Saturday June 21, 2008
The fall of Toronto, er, York
CAPITAL IN FLAMESThe American Attackon York, 1813By Robert MalcolmsonRobin Brass Studio/Naval Institute Press, 489 pages, $39.95While I was writing The Battle of the St. Lawrence, I mentioned to an eminent historian that many of the men I'd interviewed had been torpedoed. His response: ''One explosion on a ship is just like another. What really matters isn't the individual's story but the impact the attack or sinking has on tactics and strategy.''
Risky business - in fact, reckless
BREATHBy Tim WintonHarperCollins Canada,205 pages, $26.95In the annals of literature, sullen young men seem to come of age, for the most part, through bouts of exalted sulking. Whether Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther or Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood, inward angst finds expression only in doomed love affairs and arguments with incapable parents, sometimes an extended journey or a drug addiction. Perhaps these characters take after the indoors-centred lives of most novelists.
E-VOX POPULI: OUR READERS WRITE
Greg Atkin, from Canada writes: Someone mentioned Don DeLillo's Underworld. It is an intriguing novel, America's War and Peace. A sweeping portrait of '50s America starting with a New York Times front page on Oct. 4, 1951, announcing two Earth-shattering events involving a sphere.
E-VOX POPULI: OUR READERS WRITE
Leo Bloom from Radisson, Sask., writes: Cheers to Greg Atkin. Underworld is perhaps the best American novel of the past half century. I have plugged it before and will shamelessly do so again. Read Underworld. It is time well spent.
Let's give the past a future
The announcement of prizes often makes for surprises. And not just in terms of who turns out to be the winner. A few months ago, it was announced in this newspaper that a Canadian financier was establishing ''the world's largest prize for non-fiction historical literature.'' The amount: a staggering $75,000. Peter Cundill, the Montreal native and McGill graduate (in commerce) who is bankrolling the award, admitted he had taken only two history courses while at university and - perhaps not so surprisingly - couldn't remember ''a single fact'' from either one.
Dazzling debut
THE WITHDRAWAL METHODBy Pasha MallaAnansi, 319 pages, $29.95This debut collection of short stories sat around for quite a few days before I started to read it. I was not drawn to the title and, even after reading from cover to cover, am at a loss to figure out what it means. However, this does not detract from the fact that Pasha Malla is a writer of considerable talent. That talent has already been recognized by McSweeney's and other journals, and in several prize nominations.
PAPERBACKS
THE GUM THIEFBy Douglas Coupland, Vintage Canada, 275 pages, $21Two workers at a Staples outlet, despite their apparent differences, begin a touching epistolary relationship.THE GREEN GABLES COLLECTION
CHILDREN'S BOOKS
BUTTERCUP'S LOVELY DAYBy Carolyn Beck, illustrated by Andrea Beck, Orca, 32 pages, $19.95, ages 4 to 8Bovine, bucolic, beauteous are adjectives that come to mind upon meeting Buttercup, heroine of the Beck sisters' flight of fancy, and an enthusiast to her very marrow. ''I love this day,'' she announces as she munches flowers and surveys the green meadows and tree-dotted hills above, around and below her. She waxes on, poetically; not only does she love the day, she also loves, ''the grass at my knees,/ the buzz of the bees,/ the fluzz of the flies,/ switching my tail/ and making pies.''
The state of Islam
CHASING A MIRAGEThe Tragic Illusions of an Islamic StateBy Tarek FatahWiley, 410 pages, $31.95THE FALL AND RISE OF THE ISLAMIC STATEBy Noah FeldmanPrinceton University Press,
Abu Ghraib: a disgrace and a calamity
STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDUREBy Philip Gourevitchand Errol MorrisPenguin Press, 286 pages, $28.50While reading Standard Operating Procedure, a compelling but disturbing book on Abu Ghraib, I recalled the PR tour of the prison in September, 2003, some eight months before the Abu Ghraib scandal made international headlines. The tour was led by then-Brigadier General Janis Karpinski herself - at the time the head of prisons in Iraq - and it was a somewhat macabre dog-and-pony show for the international press corps, a concerted effort on the part of the Americans to show that they were kinder, gentler jailers.
