Book Review - "Bay of Spirits", Farley Mowat

I had never read a book written by celebrated Canadian author and environmentalist Farley Mowat.  When he died this past May at the age of 92, I, like many other Canadians, decided it was time to correct that. Bay of Spirits is now the third book of his that I have now read.

In 1957, Farley Mowat shipped out aboard one of Newfoundland’s famous coastal steamers, tramping from outport to outport along the southwest coast. The indomitable spirit of the people and the bleak beauty of the landscape would lure him back again and again over the years. In the process of falling in love with a people and a place, Mowat also met the woman who would be the great love of his life. 

A stunningly beautiful and talented young artist, Claire Wheeler insouciantly climbed aboard Farley’s beloved but jinxed schooner as it lay on the St. Pierre docks, once again in a cradle for repairs, and changed both their lives forever. This is the story of that love affair, of summers spent sailing the Newfoundland coast, and of their decision to start their life together in Burgeo, one of the province’s last remaining outports. It is also an unforgettable portrait of the last of the outport people and a way of life that had survived for centuries but was now passing forever. 

There are three, maybe even four, stories running through this book. The first, as the title, Bay of Spirits, A Love Story, indicates, is a love story. Although already married, when he meets Claire for the first time in St. Pierre, it seems to be love at first sight. The book is about their first few years together. I like how sometimes Mowat will use passages from Claire's journal so we get to also see her point of view.

The second is a story about adventure. Farley and Claire spent much of their time sailing and exploring the coves, inlets and harbours of Newfoundland. Severe storms could rise up in a minute and sometimes I wondered at how Mowat managed to survive many of them. Luck was surely on his side in many cases.

The third story that comes up a few times is man's senseless cruelty to creatures. Although much has been written about Farley Mowat trying to save a whale trapped in a pond while locals continually shot at it, there are other instances in the book about the same kind of useless slaughter. No wonder Mowat became such and activist.

The final story is about the loss of the way of life for Newfoundland's fisherman and those living in small harbours around the coast. The book takes place in the sixties and even then, everyone knew that the Grand Banks were being overfished. That and Premier Joey Smallwood's policy of resettling outport residents to larger communities made it harder and harder for those that refused to give up their way of life to remain.

Bay of Spirits is an excellent book, one which I highly recommend and is not the last of Farley Mowat's book that I will read.

Book Review - "Where I Belong" by Alan Doyle

I have enjoyed Great Big Sea's music for years and have seen them a few times in concert, so when the group's lead singer, Alan Doyle, wrote a book, Where I Belong,I just had to read it.

Singer-songwriter and front man of the great Canadian band Great Big Sea, Alan Doyle is also a lyrical storyteller and a creative force. In Where I Belong, Alan paints a vivid, raucous and heartwarming portrait of a curious young lad born into the small coastal fishing community of Petty Harbour, Newfoundland, and destined to become a renowned musician who carried the musical tradition of generations before him and brought his signature sound to the world. He tells of a childhood surrounded by larger-than-life characters who made an indelible impression on his music and work; of his first job on the wharf cutting out cod tongues for fishermen; of growing up in a family of five in a two-bedroom house with a beef-bucket as a toilet, yet lacking nothing; of learning at his father's knee how to sing the story of a song and learning from his mother how to simply "be good"; and finally, of how everything he ever learned as a kid prepared him for that pivotal moment when he became part of Great Big Sea and sailed away on what would be the greatest musical adventure of his life. 

 Filled with the lore and traditions of the East Coast and told in a voice that is at once captivating and refreshingly candid, this is a narrative journey about small-town life, curiosity and creative fulfillment, and finally, about leaving everything you know behind.

When I first opened the book, I thought it would be about Alan Doyle's years with Great Big Sea, with perhaps a short history of his life before that but I was wrong. Usually I dislike it when I read an autobiography of a famous person and they go on and on about their childhood. No, just give me the story of your famous life!

That's not the case here. The book is all about Doyle growing up in Petty Harbour and it's a great, fun read. It sounds like Doyle rarely got out of Petty Harbour until his teens, but he has many great stories about living there. Who knew that an entire chapter on cutting cod tongues could be so entertaining? (I had cod tongues a couple of years ago when we were in St. John's. Perhaps they weren't cooked properly but the texture and taste was nasty!)


