My thoughts:
I loved this book, the story of the two men who drove the formation of a scientific medical examiner’s office in Prohibition-era New York City. A great mix of chemistry, interesting anecdotes of purposeful and accidental poisonings, political wrangling between several mayors and civil servants who just want to do the job they’re mandated to perform, the effects of Prohibition, the Depression, and the burgeoning machine age upon the populace. There could have been a bit more chemistry and biology, a little less detail about various animal experiments, but overall I think Blum struck the perfect balance to keep readers interested. A fascinating look at what things were like prior to regulated industry (proof to all those crazy libertarians that industry can’t be trusted to look after the best interests of people). A testament to two great men who worked tirelessly not just for knowledge for its own sake but in order to help people. There’s just so much material for thought here, but the presentation makes it a quick and easy read. Great book for a book club to read.

My rating: 8.5/10

Can something as complex and wondrous as the natural world be explained by a simple theory? The answer is yes, and now Evolution explains how in a way that makes it easy to understand.”

My thoughts:
A pretty decent explanation of evolution–surely better than what many students in the US public education system get in their whole time in primary and secondary school. I just finished reading The Blind Watchmaker, and I recognised many of the points and examples from there in the first part of Loxton’s book (he even drops Dawkins’ name a couple of times for some reason–like instead of saying “biologists” or “scientists” think he says “biologist Richard Dawkins thinks”). One significant omission was the discussion of ring species as evidence of evolution that we can see in real time.

The second part was a take down of common creationist talking points, presented in a question-answer format. Most of these were rather good, explaining things well in a short space without being either condescending or too abstruse for the target audience. I did however, think the answers to the final two questions were a bit weak and a little too much on the side of accommodation.

The first dealt with abiogenesis, and instead of being quite firm that though the details are sketchy, scientists have arrived at several plausible methods whereby living cells could have evolved from self-replicating chemicals. Instead, he stresses the fact that we don’t yet know how it happened, making it sound like we have no real clue at all. At least that’s how it came across. Okay, but not strong enough for my taste.

The second question was the one about religion. I mean, if he’s going to bring up religion at all he shouldn’t take the “non-overlapping magisteria” tack. It’s rather a cop out. It’s wrong to tell kids that “science as a whole has nothing to say about religion”. It’s an easy thing to say, and might prevent your book being banned by anti-intellectual parents, but it’s just not true. Science has plenty to say about religious claims: in the form of evidence-based history and archaeology, in the form of controlled studies of the efficacy of prayer, miracle claims, in the form of the study of neurology and the human brain to determine whether there’s any evidence for body/spirit dualism, in the study of anthropology and sociology to figure out how religion develops and operates in society and in diverse human cultures…you get my point. Sorry Daniel, “your family, friends and community” are not the “best people to ask about religious questions”. You want a kid to develop critical thinking skills? Don’t tell them to ask questions of people who may have a biased interest in selling their own religion, and say they’re the best option. Tell them to be critical and ask some experts or read some books by experts on those subjects.

—
Also, very important to consider when evaluating children’s books:

Presence of Sexism – A
Men and women, girls and boys are presented fairly equally. Loxton seemed to make an effort to include a female scientist by talking about paleontologist Mary Anning. So overall, a good job.
There is a page talking about hominids and the misleading “March of Progress” image which would have been better had it included both a man and woman in each place.

Presence of Heterosexism – mostly N/A
As sex was hardly mentioned at all aside from a couple of places where we would have to infer it (e.g. he uses a compromise in tail lengths as an example of balance between selection for speed and selection for sexual attractiveness, but doesn’t actually ever explain sexual selection).

Presence of Racism – B+
There’s quite a bit of diversity among questioners, but when humans were the subject that was being discussed, the illustrations were of white people only, and the March of Progress page still made it look a little bit like modern humans in the form of white people (actually men) were the “most evolved” or what have you. Definitely not the impression he was trying to make, but it could come across that way subliminally.

