Jamie Ford – Required Reading

Summer Reading Suggestions 2018

July 17, 2018July 17, 2018 Shay Shortt

Each summer my book club goes on break, as members scatter to the four winds for visits and vacations. But being too busy to meet isn’t the same thing as too busy to read. So here’s this year’s list of suggestions for my book club members looking for something to read over the hiatus. September will be here before you know it! Click the headlines for links to full length reviews where applicable.

Cork Dork by Bianca Bosker

Bianca Bosker had a successful career as a technology journalist when she became fascinated with the world of wine, and blind taste testing in particular. How could expert tasters identify the grape, vintage, and even the vineyard of what they were drinking, without ever seeing the bottle? Cork Dork is the story of the eighteen months she spent following this obsession, quitting her job as a journalist in order to study to become a certified sommelier, while also interviewing vintners, sommeliers, chemists, and collectors. But the rubber really hits the road in Cork Dork when Bosker tries to make her way into the restaurant industry armed with her freshly polished but highly theoretical knowledge of wine and wine service, with often humourous results.

The Other Alcott by Elise Hooper

Fans of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women will already be aware that the much beloved children’s story was loosely based on the Alcott sisters’ childhood. The Other Alcott follows Louisa’s youngest sister, May, who lives under the shadow of her fame as the inspiration for the much-hated Amy March. May aspired to be an artist, and illustrated the first edition of Little Women. But while her sister’s novel was a critical success, May’s illustrations were panned. If Jo is the rough but shining favourite of Little Women, then The Other Alcott tries to imagine what it would be like to be the youngest sister of the person who penned this fictionalized version of herself. The Other Alcott follows May into Europe’s art scene at a fascinating period when the Impressionists were beginning to rock the French art establishment with their radical ideas, and more women were finding ways to formally study art.

One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter by Scaachi Koul

In this humourous collection of essays, Scaachi Koul vividly sketches a portrait of her Kashmiri immigrant family, including her parents, much older brother, and young niece. Her father in particular is a vivid character, the kind of person who will decide a year later that he isn’t done being mad at you about something you did that he didn’t approve of, and abruptly stop talking to you for months at time. The inter-generational conflict is at once unique to her situation, and recognizable to parents and children everywhere. With a deft hand, Koul combines funny family stories with insightful cultural commentary about growing up as first generation Canadian in an immigrant family.

The Jane Austen Project by Kathleen A. Flynn

When Rachel Katzman and Liam Finucane arrive in England in 1815, it is by unusual means, and with an even more unusual mission. Sent back in time from a somewhat dystopian near-future, they are charged with identifying the cause of Jane Austen’s untimely demise in 1817 at the young age of 41, and with recovering and bringing back her lost manuscript of The Watsons. This top-secret mission is known as The Jane Austen Project, and it has one very important rule; they must change the future as little as possible while achieving their objectives, or risk being stranded in Regency England forever. With this highly unusual premise, copy editor and ardent Austenite Kathleen A. Flynn has captured something of Austen’s tone and pacing, without trying to entirely mimic her style. Highly recommended for fans of time travel fiction that is more about the destination than the science of such an endeavour.

Love, Loss, and What We Ate by Padma Lakshmi

Padma Lakshmi has had a varied career. In her twenties she was a model, and then a television host and actress. She published a cookbook about what she ate to lose weight after a movie role required her to put on twenty pounds, and as a result made the improbable transition from model to foodie, co-hosting the popular cooking competition Top Chef. Love, Loss, and What We Ate is a chronicle of the role food has played in her life, through times of love, and times of loss, and how she navigated the jump from a career that was based on her looks to one that engaged her heart and her mind. From a childhood in India, to an early adulthood spent traveling Europe, to a second career in America, she shows how food can be a source of comfort, a connection to identity, and an occasion to examine our biases about beauty.

Love and Other Consolation Prizes by Jamie Ford

Local author Jamie Ford’s third historical novel is set in Seattle during the 1909 Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition. Ford opens on the better remembered 1962 fair, and uses it to echo and reflect the main action of 1909. The plot was inspired by a fascinating newspaper clipping from the AYP Expo, advertising the fact that an orphan boy was one of the raffle prizes at the fair. The fate of the real boy is unknown, but in his novel, Ford imagines what might have become of a young half-Chinese boy named Ernest, whose winning ticket is sold to the madam of an infamous brothel. Raised in a Catholic orphanage, Ernest comes to the red light district as the temperance movement is surging in the city, and finds himself caught between the Japanese house girl, Fahn, and Madam Flora’s stubborn daughter, Maisie. Through fiction, Ford explores the history of the city.

The Attention Merchants by Tim Wu

So much of the web is free, at least in terms of money paid by the users who access its vast array of content. From eyeballs on ads, to time on site, these are the metrics that the tech industry thrives on, as free-of-charge enterprises find ways to monetize. Wu explores the attention economy, and how we pay for all this free content with our time, and our personal information. Through the history of advertising, this book explores how we got to the present state of the advertising industry, and how it is morphing to adapt to our new technologies.

Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures by Vincent Lam

Four young medical school students start out on the road to becoming doctors, sure of their nobility of purpose and their calling, the real and trying rigours of the medical profession still ahead of them. Ming, Fitz, Sri, and Chen come from different backgrounds and have different career paths awaiting them. In a series of twelve interlinked short stories, Dr. Vincent Lam takes the reader behind the scenes of the medical world, from medical school to residency to the emergency room and the operating room. Lam’s characters are complicated and flawed, fallible humans who have been trusted with unthinkable responsibility, and faced with terrible dilemmas. This adds depth to the rich detail of the author’s own medical experience, making for an intriguing collection.

Reset by Ellen Pao

Get a glimpse into the boy’s club that powers the venture capital world funding today’s hottest tech start ups, and your favourite websites. Ellen Pao speaks up about her experience as an Asian American woman in this cliquey world, and offers her insights into why Silicon Valley’s diversity initiatives have failed. Going beyond the “pipeline problem,” Pao examines why women who made it through school and into lucrative careers later drop out of tech jobs in astonishing numbers, and what it would take to reset the industry culture so that everyone can thrive.

African-American, Canadian, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Read Diverse 2017, Read My Own Damn Books, Young Adult

Fall 2017 Fiction Mini-Reviews

November 21, 2017November 16, 2017 Shay Shortt

Hey there, stranger! Yes, I know, it’s been a while. After a busy summer of travel, at the beginning of September my husband and I started the process of buying our first home. We took possession at the end of October, and moved in November 1. It was a big change that has pretty much consumed my life for the last several months! I didn’t read as much as usual, and my writing time was eaten up by packing, packing, and more packing. Then the packing become unpacking, and things are slowly starting to get back to normal. Here are a few mini-reviews of some of what I read while I was away.

Exit, Pursued by a Bear

by E.K. Johnston

ISBN 9781101994580

This YA novel is a loose modern retelling of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. Hermione Winters and her best friend Polly are newly elected co-captains of the Palermo Heights cheer leading team, heading into their senior year, and their final summer cheer camp at Camp Manitouwabing. But all of their plans for the summer are thrown off course when Herimione is drugged, raped, and left in the lake. The book is an interesting and deliberate divergence from the commonly experienced reality of many rape victims, in that Hermione enjoys a supportive family, and is helped by police and counselors. However, she faces controversy in the community, and the wrath of her ex-boyfriend, Leo, who blames her for what happened. Although the identity of Hermione’s assailant is unknown, this is not really a who-dunnit. Rather, it is an emotional chronicle of the consequences of rape, further magnified by the fact that anytime Hermione encounters a boy who was at camp, she must face the idea that he could be her rapist. The biggest standout of this book is the strong female friendship depicted between Hermione and Polly, who echoes Shakespeare’s Paulina.

Love and Other Consolation Prizes

by Jamie Ford

ISBN 9780525492580

This is Ford’s third historical novel, this time set in Seattle during the 1909 Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition. Ford opens on the better remembered 1962 fair, and uses it to echo and reflect the main action of 1909. The plot was inspired by a fascinating newspaper clipping from the AYP Expo, advertising the fact that an orphan boy was one of the raffle prizes at the fair. The fate of the real boy is unknown, but in his novel, Ford imagines what might have become of a young half-Chinese boy named Ernest, whose winning ticket is sold to the madam of an infamous brothel. Raised in a Catholic orphanage, Ernest comes to the red light district as the temperance movement is surging in the city, and finds himself caught between the Japanese house girl, Fahn, and Madam Flora’s stubborn daughter, Maisie. As usual with Jamie Ford, I was most fascinated by the carefully incorporated local history. This seems to be his passion, and I often wonder what would happen if he tried his hand at non-fiction. (Disclaimer: I received access to an Advance Reader’s Copy of this book through the library where I work.)

The Turner House

by Angela Fluornoy

ISBN 9780544705166

Fluornoy’s debut novel is a complex family tale that follows how the thirteen Turner siblings must grapple with what to do with the house on Yarrow Street where they grew up after their mother is too old to live alone any longer. Fluornoy focuses on the oldest sibling, Charles, aka Cha-Cha, and the youngest, Lela, separated by more than twenty-three years in age, and eleven siblings. Cha-Cha is in therapy after having claimed to have seen a ghost, and Lela is struggling mightily to hide a gambling addiction. Flashbacks illuminate the history of their parents, Francis and Viola Turner, who came North to Detroit for the promise of a better life than the one the South offered its black citizens. Thematically, the book deals broadly with place, both the importance of the Turner family home, and the history that resides there, and also the city of Detroit. Fluornoy also addresses the legacy of addiction within and between generations of a family, and how families understand mental health and addiction more generally. The plot is slow moving, but the highlight is the complex family dynamic amongst the many siblings.

Challenges

Q1 Challenge Report 2015

April 1, 2015June 11, 2020 Shay Shortt

Happy April Fool’s Day! This post is not a joke. Rather, it is time to report in on how I’ve been doing with the reading goals I set myself all the way back in January.

