I received my Sony Reader (touch model) a couple of Christmases ago, and then when I bought the iPad, I loaded on several ebook reading apps: iBooks, kobo, Bluefire Reader, Stanza, Kindle. As a person with a brain injury, I was surprised and chuffed to find reading ebooks is easier than print books. There’s less text on the “page,” and on Sony and in iBooks, it’s easy to highlight and write notes (kobo is a close second), all strategies to help the reader to absorb, process, and synthesize the text. Still, at first I remained wedded to my favourite, familiar mass paperback. But after I became a member of Goodreads and began borrowing ebooks from the Toronto Public Library, I read ebooks more and more often. Before I wrote this post, I last read a print book months ago.

Most ebooks I read are borrowed. Until Overdrive finally created an eReading app, I used Bluefire Reader to read them on my iPad. I wasn’t interested in highlighting, printing, looking up words, or writing notes on these ebooks, so the rudimentary and restrictive practices of the apps and publishers didn’t impinge on me. But this week I wanted to buy three books for my background reading as I begin dreaming up my next novel. I wanted to buy them in ebook format. I wanted them to be as flexible and convenient to read as the mass paperback.

Apparently, I wanted the moon.

Traditional publishers are so scared — and seemingly ignorant of how readers use, lend, give away, sell print books — of what readers can do with ebooks that they insist on DRM (Digital Rights Management) locks. The idea is that they protect copyright.

The reality is they frustrate law-abiding readers and provide no deterrent to thieves.

The real result is that the publisher controls how, when, where the law-abiding reader can read the ebook and do nothing to thwart the pirates. Although ePub is an international standard, DRM locks are not. Everyone but Apple iBooks uses one standard. Apple uses another. An ebook readable in iBooks is not readable in any other app or Sony Reader. And vice versa. And Amazon is outside the ePub universe entirely. Consumer friendly, eh? Not.

Book #1 was available in Kindle format for about $4 cheaper than the ePub version. But I can only read Amazon’s mobi format ebook on my iPad’d Kindle app, which is rudimentary to say the least, lacking the features I need for background reading. I also wanted to be able to read it on my Sony Reader. To compound the insult to the international ebook standard and non-Amazon readers, the ePub version was more expensive than the mass paperback. If I bought it through the kobo bookstore or Sony bookstore, the ePub version would not be readable in iBooks, yet iBooks did not list their ePub version in the Canadian store.

Book #2 was the only book in that author’s arsenal that was not available in ebook format. What gives with the discrimination?

Book #3′s situation was totally ridiculous. It was available in ePub but only in certain territorial markets. So if I was a US customer of iBooks, I could’ve bought it in iBooks ePub. But as a Canadian, I was barred from buying it. My only option was mobi through Amazon’s Kindle store. Territorial rights in the global digital age are not only obsolete but an obstacle to reading. Given I resent buying an ebook I can read in exactly one place, I decided not to purchase the mobi ebook.

I wanted to buy all three in ePub. I could buy only one at an inflated price with limitations on which apps I could read it in. If this ebook did not have a DRM lock, I could’ve read it the way I wanted to on the device I wanted to in the app I wanted to. The upshot is that I’m reminded why I don’t buy traditionally published ebooks beyond what I must, why I prefer buying ebooks by indie authors that are DRM-free, why I will continue to mostly borrow ebooks — and why I will never put DRM locks on my ebooks. I don’t want to annoy my readers before they even load one up.

To check out what I’m reading currently and my Goodreads Author Page and bookshelves, please visit my Goodreads profile.

Marketplace mimicked bad science well this past week. Their theory: COLD-FX does not work. Their results: don’t fit.

A little manipulation was in order using panning camerawork, fun quizzes, people-on-the-street interviews journalists are addicted to, jerky camerawork as they follow some poor target, lowered voice, clever camera cuts, grainy footage, undercover-type footage, selective submission of papers for scientific analysis (truly, have doctors and researchers not yet cottoned on to how journalists manipulate them?), highlight preferred statements over blasphemous one, present conclusions as mind-blowing, etc., etc.

Well, I don’t like it when my health is threatened, and so it’s time for a little fun. After all CBC’s Marketplace can’t hog it all.

But first: I take COLD-FX, have done for several years, as a preventative measure. I started because since my brain injury, I’ve become quite susceptible to colds; worse it takes me a month to recover from one. Going from cold to cold while trying to cope with the fallout of brain injury is extremely unpleasant. I took Flonase for awhile, but the side effects aren’t great. COLD-FX allowed me to stop the Flonase and for the first time in ages, I went a whole year last year without one respiratory infection. Hallelujah! I take COLD-FX as a preventative or prophylaxis because if I took it immediately in response to a scratchy throat, my body would still take weeks to recover no matter how efficacious COLD-FX is because that’s how it rolls these days with any illness I contract. I figure not getting one in the first place is better.

And so in the cause of health, I brave watching Marketplace. I haven’t watched it in years, ever since it went from trustworthy straightforward journalism to the gotcha kind. The old Marketplace may’ve been staid, but I trusted and respected it. New Marketplace makes me roll my eyes and switch the channel.

Anywhoo…

I sit back and watch … a mom-child convention. Huh? I don’t know what a COLD-FX luncheon for hockey moms has to do with a market report on a product. But it sure looks suspicious! Marketplace has set the mood and begins to reel us in with choice words.

“Brilliant marketing idea” — sounds like COLD-FX was all about marketing, not about helping people fight the bane of our lives: colds. (Let rolling eyes commence.)

“take a natural product, ginseng and get some science behind it.” — tsk, tsk, imagine makers of a natural health product standardizing their product and using the scientific method. What will they do next? Conduct and publish more than one study?

“just like a pharmaceutical drug” — the nerve!

“research pays off” — damn, it sounds dirty, having solid research backing their product.

Marketplace then capitalizes on something no lay person is going to know, that Health Canada takes years — and years and years — to approve new products, and it isn’t always for kosher reasons either. Imagine a company that decides it’s had enough of Health Canada’s notorious foot dragging and, gasp, puts on political pressure to light a fire under the bureaucrats to actually work on it. Tut, tut. Bet all companies wish they could do that. What would be better though is if the politicians reformed Health Canada to approve — or reject — new products in a timely manner based solely on science.

Oh look, now we have the person-on-the-street interviews. It’s interactive, snazzy, and provides a we’re-here-for-you backdrop to the “expert” interview. And here’s where the manipulations get awesome.

Erica Johnson asks their chosen expert from a prestigious Toronto hospital about the claim for immediate relief for colds and flu. Erica asks Dr. Andreas Laupacis, a general internal medicine specialist: “Is there any research that’s been done showing that Cold-FX helps stop colds in their tracks?”

He answers, the camera moving and panning, weaving and zooming on him, on her, on both: “Certainly all the [camera cut to Andreas only] clinical trials I’ve looked at there’s no such [camera cut to Erica only] evidence. They’ve studied patients with [camera cut to Andreas only] Cold-FX to prevent flus. I didn’t see any studies to show whether Cold-FX works or not in people that notice a flu coming and then take Cold-FX.”

Erica: “That’s right. The pitch: to stop a cold in its tracks.”

Uh, no, not right, he said “flu.” You Erica said “cold.” Two different viruses; two different topics. Just like the flu vaccine has zero effect on a cold and some effect in preventing flu, any product that can prevent a cold may not necessarily prevent the flu. Your expert, Marketplace, did not say COLD-FX does not prevent colds. He said flu, and only flu. (That’s probably why there were separate studies for colds and flu, more below.)

But a little repetition by Erica nicely masks that distinction. Gotta admire the manipulation.

What the heck did the Health Canada letter to Marketplace actually say? A few words pulled out say nothing and cannot be relied upon. I mean if movie companies can pull out glowing excerpts from bad reviews… If you want to know, check out their website for Health Canada’s statements (more below).

On to the “undercover” work! The better to make COLD-FX look like a big, fat fraud. Jerky camera work. Blurred faces. Closed captioning of what pharmacists say. The pitch: “Remember: there’s no published evidence for [taking COLD-FX for immediate relief].”

For some reason, I keep hearing the Twilight Zone theme.

More experts! This time Marketplace sends a select list of published articles on COLD-FX for analysis by Andrew Lane Ilersich, MSc, BScPhm, RPh at the Univeristy of Toronto. But it’s kind of boring just saying what they said. Quiz time! Grand revelation after each question and answer session! But did the analysis really say what Marketplace asserts it said?

As Syd Baumel wrote on the Marketplace website: “To begin with, the scientist didn’t do an independent search of the literature in case there were other studies of Cold FX out there. He only analyzed the four submitted to him by Marketplace.”

Andrew Lane Ilersich, MSc, BScPhm, RPh did put in his short summary headline of the meta-analysis “limited scope.” (More below.)

