Archive for December, 2009

Do you believe that the Canadian book publishing industry is going to die away? With ebook readers, will we still be able to have a vibrant industry or will it be diluted by the many other special and wonderful authours from around the world? And does it matter to you?
During this past decade so many things have occurred to make us think or thrill us with a fascinating tale or tell us about ourselves and the way we live. Canada has produced many of these people who create their own slices of life. We are most fortunate.
Whether you liked the writing or not The Da Vinci Code intrigued 80 million people enough to buy the book and then to watch the movie of the same name. This brought about other books which looked at the Holy Grail, the Knights Templar and Mary Magdelene conspiracy theories. There’s even another book from Dan Brown called the Lost Symbol which follows the main character from his other hit seller. The Da Vinci  Code was the most popular book of the decade.
This lead to a series of books about God. The End of Faith, God is Not Great, How Religion Poisons Everything, the Case of God, the God Delusion and Giller Prize winner God Is from David Adams Richards debated the existence of and the reasons for God. Along with this a curious thing happened, sales of the Bible skyrocketed.
Another example of this decade’s writing was a whole series of books about making connections from people like Canadian Malcolm Gladwell and Steven D. Leavitt and Stephen J Dubner. They looked at ideas and worked out meaningful things that others had not put together. From Sesame Street to Hush Puppies, the Beatles to what a dog sees and comparing economics to a Chicago street gang and abortion rates, they proved that there is a very, very small degree of separation in our world and that practice does indeed make perfect.
Autobiographies were again high on reading lists but after James Frey’s book A Million Little Pieces was revealed as highly exaggerated lies the whole world looked a lot more suspiciously at this genre of book and insisted that authours tell the truth about mixing fact and fiction.
Chick Lit, as always made itself felt through the Shopaholic series, the Nanny Diaries, the Devil Wears Prada. If you believed these, most every important woman is neurotic, always looking for a martini and a good pair of shoes. Along with the Harlequin romances and some time-travelling tales like The Outlander series they proved that love and romance still sell.
Another trend was the Indo-Canadian group of authours from White Teeth about multi-layered, multi-ethnic life in north London through the Kite Runner, White Tiger, De Niro’s Game and Cockroach which proved that literary greatness was no longer turf reserved solely for middle-aged white men. These enriched our culture and helped us to see the world from a different slant.
The other main trend has been the Green Revolution which tries to make us look at climate change and the effect we are – or aren’t – having on the world. It all started with Al Gore and his book and film An Inconvenient Truth. Whether you believe that we can somehow ruin this earth, or maybe just ruin ourselves, there are many, many books which give opinions on both sides of the issue in fact and fiction.
I hope that we continue to see as many gifted and captivating new authours emerge in the next decade as there have been in the last one. Ideas and new viewpoints whether fact or fiction are an important stimulus for each of us to learn about the possibilities which await.

by Bryce Courtney

Another of those very interesting writers who deals with historical facts and weaves them in a story with characters we can relate to and empathize with. Bryce Courtney currently lives in Hunter Valley, Wales in the United Kingdom these days. He was born and raised in South Africa and was for many years a naturalized Australian citizen. He has written many books about both of those continents in a style which makes you want to follow the people in the books which come in series right to the end of their stories. He was one of Australia’s most famous writers for many years.

This time Mr Courtney has changed his focus and writes about a very interesting time in history in the year 1212. The narrator of the story is Sylvia Honeyeater, a teenaged girl, who lives in what is Germany today. At age eight her mother dies whereupon her father starts to abuse her sexually. When he does he gives her a honeycomb to “sweeten her disposition for the next time”. The name was later thought by those who met her to refer to her sweet singing voice.

At age 11 her father dies and she is an orphan alone. Sylvia decides to go to Cologne so that she will survive and make her fortune. The story of her journey and the people she meets along the way are the meat of the book.

This book explores themes of childhood and abuse in a very rigid and dark time. It discusses religion and womanhood as they were viewed in the middle ages. The story contrasts people like Frau Anna, the Christian lady who has all the answers for what should be done but is selfish and vengeful and only looking out for herself and Frau Sarah, the Jew who is accused of being a money-lender and Christ killer, who takes in Sylvia and Reinhart her rat-catcher, musician friend and teaches them how to earn a living making music.

