The Backyard Bird Chronicles / Amy Tan

 

4 out of 5 stars 

My best friend and birding buddy brought this book to my attention. She has rarely steered me astray and this book was no exception. It is exactly what it says on the tin: chronicles of Amy Tan's backyard birds. It is the nature journal of a very obsessed woman.

I admire people who keep nature journals. I have intermittently kept a personal journal but have had only a couple of abortive attempts at a birding journal. I just didn't have enough bandwidth for anything like what Ms. Tan has produced. My attempts ended up being mere lists of birds seen on a particular day or trip. Tan, being a professional writer, produces a vastly superior product.

I envy Tan's talent for drawing her backyard birds, as well as the backyard that supports her endeavors. California has much different birds and climate than Calgary. Her illustrations are beautiful and she tells us that drawing birds made sure that she really noticed their details. It was a pleasure to see her progress from the beginner state to more experienced birder. We are none of us born knowing these things, so we are familiar with the learning process. Most birders think fondly of those early years and the excitement of each new bird, what Tan calls New Bird Tachycardia.

I was dismayed by her tale of being talked down to by someone that she refers to as a Poobah. We've all run across one—someone who has forgotten what it's like to be an enthusiastic neophyte or who is insecure and needs to feel superior to others. Tan seems to shrug this off and continues her joyous bird studies. There are probably more poobahs out there who would critique her for anthropomorphism and/or for bird feeding (I've observed both). Tan is aware of her tendency to think up stories about the birds' lives, but I found her concern for them to be charming. (She says a couple of times that she's glad she's not a scientist.) She also is finicky about the cleanliness of her feeders and bird baths. If she sees a sick bird, she takes down all the feeders for cleaning until it's safe to reopen the restaurant. She admits to spending extravagantly on feed, especially mealworms. It sounds to me like she is hurting no birds and derives a great deal of pleasure from her hobby. Having spent a fair amount of cash on sunflower seeds myself, I would never criticize.

In short, Ms. Tan makes me wish for a yard where I could study my own local birds in depth every day. It has allowed her to get a feel for behaviour and for the rhythm of the seasons of which I am quite jealous. It is a beautiful book, which I recommend to those who also love their yard birds and/or journaling about their observations.

Bush Runner / Mark Bourrie

4 out of 5 stars

Murderer. Salesman. Pirate. Adventurer. Cannibal. Co-founder of the Hudson's Bay Company.

Known to some as the first European to explore the upper Mississippi, and widely as the namesake of ships and hotel chains, Pierre-Esprit Radisson is perhaps best described, writes Mark Bourrie, as “an eager hustler with no known scruples.” Kidnapped by Mohawk warriors at the age of fifteen, Radisson assimilated and was adopted by a powerful family, only to escape to New York City after less than a year. After being recaptured, he defected from a raiding party to the Dutch and crossed the Atlantic to Holland—thus beginning a lifetime of seized opportunities and frustrated ambitions.

A guest among First Nations communities, French fur traders, and royal courts; witness to London’s Great Plague and Great Fire; and unwitting agent of the Jesuits’ corporate espionage, Radisson double-crossed the English, French, Dutch, and his adoptive Mohawk family alike, found himself marooned by pirates in Spain, and lived through shipwreck on the reefs of Venezuela. His most lasting venture as an Artic fur trader led to the founding of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which operates today, 350 years later, as North America’s oldest corporation.

I remember first hearing about Radisson and Groseilliers in about Grade 5, when I think they were called “explorers” or “fur traders.” I also recall my mother calling them Radishes and Gooseberries. Imagine my surprise to find that Groseilliers actually does mean gooseberries!

In many ways, Pierre-Esprit Radisson is a better and a worse man than you would expect from the few facts that I encountered in grade school. He seems to have been able to roll along with whatever situation he encountered, looking for an upside or an opportunity. He also seems to have had a natural aptitude for languages which stood him in good stead. On the poor side, he seemed to be motivated almost entirely by profit and was willing to abandon or double-cross his friends and business partners whenever it was convenient for him.

Why should we be interested in the man? As the author states in his introduction: He’s living with Indigenous people in North America. He’s with Charles II of England and his court of scoundrels, traitors, and ex-pirates. He’s in England during the Great Plague. He’s in London during the Great Fire. He’s set upon by spies. He’s in the Arctic. Then he’s with pirates in the Caribbean. After that, he’s at Versailles. And then the Arctic again. Along the way, he crosses paths with the most interesting people of his day. He’s the Forrest Gump of his time.

I can’t help but think that Radisson could have achieved a lot more if he hadn’t been quite so fixated on the fur trade. He could have lived a good life among the Iroquois or the Mohawk, but his restless nature wouldn’t let him settle. A bit of a conman, he couldn’t happily just live a normal life.

Chase Darkness With Me / Billy Jensen

3 to 3.5 stars out of 5 

Journalist Billy Jensen spent fifteen years investigating unsolved murders, fighting for the families of victims. Every story he wrote had one thing in common―they didn't have an ending. The killer was still out there.

But after the sudden death of a friend, crime writer and author of I'll Be Gone in the Dark, Michelle McNamara, Billy became fed up. Following a dark night, he came up with a plan. A plan to investigate past the point when the cops had given up. A plan to solve the murders himself.

You'll ride shotgun as Billy identifies the Halloween Mask Murderer, finds a missing girl in the California Redwoods, and investigates the only other murder in New York City on 9/11. You'll hear intimate details of the hunts for two of the most terrifying serial killers in history: his friend Michelle McNamara's pursuit of the Golden State Killer and his own quest to find the murderer of the Allenstown Four. And Billy gives you the tools―and the rules―to help solve murders yourself.

I’m very conflicted about this book. On the one hand, I read it cover to cover as quickly as I could. On the other hand, there were a bunch of things that bothered me about it. The author was one of the people responsible for getting Michelle McNamara’s book I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer finished and ready for publication. And I appreciate that, because I loved that book. Jensen admits that he’s not the writer that McNamara was and I’d agree with him on that assessment.

