BOOK: Souvenir of Canada by Douglas Coupland

Souvenir of Canada by Douglas Coupland, 140 pages

3rd Canadian Book Challenge; Dewey Decimal Challenge: 971

I love the way Coupland writes, I love the way he words things. I love the pop references in his book. I knew I loved the way he put ideas together, and then I saw the collection of still life photographs he fashioned to represent Canadians and Canada, and it was complete. Coupland can do no wrong.

The book is written for Canadians, as we share our cultural history and nod and go hmm mmm, and then remember to say "Good book, eh?" It would provide some insight into Canadians you might know, but I'm not sure how many in-jokes are present. Maybe a lot. Maybe they aren't jokes though. We are different from Americans, even as we share so much of their culture that we feel we know them. Did you know that Canadians can buy their milk in 1L plastic bags, that we put into a milk container and then cut open and pour?

Part of the appeal for me is that Coupland is only a few years older than me, we are the beginning of Generation X, surviving in the shadow of the Baby Boomers, so we share a history of experiences just for growing up in the same time periods.

The book is written in a series of chapters or vignettes, in somewhat alphabetical order, that could be an encyclopedia of Canada. Coupland is not afraid to show his biases, and his perspective on the topics, and they range from the humorous to the serious, how we speak cereal French to the FLQ. Just watch me.

I returned this to the library a while ago, but I jotted down the titles of some chapters to remind me of the book. For you Canadians, can you guess why they were included?


Capitaine Crounche
Chocolate
DEW line
Distance
Flies
FLQ
Newfoundland
Ookpik
Poutine
Stubbies
222s
Vinegar
Water
Wildlife
Zed

BOOK: Miss Leavitt's Stars by George Johnson

Miss Leavitt's Stars by George Johnson, 130 pages + notes
The Untold Story of the Woman Who Discovered How to Measure the Universe

Science Book Challenge; Dewey Decimal Challenge: 522; Non-fiction 5 2009

Melanie's review at theindextriousreader last year is what first brought this book to my attention. When she recently reviewed another science biography in this series, I remembered about Miss Leavitt. Will I ever catch up to Melanie? My library has a couple more I will have to look into - including Madame Curie.

There isn't a lot of information on Henrietta Swan Leavitt, and this book almost misleadingly is named for her. I think she gets a little more than her due here as a belated apology for her lack of recognition and opportunity. She was a 'computer' at Harvard in the early 1900s, observing the relative brightness of stars from photographic plates. Her job was simply to record, but she was able to make some conclusions, even developing a relationship, that then allowed the other astronomers, the men, to determine the distances of the stars. This was a starting point for the investigation of galaxies, their nearness or farness, and for the determining that the Milky Way wasn't the center, or the only one. Miss Leavitt gave the other astronomers a starting point to carry on. PhDs have been awarded for much less.

The science is slowly explained, with some good analogies to help us regular folk. The infighting, the sniping, and the downplaying of other's contributions to raise up their own: that was easy to see. Some famous names like Hubble, Einstein, and George Ellery Hale were Henrietta's contemporaries. The information on Henrietta is shockingly slim, but she wasn't around very long as she was sickly, missing many months of work, and then she died early. Whatever could be found about her family and her life seems to have been uncovered. Her boss never really acknowledged her contribution so there was little recorded of what the 'computers' did. They were thought of as recorders, not thinkers, so any ideas they had were scooped up by the bosses. It's a sad story of women's contribution at that point in history, but all too common.

I enjoyed this little look at a time in history as ideas of space and stars and galaxies were developed, changed, refigured, and then adapted. Unfortunately, egos sometimes get in the way of results, but science wins out in the end. Now, if only I had a telescope...

BOOK: The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, 280 pages

Nonfiction Five; Dewey Decimal Challenge: 300s

How do ideas take off? Did you know another man left the same night as Paul Revere to warn of the British, but why did his message not take? How did Hush Puppies become trendy in the 1990s?

Gladwell takes his pop sociology and plain language to look at epidemics and the factors that cause/help/start/continue them. He brings in lots of academic studies to support his thesis and parses them down into the relevant information. We meet the type of people that spread trends, and that know a lot of people. We see how shows like Sesame Street and Blue's Clues had a 'sticky' message.

I read a succinct review at library thing that sums it up pretty well: Some interesting ideas, and a good enough read.
Yep, that about sums it up. I'll have to look for his other book, Outliers, to complete the 'trilogy' along with Blink.

BOOK: Survivor by Mark Burnett

Survivor by Mark Burnett, 228 pages

Nonfiction Five Challenge; Dewey Decimal Challenge: 700s

A couple of weeks ago I found a website that listed somebody's top 115 Funniest Moments in Survivor history. And since I don't have enough time suckers to amuse me on my computer, I read them. All of them. And it brought back some great memories, as I have watched Survivor from the first episode, calling out to my husband that he had to come watch this show, it was awesome! Somewhere in the midst of the Boston Rob and Rob C and Rudy and Rich references, there was a mention of a book written by Mark Burnett about the first season. Whee! My library had it and I put in my request.

