My Nerdy Friend

This month, we have a not-so-demanding 30 pages to read, all told. In keeping with an unwritten promise, I have not read the preamble for either of these shorts, but I did a very brief bit of internet sleuthing on the two authors.

Gabriel-Ernest, by Saki. This extra-short 10-page story was first published in 1909. Saki is a pen name for Hector Hugh (H. H.) Monro, who was a journalist in the UK. According to the internet, Saki is “famous for his satirical writings about Edwardian England” (oooo, could be a good one!).

The Cockatoucan; or, Great-Aunt Willoughby, by E. Nesbit. I think a fun game might be to guess in advance what these stories are about and then read them to see how close we were. This one I am guessing is about an old, spinster, cranky aunt who is reincarnated as an old, cranky, jerk of a toucan. E. (Edith) Nesbit was a very prolific writer, publishing between 1885-1924, the year she passed away. A quick count from her wikisource page indicates: Novels for children: 14, Story collections for children: 22, Novels for adults: 11, Story collections for adults: 11, short works from magazines: 22, Others: 34, Poems/poetry: 33, Non-fiction: 2. The Cockatoucan falls under Story collections for children, in a book called Nine Unlikely Tales.

Although I couldn’t find any direct evidence* that Nesbit and Saki knew each other, they were both from England, and they both lived in London (Saki from 1896 and Nesbit from 1875), and they were both prolific writers, so I like to imagine that they crossed paths in some writing circle or another.

Okay, Nerdy Friends! Have at it! Comment freely once you’ve read the stories, I think by now we know how to avoid the comments if we are trying to avoid spoilers. One thought for this month might be to read the preamble after reading the story and then see what we can figure out about why Neil Gaiman chose it for this collection.

*I did not look all that hard…

The English Understand Wool, by Helen DeWitt

I just have this to say about this book: run out right now and buy yourself a copy. (okay okay, you can also borrow it, but you are going to want your own copy, trust me). It is funny, surprising, well-written, sophisticated. The hard copy is beautifully made. It is also just 50 pages long. But deeply satisfying on a 250-page level. I refuse to spoil it by saying anything more.

Greenwood, by Michael Christie

A story that begins in 2038 and then travels generationally back in time to 1908, following the ancestry of the Greenwood family who may, or may not, be who they seem to be. Ok, it’s really not as mysterious as all that, but it’s a great bit of story-telling! And by “bit” I mean 600 pages (pairs nicely with the 50-page Helen DeWitt book). The structure reminded me of Cloud Atlas, minus the scifi stuff, in the way that mysteries are revealed in the second half of the book, as we continue our journey in reverse, from 1908 back to the story-present time of 2038. Eco-anxiety alert – there is some despair around the potential fate of trees 🙁

What Strange Paradise, by Omar El Akkad

This was an Amnesty International book club pick, and is the story of a 9 year old Syrian refugee, the sole survivor of an overloaded, broken-down ship that sinks off the shore of a small island already overrun with refugees. The book was met with mixed reviews at our book club. Criticisms included a lack of relatable and likeable characters which could have been fixed with greater depth of character development. Personally I think there was a reason for this but the reason is a major spoiler. One person was also disappointed at the inclusion of a particular epigraph that, if you understand the reference, gives away the entire story. With the benefit of hindsight, she is absolutely correct, so fair warning, if you read the book, you may want to skip over the first epigraph page (or at least don’t research what it is in reference to).