Here’s one of my issues--he tries to keep so many balls in the air, juggling a variety of crimes, like some ADD true crime addict. I can’t help but speculate that he would do more conspicuous good if he’d limit himself a bit and concentrate on one or two cases at a time.

Another thing that bugs me: what his wife and family have to put up with, i.e. what seems like a lot of absence and neglect. They must be very forgiving people, because I don’t think I’d put up with it. I don’t think that this is someone to be taking life advice from, not if you value your relationships anyway.

There’s absolutely no doubt that there are a plethora of true crime podcasts, radio shows, and books in the market right now and that more and more people are attempting to make their mark by solving cold cases. What I truly did appreciate was the chapter on how to conduct yourself should you choose to follow in their footsteps. Advice to be professional, not using people’s names in public forums like Facebook and Twitter when they are leads or suspects, not doxxing your competitors, and in general being polite and staying as neutral as possible. If you are going to do this, do it the right way and don’t be an internet troll. Think carefully about it, as this isn’t just a hobby, it has the potential to ruin people’s lives if you come to the wrong conclusions.

Although I can’t say that I’m not intrigued by this phenomenon, I do recognize that I don’t have the obsessive nature required to do a good job of these tasks. I think I will stick to family genealogy research and leave crime to those better suited to that pursuit.

In the meanwhile, I’m enjoying the modern take on the true crime book. If you enjoyed this book, I would highly recommend I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer and True Crime Addict: How I Lost Myself in the Mysterious Disappearance of Maura Murray.

The Real Lolita / Sarah Weinman

4 out of 5 stars 

Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita is one of the most beloved and notorious novels of all time. And yet very few of its readers know that the subject of the novel was inspired by a real-life case: the 1948 abduction of eleven-year-old Sally Horner.

Weaving together suspenseful crime narrative, cultural and social history, and literary investigation, The Real Lolita tells Sally Horner’s full story for the very first time. Drawing upon extensive investigations, legal documents, public records, and interviews with remaining relatives, Sarah Weinman uncovers how much Nabokov knew of the Sally Horner case and the efforts he took to disguise that knowledge during the process of writing and publishing Lolita.

Sally Horner’s story echoes the stories of countless girls and women who never had the chance to speak for themselves. By diving deeper in the publication history of Lolita and restoring Sally to her rightful place in the lore of the novel’s creation, The Real Lolita casts a new light on the dark inspiration for a modern classic. 

I read this book to fill the Truly Terrifying square of my 2019 Halloween Bingo Card.

I heard the author of The Real Lolita interviewed on the radio and was immediately intrigued. I’ve read true crime. I’ve read biography and books seeking to trace an author’s process. But this is the first book I’ve read that really combines the two and does so effectively.

When I think about Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, I think about a work of fiction. But where did Nabokov get his idea from? It turns out that this true crime story may have provided the final details and framework for this recognized classic of fiction. Weinman has spent time in the author’s archives and has been able to connect the dots in a most convincing way.

But the author doesn’t forget the real girl--Sally Horner--and her awful predicament. Her separation from her family by an unscrupulous man and his sexual abuse of this extremely young girl. I was struck by how differently we look at society and children now--it wouldn’t be likely nowadays that a mother would send her daughter off with a person she didn’t know. It was a more trusting age, trusting that people had good intentions towards others. And yet, even in our more suspicious times, young girls still get kidnapped. Witness first person accounts like Elizabeth Smart’s My Story and non-fiction like Captive: One House, Three Women and Ten Years in Hell by Allan Hall. Indeed, the author read some of these accounts to assess what Sally’s life with her abductor might have been like.

It seems that Nabokov was interested in this theme long before the Sally Horner disappearance, but her situation seems to have resonated with him somehow. What he did was fictionalize the whole experience from Humbert Humbert’s perspective and give us an amazingly literate look at the criminal’s point of view. His wife’s notes, however, indicate that he wanted the audience to recognize the plight of Lolita in the fraudulent worldview of Humbert.

I haven’t yet read Lolita and I wondered whether I actually would, but this book makes me think that I must give it a try. Thank you, Ms. Weinman, for giving me a reason for attempting what is acknowledged to be a great novel, even if it is difficult.

The Man Who Created Sherlock Holmes / Andrew Lycett

4 out of 5 stars

***2019 The Summer of Sherlock*** 

Reading a biography of Arthur Conan Doyle seemed like a necessary thing during my Summer of Sherlock. Last summer, I read Andrew Lycett’s bio of Ian Fleming during my Summer of Spies and found that it greatly enhanced my enjoyment of Fleming’s Bond novels. Perhaps I should have tackled this biography earlier in my summer and it might have given me more insight into the man’s writing. 

ACD was born in the Victorian era and lived until the British Interwar period. He saw a lot of change during his lifetime, some of which he could embrace and some of which made him angry. So really, just like most of us! In many ways, he was a man of contradictions: a man with scientific training who was fascinated with mysticism; a deeply conservative man who nevertheless held some very progressive opinions; a Victorian gentleman who strove to become modern.

According to his eldest daughter, Mary, “He didn’t concur with the Victorian view that women should marry at all costs--for he thought the un-married woman, with her freedom, was a whole lot happier than a woman married to the wrong man and, he added, ‘The worst of it is, the poor things can never tell till they have married the chap!’” This is somewhat ironic, as he obviously considered himself one of the good ones, which might have been disputed by Mary’s mother, his first wife Louise. ACD spent the last 6-8 years of her life cavorting around with the woman who became his second wife one year after Louise finally expired of tuberculosis. He then proceeded to be absolutely abominable to his two children from his first marriage, until his son’s death after WWI from the Spanish flu, when he seemed to become a little more sympathetic to Mary and the two were reconciled. Until then, he seemed like the worst sort of child support avoiding cad. In all fairness, his letters & papers appear to have been pruned by the children of the second family, who seem to have wanted Mary & Kingsley to disappear from history, so who knows what the true state of affairs was?

