Canada Day Books

L. D. Cross has provided an excellent overview of Ottawa's founding fathers. This is not an academic exercise, but rather a good simplofication for people who want to know more about the business people who made Ottawa. This book will serve as a general guide, and will help the reader determine if he or she wants to study one or more of these men more in depth.

This book would also be good for high school students wanting general information.

A very good generalization.

We enjoyed reading this book together. The story is about a fictional family set in pioneer days. Each chapter is a small independent story within the larger story of the family's Thanksgiving preparations; for example one chapter tells of a daughter sneaking out to gather cranberries to make a special dish for her ailing grandmother. Almost every other page is illustrated, and there are recipes and craft ideas scattered among the chapters and at the end of the book. The only reason I didn't give the book 5 stars is that I felt the crafts should use the materials of the pioneer time where practical. For example, the corn husk dolls should be made with corn husks and not plastic lace. You're not likely to have either laying about your house, so it's not as if plastic lace is a more convenient, handy substitute. That is the only dint in this great book.

Elma Softic has allowed us to read her personal diary and correspondance to family members about how the war in Sarajevo effected her family, friends, neighbors, and herself personally. Sometimes graphic, always honest, and frequently emotionally charged. Helped me prepare for what I was about to see when I travelled to Sarajevo recently, and how to best help the people left behind.

I recently purchased Teach Yourself One-Day Italian before a trip to Venice, Italy. I purchased the CD as a supplement to a 16 lessons set of Pimsleur Italian I had purchased and Michel Thomas' Deluxe Italian 8 CD set. I was very impressed with Elisabeth Smith's format and presentation. Far superior to any one CD language lesson I have come across and listened to. The CD provides exactly what it offers - 50 important words and a few sentences to help you on vacation. The format was very entertaining and instructive. It was easy and fun to listen to the CD over and over again as reinforcement of the learning process. I highly recommend this CD to anyone who wants to learn a few basic words and sentences before a trip. I was so impressed that I purchased all of Elisabeth Smith's other Teach Yourself One-Day CDs (French, German, Spanish and Greek). They all follow the same format. I always appreciate knowing a few basic words of the language of the country I am visiting. Typically, I use Pimsleur Level 1 CDs to get a basic grasp of a language and learn how to correctly pronounce the words. However, Pimsleur is costly. For those interested in just learning a few words at a great cost, you can't go wrong purchasing any of the Teach Yourself One-Day language CDs. The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars is because she made me want to learn another 50 words right away. I would immediately purchase any CD Ms. Smith would put out that offered to teach me 100 to 300 basic words and sentences using a similar learning format. Thank you for a great product. I only hope others will purchase these little gems to keep them in circulation.

One caveat regarding the Teach Yourself One-Day Spanish. This CD uses the pronunciation of the Spanish of Spain rather than the Spanish of South America. Spaniards pronounce the letter "z" and the letter "c" before e or i as the "th" in the word "teeth" rather than as an s. It comes out sounding like a lisp. Therefore, in Spain they pronounce bicicleta as "bithicleta." The CDs in her series are aimed for tourists visiting Europe and not Latin America. So there is no problem with her CDs for Italian, German, French or Greek. However, the Spanish CD pronounces and uses words more typical of Spain than Latin America.

Wedding Day at the Cro-Magnons is an absurd, complex, deeply moving, and tragic play from an important playwright. Recommended.

Frank Bascombe takes his son on a road trip to visit sport's halls of fame. Frank's son has emotional issues, and of late has been getting in more than just a little bit of trouble. It would be wise, although not manditory, to read The Sportswriter first. That book will give one a passport into Frank. Frank is a thinker, he is divorced, has two children, is not hurting for money, is a realtor, and is willing to try new things. If one gives Mr. Ford a chance, his character, Frank, will make one either want to cry or cheer for humanity.

