Your Best Birth by Ricki Lake & Abby Epstein

Your Best Birth is about knowing your birthing options and not feeling pushed around by doctors who often seem to disregard maternity patients' wishes. Or at least, that's what the book says. I don't know what it's like to have a baby in a hospital in the US; I probably never will. But I know my own mom's experience (at least, when she had me) was less than satisfactory, and she's still a little bitter, I think, about the treatment of OB-GYN gave her. If she'd felt there had been other options, she might have tried them.

So, here's breaking the news: I am pregnant; I'm at the beginning of my second trimester. And I remember two people singing the praises of this book: Jenn at Devourer of Books, who had a baby last year, and Dooce, who also had a baby last year.

Now, of all my generation in my family--several cousins, a sister--only one of them hasn't had a C-section. I don't know the particulars about why all of them had C-sections (except my sister--my niece was floating around in her placenta, basically swimming laps, and wouldn't stay heads-down), but I don't want surgery. And I certainly don't want to be pushed into it because of hospital protocols, which is often, apparently, what happens. I am also in love with the idea of a birthing pool, ever since I read on Pacing the Panic Room about the birth of Tessa Tangerine. (I started following Pacing the Panic Room because I loved the pictures he was taking of his wife every week of the pregnancy.)

My sister says she hates books like Your Best Birth because their goal is that everyone has a totally natural birth and they make you feel guilty if you want pain meds or if you have a C-section--which is how her prenatal classes made her feel. My response was that, yes, Your Best Birth is really heavy on supporting the decision to have a drug-free labor, home birth, midwives, doulas, and all of that. But mostly, they just don't want you to feel pushed into having a less-than-joyous birth experience you didn't need to have; they want you to have more facts than you're likely to get from hospitals and doctors. They acknowledge that C-sections are sometimes necessary (though there are an alarming number of elective C-sections) and that after 24 hours of labor, you really might need an epidural to keep going. And that's FINE. What you need, you get. But they don't want you to be pushed into having an epidural by the nurses who pop in every half hour or forty-five minutes to ask if you're ready to have an epidural yet, or get jacked full of Pitocin on Tuesday by the doctor who really wants to go away Thursday night to start a long weekend instead of waiting for your labor to start/progress naturally.

Also, Lake & Epstein provide lists of questions for doctors, midwives, doulas, etc., as well as a history of widwifery (really interesting) and a general (if a little biased) overview of the birthing industry in the US. They also made a documentary, which I haven't seen but would like to, called The Business of Being Born.

Now, unfortunately, I don't think BC's health care--or the health care from my husband's employer--would pay for a midwife and doula for a home birth. In fact, I am pretty sure there aren't any truly qualified midwives in my town, and to get a midwife to deliver my baby, I'd likely have to go to Vancouver Island. So I think the homebirth in a tub is out.

Fortunately, my doctor says that here in BC, they approach pregnancy and labor a little differently, with as few interventions as possible. There are showers and tubs for laboring moms at the hospital and they won't hook me up to an IV--or even put a needle in, in case I need one later--unless it becomes absolutely necessary. And I can feel free to walk, squat, whatever positions I want. I feel much better knowing that.

Of course, I have yet to take a look at the maternity ward here. There's only one hospital in town, so I have pretty limited hospital options (again, unless I want to take ferry to Vancouver Island while I'm in labor). But I've heard nothing but good things about its maternity ward, and I find it pretty comforting that most women in town receive their prenatal care from their general practitioners rather than an OB-GYN. There's only one OB-GYN and he's the prenatal care for high risk pregnancies and otherwise, expectant moms only see him for emergency C-sections (though I'm told he's also skilled with forceps and can be called in for that as well).

I'm really glad I read this book, because I don't think I would have considered that there are options other than hospitalization to have a baby, or that doctors could have ulterior motives for offering epidurals or kick-starting labor, or that there are so many options even if you choose to go to a hospital. I strongly encourage other pregnant women to read this book--even if you've already had children. It's fascinating.

The Blue Cotton Gown by Patricia Harman

Patsy Harman is not an unusual woman. She worries about finances. She gets irritated with her husband's ability to sleep no matter what their current crisis is. She feels the need to listen to her patients and colleagues, and is just as sensitive as any other woman you're likely to meet (even if she doesn't cry as much).

