Books read:

• The Hairdresser of Harare – Huchu, Tendai
• The Street – Petry, Ann
• Roses and Bullets – Adimora-Ezeigbo, Akachi
• His Treasure – Taye, Kiru
• Cat vs Human – Surovec, Yasmine
• A Red Herring Without Mustard – Bradley, Alan
• Under my Skin – Graves, Judith
• I am Half-Sick of Shadows – Bradley, Alan
• Swing Low – Toews, Miriam
• Ship of Souls – Elliot, Zetta
• Wanted Women – Scroggins, Deborah

Although I managed to read quite a few books, December was mostly an incredibly slow reading month for me. In fact, only four of those books were read prior to December 24th. Afterwards I did get more reading time in over the few days of holiday I had and then in the evenings the following week.

This month was busy with family and events. My mother turned 50 and shared some of her favourite books mid-month, and then Christmas was great this year as I got to spend it with the family. I posted in the Virtual Advent tour, participated in two secret Santa‘s, I shared some holiday recipes, and the Indie Lit Award nominations closed. The BAND topic this month was really interesting as we all talked about gauging the truth of the nonfiction books that we read.

Unfortunately near the end of the month I had computer issues and so fell behind with reviews and posts (hence why you are getting this post so late!), but thankfully it’s back up now. I still managed, however, to post a quick recap of my year of Nigerian reading (which I really enjoyed). Looking forward to 2012, I also posted about a challenge that my room-mate and I came up with (Amanda and Iris are informally joining in as well – feel free to join us!).

A full 2011 reading wrap-up will be coming shortly, complete with all kinds of fun and extra nerdy statistics

• I passed the 500 post mark (over 600, actually)
• I passed the 15,000 comment mark (which isn’t as impressive as it sounds – that counts me responding to all comments!)
• I passed 10,000 tweets (oh there is always something to talk about)
• I visited 5 continents (India and the United Arab Emirates in Asia, the UK in Europe, Canada, the USA, and Aruba in North America, Botswana and South Africa in Africa, and Venezuela in South America)
• I got to attend Book Expo America again, and be a panelist at the Book Blogger Convention
• I attended Book Camp Toronto, and a variety of other fantastic literary events in the city
• I met a huge number of fantastic bloggers in person, all over the world
• I read some truly fantastic books
• I moved to Toronto, otherwise known as the best city ever
• I had a fantastic time co-hosting the Year of Feminist Classics project
• I got to help found and participate in BAND
• Another year judging the Indie Lit Awards under the fantastic directorship of Cass
• I participated in some amazing discussions on and offline about publishing, writing, diversity, feminism, racism, and numerous other topics
• I grew and learned a lot thanks to all of you

In celebration of all of this and much more, I will give away a few copies of some of my favourite reads of the year. Six lucky commenters will each win their choice from the following: In Dependence by Sarah Ladipo Manyika, African Love Stories edited by Ama Ata Aidoo, Rape New York by Jana Leo, A Human Being Died that Night by Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor, or The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander. (Six winners and six books to choose from, of course, because it is the 6th!) To win, you must comment telling me which book you would like to win and why. Contest will be open until January 14th at midnight, EST.

Title:

Back in 2007 through to 2009 or so I read a lot of books, especially non-fiction and memoirs, set in the Middle East. I’m not sure why my attention shifted, but for whatever reason this book ended up on my shelf unread for a few years. While I don’t normally post DNF reviews, for the books that are part of the Roommate Challenge I will, so that anyone following knows the status.

The two authors of this book travelled to the Gaza Strip and lived there for six months with a refugee family, and for the following six years they collected graffiti and materials from the intifada. This book talks about their experience in the Gaza Strip as well as the materials they archived and the intifada itself. Included in the book is also includes 86 illustrations from their archived materials. It promises to change the way we think about suicide bombers and to see that the phenomenon is worldwide rather than specific to Islam.

The book starts off rather interestingly with a really interesting introduction that piqued my interest as the authors talked about language and how powerfully it informs views and positions.

Anyone who has tried to write about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, tried to understand both sides of that conflict, will know what we mean when we compare it to walking through a minefield. Every term carries within itself a preemptive judgement [...] Every choice is forced; there are no neutral terms. (page xix)

Sadly it lost me shortly after this as it got started because I found it just jumped around way too much and there was no concise storyline. Part 1 tells of their time in the Gaza Strip but it was more a collection of events that sometimes overlapped with much repeating of the same ideas and phrases. Part 2 is an examination of their archived material from the intifada. In this section there was even more repeating, and they kept describing images as if they were shown on the page when they actually weren’t. It was a very frustrating and dry read.

