Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town

I just finished reading Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town by Stephen Leacock. I borrowed this book from my Mom, who got it from a gift exchange, where it was contributed by someone who received it in a culture exchange at a Diabetes conference that brought nurses together from all over the country. My Mom has valued it much more than the original owner did, and she lent it to me with the recommendation that it is very charming.

Charming it is. Sunshine Sketches is about the inhabitants of a small town in Ontario. The stories are amusing, but one of the book's most interesting features is its narrator. He seems gullible and eternally optimistic, and much of what he relates is cause for a chuckle as we can see through what he says. He is boastful and egocentric, assuring the reader of the importance of his tiny town in the grand scheme of things, and yet he still remains charming.

Stephen Leacock is a Canadian author, and the book was written in 1912.

2 Good Quotes from "Slumdog Millionaire"

"I reflect on how good it is to have simple, uncomplicated ambitions, like shaking a film star's hand." (29)

"Meeting a long-lost friend is similar, I suppose, to eating a favourite dish after a long time. You don't know how your tastebuds will react after all this while, whether the dish will still taste as good as it used to. I met Salim after five long years with mixed emotions. Would our reunion be as warm as our friendship used to be? Would we still be as honest with each other?" (188)

C.S. Lewis: A Life

Over the past couple of weeks I have been reading a biography of C.S. from the public library written by Michael White. I was assigned the reading of a secondary source perspective on C.S. Lewis' biography by my professor, who seems to be of the opinion that I should write my undergraduate thesis on this man, whose writin I connect to so much. However, I have to admit that after reading this particular biography, I don't know if I do want to write a thesis on this man.

One thing that has always attracted me to the person of C.S. Lewis is that I connected with his writing. He writes in a way that is very relevent to how I think: linear, rational, and yet imaginative and witty. This particular book, but it also made me feel completely disillusioned with the man C.S. Lewis was, in fact, it almost makes me want to dislike him. The author represents Lewis as a bigoted snob, who didn't really have time for technology, progress, children or women, and who is deeply scarred and bitter over experiences that happened over his childhood. While I understand that all of these things were certainly a part of the human that C.S. Lewis was, I really detest how the author not only presented, but speculated on the information with his own personal bias.

The thing I dislike most, I guess, in this book, is how pitiable the author made C.S. Lewis out to be. He presented the humaness of C.S. Lewis to the point of making his seem pathetic. One particular way he did this was by painting C.S. Lewi's faith as a crutch, which although was certainly very helpful and important to C.S. Lewis, was not really worthy of any major notice. In contrast, the author spent almost a whole chapter ruminating on whether Lewis had sex with a particular women whom he lived with for a long period of time and called mother (she was the mother of one of Lewis' best friends who was killed in the war). He spend a great deal of time focusing on Lewis' fantasy literary career but tries to brush over most of his religious works with a short description.

Once again I find myself struggling with the fact on how popular literature can actually write about a person whose faith became so integral and central to their life and fail to provide any detail on how that actually worked, other than that faith being a crutch. On the positive side, I did glean some valuable information from this book - such as certain events and people who influenced C.S. Lewis' life - and I also appreciated how this author went out of his way to present C.S. Lewis as a human being and not some glorified uber-Chrisitan, but at the same time I feel like I must take even this portrayal of Lewis with a grain of salt. I understand that the author is an athiest and that every writer must have their bias, but if I were to use this book as a judge of C.S. Lewis' character, I probably would never read another one of his books again.

More

We went to a discount/used bookstore today, and I bought more books! Because the "to read" pile atop my piano isn't quite at avalanche level yet. I found...

1. The Canterbury Tales: A Prose Version in Modern English by David Wrighta
2. The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton
3. Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton a
4. Welcome Home: Travels in Smalltown Canada by Stuart McLean
5. The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler

In addition, I have borrowed the following books from my Mom's bookshelf:
1. Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town by Stephen Leacock a
2. Slumdog Millionaire by Vikas Swarup a
3. What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwella

My piano's going to get pretty full!

And I finished reading "The First Time" by Joy Fielding before I left on vacation. Joy Fielding is a really good fiction writer. Her novels are easy to read, but they draw you in and often leave you with something to think about. In this one, a woman splits up with her husband because he is cheating on her, and then discovers she has a fatal illness. It inspired thoughts on selflessness and relationships, and how sometimes the things we pretend eventually become true.