The first sentence in this book, which I have read many times, is enough to make some people quit reading. I have read several articles about the way to begin a piece of fiction, and I don't think any of them recommended an approach such as this one. Also, I wouldn't recommend reading this when there are distractions or if one has a headache. This book takes some concentration, but reading it is like earning an award that is many, many times more valuable than the effort invested. Beach reading it may not be, and there are other great books for those times.

We have been waiting a long time for this kind of writing. For me, not since Updike's Rabbit have I read such an engrossing, attractive, masculine character. What makes Frank Bascombe so attractive is his ordinariness, not at all an easy thing to accomplish. Intellectuals are easy for intellectuals to construct, but to find a guy who likes hot dogs, real estate and women is rare, and the reader knows it. This is, in some ways, Hemingway territory, but Bascombe is happy, unlike Mr. Hemingways's anxiety-driven specimens. New Jersey makes for a wonderful setting. Together with Philip Roth, Ford has made certain that Jersey has replaced Mississippi as the center of the American landscape. It's glorious country.

I had high hopes for this book but was sadly disappointed. Read this book if you want to study long long sentence construction. Each sentence was a test of my concentration. The story however did warrant this much effort. Perhaps Pulitzer is a reward for the most number of words with the fewest periods? I gave up.

Many people in America are reluctant to confront authority.
When they say this is a good novel and they are the "authority" , what is then
my natural reaction? This novel reminds me very much of the novel Babbitt
that I was forced to read for English literature and the author seems to be
without the connection to his extreme in materialism. ( He seems to
think he is a liberal.) I got to really dislike the protagonist in the first 100 pages
and even to dread reading more of his overationalizing morbidity.
I was left longing for the sincere freshness of Sinclair Lewis!
Making a point in some worthwhile theme would be good.
Woody Allen makes his points more clearly and maybe
with less name dropping . There is no convincing change ...
the hero doesn't get the point when he allows harm to come to his son.
It doesn't really seem to get through: mowing his lawn isn't a radical
change in behavior. He says a lot without ever saying anything:
he writes well without ever making a point.
He describes much without seeming to be able to find any meaning in what he sees.
I had a very negative reaction to this form of intellectualism.
I suppose that there must be some method here , but for me it is lost in excessive verbiage.
I prefer Tortilla Flats or Sweet Thursday where the point is in the results...
I keep asking the author to actually understand something in his own
reality. Obfuscation with window dressing of intellectualism...
If the protagonist were actually in touch with himself,
he'd put rocks in his pocket and walk into a river ( or someone
else would do it for him?). Calling this novel a literary master piece seems
to me to be a a form of intellectual sadomasochism: a lie.

In "Independence Day", Richard Ford's depiction of post-marital devolution (divorce) parallels the lack of marital (or life) bliss shown in other classics: John Updike's "rabbit run" or John O'Hara's "Appointment in Samarra."

This book's protagonist, Frank Bascombe, is not another Harry Angstrom or Julian English - the respective protagonists of Updike's and O'Hara's novels. Instead of leading a life of self destruction after receiving a perceived dealt "straight flush", Bascombe seeks to improve and repair his life.

In love, he twists and turns about whether he should reignite the flame with his ex-spouse - Ann - or turn on the heat with his weekend f$&# buddy - Sally. After hundreds of pages of his interpersonal thoughts about this ever-present conflict, we do not receive an actual conclusion. At least none is definitively delivered such that he and the "chosen one" lead off to the sunset on a white stallion. But, maybe he has made strides closer to such a conclusion, and that is enough to ask from someone so perplexed and perplexing.

In family matters, his son Paul delivers he and the ex-spouse, Ann, a handful. An adolescent whose faults are not uncommon, Paul has delusions of suicide, derived mainly from lack of self esteem and typical teenage angst. Paul's two-day jaunt with only dear old dad to Springfield, Mass. and Cooperstown, NY - the respective homes of basketball's and baseball's halls of fame - is the subject of another large portion of this book. Frank concludes, "Children, who sometimes may be angels of self-discovery, are other times the worst people of the world."

