urbanmoms.ca Book Club

"A Book is a Present You Can Open Again and Again"

My Aunt Barb once gave me a gift of a book and a package of adhesive book plates inscribed with this phrase:

A book is a present you can open again and again.

I cherished both the book (the complete and uncut hardcover version of Stephen King's The Stand: an extraordinary read) and the book plates. The sentiment was so novel to me at first, and yet reflected a deep love of reading that I'd already possessed for a number of years.

And over the years, Aunt Barb has been an excellent recommender of books to me: Ken Follet's The Pillars of the Earth, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass) and so many more that I couldn't possibly list all the great reads Aunt Barb has passed my way.

And ever since that birthday so many years ago, I have never opened a book without remembering Aunt Barb's adhesive advice. So when I received a package full of books from the lovely folks at Penguin, I couldn't help thinking, oh wonderful! Presents I can open again and again!

And I have opened them again and again, as a matter of fact.

The first book I picked out of the box was J. K. Rowling's The Tales of Beedle the Bard. As a huge Harry Potter fan, I knew I'd enjoy this cute little book. I was surprised, however, by how much I enjoyed it, as I'd been a bit worried that it might seem -- well, trivial -- after the intensity of books six and seven in the HP series (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows). Far from being trite or trivial, though The Tales of Beedle the Bard is a piece of magic in its own right.

True to Rowling's formula, there is something for both kids and parents to enjoy in this little gem. My eight year-old daughter (a huge HP fan) loved the tales themselves and Rowling's own beautiful illustrations. And while I really enjoyed the stories, what really won me over was the commentary at the end of each tale: discovered "among the many papers which Dumbledore left in his will to the Hogwarts Archives," the commentary adds a hilarious new perspective to these edifying tales. I also really appreciated Rowling's foreword, in which she points out that the heroines in these magical fairy tales are much more active than their counterparts in muggle fairy tales: they "take their fates into their own hands, rather than taking a prolonged nap or waiting for someone to return a lost shoe."

Now I must be honest here, and tell you that we've been so busy in the leadup to Christmas that we've only managed to get through two of the five books in the package. And one of the reasons we've been so busy is that the second book I pulled out of the box was Jan Brett's Gingerbread Friends.

A follow-up to the popular Gingerbread Baby, Gingerbread Friends brings us back to our friends Mattie and the cheeky gingerbread baby. Lonely in his gingerbread house, the gingerbread baby heads out to the village in search of friends to play with. As in the first book, Mattie is in the borders of Brett's incredible illustrations, this time baking some friends for his friend the gingerbread baby.

We decided to use Brett's recipe to bake some gingerbread cookies of our own, and I got together with my two daughters, nephew and neice for an afternoon of baking. We had hours of fun measuring out all the spices, sugar, molasses and butter, and even had a long-ish discussion about the order for a "hen's egg" (what other kind of egg could there be? A rooster's egg? And so on...)

Jan Brett has always been a family favourite for her incredibly beautiful illustrations and lovely takes on traditional tales from across the globe. We also love that each story has a second plot that you can follow along in the borders of the illustrations, and this story does not disappoint. Gingerbread Friends is a worthy successor to Gingerbread Baby, complete with a beautifully-wrought surprise on the last page.

If you haven't already rounded out the gift list for the young ones on your list - I strongly recommend either The Tales of Beedle the Bard or Gingerbread Friends.

Will Work from Home (and a Giveaway!)

Here at urbanmoms.ca we're very supportive of the recent trend towards WAHMs (work-at-home-moms, for the uninitiated). After all, it's what we are! We even have an entire section of the site devoted to sharing stories from fellow mom entrepreneurs (work at home or otherwise) and to helping them promote their businesses - check out the urbanmoms.ca Marketplace for more.

So we were really excited when the folks at Penguin offered to send us a copy of Will Work from Home: Earn the Cash Without the Commute to review and give away (including a nifty free bookmark and all).

