Books

Lamb

Posted on by Patrick

Lamb, a nov­el by Christo­pher Moore.

The sub­ti­tle on this one is “The Gospel accord­ing to Biff, Christ’s child­hood pal”, so right off you should know if you’re the type that will enjoy this sto­ry, or the kind that maybe should­n’t pick it up. Me, I’m the type that would enjoy this story.

Hav­ing read Moore’s nov­el Coy­ote Blue years ago, I knew that he was fun­ny. Appar­ent­ly I’d for­got­ten how fun­ny. I chor­tled all the way through this book (well, till I got to the last sec­tion, titled “The Passion”).

The sto­ry is large­ly con­cerned with the “miss­ing years” of Christ’s life. Biff (whose real name is Levi bar Alphaeus) and Christ (whose real name is Joshua bar Joseph) grow up togeth­er, fall in love with the same girl (Mary the Mag­da­lene, referred to here as “Mag­gie”), and have all kinds of adven­tures and mis­ad­ven­tures togeth­er. When events con­spire to put Mag­gie beyond their reach for­ev­er, Joshua and Biff sad­dle up and head off to the East, look­ing for the Wise Men that had showed up on the night of Josh’s birth.

They track down Balthasar, Mel­chior, and Gas­par, traips­ing from Israel to Afghanistan, Chi­na, and India in the process, learn­ing kung fu, Zen Bud­dhism, and Hin­du asceti­cism along the way. (Well, Josh learns; Biff is more into the ladies, and he learns quite a few items from them, most­ly relat­ed to the Kama Sutra.)

The sto­ry is packed with laughs, both overt and sly (at one point, Biff says to Josh, as they trav­el toward Dam­as­cus, “Well it’s not just going to come to you in a flash here on the Dam­as­cus road, Josh. That sort of thing does­n’t happen.”

As good as he is at telling the fun­ny stuff, Moore does­n’t flinch when he tells the sad sto­ries; the grim and grue­some parts of the tale are equal­ly well-told. The Pas­sion and the Cru­ci­fix­ion are espe­cial­ly heart-rend­ing when told in the voice of a man forced to watch his clos­est friend die.

When I came to the epi­logue, I found myself wish­ing there was more, much more. I think I’ll have to get some more Christo­pher Moore nov­els into my house.

Thirteen Literary Wonders

Posted on by Patrick

Inspired by Doug’s post on his favourite books, here are thir­teen pieces of text that I read in school. Some I liked, some I didn’t.