The writing style of Ford is extremely well done, and includes numerous uses of appositions - where the second element parenthetically modifies the first without changing its scope. These commonly placed parentheticals deliver a "herky jerky" motion to the reader's pace and can make the reader stumble or slow down. If not, the complexities of the writing could well be overlooked and missed. Many of the appositions represent Frank's thoughts which contradict or disagree with the written dialogue.

Ford's rich prose and deeply depressing topic of this book make a not-so-uncommon couple of modern American literature. At first, as someone who does not desire to read about others' nagging problems in love or life, I felt I would trudge slowly and belligerently to finish (if I would even do that) this novel. But, not atypically, I was wrong. I enjoyed this book, and read it in a matter of days.

This book is about style and the journey. It is about rehashing the past. It's about how we dwell on little things that done differently would have had huge impacts on our lives. It is not a mystery. It is not "hard boiled". It is obviously not what a number of reviewers were looking for when then started it. That doesn't mean it's not good. It just means they haven't separated the two.

It's true that the narrator seemingly falls for this woman without reason or explanation to the reader. One critic said this was hard to believe, that without enough this depth and explanation the whole premise to the story was flawed. But then isn't that exactly what guys do. Suddenly they are mad about someone for absolutely no reason. Just the right time or mood when they meet a woman, or a unexpected comment or smile. It's that easy.

The book is maybe a little long but it does feel like you've rehashed the incident as if it were your own. This is exactly what happens when people go down a road that makes them miserable but one that they feel stuck in. They spend ridiculous amounts of time going over and over the situation, with slightly different tangents each time.

Don't expect a plain Jane detective novel. Don't assume you know George because of what you read about him on the flyleaf and you may enjoy how the book says what it does.

I think Swift was striving for something subconscious and suffocating with this story, and he accomplished this to a degree, yet I did not feel any great level of empathy or identification with the main characters.

Having said that, it was written in a particularly stylish way, employing short, punchy chapters, mostly operating within the mind of George Webb, private eye, who is drawn into an area of grey that is an extension of what his profession is intrinsically concerned with. There are no "happy" endings in his line of work, which consists mostly of spying on infidels, mostly husbands, cheating on their wives. He crosses the line with a client in an emotional way, and much of the story is spent in flashbacks, and then back to George waiting, waiting, interminably, for his love, the object of his obsession, to be free to be his. There is quite a bit of dramatic build-up and suspense, even though we know the gist of what is going to happen. This was done well, although parts of the book tended to be somewhat repetitive and slow.

This was my first Swift novel, and I will seek out more, as I suspect this was not his high point, although it was a completely satisfactory and engaging story.

Graham Swift has crafted a special novel. It seemed as if each word was carefully selected and each sentence is special so as to slowly develop a theme through careful repetition and enhancement. The unveiling of the narrative was rather like a modern film such as "21 grams". I wasn't ready for it to end.

With THE LIGHT OF DAY, the Booker Prize-winning novelist Graham Swift has turned the classical mystery novel on its head. In place of the typical whodunit, he introduces a plot that centers around a private investigator, George Webb, and his more-than-passive involvement with a woman client who unexpectedly murders her unfaithful husband just as Webb has completed his assignment to observe the departure from London to Croatia of the "other woman."

THE LIGHT OF DAY is not a detective story - we know from the beginning who is killed, who did the killing, and the ostensible reason. Nothing is hidden from an investigative standpoint, but underneath those surface facts, almost everything is hidden, waiting to be discovered. Swift has written not so much a crime story as the story of a crime. It is an investigation of the lives and motivations of a small constellation of characters orbiting the fatal event: the cheating husband (Bob Nash), his betrayed wife (Sarah Nash), the young Croatian refugee (Katrina) with whom Bob has an affair, the private investigator (George Webb) Sarah hires to verify that Katrina boards the airplane for Switzerland, George's ex-wife (Rachel), his secretary and former client and one night fling (Rita), George's parents and his father's mistress, and the almost-retired police detective (Marsh) who investigates the Nash murder.