This book is not just about starting your own business from home (in fact, only one section is devoted entirely to the mom entrepreneur option). It's all about finding options for earning income from home, whether that means moving your existing job to your home office, finding a new employer who supports your desire to work from home or pursuing one of the several other options to earn income without commuting. But the basic message is this: Escape the cube. Ditch the commute. It’s not just a dream anymore.

Many people already spend 12 hours a day getting to work, working, getting home from work. Here’s some good news: thanks to advances in technology, acceptance of outsourcing, the trend towards corporate flextime, and other factors, working from home is easier than ever.

Good Morning America’s Workplace Contributor Tory Johnson and consumer advocate Robyn Freedman Spizman tell readers exactly how to turn today’s cultural change to their advantage without giving up an income. Specific business plans will teach them how to:
• Take their current position home
• Find a new company whose policies will allow them to work from home
• Reseach a product they believe in, and sell it from home
• Start their own business, doing something they love, for a minimal initial investment

With real-life stories, a step-by-step plan, resource guides, and lists of scams to avoid, this is the book that will help readers finally make the leap––and show them that they don’t have to give up their family, creativity, or peace of mind to earn a decent salary.

And now, here's how you can win your own copy of Will Work from Home (including free bookmark!). In keeping to the "ditch the commute" theme, we're going to ask you to share your best commuting to work stories in the comments below. One winner will be chosen at random from the entries below to receive the prize. Please remember to include your email address (it won't be displayed) so that we have a way to get in touch with you if you're the lucky winner.

So, get to work! Tell us your longest, shortest, silliest, slowest, craziest or best commute to work story. It doesn't have to be a horror story and it could be from before you had kids - it just has to be related to commuting to work. Go!

The Secret Life of Bees

I read this book in 2 days. Forty-eight wonderful hours of characters to fall in love with. I adore this type of book - character driven but with a point. This book is not without its heartbreak. The Secret Life of Bees takes place in South Carolina in 1964 during the heart of the Civil Rights movement. The novel centres around Lily Owens, whose life was forever changed by the tragic death of her mother. Lily is haunted by these memories and when her surrogate mother, a spirited black woman named Rosaleen, insults three racists Lily decides they need to escape together once and for all.

The journey that follows is one built on the love of mothers and daughters and the powerful relationship created with a group of unlikely women that become Lily's stand-in mothers. This is an inspiring story about one little girl's need for love, forgiveness, and acceptance where the politically charged times act as a backdrop to the more personal evolution taking place in the character of Lily.

This book is a definite must read especially because the movie version comes out on October 17th. I can't wait to see it! Check out the trailer here:

This review was written by Jen.

The Wise Woman

Can you think of anything more wonderful than opening up your mailbox and finding books inside? Neither can I. So, as I said last week, I was thrilled to get a package with a number of books from the really nice folks at Simon & Schuster Canada this summer.

The first book from this package was Philippa Gregory's The Wise Woman. This book was originally published following her Wideacre trilogy (which I haven't personally read yet), and is her first novel set in Tudor England. As the publisher puts it, Gregory takes the reader "on a journey to the outer reaches of passion, where magic and female power meet." Which is true.

The protagonist is a young woman named Alys who has entered a convent basically to find the girlhood she never had, but is quickly ousted when the local lord (Hugo) and his gang destroy the nunnery during Henry VIII's destruction of England's monasteries. Desperate, Alys returns to live with her stepmother Morach, the strange and nebulously dangerous local wise woman. Life with Morach is hard, cold and emotionally empty, and Alys constantly yearns for her old life in the convent and the Mother Superior she loved there. But she knows she can never go back - Mother Superior and all Alys's sisters perished in the fire set by Hugo and his men. Even more, it can be dangerous for former nuns in Henry VIII's England, so Alys must hide her true identity. Balancing on a knife-edge of peril, Alys must choose between loyalty to her vocation as a nun, and survival in the equally dangerous life Morach offers - as a wise woman.

Unexpectedly Alys is summoned to the castle as the old lord's scribe, where her life takes a 180 degree turn. After fighting his many advances, Alys eventually falls in love with the convent-burning Lord Hugo, who is inconveniently already married to Catherine. And this is where we enter the "outer reaches of passion, where magic and female power meet." Alys first enlists Morach and her magic to turn Hugo's passion back to his wife Catherine, but then finds that her magic -- at first so successful -- has taken on a life of its own, and will pursue its own ends, regardless of her intentions.