COLD-FX has ten citations and it looks like about eight clinical trials listed on its website. Cherry picking is sweet.

Baumel again: “Cold FX enjoyed a 15% reduction in cold frequency compared to those who took a placebo. Very modest effect, but statistically significant. To the individual user, this suggests that if you take Cold FX, it’ll spare you from getting a cold about one time out of 7.”

I personally didn’t understand this whole “once in seventeen years” of taking COLD-FX assertion on Marketplace. I’ve never heard statistics interpreted that way before, not in stats classes or research I participated in or studies I’ve read. Fifteen percent is one in seven and would be a standard way of putting it.

Anyway, how many people would bother reading the entire meta-analysis (PDF) to get the correct picture? Don’t your eyes glaze over at the very thought? So it’s pretty safe for Marketplace to reproduce only one paragraph from the plain-language summary and not the paragraph that states clearly that the studies “demonstrated a reduction in the risk of getting a cold.” It’s that old pull out one statement, ignore the other trick to make it sound like it’s saying what you want to. Here’s the entire summary:

“COLD-FX is effective for preventing colds in adults. Research findings from 4 experimental studies (randomized controlled trials) that compared COLD-FX to a placebo (dummy treatment) including over 1000 adults demonstrated a reduction in the risk of getting a cold. In all studies, the COLD-FX was used in a dose of 400mg/day. The duration of treatment ranged from between 2 months and 6 months.

Relative to placebo, the risk of getting a cold was reduced by about 15% when COLD-FX was used. The absolute risk reduction was about 6% (this means that if the overall chance of getting a cold is, for example, 50%, then taking COLD-FX reduces it to 44%). Altogether, 17 people need to be treated to prevent 1 person from getting a cold.

For those who contracted a cold, there was insufficient evidence that the duration or severity was reduced.

This analysis did not explore the effects of age, dose and/or duration of therapy on the effectiveness of COLD-FX, nor the cost-effectiveness of COLD-FX.”

How interesting: the analysis did not explore effects of duration of therapy or dosage taken, one or both of which would have large effects on COLD-FX’s efficacy, one would surmise.

Onto the gotcha journalism CBC enjoys. It makes their target look like they’re up to no good, even when s/he has a clear, legal reason for not answering their in-their-face questions (I mean, what journalist doesn’t know how lawyers make people shut up, even for the silliest of reasons? The buy-out seems to be the reason here. Oh, but perhaps journalists figure most people wouldn’t know how effective lawyers are at silencing people? I feel for target Shan, caught between a lawyer and a journalist. Gak.).

So Erica asks the big question. And Jacqueline Shan answers: “[I was just talking about Cold-FX inside.]”

Erica: “We didn’t hear you talk inside.” Really? They were able to track her down but were unable to make it in time for her talk?

Shan: “Our company was bought by Valeant. So I’m not allowed to make any public statement… You need to contact the company.” Pretty clear to me. It must suck for a journalist to be stonewalled by a large company, so take it out on an individual instead, eh?

Onward!

Oh hey, the lowered voice method! A lowered voice hints at nefarious doings, hints there was a bacteria cover-up even though Health Canada said there is no health risk in its last statement to Marketplace.

Marketplace quotes: “Based on currently available information, the presence of E. hermannii in a finished natural health product would be unacceptable.” Health Canada clarifies:

“Our earlier language was perhaps too black and white and did not accurately convey the science behind acceptable levels

After laboratory assessments were conducted by Health Canada scientists of the product on the Canadian marketplace, a low level of the bacteria Escherichia hermannii was found. Following a thorough assessment by Health Canada Scientists, it was determined that the level found presented the lowest risk to health and safety of Canadians [my emphasis] and, as such, no recall was initiated.

It is important to note that all health products have benefits and risks. When health products are found on the market that pose an unacceptable level of risk to health, Health Canada takes appropriate steps to mitigate and manage these risks.”

To be sure, I don’t recall any mass deaths or hospitalizations from COLD-FX-related E. coli contamination back in 2008 or 2009. Do you? But who needs to prove a dangerous bacteria contamination when all you have to say is “bacteria” to spring suspicion and fear into every viewer’s breast?

I feel for Marketplace. They really had to work hard to prove their theory about this product, going here and there, running all over the planet, from city to city, from expert to expert, using cameras that produced grainy pictures in China while using excellent ones for the scenes in which Erica appears.

On to the good stuff: an interview with Don Cherry.

Love the Don Cherry interview: one science-illiterate person talking to another, talking about two totally different things. One about immediate relief, the other about prevention. Neither notices. You don’t see this in the Markeplace piece, but in the extended Cherry piece I’ve embedded above.

Cherry begins by saying he doesn’t work for them anymore and he’s a little ticked off with COLD-FX, the company. Yet, get this, he still takes four COLD-FX capsules a day and ten a day, like the hockey players, if he feels a cold coming on. He relates in the extended Cherry piece that after a lifetime of being plagued by colds, after he began taking COLD-FX, he’s had just three colds in eight years. I don’t think anyone, least of all, Marketplace, or anything, like being fired, is going to pry the product out of his hands. He likes being cold-free too much. Me too, actually.

In all the hoo-hah, Marketplace forgot to mention an important point: “in the United States alone at least 1 billion colds per year have been reported” (from Predy et al, 2005 CMAJ article) with each person catching on average two to six colds. We know each cold costs several days of lost work or reduced productivity, never mind that it makes one feel lousier than hell. This is not peanuts. Dissing an effective remedy for colds harms public health.

The meta-analysis they had done listed four studies. I took a gander at them. (Note: in the meta-analysis, they were not identified in proper reference format, but I’m pretty sure I found the ones looked at as there can’t be more than one in the same year by the same authors on the same topic.)

2004 study: Elderly nursing home residents, 90 percent of whom had received the flu vaccine, had fewer cases of flu when taking COLD-FX for 8 weeks and 12, that is, 1 of 97 versus 7 of 101 who took a placebo. Taking COLD-FX reduced the risk of a fragile, elderly person from catching flu by 89 percent. By the way, flu kills the elderly.

2005 peer-reviewed study in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal): Healthy adults who took the same dose as in the 2004 study but for 4 months caught 0.68 colds versus 0.95 for placebo and also only 10 percent caught more than one cold while 22.8 percent in the placebo group got multiple colds.

“These results are similar to those reported for zanamivir and oseltamivir therapy. These antiviral agents have been reported to reduce the severity and duration of illness by 1.5-2.5 days. In comparison, the ginseng extract treatment was found to reduce the duration of a cold by 2.4 days.”

2006 study: A variation of the 2004 study, in which after two months of use, COLD-FX reduced the risk of contracting a respiratory infection by almost half (48 percent) and the duration by 55 percent. I assume the infections were colds because they state that there was no influenza in the community during the study.

2011 study: A larger version of the 2005 study.

“data indicate that CVT-E002 at a dose of 400 mg/day or 800 mg/day is safe and well tolerated and results in a reduction in the number, severity, and duration of Jackson-confirmed URIs (upper respiratory tract infections) when taken as seasonal prophylaxis by healthy, community-dwelling older adults. Further studies with larger sample size are warranted to determine possible dose-related effects of CVT-E002.”

Ilersich concluded: “In summary, these results support the effectiveness of COLD-FX for preventing colds. There is insufficient evidence of a reduction in severity or duration of colds.” Insufficient evidence is science-speak for do more work, we don’t know one way or the other yet.

By the end of the twenty-two-odd minutes, Marketplace’s entire piece, when read between the lines and engendering Herculean effort not to be distracted by the bells and whistles, boils down to COLD-FX prevents colds. The claim it provides immediate relief needs further study; the China connection is no different than every other product we buy (have you checked where your frozen veggies are grown lately?), thus is not COLD-FX specific and is a separate topic; the bacterial contamination is old news and a non-starter. In other words, Marketplace told its alert viewers to take COLD-FX daily if you want to prevent colds.

Perhaps that’s why it ends its piece in the bathroom – with a shot of Erica and another expert washing their hands with soap, claiming that it’s more effective than COLD-FX. Washing hands with soap is effective in reducing colds. But what’s their published evidence proving their theory right? Where’s the double-blind randomized trial that compares the two methods side-by-side in reducing severity, duration, and frequency of infections, one for colds, one for flu?

——————-

References:

McElhaney JE, Gravenstein S, Cole SK, Davidson E, O’neill D, Petitjean S, Rumble B, Shan JJ. “A placebo-controlled trial of a proprietary extract of North American ginseng (CVT-E002) to prevent acute respiratory illness in institutionalized older adults.” J Am Geriatr Soc. 2004 Jan;52(1):13-9. Erratum in: J Am Geriatr Soc. 2004 May;52(5):following 856.