Swift guides us in his novel through George Webb's almost Kafkaesque transformation from physical and emotional detachment to an unrequited emotional attachment to Sarah as she serves her prison sentence for murder. George's bond with Sarah is as inescapable for him as Sarah's jail cell is for her, yet both find a sort of long-sought fulfillment in their mutual situation.

Graham Swift tells his story through jump cuts and time shifts among three major story lines: the events surrounding the murder itself, Marsh's investigation of George Webb's role in the murder, and George's fortnightly visit to Sarah in prison on the second anniversary of the murder. Interspersed are lesser threads detailing events surrounding the marital infidelity of George's father and the failed investigation by George into a near-murder by a man named Dyson, a failure that led to George's dismissal from the police force. The result is a fine weave in which each story line complements the others and fills out our understanding of George's character. We gradually come to see the reasons for George's seemingly inexplicable attachment to Sarah despite her crime.

While the main story line is motivated by a classic love triangle (Sarah, Bob, and Katrina) gone bad, the author fills his story with triangulated relationships: George, Sarah, and Rita; George, Marsh, and Dyson; George's father, mother, and Carol (the mistress); George, Sarah, and Bob; and Sarah, Napoleon III, and the Empress Eugenie. Each triangle plays out simultaneously as Swift cuts between scenes, building our appreciation of George Webb's character and his transformational relationship with Sarah.

Typical of mystery novels, THE LIGHT OF DAY employs short, choppy sentences to create a terse, almost noirish atmosphere. The prose is short on description and long on actions, but Swift's frequent use of rhetorical and hypothetical questions, seemingly addressed to the reader, creates a strong sense of introspection. In the end, we are, like George, left with many unanswered questions about how events such as these come to pass and why we cannot prevent them, only try to suffer through their consequences. As with Sarah and George, we each can hopefully survive our lives' tragedies and find our true place, leaving our fog of confusion and uncertainty and "step[ping] out at last into the clear light of day."

THE LIGHT OF DAY is a a winner, a cleverly-constructed and entertaining read, Ellery Queen with a literary bent. Fans of Paul Auster should particularly enjoy this book for its style, atmosphere, and structural execution.

For some reason, a number of reviewers use the term "hard boiled" in their description of this deeply psychological novel. Presumably this is because the protagonist is an ex-policeman who was kicked off the force for "corruption" and is now doing seedy "matrimonial" detective work. And other familiar "hard boiled" types on hand as well: the efficient secretary who pines for the PI, the femme fatale client, a cheating husband, and the PI's long-gone ex-wife. While these are certainly well-established hard-boiled types, Swift is much more interested in noir than hard-boiled. Now "noir" is itself a very tricksy word in film and litcrit circles, with many and varied meanings. However, noir's main recurring theme is that of fate, and fate is what Swift is really interested in investigating in this novel. Another of noir's key themes is the individual's inability to escape the past, and this too, plays a major role.

The story takes place over the course of a day in the head of middle-aged George Webb, the aforementioned ex-cop turned private investigator. His interior monologue takes quite a while to get used to, lurching around in fits and starts, back and forth in time, with little glimpses here and there. This is a canny writing job of capturing the fractured nature of thought, which is rarely so kind as to adhere to complete direct syntaxóbut it also makes for jarring reading. The style only really works because it's a special day for Webb: the anniversary of the day a client killed her husband. Not just any client, but the client he's become completely obsessed with and visits every two weeks in jail.

Over the course of this emotionally distressing day, Webb's thoughts gradually reveal not only the story of his client's crime, but the story of his dismissal from the police, as well as his childhood, and his relationship with his daughter. Swift is careful to release only micrograms of information at a time, so that the complete portrait of Webb's life accumulates in fragments, like a pointillist painting gradually coming alive as the dots mount up. But for all this coyness, there's no real suspense in the narrative, events proceed along an inevitable track dictated by fate. It's heavily suggested early on that Webb was unjustly dismissed from the police, and it turns out he was. Webb's career in "matrimonial " detective work turns out to be linked to his childhood. Webb's obsession with his murderess client is based on... well... nothing really, it just inexplicably exists (as in a film noir). Ditto with any explanation for the client's crimeóit's just what fate had in store, and that's all there is to it. Ultimately, all of this is rather unsatisfying, if stylistically well-written. I've long wanted to read one of Swift's books, but this doesn't seem to be a good one to start with.