What makes Patsy Harman a bit of an anomaly is that she's a midwife in Appalachia, and she and her OB-GYN husband operate their own medical practice, even though they don't deliver babies anymore (obstetric malpractice insurance got ridiculously high). They've had a bit of bad luck with accountants, and Patsy finds it difficult to balance the problems of her patients and friends with those of her own life.

One of the early reviewers said that The Blue Cotton Gown (a memoir) reads like a novel--and it really does. I didn't want to put it down. I had to know how Patsy was going to handle the accountants, whether she was ever going to get to sleep on her own, whether her teenage patient who lost twins was going to see the light about the loser she was sleeping with--or her friend's daughter, who was having a similar problem in her love life.

I cheered her victories and good decisions and commiserated in her frustrations and worries (seriously, how many inept accountants are there?). She introduced me to the business side of medical practice, which I hadn't really considered before. As with all businesses, there's a fine line between solvency and bankruptcy, and the Harmans are walking it. But even the financial worries--they got a letter from a legal firm; are they getting sued? or how do they get the IRS to quit taking the money they no longer owe them?--are nothing like worrying about whether or not you have cancer, whether or not you'll have to have a hysterectomy, whether that kid's overdose was an accident or suicide. And Harman balances them all beautifully in this memoir, with a generous splash of humor and other bits of light-heartedness to keep you from losing sleep over her problems.

If there's one thing that didn't quite sit comfortably with me, it's that most of the time, I had no idea this book was taking place in Appalachia, which has its own distinct character. Harman's practice could have been in Idaho or Maine or Texas if it weren't for the occasional references to local geography or the very rare mention of an Appalachian trait of the locals. Maybe it's because Harman isn't from the area, but I think I would've appreciated a little more local color.

All in all, highly recommended. I really wish I could remember whose blog I read a review of this book on--whoever you are, thank you!

Dewey: The Small Town Library Can Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron with Bret Witter

I'm a cat person. You must know this by now. I mean, our cat made international news last December (and we're still introduced to new people as "the people who's cat waited at the side of the road for them for two days after their accident in Wyoming--you saw it on the news, right?") and though I think our Wavey is every bit as remarkable as Dewey, I must admit, Dewey's story is pretty amazing. And he is one handsome cat.

I cried when I read about Myron taking him out of the book drop after the coldest night of the year, with his paws frostbitten and him so cold there was no heat coming from him. And I cried at a lot of other things in the book too. I, however, skimmed most of the bits about life in Spencer, Iowa (I come from an even smaller town in Ohio and highly doubt life is all that much different there) and rolled my eyes several times at Myron's insistence that Dewey's behavior was unusual for a cat (I often disagreed)--but there is no denying he was a remarkably well-suited cat for a library.

I loved the stories of specific library patrons and the statistics of how their patronage increased after Dewey became a fixture there, and the way stories of Dewey spread until people from all over the world were coming to Spencer, Iowa, just to see him. (I would've been one of those people who detoured a road trip to go meet Dewey.)

I would give this book to any cat person to read.

Unforgettable: Southern Ladies & Gentlemen by Florence King

I was breezing through my Google Reader today to prepare for the onslaught of the reading marathon posts I expect this weekend. (I'm not participating because my garden beckons, but I hope everyone else has fun!) Anyway, I came across a post at Bluestalking titled "Good writing vs. bad, southern and otherwise." Any mention of Southern writing makes me think of Southern Ladies & Gentlemen. I know I've recommended it to several of you for challenges that have you reading Southern books, but it's really a book that anyone who's ever read Gone with the Wind or To Kill a Mockingbird or any of the other classic Southern books (or plays) should read.

King presents a study of Southern culture which is not only fun to read, but just about everything in it is applicable to any truly Southern story. It's a mix of essays (pop culture/sociology/history/etc.) that turns into something that suddenly makes Southern texts a lot more interesting and/or understandable and/or shed a new light on a story.

This is the first reading assignment I had for my Southern Women Writers class in grad school, and I am so glad Dr. Dukes had us read this. Enlightening and hilarious and highly recommended.

Unforgettable: Sex with Kings by Eleanor Herman

When I was in grad school, a friend told me I would get a kick out of this book she was reading, Sex with Kings. And I really did. It was most edifying. In fact, I want to reread it, and I wouldn't mind owning a copy.