Gerald N. Predy, Vinti Goel, Ray Lovlin, Allan Donner, Larry Stitt, Tapan K. Basu. “Efficacy of an extract of North American ginseng containing poly-furanosyl-pyranosyl-saccharides for preventing upper respiratory tract infections: a randomized controlled trial.” CMAJ October 25, 2005 vol. 173 no. 9.

McElhaney JE, Goel V, Toane B, Hooten J, Shan JJ. “Efficacy of COLD-fX in the prevention of respiratory symptoms in community-dwelling adults: a randomized, double-blinded, placebo controlled trial.” J Altern Complement Med. 2006 Mar;12(2):153-7.

Janet E. McElhaney, Andrew E. Simor, Shelly McNeil, and Gerald N. Predy, “Efficacy and Safety of CVT-E002, a Proprietary Extract of Panax quinquefolius in the Prevention of Respiratory Infections in Influenza-Vaccinated Community-Dwelling Adults: A Multicenter, Randomized, Double-Blind, and Placebo-Controlled Trial,” Influenza Research and Treatment, vol. 2011, Article ID 759051, 8 pages, 2011. doi:10.1155/2011/759051

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Only Ben Cooper appears in this nicely short story. I like the interplay befween Cooper and Uddal; the mystery itself is Intriguing; and the ending satisfies. But this is a mystery with a message. And that message is hammered home in Cooper’s thoughts, a policeman’s dialogue, a character’s spouting. It was a bit Law & Order like in its preachiness. Booth made an effort to make the dialogue and thoughts natural, but it was the sheer overwhelming amount of it that ruined that effort. I would’ve preferred more of the usual Cooper mystery tone and less of the message being so obvious.

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My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I find it a pleasure to read mysteries set in a country other than UK or US (yes, I didn’t include Canada because it’s not a big setting either), and I like this series because not only is the setting — Africa — new to me, but also the culture is so different, so personable and gentle. The tone is calm and thoughtful but not in an oh-get-on-with-it way but in a slow-suck-you-in-and-keep-you-glued way. There are levels of stories and mysteries, some minor, two the main event, that are woven in together expertly, all interesting. Tears of the Giraffe is a pleasurable antidote to Scottish grimness and North American alienation.

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My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Another good read by Nevada Barr. What made me admire her more as a writer is that she had a scene where a lesser author, going for the easy titillation, would’ve thrown sex in. Instead Barr adds credibility and excitement and interest by not doing so. As a result, in more than one way, the last scene makes you want to get the next book — now.

This is the first book I’ve finished reading in 2012. A new year of reading begins!

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My rating: 1 of 5 stars

OK, it’s rare for me not to finish a book. I’m endemically inclined to finish any book I pick up, even if it takes me years. But this writer has a really annoying habit of jumping around in time. At first, I thought the publisher had screwed up the ebook formatting and left out pages. I’d be in the middle of a scene, “turn” the page, and I’m suddenly somewhere ahead in time. When I kept reading, I’d eventually enter one of the character’s thoughts of what happened from the point the writer left off. I felt like I was getting mental whiplash every few pages.

That was bad enough. But the editor did a piss poor job with quotation marks. I’d be reading dialogue, enter another bunch of thoughts (or even a simple “he said”) as indicated by a close quotation mark, then suddenly realise I was reading dialogue — except the editor forgot to put in the open quotation mark to indicate the character had started speaking again, necessitating me to go back and reread it.

The mystery itself is interesting. But when the physical act of reading is this difficult, it’s not worth pursuing. Thank goodness I borrowed this from the Toronto Public Library and didn’t buy it.

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My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book won’t leave my head. I keep feeling the coldness of a Lake Superior summer, the lushness of a temperate climate, the aliveness of the protagonist Anna Pigeon.

I’m sure I’ve read Nevada Barr before — I have memories of reading a mystery set in a desert — but this one was immersive to me, perhaps because, as a Canadian, the wild green landscape is more familiar to me.

I took this ebook out of the Toronto Public Library, and I was reluctant to turn off my eReader when something else called my attention. Even though I found it difficult to keep track of her cast of characters — the old-school method of listing characters and having maps at the front of books would’ve been handy — I found the plot, the descriptions, the mystery, and Anna Pigeon herself so compelling that being lost in who was whom didn’t stop me from reading. And eventually I would figure it out. I cannot wait to borrow the next one in the series.

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My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I had heard great reviews of this book, but I found it a difficult read — not style-wise but content-wise. And so at first I read it on and off.

“People just don’t talk about it,” [the Iranian woman] said.

That’s true for any suffering. People get a terrible health diagnosis, friends disappear. People spiral down into mental illness, family shuns. A young teen girl is arrested as a political prisoner, is tortured, held captive, forced to marry, and parents and fiancé don’t ask. Lives are destroyed in public and must be rebuilt in private. In Iran, the author Marina did it surrounded by the silence of not being asked what had happened and not feeling safe to tell. Here in Canada, sufferers get lectures on “get on with your life,” “move on,” “think positively,” “fill in a gratitude journal,” “focus on the good not the negative.” More sophisticated yet nastier ways of ensuring silence from the sufferer about their experiences.

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” [my husband] asked when he finally read [my manuscript].
We had been married for seventeen years.
“I tried, but I couldn’t … will you forgive me?” I said.

Always it is the sufferer who apologises first — for not being strong enough, keeping silent, looking weaker than those who seem unscathed from similar experiences — not the ones who abandon, neglect, don’t ask. Yet, Marina’s husband did something different:

“There’s nothing to forgive. Will you forgive me?”
“For what?”
“For not asking.”

What a burden that must’ve fallen off of Marina’s shoulders in that moment.

At one point, I stopped reading the ebook on and off and started reading in large gulps, pausing only to process. I got over my antipathy to hearing about an unpleasant reality.

Marina seemed to have put behind her the horrific two years in Evin, Iran’s notorious political prison. She and her family emigrated to Canada, they built their lives up from nothing, and reached the Canadian dream. That’s when things began to fall apart. In the perfection of suburban life, memories came crashing back and robbed her of sleep. The only antidote was to write about it and then share it with her husband and then talk about it and then publish it so that her story became a witness to the truth of Iranian life.

It takes courage to bear your personal story to an ignorant world when it’s filled with pain and mind-breaking loss, even more when it exposes a criminal regime that hides behind the mask of religion. It’s told in a back-and-forth way. It begins in the present and ends in the past when she and her family were on their way out of Iran and then to Canada. In the middle she weaves memories of her childhood and the friendships that like a set of falling dominoes led to her incarceration in between the memories of her time in Evin and her forced marriage to one of the interrogator/torturers. What was most interesting for me was that she is not Muslim but a Christian and she went to a Zoroastrian school for a time. When I think of Iran, I think all Muslim with a diminishing minority of the original Persians, the Zoroastrians. I learnt that there were (are?) Christians allowed to practice their faith; that Christian women are allowed a different dress code from Muslim women; but that like Zoroastrians if they marry a Muslim they must convert, no choice.

It was difficult to know exactly what Marina was thinking during the telling of certain events, only later in her narrative did she reveal the fullness of her thoughts. I’m not sure if that was deliberate or the way her memory worked so as to allow her to re-experience the horror times without being sucked in completely.

“Why did we turn our backs on reality when it became too much to bear?”

After she was forced to accept her interrogator’s proposal, her thoughts turned to that question. Guilt rose up and her body rebelled. She was not allowed to express her feelings and thoughts about her interrogator’s proposal publicly, not allowed to be free in her choice, but her body expressed her disgust and pain for her. This story is not just a witness to Iranian atrocities but also to resiliency and the maturing of a conscience, of how a human being copes with and changes under suffering (and how some break).

I think this is a book that would be more appreciated in the second reading. It’s written in an accessible style, but there is so much to absorb and ponder that I’m sure much is missed in the first reading. I had only one day left before my library ebook expired when I went back to reread it; I had time only to reread the beginning. It made more sense now that I knew her whole story.

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My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The thing about Rex Stout’s writing is that it’s tight, matter-of-fact yet visually, auditorally, and smell-o-vision live. The characters are so strong it’s like they’re standing in front of you. By the time you finish your first Nero Wolfe mystery, you know Archie, Nero, Inspector Cramer, Fritz, and the principal clients as well as you know your own friends.

Homicide Trinity provides three short Wolfe mysteries. I like compilations of shorts by my favourite mystery authors; unfortunately, they’re harder to find than they used to be. They provide a quick immersion into a well-loved mystery series, reading them one at a time when you have only a few minutes to read — or so that’s the theory. However, these three stories were so compelling, I went right from the first into the second, barely pausing for a bite or breath. Whether you like mysteries or want to study how tight writing can succeed, check this one out from your library or buy it from your favourite bookstore. It’s worth the price.

