Pop Goes the Weasel

Ah good ole Patterson, the king of the stock character.

 

In the fifth installment of the Alex Cross books, Cross is on the trail of the Jane Doe murderer.  Indigent women in Southeast Washington (one of the poorest neighbourhoods) are turning up dead, and Chief of Police Pittman refuses to admit a serial killer may be in their midst.  Undaunted, Cross continues to follow his gut and track an insane killer, and his actions once again puts those closest to him in jeopardy.

 

One of the recurring storylines in these books has been Cross’ love affair with school principle Christine Johnson.  In Pop Goes the Weasel, Christine agrees to marry Cross, despite misgivings over his career choice and the dangers it involves, and the two, along with Cross’ family, take a trip to Bermuda where Christine is kidnapped, ostensibly by the very killer Cross is trying to catch back in Washington.

 

There are so many things wrong with this book, I don’t know where to begin.  Dead bodies pop up everywhere, though most never get discovered by the police.  The police work is incredibly shoddy, and Cross spends most of his time mooning over Christine and thinking about future career paths, then he does chasing the killer.  Much of the plot is contrived, and when Christine disappears, it’s so obviously a trumped up plot ploy to throw obstacles in Cross’ path, that it’s beyond believable.  Also, Cross and his family seem to be the only ones affected by Christine’s kidnapping – no family, friends or co-workers come out of the woodwork to lament her disappearance.  Months jump by from one chapter to the next in which Cross does nothing to find Christine nor solve the multiple deaths in Southeast.  I could go on, but you’re probably as tired of reading this as I was of the book by the end.

 

That being said, there were elements of the book that still kept me reading.  The killer’s character was quite well drawn, and the book had the usual James Patterson thrill rides, though often disrupted by his use of stock characters and banal plot twists.  And the ending I found maddening.  Once again, Cross fails to follow through and properly catch his man, so I expect the killer to pop up again in the next book or two.  I like characters that are flawed – makes them relatable, but really, Cross is turning out to be less flawed and more just plain inept with each subsequent book.  I can only hope the series improves with later books, because I’ve unfortunately committed myself to reading the lot of them.

 

Till next time, happy reading!

L J

 

 

TBR = 8

WPL = 19

L Meets up With Windsor Book Club to Dish John Grisham

I am so excited about Windsor Book Club.  It’s new and they meet once a month at various coffee shops around Windsor.  I have been looking to join a book club, mostly because I can’t get enough of talking about books, but when I learned the inaugural meeting in May would be discussing James Patterson’s Alex Cross’ Trial I had to bow out.  I’m still back at book 5 in the Cross series, and didn’t want to ruin anything by reading ahead.  When I heard what June’s book selection was, it didn’t prove to be much better:  John Grisham’s The Confession.  I am not a Grisham fan.  Indeed, from the time I read The Pelican Brief, back in the early ‘90’s I vowed never to read him again.  I did not enjoy his style of writing and found him very repetitive.  But trouper that I am, and because I’m dying to meet this fantastic group of readers, I shelved my cynicism and put the book on hold at WPL.

 

Much to my surprise, I quite enjoyed The Confession, which is a lesson:  Never judge a book by its author or anything they previously wrote.  You never know when a book will enthrall.

 

In typical Grisham fashion, we have an underprivileged young black man on death row, awaiting execution in Texas for the killing of school mate and cheerleader Nicole Yarber.  For nine years, Donte Drumm’s hot shot lawyer Robbie Flak has exhausted all avenues in the justice system to exonerate his client.  Texas is unique in that a murder conviction can be garnered with merely a confession – no dead body is required.  Coerced into confessing to a crime he didn’t commit after hours of police questioning that was more like battering, Donte was sentenced to death. 

 

To make matters worse, Texas has a new governor that is determined to cull the prisoners on death row, and executions are occurring fast and furiously.  Drumm’s days are numbered, and his appeals are all but exhausted.  With mere days left before his execution, a serial rapist with multiple convictions visits a Lutheran minister in Topeka, Kansas and confesses he is the real killer.  A frantic battle ensues to save the life of Donte Drumm.