It can’t have helped that Mary looked very much like her mother (at least from the photos included in the book, there is no mistaking their relationship to my eyes). But it does speak volumes that Mary had to arrange the funeral and burial of her brother, a task better suited to their well-to-do father. 

By contrast, his 3 children from his marriage to Jean seem to have been spoiled rotten. ACD made his own good fortune by working hard, first as a doctor, then as an author, all the while being very careful of his finances. And he can’t be said to be miserly, as he assisted and supported a whole fleet of family members and frequently contributed to causes and campaigns that he valued. It must have been rather frustrating to him to see his younger children behaving in irresponsible and spendthrift ways.

ACD seems to have been an extroverted person, a real networker before networking was a thing. He knew a tremendous number of authors: Oscar Wilde, J.M. Barrie, H. Rider Haggard, H.G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, among others. He couldn’t always maintain cordial relationships with all of them, but he was aware of them and probably read their works, as they seemed to read his. He was also very much a sportsman, enjoying cricket, golf, billiards and car racing. In those ways, he was very much a man of his time.

Would he be disappointed that the 21st century knows him almost exclusively for his Sherlock Holmes stories? Would he be surprised at the number of modern authors who have made use of Holmes and Watson to spin more stories of their own? It’s funny how we are too close to our own output to realize which aspects of it are the best--he seems to have always viewed Holmes as a distraction from his more “substantive” writing and as a way to make some quick money when it was needed. Another irony here, when a man who devoted his last years to spiritualism used the ultra-rational Sherlock Holmes to raise a few bucks to support that cause! 

Its too bad that his estate, especially the letters and manuscripts, got divided up like some kind of pie between his youngest 3 children and then the early deaths of the sons left some of it to daughters-in-law. One observer noted that they were glad not to be involved in the debacle, as all of the people involved were decidedly unpleasant to deal with. As a result, ACD’s papers are scattered between quite a large number of institutions, making the life of the researcher more difficult. Lycett in his afterword describes his trials and tribulations in trying to access, utilize and obtain permission to quote ACD. Lycett may the the first biographer to be able to use these documents, but someone else undoubtedly will take another stab at it when the dust (and the estates) are settled.

Rag and Bone / Peter Manseau

4 out of 5 stars

By examining relics—the bits and pieces of long-dead saints at the heart of nearly all religious traditions—Peter Manseau delivers a book about life, and about faith and how it is sustained. The result of wide travel and the author’s own deep curiosity, filled with true tales of the living and dubious legends of the dead, Rag and Bone tells of a California seeker who ended up in a Jerusalem convent because of a nun’s disembodied hand; a French forensics expert who travels on the metro with the rib of a saint; two young brothers who collect tickets at a Syrian mosque, studying English beside a hair from the Prophet Muhammad’s beard; and many other stories, myths, and peculiar histories.

With these, and an array of other digits, limbs, and bones, Manseau provides a respectful, witty, informed, inquisitive, thoughtful, and fascinating look into the "primordial strangeness that is at the heart of belief," and the place where the abstractions of faith meet the realities of physical objects, of rags and bones.

I often find myself reading somewhat odd books because I have heard their authors interviewed on CBC radio. This is one of those books. Where else would I have heard about a book featuring the bits and pieces of long dead religious people? Truth be told, I was puzzled last year, when I heard that my city (Calgary) was to receive a visit in the form of the severed arm of St. Francis Xavier. I knew that such things were important in the Middle Ages (read Ellis Peters’ excellent mystery story, A Morbid Taste for Bones, as an illustration of this), but I was unaware that religious relics were still a thing in the 21st century.

In preparation for this odd visitation, the author of this book was interviewed by our public radio station. I don’t remember the details of that interview, but I was intrigued enough to put this book on my TBR list and I’m glad that I read it, even if just for the quirk factor.

Poor old Saint F-X, he wasn’t the most successful proselytizer of the Christian faith, but in death he managed to find more fame and sainthood (he is featured early in the book). It’s these stories of the people behind the relics that are interesting, as well as finding out that Buddhists and Muslims also have treasured relics. It seems to be a bizarre human tendency, perhaps starting when the Neanderthals buried their dead in the caves that they inhabited.

The author is a religion scholar, but this offering is not a scholarly tome. It is sometimes humerous and very informative, without being overwhelming. If you are looking for something a little different in your reading docket, you could definitely do worse than Rag and Bone.

Don't Lick the Minivan / Leanne Shirtliffe

2.5 out of 5 stars

As a woman used to traveling and living the high life in Bangkok, Leanne Shirtliffe recognized the constant fodder for humor while pregnant with twins in Asia's sin city. But in spite of deep-fried bug cuisine and nurses who cover newborn bassinets with plastic wrap, Shirtliffe manages to keep her babies alive for a year with help from a Coca-Cola deliveryman, several waitresses, and a bra factory. Then she and her husband return home to the isolation of North American suburbia.

In Don't Lick the Minivan, Shirtliffe captures the bizarre aspects of parenting in her edgy, honest voice. She explores the hazards of everyday life with children such as:

•The birthday party where neighborhood kids took home skin rashes from the second-hand face paint she applied.
•The time she discovered her twins carving their names into her minivan's paint with rocks.
•The funeral she officiated for "Stripper Barbie."
•The horror of glitter.
And much more!

Now, let me begin my emphasizing that this is NOT my genre and I am NOT in the target audience for this book. I’m sure that if you have raised twins, you will probably find things to laugh about in it.

So, why did I read it, you ask? Well, the author is going to be a key-note speaker at a conference that I’m attending in August. I like to have some familiarity with the work of these folks before I attend. So I’ve also read a children’s book by Shirtliffe.

I also hasten to add that I am notorious for not getting written humour. I’m sure that when I hear the author in person, that I will at least smile, if not laugh out loud. I’ll be interested to hear her speak for that exact reason.

