Consolation

Michael Redhill’s novel Consolation is a book with several faces. It is a miniature history of the city of Toronto, a mystery of the non-murder sort, and a touching character study that focuses on the attempts of two groups of people, separated by more than a century, who are forced to deal with life’s adversities when they least expected to have to do so.

David Hollis is a university historian, a late twentieth century man obsessed by his city’s history and the people who lived in it before him. He has become convinced that a complete set of the earliest photographs ever taken of the city of Toronto was lost in a storm just offshore and that they are now buried under streets built on reclaimed land that was once part of Lake Ontario. He has dedicated his life to identifying the Toronto of the 1850s that is hidden by the Toronto of today, but when he finds that he has Lou Gering’s disease he knows that he has little time left to convince anyone of authority to help him find the lost photographic plates.

Jem Hallam is newly arrived in the Toronto of 1855, sent to the city from London to start a new pharmacy at the direction of his father. Hallam left behind a wife and two daughters, hoping that they would join him in Toronto as soon as the business began to show a profit. Things do not go well for Jem Hallam and, although he is never seems quite sure how it all happened, he eventually finds himself in the photography trade and living with a dying photographer and a woman he took into his life in order to save her from a sure death on the streets of the city.

In alternating segments, the reader is able to follow both the efforts of David Hollis to identify the possible location of the missing plates and the evolution of Jem Hallam from failed pharmacist to successful photographer. Hollis, becoming more and more helpless at the hands of the cruel disease he suffered, and finding little support in his quest from colleagues, decided to end his life. It is left up to his wife and his daughter and her fiancé to try to salvage his reputation as they try to stop the construction of a new sports facility on the very spot identified by Hollis as likely to be the final resting place of this important record of Toronto’s early history.

Redhill seamlessly moves back and forth between the stories of these two men whose lives have become intertwined despite the fact that they lived more than a century apart. Jem Hallam, forced to fight for his survival in a manner he had no way to foresee when he arrived in Toronto, and feeling guilty for carving out a new life for himself with strangers while abandoning his wife and daughters in London to the care of his father, eventually produces the photos that David Hollis will so desperately search for in the future. Or did he? That’s where the mystery begins.

Rated at: 4.0

Germany to Test Book TV

I know that we have Book TV in this country on weekends (on C-Span2) and I do usually watch it for a couple of hours every weekend. But I sometimes grow a little weary of its emphasis on political books and I tend to get a little burned out to the point that I forget about the channel for weeks at a time. I've often wondered why, with the dozens and dozens of cable and satellite channels available these days, someone doesn't try to come up with one that focuses in on all things book related, something on the air every day.

I'm sure that would be a rather risky investment but there are so many little niche channels out there already that it doesn't seem impossible. According to DW-World, a group in Germany has decided to see if they can make just such a station work there.

The broadcaster, called lettra, aims to keep book lovers up-to-date with what's going on in the world of fact and fiction. It's set to go on air on Nov. 24. on the pay TV channel Premiere Star.


The idea of literature TV was the brainchild of Jan Henne De Dijn who announced the launch at the Frankfurt Book Fair on Thursday.

...

The company aims to appeal to book worms of all kinds, featuring programs about children's literature, novels, factual and self-help books, educational literature and reference works.

Five hours of programming a day are initially planned. The centerpiece will be a two-hour live show every weekday evening. There will also be a morning show for children, along with literary adaptations, magazine shows and documentaries.

"We won't be presenting books and reading in a high-brow manner, but competently and informatively," said lettra's co-managing director and editor-in-chief Carsten Meincke. "We want to be entertaining and humorous and reflect the creativity and the variety of the book world. After all, we want to make television for everyone who love books."

...

Lettra also wants to let everyone with a passion for books have their say, giving a voice to readers, as well as writers and publishers.

De Dijn is hoping to attract half a million viewers by the end of the
year.

German television viewers will have to pay to be able to see this programming. I'm not sure from the article whether or not it will be available as part of a "package" or if it will have to be purchased separately. But this is exactly the kind of thing that cable television and satellite TV people love to package here as part of their "basic package" so that they can claim a higher number of viewer choices. Oh well, I can dream.