 

For the first two-thirds of the book, I was gripped in the story of Donte and his wrongful conviction.  I was convinced The Confession was Donte’s story, and how he narrowly cheated death by lethal injection.  But this is a Grisham novel, and so I should have known better.  The true protagonist of this story is the death penalty, and the risk of killing innocent lives because the American justice system is far from perfect and wrongful convictions do happen.

 

Although it didn’t have the happy ending I so very much wanted, still The Confession was a worthwhile read. 

 

The book club met up at the Old Town Sweet Shop in Olde Walkerville and amongst tea and espresso, we shared our views of the novel.  Opinions were fairly unanimous.  The group as a whole found the book predictable, and those who read Grisham religiously found The Confession to be typical – Grisham writes about causes, not so much people or inner conflict.  The Confession was likened to Grisham’s fact-based books, that detail specific trials and judicial procedure, and was declared to be very factual in regards to the South, racial attitudes and police procedure.  Although we thought the characters to be fairly stereotypical and rather cookie-cutter, we found the Lutheran minister’s actions heart-warming because he believed the real killer’s claims and did everything in his power to stop the execution, and also this character experienced the most growth in the novel.  But truly, the book was less about people and more about the ills of the American judicial system and the barbaric practice of the death penalty.  We attributed much of America’s judicial ills on the fact that judges are elected.  They are likely less concerned with truth and justice and more with keeping their voters happy so they’re re-elected.

 

All in all, a lively discussion ensued.  I met a great group of people and can’t wait for next month’s meeting!  If you’d like to learn more about the book club, feel free to contact me.

 

Till next time, happy reading.

L J

 

 

TBR = 8

WPL = 18

L Reads New CanLit for May

What defines gender?  What makes us male or female?  Kathleen Winter explores the nature vs nurture debate in her beautifully written novel, Annabel.

 

It is 1968 and a baby is born in Croyden Harbour, Labrador to first-time parents Treadway and Jacinta Blake.  Attending at the home birth, Thomasina Baikie notices something unusual about this little bundle of joy – it is a child born with both male and female genitalia, a hermaphrodite. 

 

Treadway decides the child will be called Wayne and raised as a son.  The doctors agree the penis is developed enough to allow this, and an operation is performed in Goose Bay.  Only three people and Wayne’s doctors know the truth, that little Wayne is a boy-girl child.  To everyone but Jacinta and Thomasina, he is Wayne.  Jacinta sees the daughter she could have had when she looks at her child, and this creates a barrier between mother and son.  Thomasina has lost her husband and daughter, Annabel, in a boating accident, and so she christens Wayne “Annabel” and calls him this in secret.

 

Although Wayne believes he is a boy, and is taught the life of a hunter/fisherman as all Labradorian boys are, he is fascinated by geometric shapes, music, and synchronized swimming.  He longs to be like Elizaveta Kirilovna and make beautiful patterns in the water.  He saves his money and orders a bright orange swimsuit from the Eaton’s catalogue, hiding it from his father, knowing instinctively this is something boys don’t wear.  He wants nothing to do with the boys in his class and their rough and tumble play; rather, he falls for sweet Wally Michelin, a budding opera singer, who shares his passion for music and daydreaming.

 

As he grows, Wayne continues to visit the hospital in Goose Bay, and is prescribed various pills, because although he is raised as a boy, his body is showing signs of the girl-child within.  The pills help his body form the masculine lines of a boys, they help his voice deepen and his shoulders to broaden, and although Wayne knows he is different from the other boys in his class, he doesn’t know why.  The truth of his birth is kept secret until one fateful trip to the hospital at the age of twelve reveals all, and Wayne begins to explore the other part of himself on a journey of self-discovery to find his true identity.

 

A truly remarkable and captivating novel, Annabel doesn’t disappoint from page one to the very end.

 

Till next time, happy reading!