As a single & childless woman, I can’t appreciate many of the stories that the author tells. It’s just not my experience. But I can tell that Shirtliffe has spent a lot of time on her writing and is quite skilled at it. If you read mommy blogs and have raised children, you will probably enjoy this book far more than I did.

Run Hide Repeat / Pauline Dakin

4 out of 5 stars

Pauline Dakin spent her childhood on the run. Without warning, her mother twice uprooted her and her brother, moving thousands of miles away from family and friends. Disturbing events interrupt their outwardly normal life: break-ins, car thefts, even physical attacks on a family friend. Many years later, her mother finally revealed they'd been running from the Mafia and were receiving protection from a covert anti-organized crime task force.
  But the truth was even more bizarre. Gradually, Dakin's fears give way to suspicion. She puts her journalistic training to work and discovers that the Mafia threat was actually an elaborate web of lies.  As she revisits her past, Dakin uncovers the human capacity for betrayal and deception, and the power of love to forgive.
    Run, Hide, Repeat is a memoir of a childhood steeped in unexplained fear and menace. Gripping and suspenseful, it moves from Dakin's uneasy acceptance of her family's dire situation to bewildered anger. As compelling and twisted as a thriller, Run Hide Repeat is an unforgettable portrait of a family under threat, and the resilience of family bonds.

Sometimes, when I read memoirs, I have to wonder what motivated the author to share a slice of their life in book form. With this volume, I have no doubt what the author’s motivation was--this is easiest way to explain the weirdness of her life to the people that she has encountered along her journey.

What if the major assumptions of your life, ones that determined major things like where you lived and who you associated with, were based on someone else’s delusion? This is what Pauline Dakin describes in this fascinating memoir of life on the run with her mother and the man that they all trusted.

Dakin is a journalist, having worked for the CBC as a medical and health reporter. She is now an instructor, teaching future journalists. With this background, it is no surprise that this is a well-written account and it is obvious that she has spent a lot of time reflecting on her experiences and trying to make sense of all that happened during her childhood and young adulthood.

I heard her interviewed on CBC radio, which put this book on my radar. I’m a sucker for memoirs, enjoying being a voyeur into someone else’s existence I guess. I’m surprised that the author’s husband and her brother’s wife were drawn into the whole delusion for as long as they were, but their spouses had been involved since childhood & were predisposed to believe Stan Sears and his complicated delusional assumptions about the world.

If nothing else, Dakin has given Delusional Disorder a little more exposure, which may be a help to others who are attached to someone with these issues.

Stranger in the Woods / Michael Finkel

4 out of 5 stars

Many people dream of escaping modern life, but most will never act on it. This is the remarkable true story of a man who lived alone in the woods of Maine for 27 years, making this dream a reality--not out of anger at the world, but simply because he preferred to live on his own.

In 1986, a shy and intelligent twenty-year-old named Christopher Knight left his home in Massachusetts, drove to Maine, and disappeared into the forest. He would not have a conversation with another human being until nearly three decades later, when he was arrested for stealing food. Living in a tent even through brutal winters, he had survived by his wits and courage, developing ingenious ways to store edibles and water, and to avoid freezing to death. He broke into nearby cottages for food, clothing, reading material, and other provisions, taking only what he needed but terrifying a community never able to solve the mysterious burglaries. Based on extensive interviews with Knight himself, this is a vividly detailed account of his secluded life--why did he leave? what did he learn?--as well as the challenges he has faced since returning to the world. It is a gripping story of survival that asks fundamental questions about solitude, community, and what makes a good life, and a deeply moving portrait of a man who was determined to live his own way, and succeeded. 

What an oddly fascinating little book! Even though I am very definitely an introvert, I cannot imagine existing in the way that Chris Knight chose to live for nearly three decades. He wandered off into the wilds of Maine in 1986 with next to no planning and next to no supplies. He managed to find himself a sheltered campsite, right alongside civilization, where he existed in a tent even during the cold of Maine winters. Mind you, he could never have achieved it without pilfering supplies from nearly all of his civilized neighbours.

Mr. Knight might still be out there, still not speaking to other humans, if he had found a way to support himself without specializing in home break-ins. I can’t conceive of not letting my family know where I am and that I’m okay. I may withhold details of my holiday locations to prevent the more neurotic from pestering my tour company unnecessarily, but I generally try to email or Facebook if I think there will be any concern. Chris Knight just wandered out into the landscape without letting anyone know anything. He also abandoned a partially paid for truck that his brother (who had co-signed the loan) was stuck paying for without the benefit of being able to drive it.

It seems like there is a tendency among a certain segment of humanity to seek solitude. The author, Michael Finkel, provides just enough history of religious hermits, recluses, and other people seeking seclusion to be interesting without being overwhelming. It rapidly becomes clear, however, that it is very difficult to avoid human interaction even under those circumstances. And most of us don’t want to completely avoid other humans.

Mr. Knight’s whole family seems to be rather taciturn and isolationist, so in some ways his behaviour is no surprise. I do feel rather sorry for him, now that he has been returned to society and must deal with people again. It is obvious from Finkel’s observations that it is a great hardship for him. In this regard, he is certainly not neural-normative. I hope he can find some way to exist somewhat happily in the world.

A Serial Killer's Daughter / Kerri Rawson

3 out of 5 stars

What is it like to learn that your ordinary, loving father is a serial killer? 
 
In 2005, Kerri Rawson heard a knock on the door of her apartment. When she opened it, an FBI agent informed her that her father had been arrested for murdering ten people, including two children. It was then that she learned her father was the notorious serial killer known as BTK, a name he’d given himself that described the horrific way he committed his crimes: bind, torture, kill. As news of his capture spread, Wichita celebrated the end of a thirty-one-year nightmare.

For Kerri Rawson, another was just beginning. She was plunged into a black hole of horror and disbelief. The same man who had been a loving father, a devoted husband, church president, Boy Scout leader, and a public servant had been using their family as a cover for his heinous crimes since before she was born. Everything she had believed about her life had been a lie.