Library Sales Disappointments

I've been disappointed by what was available for sale at the last few library book sales events that I've attended. A combination of things seems to have limited choices largely to the same kind of junk that I see on grocery store book racks and at Wal-Mart, the usual bestsellers written by the same handful of authors who churn them out two or three times a year for those readers who don't seem to realize that there are more than ten authors in the country. I realize that sounds snobbish and I don't mean to offend anyone (just can't help myself sometimes).

Libraries now have groups of volunteers who pull the better books from what has been donated so that they can sell those books to book dealers or on eBay. I understand why they want to do that, of course, but it eliminates most of the excitement of a big library sale. Searching for that elusive needle in the haystack is part of the fun and I miss it. Worse, yet I have noticed on at least two occasions that library staff pluck books for themselves before the doors are open to the general public. And worst of all was the time that I noticed one library employee letting her friends rummage through what was for sale at least an hour before the rest of us were allowed to take a look.

This article from the Chronicle-Telegram points out a new hazard that I haven't yet encountered, special scanners with a built-in data base to immediately recognize the more valuable books.

Collecting books for more than a decade, Mittler has slowly refined his bibliophilic taste, selecting choice books he knows are worth a little extra. But at this year’s sale he’ll be competing with people who aren’t so much book-lovers as they are people zealously committed to finding a book worth more than a buck.

They’re called “scanners.” They use handheld scanners to scan the bar codes on books, checking a book’s price in a database downloaded to the handheld device. Some people say it’s cheating, but organizers of the Elyria book sale say they’re allowing the scanners at this year’s sale — simply to be fair.

“These people will go in teams and hit row upon row of books with bar code scanners,” Mittler said.

Of course, some of the really old books don’t have bar codes, so a book dealer’s depth of knowledge can be invaluable.

“Dealers know exactly what they’re looking for,” Mittler said.

...

Popular these days, for instance, are “hyper-modern” books written just within the past few decades, but still hard to find.

Some great examples: Any autographed, first-edition book by Cormac McCarthy floats around $600 to $700, while a 2003 limited-edition print of “The Kite Runner,” by Khaled Hosseini, fetches more than $2,000.

“Most people looking at that would see a new book and just pass right over it,” Mittler said. “That’s where a knowledge of book collecting comes in.”

I have to admit, that being a high-tech addict, that little scanner is a very tempting new toy. I'm going to have to see what I can find out about them...yes, I'll feel guilty about that.

The Witches of Dixie

It is not every day that one reads a book written by a witch and, in fact, The Witches of Dixie, by Laura Stamps, is a first for me (as far as I know, of course). Being only vaguely familiar with the concepts of Wicca and aware of the somewhat controversial range of opinion regarding the religion and those who practice it, I began the book hoping to learn what the life of a modern day witch is like and how it differs from my own. I was pleased to find that this is exactly what the book has on offer.

Stamps offers a glimpse into the lives of four women, all practitioners of Wicca, who are facing the same daily pressures and problems with which all of us contend. What is different about these women is the way that they deal with what life throws at them.

We meet Savannah Monroe who is suddenly faced with the fact that sales of the "magickal handbags" that she depends on for her income are slumping badly. There is Maylene Whitmire, a woman who comes to feel that she is having so little impact on the world that she is becoming invisible in the eyes of others. Mirabella Middleton, who has had a successful art career for years suddenly finds that a declining economy is taking a toll on the ability of galleries to sell her work. And, finally, there is Ravena Riley who is sadly watching her husband go through the midlife crisis that is threatening the very stability of their marriage.

What all of these women have in common is their close relationship to nature and the spells and rituals that are part of Wicca. They are White Witches and they know where to go to get the help that they need. As Ravena once explained to her husband, "A White Witch worships the feminine aspects of the Divine...Someone who desires a magickal life, following a code that instructs every thought and spell to work for the good of all."

