The Wasp Factory / Iain Banks

3.5 out of 5 stars

Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different reasons than I'd disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my young cousin Esmerelda more or less on a whim.

That's my score to date.

Three.

I haven't killed anybody for years, and don't intend to ever again.

It was just a stage I was going through.

Enter - if you can bear it - the extraordinary private world of Frank, just sixteen, and unconventional, to say the least.


The inaugural entry on my “Horrible Humans” bookshelf.  To be fair, I knew going into this book what the subject matter was—and I chose to read it anyway.  What I didn’t realize that was two such books would come in at the public library for me mere days apart!  So the second entry is waiting for me at home, when I’ve finished a couple of books with nearer due dates.

What an interesting first (published) novel for Mr. Banks!  It is extremely well written—there were parts which made me cringe as I read them, I even set the book down and walked away for a while.  But any devoted reader of true crime books will tell you that Frank is pretty mild in his awfulness compared to other, older (and real) offenders.  One of the reasons that I gave up cable TV (and eventually TV in general) was an unhealthy obsession with true crime series which were seriously messing up my ability to trust the people around me.  I may still be a little less trusting than the average person, but living in a city of over a million people, that seems to me to be a reasonable state of affairs.

And should I admit that I recognize many of Frank’s behaviours?  What country child hasn’t spent hours outdoors, picking around old rubbish heaps if they are available, splooshing through water (I filled many pairs of wellies full of cold water during the run-off each spring), and developing my own little rituals to celebrate the seasons.  Unlike Frank, I spent many happy hours just watching wild animals in our farm pasture land—convincing ground squirrels that I wasn’t going to do anything untoward and that they could go about their usual activities while I watched.  Frank, however, has taken these childish past-times and given them a dark, heinous twist.  He has taken the natural world and his violent thoughts and made his own private “religion” out of them, horrifying in its complexity and personal logic.

I can see where Banks considered this to be a work of almost-science fiction, getting into the head of someone who is confused and violent.  Not recommended for those who are squeamish about scenes of animal cruelty.

100 Million Years of Food / Stephen Le

4 out of 5 stars

There are few areas of modern life that are burdened by as much information and advice, often contradictory, as our diet and health: eat a lot of meat, eat no meat; whole-grains are healthy, whole-grains are a disaster; eat everything in moderation; eat only certain foods--and on and on. In One Hundred Million Years of Food biological anthropologist Stephen Le explains how cuisines of different cultures are a result of centuries of evolution, finely tuned to our biology and surroundings. Today many cultures have strayed from their ancestral diets, relying instead on mass-produced food often made with chemicals that may be contributing to a rise in so-called "Western diseases," such as cancer, heart disease, and obesity.

Travelling around the world to places as far-flung as Vietnam, Kenya, India, and the US, Stephen Le introduces us to people who are growing, cooking, and eating food using both traditional and modern methods, striving for a sustainable, healthy diet. In clear, compelling arguments based on scientific research, Le contends that our ancestral diets provide the best first line of defense in protecting our health and providing a balanced diet. Fast-food diets, as well as strict regimens like paleo or vegan, in effect highjack our biology and ignore the complex nature of our bodies. In One Hundred Million Years of Food Le takes us on a guided tour of evolution, demonstrating how our diets are the result of millions of years of history, and how we can return to a sustainable, healthier way of eating.


This author tackles a variety of interesting topics, each one feeling like it could be the basis for its own book.  He plunges right in, pointing out that many primates are insectivorous and that many traditional cuisines include insects on the menu.  Fortunately or unfortunately (whichever way you choose to look at it), most of us have lost our taste for the chitinous creatures and our prejudices have rubbed off on those who earlier in history did enjoy this high protein foodstuff.  (Just for the record, I will NOT be joining this movement!)

Wherever you look nowadays, there is someone who is willing to tell you what you should be eating and why.  Should we give up meat?  If so, should we eat dairy products or should we go vegan?  Should we be eating fish?  How about agricultural staples like wheat or legumes?  You can find opinions on all of these questions, just hunt around on the internet for a little while.

As Stephen Le points out, some of these issues are going to boil down to sustainability issues.  We are rapidly depleting the ocean’s fish and clearing the oxygen-generating forests to create grazing land for cattle, which are quite inefficient at converting vegetation into flesh.