I feel that Part 3, the examination of identity politics and the way we all think of suicide bombers, would have been more interesting, but I just couldn’t make it that far. I gave up at page 77 of 181 (214 when you include notes and index). If you don’t mind meandering repetitions of the same facts and bits of information, you may want to give this one a try.

Title:

Why yes, I did read this during and after presents were being opened, but it was just so good! I follow the site and so was incredibly happy to see that a book was being published with a collection of the comics that Surovec had created. If you are currently owned by a cat, or have been in the past then you realize that people don’t own cats, cats own us. You will also, I think, love this collection in which the author draws on the hilarity of living with and being obsessed with your feline friends.

There really isn’t a lot I can say about this other than that it is fantastic and speaks to all cat lovers. So many topics explored, so much head-nodding and agreeance, and much laughter. The book was a big hit with others at Christmas too who all rolled their eyes at the obviousness of me and the book, but also laughed at many of the cartoons contained within.

The SECOND piece of good news today is that today (8 days after initial hard drove crash) IT got my replacement laptop working and so I am back online! I will be catching up possibly for weeks, but will try to get through google reader, writing reviews and wrap-ups, and all that other fun stuff.

Happy 2012 all!

My small collection of Nigerian lit on my shelf. (A large percentage of what I read is on the Kindle rather than in print form.)

I read quite a lot of titles through the year, and have linked to all of my reviews on the dedicated page. Some of my new favorite authors have come via the project and certainly some of my favorite books of the year. I expanded from my usual reading fare to include children’s books, romance, mystery, as well as fiction and non-fiction. I sought out authors who are still in Nigeria though that was a bit more difficult. Thanks to technology these days, however, it is becoming easier and easier.

I’m unsure if I can keep up every Friday, but I certainly won’t be giving up on Nigerian literature. The country is a fascinating one with such a huge population, with the divide between religions, and with the history the country has experienced. Authors there are coming out with some really great books, and there are so many of them to check out. I am also planning on hosting another Nigerian reading challenge this year though perhaps doing more like Kinna did with her Ghanaian Reading Week and expanding it to a week-long event filled with different exciting activities. Do let me know what you think on that idea.

If you ever need a recommendation for a Nigerian title, you can check out the review database here, and don’t forget to add your own reviews to it.

I will leave you with a new short story from a new favorite author, Sarah Ladipo Manyika, that she shared with me. All readers and collectors of books will be truly touched, I guarantee!

Hopefully will be back with reviews and real posts soon…

In more exciting news, I got a new bookshelf for Christmas from my Opa and I set it up last night. Best thing about it? The fact that the model is called a ‘library’

(I apologize for the poor picture quality. I am working on the phone.)

Title:

North American urban fantasy / paranormal books are really losing their appeal to me, I have to admit. I know that in Europe and the UK the trends are different, but I’ve not read many books from there so am unsure how they stack up. As purely enjoyment, this book and all of the others are great. But the more I think as I read them, the more frustrated I often get. That being said, this was one of the better ones.

So let me start with the positives. Graves has set the book in a fictional town in Northern Alberta, Canada, which is really great. There aren’t a ton of paranormal books with a Canadian setting it seems, as even the few I’ve read by Canadian authors seem to be set in the US anyway. It was fun reading about something like this set a little bit closer to home (if only in the sense that my mother is from Alberta).

The main character, Eryn, is half human and half Wolven. Wolven are natural shape-shifters as opposed to werewolves who are created. After her parents disappeared she was sent to this remote community to lie low while her parents are found. Instead, it seems that Redgrave is full of paranormal activity and Eryn is thrown into the middle of it.

The story was well-paced with lots of action and movement, and definitely provided much entertainment while reading. This is the type of book that you can easily get lost in as you simply sink in and follow the action. Unfortunately, for me it almost requires that. We have the typical love triangle between two very different bad boys and Eryn. We have the whole ‘super-great-kick-ass-heroine who just can’t even hardly remember her name when a hot boy is around because CLEARLY he makes her lose all bearing and stop thinking’ issue. Where a girl can’t function around a hot guy so no matter how kick-ass she is it doesn’t matter.