A homeless boy named Nicholas that Sylvia has befriended starts preaching to children that God spoke to him and showed him a Children’s Crusade to Jerusalem. This comes to a climax when a mass of peasant women walk naked, seemingly in a trance, to the church on the Sabbath day chanting “our children in Jerusalem”.

Sylvia is presented with two choices as she becomes a woman either become a wife and mother or become a nun. Those are the primary careers available. But Sylvia has a strong desire to learn everything possible to learn and to reach far beyond what is expected of her. She joins and helps to organize the Crusade.

Although a study done in 1977 cast doubt that the Children’s Crusade was anything more than roving bands of displaced people who were professing a desire to go and peacefully convert the Muslims in Jerusalem but where in actual fact homeless and heading to Italy and Rome to be saved.

Whether it happened or not this book is a great tale told from a different angle which sheds light on a time and in places which have been long assigned to the dustbins of history. An easy to read narration of life during turbulent, long-ago times.

by Dr. Phil McGraw

Do you believe that life happens to you? Or do believe that you make it happen? Whichever you believe in your own mind will control how you react to some of the possibilities and certainties of life.

Of course we’ve all read and heard about how setting goals and believing in ourselves (“I think I can. I think I can”) will help us through just about everything in life. Did you know that Jeffrey Gitomer, one of those excellent sales and motivational people, believes that the book The Little Engine That Could should be taken off the kids literature shelves and put on every adult’s bedside table for inspirational guidance? But in real life it is preparing ourselves by thinking about the inevitable that will see us through the tough times and the “new to us” happenings.

This book is about preparing yourself through reading and thinking about the inevitable days which will come during your life. According to Dr. Phil there are seven particular days which you need to be prepared for so that you can be there for yourself or be the calm in the middle of a storm for those you love when the time comes along.

The first day to prepare for is Loss. Losing something of great value through death, divorce, disaster or theft. Thinking about such things before they occur can ease the burden. In reality, we all will die. Of course, we will miss them and regret the things which did or didn’t happen between us but would anyone want their loved ones to stop living because they do? In some cultures that was expected but in today’s modern world we are educated enough not to diminish the accomplishments of loved ones by proving that we cannot cope with the world without them present. Divorce usually happens because people change their beliefs and emotions. That too is a natural part of life. No one keeps the same beliefs that they had in childhood all the way through life. It is natural for us to grow out of the belief that there are monsters under the bed or that you need a parent to do everything for you throughout life. It’s natural to change your mind about having one type of career in life. So, it is also natural that we change the things we like to do and the people we want to be with throughout our lives. This is not necessarily a rejection of the other person but a change in our wants and needs.

The second day to prepare for is Fear. The day you realize that you have lived your life in fear of what others expect or think about you. Finding you own hopes and goals is the right way to get past this very tough day. Life was not meant to be lived in dread of consequences but in the joy of learning and helping and being.

Third is the Adaptability Breakdown day. The day when your pressures and responsibilities seem too great for you to bear any longer. That day when you are in way over your head. How you cope and where you find your backup system is important to your survival. Putting things like friends, religion and things you like to do in place long before that day arrives is important.

Fourth is that awful day when you realize your Physical Health is compromised. It happens to every single human on this planet when we find that our body is wearing out and not repairing itself perfectly. For some this day comes much too early, for the lucky few it comes very late in life – but it always comes. How we face reality is a choice we make. Expecting any different is just not realistic. We can do everything possible to stave off the fourth day but it will come eventually no matter how many vitamins we take or how many marathons we run. Our bodies will break down. So enjoy every minute you can before it does.

The fifth day is when the Mental Health of yourself or a friend breaks down and betrays all the promise which seemed so bright. The mind can be sick or malfunctioning just like the body. It is not something to hide and fear. It is something to recognize and do whatever we can to help rejuvenate or treat just as we do any other part of the body.

The sixth day is when Addiction arrives and you realize that you or a loved is not in control any more. Staring that monster in the face is one of the very hardest times in our journey through the world. It’s not easy to admit, even to ourselves, that our parent or child is on a path to destruction. It’s even harder to admit that we ourselves are not managing our selves or our actions any more but some outside substance or need has taken over. Whether it’s an obsession or a physical need we must get back our or our loved ones control in life.