I wouldn’t have requested this book from the library if I hadn’t heard the author interviewed on the radio. She sounded somewhat exasperated and I wondered why, driving me to look for her book. Now that I’ve read it, I understand some of her indignation.

First, it seems that many people don’t read the title or don’t believe it. This is NOT a book about her father, this is HER story. Yes, her father appears in her account as a major player because he is her father, but the story is hers. It focuses on her life and her beliefs. I can see why she’s ticked that people read it only as a way to view her dad.

Secondly, it has obviously been written as what the evangelical Christians call “a witness.” She is professing her Christian faith and it is the most important part of the work to her. The discount of that by secular reviewers must drive her mad.

Truth be told, she could have used a good ghostwriter to assist her. There are several chapters dealing with one hiking trip to the Grand Canyon, where there should probably only be one. It was a good idea to use this trip as a way to illustrate her relationship with her father and to highlight his idiosyncrasies. It just drags on far too long and has too much religious reference in it.

It quickly becomes obvious to the reader that Dennis Rader was a volatile man and a challenge to live with. His daughter, having known no other way of life, didn’t realize the extent of his abusiveness until long after his arrest. She has fought a life-long struggle with anxiety and depression and that is unsurprising, given her family situation. Interestingly, it seems that she and her mother are the ones who are depended on to “manage” Rader. Funny how it’s always up to the women in the family to handle the volatile man! 

The important aspect of this book, to my mind, is the fact that we tend to forget the families of serial killers when we are thinking about their victims. Rawson shows us in no uncertain terms the difficulties encountered by her family and their attempts to put their lives back together. Dennis Rader may be BTK to the world, but he was still a husband and father, uncle, neighbour, and working man. Those who shared his life were shocked by his arrest and confession and had hard work to do to put all of this behind them to some extent. We need to extend to them the same compassion that is offered to the murder victims’ families, as they have been betrayed and damaged too.
 

Random Family / Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

2.5 stars out of 5

In her extraordinary bestseller, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc immerses readers in the intricacies of the ghetto, revealing the true sagas lurking behind the headlines of gangsta glamour, gold-drenched drug dealers, and street-corner society. Focusing on two romances - Jessica's dizzying infatuation with a hugely successful young heroin dealer, Boy George, and Coco's first love with Jessica's little brother, Cesar - Random Family is the story of young people trying to outrun their destinies. Jessica and Boy George ride the wild adventure between riches and ruin, while Coco and Cesar stick closer to the street, all four caught in a precarious dance between survival and death. Friends get murdered; the DEA and FBI investigate Boy George; Cesar becomes a fugitive; Jessica and Coco endure homelessness, betrayal, the heartbreaking separation of prison, and, throughout it all, the insidious damage of poverty.

Charting the tumultuous cycle of the generations - as girls become mothers, boys become criminals, and hope struggles against deprivation - LeBlanc slips behind the cold statistics and sensationalism and comes back with a riveting, haunting, and true story.

I guess that I’m not entirely sure what the author was trying to achieve with this book. There’s no introduction, there’s no conclusion--I don’t enough about her to know her motivations. To be charitable, it would seem that she is trying to show, through the lives of three main people, the ties that bind people into poverty, drugs, and crime.

I have no doubts about how difficult it is to escape poverty. When your parents are uneducated, violent, and poor, who can you look to for an example of how to get out of that situation? During this time, in this place, boys were fathers in their teens, dropped out of school, and could only earn money through drugs and other criminality. Girls are pregnant in their teens, dropped out of school, and can’t provide for themselves and their children on minimum wage jobs. Sexual abuse is common because children get left with people that can’t be trusted. Girls skip from one man to the next because they’ve watched their mothers do the same thing. No one has enough education to properly fill out government forms to obtain benefits or to budget what little money they have. Boys take advantage of their male status to have sex with as many girls as they can talk into it. Girls can’t afford birth control and view having children as a way to bind boys to them.

Add to these problems that being a generous, good person can work against you. How many times did these women feed people who were only “random family”? Someone connected to someone who was part of the family? When girls have children by 2 or 3 different men, all of their relatives somehow become part of the web of family and women like Coco feel badly about denying them food and/or housing. Yet she knows that it’s bad for her own children in the long run.

These people are in a virtually inescapable situation. Their only pleasures are food and sex and they indulge when they get a chance--who wouldn’t? But when all the food is gone and there are more babies on the way, once again their lives worsen.

It was depressing reading because I know that the same things are probably happening to the children and grandchildren of Jessica, George, and Coco. Reading this made me realize how incredibly fortunate I am to have been born into the family that I’m part of, into the communities that I’m part of, and to be a citizen of my country. The fact that the adults around me didn’t lecture me about how to live, they just lived it and let me watch & learn. I learned to work, to live within my means, to value education, to regulate my emotions, all those skills that are necessary to living well.

I’d like to think the author meant this book as more than just downward social comparison, but I wish that she had addressed her purpose directly. What would have made things better? Are there programs that could actually assist people in these life circumstances? Ultimately, without this kind of analysis, I wonder why she wrote it?

The Fossil Hunter / Shelley Emling

3.5 stars out of 5

Mary Anning was only twelve years old when, in 1811, she discovered the first dinosaur skeleton--of an ichthyosaur--while fossil hunting on the cliffs of Lyme Regis, England. Until Mary's incredible discovery, it was widely believed that animals did not become extinct. The child of a poor family, Mary became a fossil hunter, inspiring the tongue-twister, "She Sells Sea Shells by the Seashore." She attracted the attention of fossil collectors and eventually the scientific world. Once news of the fossils reached the halls of academia, it became impossible to ignore the truth. Mary's peculiar finds helped lay the groundwork for Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, laid out in his On the Origin of Species. Darwin drew on Mary's fossilized creatures as irrefutable evidence that life in the past was nothing like life in the present.