I was initially skeptical about this book - it didn't feature any of the famous characters we've all come to know and love through The Other Boleyn Girl and the many other great reads that she has written set in Tudor England. But Gregory does manage to deliver some of the magic we've come to expect from her other Tudor-era works, although I will freely admit that she at first strained the limits of my credulity with her use of magic in The Wise Woman, and then just went ahead and smashed through them altogether.

In the end, I did enjoy the book, although there were a few chapters towards the end that I'd rather she hadn't written, truth be told. In hindsight, The Wise Woman is a bit reminiscent of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in the sense that, like Frankenstein, Alys uses powers far beyond her ken to give life to creatures over whom she has no control, and with disastrous consequences. And Gregory is always a master of character: Alys is no pure protagonist, and Morach is never 100% villain. Even as the plot takes ever more unbelievable turns, the characters blossom and expose their deeper layers and their true humanity, which for me is entirely redeeming.

In short: I wouldn't hesitate to recommend The Wise Woman, but don't forget to bring your imagination along for the ride.

This review was written by Kath.

Promise of the Wolves

A while back, the nice folks at Simon & Schuster sent me this book:

I've always had a soft-spot for fantasy and sci-fi, so I took a peek within. Here's how the promotional material read:

WHAT IS THE PROMISE OF THE WOLF?

NEVER CONSORT WITH HUMANS.

NEVER KILL A HUMAN UNPROVOKED.

NEVER ALLOW A MIXED-BLOOD WOLF TO LIVE.

At least that's what the wolves of the Wide Valley believe. Until a young wolf dares to break the rules -- and forever alters the relationship between wolves and the humans who share their world.

This is the story of such a wolf. Born of a forbidden mixed-blood litter and an outcast after her mother is banished, Kaala is determined to earn a place in the Swift River pack. But her world is turned upside down when she saves a human girl from drowning. Risking expulsion from their pack and exile from the Wide Valley, Kaala and her young packmates begin to hunt with the humans and thus discover the long-hidden bond between the two clans. But when war between wolves and humans threatens, Kaala learns the lies behind the wolf 's promise. Lies that force her to choose between safety for herself and her friends and the survival of her pack -- and perhaps of all wolf- and humankind.

Set 14,000 years ago, Promise of the Wolves takes us to a land where time is counted in phases of the moon, distance is measured in wolflengths, and direction by the scent of the nearest trail. Years of research into the world of wolves combines with mythical tale-telling to present a fantastical adventure set in a world filled with lore.

Well, to tell you the truth it all sounded a little too much like the perfect Ayla, inventor of all good things and domesticator of dogs and horses (of Jean M. Auel's Earth's Children Series). Plus, not being a dog person (I vote decidedly and emphatically for the cat party) I wasn't too hyped about taking this one up. But: never being one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I carried on. And you know what? I really enjoyed Promise of the Wolves.

Despite the fact that I haven't the first clue how to pronounce the protagonist's name, I couldn't help rooting for the gutsy and loyal Kaala. Author Dorothy Hearst also does a beautiful job creating the setting, often managing also to catch the animal-ness of her characters, particularly in the case of the ravens and their interactions with the Swift River pack. And despite my ahh, well, how to put this -- distaste -- for dogs, I found myself becoming fascinated with wolves. The author's website has some fascinating resources for wolf information.

All in all, Promise of the Wolves was a fun and enjoyable summer read, which left me looking forward to reading book 2 in the Wolf Chronicles.

This review was written by Kath.

If You Liked the Other Boleyn Girl...

Okay, I'll admit it. I loved The Other Boleyn Girl (you can read my original review of this title here). In short, I thought it was a compelling and well-crafted narrative that brought to life one of English history's most interesting, tragic and misunderstood personages in Anne Boleyn, through the eyes of her sister, Mary.

But I'm not here to write (again) about Philippa Gregory's first (and, in my opinion best) historical novel about Tudor England.