What bothers me most, and I keep talking about it with young adult paranormal, is the rape culture. We also have, in this book, the usual old she wants to avoid but psychological mind-tricks make her want him so bad (i.e. her mind isn’t under her control, basically we could term this mind-rape). A guy is literally forcing himself into her thoughts, making her want him, and etc. We are shown that this is problematic but not because it is an invasion of privacy and self and the loss of control and consent, but because it means that her mind is dark and so it allows it. It becomes her fault that he can get into her mind. Oh right. Of course. Back to the standard victim-blaming we are all so good at.

Lastly, we see the excepto-girl issue where Eryn and Brit are great and kick-ass but the other girls are just girly and annoying. Because of this fact they are shown to be susceptible to vampire charm and thus again, back to the victim blaming tactic discussed above. Their minds aren’t pure because they are too selfish and vain, and so it is their fault that they fall prey. While we see potential by the end for this stereotype to change, that potential may not come through.

So in all, entertaining and if you can ignore the problematic aspects, you’ll likely enjoy this. I say this knowing that I am really usually one of the only ones complaining about these issues, so most people would probably enjoy it (and oh, how it hurts to admit that). (Though again, this book is much better than many of the other popular ones I’ve read recently.) I should warn you though that this is (of course) the first book in a series as well. And yet… I really want to know what happens next. THIS is the issue with these books. They somehow draw you in completely and totally despite the glaring problems. So the problems get pushed to the back of your brain and you ignore them, but you still absorb their message.

Title:

I read and reviewed the first two in the Flavia de Luce mystery series by Bradley last year, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag. I find the series light and enjoyable especially because Flavia herself is such a fun and precocious main character. At eleven years old, obsessed with chemistry, and quite independent in her home with a distant father and two elder sisters.

Upon reading this third book, maybe because of all of the reading I’ve been doing between reading the first two and reading this one, I did notice a few slightly troubling aspects. The first is the classism that prevalent in these books. Flavia and her family live in Buckshaw and their family is historically, apparently, the minor royalty of the area. They play certain roles such as leading the choir and are deferred to by many of the people in the town. While they suffer the same economic hardships, they certainly are in a better place to begin to deal with them.

Additionally, the de Luce family has two servants, Dogger and Mrs. Mullet. They appear not to be able to do anything on their own, with Mrs. Mullet doing all the cooking and cleaning and Dogger performing other odd jobs around the house. Dogger has apparently suffered during the war, spending some time as a prisoner of war which has, according to the text, addled his brain. He is portrayed as a brilliant man at times, and at others as a simpleton. Mrs. Mullet is portrayed as a huge gossip. This having of servants while the rest of the townspeople are somehow beneath them, as Flavia’s clear disregard of and snooping in their lives shows, really highlights the classism.

This book deals chiefly with a Romanian Gypsy in her caravan whom Flavia invites to stay on their property and who is then found beaten. The portrayal of a Gypsy, while showing her to be more than a child-snatcher or lying fortune-teller as the stereotypes in the book seem to insist she is, is still problematic in the sense that there are but two non-native Englanders in the book and they are both treated in this way of stereotyping and exoticizing. The other is a former German prisoner-of-war who decided to stay on in the area, though he is discussed more in the prior books.

One thing I really like about the books is their treatment of sisterhood. Flavia both loves and, because she loves them so much, hates her sisters. Their petty bickering, their lies and trickery, and their attempts at revenge, while perhaps amplified still, I think, do a good job of showing the various ways that sisters interact. Flavia is eleven and we can see throughout how the actions of her older sisters hurt her and the way she tries to get revenge, while still unsure of what to believe or not. Their father’s absence from their lives clearly affects them as they struggle to use the means they can, which often includes cruelty, to feel better about their place in the house and themselves.

While I enjoyed the book as a light mystery, I felt it also gave a lot to think about on the other subjects. Recommended for lovers of mysteries. Recommended as well for anyone who likes to collect odd facts and figures as these books are full of them!

Have spent the last week with my family in Prince Edward Island and yesterday we got snow – which is still continuing. Although being in Venezuela and seeing all of the Christmas trees for sale (shipped from Canada) was an odd experience and really made me think through what has become the tradition around the world, I still love having snow on the ground myself. Isn’t it odd to think about though? Even down in the southern parts of the world people sing ‘Let it Snow’, people decorate trees that are shipped in from other areas, it is rather odd right?

When we were children my aunt knitted us all Christmas stockings nice and extra large as a joke on my parents. These are the stockings we use each year for Santa to fill. Each year we attempt to stretch them to their fullest (especially me, as I am the eldest and the stockings have grown each year!). Here is one of my favorite photos of my two younger sisters and I back in 2005.

Happy holidays everyone Thank you again and I hope you visit again in the new year.