabus, without a doubt. Some undergrads may be scandalized; WILL be scandalized. Too bad. Erika, I love you. I tell all my friends in the Princeton English Department about you. I am a one-man word-of-mouth machine, spreading the gospel. You are too much. Exuberance is beauty. Don’t stop!

I was in need of a new book to read, and tah-dah! This one showed up in my mail today. Paul’s sister Linda finished it and wanted to pass it on. It’s infinitely sweeter to find a little hardcover book in the mail than hoards of bills and leaflets…

Witch Child ~ by Celia Rees

Amazon.com Review:

During the witch hunts of the mid-1600s, many young Englishwomen died on the gallows, innocent victims of false or hysterical accusations of witchcraft. But what of those women who actually claimed the name “witch” as their own? In the pages of her secret journal, Mary Nuttall reveals what it is like to live in a climate of mistrust and piety in which differences are dangerous and rumors can kill, where she must hide her heritage as a healer and pagan.

With a sure hand, she describes her beloved grandmother’s trial and hanging as a witch, her own rescue by a mysterious noblewoman, and her eventual passage to the New World and the forest settlement of Beulah. There Mary falls under a curtain of suspicion when she willingly chooses to explore the dark woods shunned by the fearful colonists and makes friends with some of the spiritual native people. When several girls in the community begin to shriek and swoon, and the same minister who damned Mary’s grandmother comes to search for signs of witchcraft, Mary is subjected to close and deadly scrutiny.

Breaking with most historical fiction about witchcraft (such as Elizabeth Speare’s The Witch of Blackbird Pond), British author Celia Rees raises the stakes and the tension by placing a real witch at the center of her story. Witch Child is an engrossing, suspenseful novel that will cast a spell over both readers of historical fiction and fans of witchcraft series from Circle of Three to Sweep. – Jennifer Hubert

Last night I started reading Arcadio by William Goyen (who wrote The House of Breath in 1950). I’m not that far in yet though, my reading abounds with distractions lately!

Editorial review:

Completed while he was dying, William Goyen’s Arcadio is one of the most affecting and imaginative farewells to life ever written. Arcadio, whose voice is inimitably Goyenesque, is a creature from beyond the normal walks of life. Half man, half woman, raised in a whorehouse and for years the veteran exhibitionist in an itinerant circus sideshow, he has escaped from the show and has been wandering in a quest for his lost family. Speaking intimately to the reader, he tells the bizarre and fantastic tale of his life. This unforgettable novel is the crown of Goyen’s exploration of the forms and feelings that could be compassed within fiction.

I haven’t been keeping up with entries of what I’ve been reading, and I haven’t had a fat amount of book time lately, but since my last post here, I’ve read (or am still reading):

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work (John Gottman, Ph.D.)
Simple Abundance, A Daybook of Comfort and Joy (Sarah Ban Breathnach)
X-Files Confidential (Ted Edwards)

Relationships, happiness, and Scully & Mulder. Yes, sort of an odd trio, and I’ve had to take a few things and leave a few things here & there, but I’d say all 3 have been worthwhile. And I love the pink satin bookmark in the daybook.

I’m really feeling the need for something… meatier though.