The way of a Ship / Terek Lundy

This purchase was a mistake and I am simply unable to start the reading, although I tried.
I am collecting/reading "the real thing" on the saile era,written by those who were then involved.( Am finding texts in English, Dutch, French & a bit in German - unfortunately, I do not read Swedish/Finnish ).
Maybe Mr Terek Lundy is an excellent author, but this book is not what I was looking for.

R Grommé

The Way of a Ship is a strangely structured book on an interesting topic. Derek Lundy tells a good story, but it is spoiled by the other information interleaved in it.

One of the authors forebear's was a sailor on a square rigger that sailed around Cape Horn. That is what sparked his interest in the story. He describes this as well as some of the research he did for this story. Fortunately these interruptions are short.

He then goes on to interrupt the story with lessons on the economics and history of sea transport at the time of the story. He also describes the social life of the people who made up the crew on these ships and has some comments on the types of ships being built as steam ships over took sailing vessels. There are also interludes of historical information about Joseph Conrad, Richard Henry Dana and Herman Melville.

While they are reasonably well written and are interesting by themselves they just serve to confuse the fiction. They look very much like filler to me. The story that makes up the central theme of the book is a well told sea tale with a sympathetic protagonist. However the story cannot survive being lumped in with all these other distractions. The reader has to be motivated to read yet another sea tale to bother with this one.

But only about 240 if you remove all of the quotes from Conrad, Dana, Mehlville, etc.

Truly a letdown.

This is made-up fake stuff by a wanna-be. Why not read the real - try Marryat's "Mr Midshipman Easy", etc. Marryat joined the Royal Navy in 1806 (yes 18) and fought against the French in the Med. He wrote this book in 1836 (yes 18) - it and other sources were used by Forrester to create the Hornblower character. Read this book and compare situations to the early Hornblower actions - like identical.

I find it curious that some readers found this book wanting. I would admit it had its slow times, but over all I was very impressed.

Besides a reasonable story line of the fictional voyage, the author had lots of the sea history of steam vs. sail, rounding the "Horn", navigating, scurvy, etc. I liked it all and appreciated the author's connection with long-lost relatives.

My recommendation: if you like "fictional history" from that era this is a good choice.

This book was okay for a good "girl" book. A quick read with a few hilarious stories where I was litterally laughing out loud. I was hoping for more stories, more details and less fluff in between the two. I have to agree with other comments here- I was looking for the article she wrote that got her kicked out of the bridal party, destroyed her friendship with "The Bride" and spawned this book. That would have been a nice inclusion. It seemed at the end of the book the author is trying to make up for all the "Bride" bashing of the entire book by saying "we really do love you" but it was too little too late. Being a five time bridesmaid and a bride I didn't mind the bride bashing, weddings are what they are, dramatic and stressful. These stories were entertaining, a good fluff read.

I had been wanting to read this book for a while... the creative title piqued my interest right away. It was a quick and interesting read, by no means an intellectual or sociological look at the wedding industry like Cinderella Dreams, but it was still fun to read for someone who is interested in the behavioral aspects behind weddings. If you watch the reality shows on TV about weddings you will probably like this book... it offers examples and stories upon horror stories of crazy brides and the poor bridesmaids put in terrible situations. The complacency of the bridesmaids was a bit unnerving and I have to admit that these stories convinced me that the author only used the most extreme examples she could find of these pre-weddings gone wild situations. But that was the purpose of her book I suppose and we are not supposed to take the book as a whole too seriously. Enjoy it, don't let it scare you away from weddings forever, and try to remind yourself that it's just a silly read and you'll be happy.