2015 Goodreads Challenge

I set my reading meter to 116 books, and have gotten mildly ahead of schedule. I have read 40 books so far, putting me at 35% finished when I only need to be at 25%. The original idea was to slow down a bit and focus on my second goal, but I already had a bunch of books on hold at the library, so I plowed ahead and kept reading them as they came in. I did have to continue to keep my eye on what I was reading though, in order to stay on top of my second goal.

Diversify 2015

Reading 116 books in a year isn’t much of a challenge for me, but last year only 10% of the books I read were by authors who aren’t white. This isn’t surprising given the state of the publishing industry, but it was something I wanted to do better at. Knowing myself, I need to have a measurable goal in order to change, so I set the challenge that 25% of the books I read in 2015 would be by authors who are members of a visible minority.

Of the 26 books I have reviewed so far this year, 12 of them have been by diverse authors, putting my reviewed books at an amazing 46%. However, I’ve also read quite a few books that I haven’t reviewed. Of the 40 total books I’ve read this year, 14 of them were by diverse authors, so my actual total is more like 35%, still well ahead of my goal of 25%. You can find the qualifying reviews by checking out the posts in my Challenges category.

I’ve discovered that plenty of books by diverse authors are crossing my radar on a regular basis; it is just a matter of flagging those books and giving them a higher priority on my TBR pile. Even without pushing myself to read genres or topics that are outside my usual areas of interest, I have had no trouble finding plenty of diverse books for this challenge. I’ve got a stack of a dozen more qualifying books standing by, and still more on hold at the library. I finally read the truly excellent Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. I became utterly immersed in Aaliya’s strange literary rituals in An Unneccesary Woman by Rabih Alameddine, and next week I am leading a book group discussion of The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henriquez. I didn’t love every book I read (looking at you Songs of Willow Frost) but so far, the challenge has been an overwhelmingly positive experience.

How are your 2015 reading challenges going? Do you have any diverse books you would like to recommend?

Challenges, Fiction, Historical Fiction

Songs of Willow Frost

February 3, 2015January 15, 2015 Shay Shortt

by Jamie Ford

ISBN 978-0-345-52203-0

“You can’t expect children to sew their own gaping wounds without leaving a terrible scar.”

Five years ago, at the beginning of the Great Depression, twelve-year-old William Eng found his mother bleeding out in the bathtub of their apartment in the Bush Hotel in Seattle’s Chinatown. Since then, he has lived at Sacred Heart Orphanage under the watchful eye of Sister Briganti. Sometimes children are retrieved by their parents or adopted, but Chinese William, and his friends, Native American Sunny and blind Charlotte, have little hope of finding a new home. On a joint birthday outing for all the boys at the orphanage, William spots an Asian actress on screen who is a dead ringer for his mother, Liu Song. When he discovers that the actress, Willow Frost, will be coming through Seattle on tour, he sets out to meet her, determined to get the answers the nuns have so long denied him. Running away with Charlotte in tow, William learns the tragic and complicated story of how he came to live at Sacred Heart. The history he uncovers lays bare the plight of Chinese-Americans and Chinese immigrants in Depression-era Seattle.

Social injustice and oppression are rife in this story that begins in Seattle at the time of the Chinese Exclusion Act, and continues through the Great Depression. Even before the Depression, it was difficult for women to obtain legitimate employment, and the pay from the jobs that were available was meager. Non-white theatre-goers had to sit in a separate section, and coloured performers were relegated to the servants’ dining room of the venues that warmly receive their white counterparts. An American-born Chinese woman could not marry a white American, but risked losing her citizenship if she wed a man born in China. Poor women and members of minorities were subjected to involuntary sterilization at the hands of the state under the cover of medical aid. The list of atrocities is long, and historical remove turns the perpetrators of these injustices into flat, villainous caricatures.

With so many misfortunes in a single book, it is no surprise that most of the characters have more than one tragedy in their backstory. A tragic past is not the same thing as character development, but unfortunately Jamie Ford often treats it as such. While this certainly conveys the bleakness of the Depression, people who are little more than catalogues of tragedies make for unrealistic characters. William’s friend, and fellow runaway, Charlotte, is dealt with particularly unjustly. One of William’s few friends at Sacred Heart, she is the stereotype of a blind character, with acute hearing, and the ability to tell who has approached her without seeing them. Ford disposes of her quite callously when she is no longer useful to the story.

The main strengths of Songs of Willow Frost are historical colour and local interest strongly supported by Ford’s research (see the Author’s Note and Acknowledgements, particularly if you are local to Puget Sound and want to visit some of the museums and libraries that supported this project). William affects his escape from Sacred Heart in the back of the King County Library bookmobile, and the story stops at many recognizable Seattle landmarks, including Smith Tower’s Chinese Room. Ford neatly slips the developments in the film and music industries of the period, and other technological advances into the fabric of the story. Only occasionally does he get a little carried away, letting history overwhelm the narrative. Unfortunately, these real elements are frequently more interesting that the fiction that surrounds them.