L J

 

TBR = 8

WPL = 17

L Makes out like a Bandit at the Raise-a-Reader Book Sale

The Raise-a-Reader book sale was held this past weekend at the Windsor Crossing Outlet Mall, and not one to miss an opportunity to pick up books dirt cheap, I stopped by Saturday and bought an armload full.  Paperbacks as cheap as $1???  Can’t beat that!

 

I picked up several Canadian authors, many new to me, among them being:

 

Vincent Lam’s Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures, which won the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2006 and was made into a series on CBC.  Lam was born in my home town of London, Ontario which is pretty cool J

 

Emma Donoghue’s The Woman Who Gave Birth To Rabbits.  Donoghue has received some press lately for Room, a dark, disturbing book about five-year old Jack who’s locked in a small room with his mother, which I’m dying to read.  It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the 2010 Governor General’s Award, and won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.  Hoping Rabbits is just as good.

 

Jane Urquhart’s Away.  Urquhart is a Canadian author I’ve heard much about, but never read, so I was pleased to pick up this title.

 

Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost.  Ondaatje is best-known, I think, for The English Patient.  I have not read him yet, so was happy to pick up one of his novels.

 

Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s best known work, One Hundred Years of Solitude.  A Columbian writer and a book I’m very much looking forward to.

 

Joyce Carol Oates We Were the Mulvaney’s.  I may have read something by Oates in school, though nothing readily comes to mind.  She’s a rather prolific American author and I’m quite looking forward to reading her.

 

And of course, I picked up a classic, Henry James’ Portrait of a Lady.  I tend toward more 18^th Century and early Victorian novels, but just couldn’t resist James when I saw him amongst the piles of books on sale.  Can’t wait to tackle this classic.

 

And finally the piece de resistance, Paul McCartney’s Blackbird Singing: Poems & Lyrics 1965-1999.  Being a HUGE Beatles fan, this is a true book sale find!  

 

Now I know my TBR reads are woefully limping along behind my WPL reads this year, but summer is finally here, bringing with it no classes, lots of vacation, and lazy weekends spent reading on the patio and with these new tempting additions to my TBR bookcase, I hope to balance out those reading stats as soon as!  That is, of course, after I finish reading the three library books I already have checked out. *blush* (once an addict always an addict….)

 

Till next time, happy reading!

L J

 

“Hello, my name is Lisa, and I am a library-oholic.”

L Reads a Classic

I was first introduced to John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress in Louisa May Alcott’s delightful novel Little Women.  Whenever I read great works of literature, I like to pay attention to novels the characters are discussing, because it gives depth to the novel by showcasing the thoughts and feelings of the day.  In Little Women, the four sisters, Amy, Jo, Beth and Meg act out scenes from Bunyan’s pivotal spiritual work, The Pilgrim’s Progress. 

 

Many Brits immigrated to the new world due to religious persecution and in North America, they were free to practice their Quaker and Puritan beliefs, without pressure to reform to the Church of England.  Bunyan was the son of a tinker who was exposed to different forms of worship when fighting for the Parliamentary Army, who wanted to depose King Charles I.  Imprisoned for his beliefs, Bunyan wrote several books of spiritual discourse, The Pilgrim’s Progress being his most famous and most read.

 

In The Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian is on a quest to relieve himself of the burden of sin and enter the kingdom of heaven.  With him, he carries the Bible, the book that will tell him how to get from this world to the next.  Along the way, he encounters many barriers and obstacles in characters like Mr. Worldly Wiseman, Obstinate, Pliable, etc., that attempt to dissuade him from his purpose as he traverses through dangerous places like the Hill Difficulty, the Valley of Humiliation, Vanity Fair, etc.  The journey though is not so much a physical path, as a spiritual one.

 

It’s a simple story, of course, an allegory of spiritual belief, that by reading the Bible, one will discover the secrets to the Kingdom of Heaven, but if one strays from the right and true path, then therein lies death and perhaps even Hell, and eternal life will be forever lost.