The Maidens, by Alex Michaelides

My husband is one of the few people who didn’t like the movie The Sixth Sense (and by “didn’t like” I mean “hated”). It’s his opinion that the movie purposely misled viewers, and he was not remotely impressed at the big reveal because he feels we were, in fact, lied to. As expected, there have been a lot of “yes, buts” in response to his arguments. Case in point: when Bruce Willis’s character Malcolm meets with Cole’s (Haley Joel Osment’s) mother Lynn (Toni Collette), there is a brief scene of them sitting in the same room, awkwardly not speaking or looking at each other. This is a lie, according to my husband, and if you’ve seen the movie you know why it’s filmed this way. The “yes, but” comes from Cole saying “they only see what they want to see” to explain Malcolm not noticing that no conversation was taking place. Fair, but I can see my husband’s point (ditto when Malcolm is late to meet his wife for his anniversary dinner and she ignores him, grabs the cheque, and leaves, “yes but” he was late and she was probably just angry). The Maidens was a bit like this for me. IMO the author tries way to hard to create a bunch of different viable suspects for a murder, to the point where we are certain the murderer had a dog as a child and one of the suspects has a picture in his living room of himself with a dog. But none of these people are the actual culprit and the real murder is so far from someone you’d suspect, I feel in way like I was lied to. “Yes but” all the misdirection still fit into the story, just in entirely unexpected ways. In summary, it wasn’t a terrible book and anyone who liked The Sixth Sense might enjoy it a lot. Yes, but the deception went a little too far for my liking.

Well, I’m not really sure what happened, but here is it, already May 14 and I was supposed to pop this post up on May 1! So let’s get right to it.

This month, assuming you aren’t way ahead of me and haven’t already done so, we will be reading two more stories! First up is Sunbird, by Neil Gaiman himself (I’m looking forward to this one!). Second, we have The Sage of Theatre, by Diana Wynne Jones. Diana is (was) a British novelist, and has been described by Neil as “quite simply the best writer for children of her generation”.

Read on, my friends, and feel free to drop your thoughts in the comments as soon as you like, given the month is already half over. I’ll be back at the end of the month to add mine.

A quick reminder: if you are participating in the Nerdy Friends Book Club, remember to stop by over here and leave a comment about stories 3 and 4!

Meanwhile, don’t ask me how, but I somehow managed to plow through eight (8!!!) books in the past 6 weeks. I only cover 6 of them here because the other two need some time to simmer. Plus, I don’t want to bore you to death! There are no particular themes this month. An autobiography, a science fiction, a mystery, a love story, an obsessive love story, and one that made me SMH. You’ll be able to figure them out.

Woman, Watching, by Merilyn Simonds

An autobiography of Louise de Kiriline Lawrence, a Swedish aristocrat born in 1890 who ends up moving to North Bay and living her life out in a log cabin where she becomes a dedicated and celebrated bird watcher and expert in her research, publishing scientific papers in various journals.  But all this is after she trains and works as a nurse in a Denmark Red Cross hospital during WW1, falls for a Russian patient, follows him back to Russia where he ultimately perishes in the Russian Civil War, and then makes her way to Canada where she becomes nursemaid for the Dionne Quintuplets! This is a must-read for a true and astonishing story of a very unique individual. I do have one bit of feedback for Merilyn Simonds: while it is obvious she admires, even idolizes, Louise, the book gets a bit long in the tooth by the end, and it would not have taken away from the amazing accomplishments of Louise’s life to end the book 3 or 4 chapters earlier.

Long Division, by Kiese Laymon

This book was recommended several times by my book readers podcast “Reading Glasses”. It’s an interesting idea – two separate books that can be read either front to back or back to front (what they really mean is that book one starts at the front of the book and ends at the halfway point, and to read book two you have to flip the book over and start from the back, so that it also ends at the same halfway point). I, of course, started at the back, just to be contrarian, but truthfully I think it works better reading them in proper order. It’s a clever science fiction story involving time travel (and the requisite paradoxes that result), and deeply thoughtful. But is written in a very colloquial style that made comprehension a bit tricky. I had to pause often to look things up, but as one of the characters says in the book, it gave me a chance to linger.

“I hate the answer because I don’t believe in mastering the smaller steps,” she told me. “They never teach you to like, you know, linger in the smaller steps.”
“Linger? What’s that mean?”
“They just tell you that you gotta master the small steps if you wanna get to the big answer,” she told me. “But I wish we could really pause at each step in long division and talk about it.”