Piano, fortissimo
A ROMANCE ON THREE LEGSGlenn Gould's Obsessive Quest for the Perfect PianoBy Katie HafnerMcClelland and Stewart,259 pages, $27.95In the bibliography of Katie Hafner's new book, 25 books (and other sources) are listed whose titles include Glenn Gould's name, plus many more in which he clearly plays an important role. Most of the feuilletonistic stories, legends and voyeuristic details retold here are easily available in many of those sources.
Eat, while it's still possible
THE END OF FOODBy Paul RobertsHoughton Mifflin,390 pages, $29.95As the price of gasoline continues to climb, more people are newly open to hybrid cars, bus passes and the idea that we will soon run out of the oil that fuels our economy. That's precisely the scenario that Paul Roberts, a New York-based journalist, wrote about in his 2005 bestseller The End of Oil. Now he has turned his analytical skills to an even more important industry, also hugely dependent on fossil fuels.
Words beyond worth
How do you measure a book's worth? By its sale in millions, by its perennial appeal to generation upon generation, by the beauty of its language and style or because, as in the case of the Koran, the book is considered sacred and venerated as God's very word. With more than one billion Muslims in the world who believe that the Koran is God's last revelation in human history, the Koran, like the Bible, is one of the most widely read, revered and recited books in the world. Its reach is global, its influence is global. It has been the inspiration to one of the greatest civilizations in the world and is the basis for some of the most impressive art, architecture, literature, philosophy and science the world has ever known.
Little rest under these wings
THE PLAGUE OF DOVESBy Louise ErdrichHarperCollins, 311 pages, $27.95''And John bare record, saying, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him.'' From the Gospel According to John (1:32).
A rare vintage from the Ch?teau de Faux
THE BILLIONAIRE'S VINEGARThe Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of WineBy Benjamin WallaceCrown, 304 pages, $27.95An old bottle of wine is rare, but a ripping good mystery about one is rarer still. The tale of The Billionaire's Vinegar begins on Dec. 5, 1985, in the tony West Room of Christie's London auction house. Lot 337, a hand-blown, dark-brown bottle of 1787 Chateau Lafite, is held aloft for all the bidders to admire. The reason: Not only is this the oldest bottle of wine ever to come up for auction, but the glass is also etched with the letters ''Th. J.'' - supposedly the initials of Thomas Jefferson, U.S. founding father and the purported former owner of this prize bottle.
BESTSELLERS
FictionTHIS WEEK/LAST WEEK/WEEKS ON LIST/TITLE/AUTHOR/PUBLISHER/PRICE 1 -1Sail, by James Patterson and Howard Roughan (Little, Brown, $30.99). 2 16The Host, by Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown, $28.99). 3 35Love The One You're With, by Emily Giffin (St. Martin's, $27.95). 4 22Plague Ship, by Clive Cussler, with Jack Du Brul (Putnam, $29.95). 5 43Devil May Care, by Sebastian Faulks (Doubleday Canada, $29.95). 6 -17The Appeal, by John Grisham (Doubleday, $33). 7 -1The Broken Window, by Jeffery Deaver (Simon and Schuster, $29.99). 8 64Bright Shiny Morning, by James Frey (HarperCollins, $28.95). 9 -1This Charming Man, by Marian Keyes (Michael Joseph, $24). 10 -1Married Lovers, by Jackie Collins (St. Martin's, $29.95).
Seduced by misery and redemption
JACKFISH, THE VANISHING VILLAGEBy Sarah Felix BurnsInanna, 225 pages, $22.95Is it just me? Why did I feel apprehensive when the opening paragraph of this heartfelt novel told me of a vast lake: ''a freshwater basin carved into the ragged rocks of the northland by receding glaciers of ice''? Are there any glaciers not made of ice? And how can they carve out tons of bedrock by melting (receding.) Don't they scour and gouge the land as they advance?