I'm here to tell you about a book I discovered quite by accident: Nefertiti, by Michelle Moran. I picked it up in the Calgary airport, just before a nine-hour flight to London, knowing I'd need something good to read on the plane (and a good thing, too, since I still had 7 hours to kill after watching the movie version of The Other Boleyn Girl!)

Nefertiti is the story of two sisters from a powerful political family with close ties to the throne. One sister becomes queen, and the younger sister must then serve her interests and those of her family, seemingly at the expense of her own happiness. But political turmoil boils just below the surface, and danger lurks behind every pillar in the royal palace.

Clearly, there are a lot of parallels between the story of Nefertiti and her younger sister Mutnojmet and that of Anne and Mary Boleyn. Right down to the failure to bear a male heir, it's remarkable how the theme plays out; this time in ancient Egypt. At first, I'll admit, I did find it a bit uncanny: the strong-willed and  beautiful sister trampling heartlessly over the hopes and dreams of her younger sister in her single-minded quest to sexually dominate the king. It just seemed like it had been done before.

But I quickly became engrossed in the story and came to know and love the sisters, and realized that the uncanny similarities are not in the telling of the stories by Gregory or Moran, but rather in the stories themselves. Both writers do justice to the compelling tales of the remarkable historical figures of Anne Boleyn and Nefertiti and their younger sisters, expertly drawing our attention to the impossible situation of women in any age when men can hold our very lives in their often fickle hands.

If you're a fan of historical fiction; if you enjoyed The Other Boleyn Girl, then pick up Nefertiti. You won't be disappointed!

This review was written by Kath.

A Must Read - The Book of Negroes

I read this 486 page novel in less than a week. Lawrence Hill's The Book of Negroes (Someone Knows My Name in the US) is a compelling, character driven historical fiction that is nearly impossible to put down. This book is a must read.

Although the book is fiction it is full of historical facts that educate and enlighten the reader. The strong main character, Aminata, and the heart-wrenching tale of her life as a slave make The Book of Negroes one of my favourite books this summer. I was hooked after reading the opening passages.

The book criss-crosses the ocean and many continents. It begins before Aminata's capture as a young, happy child in Africa. It includes the details of her African heritage, religion, education (her father taught her to read and write, her mother taught her midwifery), and community which are illustrated through stories of her interactions with her parents and other villagers.

After witnessing horrendous tragedy at the hands of African slavers, Aminata is coffled and begins her torturous journey through the African interior before arriving exhausted at the coastal slave port. Meena's (Aminata) 11-year-old self describes her experience through frightened and innocent eyes. The character's  youth and naivety enable the reader to see the inhumanity and horror of her experience from a personal perspective instead of merely as historical fact. Meena suffers many hardships throughout her life but it is the reader's strong relationship to this individual character that make this journey distinctly personal.

This award winning novel is compelling, well written, and the character of Aminata is one I will never forget. I highly recommended The Book of Negroes.

Lawrence Hill is a Canadian author whose writing is strongly influenced by his experience as the son of political activist parents.  For more on Lawrence Hill and his writing visit his website at www.lawrencehill.com.

This review was written by Jen.

Sharing My Childhood Favourites With My Children - The Booky Trilogy

Reading is part of a regular bedtime routine at our house. One the whole family looks forward to. Whether it be a family affair sharing a great story book or the latest issue of Owl or Chirp or whether it be alone or two and two we try and read for at least a half an hour every night.

My son and I tend to love reading the classics together - Charlotte's Web, Anne of Green Gables, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe to name a few.

Right now we are reading one of my all time favourite children's books. A gem of a story that takes place in Toronto during the Great Depression. This story offers so many opportunities for learning, reflection, and gratitude. My son and I have had many heart to hearts about the struggles of poverty and the power of a positive attitude.

The version we own (see pic to the left) is the Trilogy which includes The Scatterbrain Booky, With Love From Booky and As Ever, Booky. We both love the fact that the story takes place in our home town. Especially when we recognize some of the streets or events such as the (then) Eaton's Santa Claus Parade.