Enduring Love, by Ian McEwan

We learn a new disorder: de Clerambault’s Syndrome, described as “homoerotic obsession with religious overtones”. Precisely the kind of person I want lurking on the sidewalk outside my home, day after day after day. Ian McEwan is a wonderful writer, and he manages to perfectly capture the escalating feeling of fear and frustration when the protagonist is stalked by man who wants to “lead him to God through their mutual love” (gack!) and yet nobody believes him when he goes in search of help.

The Magician’s Assistant, by Ann Patchett

I didn’t love this book as much as my absolute favourite Ann Patchett book (Bel Canto), but it was still lovely. The lead character, Sabine, is the assistant to her husband Parsifal, the magician. It’s a marriage of convenience, because Parsifal is gay, but he is also Sabine’s one true love. After he dies somewhat suddenly, Sabine finds out that the family he always told her was dead is actually very much alive. The story is of her journey to find and know this family, and finds herself in the process.

Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov

A book in keeping with the “My Dark Vanessa” theme of books about disturbing and predatory men who prey on young girls, in this case the man’s 12 year old step-daughter. To make matters worse, he only marries the girl’s mother in order to be able to have closer daily contact with the girl. Ew. I have one thing to say about Nabokov: he is a fantastic and immensely witty writer. I also have only one thing to say about this book and it’s directed to men: look, dude, I don’t care if a girl strips naked in front of you and begs you to sleep with her, you DO NOT HAVE SEX WITH YOUR 12 YEAR OLD STEP-DAUGHTER you predatory freak (you might want to pay attention, Woody Allen).

The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, by Theodora Goss

Imagine this. What if, in some of the greatest horror stories of all time, the disposable female characters where, in fact, not disposed of, but instead came together through circumstances surrounding a series of unsolved murders in Whitechapel, London. And what if the detective who steps in to investigate the murders is none other than Sherlock Holmes himself? Well, I’d say you have yourself one heck of a fun, “not your average” murder mystery!

Welcome back to the Nerdy Friends Book Club! Just a quick reminder that if you want to join in the conversation about the first two short stories, you can do so here. Just scroll down to the comments.

This month we will be reading the next two stories in our selected book, Unnatural Creatures with stories selected by Neil Gaiman. First up, we have The Griffon and the Minor Canon, by Frank R. Stockton. Stockton was a contemporary of Mark Twain, and was best known for a series of children’s fairy tales popular in the late 19th century and none of which I had heard of. I regret this, because his Wikipedia page describes his children’s tales as poking fun at greed, violence, abuse of power, and other human foibles. Much better than kids hiking through the woods only to get eaten by a wicked witch!

Our second story is Ozioma The Wicked by Nnedi Okorafor. Nnedi is a contemporary writer, and winner of the Hugo, Nebula, Eisner, and World Fantasy awards, and frankly needs to be added to my TBR list!

By the way, both of these stories are under 20 pages long and based on my reading of the first two, they will each take maybe 15-30 mins to read, depending on your reading speed.

Last thought: Erin had a great recommendation after reading the first two shorts, which is to skip Gaiman’s intro until after you’ve read the stories, as his comments can be a bit spoiler-ish (or anti-spoiler-ish, in one particular case).

With that, let’s read! Please feel free to post your spoiler-filled thoughts in the comments starting April 23.

Starter Villain, John Scalzi

I can’t believe I’ve never read a book by John Scalzi before. His writing is right up my alley – funny, cheeky, sarcastic. Just look at this amazing list of titles! “Redshirts: A Novel With Three Codas”, “Old Man’s War”, “The Book of Dumb”, “You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop”, “Virtue Signaling and Other Heresies”. Seriously, my TBR just jumped by about 20 titles!

In Starter Villain, our protagonist Charlie inherits a boatload of money from a long lost uncle (ah, dreams) as well as a thriving supervillain business. Charlie has to learn the business “tout suite”, while finding out his pet cats are actually super-intelligent spy cats who can communication with humans, and dealing with labour unrest among the super-intelligent dolphins that protect his secret volcano lair. But honestly, the most far=fetched part of this book is a secret society of the 12 riches people (men) on earth who interfere with world progress by subtly nudging things like governments and technology in the direction they want them to go. AS IS a bunch of rich people (men) all working together in a secret society would be subtle! Puh-lease!!! They would ALL be launching stupid-ass things like cars into space, building stupid-ass clocks that tick once a year, and buying entire social media platforms just to drive it into the stupid-ass ground for no good reason. But that’s why we love books, right? For the fantasy.