What I found quite interesting is that I could hear the Newfie accent in everything he wrote. Teena and I were at an interview with Alan Doyle recently about his book.  He told many great stories there too and he explained that if something did not sound right on paper, he would go down to the small recording studio that he has in his home and record him telling the story. That's why everything in the book feels like he is sitting with you telling the story because the book truly is in his own words, accent and all.

I got a kick out the end of the book where he puts in a Glossary of Terms (mostly for Mainlanders) It's very funny and don't dare flip to it until you've read the book.

Where I Belong is hopefully just his first book. I will definitely read his next. I highly recommend it.

Book Review - Worst. Person. Ever.

I've become a big Douglas Coupland fan and Worst. Person. Ever. is the third book of his that I have read, plus I have viewed one of his works of art.

Meet Raymond Gunt. A decent chap who tries to do the right thing. Or, to put it another way, the worst person ever: a foul-mouthed, misanthropic cameraman, trailing creditors, ex-wives and unhappy homeless people in his wake. 

Worst. Person. Ever. is a deeply unworthy book about a dreadful human being with absolutely no redeeming social value. Gunt, in the words of the author, "is a living, walking, talking, hot steaming pile of pure id." He's a B-unit cameraman who enters an amusing downward failure spiral that takes him from London to Los Angeles and then on to an obscure island in the Pacific where a major American TV network is shooting a Survivor-style reality show.

After the first chapter, I thought that Fiona, Gunt's ex-wife, was the worse person ever but it turns out she would only be in the race. Gunt is the pure winner. In fact, most of the people in this book are basically not nice individuals. There are a few good ones ... maybe two in the whole book but all are enjoyable to read about.

I thought this book was quite improbable and extremely hilarious. It's an example of an author letting his imagination run wild to the fullest.

Finally, on the back on the book is the following, This novel contains much talk of bodily functions, improbable sexual content, violent death, nuclear crisis and elaborately inventive profanity. Viewer Discretion is advised ... and it all works.

Worst. Person. Ever. is a fun read and I book I would highly recommend.

Book Review - People of the Deer

I have wanted to read some Farley Mowat books for awhile and finally got around to my first one last month when I read And No Birds Sang. It was excellent and made me hunger to read another, which I just did with People of the Deer.

In 1886, the Ihalmiut of northern Canada numbered 7,000 souls; by 1946, when 25-year-old Farley Mowat travelled to the Arctic, their population had dwindled to only 40. Living among them, he observed the millennia-old migration of the caribou and endured the bleak winters, food shortages and continual, devastating intrusions of interlopers bent on exploiting the Arctic. In this seminal book, Mowat details a genocide wrought by misunderstanding and neglect. Debated long after its publication, this powerful story of the Ihalmiut continues to haunt the Canadian conscience.

This is a very powerful and extremely depressing story about the extinction brought on to a race of people by, of course, the white man. Mowat does a great job in telling the Ihalmiut story. He did not just observe them but took the time to learn their language, at least a small portion of it, as they did not speak English, and lived among them. Learning a little of their language allowed him to hear the Ihalmiut's story of the good times, when the deer (caribou) numbered in the thousands.

Mowat was very thorough in telling the story of their destruction, how the white man came and set up trading posts to trade food, guns and ammo for white fox pelts. This first contact, of course, brought disease to the people. When the price of fox furs fell, the trading posts just closed up shop. The people would go hungry and the disease could take a better hold of them.

The caribou, their main source of food and fuel, started to fade in numbers. He watched as the people he had grown so fond of died off.

This was Farley Mowat's first book and is extraordinary. Mowat not only tells us of the problems the people face through missionaries, the Canadian government and even the RCMP, but offers solutions at the end. You can sense Mowat's inner anger seething all the way through the book.

He made another trip to visit the Ihalmuit in 1958 where he apparently follows up on what happened to those first people he met. I'm not sure if I'm up for that one but do want to read more stories by him. I'll be looking for a happier story, though.

People of the Deer is really a must read for any Canadian.

Book Review - "And No Birds Sang", Farley Mowat

When famed Canadian author Farley Mowat passed away this past May at the age of 92, I realized that I have never read one of his books. It's a serious oversight on my part that I had to correct. 

I went through the titles and found many that I wanted to read and thought I would start with a book where he writes about his experiences fighting in World War II, And No Birds Sang.