I'd never thought much about royal indiscretions, but I learned a lot about royal life (and loneliness) from Herman's book. And since reading this, I've heard a lot of references to famour mistresses, like Madame Du Barry, who is one of the most famous royal courtesans ever. As I recall, the book only covers some of Europe's kings and their mistresses, and it opens the path to more research for other scholars.*

Because it's a scholarly monograph, it does get a little repetitive; good for researchers who will read only a chapter or two, but not as much fun for casual readers who just sit down and read it cover to cover. The non-chronological jumping around makes it a little harder to keep track of which mistress goes with which king and the time frames of all the reigns, so I highly recommend keeping a little notebook to jot down names and years--it may sound like a little more work than you tend to do when reading, but such notes will be very helpful.

A must-read for you fans of Phillippa Gregory and other royalty-based historical fiction.


*Herman has also written Sex with the Queen, which I'm adding to my wishlist right now.

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

I didn't finish Three Cups of Tea. It's been nine months since I started it, and now I'm absolutely sure I don't want finish it. (I'm about halfway through, and I wouldn't have even bought it to begin with had it not been a reading group selection.)

The story itself may be good, but the style of its telling could have been much, much better, and it's why I stopped. I found myself making the kinds of notes I'd make on a manuscript--e.g. word choice, fact check, this statement is in opposition to position three pages ago, this scene doesn't make sense because..., readers may find rhetorical questions unnecessary and annoying, etc.

Also, I think this book would have been much better written as a memoir. I was thrown by the fact that the book tells the story of one of the authors, but it's not written in the first person. Even with that said, though, I'm starting to shy away from memoirs written by or with the help of journalists. A lot of them just aren't good at creative nonfiction, and based on this book, I'd have to include Relin in that group.

Don't Call Me a Crook! by Bob Moore

My friend Josh agreed to take up the challenge of reading this one and writing a review.* Thanks, Josh!

______________________________

“It is a pity there are getting to be so many places that I can never go back to, but all the same, I do not think it is much fun a man being respectable all his life…”

So begins a book--a dark memoir that this reviewer was shocked to learn was deemed worthy to be republished (originally published in 1935). I am not alone in my opinion that this book has no redeeming qualities.

As a precautionary measure before plunging in to Bob Moore’s telling of his life as a wayward Scotsman; don’t say I didn’t warn you!

A self-proclaimed thief, liar, and gunrunner (one must add racist, drunk, and murderer to the list!), Don’t Call Me a Crook! is a 245 page slog through the murky waters of violence, corruption, and all else in bad taste.

The book is separated into fourteen chapters but his telling of the story feels disjointed and hardly goes together seamlessly from one part to the next. And as an added insult grammatical errors abound; that Dissident Books (the publisher) purposely left in to illustrate the sparse and saucy language of the time. It does not work in the book’s favour, rather creates a choppy, broken progression that detracts from the prose.

More than once I was ready to throw the book in to the trash. It is painful to read. The author is a despicable character.

Don’t Call Me a Crook! is a work of self-denial. Bob Moore is a crook!


*I couldn't finish it; I read to page 79.

Tattoo Machine by Jeff Johnson

When I got my tattoo, it was a last-minute thing. My friend had decided it was the night to get her tattoo, and she'd done a little bit of research but hadn't made an appointment, so we walked into what she was assured was one of the better tattoo parlors in the city. Lots of flash on the wall, and binders full of it. (Flash is the paper typically tacked up all over tattoo parlor walls, a display of what the tattoo artists can do or have done; it also serves as idea fodder.) We ended up waiting five hours because there was only one artist working (which we found odd for a Friday night) and he was coloring in a huge tattoo on a woman's back; we both thought that if we left, we might make excuses not to come back. And boy, were there a lot of interesting people wandering in and out of that place. The girl doing the piercing that night was plenty busy.

Jeff Johnson's book Tattoo Machine, a collection of memories and analysis of the tattoo business (past, present and future), was an interesting book to spend a few hours with. Johnson co-owns a successful tattoo shop in Portland, Oregon. His stories are sad and funny and infuriating--and one story about the guy who wanted a banner with a name and number in it creeped me out. It seems obvious through his style that Johnson spent some time learning the craft of writing stories. He probably worked especially hard on his voice; I wouldn't be at all surprised if the persona he presents in the book is the persona the people who visit his shop see.

He does take off on tangents every now and then, rants that I would've recommended removing. But mostly he tells stories, and he does it well.

