Books & Bonspiels

I’ve been reading more lately so I thought it was time for a round-up of some of the books I’ve read so far in 2022.

American Dirt is my first 5-star book of the year. I’m pretty stingy with my 5-star reviews. To qualify, a book has to change the way I think about things, or stay with me for days after I’ve read it.

It wasn’t until I finished reading American Dirt that I learned it was controversial. The controversy seems to revolve around it being a novel about Mexican immigrants written by a white woman. I understand the need for diverse voices to be represented in fiction, but I also think it’s ridiculous to say that an author can only write characters of their own colour (or religion or gender). If that were true, people could only write memoirs. Fiction helps us recognize the universal aspects of humanity, so we can develop empathy for others. American Dirt certainly did that for me.

(One critique said the book was ‘trauma porn’. I have no idea what that means.)

Born a Crime is a memoir by comedian, and host of The Daily Show, Trevor Noah. It covers his childhood growing up in South Africa under apartheid. The book is both funny and harrowing and you don’t need to be a fan – or even know who he is – to enjoy it. I’d give it a 4.5 out of 5. Highly recommend.

I mentioned The Strangers in a previous post. I’d give it a 4/5, but wouldn’t recommend it for people who don’t like ‘depressing’ books. It was kind of a downer.

Where the Forest Meets the Stars. Have you ever gone on vacation and tried a new food or drink that you enjoyed so you bring some home with you but it’s not the same? I bought a bottle of raki in Turkey once but couldn’t even drink it when I got home. It had tasted much better when I was sitting inside a shop full of Turkish carpets.

I rated this book 4 out of 5, but I read it poolside in Jamaica so I’ll add a caveat that it might really be a 3.5 out of 5. It’s about a mysterious young girl who appears one day claiming to be from another planet. A woman and her neighbour reluctantly take the girl under their wing and are, of course, changed in the process.

I’ve just noticed that this is the only book on the list that doesn’t have racism as a central theme.

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek. This was our February book club read. I gave it 4 out of 5, with the same caveat as above (read in Jamaica, so might want to take it down half a point). Coincidentally, this book and the one above had similar settings. This one took place in the Appalachian mountains of rural Kentucky, and Where the Forest Meets the Stars took place in rural Illinois, so it was interesting to read them back to back. They both use the settings to great effect.

Part of the appeal of this book was that it covered two topics I’d never heard of before, the Pack-Horse Riding initiative, where librarians would travel through treacherous country on horseback during the Depression to deliver books to remote areas; and the Blue People of Kentucky, people who were born with blue skin. An interesting read.

The Vanishing Half. Very conflicted over this one. It was almost a ‘did not finish’ and I was debating whether to give it a rare 2 out of 5, but the rave reviews kept me reading and it did improve as it went along. It’s about identical twins who are coloured, but light enough to “pass”. They go different ways in life with one of them choosing to live as a white woman and the other to live as a black woman. It would be a great book club read because it covers so many themes – identity, race, colour, socio-economic status, opportunity, choices – and how all those things intertwine in complex ways.

The writing style, particularly in the first half of the book, just didn’t work for me. It jumped between characters and timelines and settings so often that I kept being pulled out of the story. I was always aware I was reading a book (whereas during American Dirt, for example, I was totally immersed in the story). There was too much ‘telling’ and not enough showing. It got better in the second half when the author stayed with the same storyline and character for a while.

It was definitely thought-provoking, but not engrossing. I gave it a 3, but it’s a conflicted 3. Could also be a 2. Or a 4. Hard to say. Interested to hear what others thought of it if you’ve read it.

I entered my first curling bonspiel this past weekend (or rather my name was added to the list in absentia while I was in Jamaica). It was a women-only Pink Flamingo bonspiel so there was a lot of pink.

I’m not very good at curling. And I’m not ‘just saying that’. I was a strong contender for the Hogged Rocks Bag of Shame prize with one-sixth of my rocks not making it to the hog line. The hog line, for those who don’t follow curling, is the line the rock must cross to remain in play. In the pic above, my teammates Lorrie and Lynn are sweeping their little hearts out in order to get my rock past the hog line. Unfortunately for me, it wasn’t the most hogged rocks that got you the prize. It was a draw, which I didn’t win.

If I consistently threw the rock too light, that would be one thing, but I threw about the same number of rocks right through the house, so they were also out of play. And then once in a while the rock would happen to go where it was supposed to and my teammates would cheer and say ‘good shot’ as though I’d had some say over where it went.

In other news, Ray bought himself a new bike. He’d been planning to buy one in the spring of 2020, but was waiting for the sales to start. After the pandemic hit, bikes became very hard to find. He called a small bike shop in Belleville to see if he could pre-order one, expecting to have to wait many months to receive it. To his surprise, they had one in stock that was just what he’d been looking for.