In July 1942, Farley Mowat was an eager young infantryman bound for Europe and impatient for combat. This powerful, true account of the action he saw, fighting desperately to push the Nazis out of Italy, evokes the terrible reality of war with an honesty and clarity fiction can only imitate. In scene after unforgettable scene, he describes the agony and antic humor of the soldier's existence: the tedium of camp life, the savagery of the front, and the camaraderie shared by those who have been bloodied in battle.

The title paraphrases a line from a John Keats poem in which Farley quotes:

O what can ail thee, Knight at arms,
Alone and palely loitering,
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing!

I have always had a great admiration for that generation who went to war and survived its horrors. This is a brutally honest account of what Mowat witnessed and felt as the company went through Sicily and Italy in the allied invasions of 1943 and 1944. The book starts lightly with stories of trying to get into the army and the war, and some humorous stories of his training in England. When he finally goes into battle his mood and the mood of the book darkens as we witness the change that takes place within him and others he knew as they fought battle after battle ... after battle.

Mowat is a fabulous writer. The book is so well-written and even the letters that he sent home have such eloquence to them. I am glad that this was the first book I read of his as I feel that I now have a bit of understanding of the person he was. After reading And No Birds Sang makes me hungry for more of his work.

With all the books we were assigned to read in school, I wonder why we were never studied a Farley Mowat novel. I will be reading many of his works in the future!

Book Review - Up, Up & Away

I am a baseball fan and was a fan of the Montreal Expos right from their start, way back in 1969, so when I saw new book on the entire history of the Expos, Up, Up, & Away, I had to give it a read.

There has never been a major English-language book on the entire franchise history. There also hasn't been a sportswriter as uniquely qualified to tell the whole story, and to make it appeal to baseball fans across Canada AND south of the border. 

Jonah Keri writes the chief baseball column for Grantland, and routinely makes appearances in Canadian media such as The Jeff Blair Show, Prime Time Sports and Off the Record. The author of the New York Times baseball bestseller The Extra 2%, Keri is one of the new generation of high-profile sports writers equally facile with sabermetrics and traditional baseball reporting. He has interviewed everyone for this book (EVERYONE: including the ownership that allowed the team to be moved), and fans can expect to hear from just about every player and personality from the Expos' unforgettable 35 years in baseball. 

The definitive history of the Montreal Expos by the definitive Expos fan, the New York Times bestselling sportswriter and Grantland columnist Jonah Keri.

I really enjoyed this book. Sports writers usually will write books from within the context of the sport. Keri, having been an Expos fan since their inception, writes the history of the Expos not only from the viewpoints of the players, managers and owners, but also from the point of view of the fan. "Like the year before, 2003 brought more fun than anyone expected. But it also included two monumental punches to the face." Spoken like a true fan.

It was great going back in time, reading and remembering Gary "The Kid" Carter, Andre "The Hawk" Dawson, Tim "Rock" Raines, Vladimir Guerrero, Vladi, Pedro Martinez,  and Rusty "Le Grand Orange" Staub (or as Keri points out, the man with two nicknames as his real name was Daniel but was nicknamed Rusty for the colour of his hair). I enjoyed the stories of some of the close or unusual games that were played, especially El Presidente's (Dennis Martinez) perfect game against the Dodgers, which I watched on a TV with bad reception from a cottage in Haliburton.

Looking back on the title of the book and thinking of some of the other players, Expos fans sure loved their nicknames!

The ending is sad, for the team due many many reasons packed their gear and moved to Washington. It all started to go downhill for them after the 1994 baseball strike. The strike cancelled the World Series the year the 'Spos were the team to beat (they stood 74 - 40 at the time, the best record in all of baseball) and broke the hearts of their fans. The story of their last 10 years was very interesting to read about. The franchise did have some serious issues they could not overcome.

For any baseball fan, Up, Up, and Away: The Kid, the Hawk, Rock, Vladi, Pedro, Le Grand Orange, Youppi!, the Crazy Business of Baseball, and the Ill-fated but Unforgettable Montreal Expos is a must read.

Book Review - One Day in August

My dad was a soldier with the Canadian army who fought in World War II. Every time I read a book about the Canadian Forces in that war I think of him. He came into the war after the tragic raid on Dieppe, which I am thankful for as if he had been there, I might not be here. So many Canadian men died on the beach that day. If he had been there that day, he too might not have made it out.