How to be a Canadian

I have also recently finished reading How to be a Canadian by Will & Ian Ferguson (one of my acquisitions from the book sale). I must say, I was a little disappointed in this one too - possibly because I got my hopes up and told someone else that this book was going to be fantastic and she would not be disappointed. It was okay, but I hoped to learn a lot, be entertained, and see reflections of myself as a Canadian in this book. I feel like the authors (1) sacrificed facts for humor, and (2) focused too much on stereotypes.

1. You can present truth in a way that's funny, or you can be funny using topics that are (at some level) true. In the latter, the truth often gets stretched to increase the humor. That's what I found in this book. In addition, the funniest things are often quite insulting if taken literally, and the authors themselves acknowledge their insensitivity because of their efforts to be funny (58).

2. It's easier to notice how stereotypes apply to other groups of people than it is to identify them with ourselves. Stereotypes tend to reduce the identity of a member of a group to just a few characteristics. But there's so much to who we are and how we see our surroundings that doesn't fit in those stereotypes that we don't see how those common conceptions define us at all. As someone else has written, "It’s easier to view people superficially but nobody likes to be viewed as one dimensional because nobody is." I didn't recognize myself in the way Will & Ian described Canadians.

This is not to say this book wasn't worth the read. It was funny, and it did have some interesting views on Canadians. This was my favorite part:

Known far and wide as master linguists, Canadians excel in particular at translating cereal boxes. Often, when the U.N. needs a cereal box translated, they call in the Canadians, who parachute out of stealth bombers clutching boxes of Capitaine Crounche and K de Special.(12)

That's me!

Philosophy Pooh

I recently finished reading "Pooh and the Philosophers" by John Tyerman Williams. It is subtitled, "...In which it is shown that all of Western Philosophy is merely a preamble to Winnie-the-Pooh," and I thought it would be whimsical, entertaining, and educational. But I was disappointed and frustrated, and I rejoiced when the book was finally over.

I wondered about whether or not to tell you guys about what I thought, or to ask you to read some of it yourself, form your own opinion, and see if it is similar to mine. (That's the thing about opinions: sometimes they have more to do with me than the subject matter.) But after I read a little bit to Justin and he validated my views by echoing them, I decided to just share what I thought of this book. If you're interested in checking it out for yourself, let me know - I have a copy I'm willing to part with.

I think the biggest problem I had was with the style. The author was arrogant. He constantly used the word "obvious," a term that I generally find quite insulting. He built his arguments on very thin evidence and made conclusive points out of shaky associations. I was telling a coworker about this book and he summarized it perfectly by saying, "It sounds like that's really a stretch." Exactly. And then the author had the audacity to write that "the last think I wish to do is to present any explanation that does not arise obviously and inevitably out of the text." (189) That is exactly what he does. He's not even fair about it - he has no trouble applying different interpretive rules to points he wishes to make and matters he wishes to dismiss. He takes his thesis (that Winnie the Pooh is a preamble to all of Western Philosophy) very seriously, and writes as if all philosophers prior to this current century were actually anticipating Milne's work, and all philosophy after its publication was merely footnotes. In addition, it seems that the author arbitrarily chose a thesis and then tried to find examples with which to defend it, instead of letting the argument arise naturally from the text. To use a cliche, it's like he put the cart before the horse.

Here's a sample:

The next important Platonic reference in this chapter occurs just after the episode of the song. Pooh finds Christopher Robin preparing for an Expedition (or Expotition) to the North Pole. Leaving aside another example of Pooh's Socratic pretense of ignorance, let us concentrate on the striking fact that in the short space of seventeen lines, we find no fewer than seven "x"s.
Now "x" is one of the rarest letters in English. We need not go into elaborate calculations to prove that an average of one "x" per 2.43 lines is quite exceptional...
A mere coincidence, does anyone suggest? An inevitable result of the fact that an expedition is the subject of their conversation? Reader, remember that we are studying the supreme work of Western philosophy. Not one word, not one letter, not one comma is there by chance. Everything in it has a meaning. Indeed that is an understatement. Everything in it has several meanings...
What does this signpost point to? What does "x" mean to us? First and foremost it is the unknown quantity. This fits well enough when the subject is an expedition into the unknown in search of the unknown. But this is only the first step. We need another to lead us directly to Plato. What is it?
Plato was a master of the general and the abstract rather than the particular and the concrete. Therefore, we can hardly be wrong if we expand the meaning of "x" from the particular "unknown quantity" to the more general "mathematical symbol."
Everything now falls into place. We remember it was Plato who inscribed over the door of his Academy the words "Let no on ignorant of Mathematics enter here." This naturally followed the well-known connection of Platonism with the teachings of the Pythagorean School. And an essential Pythagorean doctrine was that the universe had a mathematical basis - a brilliant anticipation of some theories of modern subatomic physicists.
We can now see that the Expotition to the North Pole is an allegory for the search for the ultimate structure of the universe. No longer can we be surprised that it was Winnie-the-Pooh who discovered it. (26 - 29)

So we go from 'x' to Math to Pythagoras to the structure of the universe, and somehow it's all based on Plato. It's a stretch.