My rating: 7.5/10

My thoughts:
The penultimate chapter of the War of the Roses tetralogy (or pentalogy if you count Richard II where the whole thing begins, though that was a prequel of sorts). Warwick, won over to the Yorkist cause and then left hung out to dry when Edward changes his mind about his embassy to France to woo the French princess, dominates the play–at least until Act IV. We get the set up for Richard III as Richard proves both ambitious and bloodthirsty. Lots of back and forth as first one party then the other holds sway, with tragic losses on both sides, this would be pretty exciting to watch as a play even if we know how it all turns out.
My rating: 9/10

My thoughts:
This play was in some ways a lot like Coriolanus: a once-well respected citizen becomes an hated exile and is requested to come back into the fold. But the similarity ends there. Timon begins the play as a generous friend and benefactor–he’s willing to give everything he has away to his friends, willing to patronise the arts, willing to pay his servants well, willing to entertain even the lowest beggar at his table. But he must borrow to live this lifestyle and his addiction to generosity is as bad as an addiction to gambling or drink. He’s brought up short when it turns out he’s run out of money. But that’s all right, he thinks–these friends to whom he’s lavishly gifted will surely return his good will and loan him some money. But he’s wrong. Were these men just using him all along and now have no use for him? or are they just being wise with their own money, knowing that Timon can’t be trusted to pay them back? Either way, they all turn him down and he loses it. He’s angry and trusts no one to be honest. In a moment he turns from philanthropist to misanthrope. He ends up trying to be a hermit outside the city, but no one will actually leave him alone. He finds some gold, but he doesn’t want his old life back. It’s too late. The last part of the play is a study of the kind of indiscriminate bitterness against the world that takes hold and doesn’t let go. Not one of the best plays, and one gets the sense that there’s a whole subplot with Alcibiades basically missing.
My rating: 7/10

My thoughts:
Moll Flanders is one of the great characters of English literature. In one way, she illustrates how dependent women were upon men before the feminist movements of the past couple of centuries, in another, she herself is a proto-feminist doing her best to survive in a patriarchal culture. Born to a criminal in prison, she must work for her keep from the start. She has ambition, but it is not the ambition of, say, a Becky Sharpe. She just wants to live comfortably and work for herself rather than as a servant. She is blessed with intelligence, a likeable personality, a bit of beauty, and some fortunate occurrences that happen when she needs them the most (bad fortune comes her way too, so it doesn’t seem too contrived). Though she calls herself a whore, in fact, looking on her with liberated, twenty-first century eyes, the closest she gets is living for a few years as a kept mistress (without many other options I might add). She marries a few times, but one gets the impression that this is out of practical necessity rather than desire. Marriage (as long as it’s good) grants stability and respectability. Once poverty drives her to take up thievery though, she’s perfectly content to apply herself and her talents to it as a career that provides both her and her friend with a living. One could imagine Moll dropped into modern times taking up a far less ethically dubious profession. Though at the end she protests her true repentance, there is really little change to her character. She doesn’t allow herself to feel the shame and remorse that religion and men would demand of her. And it would seem that Providence doesn’t require it since she finishes up happy and well off.
My Rating: 9/10

Other useful links:
the Wikipedia entry for Morley Callaghan

My thoughts:
I enjoyed this immensely, my favourite of Callaghan’s so far. Callaghan is a great guide to the literary world of the twenties. He was obviously well-regarded by his slightly older contemporaries, including Hemingway and Sinclair Lewis and Ezra Pound and James Joyce. I love his enthusiasm as he meets up with his idols one by one. In between stories of these encounters, he talks about his day to day (or night to night) routine of walking around Paris and discussing literary and other things in the cafés over wine, punctuated by weekend boxing matches with Ernest.

From a coming-of-age, portrait of the artist as a young man in the first part of the book, we move to an older man’s reflection upon the sincere friendship of three men gone awry in the last act. The breakup of the friendship of the three men over something so small and inconsequential was sad and unnecessarily unfortunate. Or, perhaps, according to Morley’s analysis of their natures, unavoidable.

Great, inspirational passages about writing as an art, an interesting description of a renowned time and place with famous people entering and exiting the stage, and a meditation on the vicissitudes of friendship.

Today the novel is recognized as marking a significant shift in fiction written in and about the Canadian West. The accuracy of its detail makes it one of the finest examples of local realism in Canadian writing. It is also a fascinating chronicle of conflicting personalities, and of the genius of British Columbia hand-loggers, the culture of camp life, and the intrigues and corruption of the lumber business at the turn of the century.”

Other useful links:
the Wikipedia entry for Woodsmen of the West

My thoughts:
So from Ontario, we travel west to the rough frontiers of British Columbia on the other side of the young country. It took me quite a long time to read this one, even though it’s not that long a book (plus it’s episodic, so one might think it would go quickly).

It reminded me quite a lot of Moby-Dick without all of the biblical overtones–the western loggers were rather a secular bunch–and without the extensive descriptions of the process (in this case, of logging rather than whaling). We don’t get the minutiae of the procedure we get from Melville, as the focus is rather on the character of the men who work on the frontiers of civilisation and the culture which they have constructed. I loved to read the descriptions of frontier life. I think the illustration of the Western ideal, the Western character, is still today the mythos in which Western Canadians see themselves: tough, uncomplaining, independent, active, educated by doing rather than reading books.