When he was alive and I was young, I remember asking him why the raid even happened. Joint Canadian and British forces were to land in Dieppe France, take the town, hold it for a few hours, then return back to England. To me, it sounded pointless.

He told me what many have said in the years after it was a practice invasion to know everything that would be needed for when the D-Day invasion took place. I was never satisfied with that answer. To me, it was a senseless waste of life.

David O'Keefe claims to know the real reason behind this mini invasion and details it in his book, One Day in August.  

One of the most important Canadian non-fiction books we have published: the groundbreaking, thrilling, ultra-secret story behind one of WWII's most enduring mysteries, which fundamentally changes our understanding of this sorrowful event in Canada's past. 

The Dieppe Raid--the darkest day in Canadian military history--has been one of the most perplexing mysteries of WWII, when almost 4,000 Canadian amphibious troops stormed the small French port town, only to be ambushed by the waiting Germans, slaughtered, wounded or captured. This catastrophe, coupled with the 7 decades-long mystery surrounding the reason for the operation, left a legacy of bitterness and recriminations and controversial charges ranging from incompetence to conspiracy. O'Keefe's detective-like research over 15 years in the Intelligence archives of 5 countries now reveals that it was a vitally secret "pinch raid," organized by British Naval Intelligence and the Joint Intelligence Committee. The mission: under cover of a raid to secretly steal the German code books that would unlock the Enigma cipher machine that held the key to the German High Command's plans. One of the key figures behind the mission, along with Mountbatten and Churchill, was Commander Ian Fleming, waiting in a ship off-shore for the code books that might have saved countless lives and shortened the war by some years.

Then book is both meticulous in detail, interesting and thrilling to read.  O'Keefe details Britain's success early in the war in cracking German codes and messages, with the clever theft of German Enigma machines that gave the British navy the knowledge of where German subs were so supply convoys from Canada could safely make it across the Atlantic. When the Germans came up with a revision to the machine, Britain was blind and the convoys they desperately relied on came through in far fewer numbers. The country was starting to starve.

Britain needed to get a hold of the new Enigma machine and its codes and that was the secret target of the Dieppe raid. I am not giving anything away here as it is easy to tell from the first few pages what the mission was. O'Keefe tells the story well of how it got to that point.

I enjoyed the read but was appalled by the horror the men suffered on the beach. The story is so well told.

One thing he mentions early on in the book and in the closing chapter was a quote by one of the men who survived that day but saw many friends fall, "now I can die in peace. Now I know what my friends died for ..."

A compelling book worth reading.

Book Review - The Cellist of Sarajevo

A week or so ago, I was returning books to the library with the knowledge that I currently had nothing to read. After making the return I wandered over to a shelf that featured favorite picks and found The Cellist of Sarajevo among them. Knowing that it had been on the long list for a Giller Prize, I picked it up and brought it home.

This brilliant novel with universal resonance tells the story of three people trying to survive in a city rife with the extreme fear of desperate times, and of the sorrowing cellist who plays undaunted in their midst. 

One day a shell lands in a bread line and kills twenty-two people as the cellist watches from a window in his flat. He vows to sit in the hollow where the mortar fell and play Albinoni’s Adagio once a day for each of the twenty-two victims. The Adagio had been re-created from a fragment after the only extant score was firebombed in the Dresden Music Library, but the fact that it had been rebuilt by a different composer into something new and worthwhile gives the cellist hope. 

Meanwhile, Kenan steels himself for his weekly walk through the dangerous streets to collect water for his family on the other side of town, and Dragan, a man Kenan doesn’t know, tries to make his way towards the source of the free meal he knows is waiting. Both men are almost paralyzed with fear, uncertain when the next shot will land on the bridges or streets they must cross, unwilling to talk to their old friends of what life was once like before divisions were unleashed on their city. Then there is “Arrow,” the pseudonymous name of a gifted female sniper, who is asked to protect the cellist from a hidden shooter who is out to kill him as he plays his memorial to the victims.

Wow! What a powerful story. Even though most of the story is bleak, tracking the lives of four people who seemed to have lost their souls and maybe even their humanity, it was a book that I could not put down. I became very involved with each character and their plight and wondered how I would fair under those same conditions.