Give this about a 3.5 star rating for my general reading experience. I knew the basic outlines of Mary Anning’s story—a woman with a talent for finding marine reptile fossils, held back by her social status, her lack of access to education, and her gender. In a world which favoured wealthy men with leisure time, she was at a tremendous disadvantage and achieved a great deal despite that.

This book filled in the gaps in my knowledge of the woman and made me admire her fortitude all the more. The author is a journalist, so it is written in a rather journalistic style—not surprising. There is some speculation, trying to guess what may have been going on in Ms. Anning’s mind, but nothing that is too unreasonable. Since the author seems to have done her research on the time period, she makes safe assumptions.

I found it interesting that on pages 209-210, more current research was referenced:

”And new species of plesiosaurs—a most diverse group of aquatic carnivores—are being discovered to this day. One of the oldest and most complete skeletons of a prehistoric aquatic reptile has been uncovered in North America, representing an entirely new group of plesiosaurs. This 8.5 foot specimen, known as Nichollsia borealis, is one of the most complete and best-preserved North American plesiosaurs from the Cretaceous Period.”

It is too bad that the author didn’t mention that this creature is named after Elizabeth (Betsy) Nicholls, who was a paleontologist specializing in Triassic marine reptiles at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta, Canada. Betsy worked on a back-breaking dig in northern British, excavating Shonisaurus sikanniensis, a Triassic marine reptile and she probably would have identified with Mary Anning’s perilous labours. Nicholls at least got the recognition for her work, receiving awards and having marine reptiles named in her honour. Sadly, both Anning and Nicholls died young of breast cancer, another thing they have in common.

Nichollsaura borealis  (source: Wikipedia)

I'll Be Gone in the Dark / Michelle McNamara

4.5 out of 5 stars

For more than ten years, a mysterious and violent predator committed fifty sexual assaults in Northern California before moving south, where he perpetrated ten sadistic murders. Then he disappeared, eluding capture by multiple police forces and some of the best detectives in the area.

Three decades later, Michelle McNamara, a true crime journalist who created the popular website TrueCrimeDiary.com, was determined to find the violent psychopath she called "the Golden State Killer." Michelle pored over police reports, interviewed victims, and embedded herself in the online communities that were as obsessed with the case as she was.

"I love reading true crime, but I’ve always been aware of the fact that, as a reader, I am actively choosing to be a consumer of someone else’s tragedy. So like any responsible consumer, I try to be careful in the choices I make. I read only the best: writers who are dogged, insightful, and humane. It was inevitable that I would find Michelle."

So says Gillian Flynn in her introduction to this fascinating book. She is so right about author Michelle McNamara. Her writing is top notch—right up there with Truman Capote in his classic In Cold Blood. So many true crime writers get bogged down in details, so intent on giving the reader every tiny fact that they neglect to tell a story. McNamara goes down the rabbit hole of details regularly, but she doesn’t make the reader accompany her—she sorts things out, investigates tirelessly, then reports her results.

This is as much a memoir of McNamara’s obsession and search for this killer as it is a history of the crimes and investigation. I felt like I got to know her and I liked what I saw. She would have been a fascinating coffee date and I got the feeling that she missed her calling, that she should definitely have been a professional investigator of some kind.

The saddest thing for me about the book was that Michelle died two years too soon to know the identity of the man she was searching for. From her descriptions in the narrative, I was unsurprised that it was Paul Holes who made the DNA discovery. He seems to possess the same investigative drive that Michelle embodied. As for justice, I guess this is a “better late than never” scenario.

The title of the book makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up, coming as it does from a line from the criminal himself: “Make one move and you’ll be silent forever and I’ll be gone in the dark.”

If you, like me, tore through this book and wished it was a bit longer, try James Renner’s True Crime Addict: How I Lost Myself in the Mysterious Disappearance of Maura Murray, which provides a very similar reading experience.

Give Me Everything You Have / James Lasdun

3 out of 5 stars

A true story of obsessive love turning to obsessive hate, Give Me Everything You Have chronicles the author's strange and harrowing ordeal at the hands of a former student, a self-styled "verbal terrorist," who began trying, in her words, to "ruin him." Hate mail, online postings, and public accusations of plagiarism and sexual misconduct were her weapons of choice and, as with more conventional terrorist weapons, they proved remarkably difficult to combat.

James Lasdun's account, while terrifying, is told with compassion and humor, and brilliantly succeeds in turning a highly personal story into a profound meditation on subjects as varied as madness, race, Middle East politics, and the meaning of honor and reputation in the Internet age.

I first read this book back in 2013. I had a great deal of sympathy for the author, as I had four creepy men oozing their way around the outskirts of my life at that time and I was struggling to cope with the situation. Fortunately for me, none of them was nearly as persistent or proactive as the woman who troubled Mr. Lasdun.

On re-reading this volume, I was struck by two things. First, that the events in this book took place before we were really familiar with things like public shaming on the internet, revenge porn, and GamerGate and so many other attacks on people’s reputations in cyberspace. It’s taken a long time to get police interested in pursuing physical stalkers and their assistance has extremely mixed results, so I’m unsurprised that this author couldn’t get them effectively interested in his predicament.

Second, I have to point out that I don’t think this book wouldn’t have been deemed worthy of publishing if the author had been female. Women have to put up with this kind of behaviour with very little help from authorities on a regular basis. The reason that this book was “news” was because the victim was male and that character assassination on the internet was a new-ish thing.

I’m pleased to report that all four of the creepy men in my 2013 life are history. I don’t know where a single one of them is and I’m happy that way. Stalking is about power, having the power to make someone else’s life miserable while trying to get them to conform to some fantasy.

For observations on the stalking phenomenon, I would recommend Obsession by John E. Douglas (former FBI agent). For advice on keeping yourself safe, I would advise reading The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence by Gavin De Becker.