    Ones I liked
  1. There were sev­er­al Norse Myths in one of the read­ers that I had in about Grade Five or so. They were there as sort of a com­pare and con­trast with a cou­ple of Greek myths. The only one that I remem­ber for sure being there was the myth of how Loki gave away–and then recovered–Idunn’s gold­en apples. To this day I still love the Norse myths. I think maybe it’s some­thing about Rag­narok that draws me to them, the knowl­edge that some­day, all the gods die.
  2. Mack Reynolds’ short sto­ry Burnt Toast fea­tures an inter­est­ing twist on the “sell your soul to the Dev­il” sto­ry. A man, des­per­ate for mon­ey, is giv­en this chal­lenge by a demon: drink one of thir­teen shots of liquor, one of which is spiked with poi­son. If you get the poi­son, I get your soul. For each drink that you fire back, you get an amount of mon­ey that goes up expo­nen­tial­ly (the first glass is worth $100, the sec­ond $200, the third $400, and so forth). The man accepts the chal­lenge, and keeps com­ing back for more. As the num­ber of shot glass­es dwin­dles, and the amount get high­er, the ten­sion mounts, until there’s only two glass­es left. What comes next? Ask me nice and I might tell you. [edit: Appar­ent­ly this sto­ry was first pub­lished in a 1955 Play­boy. I read it in a read­er at school. Really.]
  3. The only Shake­speare play I’ve ever read, to date, is Mac­beth. It was all right. I watched the blood­less BBC ver­sion of it, and it was not all right. At the end, when Mac­duff holds Mac­beth’s head aloft, it’s got red yarn hang­ing down from it.
  4. I much pre­ferred George Orwell’s Ani­mal Farm to its longer cousin, 1984. Then one day I was in a moun­taineer­ing store in Cal­gary, and there was a dis­play of walk­ing sticks. The ad cam­paign for them made me laugh: “Four legs good, two legs bad”.
  5. I know it sounds cheesy when peo­ple say things like “It real­ly makes you appre­ci­ate what you have”, but for me, the book that this sen­tence applies to is One Day in the Life of Ivan Deniso­vich, by Solzhenitsyn.
  6. In the tenth grade, I read Ray Brad­bury’s Mar­t­ian Chron­i­cles, and quite enjoyed it. Years lat­er, some­one com­pared my writ­ing to Brad­bury’s. Hmmm.…
  7. Arthur Miller’s The Cru­cible had an impact on me. Espe­cial­ly Giles Corey’s death, off-scene, pressed by stones. His last words were “More weight”, and then he expired.
  8. When I was about nine years old, my moth­er, a for­mer teacher, did an extend­ed stint sub­bing in one of the junior high class­es. They were read­ing Incred­i­ble Jour­ney, and some of the stu­dents were com­plain­ing bit­ter­ly about hav­ing to read it. Mom brought home a copy for me, and I burned through it in a few days. The next time some­one com­plained in class, she point­ed out that her nine-year-old son had read it, and that appar­ent­ly shut them up.
  9. There are sev­er­al comix (actu­al­ly, I sup­pose, they’re more accu­rate­ly ban­des dess­inées) that I used to read dur­ing library peri­od at my elementary/junior high school. It was a French immer­sion school, so we were encour­aged (read forced) to read French books in the library. The loop­hole was that there was a hefty col­lec­tion of Schtroumpfs and Astérix et Obélix comics in the library. There were a lot of jokes in the char­ac­ters’ names in Astérix–the dog’s name, en français, was Idé­fixe (in Eng­lish, he goes by Dogmatix).
  10. Speak White by Michèle Lalonde, a poem about the oppres­sion of the French lan­guage in North Amer­i­ca (if I remem­ber cor­rect­ly). I took this in first-year uni­ver­si­ty French.

    11. Not So Much

  11. Pret­ty much any­thing by Gabrielle Roy. She takes a long time to say… noth­ing. I sup­pose this might be an indict­ment of lit­er­a­ture in gen­er­al, but heav­en help me, GR was, in my view, the queen of boring.
  12. Aldous Hux­ley’s Brave New World. I have friends who insist I should give it anoth­er shot, and I may yet. The sto­ry did­n’t appeal to me the first time, though. Then again, it was­n’t till my sec­ond read of Dune that I got into the story…
  13. See Dick Run. My grand­moth­er’s favourite sto­ry about me is that, once, to prove to some­one that I could read (at the age of three), she had me read a Dick & Jane book. I read it cov­er to cov­er, closed it, and said, “Well, that was a stu­pid sto­ry.” And now I think every­one I’ve ever met knows that story.

Oth­er 13ers:

Tech­no­rati: Thurs­day Thirteen

Censoring Dennis Lee?

Posted on by Patrick

Some days, it just don’t pay to read the news.

CBC Arts: N.S. edu­ca­tors can’t see humour in ‘Brat­ty Broth­er’ poem

Review­ers of one of my favourite poems from my childhood–“The Brat­ty Broth­er” by Den­nis Lee–are hav­ing issues with the poem’s inclu­sion in a book dis­trib­uted to every first-grad­er in Cana­da to pro­mote literacy.

The poem, “Brat­ty Broth­er”, is a vio­lent poem and the humour of it escapes our review­ers. Some par­ents may also respond neg­a­tive­ly to the poem…

Per­haps the review­ers need to read this poem as a child would, rather than as a lit­i­ga­tion-fear­ing no-fun-allowed suit would.

Besides,

The poem is more than 30 years old and the poet him­self says he’s had noth­ing but pos­i­tive feed­back from par­ents, who actu­al­ly say the book helps kids with younger ‘brat­ty’ broth­ers under­stand that they aren’t the only ones hav­ing these problems.