This is very much a human story. The insight the author Steven Galloway gives into everyday people, not knowing each day whether they would live or die at the hands of "the men in the hills" is rather soul crushing, but these people live on.

The book was inspired by a real event. During the siege of Sarajevo in May of 1992, mortar shells fell on people in breadline killing twenty two and wounding more than seventy. For the next twenty two days a local cellist, Vedran Smailovic would go to the site and play Albinoni's Adagio in G minor, in honour of the dead.

A fabulous book, one that I normally would not read  but am so glad that I did! Here is Albinoni's Adagio in G minor.

Book Review - The Great Escape: A Canadian Story

The story of the great escape in World War Two , where prisoners in a large, seemingly inescapable POW camp, staged a large mass escape, is a fascinating one. I have seen the movie The Great Escape many times and a few years ago read an excellent book by Tim Carroll called The Great Escape from Stalag Luft III.

My dad fought in this war and we watched this movie together a few times. He would always explain that Americans were not involved in the great escape, but in fact in it was all British and Canadian officers.

The Great Escape, A Canadian Story tells the story of the Canadians involvement in the escape and it was quite substantial.

On the night of March 24, 1944, 80 Commonwealth airmen crawled through a 336-foot-long tunnel and slipped into the forest beyond the wire of Stalag Luft III, a German POW compound near Sagan, Poland. The event became known as "The Great Escape," an intricate breakout more than a year in the making, involving as many as 2,000 POWs working with extraordinary co-ordination, intelligence, and daring. Yet within a few days, all but three of the escapees were recaptured. Subsequently, fifty were murdered, cremated, and buried in a remote corner of the prison camp. 

But most don t know the real story behind The Great Escape. Now, on the eve of its 70th anniversary, Ted Barris writes of the key players in the escape attempt, those who got away, those who didn't, and their families at home.Barris marshals groundbreaking research into a compelling firsthand account. For the first time, "The Great Escape: A Canadian Story" retells one of the most astonishing episodes in WWII directly through the eyes of those who experienced it.

The movie fictionalized much of the escape but the conditions the men were held under, their dealing with the guards and the rigors and  mass planning of the tunnel are seemingly accurate.

In 1963 the studio had to hire big America and British stars to make the film a success. They also had to show Americans being a huge part of the escape to make the film sell-able.  Steve McQueens character and motorcycle chase were fiction as were some others but here are some interesting Canadian facts.

James Garners role as the scrounger was in real life Barry Davidson from Calgary. They main diggers weren't American and British as played by Charles Bronson and John Leyton, but the tunnel king was Wally Floody from Chatham, John Weir from Toronto and Hank Birkland from Spearhill Manitoba. Donald Pleasance role as the forger was actually Tony Pengelly from Weston Ontario.

The list goes on. It seems as if the great escape may not have happened if not for Canadians.

The author only takes a moment to explain this and the rest of the story is about the lives of the Canadian men in the camp and the entire story of the escape. Short backgrounds on how each arrived at the camp is given and their lives after the war is told too. Many never got over it.

76 men escaped, that March night, nine of them were Canadians. 50 were murdered by the Gestapo after being captured, and six of those were Canadians. Their stories are fully told here. More on the stories of the nine Canadian escapees are on the Canada at War website. The next time I watch the movie, I will have a greater appreciation for Canada's role. One note, three escapees were successful in getting all the way back to England. A home run!

This is an interesting fascinating book that I highly recommend. Although I give it a 9/10, I can't for the life of me find a reason that I'm not giving it a full 10.

Book Review - Traitor's Blade by Sebastien de Castell

Have you ever read a book with a story so good that you hate to see it end?

That was the way it was for me with Traitor's Blade.

Falcio is the first Cantor of the Greatcoats. Trained in the fighting arts and the laws of Tristia, the Greatcoats are travelling Magisters upholding King’s Law. They are heroes. Or at least they were, until they stood aside while the Dukes took the kingdom, and impaled their King’s head on a spike. 

Now Tristia is on the verge of collapse and the barbarians are sniffing at the borders. The Dukes bring chaos to the land, while the Greatcoats are scattered far and wide, reviled as traitors, their legendary coats in tatters. 

All they have left are the promises they made to King Paelis, to carry out one final mission. But if they have any hope of fulfilling the King’s dream, the divided Greatcoats must reunite, or they will also have to stand aside as they watch their world burn.

