Everything Matters!

I really love this book. It has its issues, but I’m a fan of the omniscient second-person, and the countdown to the end, and even the sort of epilogue and the way it doesn’t fix everything, doesn’t really fix anything. I am all for Currie’s writing, just about always.

4.5/5

Beat the Reaper

This is fun reading at its best; sharp, smart, and full of shark tanks. The asides are brilliant, the events are just ludicrous enough to work, and the narrator is just unlikeable enough. Though maybe I could have done without a bone knife.

4/5

Oryx and Crake

I’m so impressed by Atwood’s ability to create this dysfunctional, screwed up world, where sex and violence (both transgressive and genuine) are just another thing to fill the time, and counting all the extinct species and destroyed indications of human growth turn into games. The aftermath, I’m less in love with, but there is nothing in here that isn’t well-done.

4/5

What We All Long For

I’m going to admit I’m biased here, because this book takes place in Toronto, and everyone loves to see their city laid out on the page. But this is lovely, focusing on truly human characters with human problems, on the never dwindling issues of race in a multi-cultural city, on the implications of family and how abandoning those implications is just about impossible.

4.5/5

In the Lake of the Woods

This isn’t for anyone who wants a straightforward narrative or a pat ending, because it absolutely refuses any sort of closure or simplicity of meaning, however, it is an extremely interesting view of both the aftermath of a disappearance and the aftermath of Vietnam. O’Brien is always interested in Vietnam, and I am always interested in his narratives of Vietnam; brutal, ugly and human. When O’Brien writes about the aftermath, it’s less interesting, but that’s not actually saying much; O’Brien’s pretty damn interesting whatever he’s writing.

4/5

Who Will Run the Frog Hospital

Have I mentioned I’m in love with Lorrie Moore yet? Because I am totally in love with Lorrie Moore. In most people’s hands, a story about a summer in a sixteen year old’s life, and then a few days in her life twenty years later, well, that would be unspeakably boring. But somehow Moore takes things that should be unspeakably boring, and turns them into something heartfelt and heartbreaking and beautiful. She’s really, really good at that.

4/5

The Hurt Locker

Hurt Locker is rendered in a world of beige, taupe and tan, a world that seems washed out, which works wonderfully with its narrative. In this bleached world, slow moving and then frenetic with motion, every action has extreme importance, except when it doesn't. My favourite moment, a moment in a grocery store washed in brilliant colours, shows how out of place soldiers are in that world, busy with nothing meaningful, and this moment serves as an allegory for what is an extremely rich study of monotony and danger, often at the same time.

4/5

Anagrams

Lorrie Moore is so wonderful. Her take on the novel is rooted in short stories, looking at, well, anagrams of what the protagonists could be. Moore enlivens what could be a typical narrative--middle age woman, now single, juggling a child and a relationship with a student--with clever language, interesting changes in point of view, sharp humour, and an imaginary(!) child instead of a real one. Moore refuses a typical narrative and a typical novelistic structure, and instead makes something better.

4.5/5

Middlesex

This is a massive, sprawling story spanning three generations, explaining how the protagonist, Calliope becomes the protagonist Cal. I really enjoyed this experience, if maybe a little more in the beginning, finding Cal's grandparents the most interesting characters within. The idea of an almost omniscient first person narrative is so fascinating, and I had none of the qualms with Middlesex that I did with The Virgin Suicides. If Eugenides continues to write like this, I will continue to read him.

4/5

Running in the Family

Ondaatje's memoir of his family history s rich with the amount of detail you find in his novels, and because he has an extremely fascinating family, feels like a novel about an exceedingly eccentric family. He breaks the prose with some poetry, including the famous "Cinnamon Peeler's Wife", and, in bits and pieces, creates a vivid portrait of a time and place where happening--snake shooting, a magnificant drowning, the hold up of a train--are so crazy that they're true.

4/5

Mercy Among the Children

It's hard to give a good rating to a book you desperately want to end another way, any other way. This is one of the most depressing stories I have ever read, with a look at hopeless poverty, the futility of honour, and desperate people doing horrible things to other desperate people. There are no happy endings here, and I didn't expect one, but oh, I wanted one so badly. Regardless, this is a trainwreck of a book, and I mean that in the best way: you want to shield your eyes, but you can't bear to stop watching.

