Must read book of the year!

This book wasn't on either of the list's I'm readin but it is hands down best book I've read all year!

I love homeless people, always have. I have felt called to work among them since I was 16 and this book shows why. There are stories in their lives, beautiful heart rending stories and this book is full of them. To those who have never sat with a homeless person the stories of each of the four lives profiled by this book sound hugely over exaggerated but they aren't. The trauma and the pain detailed in these 500+ pages are the gospel truth even though the book is a work of fiction. It reminded me of my many friends I have met in my jobs as Homeless Outreach Worker and Youth Outreach Worker.

This book is filled with the beautiful power of story. 4 homeless people and one broken man discover each other during a cold snap where they all end up at the movies. The book shows the "magic and the mystery" (note the title of my blog) of truth and beauty displayed in the flickering lights of the big screen. The truth in story is why I read and this book has it all. Life lessons, heart rending stories that break down the harden parts of you, beauty so painful it feels like a knife stabbing you in the heart, and magical events that remind you there is a God. I don't often read stories that make me cry (I tend to avoid them like the plague because I am a lot like the character Digger in the story I don't like to get mushy or be vulnerable)

One day I would like to sit down and watch each of the movies that the book talks about, but right now I am not ready, because I think I would sob like a little baby. There are only a few books that I would give 5 stars to but this is one of them. I want to pass this book around to the world because the story is so powerful. Funny that so many of my favorite books were found on the bargin table at Chapters. Happy accidents from titles that spoke to me or covers that drew my attention. I don't really believe in accidents...

I love beautiful quotes and this book is just full of them. The words are sometimes cliche but in the context of the story they are heart rendingly beautiful.Here are just a few:

"Being a rounder's just what it sounds like. You go around the same fucking vicious circle until you've seen and done and survived everything. At first its just life that screws you. Nobody comes here by choice"

"There's a risk that comes from being known, and its most marked form is the loss of subterfuge"

This is why I love the homeless. They are the most genuine people I have ever met. They cease being ashamed of the person they have become and just live as who they are scars and all.

"About seeing what you crave the most thrown up on the screen in front of you and recognize it for the hole within you that it is"

Ahhh....that is so true. That is the power of good story. To recogize things in our lives because it is outside of ourselves and can be objectively viewed for the first time.

"It was a magic way. A mystery way."

I named my blog magic and mystery because those two word describe the essence of the things that make me happy and I love finding those two paired together in literature. Makes me glad to know others recognize their importance.

I highly recommend this book as a must read. Hands down best read of the year!

Book 20-The Great Gatsby

This list has been good for me. I read The Great Gatsby as a teen and didn't like. I remembered nothing else about the book except that I had liked one quote in it which I remembered writing in my quote book. By reading book's on this list and refreshing my memory of ones I read a long time ago I am hopeful that I will have a much firmer grasp on the books 20 or even 30 years from now. If nothing else, like my quote book of my teen years, this blog will remind me a little about the feelings and thoughts I had about the books I have read. My memory is a sieve, but intentionally setting out to look at what I read and put it in some rational form will hopefully help me to retain more than just a vague sense of emotion about books.

For the purpose of this list I chose to listen to this book as an audio book which I downloaded from the BC library system "Library without walls". Although I had read this book in 2001, I wanted to be able to write a review of it....and I just didn't have enough to go on. It was a good thing I did decide to listen to it again because I was better able to appreciate it now that I am older and have more experience in the world.

The book as I see it is basically about the fact that all behaviour makes sense when it is viewed in context. Gatsby is a bright, glittery wealthy jerk, but his facade had a purpose. He was trying to woo the love of teen life to him with money, wealth and power. Although it had been years since he seen her he knew if his notoriety increased enough she would eventually hear of him and make the trek to see him. (This part reminded me quite a bit of Absalom, absalom) What luck, then, that the narrator Nick Carraway a friend of his beloved Daisy moved next door. It was the glitteryness of the book, and the depressing nature of the story that turned me away from the book as a young teen setting out into the world. I read it while i was home from university one summer, during the years when I snapped up literature and read it with voracity because it was teaching me about life and truth and beauty. I didn't want to see that life could be so cruel or that people could be so fake. Basically I didn't want to read a book that was so horribly depressing. All the reviews say that the book is about how the American Ideal at the time the book was set was flawed and cracked. I would agree that it IS about that too, but the book gives a rationale for why people might be pursuing vain goals.