Very soon after, season 1 was shown as a marathon on Victoria Day Monday here in Canada. I watched it all day and then as late as I could, and was impressed with how great it was all over again. So reading this book just puts the topper on my recent Survivor trifecta. I really enjoyed the book - producer Burnett wrote it as the show was being filmed on the island. It covers the timeline of the episodes, and the characters, and provides some insight into the production and the motivations of the castaways. Recommended for Survivor fans.

BOOK: Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, 254 pages
The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

Dewey Decimal Nonfiction: 153.44

Great little pop psychology book for my first Gladwell book. I look forward to his other books, The Tipping Point and Outliers. The premise here is that we make complicated decisions in the 'blink' of an eye, based on complicated brain processing. He examines how we can do that, and uses lots of examples and anecdotes to back this up. He also gives examples where this instant thinking can let us down, with brain theory and psychological studies into the brain.

By writing with lots of anecdotes, Gladwell makes this immensely more readable than a psychology book, but he is more present as an author than in a more scholarly article and I found his opinions and some conclusions a little jarringly appearing out of the blue. For example, when referring to Tom Hanks, being cast in his first major movie Splash, he says "All he had done was the now (justly) forgotten TV show called Bosom Buddies." Why that justly had to be included there surprised me because it doesn't add to the book, it just tells me that Gladwell didn't like that show, and since I did, it was jarring. Little editorial comments like that were sprinkled throughout the book and took me out of the reading periodically.

The descriptions of facial muscles required to produce different emotions was very interesting, especially connecting it to how autism doesn't react to mind reading and face reading of emotions. The descriptions of the actual muscles moving for every emotion got a bit tiring and sometimes if felt like the book couldn't make up its mind as to whether is was a scholarly book, with specific details of the scientific studies, or a lay man's version summarized into real life examples. These two examples are small concerns however, and I really enjoyed the look into how I made up my mind about someone or something, or get a bad feeling, with out perhaps knowing why. My subconscious knows why, it just doesn't always let me know.

BOOK: The Darwin Awards by Wendy Northcutt

The Darwin Awards Next Evolution: Chlorinating the Gene Pool by Wendy Northcutt

Dewey Decimal: 082

Have you ever heard the phrase by Charles Darwin when referring to evolution: the survival of the fittest? It's the idea that only the strongest and smartest of a species will survive to reproduce and that nature will eliminate the members that don't have the necessary genes to survive and adapt. The Darwin Awards were developed to recognize those members of the human race who are essentially eliminating the stupid gene.

The vignettes are divided into categories like Electrical Extinctions,Vehicle Victims, Criminal Capers and Combustion Crazies. Mostly you will cringe slightly upon reading these stories of death or near death - being left unable to reproduce can also 'win' you a Darwin Award. You can begin to imagine what will follow with stories that begin with or contain the following phrases: "instead of following standard procedure...", "attempting to impress the lady...", "so he could save himself time...", or "a case of beer went into the planning." Generally, you will feel very smart after reading some of the situations these people, mostly men interestingly, get themselves into.

There are rules that need to apply before being considered for a Darwin award in that it can't be a true accident, other people can't be hurt, and only adults. It has to be a situation where a lack of judgment is apparent, like the guy that removed the foam protective padding from the bottom of a ski hill to ski down on. You can guess exactly where he slid into. Or the guy who used a artillery shell to squash a bug and found out the hard way it wasn't inert. The guys who tested the ice by jumping up and down on it and then sank 2 cars in trying to pull the first one out.

The stories just continue, from all around the world, proving the stupidity of so many people, doing their part to improve the gene pool of the human race. If you are having a bad day, picking this book up and reading a few stories will make you feel better about yourself.

BOOK: Shakespeare Wrote for Money by Nick Hornby

Shakespeare Wrote for Money by Nick Hornby, 131 pages

Dewey Decimal: 808

I can never decide what I like best about these books: the new book ideas, the reviews of books I've already read, or Hornby's musing about reading in general. It's a real blend of all three. What I have also liked in the other two books of this series (The Polysyllabic Spree, Housekeeping vs the Dirt) were excerpts from other books which were sadly missing from this book.

1. Books I now want to read: Poppy Shakespeare, Skellig, Everything That Converges, The Abstinence Teacher. He seemed to read a lot more non-fiction this time, which he attributes to turning 50 and needing to know more stuff.

2. Books I've read already that I enjoyed reading his review of (and I feel smarter because I had already read them, just like Nick Hornby did): The Road, American Born Chinese, Holes, On Chesil Beach, Weetzie Bat

3. On favorite books and movies: to achieve such an exalted positon means that they entered your life at exactly the right time, in precisely the right place, and those conditions can never be re-created. Sometimes we want to revisit them in order to check whether they were really as good as we remember them being, but this has to be a suspect impulse, because what it presupposed is that we have more reason to trust out critical judgments as we get older, whereas I am beginning to believe that the reverse is true.

On finding a new author: It's not often you finish a first novel by a writer and you are seized by the need to read her second immediately. Of course, by the time her second comes out, I'll have forgotten all about the first. But today, the will is there.