Anyone who has even the slightest interest in what goes on behind the scenes in a tattoo shop should read this. As you can imagine, he runs into all sorts of people--and he spares no one.

Brain Injury Survivor's Guide by Larry & Beth Jameson

First, June is Brain Injury Awareness Month here in Canada. (In the US, it's March.) If anyone in your family rides a bike or skateboards or any of those other activities that can involve nasty spills, I'd like to encourage you to make sure that you & your kids wear helmets that are up-to-date and fit properly. (And don't be one of those parents who tells their kids to wear a helmet to ride a bike but doesn't wear one him-/herself.)

Now, about the book:

Beth Jameson suffered a brain injury nearly twenty years ago, caused by an anoxic stroke, and with her husband's love and support, she has created a new life for her brain-injured self, and together they have created Brain Injury Survivor's Guide as a manual for other brain-injury survivors and their families.

I'm not part of their audience, despite having married a man who suffered a brain injury nine years ago. This book is really for people who have recently suffered ABI (acquired brain injury) and their families. The Jamesons detail major parts of Beth's recovery and the strategies they implemented (including lists of schedules and how-to's for daily tasks like applying make-up) to help Beth be as functional as possible. They also include a list of resources in the last chapters.

They don't dwell on things like health care insurance battles, though they do mention them, and this is not a book filled with self-pitying tales. Beth fought for all the ground she's gained, and they're proud of it--and they want readers to know that doctors know surprisingly little about brain injury and what can be accomplished and/or relearned after a person suffers such an injury.

Despite some editorial flaws, this seems to me a book that should be handed out to family members of the brain-injured in hospitals, to start preparing them for what may lie ahead. Even though no two brain injuries are the same, and the methods employed by the Jamesons won't necessarily be useful for everyone in the target audience, it will still provide an initial layer of support and community that they will find helpful.

Larry and Beth maintain a useful website, About Brain Injury and Beth keeps Beth's Brain Injury Blog.

Rubies in the Orchard by Lynda Resnick with Francis Wilkinson

Sadly, I can't recommend Rubies in the Orchard to readers (unless they're really interested in POM Wonderful, Resnick's personal Camelot company). This book should have been more engaging. Maybe if Resnick had been as emphatic as she tells us she is with her products, she wouldn't have let so much mediocre writing slip by. Or maybe Wilkinson wasn't the right "with" guy for the job--excellent book writing is far different from newspaper or magazine writing.

Throughout the book, I got the feeling Resnick dictated, with little revision between dictation and printing. Resnick creates a sense of talking to a student-reader, which another blog reviewer calls a condescending tone, but I think the tone Resnick strove for is one of assertion; Resnick has a lot of experience and wants you to benefit from her hard-earned wisdom. Of course, if statements like, "Believe me, I know," had been stripped from drafts, some of that perceived condescension might have been mitigated.

Resnick's use of truisms and statistical yet unquantified generalities ("A number of geologists" is referred to on page 173) further undermines her authority. And for someone who declares a high level of eco-awareness, I found it hard to comprehend so many pages wasted on lauding the book, praises most people won't read--poor trees! (Myself, I tend to veer away from books with so much space utilized for curried praise, usually a precursor to my disappointment.)

There are times when the book feels like "a celebration of Me and My accomplishments," learning from"My mistakes"--all so very Mr. Rogers.

And it's not that the book is awful--it's not. It's just that the reader has to work a little too hard to stay interested from point A to point B to point C. Mostly, Resnick seems not to have fully realized what she wanted this book to be--a book about marketing or a marketing memoir.* It would have been better if she had gone with one or the other. Instead, she straddles the two options, which results in a list-style of writing. Clearly she had some parts that would have benefited from a better narrative approach.

I love the cover, and some of the stories she has to tell are interesting. But those may be the best compliments I have for Rubies in the Orchard (which is really too bad, because I eagerly approached this reading).


*And then there are the textbook-style boxes highlighting her key points.

Thanks to Molly Peters at POM Wonderful for sending me this review copy.

A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder by Eric Abrahamson & David H. Freedman

I've never been an organized person, and this has never caused me more problems than it did in my first year of teaching, when I was constantly misplacing stacks of papers (graded, ungraded, not handed out yet, things to run off, etc.). After that first year though, I managed to iron out enough kinks that my classroom ran pretty smoothly. And I've never been the person who minded having a messy desk, though it drove my mom (and my super-organized sister of the eight-page wedding day itinerary) a little crazy.