The Absolution (Book 3 of Children’s House), by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

I found this book at a library sale at the local Ameliasburgh Fall Fair and it’s really one of the most county things you could do to visit this village fair, unless it’s to visit the Milford Fall Fair! Unbeknownst to me, this is book 3 in a series of crime-fighting murder mysteries and there was definitely some important history between the key members of the crime-fighting p0lice force. I hindsight, I might better have elected to read this series in order.

Pretty quickly you figure out that The Absolution is a revenge story set around the theme of cyber-bullying and I have to say, it makes me extremely happy that I did not grow up in a world with no borders to bullying. In my day (which, really, how old does that expression make me sound?), it was possible to escape the presence of bullies by simply walking away from them. Home from school? No bullying! Except of course for the case where some doofus “friend” decided it would be fun to prank-call our house 35 times a day (this is not an exaggeration), but we just didn’t answer the phone. In fact, in one moment of sweet satisfaction, I got the loudest whistle known to mankind in a Christmas cracker and I started answering the phone and immediately blowing the whistle as loud as I could into the receiver, and what fun that was hahaha!!! Stupid bully. I can’t even imagine life today, with cyber-bullies dogging you every minute of every day everywhere you go. The book does a fine job of showing just how inadequately we, as a society, are prepared to deal with this kind of thing. But honestly, hasn’t it been long enough to at least start to figure it out? Also, eff-you, social media companies. (Now that I think about it, maybe all the rich people SHOULD just buy social media companies and burn them to the ground with their hubris.)

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin

This book is a love story. It’s a love story about gaming (although you don’t have to be a gamer to love the book, me being a case in point. The last computer game I avidly played was Zork – what I remember being called ‘Adventure’. That’s right, you read that right.) It’s a love story about story-telling within computer game creation. It’s a love story about the game two gamers collaborate to create together. And in a strange and unusual twist, it’s a love story about a boy and girl who are friends, collaborators, roommates, partners, but never lovers. What a refreshing change! They have ups and downs, fights, breakups, makeups, boyfriends and girlfriends (with other people) but they, in the long run, are just best friends.

Apeirogon, by Colum McCann

Two fathers, a Palestinian and an Israeli, lose their daughters in acts of war – one shot by an Israeli soldier, and one a victim of Palestinian suicide bombers. Eventually they meet and travel the world together advocating mutual understanding and peace. Based on a true story and told through fragmented chapters, the book reveals nuances about the conflict that make it difficult to “pick a side”.

I admit to massive lack of knowledge about the history of the conflict in this area and it feels like something we are not supposed to have an opinion on. Politicians and governments tell us how to feel, and if we express dissent, we are bigoted in some way. But from what I read in this (one and only) book, it seems like Palestinians live in a land occupied by Israel. And it seems like Israel is creating settlements inside the occupied land, an action that is, I think, illegal. In fairness, the origins all seems traceable back to British colonization, another notch of their bedpost of ignorant and careless actions resulting in decades of bloody conflict. At any rate, I am interested in reading more about the history of this area, if you happen to have a recommendation please leave a comment.

Welcome to the first month of the Nerdy Friends Book Club!

Through popular request and strategic planning around busy schedules, I’ve selected Unnatural Creatures, a book of short stories curated by the great Neil Gaiman! There are 16 stories in all, so we will plan on reading two per month, and discuss them in the comments. I suggest that we aim to read the stories within the first 3 weeks of the month and leave the 4th week for commentary. This is not a hard and fast rule, you decide what works best for you, but be aware that after week 3, spoilers may appear in the comments.

This month features the first two stories in the book, one of which has a non-verbal “Arrival” style title that looks like an audio sound wave, and which we will simply refer to as “Story One”. The second story is titled “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchists Bees”. Authors are not provided in the table of contents, but do get credited at the start of each story. That’s it! Chat with you in 3 weeks!

