Book 43, Glengarry School Days (1902) – Ralph Connor
“The 15 sketches that make up Glengarry School Days look back affectionately on childhood in Ontario at the time of Confederation. Yet behind Connor’s delightful account of boyhood enthusiasms – and his clear desire for a more orderly and courageous world – lie glimpses of the moral rigidity that also characterized homesteading life in early Canada.”

Other useful links:
the Wikipedia entry for Ralph Connor

My thoughts:
Summary: This book was worth reading for the shinny chapters alone. Hockey takes its place within the Canadian canon. Longer review to come when I have some time. Eight and a half out of ten for the shinny rivalry, six out of ten for Hughie’s moral journey, three out of ten for the butchery of the bear, two out of ten for the religious conversion of Craven and crew.

Thoughts amidst reading:
Certainly not as heavy-handed as the bulk of Man From Glengarry, thank goodness. In addition to Angel Mrs. Murray, we have Saint* Mrs. Finch. Connor really had a thing for idealising (in a Christian Victorian mould) and idolising the mature women in his stories. Yet his opinion of girls and women in general is hyper-patriarchal (for the most part…I keep thinking of Kate driving that frisky team of horses). The girls scrub and clean up the school room while the boys have the freedom to go out in the woods and gather evergreen branches, playing the entire time. The man of the house is expected to lay down the law in the form of a beating and only relents when challenged by another man (his wife is yelled at and told to STFU). The denigration of the “gurl” teachers and the general consensus of everyone, including Her Holiness Mrs. Murray, that a man is required for the position.

A couple other interesting points of observation:
The gun culture is crazy. It’s really more expected than not that the boys will be playing with real guns. I know the focus in this part of the story is about Hughie’s fall into temptation, but I can’t help but be distracted by the fact that the object for which he fell was a pistol that he could shoot squirrels with.

Foxy reminds me of a baby Milo Minderbinder from Catch-22.

***spoiler for Chapter 9 ff.***
*and Martyr, one would presume

Final thoughts:
I was kind of turned off by the whole mass conversion thing. Surely Tom Finch, Hughie, and Craven could think of doing something better with their lives than becoming ministers.

Apart from that, we had the expected deathbed martyrdom of the female saint, which was also rather…I dunno, can something be maudlin and twee at the same time?

All made up for with the shinny chapters. Really got me in the mood for the World Juniors which started the day after I finished the book. It’s worth reading those chapters alone.

From the back cover:
“Catch-22 is like no other novel. It has its own rationale, its own extraordinary character. It moves back and forth from hilarity to horror. It is outrageously funny and strangely affecting. It is totally original.

Set in the closing months of World War II in an American bomber squadron off Italy, Catch-22 is the story of a bombardier named Yossarian, who is frantic and furious because thousands of people he hasn’t even met keep trying to kill him. Catch-22 is a microcosm of the twentieth-century world as it might look to someone dangerously sane. It is a novel that lives and moves and grows with astonishing power and vitality—a masterpiece of our time.”

My thoughts:
This novel is undeniably a masterpiece. It is not only a commentary on the absurdity of war (and capitalism thrown in for good measure), not only an encapsulation of the entire 20th century Zeitgeist with all of its angst, humour, brutality, and tragedy, but a metaphor for human life itself. Absolutely brilliant with great characters, outrageously funny episodes, and a jumble of a timeline that works both to confuse and elucidate the action (how’s that for a paradox?). I loved every minute of this book, even when I cried. I listened to the audiobook version (read by Trevor White), which I would highly recommend, and I thought the novel was so fantastic that directly upon finishing it, I put it on my wishlist for a hard copy for my permanent collection. This deserves to be on the top ten list of 20th century novels for sure. But I’m not going to touch the sequel with a ten-foot pole. Some things are best left alone, and I get the feeling this is one of them.