It is telling that the opening line of the book, was the quote that I loved, "Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone remember that all the people in the world haven't had the advantages you've had" . I loved that because I knew it was true. People make some poor choices in life, but they are perfectly rational choices in their mind, given the circumstance they are in and the skill set that they have. Although the narrator was wealthy and did have priviledges that others didn't have, I loved the quote because the same is true of people in poverty or people who grew up facing emotional hardship. If you want to criticize someone for their behaviour because it doesn't make sense to you just remember that you don't make sense to them either!!!

One of the alarming consequences of the books I have been reading, both on this list, and in other areas as well has been that I have become increasingly aware that one small turn of events can dramatically change a life forever. After reading books about the turning points in so many fictional characters lives I have come to realize that I am just one bad turn away from a complete change in my philosophy of life. Although I see myself as an optimist, I am guessing that for the most part that is because my world generally makes sense. Yes, crappy things have happened but I have been able to adjust and move on. After reading books like Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, and the Great Gatsby it is easy to see how something devasting can scar you for life.

The second time I "read" this book I picked up a few more quotes that I likes as well:

"A sense of the fundamental decencies are parcelled out unequally at birth"

A quote I think affirms that this book is about the fact that people have differeing perspecitves and that we can't always understand why someone does what they do.

"Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something".

Nick Carraway, the narrator of the book, who recieved the opening line wisdom of his father, never liked to judge someone because he was never sure of having all the information he needed to pass judgement. He referred to the fact that he tried to present Gatsby in all of his glory, and flaws.

One of the quotes that made me smile was this:

"the limited of all specialists: the well rounded man".

I like it because I think it is good to be well rounded in the things that you know. Sociology, English, carpentry, etc, etc.....all of it changes the way you look at the world. The book makes the point that you can only view the world through one lens at a time. And that, I think, for the most part is true. The next book on the list is To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf.

The Secret Agent-Joseph Conrad (33rd book)

Wow for a book published in 1907 it has some suprisingly modern insights! I read this book because it is on the "1001 Books to Read Before You Die" List and I am slowly working my way through the list. I chose this book as the second one to read off the list because although it had a lot to say it sounded like an easy read. I wasn't wrong there. Although it took a bit to get into at the beginning, by the end it was a fast paced read that left you wondering how it was all going to end. The characters were very realistic and you understood their inner workings through their thoughts, actions and descriptions of their motivations.

Some of the eeirily accurate predictions included one about Doctors. "In two hundred years doctors will rule the world". Although I don't feel this is true in Canada...I can definitely see that this is applied to the US. With their private health care system and for profit health care prices have soared out of control and people live in utter fear of getting sick. Minor illnesses can bankrupt people and even something like having a baby is now a medical procedure that can cost upwards of $10,000. I thank God every day for the public health care system I am proud to pay into. For someone to make this observation in 1907 London is utterly amazing to me.

The books central plot revolves around a bombing attempt gone wrong. The rational behind the bombing, the terrorist elements in the attack and the secret government involvement all are a little too similar to modern day terrorist attacks. In chosing the target of the Greenwich Conservatory the planner behind the attack said that churches, and government buildings would have little effect but an attack on something that was an institute of science would have more sway. ON 9/11 terrorist chose to attack the twin towers which could be a modern day equivalen to the Greenwich Conservatory.

Lastly, I loved reading this book after my trip to London and the UK. I was so excited when Verloc, the main character in the book sat in Chesire Cheese (a city of London pub, rebuilt very shortly after the London fire). I was there when I was doing a Dicken's tour of London and I loved it with its low ceilings, labyrinthine corridors, cozy cubby holes and claustrophic feeling. It would definitely not pass modern day fire codes!

There was also a funny quote that amused me because of my Dr. Who obsession. One of the communists that Verloc hangs out with says, "Exterminate! Exterminate!" Which is something that the Daleks say in Dr. Who.