If you have a curious 8 or 9 year old this is a great book to read together. If you have a mature 10-12 year old who loves to read, the Booky Trilogy is a great addition to their library!

My 9 year old son says, "It's interesting to read about Booky because her life is very different than mine. She lives a long time ago and is very poor. Even though Booky is very poor she has a good attitude."

This review is by Jen.

Career Girl's Guide to Becoming a STEPMOM

At the moment, I suck as a mother, a step-mother, a wife and a woman in general. I have just come home, at 9:30, after a very long day at work to bark at a 17 year old step-daughter who came home at the same time as me even though my last communication with her was that she would be home at 6:30. Of course, she barked back! Then, instead of thanking the 15 year old for watching the Gaffer so I could work late I barked at her for leaving the kitchen a mess. I would have yelled at the 13 year old boy for leaving the TV on, again! but he was asleep. I didn't read the Gaffer a story at her request because I was too grumpy and that made her cry.  Why is she even still awake? Mr. Husband ordered my favourite take out for dinner - Indian - but none of the dishes I like. I was ungrateful,  ate them anyway because I eat when I am upset and now feel sick and very full.

 
That is why I am happy to have Jacquelyn Fletcher's A Career Girl's Guide to Becoming a Stepmom beside me to remind me of all the things I don't have to be.  I knew I would be intrigued by the book by the title of the first chapter, "Cinderella's Man Didn't Have Any Kids; Why Does Mine?"  Mr. Husband definitely presented himself to me as my Prince Charming and the way he behaved with his children was a huge selling feature. Not everyone gets to see what kind of parent their future spouse will be first hand and there is that bonus in marrying a man who already has children, but there are also many challenges.
I have been blessed with missing much of the movie-of-the-week melodrama of step-parenting. Mr. Husband and his ex-wife have good communication and get along well in their exhanges about the kids. We live 5 blocks apart so the toing and froing seems to work as well as it can.

This isn't true for every step-family and absolutely no two families are alike, but we do have some similarities. Fletcher's book offers great insights into what some of these trials and tribulations can be, and even references research, statistics and anecdotal evidence from other step-mothers and Jacquelyne's own experiences as both a step-daughter and step-mother to three.

The back jacket of the book tells us that Fletcher offers advice, hope, encouragement, and much-needed answers to common conundrums, including:   Why don't I have control over my own schedule? What kind of relationship do I want with my stepkids? What if I want to have a baby of my own? How do we create a budget that feels fair if I make more money than my husband does? A Career Girl's Guide to Becoming a Stepmom is essential reading for the professional woman who has it all--and then suddenly has more than she expected. A weakness of the book for me is its occasional repetitiveness and its emphasis on the step-mom who comes from a highly successful business background. That is not me and I did not relate to all of the business jargon, but I did appear on many other pages. There are 17 chapters that all follow the same format.

Each chapter opens with The Career Girl's Personal Assistant which frames tricky questions and situations in business language and action plans. There is then an explanation, analysis and anecdotes about the situations in other families. Finally the chapters end with Topics for Two which provide discussion points for the step-mom and her husband to work through. My usually cynical husband liked many of the questions and suggestions, but kept asking where the book was 7 years ago when we started on this journey. Jacque and her family are a bit too touchy-feely for me and my family, but her book had many insights and provided a lot of aha! moments for me. She has a personal website on step-parenting with a monthly newsletter to which I subscribe http://www.becomingastepmom.com/ and I highly recommend.

A Room of One's Own

It is official.  I have bitten off more than I can chew.  I have always had a tendency to over-subscribe to activities, projects, groups, clubs.  I signed up for everything and then cried at the kitchen table while my mom reheated my tuna casserole because I couldn't do it all.

I feel like crying tonight. I am missing both my book club (is there any worse admission from a literary mom?) and a gathering of some of my favourite women in the neighbourhood for what I know will be an ex-rated conversation after a few glasses of some yummy red wine.