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My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’m enjoying this series set in Sweden. The Torso is rather gruesome but not relentlessly so. Humour, personal conflict, doggies, and vivid descriptions of Goteberg and Swedish life add welcome counterpoints and keep one engaged. I also like the peek this series gives into a different society and culture. There is far more misogyny and objectification of women in Sweden than I would’ve expected of a socialist country. And I learnt that Scandinavian countries are not all one vast blonde sameness either.

I don’t know what it is about Tursten’s writing, but she kept me reading. I haven’t read late into the night in quite some time — until I loaded this ebook onto my Sony Reader — and I replaced the light battery in my Reader’s cover just so I could. I’ll be putting the next book in this series on hold at the Toronto Public Library virtual branch!

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My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is a needlessly big book and it’s filled with visual imagery that so realistically conveys the grimness of life and its grossest aspects that you just want to go kill yourself or hide under a rock.

The day I got to the point in the novel where the graphic intensity reached levels that both bored me and turned me off, I received a pep talk from Jonathan Lethem in my NaNoWriMo mailbox (National Novel Writing Month), to wit:

“The comings and goings, loosening and tightening of faucets, shittings and pissings and nose-blowings of everyday circumstances. Keep them at the periphery, in the subliminal range, unless you really want to try to make something of them, and then you’d better make it good. I’m trying to tell you to ignore transitions. Skip to the good stuff.”

Although MacBride is a good writer who has a great command of the language, he could’ve used this advice. By the time I read the pep talk, when I was about halfway through the novel, I was skipping entire pages, including repetitious reflections filled with guilt and dumb-ass thinking.

But the thing that really got to me, that changed my mind from “liked it” to “it was OK” was when Logan suddenly became stupendously stupid, just so as to fill more pages and keep the plot going a little longer. I thought: really? A detective can’t put two and two together when it’s given to him one right after the other? Really??? I’m supposed to think he’s a good detective when he’s that oblivious? Uh, no. Aside from that, the unrelenting grimness is not something I want to read. I set aside the book for a few days, just to recover. But though I finished it, I didn’t care about whodunnit. I almost always care! But this book wore me out that much.

In the end, I learnt a lesson as a writer. As Lethem put it so well: “Write like you’d read—and notice how much you customarily skip as you read.”

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My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Geeze, I thought I’d marked this book as read and had written a review already. I guess I got distracted! Or was that when the computer was in the shop… Anyway, I always enjoy Paretsky and was thrilled to see a new (to me) book out by her.

It’s been such a long time since I last read one of her books, I’d forgotten that she can get a little preachy in some areas, a little Law and Order like. But as I was about to get turned off, Paretsky refocussed on the plot and the action and the relationships between the characters. She draws vivid characters, imbues their relationships with a rainbow of emotions, and makes the story leap off the page. The mystery is never easy to solve either. A good read.

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My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I don’t usually read spy novels, but the plot for this one sounded intriguing. And I was captured by the idea of a lead female character. I wasn’t disappointed.

I read the ebook version of Bloodmoney. Fiction is probably the easiest kind of ebook to read because there’s no expectation of clickable notes, links that work, or even a table of contents, although this novel had one. It was a speedy read in some ways in that the action or feeling of action never stopped. Even in the slower scenes, the sense of anticipation, the suspense kept the tension up. However, it took me a week to read — it was longer than I’d realised. Ebooks give you no visual sense of how big a book is!

I would read this author again, although it would depend on the plot. But if I liked the sound of the plot, then I would know it would be a good book to get lost in.

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My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’ve read only one foreign-language-translated-into-English mystery author before, and when I stumbled onto this book while browsing the shelves of the Toronto Public Library’s virtual branch, I decided to give her a try. Good decision!

It’s interesting reading a story set in a country I’m not that familiar with. All the little cultural, geographical, and wintry details bring Goteborg, Sweden to life for a foreigner like me. I’m not a reader who needs to have North American touchstones in order to enjoy a book. I find that slang or jargon or even measurement systems that are native to the area in which the story is located makes it much more real and authentic and enjoyed immersing myself in the unfamiliar. I discovered some real differences between Canadians and Swedes, some of which I knew from my Swedish contacts who helped me with my research for Lifeliner, but some more shocking trends and events I didn’t know. Mysteries aren’t just for entertainment!

But Detective Inspector Huss is an entertaining read. There’s no solving the mystery way before the ending, no obvious red herrings, no cheating tactics to fool the reader, just a well-crafted mystery and plot with strong characters and vibrant details. Well worth a read. I’ve put the second in this series on hold at TPL and cannot wait to read it.

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I was looking for a Canadian mystery writer, and Robert Rotenberg was recommended to me, forget by whom. Even better for me as a Torontonian, he sets Old City Hall in Toronto. Unfortunately, that meant as a Torontonian, I got tossed out of the flow of the book when he used strange-to-monikers for common place, like “bay” for the “inner harbour” (or at least I think that’s the body of water he was referring to). The strange terms may be because of his publisher as the book didn’t seem to know whether it was Canadian or American. Personally, I think the ACC should be spelled correctly as in Air Canada Centre (not Center) and cheque instead of check. Language is part of culture and reading such a decidedly Canadian book in part-American English is weird. Also the editor not ensuring consistency was jarring too.

There are many characters in this book, an ensemble. I found the characters interesting, and the only real objection I had to Rotenberg’s plethora was that sometimes a character would pop and then disappear for so long you wondered why the heck they’d been introduced in such detail when only around for a few pages. Then long after you’d given up on them, they’d pop up again. A bit disconcerting. He spends a lot of time detailing the events and thoughts leading up to a crucial meeting, let’s say, only to move on to the next scene as the characters begin the meeting. I consider this cheating in a mystery. There are better ways to hide the clues in plain sight! But the descriptions and dialogue are engaging — another reason for being peeved for being moved along and out of the scene you’re so engrossed in. That’s a good negative though!

Overall, I enjoyed this book and would like to read his next. But I’m not a hard cover reader and refuse to pay so much for a DRM-locked ebook or even a reader-friendly non-DRM ebook. I’ll wait till either it comes out in paperback or appears in Toronto Public Library’s virtual branch. I anticipate it’ll be worth the wait.



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I liked the inside look this mystery book by a Canadian publisher gives the reader into the publishing industry. I liked the basic plot and the characters. But I solved the mystery long before the end, and so I found myself impatient for the final reveal. Porter also has a boring, and sometimes confusing, habit of using narrative instead of dialogue to tell us what characters are saying. Right near the end, she finally, finally writes an extensive piece of proper dialogue, with quotation marks and everything, and it was good. Engrossing. Full of emotion and tension. Too bad, she didn’t do that all through the book but only here and there. Printing errors were a bit distracting too. So much for traditionally printed books being superior to POD.



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Savoury

King’s Café, in Kensington, was the Fair’s Gold Sponsor and had a take-out counter. I had my first Chinese bun in years, a veggie one this time. No more barbecued pork buns for me after I went veggie. It was one item I missed. The King’s Café bun was good. Puffy, white, slightly sweet. The veggie filling was not filled with fresh or quickly sautéed vegetables so much as saucy filling of some sort. I would’ve liked more colour and flavour. Their spring roll was like vegetable spring rolls everywhere: crispy and greasy. The other item I had, a mock chicken skewer was bleh.

Bunner’s is on Dundas West and had a delicious-looking booth of cookies and cupcakes with a couple of savoury items: pizza or curry pastry pockets. I bought the pizza one, a red-velvet cupcake, and their Gypsy cookie.

The pastry for the pizza pocket was decent, a bit crumbly though. The filling included tomato, mushrooms, and diet mozzarella cheese. Let’s just say I’m not a fan of the latter. I do eat skim cheese or partly skim, but this did not taste anything like as good as what I buy at the store. So I think since the bakery is vegan it was not so much diet cheese as fake cheese. Soy and tofu are good substitutes for some things and can make tasty dishes, but I’m not a fan of many versions of soya milk (gag) and apparently not the cheese either. The mushrooms tasted like those ones from the old days in red-candled, dim pizza parlours. Not good. The tomato sauce was not all that flavourful. And something gave a chemically aftertaste; maybe that was the “cheese.” I don’t know what the calorie count would be, but it looked as hearty as a Cornish pasty. Too bad nowhere near as filling. I definitely needed dessert (well, is there any excuse not good enough for dessert?).

The Sweet Stuff

I stocked up on the sweet stuff from several bakeries and took them home, except for the sweet potato doughnuts from LPK’s Culinary Groove. I am a fan of this expensive-but-worth-it bakery and had not yet tried their doughnuts. And so when I saw they were freshly frying them, I had to try a cone of three. They’re tiny round balls dipped in maple sugar and piled into a paper cone. It’s a very attractive snack. The doughnut itself was crispy on the outside, soft and delicious on the inside, but the maple sugar’s flavour overwhelmed the dough’s. I would have much preferred raw organic sugar, which, I must admit, is what I like dipping my own homemade doughnuts in. A rare miss in LPK’s pantheon of delights.