I suppose, then, that it was only natural that I was drawn to A Perfect Mess, which encourages embracing (or adding) bits of disorganization in our days.

To clarify: A Perfect Mess does not encourage hoarding or complete chaos or unsanitary living conditions. Instead, Abrahamson and Freedman have researched ways in which being a little messy about how you do things can be helpful in your life (at home, in offices or science labs, etc.). The book is full of stories of how being hyperorganized can be detrimental and how serendipity tends to fall to those of us who allow ourselves room to be messy. I especially appreciated their narative illustrations, and also how often bookstores were used as examples (and I have added a new bookstore to my must-visit list).

But though they do poke fun at the billions of dollars people spend (usually futilely) trying to get organized (and this includes hiring professional organizers to come to your house to unmess it), Abrahamson and Freedman don't discourage organization. What they encourage is a happy medium. And they want people to quit apologizing for the messy states of their homes; stacks of mail on dining room tables, kids' toys on the floor, piles of to-be-filed papers on your desk--these are all perfectly normal and we shouldn't be made to feel by the hyper-organized (who are outnumbered by the rest of us, I'd like to point out) that these things make us some kind of failure.

Abrahamson and Freedman also explore messiness in other, sometimes unexpected, areas--music (did you know improvisation used to be expected in Baroque music?), computers, search engines, hospitals, law offices, machine design, traffic patterns, jaywalking, schools, and lots more. Sometimes these other areas felt like overkill, and sometimes they seemed redundant (subjects did tend to overlap between chapters here and there), but overall, this book offered a pleasing tour through various aspects of organization and mess.

I highly recommend A Perfect Mess. It would make a great counterweighted perspective to books like the forthcoming Throw Out Fifty Things (which provokes a challenge being undertaken this weekend and being documented in a series of posts over at Devourer of Books).


Many thanks to Little, Brown & Co. for the review copy!

After the Fire by Robin Gaby Fisher

After the Fire is the recovery story of two college boys who were badly burned in a dormitory fire January 19, 2000.

This book must have been complicated and difficult to write, considering the subject matter, but I feel that the author tried to simplify it for her readers, which resulted in a book that read like a very long Reader's Digest story, reinforcing every positive angle (the unfalteringness of the parents' faith, burn ward staff dedication, the boys' determination, etc.) in every chapter.

Personally, I was expecting something more complex. The people portrayed in this book had very minor flaws, if any, and nearly all negativity was filtered out, which made it seem a bit less true.

So, if you like--or at least don't mind--Reader's Digest-style stories, this might be right up your alley.

The Book of Vice by Peter Sagal

When I was in college, a friend found out that I'd never seen a porno, and I was promptly invited to her porno party--which she'd been convinced to throw because she'd never seen one, either. I went, and I wrote about the experience (which I won't describe here) for my weekly column in the college paper.

Then, when I was in grad school, a stranger at the local Barnes & Noble Starbucks struck up a conversation with me that somehow ended in an invitation to a fetish ball. (It wasn't a date invitation, just a suggestion that he'd be ever so happy to run into me there.) I obsessed about that invitation for a week; I was extremely curious as to what a fetish party would be like. In the end, I decided that such an experience likely wouldn't be worth the discomfort of being so far outside my comfort zone--and I couldn't think of anyone to go with me who I'd trust in that kind of situation, anyway.

The Book of Vice explores both porn and fetishes as human vices. Peter Sagal wasn't so quite so shy. He went to a fetish club and a porn set to research for this book. The other vices he explores--consumption, food, gambling, swinging, lying & strip clubs--are also personally explored by visiting a swingers' club (with his wife, but strictly as observers), interviewing strippers, spending nearly $1000 on a food experience, and visiting Vegas and talking to professional gamblers.

Alcohol, smoking and drugs were not discussed because Sagal felt there was an element of addiction that overrode their vice qualities. Funny, I thought porn and gambling were addictive, too. I guess drawing the line between physical and psychological dependencies.

Sagal uses a combinationof expository and narrative in each chapter, which generally worked very well with his conversational style. He does have a tendency to drag every now and then--I was tired of gambling, strip clubs and porn about halfway through those chapters, even though the second halves were always as equally interesting as the first.