Although I didn't give this book a very high rating I did like the story and would recommend it to everyone. I read it on my ereader so it was a free read thanks to its early publish date.

The Castle of Otranto

The first official book I've read as parat of the 1001 Books to Read Before you die!

I am still working on the list of the Novel 100 (which are almost entirely on the larger list) but taking it slower. This book I read very fast as it is short and silly! The book is a gothic novel about a Prince who wrongfully steals land from another man. It is a parable in the vein of the Bible verse, "sins of the fathers are visited on their children" or however that verse goes. His son is killed by a giant hugely plumed helmet that falls on him, the castle is haunted by giant bodiless hands in armor and a stranger appears in his castle who turns out to be the rightful heir. Although not life changing this book is amusing and an interesting read. A good diversion from some of the harder novels on the lists I have been reading. Thanks to Project Gutenberg and my kobo ereader I got to read this novel for free

A Second list? Are you crazy??

So when I bought the book The Novel 100 I knew what I really wanted was the book 1001 Books to Read Before You Die, but the price difference (The Novel 100 was 6.99 on sale at Chapters and the 1001 book was 39.99) made the choice for me. I started the The Novel 100 list with zeal and have loved every step of the way, but everytime I set foot in Chapters I would wander over to the larger list and gaze longingly at it. Finally when my irewards card was just about to run out I caved and purchased the book. I LOVE it....I have spent hours flipping and reflipping through the list and looking up random pages to read the comments about the various books.

Not being one to give up what I started though I am still plugging away at the smaller list. I am currently on book 21 To The Lighthouse. It is interesting to note that almost all of the 100 books on my original list are also on the 1001 list so everytime I tick a book of one list I get to also tick the book off the second list. Really, what should have happened here is that I should be in school right now, writing essays and doing assignments in a degree program where I would be getting credits for what I am doing, but instead I am intellectually challenging myself with the gargantuan task of reading and reviewing book after book FOR FUN!!!! And what great fun it is!

So how is this going to work you ask?? Well, i am going to concurrently read books off of both list. I have a Goodreads group for the Novel 100 and I am trying to read 1 book a month of the original list so that if anyone in my novel group wants to read along they can try and keep up. Sadly however, I am a fast reader and can breeze through books much quicker than 1 a month. So while I slowly read books of the original list I will also read books of the second list.

Here is the list of books I have read so far on the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die:

The Tale of Genji
Don Quixote
Tom Jones
Emma
Moby Dick
Bleak House
Madame Bovary
Great Expectations
Crime and Punishment
War and Peace
Middlemarch
Anna Karenina
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Ambassadors
Of Human Bondage
Ulysses
The Magic Mountain
The Great Gatsby
Rememberance of Things Past
Absalom, Absalom
The Hobbit
The Catcher in the Rye
The Lord of the Rings
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Alias Grace
Life of Pi
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Notes from the Underground
Wuthering Height


Thats for a total of 31! Not even 10% of the list yet! Anyways, so when I enter these books in my blog I will try to make it very clear which list they are from but it may get confusing from here on out. Please feel free to comment on either set of reviews that I do and I will do my best to keep up with my blogs for both sets of books. If you are a reader yourself feel free to follow my progress as I read on Goodreads.com.