Bunner’s red velvet cupcake is a dainty confection pleasing to the eye. But in my first bite, I received a strong taste of the fat, non-butter fat. Good butter is yummy. Coconut fat can be awfully good. But oils and other baking-type fats are best left as background tastes not dominant ones. The texture was suitably airy, and the icing awfully sweet, which I know in our sugar-saturated society, many like. Not me. I do have a sweet tooth, and some sweets like Indian sweets are meant to be oh-so-sweet, which is why they come in small sizes and pack strong flavours to balance the sugar. But too much sugar in non-Indian sweets is not a good thing. Cakes and cupcakes are meant to be a flavour harmony that lights up the taste buds and makes the mouth smile and the mind remember pleasurably for a long, long while. Too much fat and sugar just gives one an emotional overload that leads to an emotional trough.

I saved Bunner’s Supersonic Gypsy cookie for last. And I’m so glad I did. My stomach was satisfied, my taste buds were singing, and my eyes feasted on the deliciousness of deep red dried cranberries, a surfeit of chocolate chips, creamy-coloured oats, and seeds, all held together with yummy cookie dough. I should’ve bought another. And another.

Next on the sugar express is the pecan sticky bun from bloomer’s bakery. According to the veg.ca website listing, bloomer’s is a delivery-only bakery out of the annex or available only at select stores. And so this was a good way to try out their goodness. The gentleman who served me was the baker’s father and generous. I bought the bun as I was leaving the Fair. Back at home, I had a third of a bun first (I was getting a bit stuffed). My first bite netted me a hit of sweet, uncooked dough. A short stint in the microwave fixed that, a remedy I’ve had to use a few times with my own doughy recipes because I seem to have lost my sense of when bread is done (stupid brain injury). So either the baker is new at this or rushed because of the pressures of the Fair. Experience with bread baking and high-pressure situations will remedy this in time. The taste was yummy. And it wasn’t drowning in cinnamon like some sticky or cinnamon breads can be. Sticky with just-the-right-amount-of-sweet bread and crunch of pecan, it hit the spot.

Next up was the Kelly’s Goodies’ coconut cupcake. It didn’t survive the trip home too well.

But when I took it out of its carton, I found that it was only the beautifully rounded dome of icing that had been smooshed and only on one side.

The cupcake was fine and oh so moist. I detected banana; it seemed like it was layered in between the icing and chocolate cakey part, but I didn’t take the cupcake apart to inspect it. I was too busy eating to want to pause. The cupcake was decently chocolatey and not too sweet. Even better, the icing wasn’t overly sweet either. I think the coconut sprinkled on top thickly would’ve been better toasted, not only for a nicer crunch but also for the flavour. I noticed near the end of my cupcake feeding frenzy that fake aftertaste I’d noticed so strongly in Bunner’s baked goods. In this cupcake it lingered a few moments after I’d finished, long enough not to be pleasant but not so long that I went hunting for something else to eat to get rid of it.

Kelly’s Goodies’ is in Burlington, and its brownies come in at least three versions. At the Fair, they were handing out little samples of the plain-no-icing brownie. Smart. It got me to buy the Über or World Peace brownie — a brownie with a thin layer of chocolate icing. For icing nuts, there was the Mile High brownie with a rising cloud of icing and what looked like a tiny brownie on top. The Über Brownie is chocolatey and moist, so moist it almost clings to your palate like peanut butter. The icing was chocolatey too; its sweetness didn’t cloy, and the sugar didn’t overwhelm the chocolate taste. Best of all, no fake or chemically aftertaste.

Apiecalypse Now! bakery doesn’t have a storefront so the Fair was a great opportunity to sample their fare. I chose an individual fruit cobbler filled with strawberries and peaches and totally covered with pastry so that it would arrive home sans fruit spilling out. I can only eat so many desserts in one day, and so it sat in my fridge for a few days. I heated it up in its foil container, uncovered, in a 200°F oven. Warm is best for pies. And it was good. Its taste and texture were as if I had just bought it. A fluffy topping, full of flavour but not overpowering, its crust a golden bite. The filling was a fruity, not sugary, amalgam of strawberries and peaches. I have to admit I would’ve liked more fruit. But it was a very pleasing pudding, as they say in Britain.

After all this dessert goodness, you’d think I’d have had my fill for a month. Nope. I’m ready for trying another pie from Apiecalypse or maybe one of LPK’s genius vegan Nanaimo Bars that I savoured a couple of months ago from their bakery on Queen Street East. It was worth the special trip.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As a writer, I’ve discovered it’s difficult for me to review books of authors I’ve met or have had some communication with. Because of the ebook SNAFU with Blood and Groom, Jill Edmondson kindly sent me paperback copies of this book and her next one. And I wanted very much to give this book a rave review. Much to my regret, I can’t, but I can say it’s the kind of book you pick up when you want to switch your brain off and just escape into a quick read.

The voices are strong in Blood and Groom, no mistaking one character for another, and as I’ve learnt this past year, not always a given and a really good thing. The mystery itself is intriguing, and a secondary plot serves as a juicy red herring. The protagonist or heroine of the book, Sasha Jackson is energetic, for sure. But I found the litany of adjectives a bit overwhelming. As the book progressed, the adjectives decreased. There were times when I wondered where the editor was; traditional publishers say their strength is in their editing, that self-published authors can’t have such high standards as they have. But this is like the umpteenth traditionally published book I’ve read in recent years where I wonder if the editor fell asleep or did the most cursory of forays into the manuscript. Bad editing reflects on the author unfortunately. Publishers owe it to their authors to do a better job. All in all it has the makings of a good mystery series, and best of all it’s set in Toronto.

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My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’m pacmanning my way through theoretical physics books these days as background reading for my next novel. I think if you want to learn complicated concepts, talking to different people or reading different books on the same subject means you get a three-dimensional explanation rather than a one, which means you’re more likely to “get it.” After reeading Stephen Hawking’s A Briefer History of Time and The Grand Design, this book seemed rather long. Relatively speaking, for it wasn’t wordy, and it went into more depth than Hawking did in those two books. On the other hand, Hawking says much more in fewer words.

Overall, I much preferred Goldberg’s examples to Hawking’s: they were more relevant, visual, and understandable. The one thing that really started to grate on my nerves was that pretty much all the physics characters were boys: Rusty, Patches, Dr. Hyde, Billy. When I finally came across a female character, she was, well, relegated to the kitchen. I definitlely got the impression that theoretical physics is a boys-only club. Girls are there to feed not feel physics.

Being as I was most interested in time travel, I really liked how in two places in the book they commented on the methods of time travel used in some TV shows and movies. But they left out Doctor Who! How could they leave out the one show all about time travel?!! Argh!

Illustrations are a must in these kinds of books, and I liked the cartoons that littered the pages of A User’s Guide to the Universe. In the ebook, some of the lettering was hard to make out, and it wasn’t possible to magnify the cartoon, only the printed text. I did a lot of staring at one of the Big Bang cartoons till I finally made out “Birth of Elements”…at least I think that’s what it said.

It’s rather funny that a science book would not be designed well as an ebook. The hard-to-read lettering on some of the cartoons was pretty minor compared to the real problem: the publisher made it a pain to read and frustrated learning.

First off, we have the [epithets deleted] DRM, which makes you waste time trying to figure out which app on the iPad will read the darn thing (not iBooks, only Bluefire Reader), to get it onto the iPad if you buy it from the “wrong” ebook store, and then prevents you from taking advantage of the format and makes it less useful than a print book. Imagine that – a science book publisher who designs an ebook to be primitive compared to a print book. Oh sure, they managed to get the endnotes to be clickable, most of them anyway, which is better than many ebooks I’ve read. But then they don’t use that simple tool to link references to previous chapters and previously discussed ideas to those chapters and ideas. So if you want to refresh your memory, you have to do a Search (which in apps and my Sony Reader is forward first before going back to the beginning and going forward from there). Searching an ebook is in some ways slower and more cumbersome than a print book if you have a visual memory. But that wasn’t the only way the publisher frustrated ebook readers. There are many terms used in this book that one would not use in real life, like leptons or mu neutrinos or Casimir something-or-other. The great thing about an ebook is they could make these terms clickable (not necessarily a different colour or underlined as that would make the text harder to read) so that a reader could click the word and get the author’s definition. Oh sure, eReaders include dictionaries but believe it or not, they don’t always define physics’ terminology beyond sub-atomic particle, real helpful. Worst of all, because of the DRM, I could not print out the Rogue’s Gallery appendix at the end of chapter four to keep in front of me while I continued to read the ebook because God forbid I “pirate” the ebook for my own use. Publishers are so petrified and anal about ebook technology that they forget the fact that anyone can photocopy those same pages from a print book — thereby making it more useful than the ebook — and that people have been lending/passing on print books ad nauseum for years so that total sales probably don’t reemotely reflect total readers. I probably have about 10 readers for each purchase of my book Lifeliner. I guesstimate that because everyone who proudly tells me they passed it on talk about lots of people, not one or two (I could buy groceries for a week in those lost sales from just one original buyer). Somehow publishers have managed to stay in business this past century or so with all this “pirating” going on and readers could also, gasp, read their print books wherever they wanted and in whatever light levels they wanted. But if I want to read this book at night on the iPad, versus sunlight on my Sony Reader, I had to jump through hoops to get it to work. And I couldn’t be bothered wasting an hour to break the DRM just so’s I could make it easier to read and to print out the appendix to make the ebook easier to follow. Yes, publishers, your DRM is breakable, which means the only readers you’re pissing off are the legit ones.