This is the first book written by Sebastien de Castell who hails from Vancouver. I found it very action-packed, well written, and filled with twists and turns throughout the story.

I usually shy away from fantasies but this book, although set in a mythical land, draws much from the time of the 17th century, the period of time when the story of the Three Musketeers took place. That being said, this book is equal to or even better than the Alexandre Dumas story.

The book may be finished but happily, the story of the Greatcoats, led by Falcio val Mond, is not yet over. According to de Castell's website the next book in the series, Greatcoat's Lament, is now at the publisher. I can hardly wait for it to come out.

Thanks to Luanne from A Bookworm's World who posted her review of this book on The 7th Annual Canadian Book Challenge site in March. I too take part in the challenge as does Teena, and I enjoy having a look at what others have read. That's how I found this book and am very glad that I did.

Book Review - The Gum Thief

In 2010 I read a book by Douglas Coupland, Player One, What is to Become of Us, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I loved how it made me think. I read a lot of non-fiction and decided I needed something more off the wall to read and realized that I haven't read any more of Coupland's works, so ordered The Gum Thief.

In Douglas Coupland's ingenious new novel we meet Roger, a divorced, middle-aged "aisles associate" at a Staples outlet, condemned to restocking reams of twenty-lb. bond paper for the rest of his life. And then there's Roger's co-worker Bethany, who's at the end of her Goth phase, and young enough to be looking at fifty more years of sorting the red pens from the blue in Aisle Six. 

One day, Bethany comes across Roger's notebook in the staff room. When she opens it up, she discovers that this old guy she's never considered as quite human is writing mock diary entries pretending to be her-and spookily, he is getting her right. She also learns he has a tragedy in his past-and suddenly he no longer seems like just a paper-stocking robot with a name tag. 

These two retail workers strike up a peculiar and touching epistolary relationship, their lives unfolding alongside Roger's work-in-progress, the oddly titled Glove Pond, a Cheever-era novella gone horribly, horribly wrong. Through a complex layering of narratives, The Gum Thief, highlights number-one bestselling author Douglas Coupland's eye for the comedy, loneliness and strange comforts of contemporary life. 

Everything that happens in this book is told through diary entries and letters and it's fascinating how well this works.

There are really two stories being told here. One is the story of Bethany, a young goth girl with a very negative view on life, and Roger, an older man who works with her, who has been dragged through hell in his life and has a very negative attitude towards life himself. Maybe that's why they can relate so well to each other.

The second is the story of Glove Pond, a book that Roger is writing. At first I thought it was a little dumb but then got really pulled into that story too. Interesting that Glove Pond actually has a listing and review on Goodreads!

Unstoppable rage smolders amid the imploding remains of a dying marriage. A college-town academic, Steve, is hectored and tormented by his bullying, shrewish wife, Gloria. The appearance of a younger successful novelist, Kyle Falconcrest, and his wife, Brittany, becomes the final ingredient in a powder keg of lust, revenge, alcoholism and unthinkable secrets.

In the end I hoped that both the story of the characters in the book and Glove Pond would all have a satisfactory finish,  At first I thought one did and one did not. After thinking about this for awhile, I decided that both endings were very good.

That's what's so great about Douglas Coupland. He makes you think. A great read, although the people at Staples may not think so!

I'm the dead girl whose locker you spat on somewhere between recess and lunch.

I'm not really dead, but I dress like I want to be. There's something generic about girls like me: we hate the sun, we wear black, and we feel trapped inside our bodies like a nylon fur mascot at a football game. 

I wish I were dead most of the time. I can't believe the meat I got stuck with, and where I got stuck and with whom. I wish I were a ghost. 

And FYI, I'm not in school any more, but the spitting thing was real: a little moment that sums up life. I work in a Staples. I'm in charge of restocking aisles 2-North and 2-South: Sheet Protectors, Indexes & Dividers, Note books, Post-It Products, Paper Pads, Specialty Papers and "Social Stationery." Do I hate this job? Are you nuts? Of course I hate it. How could you not hate it? Everyone who works with me is either already damaged or else they're embryos waiting to be damaged, fresh out of school and slow as a 1999 modem. Just because you've been born and made it through high school doesn't mean society can't still abort you. Wake up. 

Let me try to say something positive here. For balance. Staples allows me to wear black lipstick to work. -Bethany -from The Gum Thief.