Because so much of what he wrote seemed like nonsense to me, I couldn't help but wonder whether the author was trying to write a satire. But I'm not very good at satires, and I couldn't figure out what he might be intending to comment on. I did, however, find myself drawing on what I have learned about Biblical interpretation as I read. The author seemed to treat Winnie the Pooh like an allegory, where everything means something else. Honey means philosophic truth; a round balloon must be referring to the idea that the earth is a sphere. There is a belief in the inerrancy of the text and the idea that each jot and tittle is pregnant with meaning. The question of whether or not one ought to be cautious to not extract more than the original author intended in his/her work lingers. I'm not confident that this author intended to criticize a fundamentalist, allegorical approach to the Bible - he avoided discussing religion altogether, and nothing made me believe that this was his underlying message - but that is what this book reminded me of.

Although this book mentioned a lot of philosophers, I don't think I learned anything about them. I was too frustrated with the tone of the writing to accept anything it could possibly be saying. In addition, the author seemed to focus on hilighting his own wit and the intelligence of Winnie the Pooh over any explanations of philosophical thought. He twists the original characters to illustrate his thesis, making Pooh Bear a great Socratic teacher of great wisdom who seeks to enlighten his friends, a foil of the dense Christopher Robin. I must say, I prefer the original characters, the original story, the original interpretations.

Book Sale!

I was a little delayed in making this list, but here it is! These are the books that I bought at the CBC Calgary Reads Book Sale a few weekends back!

1) "Cold Mountain" by Charles Frazier
2) "Who Killed Canadian History?" by J.L. Granatstein
3) "The Famous Five" by Nancy Miller
4) "Everyone Worth Knowing" by Lauren Weisberger
5) "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" by James Joyce
6) "The Great Canadian Trivia Book" by Mark Kearney and Randy Ray
7) "101 Reasons to be Proud to be Canadian" by David Kieser
8) "The War of 1812 Against the States: Heroes of a Great Canadian Victory" by Jennifer Crump
9) "Anne of the Island" by L.M. Montgomery

Hey

Hey, I don't think we have said this yet, but...
Welcome, Corina.
I'm sorry it took so long to acknowledge your presence here. (On the internet it's hard to see each other, and easy to procrastinate and forget...)
I'm sorry I don't exactly know how to spell your name.
And I'm sorry that I didn't get a chance to meet you when I visited your sister. I regret that.
I'm glad you're part of this; you are welcome here.
(P.S. If you're uncomfortable having your name on here, please feel free to change it to a nickname or something after you have seen this!)

The Bishop's Man

Although The Bishop's Man isn't a genre I usually dally in, this book caught my attention and I decided to give it a try. It is written by a Candian author, Linden MacIntyre, and it is a recipient of the Governor General's Literary Choice Award.

The book itself is about a priest in the Roman Catholic Church who has, over his career, been given the responsibility of dealing with corruption in the priesthood. Known among his peers as "the exorcist", it is his duty to go to places where priest have been engaged in less than priestly behaviours (notably child molestation), and do the clean-up work before the media gets involved. At the point in time that this book begins, the media is getting a little too close for comfort on some of the church's dirty secrets, and so the priest is sent to a small town parish in Nova Scotia by his bishop to lie low and be the local priest. Now that the priest finds himself surrounded with silence and solitude, however, he begins to process and struggle with events that happened in the past. In the meantime, there are those within the little town who are not without their own problems.

If you like fast paced, action and adventure filled novels, this story is not for you. If you like happy stories, or stories that at least end on a happy note, then this isn't for you either. If you like linear stories that have a clear beginning and end and proceed linearly throughout the book, then this isn't for you either. In retrospect, I definitely wasn't the person who should have been reading this book. Very little actually happens in the entire story; rather it reads like an internal monologue and the priest processes the events of the past and what is happening around him. The story, since it follows his train of thought, does not hesitate to jump around in time frequently, and without warning. The protagonist will be out doing something and then suddenly a completely unrelated paragraph from events five years earlier will interject. These multiple layers of story are revealed parallel to each other, so the book in some ways reads like a mystery, with things being alluded to that are never actually explicitly spelled out. This means that the reader has to be constantly connecting the dots; if you don't you will get lost, real fast.