The one thing the authors are responsible for in this frustration factor is in not including a glossary. Hawking did. A glossary is essential, with or without clickable terms. And since this ebook didn’t have clickable terms and clickable internal references and it had the DRM, a glossary was mandatory.

On the frustration factor alone I would give ten demerit stars. But that’s not fair to the authors and the work they’ve done. So I will delete one star for publisher idiocy. And remind me never again to buy an ebook from a mainstream publisher.

Aside from all that, this book makes a nice complement to Hawking’s, especially in the few areas they seem to diverge. Forget the overpriced ebook. Buy the print book. You’ll be helping to keep the publisher in the 20th century, where they belong and are comfortable, and it won’t want to make you want to tear your hair out.

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I’m a half-breed. I’m half of a people so decimated, there are purportedly only a couple of hundred thousand left on the entire planet and whose official structure didn’t recognize me as being Parsi (they do now) because of a deal they made centuries ago in order to survive. Half of hardly anything is rare indeed. It would’ve been an astonishing day to see a person like me teaching me or mentioned in any of my studies as people to admire. I was so rare that it wasn’t until the 21st century – until after an influx of people who worked and played alongside people like half of me on the other side of the planet — that anyone knew what I was talking about when I mentioned I was Zoroastrian or Parsi. My heritage is actually writ on my face – except for my nose. And thank God for that. Parsi noses are prominent. Anyway, because of that, some Russians, Indians, and Iranians look at me and know me.

It is strange.

And I’m conflicted.

I grew up in a school system who knew no one like me. It was so bad that when I was taught classical civilizations in high school, I rooted for the ancient Greeks in their war against the ancient Persians because that’s who my teacher – the irascible Mr. Payne – rooted for. And, as well, there were lots of Greeks left to care for and advocate for their history; Parsis don’t even live in their own land anymore, never mind have control over their structures, history, and names. (Many think my name is Muslim. It isn’t, it’s a Parsi name. The co-opting of Parsi names as Muslim ones would be like Cree names being co-opted by the English and identified as English names.) And despite being an argumentative, debating lot, Parsis as a people have no voice. It was a long time before I learnt that the ancient Persians were my ancestors. And so I can’t get excited about people blaming the lack of seeing themselves in their teachers and coursework for their lousy performance. In the end, it wasn’t seeing myself reflected at school that drove me to do well, it was what I was taught at home, told over and over and over and over and over again that only good marks would do, specifically “A”s.

Yet I find myself increasingly annoyed at the token female syndrome. You know, that’s when a talk show has a panel of which only one member is female so that the show or host can say they represent all perspectives. Yeah, right. When TVO gave the boot to Paula Todd, they also gave the boot to female equality in front of the camera on The Agenda. I’m not talking about going from female-male co-hosts to male host only. I’m talking about panels of five being all male but one. And why is it panels of three can only be two males plus one female? Why never the other way around? In the 21st century, there aren’t such a dearth of expert women that it would be hard to fill a panel with them.

Seeing these token-women panels makes me feel like I don’t matter, that as a female I have a voice so long as the men around me let me have one. As a half-Parsi, half-English Christian, I don’t feel like that at all. My Parsi heritage taught me to use my voice, that it counted as much as anyone else’s. And so as a teen and adult I never let patriarchy or misogynist attitudes shut me up or to feel less than. So what gives now?

Decades of being worn down by the inequity of being female.

And moreso, losing my personal identity because of brain injury.

It’s tough enough to belong to a group no one’s heard of, but to not yourself know who you are, with no solid group identity to hold on to, is a torturous place to be. Yet that’s not as bad as inhabiting the female identity, for women are treated so badly, so routinely that the fact the glass ceiling hasn’t moved in twenty years barely mentioned a blip on the evening news. In all the discussions of how hard it is to be a Muslim in a Christian society (try being a Christian in a Muslim society, ahem), an African- or Caribbean-Canadian in the ghettoes, a First Nations member on a poor reserve with no running water, the pundits and opiners forget that to be female in any society is to be below every culture, every ethnicity, every race, every creed. Is it any wonder then that too many women who achieve success lash out at the other females and keep them off the airwaves and out of the boardrooms? To be female is to have the most contemptible identity of all.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I received a signed copy direct from the author. The problem with brain injury is you meet these fascinating people, and you can’t remember how or why. This was several years ago, and I do remember talking with him about the trouble of selling books, I think before…or maybe it was after…I’d written Lifeliner. There are so many good books that are missed by readers, and this is one of them.

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My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I came across this slim volume (again) while I was reorganizing my books and sat down to look through it, as is the wont of any good reader. Underneath the title “Reach Out for Your Dreams” my English grandmother had written, “& may they all come true Shireen & all your life may you find as much pleasure and happiness as I have from reading & quoting good poetry that will always bring you soul satisfaction that will go with you wherever you go.”

I think that’s the longest dedication she ever wrote in a birthday gift to me. The year was 1981, and it was a tough one. I’d forgotten what a sharp, observant tack she was. Thirty years later, it’s like she’s speaking to me again. That’s the value of this book to me, more than any of the poems and quotations in it.

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In The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking along with his co-writer Leonard Mlodinow go beyond A Briefer History of Time, which I reviewed recently, and enter the territory of philosophers. They claim that philosophy is the domain of physicists because philosophers have abdicated their role in society by not keeping up with scientific developments and knowledge. In this book, he and Leonard attempt to answer the question of if there is a God, if there is a Grand Design, and what it is.

I got this book out of the library, but it had such a long hold period that when it became available to me, I was in the throes of wrapping up some work and didn’t have the time I would have liked to read it. By the time I started it properly I had three days and a bit to finish. But it repeats some of the same ground as A Briefer History of Time, and it wasn’t too long, making it easier to read. I finished it before Overdrive went boing, time’s up.

Only the pressure of time got me to read it and to finish it.

It isn’t that bad a book. It’s just not as good as A Briefer History of Time. What Hawking forgets is that though philosophy may’ve abdicated the sciences — and I think a few philosophers would disagree vehemently on that point — science alone cannot answer these questions of being and grand design.

I had not noticed particularly in A Briefer History of Time that Hawking seems to believe that human beings do not have free will until I read it again in The Grand Design.

He writes: “Though we feel that we can choose what we do, our understanding of the molecular basis of biology shows that biological processes are governed by the laws of physics and chemistry and therefore are as determined as the orbits of the planets.”

He goes on to talk of the well-known situation wherein a neurosurgeon electrically stimulates the brain of an awake patient and lo and behold they move a hand or their mouth. Thus, according to Hawking, speaking and moving hands are not by free will but by electrical impulses from the brain to the mouth or hand. Yes, well, we know about the impulses. But last time I checked there aren’t neurosurgeons with electrical probes hanging over the heads of each of us, poking this neuron and that to get us to speak…or maybe there are, and we just don’t know it…yet.

The point is that outside of the operating room what stimulates those nerves to fire to get us to speak? Is it only external stimuli? Are internal stimuli only external ones in disguise? To go further, what gets one depressed person to hide and not seek help and another equally depressed person to hightail it to the doctor’s office? Is it just a lack of external stimuli in the former situation? Is it the upbringing that makes seeking help a bad thing for the former patient and a good thing for the latter? But if so how do the laws of nature that govern matter and energy and our biological processes account for culture and attitudes? Do we say it’s simply a matter of entraining the neurons to fire in a certain way, yet things like birth order, peer groups, health, talent, skills, and luck will create people with different attitudes and even different cultural expression in the same family. So then do we say, well, their external stimuli were different and thus entrained their neurons differently. But we are still left with the idea that the act of seeking help comes from within and not from the neurosurgeon poking his probe into the brain.