Book Review - Bigger Than The Game by Dirk Hayhurst

After reading Dirk Hayhurst's The Bullpen Gospels, I was looking forward to reading more of his work as it came out. Bigger Than the Game is his newest book and the second I have read of his. I was excited to read it.

After nearly a decade in the minors, Dirk Hayhurst defied the odds to climb onto the pitcher's mound for the Toronto Blue Jays. Newly married, with a big league paycheck and a brand new house, Hayhurst was ready for a great season in the Bigs. 

Then fate delivered a crushing hit. Hayhurst blew out his pitching shoulder in an insane off-season workout program. After surgery, rehab, and more rehab, his major-league dreams seemed more distant than ever. 

 From there things got worse, weirder, and funnier. In a crazy world of injured athletes, autograph-seeking nuns, angry wrestlers, and trainers with a taste for torture, Hayhurst learned lessons about the game-and himself-that were not in any rulebook.

I'm glad that it was a quick read, as I found myself really not enjoying many of the stories he told. Some chapters just went on and on about nothing. In fact, in his first book I saw a likeable person with drive and humour but in this book, I did not like him at all. I realize that there is a lot of mental as well as physical healing needed when a pro athlete injures themselves but I found him quite whiny. There was also an air of arrogance that came through that he never showed in his first book.

There were some interesting things about life in baseball that he wrote about but not much. Near the end of the book, he said that after the success of his first book that he got a two book deal from the publisher. This book seems thrown together just to satisfy the terms of the agreement.

I highly recommend The Bullpen Gospels but recommend that you should avoid Bigger than the Game!

Book Review - "Stats Canada: Satire on a National Scale"

I am part of the The 7th Annual Canadian Book Challenge, a fun blog that challenges bloggers to read and write about 13 books by Canadian authors, books about Canada or books which take place in Canada.

I spotted this book, Stats Canada: Satire on a National Scale, in January list of books which was posted by Shan at Curled up With a Good Book and a Cup of Tea. It sounded interesting so I gave it a read.

Canadians everywhere have been deeply confused by the irresponsible and wildly inaccurate data tweeted by Stats Canada since July 2012. While outrageously false, these hilarious “facts” unearth deep truths about Canadians and their culture. 

For the over 200,000 people already following on Twitter, @stats_canada is a daily source of the funniest Canadian parody. Now, in their first book, Stats Canada satirizes everything from history, culture, and language to sports, entertainment, politics, weather, and much more. 

With all-new features, graphs, maps, and other illustrations, Stats Canada has all the laughter you’ve come to expect, with only 10% recycled content! 

35% of advice given in any Home Hardware does not come from an actual employee 
67% of Canadians own summer snow pants 
32% of Canadians can’t spell “tuque” but own at least four 
56% of Manitobans are convinced they’ve travelled to the future when visiting other provinces 
79% of Canadian teens don’t want to wear their winter coat, it’s not even that cold out 
100% of Canadian hockey players give it 110% every game 
65% of Canadian Instagram accounts include an artsy photo of a Tim Hortons cup 

Disclaimer: The official Statistics Canada has taken no issue with the content of this book. They were too polite to object.

No, I hadn't heard of this before getting the book and thought it would be humorous real stats about Canadians, so went into the book with a little trepidation. Turns out it is a fast and mostly amusing read. I do feel it is in bad taste to make fun of life taking tragedies such as the Halifax Explosion or the Newfoundland Tsunami but mostly the book is fun and one that I enjoyed.

Book Review: "The 163 Best Paleo Slow Cooker Recipes"

Usually when I post a picture of a cover of a book, I copy it from a website to get the best picture. For The 163 Best Paleo Slow Cooker Recipes by Toronto writer Judith Finlayson, I took a picture.

Why?

I wanted to show all the bookmarks I have for recipes which I want to try.

Enjoy old standards and new classics with this very topical collection of slow cooker recipes. They've been refined to meet the needs of people who subscribe to the Paleo or Primal lifestyle. The Paleo diet is currently one of the most popular diets being followed today and has been embraced by nearly 1.5 million people in North America. 

The recipes don't contain any grains or legumes (therefore making all of them gluten-free), no refined sugars, no refined oils or processed ingredients - the basic principles of the diet. Slow cookers are hugely popular because they're so convenient and the results so delicious -- all the recipes in this book pay very close attention to Paleo guidelines while also recognizing that there's a wide variety of reasons that people choose to eat Paleo that go beyond weight loss. So there's room to be flexible depending on your personal requirements and expectations of the diet. 