And why am I missing these two events? Because I am too exhausted to move, I am on the verge of a major cold, I have 20 essays to mark, another friend who has just been diagnosed with breast cancer, an exam to prepare, a toddler bed to build, the first attack of the black crayola monster all over the beautiful yellow bedroom wall to clean, groceries  to buy and at this hour I'll have to hit the 24hr Dominion, bills verging on obscenely late to be paid, a living room covered in toys, a husband who usually pays no attention to the real estate market - all of a sudden keen on getting our real estate agent and me out looking at homes - cause that's not too time consuming, and my eyes fall on one of my favourite books of all time and I think, if I only had a room, all to myself, where I could hide away and lock the door occasionally, all would be well!

Those of you of a certain age and stage may remember Claire Huxtable, recently named TV's greatest mom by MSNBC.

She was the matriarch of the Huxtable family on the Cosby and show and the kind of mom I had always hoped to be - so far, not even close.  One of my favourite episodes is called Claire's Place (if you can find it on youtube, please let me know, I gave up in the 200's) where Cliff builds Claire a room of her own. Demonstrating just how enduring good literature is, this concept of a room of one's own was not fresh to the Cosby writer's rather an homage to Virginia Woolf's 1929 extended essay.

 In 1928, successful Modernist writer, Woolf was invited to Newnham College, one of two women's colleges at Cambridge, to discuss the topic of women and fiction. A Room of One's Own, one of the original arguments for independence for women, is  the printed collection of those talks. Woolf's thesis examines the idea that a woman "needs money and a room of her own to write fiction." This idea has been extrapolated by feminist literary critics over the years to include the concept that women need time and space of their own in order to learn, discover, appreciate and develop themselves. 

For a formal essay, the book has great literary merit with the use of symbolism, motifs and some short plot narratives to keep the reader's attention while fully nodding her head in agreement with Woolf's theories.

In one chapter, Woolf creates a fictitious character in Judith Shakespeare, William's twin, in order to demonstrate the gender inequities for women in general and writer's specifically. Judith, who is more talented than William but robbed by society and its rules of an opportunity and outlet for those talents, commits suicide.

In another, Woolf discusses the careers of Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters and George Eliot. Eliot, a pseudonym for author Mary a Evans, who knew she could not get her fiction published as a woman, wrote Middlemarch, the first quintessential trashy summer novel in 1871.  It is set in Middlemarch, the fictional town of Coventry in the 1830's.. Although the story revolves around the unfortunate marriage of Dorothea Brooke, her friendship with Dr. Tertius Lydgate, the trials of his social climbing wife Rosamund, and all their friends and acquaintances, it is also a treatise of the limited power and subservient role of women in the early 1800's.   Their only access to money is through marriage and inheritance and any time spent alone would be considered suspect and cause for scandal.

Now that I am a mother/step-mother myself, I believe that what Woolf suggested through the plight of the women who wrote before her almost a hundred years ago is truer of mothers than anyone else.  Sometimes a wife, a mother, a woman needs to be able to close a door behind her and just be. At the moment, my quiet place is in the laundry room and with the dryer running, I can't even hear the fights over the computer and tv. At the moment I can't fit a chair in there, but I can lean against the washer and breathe deeply for a few moments before I go back into the fray.


Here's a little reading quiz I wrote for my Grade 12's a few years ago, if you're so inclined.  Answers next week.
A Room of One's Own
Reading Quiz

Fill in the blank:

1.    "A woman must have ? and ? if she is to write fiction."

2.    The imaginary narrator of Woolf's essay is ? (write any one answer)

3.    Who is Shakespeare's fictional sister?

4.    At the fictional university of Oxbridge, where Woolf sets her essay, women are not allowed to a) b) c)

5.    At the British Museum, the narrator realizes that most books about women are written by ?

6.    Three reasons why Shakespeare's imaginary sister cannot become a writer are:

7.    The novel is the best form of literature for 19th century female writers such as Austen, the Brontes and George Eliot because they were trained in the art of?

8.    Aphra Behn was the first woman writer to be ?

9.    Why would "Chloe liked Olivia" be a good title for Chapter 5?

10.    Samuel Taylor Coleridge said that a good mind is "_______________________", meaning "it transmits emotion without impediment; it is naturally creative, incandescent and undivided."

11.    What is the first word of Chapter 1?