Hawking believes that there is no God. Yet many of his arguments line up neatly with religious thinking. Free will is a prime example. I’m apparently told (probably for the umpteenth time, as I’m obstinate in my disbelief) that in my Christian tradition, our lives are preordained, that is, we have free will, but we don’t. While Hawking says it’s just our biological processes governed by laws of physics, religion says it’s our humanity governed by laws of God. It is like two people arguing heatedly when they agree on the result and only disagree on the method.

One of the ideas he is at pains to disprove, in order to prove that there is no God, is that people are at the centre of the universe, people are not special. I realise the Church had a problem with the idea that the Earth is not the centre of the universe, but it is very clear in the Creation story that human beings were not created to be the centre of the universe but to serve God’s Creation. Since people were rather thick on this concept, Jesus hammered it home in his teachings. To serve is a rather different idea than to be the centre.

Furthermore, I don’t understand how multiverses make us less unique in the universe. I get that what he’s saying is that we simply exist because of statistical probabilities. Still, the laws of physics or nature that gave rise to us are extremely fine tuned, so fine tuned that an error one way or the other and poof we boil away or freeze into oblivion. We are rare. Period.

And the discoveries of time confirm what many who have followed one God have known for millennia — God is outside of time, thus time cannot be strictly a linear construct. It is difficult for many of us to comprehend that in an experienced way, tis true. But the story of Abraham and Sarah clarifies how differently God views time than we do. The story Zarathustra told is partly about time and how human beings see time as linear and the present time as important, but God doesn’t. Experiments on prayer have shown how past time has been changed in the present (my head is starting to hurt). Again physics is lining up with ancient teachings.

Since he began the book with incomplete arguments I can poke holes in, I’m afraid I was not so impressed with his other arguments either.

He makes sense when he talks about looking at the cosmos from the top down, but he forgets that just as our current state influences the way we understand the Big Bang, so too do our observations and interpretations colour our views on life, past, present, and future. Two people can look at the same event and see completely different things because of their backgrounds, personalities, talents, age, experiences, etc., etc. Their observations show different histories — Feynman’s sum over histories effect, if you will. Thus he has not seemed to take into account the effect of his own life, upbringing, and having ALS have had on his interpretations in the top-down view of the cosmos, multiverses, and so on.

And at the end of the day, he has not explained the Big Bang satisfactorily to me, specifically, what came before. He writes that it was a spontaneous combustion in which time was space (thus why time did not exist before) and because of its spontaneity, there was nothing before. Yet he also states that empty space is not actually empty. So why would it be emptier or be a complete void (to use a Creation term) prior to the Big Bang? And as far as I know, spontaneous combustions don’t happen in the complete absence of matter and energy. So what elements existed that created the explosion? What were the conditions in the seconds before the Big Bang? A spontaneous combustion out of nothing makes no logical sense to me.

The brevity of the book is its downfall. These are deep arguments that have many entries to them — science, arts, literal, metaphor, evidence, myth. They require more space-time in a book to delve into them properly.

In the end, to me, Hawking is essentially saying that the laws of physics and nature correspond to the stories of Creation. That is not a very effective refutation of the existence of God in my humble opinion. At the end of the day, like so many writers, it comes down to this is my belief. And yours is wrong.

(I am posting this review but won’t be online to see and answer any comments for about a week or two, time in my present being a bit elastic.)



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I think it was an Amazon Kindle group thread on good public domain books to read that I heard of this one. I downloaded it to my iPod Touch and read it using the Stanza app.

Apparently Bentley was a newspaperman, who wrote Trent’s Last Case in 1913. There’s no doubt writers wrote differently back then, and I found the story-telling method of that era a bit slow at first, and it was many weeks before I picked it up again. I’m glad I did. After the intro, this book is a deceptively mild meandering mystery. It seems that the mystery is solved when you’re only halfway through the book, yet is it? The fact you’re only halfway through the book creates doubt although all the clues seem to be sewn up. But the mystery, the story, is like a Russian doll — when you think you’re at the end, when you think this is another genteel early-20th-century scene between two or three characters, surprise! The title is revealed on the very last page, or I should say the reason for it.

There are all sorts of neat details about life a century ago. Although we may still be familiar with the word “receiver” in relation to phones, I’ve never heard the word “transmitter” used in relation to consumer phones. Cars were real slow. And there were no forensics! Forensics are imaginative-crime killers. Finger markings could tell the police only so much 100 years ago, which gave the writer lots of room, whereas today microscopic hair, blood, fingerprints, DNA tell the police lots, enough for them to figure out the gist — in mystery books anyway. A century ago, the little grey cells ruled.

I enjoyed this ebook very much and would recommend it for a summer or holiday read. And next time I download a public domain book, I need to put it on my Sony Reader too. Stanza makes it easy to read an ebook on the iPod Touch, but I prefer a bigger screen.



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**I’m not really sure you can have spoilers in a non-fiction book and one that was extensively discussed in the press, but if so, there is a tiny bit of a spoiler four paragraphs down and on.**

In preparation for my next-next novel, I decided to read the briefer (and, I assume, easier) of Stephen Hawking’s books on time and space for the lay person. It’s something I would’ve been loathe to do even six months ago because of the state of my reading ability. But Goodreads has done for me what I’d hoped it would: gotten me to practice, practice, practice reading. And as you know, practice makes better and gives a person the confidence to try harder material. Also my rehab team had told me when choosing books that material I was already familiar with would be easier to read than new material. Fortunately, I am familiar with all of the physics discussed in this book up until about the 1980s and Feynman’s work. I just didn’t recall it all that well.

Hawking and his co-author Leonard Mlodinow (of Star Trek: The Next Generation) do a nice job of building the physics story from centuries ago up to the present day. You get a good sense of how laws and theories progressed and of the obstacles the various physicists faced, whether from within their own theories, from their rivals, or from the politics of the day. By the time you get to the meat of the book — Einstein — you’ve received a good background.

But that’s when I ran into problems. The language was as simple as could be. They used effective illustrations, for the most part, to help you visualize what they’re talking about. I liked how they inserted Hawking into some of the images. They also came up with examples people could relate to to help explain these mind-bending concepts. Unfortunately, when they got to the good stuff on time, their language broke down. Maybe the editor had a brain cramp or something because a key example was rather imprecise.

“Suppose that one twin goes to live on the top of a mountain while the other stays at sea level. The first twin would age faster than the second. Thus, if they met again, one would be older than the other.” (pg 43)

OK, so twin #1 is at the top and is older than twin #2 at the earth’s surface, right? I assume that based on logic sequence — the first twin mentioned is the one on the mountain, and so must be “first twin.” However, I did have to assume, and that’s the trouble, for then came this passage:

“…if one of the twins went for a long trip in a spaceship in which he accelerated to nearly the speed of light. When he returned, he would be much younger than the one who stayed on earth.”

Um, isn’t the one in the spaceship like the one on the mountain? This confusion could’ve been avoided with some judicious editing. It happens again elsewhere, but only this one made me really go spare. Luckily, I have an engineer friend I could confer with, and I decided to forget the mountain man example and focus on rocket man.

In a way, this is a small quibble except for the fact that this book is aimed at a lay audience, whose physics knowledge is low and thus will need the authors to connect the dots for them with clear, precise language.

The chapter on going back in time was interesting. I learnt something new physics-wise although Hawking’s philosophizing against backward time travel was not new as his stance has been discussed many times in the popular press or on television. Physics is, in a sense, about philosophy because to get to a new theory you have to think about the possibilities and the whys and wherefores of both sides of the equation. Still, Hawking focuses on the reasons against backward time travel to such an extent that his ending statement that “the possibility of time travel remains open” comes as a bit of a surprise.

I like their little bios at the end, especially of Newton. I had no idea he was a man such as that! All in all, a good read, and it has given me a few ideas too for my novel.



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This novella by Linwood Barclay was OK. The point of the mystery is only partly to do with whodunnit, which is a good thing as there are little clues all over the place from the get-go. No, the bigger point is what will be the outcome of the interaction between the characters. Unfortunately, I couldn’t care less about any of them, and in a mystery like that, you need to care somewhat in order to enjoy the suspense and have it do for you what suspense is supposed to. It was like watching a swim meet final where no Canadian is entered: it’s something to pass the time, but you’re not vested in it.