My favorite chapter was the one on eating--the descriptions were fun, though it quashed any desire to experience a 26-course $1000 "meal" that involved inhaling shrimp cocktail through an atomizer or eating little frozen pureed vegetable cubes. (In the end, all Sagal and his wife Beth really wanted was something satisfying--like a fast food burger.)

I wonder how a woman writing this book would have changed it. Would she have reached different conclusions about why some men are drawn to strip clubs? Would she have even covered the same vices? Would she have explored why there are so many sexual vices? (About half of the vices in this book are sexual.)

I can't say I would highly recommend this book. It's just a little too slow, a little too purposeless to be highly recommended. (But I would like to see that ghostwritten memoir he mentions in the porn chapter rewritten and published as a fictional memoir.) This will probably hold the most interest for people who really liked their pop culture, or maybe sociology, classes in college.


Thanks to Jennifer at The Literate Housewife Review for sending me this book!

Ikonica: A Field Guide to Canada's Brandscape by Jeannette Hanna & Alan Middleton

For this book, my readers are getting three reviews: mine (an American's view), my husband's and a knowledgeable and wise friend's (both Canadian)--not necessarily in that order.
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Knowledgeable & Wise Friend:
The companies profiled are well known to Canadian consumers. Products, logos and signature lines, etched in our everyday lives. But this book adds little to our knowledge and understanding of the dramatic creation and development of these enterprises or the backgrounds of the risk-takers, visionaries and adventurers who dreamed the impossible dream in a country not known for taking chances. Instead we get button-down profiles right out of the annual reports and faint images and pale ghosts of the greatness of capitalism and free enterprise.

No energy, no excitement and few insights to celebrate these iconic companies - ironic.

iKonica/ironiKa

Muse:
I wanted to read Ikonica because it looked fun and educational for this American living in Canada. Part coffee table book, part Canadian marketing overview, Ikonica was not as fun as I thought it would be. I learned some stuff--there are a few brands/companies I didn't know were Canadian (like Umbra, the company that designed the liquid soap dispenser I bought in NYC). Mostly, though, Ikonica is a book that boils down to a pat-yourselves-on-the-back book for Canadian companies (which seems to have been the purpose of Hanna and Middleton). Readers, whether they are Canadian or not, will quickly tire of of "Canadians are so great" statements that appear at least three times a page.

I also disliked the comparisons between American marketing and Canadian marketing (though I don't know if it's avoidable); I detected definite anti-American sentiments from some of the contributers, and even when they weren't referring to the myopia of American consumers, the CEOs and presidents and VP's and founders all made a point of discussing how "modest" Canadians are.

Overall, the book lacked substance. No one discussed anything that had ever been done wrong or badly in their companies, with the exception of the marketing VP for Cirque du Soleil mentioning that they tanked in Niagara Falls because of ill planned marketing and branding.

Ikonica reaches the height of boring readers by the halfway point (sooner for the less tolerant) if you read it straight through, after which readers will have a hard time focusing and may just flip through the pages to look at the pictures.

Muse's beloved husband:
Ikonica goes to great lengths to re-broadcast the corporate "message" as written by those pretending to be the messenger, the CEO's and Chairmen/women of the boards.

To read this book and believe the words contained, I would come away thinking that if it weren't for George Stroumboulopoulos, I would have no cultural bellwether with which to guide myself.[Insert finger in mouth here to imitate gag] If it were not for Roots, my understanding of the beaver would be lost forever. [Puff out cheeks here to imitate mouth filling from reflux and gag reaction] I do not watch The Hour, by choice. I have never worn Roots clothing, by choice.

Where is mention of Take Thirty and the ground breaking work of Moses Znaimer? Where is the nod to the many industrial innovations of Canada? Jeepers and golly gee there hasn't been a true-sounding Canadian tone since the death of Peter Gzowski. (At least he admitted to being a bit of a fraud with his "creation" of the award-winning front cover of the burning tree burning the forest fire sign.)

Little is said in Ikonica about the failures, and the struggle... the ashes and anvil where success is forged. Ikonica comes in at last place in selections of books I would choose to offer as representative of Canadian anything. Ikonica reminds me of early family portraits, stood for at the dawn of photography; Mother and Father, straight-faced and turned out in clothes more suited to a funeral parlour; children looking equally dour, standing poised and upright. It becomes known later that each person had a stiff set of metal fingers gripping them by the neck to ensure steady pose and lack of movement. That is Ikonica.