What I really liked was his sensible suggestion that we quit looking at food in terms of specific nutrients and instead consider it in whole cuisines.  So a person should consider their genetic heritage and try eating more foods consistent with what their own specific ancestors ate.  As a descendant of Danish immigrants, I am probably fine eating dairy products (while many Asian and Native Canadians lack the digestive enzymes to deal effectively with lactose).  I should also consider including more fish in my meal planning (pickled herring, anyone?) to mimic the ancestral condition.  However, I am a devoted maker of curries and stir fries, not very Scandinavian!

Lots to think about, but nothing startling.  Yes, we should exercise more (going walking this evening), eat more like our ancestors (without worrying about going all Paleo), worry less about vitamin pills (as my doctor says, they just produce expensive urine), and eat real food (shades of Michael Pollen).

A nice summary for those who aren’t sure about all the food wars raging in cyberspace.

Moon Over Soho / Ben Aaronovitch (Peter Grant #2)

4 out of 5 stars

London constable and apprentice Peter Grant suspects sorcery when Soho area musicians drop dead, their brain scans showing magical draining. Victim Cyrus left girlfriend Simone, who beds Peter. His dad "Lord Grant" taught him jazz, but master mage DCI Nightingale still recuperates, and a Pale Lady bites off essential bits for an animal chimera slave ring.


I do like Peter Grant! I find him a charming narrator, as he attempts to balance being a copper and being an apprentice wizard. Both roles are complex and the combination can be overwhelming at times.

I do love his insistence on quantifying and measuring his abilities, his attempts to understand magic using the scientific method, and his various ways of trying to protect his mobile phone from being fried by magic. I was also amused by his use of online translation tools to try to deal with Latin texts, because I do the same thing as a library cataloguer—typing titles, tables of contents, and occasionally whole paragraphs into Google translate, trying to determine which call number and subject headings to assign to a book that I can’t really read. You do get the kind of scrambled translation that Grant has to deal with! (Because those translation tools are largely based on United Nations documents, published in multiple languages and used as a basis for the translation, they are not always useful for personal and emotional subject matter).

I also love the setting—London itself is very much a character in these novels and it is clear that the author loves the city a great deal.

I will definitely continue to follow the adventures of Peter Grant.

Ides of March / Thornton Wilder

4 out of 5 stars

The Ides of March, first published in 1948, is a brilliant epistolary novel set in Julius Caesar's Rome. Thornton Wilder called it "a fantasia on certain events and persons of the last days of the Roman republic." Through vividly imagined letters and documents, Wilder brings to life a dramatic period of world history and one of history's most magnetic, elusive personalities.

In this inventive narrative, the Caesar of history becomes Caesar the human being. Wilder also resurrects the controversial figures surrounding Caesar -- Cleopatra, Catullus, Cicero, and others. All Rome comes crowding through these pages -- the Rome of villas and slums, beautiful women and brawling youths, spies and assassins. 


I can’t believe that this was published in 1948! It truly has not aged, possibly because it was dealing with much older history. It still felt fresh and I was intrigued.

I began reading this on the Ides of March (I live in hope that my local Shakespeare Company will perform Julius Caesar in March one year, so that I can attend it on the Ides). I adore books that are written in letter format, so I was predisposed to appreciate this one.

It is surprising how well people can be characterized through their written documents. I felt I came to know the main players remarkably well. I came to love the scheming Roman women and found Cleopatra to be quite fascinating. Wilder included quite a number of female characters, recognizing their political and religious significance.

My studies of classical history took place in my distant past and are hazy in my recollections now. Some courses, I know, were done in summer school, where one tries to distill a whole term’s worth of work and learning into 6 weeks. As a result, I knew it well enough to write the exam, but it has not retained its place in my memory as most other subjects have. I would be most curious now to read some Roman history and refresh my memory concerning Caesar. 

Birds of America / Lorrie Moore

3 out of 5 stars

Birds of America is the stunning new collection of twelve stories by Lorrie Moore, one of our finest authors at work today. With her characteristic wit and piercing intelligence she unfolds a series of portraits of the lost and unsettled of America; each story shines with humor, heartbreaking pathos, and warm understanding.


I’m not a huge fan of short stories, and I feel like I was rather fooled by the cover of this book into tackling it. I have worked with the Whooping Crane reintroduction program here in Calgary, exercising young crane chicks, and I simply couldn’t resist the pretty cover with the Whooping Crane on it. Plus that alluring title (for a birder), Birds of America. How either the image or the title relate to the stories within remains a mystery to me.