I loved this book. Too bad more of the insanity was not in it. I too hate all things commercialized wedding. Having stood up a few times (always wonder why anyone would ask me with me being so vocal in opposing)I hated every single minute of it. My brides were very nice and paid for the dresses and we did not have to do all the crap some bridesmaids do. Do people really expect bridesmaid to throw a shower? Have you no family that likes you? Do brides really expect bridesmaids to do their errands? COME ON!

Dear Brides,
If you really want people to enjoy your wedding then don't ask them to stand up. Simple as that. No one likes to stand up. It sucks! This whole, "It's my day" crap is just that, crap. We barely want to attend the wedding let alone deal with you. Who hasn't shuddered at the sight of an obvious wedding invitation in the mailbox? Who hasn't called everyone in the family to warn them it is coming. I personally think you should ask your enemies to stand up for they deserve it more.

This book showed how goofy weddings can get. I'm SO very glad I'm old enough to never again be asked to be a bridesmaid!!!!! In my day, we threw a shower, showed up for rehearsal, did the wedding and promised not to get drunk at the reception!!!

I was a bad bridesmaid - almost twice.

My near miss was when my best friend asked me to be a bridesmaid. Tho' I found it impossible to support her choice in groom, I agreed. Until she then informed me that even tho' I was her 'Best' friend I was the 5th person she asked and she wanted at least 3 bridesmaids! Evidently she was having a hard time finding enough random strangers to wear a "baby-teal" 80's-reject, prom dress (with sleeves bigger than a basketball) for her kegger/wedding. My ego let me back out within 10 minutes of being asked. (their marriage lasted slightly longer than that.) Oddly enough our friendship survived that awkward blip in our 16 year relationship.

Even when I finally went "all the way" with it for another friend things were so difficult and AWFUL, that after the wedding we quickly broke it off and neither of us have ever looked back - Thank God!

At first I really thought it was me, I felt guilty. Maybe I'm not cut out to be a bridesmaid, maybe I really am the anti-wedding witch. Or maybe my friends lost their minds (and souls) when they became engaged.

Thank you, Siri Agrell! Your book has provided me with the thearpy and knowledge I needed to realize: It is not just me! There are others out there like myself who were put in exploitive & mercilessly compromised situations all because we knew someone (either well or randomly) who lost all common sense the second they got engaged.

This book made me laugh...and wince, but mostly I identified.

I found Day By Day to be compelling reading as I share the same love and awe of nature as Mr. Petersen and his family. We enjoyed a cruise from Vancouver to Sitka, Juneau and Glacier Bay some years ago. The observations of these areas in the book were particularly interesting to me. To experience Glacier Bay cruising alone in a small boat was truly an awesome feat. The book describes the wild life viewed in detail indicating how to keep oneself safe while viewing bears, etc.

Tips on fishing these beautiful waters also were of interest. The catching of about every game fish, crabs, and digging clams was included in the book. This book is also a guide to great places to eat along the way, on land sights not to be missed, hot springs for bathing and best places to anchor.

To anyone owning a boat, the mechanical problems described and how they were corrected would be very helpful. Also, a novice would find invaluable the detailed descriptions of tides, times to avoid certain waters and highlights of the many inlets and coves he explored and which are named in the book.

There are numerous instances of protection and guidance as the result of his leaning on the almighty and trusting in God's care.

To read this book is a must for anyone contemplating cruising these waters and it would be a valuable companion on one's trip.

This book is great for those who want to cruise to Alaska in a small boat or just enjoy cruising around islands in the Inside Passage. It is full of tips, lists, and local insight from someone that has made the trip several times. I was glad to know small boats can make the trip to Alaska if you are careful. Besides this book I suggest anyone planning to make a trip like this take the piloting classes offered by the United States Power Squadron or Coast Guard Auxiliary to learn more about using charts, and GPS.

I am disappointed that the editorial review did not indicate that this book is actually an evangelical platform for a born-again Christian. Mr. Petersen averages some discourse on his God and his faith about every 5 pages. There are 38 "God" citations in the index.
Had I known that the voyage was to serve as his "Sermon on the Inside Passage", I would not have purchased the book.