I liked Marty and his self-deprecation–he seemed to embody the amateur outsider, just there to observe the culture into which he’d been dropped. Carter, the obsessive, cruel taskmaster seemed a close cousin of Ahab.

It is quite modern in tone–a precursor to the unembellished prose of later decades–and very episodic. It has the feel of a memoir rather than a novel.

Other useful links:
the Wikipedia entry for Leaven of Malice

My thoughts:
Brilliant. Funny. Poignant even at times. Robertson takes us back to Salterton some four years after Tempest-Tost, where someone has placed a false engagement notice about Pearl Vambrace and Solomon Bridgetower in the paper. Professor Vambrace is outraged, thinking that the mysterious ‘X’ did it as an insult to him. When he doesn’t get the apology he wants from Gloster Ridley, the Bellman’s editor, he decides to sue for libel. Everyone in town seems to be affected by the hubbub created and we get to eavesdrop upon conversation after conversation (accompanied by Davies’ delightful and witty commentary) as the overlapping ripples spread out and reflect back on each other. All of the characters are human and flawed, but Davies loves them anyway and we do too. With the dean’s speech on malice at the climax, Davies takes another step toward the mythical and philosophical atmosphere of his later trilogies.

Sympathetic, humorous, and wonderfully detailed, The Imperialist is an astute analysis of the paradoxes of Canadian nationhood, as relevant today as when the novel was first published in 1904.”

Other useful links:
the Wikipedia entry for Sara Jeannette Duncan

My thoughts:
Before I started, I thought that from the description this sounds like it’s the same kind of book that Edith Wharton or perhaps Henry James would write, but with a distinctly Canadian twist. But I found that she writes a little more like George Eliot or even Elizabeth Gaskell but with a Modern burnish, almost anticipating Virginia Woolf at times.

The middle of this book was rather tedious as the author went on and on explaining Lorne’s positive support of imperialism* and his party’s wavering position on the issue. I wish Duncan had spent more time on her characters, their relationships, and a little less on political philosophy. But the parts she spent on those things were very good.

From the setup, the natural ending would have been an electoral success for Lorne and romantic disappointment for Advena, but Duncan switches things up and at the last minute, Lorne’s political career crashes and burns (along with his proposed marriage, but good riddance), and Advena’s marriage suddenly becomes convenient as well as desirable.

There are threads in this book that we can see working their way through Canadian identity in the future…

*In this book “imperialism” does not refer to colonial oppression and extermination of indigenous cultures and peoples as it is used today. Rather, it refers to protected, preferential trade agreements between the mother country and daughter countries (in this case Britain and Canada).

As her story unfolds, we are drawn into her past. We meet Hagar as a young girl growing up in a black prairie town; as the wife of a virile but unsuccessful farmer with whom her marriage was stormy; as a mother who dominates her younger son; and, finally, as an old woman isolated by an uncompromising pride and by the stern virtues she has inherited from her pioneer ancestors.

Vivid, evocative, moving, The Stone Angel celebrates the triumph of the spirit, and reveals Margaret Laurence at the height of her powers as a writer of extraordinary craft and profound insight into the workings of the human heart.”

Other useful links:
the Wikipedia entry for The Stone Angel

My thoughts:
Brilliant book, just as good as I remembered (though I remembered no details, so it was like reading it fresh). I’m all teary and goopy ’cause I just finished it. Hagar’s a great character to read about but she would be hell to live with (and I don’t mean just when she’s old). I felt much more sympathy for Marvin and Doris than I did the first time reading it. I mean, imagine being in your sixties and having to deal not only with your own issues, but having to take care of a woman who seems unable to make anything easy for anyone. My own mother is 68 and suffering from Graves disease which is giving her double vision, photo-sensitivity, and constant tearing. I can only imagine what a burden it would be for her to have an even older, sicker, and more difficult parent to take care of.

Anyway, I’m wondering if Laurence was writing with a moral—since anyone can see that Hagar would’ve had a happier life if she’d married someone her father (coincidently or not) approved of—i.e. pride was her undoing. Or are we supposed to admire her independence and willingness to speak the truth as she sees it? Or are we just supposed to be neutral, afforded a glimpse into the mind of someone who finds some strange comfort in being miserable and keeping others distant?

A supremely well-crafted book.