April & May 2023 books

April was a slow reading month so I combined it with May to appear more impressive. Also because I’m a procrastinator.

Ottawa Rewind 2: More Curios and Mysteries, by Andrew King

Andrew King is an avid amateur historian, whose obsession with Ontario history compels him to research library archives, review satellite photos, and hike through forests in search of foundational remnants of past architecture and settlements. And by foundational, I mean he searches for evidence of literally the foundations of old buildings in the forests and parks of the greater Ottawa area. He does this in order to piece together a narrative positing what might have become of some past historical sites. He compiles his obsessions into fascinating, short-story-sized accounts of his findings and theories. If you are from, or at all familiar with, the Eastern Ontario region, particularly the Ottawa valley, you will likely find this book interesting, and in some cases amazing!

Coincidentally, as I was reading this book (this is his second book – I haven’t read book 1), I noticed some artwork on the cover that looked oddly familiar. In Prince Edward County, where I now live (fondly referred to as “The County”), there is a year-round self-guided Art Gallery tour called the “Arts Trail”, and each year a guidebook in printed, featuring a local artist from one of the member galleries as its cover artwork. Take a look at the guide for 2022-2023 and the cover of Andrew’s book and see if you notice anything interesting.

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Right??!! It turns out that Andrew King is also a very popular artist whose work is represented by Mad Doc Gallery in Picton, here in The County. He is so popular, in fact, that he work sells out within a couple of weeks of a show being launched. It turns out he himself is as interesting and curious as the histories that he writes about!

Field Notes from an Unintentional Birder, by Julia Zarankin

I have a tattoo of a red-winged blackbird on my left shoulder. I got it in my 40s, and it is in recognition of the fact that the red-winged blackbird has been my favourite bird for most of my life. (Two quick answers to the question “why”: 1) when I first learned about red-winged blackbirds as a child, I couldn’t believe such a stunningly coloured bird existed in nature and then I SAW one in real life and 2) I love the way they hide their beauty until they fly, and they they are breathtaking.)

This book first caught my eye because I also consider myself to be an Unintentional Birder. This is 100% me:

Imagine, then, my reaction when I read this inside the front cover flap: “When Julia Zarakin saw her first red-winged blackbird, she didn’t expect that it would change her life.” WOAH! This book was obviously written exclusively for me! I knew I would love it, so much so that I bought a copy to keep. Because I knew. I KNEW.

And I tried really, really hard to love this book. And when that started to fail, I tried really, really hard to like it. But it just didn’t live up to my desperately desired expectations. I can’t say exactly where it failed. It might be the clumsy segues between her life, being born in Russia and growing up in Canada, and the emergence of her interest in birding. Or maybe it’s the way she bandies about names of birds often without bothering to give you one iota of an idea of what they look like or why you should also be interested in them (many times I stopped reading to google a particular bird just to get a sense of what she was talking about). Or when she accidentally breaks the leg of a bird she is trying to extract from a mist net (what the hell???). It could also have been her list-writing, where she just rhymes off a list of birds in a way that annoys the crap out of me. Consider: “… the names I had longed to pronounce aloud delighted me with their sound: Cape May, Blackburnian, Wilson’s, northern parula, scarlet tanager, indigo bunting, Baltimore oriole, and yellow, bay-breasted and black-and-white warbler.” Gaaaak. Nothing takes me out of story like coming across a lengthy, comma-delimited list.

In summarizing this book to the people who also really, really want to love it, I would just say that it should have been much better than it was.

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I had forgotten most of the important plot points of The Great Gatsby, and instead of watching the DiCaprio movie I decided to just re-read the book after coincidentally encountering a number of Gatsby references over a short time. Isn’t weird coincidences just how life works?

At any rate, I have to admit that at first I was a bit off-put by FSF’s play-by-play of the lavish and drunken world that his characters inhabit. He is unfortunately also a fan of the aforementioned and hated list-writing, but SO much worse, when he takes a page and half to name all of the people who attended a party at Jay Gatsby’s (none of whom ever appear in the novel again). GAAAAAK!!! But ultimately, the book kind of grew on me. Most surprising was how timeless it felt. The parties and escapades and fancy cars could be dropped into almost any modern-day event or movie with barely a notice. Think of the parties in Weekend At Bernie’s, Office Christmas Party, and every James Bond movie ever made. All told, it was worth re-reading, and now I might even go watch the movie.

Why Birds Sing, by Nina Berkhout

Every spring, The County holds an event called The County Reads, at which four community residents each choose a book by a Canadian author and defend it as the “must read” book of the year. I attended this year because it seemed like a fun way to spend an evening (remember, I live in the middle of the country). Why Birds Sing was one of the selected books (spoiler: it didn’t win). An opera singer who tanks her career by pushing too hard on her boundaries is relegated to teaching a group of Roger-Whittaker-loving whistlers to, well, whistle. In the meantime her husband’s estranged brother moves in with his temperamental African Grey parrot while he undergoes cancer treatment. The writing is a little jumpy but I eventually settled into it and ended up enjoying it. If character-driven stories are your wheelhouse, then you’ll probably like it as well, although be aware that the parrot might be the most well-developed character in the book.