The first thing that jumped out at me from this book was the dedication, which makes me think of my friend Chrystal not because she’s boring (she isn’t!) but because I think she may actually be a secret agent:

For Bigfoot, for the time travelers, for the pirates, for the robots, for any boring people (who obviously aren’t actually secret agents in boring disguise), for people in space rockets, and for our mothers. ~N.G.

The Sherlock Holmes Bookshop Mystery series, by Vicki Delaney

I started an unseasonably (and alarmingly) warm winter with a quadruple cozy mystery binge. What exactly is a cozy mystery, you may be wondering! The key elements are: violence and sex occur offstage; there is an amateur sleuth who solves the crime, often a woman, with a community job such as librarian, shop owner, dog trainer, or caterer, and with some kind of personal connection to someone on the local police force; the crime occurs in a small town where the principle characters all know each other; maybe there is a cat.

The Sherlock Holmes Bookshop Mystery series is a set of (currently) 9 books. The amateur sleuth character is a woman (check!) from England who has resettled in the small Cape Cod town of West London (check!) to manage her great uncle’s shop, the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium (check!) which is also the home of Moriarty, the cat (check!). Her on-again/off-again boyfriend is a local police detective (check!) and her best friend works in an adjoining shop running a tea room. Both the book shop and the tea room are thematically based on Sherlock Holmes (BONUS POINTS!). The formula is strong with this one!

All of the books focus on a murder that takes place when a well-known out-of-towner comes to participate in a local event, that in every case is connected with or located at the bookshop. An amazing coincidence for little West London! I’ll say this, four books in and I would definitely not be hosting an event at the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium. I’d be safer jaywalking across a busy 6-lane highway!

If you like cozy mysteries, and I do, this is a fun series. Vicki herself is local to Prince Edward County, and in fact, I bought these 4 books directly from her at a Christmas craft fair just down the way in Wellington. I could, perhaps, have reconsidered binging them all at once. The repetitive formula would be better served by having some space between each book (for me, at least), on top of which Vicki tends to annoyingly overuse the word “pastiche” which might be less apparent if you space the books out. Apart from that, however, 10/10 as cozies go.

Here’s the list of the first four books:

• Book 1: Elementary, She Read
• Book 2: Body on Baker Street
• Book 3: The Cat of the Baskervilles
• Book 4: A Scandal in Scarlet

Thanks to everyone for the amazing suggestions for a 6th “bonus” bookish activity challenge for 2024! I ultimately decided to go with a co-challenge, where you get to share in the activity with me.* We are going to read a book together over the course of the next 10 months!

Respecting that everyone has different and differently challenging schedules, reading tastes, and access to books, I settled on the short story collection “Unnatural Creatures: Stories Selected by Neil Gaiman”. I chose this book because:

1. Although Gaiman selected the stories, he only authors one of them, so if you happen to hate him (wait, WHAT????), then you are only subjected to one story by him, which you can always skip. Mind you, I would assume his tastes run through the rest of the book.
2. Short stories means you can miss some of the reading, and still be able to participate fully in any discussions for stories that you did read.
3. The short stories themselves appear on first glance to really be short. The longest seems to be one at around 80 pages, and the shortest is around 12. Most are in the neighbourhood of 25.
4. There are 16 stories in all, which means we can read 2 per month and wrap up at the end of October with 2 months to spare.

I have no idea what the stories are about, but suspect a healthy does of the magical and the fantastical, being selected by Gaiman and all. This is an older book (2013) so copies may potentially be easier to come by, both in stores and in libraries. I’ve included some links to sources below. The plan is for us to read 2 stories per month, starting in March. I’ll create a post each month to kick it off, listing the two stories that are that month’s focus. At the end of the month, everyone can post their thoughts (good and bad) in the comments. I hope you’ll consider participating!

One final point, this may be a book aimed at younger readers, just so that you’re prepared for the reading level being potentially extremely easy 🙂 An interesting tidbit that I came across while looking for sources of the book: “Sales of Unnatural Creatures benefit 826DC, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting students in their creative and expository writing, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.” I’m curious if this still applies to sales a decade later?