 

In its day, The Pilgrim’s Progress was a lesson every young child needed to learn, as religion played a huge part in each and every life.  Today, however, this cynical, non-religious mind determines it’s an interesting tale, one worth reading for its classical and historical significance, rather than any religious lesson.

 

Note: The edition I own carries both The Pilgrim’s Progress and its sequel, The Pilgrim’s Progress Part II in which Christian’s wife and children attempt to follow him from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City.  As I had many library books piling up, I decided to split the reading of The Pilgrim’s Progress into its two parts, and blog about them separately as two individual books.  As they were technically originally written and published separately, and although they are now often published in one volume, as one complete work, C says it’s perfectly okay to treat them as two separate entities.   So I will.  Talk to her if you have a problem with that. ;p

 

Till next time, happy reading.

L J

 

TBR = 8

WPL = 16

Another off the TBR pile

Okay, so I can’t say I always pick winners, and admittedly read some really odd stuff, but British writer Jonny Glynn’s The Seven Days of Peter Crumb has got to take the cake for the weirdest book I own.  Definitely bizarre, disturbing, and horrifically graphic, Glynn tells the tale of a bereaved father descending into psychotic hell and taking unsuspecting citizens of London with him in a week of terror told with the blackest of humour and in very graphic detail.  This is not a book for the faint of heart.

 

That being said, I did enjoy it.  There are moments of such abject humanity, that you can’t help being drawn in.  Peter Crumb has lost his five-year-old daughter in a most horrific crime.  His marriage and life have fallen apart, and he now lives in a basement flat dealing with a splintered psychosis.  The story is told from Crumb’s perspective, and so you witness first-hand that psychosis, the movement between rational and irrational thought and action, and Crumb’s splintered personality becomes a separate character, alive and breathing, at turns lurking in dark corners and overtaking Crumb’s body.  Fascinating stuff.

 

Till next time, happy reading.

L J

 

TBR = 7

WPL = 16

L Reads New CanLit for April

I was extremely excited to read Alexander MacLeod’s collection of short stories, Light Lifting, for my April CanLit selection, especially after I was introduced to it as a selection for the ScotiaBank Giller Prize.  MacLeod is the son of veteran Canadian short story writer Alistair MacLeod who is something of a local legend in my adopted city of Windsor, Ontario.  You will sometimes find Alistair in the University of Windsor’s English Department, where he is Professor Emeritus, and I had the very great fortune and pleasure of meeting him several years ago when he sat down with Marty Gervais’s (another local author and publisher) writing group to discuss his writing methodology.  There is nothing more fascinating than listening to a published author discuss how they come up with story ideas and their work habits.  I can still picture Alistair’s 8.5 x 11 exercise book in which he writes all his stories by long-hand.  He writes on one side of the page only, leaving the other side blank for edits and revisions.  That night, he talked about a new story he was working on and the struggle to find descriptions for snow.  Fascinating!

 

So you can imagine how thrilled I was to begin reading Light Lifting, stories written by his son Alexander, who was raised in Windsor, Ontario.  The collection is locally published by Dan Wells’ Biblioasis press, and is filled with references to local sites, which thrills this reader.  I love reading books with local flavor and Light Lifting doesn’t disappoint, from the title story about bricklayers working during one of Windsor’s boom times, laying down driveways in Southwood Lakes, among other neighbourhoods, to the boys racing trains long the underground rail line between Windsor and Detroit, to the story about accidents on Number Three highway and the protagonist who walks down University to Huron Church and along Huron Church to the 401 overpass, heading for the Number Three highway and describes, as he passes, the University buildings, the malls and strip club, Tim Horton’s and McDonalds.  I’ve driven this route, which made the pictures so much more vivid in my head as I read MacLeod’s story.  So much of the CanLit fiction I read is Toronto-based and so it’s nice to read something local and close to home, to remember that Ontario is more than just Toronto, and great fiction can be written about this province’s smaller towns.

 

A delightful read that will bring back memories for many Windsor and Essex County residents, Light Lifting is Canadian fiction at its finest.

 

Till next time, happy reading.

L J

 

 

TBR = 6

WPL = 16