Writing style aside, I found the approach of the book to also be weird and adverse to my own way of thinking. Although this was a novel dealing primarily with religious characters, a religious background and religious concepts, the idea of God was almost absent from the entirety of the novel. In contrast, liquor appeared on almost every page. The author's approach to the church was a secular one from a completely institutional standpoint. If God was ever mentioned, it was in passing; and the church's purpose was not to serve God first, but rather to be an institution that was self-sanctioned to take care of the souls of people. The church was presented as very self-focused, and there was more concern on the part of the ecclesiastical officials in the book with preserving the reputation of the church than bringing truth, life and God to the people. I admit that this presentation, especially the latter part about the church being concerned with its reputation, is valid, for some church institutions. There are some Christians who approach religion like this. It disturbs me, however, that someone can write a 400 page book about the church and not have God enter the conversation at all. This is completely opposite from my own experience of religion and I felt like it was a distorted view of the Roman Catholic religion as well. In fact, the author all but agreed with this sentiment when the protagonist wondered to himself why every priest he had ever met was some wonderful example of perversion and corruption when there were so many priests out there who were actually good and holy people. It should also be noted that this book presented a very poignant and completely one sided argument against celibacy. Although I myself am not a fan of institutionalized celibacy, I felt the book failed to recognize the true depth of reasoning and tradition behind this lifestyle choice. It would be a hard thing to explain, however, without bringing God into the picture.

Despite all of my misgivings about this book, I cannot say that I regret reading it. It is good to know what people are reading. This is popular, secular literature: this is how people see the church. It is interesting to consider how this book will be the basis of understanding that many have for the church. To this book's credit however, the author did try to stress the point that priests are just human too, with problems like the rest of us. This at least is true of any person, regardless of whether God enters the picture or not.

The Outlander

Over the last 2 months I've been engrossed in a book series recommended to me called 'The Outlander Series' by Diana Gabaldon. The basic storyline is about a WWII nurse named Claire who, during her second honeymoon in Scotland with her husband, dissappears through some standing stones and finds herself in the 1700's. During her adventure she meets and ends up marrying, by neccessity, a Scottish man named Jamie. The first book is about their falling in love with each other and trying to evade the notorious Black Jack Randall, a cruel English soldier who gets far too much joy out of causing others pain. 

This series is very difficult to describe in terms of genre as it covers many of them. I think her website describes it best with a review of her latest novel in this series,

"An Echo in the Bone is the seventh novel in the wildly popular, NYT #1 bestselling, internationally award-winning Outlander series—described by Salon.com as "the smartest historical sci-fi adventure-romance ever written by a science Ph.D. with a background in scripting Scrooge McDuck comic books."


I actually llike the mixing of the genre's, but overall I think it may be classified as a love story or romance as this is the prevailing theme throughout the novels regardless of what situations the characters find themselves in. I was somewhat shocked to discover that many of the events in the books are based, at least loosely, upon real events in history. It contains info about the battle of Culloden and the Jacobite Uprising in Scottish history. Also my own ancestors, the MacGregors, may have fought in this battle which of course didn't bode well for them since the English hunted down and killed everyone involved. I find these books to be well written and worth the effort (considering there length) and would highly recommend them to those who enjoy romance/historical fiction/adventure/sci fi/suspense novels!   

Book Sale!

Today we went to a used book sale and restocked our bookshelves. Here's what I came home with:

1. The First Time by Joy Fielding a
2. Puppet by Joy Fielding
3. Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare
4. Timeline by Michael Crichton a
5. Star Wars: Children of the Jedi by Barbara Hambly a
6. The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence
7. The Children of Men by P. D. Jamesa
8. What Went Wrong: The Clash between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East by Bernard Lewis
9. Speaking Out by Jack Layton
10. Worth Repeating by Pierre Berton
11. The Canadian Rockies Trail Guide by Brian Patton & Bart Robinson (n/a)
12. Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus by John Gray
13. Boundaries in Marriage by Henry Cloud and John Townsend a
14. Cheats, Charlatans, and Chicanery by Andreas Schroeder a
15. How to be a Canadian by Will Ferguson & Ian Ferguson a
16. Whitethorn Woods by Maeve Binchy (a gift for my Mom) (n/a)
17. Five Complete Novels by Agatha Christie
- Thirteen at Dinner
- Murder on the Orient Express
- The ABC Murders
- Cards on the Table
- Death on the Nile
18. The Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon

Hooray for books that only cost $1! Together with the few books I have from my last reading list, these will provide much of my reading for the next little while.