Each woman begins to solve the problems facing her by using the real spells, chants and rituals included throughout the book. As each ultimately conquers the worst that she is faced with, the reader is left with a clear understanding of the principles of Wicca and those who practice it in the twenty-first century. It is a fascinating look into a lifestyle of which most of us know very little, and understand even less.

Rated at: 3.5

Infidel

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a rare and remarkable woman, someone who has achieved success, and a measure of fame, despite the odds that origin and circumstance stacked against her. Her intimate autobiography, Infidel, explains how she became a determined feminist because of, not despite, her upbringing in a Muslim culture in which women have few rights and little value compared to the males in their world.

Born into a family situation in which her father took several wives, although each maintained a separate household, Ali did not see much of her father for long periods and was raised by her more religiously tolerant grandmother and mother. Even as a girl, she found herself questioning authority and some of the basic tenants of her religion while still striving to do the things that were expected of her. Ali learned exactly what those expectations were. Circumcised as a young girl and educated by radical imams, she soon learned that by so much as uncovering her hair in public she would be solely responsible for whatever reaction she received from any male she encountered. She learned that the Koran was to be taken literally as the direct word of Allah and that it could never be questioned even when it seemed to justify the beating and killing of women by husbands, brothers or fathers who believed them to have disgraced the honor of the family or clan.

She tried very hard to internalize all that she was taught, but Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born with a questioning mind and could never reconcile herself to the fact that she felt much of what she was taught to be unjust. And when she saw an opportunity to escape and make a new life for herself she took it. While in Germany to arrange for the paperwork to join her new husband in Canada, the result of an arranged marriage set up by her father, she took the opportunity to flee to Holland where she sought and received refugee status.

What Ali accomplished in Holland is the most amazing part of her story. She learned the Dutch language so well that she was able to support herself as a translator rather than having to depend on the Dutch welfare system. She went to university and received a degree. She was granted Dutch citizenship. And, most amazing of all, she was elected to the Dutch parliament.

Never afraid to speak her mind despite the danger of doing so, Ali spoke loudly about the plight of Muslim women forced into arranged marriages who suffered beatings and, on occasion, honor killings at the hands of either their new husbands or their own family. When Dutch film director, Theo van Gough, who collaborated with her on a film documentary about the abuse of Muslim women within the confines of their religion was murdered on the street, she was forced into hiding, almost had her Dutch citizenship stripped from her, and eventually moved to the United States for her own safety.

Ali states her beliefs and goals very simply: "...the Quran is an act of man, not of God. We should be free to interpret it; we should be permitted to apply it to the modern era in a different way, instead of performing painful contortions to try to recreate the circumstances of a horrible distant past. My intention (is) to liberate Muslim minds, so that Muslim women - and Muslim men, too - might be freer. Men, too, are forced to obey inhumane laws."

Is this really a crime for which she and others should be killed?

Rated at: 5.0

Reading Slumps and Real Country Music

I know now that reading "slumps" are fairly common after having read the comments on a few of my favorite book blogs when some of you experienced them. But it's been a long time since I've gone into a reading slump of my own, so it's still a little frustrating to me when it happens.

I suppose that I've just been overwhelmed with little time-killers, and really big time-killers, for the last couple of weeks but, when I do find a few minutes to read, I'm suddenly finding it hard to shut my mind down long enough to concentrate on the words on the page. And that's a shame, because I'm in various stages of completing five pretty good books right now (see the list in the left hand column of the blog for details).

I've added two links, one to a web forum that I help moderate and one to the new country music radio station that I set-up yesterday, a job that ended up consuming almost twelve hours of time. I've been involved in internet radio for over four years and, sadly enough, have parted ways with the original station. The focus of both stations is the promotion of traditional country music, and especially of those bands and singers still recording that kind of music today. Most people don't realize that there are lots of people still writing and recording in that style, so it's been fun to help those people get their music heard. Fans of "real country music" are invited to click on the radio link to hear what I mean.

Anyway, I'm hoping to get back in the groove soon because I feel like I've forgotten how to read. Instead of 200 pages a day, I'm struggling to read 60. This, too, shall pass...I can't wait.