4/5

As For Me and My House

You certainly couldn’t say As For Me and My House is uplifting, but it is beautifully written, skilfully plotted, and immensely satisfying. I have never seen the journal format work to better effect than it does in this novel. I can see why this was considered one of this first likely Great Canadian Novels.

4/5

Flowers For Hitler

Leonard Cohen is one of my personal heroes, and while the quality of both his music and his poetry has declined significantly in the past twenty-five years, Flowers for Hitler reminds me why he has such a place in my heart. This is not a smooth read by any means; there are certainly a fair number of duds. However, the pearls, of which there are many, are luminescent, and that is why I’ve still never quite given up hope that Cohen will return to form.

4/5

I am Curious (Yellow)

I wasn’t expecting to like this; it’s an extremely political film, to the point of bordering on manifesto, and centres on a supremely obnoxious character. And yet, I did like it. I really did. Reality and film blends, person and character blends, and it’s such an intelligent, but delightful romp, that I really couldn’t help enjoying it.

4/5

Birds of America

I have a special place in my heart for short story collections, and Moore's brilliant collection epitomizes why. Each story deals with different sorts of helplessness and unhappiness in gently different ways, and the tenuous threads of other themes--feminism in particular--are exposed over the course of the collection. I'm very, very excited to read more of Moore's works (no pun intended).

4/5

The Things They Carried

Tim O'Brien brilliantly brings the Vietnam war to life with a book that blurs the line between novel, collection of short stories, and memoir. I have read a great deal of war novels, and watched a great deal of war films, and O'Brien's work is one of the best, if not the best, lenses into the unimaginable horrors, comedy, tragedy, and boredom of the front. Each note is struck with the particular skill of a man who has lived through a war, and who inserts reality into fiction in a way that carefully blurs the realities of war in a very interesting way.

4/5

Green Grass Running Water

This is the rare case where studying a text has made me like it less. On original reading, King's novel made me ecstatic, with hilarious renderings of biblical texts through a native lens, and a fast-paced, humourous story.

However, the sheer anger that permeates the text has dimmed my enjoyment; I will admit this is because his anger is directed at me, a descendent of a Colonial nation (England in particular), but I was made uncomfortable. I'm sure that was King's intention, however, I cannot help my reaction to the cutting remarks he makes regarding people he likely identifies me as close kin to.

5/5 pre-lecture, 4/5 post-lecture.

Die Welle

German films tend to be hit or miss for me; that is to say, I cannot think of a single German film I have been ambivalent or apathetic about. I love them or hate them, with little room between. I am lucky, then, that this would be one of the films to love.

Die Welle (or, in English, The Wave), explores autocracy (and not necessarily Third Reich autocracy, though that is certainly a shadow over the film) in a high school context, which works marvellously, without simplifying the issue. Instead, the subject is handled deftly, with loaded dialogue, and even more so loaded concepts.

Die Welle doesn't buckle under the pressure of the concepts it explores, and while occasionally the film seems a little obvious, a little heavy-handed, that is likely because we, as a society, have spent so much time discussing these issues. That doesn't make Die Welle less important; in fact, its fresh take on the issue is perhaps even more important in light of the ham-fisted efforts that precede it.

4/5

Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever...

Swish is a delightful little romp, advertised as a man's quest to become the gayest person ever, and packaged as such, with chapters on knitting, aerobics instruction, and go-go dancing. But instead of being a shallow, if funny, look into sterotypical homosexuality, it is a much more nuanced memoir, tackling issues like the early death of Derfner's mother and his struggles with obsessive-compulsive disorder. That isn't to say it isn't funny, because it is very, very funny. But instead of being a waste of time, if an enjoyable time-waster, it is an intelligent little memoir, packaged as something much less substantial.

4/5

The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God

Another from Keret; I read three of his collections in short order, and this was the second I read. The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God is every bit as good as The Nimrod Flipout, if a little bit more serious, more sad. Each of these stories is funny, mostly, but the laughter leaves a really bitter taste in your mouth. Which is the perfect palate cleanser for me, and these stories are startling in their poignancy.

4.5/5