Moore’s stories are rather bleak views of human relationships—told from all kinds of angles but with similar disappointments to go round. As in this dinner party exchange:

"The thing to remember about love affairs," says Simone, "is that they are all like having raccoons in your chimney."
"Oh, not the raccoon story," groans Cal.
"Yes! The raccoons!" cries Eugene.
I'm sawing at my duck.
"We have raccoons sometimes in our chimney," explains Simone.
"Hmmm," I say, not surprised.
"And once we tried to smoke them out. We lit a fire, knowing they were there, but we hoped that the smoke would cause them to scurry out the top and never come back. Instead, they caught on fire and came crashing down into our living room, all charred and in flames and running madly around until they
dropped dead."
Simone swallows some wine. "Love affairs are like that," she says. "They all are like that."

I don’t believe I’ve ever had a love affair which ended quite so spectacularly. Clearly, I am doing it wrong.

A Darkness at Sethanon / Raymond E. Feist

3.5 out of 5 stars

An evil wind blows through Midkemia. Dark legions have risen up to crush the Kingdom of the Isles and enslave it to dire magics. The final battle between Order and Chaos is abotu to begin in the ruins of the city called Sethanon.

Now Pug, the master magician sometimes known as Milamber, must undertake an awesome and perilous quest to the dawn of time to grapple with an ancient and terrible Enemy for the fate of a thousand worlds.


A satisfying end to an acceptable fantasy series. The Riftwar books suffer by comparison to modern high fantasy series, but in their day, they were the next step for those looking for a LOTR substitute. At least Feist came up with his own version of The Enemy to deal with, instead of just dusting off Tolkien’s idea, changing a few names and calling it good.

Yes, there are elves, goblins, trolls, and such—and although they share some characteristics with their counterparts in other fantasy literature, Feist does try to make his versions stand off a little way and have some new & interesting characteristics. Pug/Milamber (both rather awful names for the same man) is a Gary Stu, seemingly able to learn everything and only rarely make mistakes (and those few then seem to work out in his favour). Enough familiar faces perish to make things more believable, as not everyone can live through such momentous battles. And some less familiar faces re-appear and make a much better impression in their second time around.

The siege and battle at Armengar was impressive, only vaguely resembling the siege of Minas Tirith (and that mostly in timing of the battle). I was happy to learn about the rather mysterious creation of the city before the book ended.

This final entry in the series was extremely light on what was happening with the female characters that we got to know in earlier installments. They seem to have been relegated to household and maternal duties and no longer get to truly participate in the action. I thought that some scenes from Anita’s or Carline’s points of view might have been interesting or at least a good contrast to the battle zone.

All the major characters seem to be suitably paired off by book’s end, leaving us to assume that things proceed happily ever after, but Feist doesn’t linger around examining the aftermath. The story ends when it is clear that all will be well—there is no “Scouring of the Shire” type follow-up.

Very good for its day and probably still a good choice for young readers searching for another story of noble quests and fierce battles. 

The Taming of the Shrew / William Shakespeare

4 out of 5 stars

The Taming of the Shrew has to be one of the most difficult of Shakespeare’s plays for a modern woman to appreciate. I don’t know about you, but I found it difficult to watch an independent young woman being “tamed” into a Stepford wife.

I went to the cinema to see a version filmed at Stratford, Ontario (Canada’s Shakespeare capitol) and I have to say that they did it extremely well. The drunken tinker at the beginning of the play became a drunken blogger, being belligerent in the audience. The music & humour began immediately and continued throughout the play. I haven’t laughed out loud so many times in a theatre in a long, long time. Plus, during the intermission, there was a “behind the scenes” tour of Stratford—all the prop and costume workshops which I’m sure the regular festival attendee doesn’t regularly get to see. Good stuff!

This is a very physically demanding play. I really admired the energy that Ben Carlson (Petrucchio) and Deborah Hay (Kate) put into the roles. Ms. Hay especially had a lot of roaring, flouncing, and flailing to do and seemed to be having a really good time letting it rip! An interview (also during intermission) reveals that the two are a real-life couple and were able to bring their own chemistry to the performance. Hay acknowledged that becoming the extremely subservient wife was a difficult part to play, but that she felt that Kate & Petrucchio have “an understanding” about how Kate will behave when they have an audience. And she plays the “tamed Kate” role with an undertone of the possibility of the volcanic eruption of “shrewishness.”

Much of the humour came from the inflections and tone of voice of the actors, giving the archaic phrases modern meaning—and a few reworked bits of dialog that made the play more accessible for modern people. I think that Shakespeare himself would thoroughly approve of pleasing the audience and I found the changes to work well.

Although this will never be my favourite play, it was extremely well performed and a lot of fun.