High quality production in print and photography amount to little more than an advertisement from the writers of this book that they will produce for your company, a very slick press release, which you can write yourself.

I will stick to Why I Hate Canadians by Will Ferguson as a gift to the interested.
__________________________

Thanks to Mini Book Expo: Business Edition & Douglas & McIntyre for sending this book.

Click by Bill Tancer

This is another guest post by my beloved husband. I will probably be reviewing it myself sometime in the near future.

--<>--

http://www.hyperionbooks.com/author_video.asp?ISBN=1401323049 will take you to a website showing a video of Bill Tancer talking to the Google demagogues about his new book Click.

http://www.hyperionbooks.com/titlepage.asp?ISBN=1401323049&SUBJECT=business will take you to a website with a publisher's synopsis/review of Bill Tancer’s new book Click.

Of course, clicking on the book cover or title will allow you to order your own tactile experience of Click through Powell's Books.

“The medium is the message" (Marshall McLuhan) best describes the impressive multi-media experience and concepts outlined by Tancer in Click. The author does not give the nod to McLuhan. Tancer's demonstration of data is his implied agreement with the ideas of a media-driven society, obsessed by its own desire to know which way it will turn next. One begins to understand, as they read, the mouse and keyboard must not be far away.

Bill Tancer is honest and straightforward as he parleys his understanding of his place in this world. He relates his mission is not one he picked up while seeking an easy major/minor combination at the state university. Indeed, he has come into his calling after a lifetime of watching his own fascination with data and how numbers and people relate in the real world. Click is a 212 page business card for Bill Tancer and Hitwise, the data, information company he is a part of. 212 pages of stories mixed with information and frontline insights that will excite prescient readers into understanding something about themselves and how they relate to their own public or market segment.

A book written as if it were spoken, cleanly without the uhhh and ummm and pause while words are sought for. After reading Click I went online to investigate what sort of press Hyperion is. They have a wide range of titles and include contemporary authors I have read, like Mitch Albom. I watched the video of Tancer’s lecture at Google and was impressed to see the same “aw shucks” sort of guy I meet in Click. Tancer is a plain language speaker, who does not shirk from hard questions or difficult problems. I would imagine if I wanted to know what the next thing was going to be, based on internet use, I would turn to Bill Tancer and Hitwise to see if he could illuminate further in the same way Click did.

I am wondering if the apple would bob so close to the surface if it knew it were next.

Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life by Kathleen Norris

The day I requested Acedia & Me, I was really in the mood for a good memoir. This is another one I didn't finish.

Acedia and Me is part memoir, part expository/exploratory essay. The memoir bits were fine, but in the first 100 pages, there was too much that was essay debating what acedia actually is (based on etymology, religions' definitions, etc.). I didn't care that much about the background of it. A chapter in the beginning, fine. Four chapters of it in the beginning was over the top. By the end of 100 pages, I cared even less about whether it was the same thing as clinical depression (she wants to argue it's not), and I certainly didn't want to read any more about it. I would've read the rest, if Norris had stayed in memoir mode.

I don't want to discourage anyone else from reading this, but this is meant for a more academic audience than I'm willing to be right now.

The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell

I was going to read The Wordy Shipmates and have a review all set to go by its release date (October).

Clearly, that didn't happen. I stopped about halfway through and determined to finish it when I was feeling more like I could give it a fairer reading.

I was originally very excited about this book. I'm fascinated and confused by Puritan theology. But it seems I was also traumatized by my junior year English teacher's presentation of the 1600's and Puritan persecution, because I kept having flashbacks of the class while I was reading this. (Very unsettling.)

This is my first experience with Sarah Vowell's work, and I am disappointed. First, the lack of chapters made the book seem unpolished and disorganized. Having no chapters also made the book seem to drag on because there weren't great, obvious stopping points.

Second, I kept getting people confused--which means I should've been keeping notes; I didn't because I thought that the people would be more definitive in my mind, but every time I came across Williams or Winthrop or Vane, I had to stop to remember which one he was. (And the two W names show up a lot.)

Last, Vowell's bitter political comments (example: "It's why in U.S. presidential elections the American people will elect a wisecracking good ol' boy who's fun in a malt shop instead of a serious thinker who actually knows some of the pompous, brainy stuff that might actually get fewer people killed.") seemed like cheap, strictly media-fed opinions. I'm not a huge fan of these particular politics, either, but I thought the snarky anti-Bush remarks cheapened her obviously hard work.