 It's all here: from great family food to more sophisticated recipes for entertaining, not to mention luscious desserts:. Now even people who follow the Paleo lifestyle can enjoy easy delectable meals that reflect an outstanding variety of fresh flavors, cuisines and textures.

So what is a Paleo diet all about?

The Paleo Diet is about eating food that is close to what our ancestors, who were hunter-gatherers, ate, which means eating food that is as close to its natural state as possible.

Some key points include: increasing your consumption of protein in the form of naturally raised meat and wild fish and seafood limiting carbs sources to include fruit and veggies that are low in starch, as well as certain nuts and seeds forgetting most of what you have been taught about fat ... as long as it is "natural", fat is fine no grains or legumes no refined sugars and oils or processed foods.

I found the recipes very simple and although they use very few ingredients, they are delicious. So far I have made Ranch House Chicken Fried Steak (crockpot style) and Paleo Slow Cooker Classic Beef Stew. Both were fabulous! This weekend I am making Down Home Smothered Steak. Of course, I'll be posting about that.

There are many more to try and I'm looking forward to it. If you have a slow cooker or crockpot, this is an excellent book to have!

Book Review - "Don't Tell The Newfoundlanders"

My dad's parents were both Newfoundlanders and came to Canada sometime before 1921 (Teena found that they were married and living in Toronto in a 1921 Toronto census. One day I hope to have an exact date they came over). It sounds a little funny now to say that somebody came to Canada from Newfoundland but remember Newfoundland was not part of Canada then.

Yes, there is Newfie blood running through my veins. It is because of this that I always read when something about Newfoundland hits the news.

I never really thought much of how Newfoundland came into Confederation, except that they held a vote, becoming a province of  Canada won and on March 31 (my birthday) 1949, they became the country's 10th province.  Don't Tell the Newfoundlanders tells the true story of how Newfoundland came to join Confederation.

The true story, drawn from official documents and hours of personal interviews, of how Newfoundland and Labrador joined Confederation and became Canada''s tenth province in 1949. A rich cast of characters--hailing from Britain, America, Canada and Newfoundland--battle it out for the prize of the resource-rich, financially solvent, militarily strategic island. The twists and turns are as dramatic as any spy novel and extremely surprising, since the "official" version of Newfoundland history has held for over fifty years almost without question. Don''t Tell the Newfoundlanders will change all that.

This is a fascinating book about the years of wheeling and dealing between Great Britain and Canada about how to move Newfoundland into Canada. The title of the book says it all. All the dealing between the two countries was done without Newfoundland's knowledge, in behind closed door meetings and top secret communications. Entire communications of these top secret documents are used in the telling of this story. It surprised me how many letters started with the words "Top Secret".

Although it had its own government during the 1800s, Newfoundland was still considered a colony of Great Britain. In 1907, Newfoundland was granted Dominion status. Due to a severe debt load caused by loans taken during World War I to fight for the British Empire and the world wide great depression, Great Britain made a deal to extend credit to Newfoundland on the basis that Newfoundland would lose its government and control over its own destiny and once again become a colony of Great Britain. The people of Newfoundland lost their power to vote and had to depend solely on the decisions made by a "Commission of Government" and its governor, solely appointed by Britain.

From 1933 'til the moment in 1949 that it came into Canada, there were no elections in Newfoundland. Don't Tell the Newfoundlanders tells the story of how both England and Canada used this lack of government to their advantage to come to a great deal for both countries and a bad one for Newfoundland.

I know Newfoundland has had a raw deal in many areas with Canada. Its hydro deal with Quebec and Canada's supporting Quebec in this has always rubbed me wrong but the end of the book tells much more.

The last chapters deal with the vote itself in Newfoundland's referendum to bring Newfoundland into confederation or to bring back responsible government. Confederation won by a narrow 52% to 48% margin, but the author, Greg Malone, puts forth a case that the vote not only was rigged but responsible government actually won and the people were lied to. This part was a little too "conspiracy theory" for me but he makes not too bad of a case.

This is a very interesting book that I learned a lot from. It's definitely worth a read and should be mandatory reading for Newfoundlanders and their descendants.