Here is part of the poem, repro­duced from memory:

I dumped the brat­ty brother
In the shark-infest­ed sea,
By dusk the sea was empty
And the brat was home with me.
…
I wept, and hurled the brat­ty brother
Off the CN Tower;
He lol­loped through the liv­ing room
In less than half an hour.

Of course, when I read it, I sub­sti­tut­ed “sis­ter” for “broth­er”, as I have two sis­ters and not a sin­gle brother.

I mean real­ly.  What’s next?  Do we ban “Alli­ga­tor Pie” on the off-chance that some­one los­es a leg try­ing to snare some lunch?

Iron Sunrise

Posted on by Patrick

A while ago I read Acceleran­do by Charles Stross, a whirl­wind tour of the solar sys­tem and beyond before, dur­ing, and after a Tech­no­log­i­cal Sin­gu­lar­i­ty. It was an enjoy­able read at a break­neck pace. So when I was in Chap­ters in Win­nipeg, I picked up Iron Sun­rise, which fea­tures a dif­fer­ent Sin­gu­lar­i­ty and a dif­fer­ent future. It was anoth­er enjoy­able and break­neck read, though a cou­ple things both­ered me–Stross real­ly likes his adverbs, and they had a ten­den­cy to stand out for me, for what­ev­er rea­son; and the book is actu­al­ly a sequel to his Sin­gu­lar­i­ty Sky, but I had to go online to find that out. Nowhere on the cov­ers or inside the book is this lit­tle fact men­tioned. Had it been, I prob­a­bly would have picked up Sin­gu­lar­i­ty Sky instead. (Oh well. It’s not the first time I’ve start­ed in the mid­dle of a series; I read William Gib­son’s Sprawl tril­o­gy 2–1‑3.)
Con­tin­ue read­ing “Iron Sun­rise” →

Einstein biography for $3

Posted on by Patrick

Einstein book coverWent down to For­bid­den Flavours tonight to buy my sis­ter a birth­day gift (shhh, nobody tell her), and I nat­u­ral­ly went into the used book­store in the back. They had copies of Greg Bear’s Eon and Eter­ni­ty in there, but the book I end­ed up buy­ing was Ein­stein: the Life and Times. Looks fas­ci­nat­ing, but it’ll have to wait till I’m done the oth­er books in my stack.

From the back cover:

Here is the real Ein­stein: The boy grow­ing up in the Swiss Alps, the young man caught in an unhap­py first mar­riage, the pas­sion­ate paci­fist who ago­nized over his role in the mak­ing of The Bomb, the indif­fer­ent Zion­ist who was asked to head the Israeli state, the physi­cist who believed in God. Here, too, are the mod­ern giants who touched Ein­stein’s life: Franklin Roo­sevelt, Sig­mund Freud, Madame Curie, and Ben-Gurion.

I’ve long been fas­ci­nat­ed by Ein­stein, though I know rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle about him. I know that his Nobel prize was not for rel­a­tiv­i­ty but for his work on the pho­to­elec­tric effect; I know that he stub­born­ly refused to believe in the impli­ca­tions of quan­tum mechan­ics; and that’s about all. I’m look­ing for­ward to learn­ing more, more, more.

Can’t blog. Writing.

Posted on by Patrick

I’ve decid­ed to enter a non-fic­tion con­test, and I have to have the sto­ry in the mail by Nov. 1st, so I’m kind of up against a dead­line. The theme of the con­test is “A Mem­o­rable Voy­age”; my entry, in about its sec­ond draft, is here. You’ll need a pass­word, too: it’s win­nipego­sis. Read it, if you’d like; let me know what you think. (It’s short, only about 1100 words.)

I fin­ished Last Light of the Sun last night. It was enjoy­able, well-researched, and some­thing that I don’t nor­mal­ly read. As a fan­ta­sy it was very low-key; as a his­tor­i­cal nov­el it was heav­i­ly fic­tion­al­ized; as an out-and-out sto­ry that hap­pened to be set 1,000 years ago, it was excel­lent. Gabriele, I seem to remem­ber that you were read­ing it. Do you have any com­ments on it? Did you fin­ish? Did you enjoy it?Later, y’all!