Having said that, the message at the end is pointed and makes you think, “if only…”



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My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I studied psychology in university and used to be quite interested in the psychopath, what made them tick, how to deal with them (warily). Back then, there was no scientific or physiological explanation for the psychopath. And the view was they were incurable. They never changed. It was my misfortune to run into a couple or three. It always amazed me how well they sucked in almost — well, not almost, every person I knew. To me, they had little red flags over their heads saying, danger, charm offensive. If I could, I stayed far away. It’s why to this day, if I see or meet someone who’s obviously charming, my hackles go up. Yet these psychopaths I’d met would take in people, convince people of the truth of their stories, whatever those stories were, manipulate people into doing their dirty work, and people would only figure out their sheep’s clothing-like nature when they did something stupid or were caught out in a lie. Unfortunately, by that point, damage had been done. They are really really good liars. The best. Now, I should mention these people were not known to the police, had not seen the inside of the criminal system to my knowledge. That’s why I was interested in this book. For so long, talk of psychopaths has mostly focused on those in prisons, yet I’m convinced they destroy people and companies in ever-widening ripples from families to friends to neighbours to employees and strangers. Others have too as that film so famously explored. But I wondered how this anxiety-ridden journalist would handle meeting one and finding out more about them.

Jon Ronson writes in a breezy, easy-to-read way, and sprinkles his book with humour that makes you bark out loud at the suddenness of it. Psychopathy may seem like a serious subject, but the humour shifts the subject, his own attitudes, and his perceptions of the people he meets so that you see what you’ve just read a little bit differently. At first, it was all connected, but then he seemed to go off tangent. He described a man who sounded like he had mania, not psychopathy, which confused the heck out of me. And then he went off on another tangent talking about reality shows (which sound way more prevalent across the pond than here and way more bizarre than what I’ve seen in Canada). I scratched my head. Is this book about psychopathy or something else? Still, his writing — and my own interest in things psychological that I’d thought had disappeared, but apparently not — kept me devouring the book.

When I read the last line, I felt unsatisfied, like I’d been given a tease of three different morsels, but not enough to fill me up on each one. The premise of the book is psychopathy, yet he never finishes that theme. He does circle it, starting and ending with a prisoner he met in Broadmoor. But what was the point? Other than an incomplete story, which is as life is. Then he switched to talking about psychiatry and the DSM and how it shaped how we look at psychiatric diagnoses, as well as how the pharmaceutical industry has used it to increase (new) psychiatric diagnoses. But he didn’t finish that theme either. Frustrating! He wrote just enough for the reader to realise that a good book on the madness industry was warranted. And then his talk about reality shows and their deadly consequences raised the eyebrows, but he veered away just as you wanted to know more, to think about it more through the contemplations of the author and interviews with acknowledged experts in the field and perhaps discussions of the latest research. This third theme could’ve been a whole book on the reality show industry and how it encourages madness.

Perhaps he could’ve written this book better so that his introduction to the diagnosed psychopath at Broadmoor led in an obvious way into an exploration of the madness industry and thence to the reality show industry. But he never connected the mania guy to Tony the psychopath guy to the dead sister of the reality show contestant. The only connection was his travelling. Not enough. In short, the writing was entertaining; the structure sucked.

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My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was looking for the Canadian author Robert Wilson in the virtual branch of the Toronto Public Library. He wasn’t listed, but this Wilson was. The blurb sounded interesting, and even more relevant, it was available to borrow right away. Most books in TPL are on hold!

Instruments of Darkness describes a world I’m not familiar with at all: the grit of Africa, where violence roams next to pockets of people trying to earn a living, where booze and cigarettes are as ubiquitous as the heat, where money greases the shipping, and pale-skinned folk stand out. I wasn’t sure at first if this was my kind of detective story, but I kept turning the pages. I took that as a sign that I was engaged enough to make reading it worthwhile.

In places, I really noticed the short sentence structure, and the patois got a bit tedious at one point. As a young reader, I used to be a fan of writers using dialect in their dialogue. But now I often find it distracts when overused and adds a layer of artificiality or a feeling of trying too hard on the part of the author. As the book went on, the dialect lessened, and the story took ascendance.

It’s a simple story on the surface, of a man trying to puzzle out why two people died in the way they did and the truth of how they are tied together. But underneath seethes a plot that requires you to use your little grey cells. Even the personal back story of the protagonist requires one to do more than eyeball the words but to think about how men and women interact and what the woman in the protagonist’s life really wants.

The heat is unrelenting and is a metaphor for the heat of injustice weighing on the Englishman, the narrator and protagonist of Instruments of Darkness. But it’s not done in an obvious way. Rather, though at first unpleasant to read seemingly endless descriptions of sweat and sticking, it became a compelling part of the milieu and gave me a peek into what it’s like to live in another part of our shared planet where air conditioning is infrequent.

The book ended when I was not ready. The story was complete; I just wanted more.

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My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sacred and Profane is one of those infrequent books with a perfect title. The title tells you exactly what the book is about; even better, it is lifted out of a dialogue in which this concept is emphasized.

Titles are tricky. I’ve always liked the process of coming up with titles. Sometimes, it’s like pulling hen’s teeth and makes one want to scream. Even so, I was astonished and horrified to learn that publishers — not authors — choose or have the final say on book titles. Giving feedback I understand; making the decision, no way. So I wonder who came up with this title? Was it one of those instances where the author’s choice stood? Or did the publisher’s marketing department have a moment of genius? Either way, it makes the book.

The book itself continues the story of the relationship between Peter Decker, a cop with bad habits and an angry heart, and Rina Lazarus, an orthodox Jewish woman. I had read this book before, a long time ago, but though I couldn’t remember how the mystery part of it unfolded, it really didn’t matter, for the main plot is the conflict between Decker and Lazarus and within Decker himself. Sacred and Profane also explores some of the tenets of orthodox Judaism within the parameters of the two conflicts so that it is part of the story, not extraneous or preachy. The mystery itself is standard hard-boiled police stuff. And in the end, I kind of lost track of who did what and who was responsible for what. Faye Kellerman didn’t do a wrap-up like some other mystery authors do…for the mystery anyway. She did for the relationship.

Sacred and Profane is part of a series that must be read in order as the relationship between Decker and Lazarus grows and regresses so much within each book that you’d be lost if you read one out of order. It is worth it though to start from the beginning and not let the fact you have to read the books in order put you off.

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I remember my first days here as a child. I saw empty streets, clean pee-free sidewalks, trees and more trees, and even more trees, and cool grass under the tootsies. Most amazing of all, everyone had a car!

As I grew up, I noticed other differences. Racism infected my schoolmates and Canadian society in general, yet it was not nearly as invasive as in India where there was always some reason to look down upon or despise "others" whoever the "others" were. Weather never stood still. It showed more than the two Indian  moods of hot and rain. Here hot saunas cool down into breezy nights, and trees turn red and gold. Then golden trees give way to soft white flakes falling from the sky, and in turn the greyed white blanket melts under fresh rain and warming days. In concert with the crack of the bat, growth emerges slowly over weeks in the south and up in the Yukon in a single day.

And yet…

Indians revere education. Yet Canadians did not seem to. I often heard that learning takes childhood away from children as if children by necessity do not learn every minute. Without learning, how would our young leave diapers behind, learn to speak, learn to share, learn to work with others? Children love to learn; it’s innate. It’s adults who hate it. Children are smart, for in the current information and knowledge revolution the country that respects education and begins formal learning at the youngest age possible is the one that will prosper.

And yet…

Our ancestors set us up to lead the knowledge revolution. They did not relish living in the stone age; they toiled to build a modern, prosperous, just nation from dark forests, raging waterways, and feuding peoples.

I wonder what drove them? For it seems to me that that gushing desire to create, to build a home for everyone has trickled into a puddle of complacency.

I discovered part of the answer when I travelled north, way north. Canada’s spirit lives in her wilderness. We here in Toronto can glimpse it in our deep, leafy ravines and the wildness of Lake Ontario on a stormy day. But only in the northern territories can one feel it. Seeing the young mountains of the Yukon, experiencing chicken lunch time in a small store in a small place on the one road snaking north, marvelling at a forest burnt down fifty years ago with nary a new leaf to be seen, boggling at the rigorous hike men and a few women endured to get to Dawson City while gazing upon the river churning nearby, imagining that river flowing into all the large and small waters that nourish our land, all that and more makes you feel the deep, dangerous heart of Canada, a heart that beats for her people and expects much.

That heart must’ve been what impelled our ancestors to claim cities out of impenetrable flora, to ambitiously build a railroad from coast to coast, to declare the 20th century ours, to forge a national identity on bloody battlefields, to imagine and build places like Chalk River that used to heal the world, to create a social safety net that alleviated so much worry, to bring the Constitution home, to aver that we are strong and mature enough to handle free trade. Our past leaders spoke into being vast northern dreams, and we followed them, cheering, kicking, screaming but never slowing down. Their courage, their persistence, their imagination built us a paradise.

I wish all my fellow Canadians a happy day in Paradise and for us all to remember how we came to be. On this Canada Day, I wish that we as a people will invite into ourselves that burning northern Spirit again, that we will drive ourselves off the comfortable couch to continue on with the creation our ancestors began.

Canada.com printed a shorter version of this piece of their Real Agenda web page in honour of Canada Day.