Lion / Saroo Brierley

3 out of 5 stars

At only five years old, Saroo Brierley got lost on a train in India. Unable to read or write or recall the name of his hometown or even his own last name, he survived alone for weeks on the rough streets of Calcutta before ultimately being transferred to an agency and adopted by a couple in Australia.
Despite his gratitude, Brierley always wondered about his origins. Eventually, with the advent of Google Earth, he had the opportunity to look for the needle in a haystack he once called home, and pore over satellite images for landmarks he might recognize or mathematical equations that might further narrow down the labyrinthine map of India. One day, after years of searching, he miraculously found what he was looking for and set off to find his family.

The first book of 2019 with my real-life book club. I missed the meeting during which it was discussed, but I see at least two of my book club ladies have rated it on either side of my own rating. It wasn’t a bad story, but it certainly wasn’t the most riveting memoir that I’ve ever read either.

First off, the story is an amazing one. A four to five year old Indian child, separated from his family, too young to know his own surname or the proper name of his town. Eventually, we even learn that he mispronounced his given name! Judging from this account, it sounds like he didn’t have much vocabulary and he may have had speech difficulties, as he couldn’t seem to make himself understood to the adults in the new world he found himself in. He did come from a very impoverished family, so schooling was unavailable to him, but he was young for school attendance anyway. His family members were so occupied with survival that there was no time to spend educating the younger children.

I’m pretty sure that, at the same age, I wouldn’t have been able to identify the landmarks around my home with the degree of certainty and accuracy that Mr. Brierley did. That’s what makes the story so interesting, is his ability to recognize his home town from Google Earth.

I can see where the movie version of this tale would probably be superior to the book. The author is obviously not a practiced writer, so the writing is very average. There is a great deal of unnecessary detail and quite a bit of repetition.

People who are adoptees would probably have greater interest in this story than I did. I personally would recommend trying the movie before picking up the book.

Resurrecting the Shark / Susan Ewing

4 out of 5 stars

In 1993, Alaskan artist and paleo-shark enthusiast Ray Troll stumbled upon the weirdest fossil he had ever seen—a platter-sized spiral of tightly wound shark teeth. This chance encounter in the basement of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County sparked Troll’s obsession with Helicoprion, a mysterious monster from deep time.

In 2010, tattooed undergraduate student and returning Iraq War veteran Jesse Pruitt became seriously smitten with a Helicoprion fossil in a museum basement in Idaho. These two bizarre-shark disciples found each other, and an unconventional band of collaborators grew serendipitously around them, determined to solve the puzzle of the mysterious tooth whorl once and for all.

Helicoprion was a Paleozoic chondrichthyan about the size of a modern great white shark, with a circular saw of teeth centered in its lower jaw—a feature unseen in the shark world before or since. For some ten million years, long before the Age of Dinosaurs, Helicoprion patrolled the shallow seas around the supercontinent Pangaea as the apex predator of its time.

Just a few tumultuous years after Pruitt and Troll met, imagination, passion, scientific process, and state-of-the-art technology merged into an unstoppable force that reanimated the remarkable creature—and made important new discoveries.

I don’t remember exactly which year it was that I was kind of accidentally introduced to the artwork of Ray Troll. I work on a university campus and occasionally there will be an event which catches my attention that I’ll attend after work. I’m also a paleontology enthusiast, so when I saw a session about fossil fish and I had no other responsibilities for the day, I went. Little did I know, that I was going to become a fan of fin art! Mr. Troll was giving a presentation on his artwork which featured fossil fishes and I was hooked, so to speak. Ray Troll also ends up being a central character in this history of the understanding of the whorl-toothed shark, Helicoprion. The fossil whorl captivated him and he spent years talking with paleontologists about Paleozoic sharks, trying to accurately illustrate the animal. Because of when he started his quest, he knew the old guard (now deceased) and was able to dispense some of their wisdom to younger researchers (and point them toward appropriate papers). In fact, he seems to have become the fairy godfather of the Helicoprion project, facilitating contact between professionals which might never otherwise have happened. I would have to say that popular works on paleo-fish research are few and far between and Susan Ewing has written a very enjoyable contribution to the field. She manages to cover all the factual data and still have a sense of humour, as when she describes one researcher using CT scans to “squeeze out every last ounce of sharky goodness.” I would also encourage you to check out Troll’s webpage and art: http://www.trollart.com/trollart_topl... Thank goodness for people like him, who have the passion to pursue these fascinating research projects, being cheerleaders and facilitators.

Ian Fleming / Andrew Lycett

4 out of 5 stars

***2018 Summer of Spies***

If you are a feminist who is planning to read any of the James Bond books, I would highly recommend that you also read this biography of their author, Ian Fleming. Knowing his background changes nothing in the novels, but at least gives the reader some glimpse of why they contain the prejudices that they do.

Fleming’s life is an excellent example of that old adage “As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.” I am hardly an apologist for Mr. Fleming, but his circumstances certainly made him into the man and author that he was. His father died when he was young and he was left with only an extremely controlling egocentric mother. If I’m reading between the lines correctly, Ian was an introvert, perfectly happy by himself, but forced by his social position and extroverted relatives to try to conform to the extrovert ideal. He loved comfortable living, with plenty of cards, cigarettes and liquor, but didn’t have the family money to rely on. Work was definitely a bore that he had to perform in order to support his desired lifestyle. The only time he really engaged was during his stint in Naval Intelligence during WWII. Finally, he had discovered a job that used his ability to make contacts across ranks, classes and nationalities.

However, if Fleming didn’t see a benefit coming to him from someone, he could be incredibly rude and cutting. I look at photos of the man and I cannot imagine how he achieved the parade of young women through his bedroom, but he must have exuded charm to them. When one hostess took him to task for his treatment of one of her friends, calling him a cad, he replied, “You’re quite right, Mrs. Leitner. Shall we have a drink on it?” Which they did and became friends. He was known to tell people that women were on parr with dogs for him.