The things I liked: I laughed a lot and aside from the modern political stuff, I enjoyed her wit. I learned quite a bit. I enjoyed the last half of the book more than the first.

I'd be willing to read more of her books, but I'd be very careful about picking which one next. (Likely, I'd have to read a chapter or two before deciding.)

I'm willing to believe Vowell is a very funny, worthy writer to read more of--but I wouldn't recommend most newcomers to Vowell's work begin with The Wordy Shipmates.

Tar Sands by Andrew Nikiforuk

Ladies and gentlemen, my husband asked me to let him review Tar Sands, as he knows quite a bit more about the subject than I do, so here is my first guest review, by my beloved husband.

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Take two dishes and place them on your desk. Fill one with adjectives and adverbs which immediately bring to mind associations things often considered evil or wrong, even though in themselves the thing or idea is benign or ambiguous. Fill the other bowl with wide sweeping generalizations and some indistinct segues between actual quotes and random unattributed ideas. Next, pick a topically hot subject that most of society is knowledgeably ignorant about but vaguely aware of. Mix together with the skill of a Gamey Bird newspaper-trained journalist (Car crash on the front page. If there was none that week, dig one out of the files.) and you will come up with a close approximation to Nikiforuk’s Tar Sands.

Let’s try using some of his own style.

Andrew Nikiforuk lives in a dangerous Calgary neighbourhood frequented by crack users who have broken into one of his two gas guzzling cars to steal money, leading one to wonder if this is not simply the poor addict's attempt at saying “no” to the petro-jobs which would earn him substantially more income than the dollar his neglectful wife left behind.

There. See how easy that is?

You know, if one were to substitute any other group besides tar sands executives, it is very likely there would be a case here for a human rights tribunal hearing into hate literature.

I got to page 87 and could go no further.

Thank you to Douglas & McIntyre for the review copy.

Book Magic by Julie Ferguson

Book Magic is a practical guide for writers who have not yet ventured into the publication arena. Ferguson discusses how to predict markets, pitch ideas and reinvent yourself as an expert in your field. She also covers the importance of query letters, picking book categories and genres, and using agents (or not). Mostly, though, Book Magic presents writers' publishing options, including commercial, print on demand, e-books and more. Even published authors will find valuable insight in these pages. Ferguson plainly lays out the pros and cons of each publishing method, as she herself has published in several genres and explored every avenue.

If you're turned off by or skeptical of the use of "magic" in the title, you needn't be. Though the magic theme/gimmick feels hokey, Ferguson describes the hard work and effort that are the real magic behind getting published. The only disappointment in the book is the writing wasn't as smooth as I would have liked; sometimes it feels stilted, and that's not helped by the author's fondness for commas, the extra spaces between paragraphs or the numerous bulleted lists. Not that the bulleted lists are bad--sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. Overall, though, I found the text to be reader-friendly.

Book Magic would be an invaluable resource on the shelf of most Canadian* writers, especially those new to publishing. The important information offered is succinct, and its 121 pages (plus helpful appendix) cover a lot of ground. And when you're done, publishing won't feel like such a huge obstacle.

*Ferguson, a Canadian, focuses on Canadian publishing information, but doesn't neglect the more numerous publishing businesses in the US, either.

When Julie Ferguson presented at the Powell River Festival of Writers (2008), I was privileged to be volunteer chauffeur for her two-day stay. When she asked me to review the second edition of Book Magic, I was flattered.

Erotic Massage for Lovers by Ros Widdowson & Steve Marriott

Erotic Massage for Lovers is another book I requested from Mini Book Expo. I love being touched by my husband, and I thought that learning to massage each other would be--well, at the very least, fun.

The book seems to cover everything beginners need, even mixing your own oils if you're not using something commercially available. Descriptions of the motions are well laid out and include pictures to illustrate. The massages are about learning to touch each other, communicate, give pleasure and learn a new kind of intimacy--it's not really about foreplay (though it may lead to that). My only problem is that there are so many massages described that we'll need to keep the book next to us for a while yet. (Not much of a problem, eh?)

I'd encourage gifting Erotic Massage for Lovers to newlyweds or maybe a couple celebrating an anniversary--or to your significant other when you feel the need to reconnect.