The soul is a slippery thing.

 Explosive Eighteen by Janet Evanovich. I bought this in the Houston Airport because I'd reached my knitting saturation point.  I only packed my Bible in the hopes to convert my reading energy into knitting energy.  No such luck.  I can read for far longer periods than I can knit... even if it's really cool multi-colored yarn.

I traded in an acrylic yarn for a silly yarn with this Stefanie Plum novel. It's a beach read if there ever was one.  It's stereo-typed and cliche in a cutesy way.  The characters are believable caricatures.  The fat girl loves to eat fried food, etc.  All the threads are accounted for in the plot in a predictable (and satisfying) manner.  The thing is: I recommend it.  It's a decent sit-com-esque entertainment that'll make you chuckle.

 Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje. This jewel was found in the Valley Village in Burquitlam.  I've really enjoyed fiction by Ondaatje, author of The English Patient; so, I gave this one a try.  His writing is lyrical.  He paints with words.  This is a story of his return to Sri Lanka to discover more about his past and his parents.  Humor, warmth, pride and honesty abound.  He writes about brilliant, beautiful and broken people with aplomb.  He weaves his father's alcoholism into a tale sans sentimentalism.  He treats suffering (even within his family) as a reality with which one must deal.  There are some hard knocks along the way, but  a strong sense of story, meaning and humility undergird the story.  He talks about visiting the graves of his ancestors and feeling his smallness.  This was a good read by a talented author.

Dogs at the Perimeter by Madeleine Thien. I bought this on my friend's recommendation.  This is the kind of book that justifies reading.  It's haunting.  It's important.  It's about survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia-- it's about war, suffering, love, survival, memory.  It's so near perfection that it makes me want to write a book and promise never to write again in the same breath.  Plot, philosophy, and art intertwined into story. I'll give you two paragraphs for evidence:

"We arrive at my stop and I exit through the back doors. Above me, in the clearing sky, pigeons roost on the high wires, clouds descend, and I turn and walk east along the frozen skirts of Mount Royal.  The mountain, dipped in snow, has an eerie beauty, tree after tree rising up the hill, slender as matchsticks.  The temperature is dropping fast and people, blank-faced beneath their hats and scarves, shoulder roughly by. This place wears its misery so profoundly.  Mean-eyed women, sheathed in stiletto boots, kick the ice aside while small men in massive coats lumber down the sidewalk. The elderly fall into snowbanks. All human patience curdles in the winter. On University Street, I turn left, continuing until I reach the heavy doors of the Brain Research Centre."

....

".... My mother once told me that when a child is born, threads are tied around the infant's wrists to bind her soul to her body. The soul is a slippery thing.  A door slammed too loudly can send it running. A beautiful, shining object can catch its attention and lure it away.  But in darkness, unpursued, the soul, the pralung, can climb back in through an open window, it can be returned to you.  We did not come in solitude, my mother told me.  Inside us, from the beginning, we were entrusted with many lives. From the first morning to the last, we try to carry them until the end."

Ah.  Her language flows so deftly that it seems effortless.  The commas that gently pace. The exquisite verbs that hold the abstract and concrete in balance.  Landscape laden with meaning.  This book is an act of worship.


As I write, I realize that my favorite books this round are by Asian Canadians.  I don't know if that has any significance.