Amazon (paperback $13.61 and kindle $11.99)

Indigo (paperback $13.61 and kindle $11.99 – same price fixing as Amazon, surprise surprise)

Thriftbooks (paperback $6.39 – $14.69)

Abebooks (price = ??? TBH I’m not a fan of Abebooks anymore, they hide a lot of costs in currency conversion and shipping that did not used to be the case)

*other suggestions have not been discarded, merely postponed for possible future use

This month is brought to you by word Agency. Let’s dive right in.

The Sleeping Car Porter, by Suzette Mayr

What stood out most for me in this book was how effectively Suzette Mayr describes the state of extreme exhaustion. Exhaustion to the point of hallucination and loss of basic motor skills. The book made me want to take a nap – not out of boredom (it is most assuredly not boring), but out of her near perfect description of what it’s like to be that tired.

The sleeping care porters are tired because they’re required to serve passengers all day, closing up bunks each morning, washing linens, providing food, cleaning toilets, and re-opening bunks each night for sleeping. They’re busy all night as well, shining shoes, cleaning passageways, washing more linens, and answering to passengers in the night who need ladders to climb down from their sleeping bunks to use the bathroom. All the while, they are required to be on their best behaviour in order to earn much-needed tips to supplement their meager wagers, and to avoid being penalized with demerits, which means being fired if their demerit count reached 60. I think most of us are just a little too used to speaking our minds to really understand how demeaning this life must have been. To just stand there and take whatever is given or said to you, quietly begging for coins and trying to avoid negative reviews.

The book itself follows the story of one porter, Baxter, who desperately wants to earn enough money in tips to go back to university and complete his degree in dentistry. He gets demerits for having a dirty uniform after a passenger accidentally spills coffee on him, and with no merit-earning options he simply struggles to stay below the fire-able offense of reaching 60 before he has secured his dental school savings. To add to his difficulties, Baxter is gay, an illegal offense for which he can be imprisoned if found out. Baxter ends up working the lengthy Montreal to Vancouver run, continually trying to please a group of unruly passengers who call him “George” because they can’t be bothered to learn his actual name.

While I was reading, I remembered that my grandfather worked for the railway for many years after immigrating to Canada from Poland. I have no idea what he actually did, but I wish now I has asked more (or any) questions about that. There were probably some amazing stories there, sadly now lost.

My Dark Vanessa, by Kate Elizabeth Russell

When fifteen year old Vanessa transfers to a boarding school for her sophomore year of high school (that’s grade 10 for us Canadians), she becomes involved in an affair with her forty-two year old English teacher, Jacob Strane. Seventeen years later, another student publicly accuses Strane of sexual assault, and reaches out to Vanessa asking her to add her own story of abuse to the accusations. The trouble is that Vanessa doesn’t see herself as a victim of abuse (whaaattt????) and in fact believes that she and Strane fell deeply in love. I’m pretty sure I know what you’re thinking about this … situation, but here’s the thing. The story, both the past and the present, are written from Vanessa’s point of view, and she is a young woman who thinks she had as much agency in her own love story and the teacher who (allegedly) seduced her.

It’s a thought-provoking book that is sure to generate conflicted opinions and heated discussions. From my perspective, I am absolutely convinced that the teacher, Strane, is a sexual predator. I am certain that he manipulated Vanessa into falling in love with him, groomed her to consent to his sexual advances, and then gaslighted her into believing the reverse was true, that she lead him on instead. I am certain that he absolutely ruined her life. But the book reveals nuances and complexities, not the least of which is this. How do we deal with situations of abuse and assault where the women feel they have had agency and control over their own lives, and who feel they have consented to what they view as a real relationship based on love. How do we, in good conscience, tell them that all this time they have been molded, manipulated, and victimized by horrible men that do not actually love them? How do these women find and maintain self-worth in the face of these humiliating implications? I’m wondering if we are having the conversations incorrectly and without appropriate empathy. This book is troubling, but important.