Book 19-One Hundred Years of Solitude

Meh...so here is my book review for One Hundred Years of Solitude. As you can tell by the start of this review this book did not inspire me. I liked it, I read it pretty quickly, but I have absolutely no passion for this book and therefore I have had little motivation to finish this review. I was also holding off on publishing it becuase I was slowing down the pace of the book reviews for my Goodreads book group The Novel 100. I was trying to keep it to a book a month although I am a super fast reader. Feel free to join my group and Goodreads if you love reading, in particular classic novels.....anyways, back to the book. One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of the classic examples of magic realism a genre where fantastic events are described as a part of everyday life I LOVE that genre, but this book took it too far for me. The magical events in this book are not used for a a purpose to convey a meaning or express the authors thoughts on something they are just strange events captures as though they were real. This book is by a South American author Gabriel Garcia Marquez so maybe the book just didn't touch me because it was so far out of the realm of my everyday existence.Not sure what it was, but the talk of family relatives being taken up into the sky and never seen again, a beloved who is preceeded by butterflys whereever he went (actually that was pretty AWESOME actually) and a fantastic journey that a member of the family takes where every one gets shot and taken out of town by train but NOBODY in the entire town remembers it happening are a bit mcuh for me. That being said I read this book quite fast because it was an interesting story and an easy read. The book follows 100 years of the Buendia family with its various Aurelianos Arcadios. If there is a point to this story it is just that we are often alone in solitude, even when we are connected to family and friends. In that way this book is rather sad. As people married, had children and grew, a cycle in the family repeated itself and everyone essentially ended up alone (and some rather tragically). If there weren't a few times in the book where it specifically mentioned the connection to solitude and aloneness I might have missed that it was indeed the point of the book however. Here are a few of the quotes that I liked: "A person does not belong to a place until there is someone dead under the ground" "Death really did not matter to him but life did" "The search for lost things is hindered by routine habits and that is why it is so difficult to find them" "Both actions had been a mortal struggle between a measureless love and an invincible cowardice and that the irrational fear Amaranta had always had of her own tormented heart trimphed in the end" "She became human in her solitude" Although the book primarily focuses on the various Arcadio's and Aurelianos that the Buendia family creates and passes down through the generations the females in the stories are possibly more tragic than the males. Amaranta mentioned in the quote above was a tragic female who had attracted the love of two men in her life time, but due to her fierce pride would not consent to marry them (one because he chose her sister first). So with all that I would simply say that this book is an engaging read, but not a life changing one for me. It is enjoyable, and I am glad that I now know what everyone is talking about, but beyond that I can't say I am a better person for having read it. I am not even sure I would recommend it to anyone. The next book on the list is The Great Gatsby which I have already read, but may check out again either by movie or audio book to remember what I thought of it before doing a review. The next book I am reading book 21 is To The Lighthouse by Virgina Woolf.

"My love, my love I don't want to go home now" or The God of the Desert Places

So I arrived home, super late from Spokane and it has taken until today (four days later) to actually sit down and write about my crazy adventure home. There are several reasons for this, one being that I was too emotionally raw from some crazy processing that happened on the way home and two being that I spent a few days recovering from being SOOO tired. At any rate here it is, the tail end of my trip to Spokane.

So taking 11+ hours to drive home from Spokane I had to leave super early. I left the hotel by 6am and started my long trip home. I almost ran out of gas in my haste to make as few stops as possible. I calculate gas mileage to a town but failed to remember that miles were 2.4 kms each. Thankfully I discovered this in time and was able to make a quick stop in a town I didn't expect! I also decided no matter how long it set me back I needed to stop in the desert just outside of George, WA a place that has become a spiritual home for me.There is an awfully long story about this but since it is important to why I stopped I will try to be as brief as possible. 8 year ago when I went to visit Deanna I had a mini breakdown that resulted in me surroundering my all to God in frustration only to hear the beautiful comforting words which left me shaking with awe that God was good, and safe...when I had been so sure that he was not. What happened was this I had been to TWU for 4 years learned so much, was filled so much and grew so much that when I returned to my home town of Courtenay I didn't know how to fit the new me into an old environment. I started to get apathetic and tuned out my inner world and got really busy to drown out a part of me that was dying from lack of spiritual food. I was in a dream job as a residential youth outreach worker had money and time to go on a holiday, but right as it came down to crunch time my car broke. I fell into a fairly significant depression, but because I wasn't ready to face it I surrounded myself with people so I wouldn't have to face it. The first part of my epiphany happened when my roomate came home and said, "why is it that you are never alone when I come home?" or something to that affect. I burst into tears and cried for so long. Needless to say my roomate and the friend I had over at the time were a little confused. I tired to explain it as best I could, but in the end I am sure I did a poor job. The next day I stopped, stopped running from God, stopped running from the yucky emotions inside of me and just surrendered. I prayed and gave the trip I was supposed to take to God and finally told Him I would follow him even if it meant being alone and spending sometime at home. I also spent sometime reading the Bible. I turned to passage set out for my by a reading guide I was using at that time and the verse I read just snapped me. The verse is Hosea 2 and the part that leapt off the page for me was a verse about "Therefore I am not going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her" v.14. I had assumed that my shutting out God meant that I had to give up my trip to get back on track. When I read that verse I knew that God was giving it back to me as a gift. The remainder of the verse is about how Hosea's prostitute wife (which is an allegory for Israel) wold chase after her lovers thinking that they had given her food, clothing, shelter and love....God takes away all these things (not to punish her, but to show the depth of love for her and that He would do anything for her to get her back. This verse broke my heart: "I will punish her for the days she burned incense to the Baals; she decked herself with rings and jewelry, and went after her lovers, but forgot me". I couldn't believe that God cared how I felt and wanted me so badly that he woudl literally chase me down. This sounds like a really negative story, but the good news come with the verse I quoted above. God allured me to the desert. He did speak tender words to me. I learned that he coudl be trusted and that even the un-fun stuff was done out of love. The further good news comes from verse 15 and on but for brevity sake I won't go into it. I will just quote the last bit which is "I will show my love to the one called 'not my loved one'. I will say to those called 'not my people' 'you are my people' and they will say, 'You are my God' "