The last is the day when we lose our compass, our direction and the connection to the meaning  in our life. When we start to scream “Why?” and nobody seems to answer. The day we feel useless and ineffectual for whatever reason is the day that we need to find a new goal, a new motivation, a new reason. Although this happens for many reasons, old age is a very sad time when we feel marginalized and not involved in life. What we do about that is ours to decide.

Always keep an idea in your back pocket against that day. Write yourself a letter which you can read when in doubt and tell yourself what good things have happened because you are here. It’s like the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” which comes around each year at this time. What would this world be like if you had never been here? Don’t give up before you’ve accomplished everything possible!

This book is about putting mental, emotional and physical supports in place all around you to make sure that when the inevitable comes your way you have a system and a plan in place to help you cope. Reading and thinking about such days doesn’t mean you will bring them on yourself. When were you put in charge of the world and given that much power?

These days will not come in any particular order and you will never feel totally ready but you can think and prepare so that you will be a help to yourself and those around you rather than losing all control and despairing of every finding joy again. Be your own best friend.

- by Pearl S. Buck

One of my favourite writers, Pearl Buck, was born in Hillsboro, West Virginia, in 1892 but at the age of three months returned with her parents to Zenjiang, China. Her parents were Southern Presbyterian missionaries. While her father travelled looking for Christian converts, her mother ran a small dispensary for Chinese women. For forty years, Pearl lived and worked in China. She was completely fluent in both Chinese and English.

Pearl lived through the Boxer Uprising in 1900 when many foreigners were killed by roving gangs of Chinese who blamed all their ills on the foreigners living in their country. The family escaped to Shanghai and spent many anxious months waiting to learn the fate of her father. When he finally escaped and joined them they returned for another home leave in the United States.

Shortly thereafter, they returned to China and except for four years of college in the United States, Pearl lived and taught in China well into her forties.

After marrying an agricultural economist named John Lossing Buck she moved to rural Nanxuchou in Anhui province where she collected the material that she used in The Good Earth and other stories of China. She and her family lived through the Nanking Incident and were rescued by an American gunboat which took them down river to Shanghai.

As Kuomintang Nationalist troops neared and entered the city, which had many foreign residents, the Communist troops within the Northern Expeditionary Army targeted and looted foreign properties, doing much damage and killing and injuring many foreigners to discredit the Nationalist Party. Western and Japanese warships on the river responded by shelling Chinese forces in an effort to stop the looting of the city.

Chiang Kai-shek and his moderate wing of the Kuomintang blamed the outrages on communist elements in the army, an explanation which the Japanese and many westerners were very ready to accept. Although at the time he had no good evidence to support this, new research into the archives of the Soviet Embassy in Nanjing appear to confirm his suspicions. Foreign outrage was strong but the Americans and Japanese in particular wanted to avoid action against Chiang that would weaken his hand against the communists, whom they feared far more.

The Good Earth tells the story of life in the countryside before the 1949 Revolution which saw the Communist Party take over China. The Chinese Civil War changed the institutions, culture and ethics of Chinese life. The story tells how a rural family survived the huge upheavals. It is primarily the story of O-Lan who manages to save her family’s farm and land through a chance finding of pearls while trying to survive in the city during a time of famine and starvation. The pearls help the family to keep their farm land and buy back their home. The only thing which O-Lan asks is that she be allowed to keep two pearls for herself. Her youngest son becomes enamoured of a bad girl who convinces him to give O-Lan’s pearls to her. This threatens to break up the family but in time the son realizes what he has done and is reconciled again when he returns his mothers pearls to her.

Published in 1931 and 1932 this book won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938 and was a best selling novel for many years. It was this book and the many others which she wrote which created the idea of connection with the Chinese people and encouraged making China an ally during the Second World War.

Great sympathy was created with the Nationalists as they and the Communists fought to change the ruling of China from a monarchy into a modern democratic state. In the end, the Communists won but successive American governments backed the Nationalists who were exiled to Taiwan for many years until Richard Nixon made his epic historical journey to meet with Zhou en Lai during his term of office. Pearl Buck had known Zhou for many years and felt that he was a much better person than Mao ever was.

In 1937 a movie of The Good Earth was made which starred Paul Muni and won a Best Actress award for Luise Rainer. Very good historical content from someone who lived through a lot of it.