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The Bookword Game

When I read The Book Thief, I mentioned how I kept putting the book down, because I was afraid to read on, too afraid to wonder how bad Zusak could make this Holocaust book. Somebody commented that it was a Freezer Book, from the "Friends" episode of how Joey would put a scary book in the freezer when he didn't want to keep reading. Exactly!

A few months ago, bybee tried to find the phrase to describe the moment when you discover the title embedded in the novel. Turned out there was no such phrase, much to all her readers' dismay, so we suggested some names and voted on Title Drop. Isn't that perfect? It describes an event exactly that needed a description.

I think there are many more book phrases that need to be named. So, starting this Wednesday, Suey of It's All About Books and I are going to try this game, the Bookword Game. We will put a phrase out there that we think needs its own word, like Freezer Book, or Title Drop. We'll take suggestions and then there will be a vote. It is a democracy here after all. Mostly. We may make some unilateral decisions, but most unlikely! So come back on Wednesday to see what this is all about.

BOOK: Dewey by Vicki Myron

Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron with Bret Witter, 271 pages

dewey decimal nonfiction challenge: 636.80929

How adorable is that cat? I had to fight with my girls to pick up the book; both of them tried to read it. They are 9 and 5. The nine year old gave it a great effort and read the Dewey parts. She said she skipped over all the other parts, more on that in a bit. The five year old and I went to the library to get her some cat books to read for herself. Everyone needed a cat book apparently.

I decided to start the Dewey Decimal Nonfiction read with the Dewey book I got in my Hachette box o'books last year. Myron tells the story of how she found Dewey in the book deposit on bitter cold winter morning. The half-frozen kitten immediately loved the people in the library and the library in Spencer, Iowa. The rest of the book follows three main areas: Dewey, small town Iowa during the 1980s and '90s, and Myron's life and family. I enjoyed the book in that order. The Dewey stuff was good, cute as you'd expect. The Iowas stuff was okay and covered some of the same ground as Bill Bryson's Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. The family stuff seemed out of place as suddenly we are learning about Myron and her daughter's rocky relationship and then the next chapter is the food Dewey ate.

It was my idea of a great nonfiction book - short, easy to read chapters that I could pick up everyday and read while supper was getting ready, giving me a book finished easily in January. A bit of a mixed bag in the reading though. Myron seemed to contradict herself about Dewey: he was just a cat, he didn't do anything great, he was an institution. He loved everyone, he didn't pay any special attention to anyone, he changed the life of so many people, he was just the library cat. I wasn't quite sure what she was trying to say about him. Her love for Dewey certainly came through however, and fellow pet people would most likely enjoy this book. It's that intangible effect pets have on those around them that she was trying to describe, it was hard to pin it down.

He was awfully adorable in that picture.

CHALLENGE: Dewey Decimal System

Being hosted at The Novel World. The challenge is to read one from each category of the hundreds in a year. I don't read a lot of nonfiction, and this might be a great place to keep track of books read. This is just a list, books read will be noted, or linked to a review if possible. I like the idea of keeping track of my nonfiction reads by their Dewey number. The first will probably be Dewey: the small town library cat who touched the world, appropriately enough.

000 - Generalities
081 The Darwin Awards - Wendy Northcutt

100 - Philosophy and Psychology
128.4 The Book of Calamities*

153 A Whack on the Side of the Head*

153.4 Blink: the power of thinking without thinking - Gladwell

200 - Religion

300 - Social Sciences
394.1 POL An Omnivore's Dilemna: A Natural history in 4 Meals
370 UNG Failing Our Kids: How we are ruining our public schools
305.48 Kabul Beauty School - Deborah Rodriguez*
302 The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell

400 - Language

500 - Natural Sciences + Math
599.9 SYK The Seven Daughters of Eve
539.7 The Elegant Universe - Brian Greene*
516.204 The Golden Ratio - Mario Livio*
522 Miss Leavitt's Stars - George Johnson
530 E = mc^2 - David Bodanis


600 - Technology
636.8 Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World - Vicki Myron
641 Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of food life - Barbara Kingsolver*

658 Bo's Lasting Lessons*
614.52 The Great Influenza by John Barry*

700 - The Arts

792.7 I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This - Bob Newhart
796.962 Searching for Bobby Orr - Stephen Brunt
791.45 Survivor! - Mark Burnett
792 Without You - Anthony Rapp

800 - Literature and Rhetoric

808 Shakespeare Wrote for Money - Nick Hornby
814.54 I Feel Bad About My Neck - Nora Ephron

823.92 Say You're One of Them - Uwem Akpan*
818.09 The Innocents Abroad - Mark Twain
832 BRE The Life of Galileo

900 - Geography and History

971 Souvenir of Canada - Douglas Coupland

910.91634 Titanic's Last Secrets - Brad Matsen*
942.1 Necropolis: London and its Dead - Catherine Arnold
967.5 DALShaking Hands With the Devil - Romeo Dallaire

*I have the book here. I won the Hachette nonfiction box o'books which certainly increases my nonfiction TBR.