I hit my favorite part of the desert about 7 or 8am. It was so beautiful. The sun was rising over the hills and the air was cool and fresh. i stopped at my favorite rest stop viewing area and walked out towards the river. I saw a little lizard but other than that it was perfectly still. I sat on a rock jutting out near the river and read my bible, and prayed. I was just so thankful that I was there and so thankful that I had that story to remind myself of the faithfulness of God. I was also thankful that God is a God of the present and that He continually speaks. As I left the view area I began to compose a "fairytale version my story in my head. I wanted a way to tell what had happened in a concise way. I seem to have lost the motivation to sit down and write it out like that though so this narrative version is what you get instead. Somehow I think telling it as a fairytale might make it clearer but I've lost the high I had on teh road. I was listening to a CD by Bebo Norman on the way home and was so crushed by the beauty of the words he sang. He has always been a singer who for me speaks so personally and deeply. A song called, "The Middle" came on and I was blown away. I had an epiphany (seems to be my word of the year...). I have been listening to this song, and feeling it resonate in my heart. I had felt I had felt the feeling the song talked about before but I couldn't think when, and I couldn't quite tell what Bebo was going through onlly that I loved it and that it was deep and important. After sitting in the desert I realized that it was EXACTLY the feeling I had felt pre-desert melt down the first time....I WAS running away and yet I wanted so badly to be set free. Here is a link to the song.... I played the CD on repeat belting it out all the way down the I-90...I was just so giddy, that the trip seemed to fly by. I made such good time (impossibly good time I turns out). I got to the border at noon and had a ton of time. I stopped for gas at TWU after crossing in Aldergrove to stop at the Coquitlam IKEA for a friend who needed a dresser. As I hit Trinity I was further overwhelmed by how far I had come since the day I had landed on campus at 18 a broken and significantly damaged girl looking for love, but unable to get it. So much garbage fell away during those years in the furnace of TWU. I was almost weeping as I ran around campus on an adrenaline high. I must have looked like an idiot as I grinned at all the students going to class, secretly yearning to be right back where they were. I posed at every meaningful place I coudl get and used my alumni discount to by stuff at the bookstore. I was just SOOOO high on life. I was mistaken for a student at one point which made me even happier!!!! I continued to listen to Bebo Norman all the way to IKEA singing it at the top of my lungs until I felt like my heart was going to burst from teh sheer joy of it all. I literally ran around IKEA looking for the dresser Esther needed and then got back in my car to go to the ferry. Sadly I had to wait for an additional ferry and completely lost my momentum as the tiredness hit and the adrenaline high crashed. I was still thankful for the day, but it was more of a contemplative high and less of a speedy high. I made it home quite late and then crashed....it has taken four days, but i was finally ready to talk about my experience in the desert. As personal as it was, it is so dear to me I wanted to share it. I hope you can all find some joy and some hope in it.