Fleming seems to have been happiest when he was involved with other men’s wives. All of the benefits with few of the headaches of relationships. Eventually, when he married Ann, it was after a 14 year affair with her. Ann was pregnant with Ian’s child when her husband lost patience with the situation and divorced her. Although Ian initially tried hard, he had lived alone for too long and was too much a solitary man to be able to live comfortably with anyone, but particular with an extrovert like Ann. He seems to have married someone much like his mother. Ann had cheated with him for many years and when the marriage waters got rough, she repeated this pattern. Fleming was hurt, but the shoe was on the other foot and what could he say?

This is the secret sauce that produced James Bond. Bond is as misogynistic as Fleming himself. Although Fleming was chained to a desk during his Naval Intelligence years, Bond could explore all of Ian’s spy fantasies. Fleming was a card player and golfer and so is Bond. They shares tastes in liquor, cigarettes, food, cars, and general standard of living. Fleming mined his own life for the details of the books. Some of the best passages, in my opinion, are when he describes the natural environment, as in the diving scenes in Live and Let Die.

By and large, Fleming seems to have been a restless, unhappy man. His work during WWII seems to have been his happiest period, which is perhaps why he chose to write in the espionage genre. He self-medicated with alcohol and nicotine and escaped his life through golf and cards. He became the creepy old man at parties that young women warned each other about.

The continued interest in Bond would probably amaze him—he endured the scorn of his wife’s literary circle and the outrage of conservative reviewers and was continually considering terminating Bond. The enormous success of the books came largely after his death, although he had made enough money in his last years to be angry about the self-imposed health problems which would kill him early, preventing him from enjoying the fruits of his labour.

The Good Women of China / Xinran

3.5 stars out of 5

When Deng Xiaoping’s efforts to “open up” China took root in the late 1980s, Xinran recognized an invaluable opportunity. As an employee for the state radio system, she had long wanted to help improve the lives of Chinese women. But when she was given clearance to host a radio call-in show, she barely anticipated the enthusiasm it would quickly generate. Operating within the constraints imposed by government censors, “Words on the Night Breeze” sparked a tremendous outpouring, and the hours of tape on her answering machines were soon filled every night. Whether angry or muted, posing questions or simply relating experiences, these anonymous women bore witness to decades of civil strife, and of halting attempts at self-understanding in a painfully restrictive society. In this collection, by turns heartrending and inspiring, Xinran brings us the stories that affected her most, and offers a graphically detailed, altogether unprecedented work of oral history.

This is a heartbreaking book which I would never have picked up except I was looking for an X author for my Women Authors A-Z reading challenge this year. I never know how to rate books like these because it’s important to know about the situations in countries other than our own, but I always feel helpless and angry when I know that women are having such frightful difficulties.

I have to bear in mind that this book was published in 2002 originally, the author having moving from China to England in order to be free to do such a thing. A lot can and probably has changed in 16 years, plus many of the stories related in this book are from earlier years yet.

The Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) seems to have disrupted relations between men and women and the nature of family relationships to an extreme. Survival was top of mind for everyone and each did what they had to. Xinran reveals the painful stories told to her by Chinese women—of having children horribly injured, daughters gang raped, husbands treating them like servants (or livestock), work denied, promotions skipped over, you name it.

As China seems to be heading into another iteration of their authoritarian regime, there will undoubtedly be more issues for women. I hope there is still someone like Xinran to listen to women’s voices and to articulate what they are able to (Xinran herself had to walk a fine line so as not to offend the Communist Party).

In the era of the Me Too and Time’s Up campaigns here in North America, we have to hope that our sisters on other continents are able to achieve some gains as well.

Unbuttoned / Christopher Dummit

3 out of 5 stars

When Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King died in 1950, the public knew little about his eccentric private life. In his final will King ordered the destruction of his private diaries, seemingly securing his privacy for good. Yet twenty-five years after King’s death, the public was bombarded with stories about "Weird Willie," the prime minister who communed with ghosts and cavorted with prostitutes. Unbuttoned traces the transformation of the public’s knowledge and opinion of King’s character, offering a compelling look at the changing way Canadians saw themselves and measured the importance of their leaders’ personal lives.

Christopher Dummitt relates the strange posthumous tale of King’s diary and details the specific decisions of King’s literary executors. Along the way we learn about a thief in the public archives, stolen copies of King’s diaries being sold on the black market, and an RCMP hunt for a missing diary linked to the search for Russian spies at the highest levels of the Canadian government. Analyzing writing and reporting about King, Dummitt concludes that the increasingly irreverent views of King can be explained by a fundamental historical transformation that occurred in the era in which King’s diaries were released, when the rights revolution, Freud, 1960s activism, and investigative journalism were making self-revelation a cultural preoccupation.

If you are picking up this book to read the salacious details of the private life of William Lyon Mackenzie King, set it back on the shelf. There are precious few details about our 10th Prime Minister’s dabbling in spiritualism or his probable visits to prostitutes. Instead, this is an analysis of the way Canadians have viewed/judged/responded to these revelations about WLMK.

It’s an examination of our changing attitudes towards politicians, about the limitations of privacy, and what is acceptable behavior in Canadian society. Basically, the psychological changes as we moved from Victorian to modern sensibilities. Much of the text deals with the history of the voluminous diaries kept by WLMK and how they were a thorn in the side of his executors. King was notorious for doing just enough to get through a crisis and not another thing more—so of course he had wanted certain excerpts of his diary available to historians and the rest destroyed. However, he never got around to specifying which parts were which. The upshot is that all of his diary is now available for perusal and today you can search them online through Library and Archives Canada. His executors only destroyed the binders which detailed séances WLMK attended.

Looking backward from the 21st century, King’s foibles seem pretty tame, but they caused a sensation when they were first revealed to the public after King’s death. With no social media to out him, he was able to conduct his psychic research without penalty during his time in office. I’m not sure that Canadians are interested in more than the broad strokes of their politicians’ lives and beliefs even yet. We are much more likely to leave them alone when we encounter them in the community, because we respect private life, even if we don’t respect the politician his/her self.