L.C. Chase writes Cowboy Romance Novels, specifically Gay Cowboys. These cowboys happen to be Rodeo Cowboys as the cover art will show. That they are young, tall, strong, and handsome is cliché. The path to true love will not be straight or easy else there wouldn’t be a story in this. Being openly gay in the macho world of championship rodeo adds a complicating twist. If you don’t mind reading about a short bit of bedroom gymnastics this is a good read. Ride ’Em Cowboy! 

The Secret Language of Doctors

Doctor Brian Goldman is an Emergency Room Physician in Toronto. He is also host of the CBC program White Coat/Black Art. Despite the title this book is more an assessment of the state of Medical Health Care in North America than a dictionary of medical slang/argot/jargon.

In his position he gets to see acutely ill patients but often does not get to provide after care. However, he works in a system that rewards through-put and not quality of care and therefore pays a doctor more for dealing with a cold, a cut, or a broken arm; than spending the time it would take to counsel a patient about the lifestyle choices that underlie their medical issues. Doctors have come to be regarded as wizards who can cure all ills whereas too many medical conditions are the result of lifestyle choices—smoking, diet, exercise. Rather than depend on doctors and medical science to provide all the answers patients need to take responsibility for their own health.

The language thrown around hospitals between nurses and doctors therefore becomes both a means of transmitting a great deal of information in as few words as possible and an expression of their frustration—blowing off steam. Of making derogatory comments in a language that the public hopefully will not understand or misinterpret.

Most of us look to hospitals as centres of healing, in French the word is Hotel Dieu. Imagine then the let-down involved in learning that nurses treat each other in an appalling fashion with a definite pecking order that heaps abuse on new recruits. That rather than being patient centred doctors shunt patients around to ensure they don't die on their watch and refuse admissions to their wards or engage in delaying strategies that endanger patient's health. That various specialities demean one another and use derogatory language. If this is how they treat one another what does it say about their patient care.

Half a Life

When a careless carefree moment results in the death of a child or young adult the emphasis is usually placed upon the grieving parents, relatives, and friends. Here, we get to hear about it from the perspective of the young driver who had a biker swerve in front of his car resulting in that person's death. The fact that he is not held responsible for the incident does not absolve him of the grief and angst he feels over being the agency for another's death. Eighteen years after this tragic event occurred in the life of his eighteen-year-old younger self Darin Strauss writes about what happened to him half a lifetime before.

It's called survivor's guilt. Think of a subway driver entering a platform at forty-miles-per-hour when a mental patient jumps in front of his car. He already has the train's maximum braking power engaged and in any case he has ten carloads of passengers behind him to consider so there is nothing he can do to avoid the splat that hits his windows in a split second. But does the fact there was nothing he could have done to avoid this incident relieve him of the post dramatic stress he feels in the aftermath.

The opening sentence here says it all:

“Half my life ago, I killed a girl.”

Little House on the Prairies

The Ingalls and the Wilders may not have been gypsies but they seemed never to be satisfied with their situation establishing numerous homesteads in several states. Indeed there are at least 5 locations claiming to be the author's birthplace. The books are written in a simplistic style seemingly to explain to succeeding generations how settlers lived and how they built their homes from the materials at hand without the aid of architects and contractors. This book describes in great detail the building of a log cabin on the prairie 40 miles from Independence Missouri.

In contrast to a neighbour I had whose wife claimed he was incapable of even changing a lightbulb these men are extremely handy with their tools. Since I grew up with many of the tools now exhibited in museums I find these descriptions interesting and the books are light reading compared to many of the other tomes I read.

Unlike today's permissive milieu children were expected to be seen and not heard for example not speaking at table unless spoken to. Interrupting adults was unheard of.

The attitudes espoused in these and other books are at odds with Thomas King’s The Inconvenient Indian or AS King’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. It was people such as the Ingalls who encroached on Indian territory and felt it their right to squat on Natives’ ancestral lands and agitate for the Indian’s removal from it.

As this volume ends the Ingalls are on the move again after having just put in a garden. 

The Back of the Turtle

Thomas King's book has 99 short chapters that jump between half a dozen story-lines involving different locations and even time periods. The challenge is determining how all these characters and places fit together. All this by way of saying that the book does not lend itself to casual browsing.

There's a large conglomerate located in downtown Toronto, its president, and his support staff involved in Genetic Manipulation and the tar sands; a west coast reserve; and a ghost reserve where a disaster killed all the residents. Worked into the story are current events such as the duck kills in Northern Alberta and water poisoned by tar sands operations. It's left to the reader to tease out where all these disparate threads are headed.

We have:

1. Sonny who lives in the run down Ocean Star Hotel.
2. Mara the Indian woman who has come back to Samaritan Bay.
3. Nicholas Crisp who frequents Beatrice Hot Springs.
4. Gabriel Quinn the Biological Scientist who walks away from his job in Downtown Toronto to return to his place of birth.
5. His boss Dorian Asher, CEO of Domidion and his female assistant Winter who work in Toronto.
6. And finally the dog who fully qualifies as a character in this story.

And since this is fiction not real life it all resolves to a satisfying happy ending.

Sapiens

Yuval Noah Harari writes a macro history of humankind that begins with the cognitive developments that led to the supremacy of Homo Sapiens and led to the demise of other sentient lifeforms. He goes on to chart the agricultural revolution that tied us to our fields and communities and then the industrial revolution that introduced the concept of structured schedules and time. He ends with a philosophical and scientific discussion of what constitutes happiness and a look at bio-engineering.

His conclusions overturn many popularly held beliefs and will give all who read this book cause for sober thought about what they thought they knew.

Insurgent

As book two of the divergent series Insurgent follows seamlessly from book one. It continues to reveal pieces of the puzzle that is Tobias Eaton's life. If you liked book one this middle book carries the story along. It should not be read independently.

[Those sensitive about possible spoilers read no further.]

The majority of Factionless are failed Dauntless Candidates. No one fails Abnegation but a large proportion fail Dauntless. There are no old or infirm Dauntless as the aged are either pushed out or driven to suicide.

Each faction has its own unique style, its own myths and philosophies. Under Eric Dauntless reflects his sadistic and duplicitous nature. In this outing we discover that the Factionless have united to form their own unique faction.

Midway through the book seems to drag but the pace picks up as it moves toward the climatic conflict.

[Those sensitive about possible spoilers read no further.]

The majority of Factionless are failed Dauntless Candidates. No one fails Abnegation but a large proportion fail Dauntless. There are no old or infirm Dauntless as the aged are either pushed out or driven to suicide.

Each faction has its own unique style, its own myths and philosophies. Under Eric Dauntless reflects his sadistic and duplicitous nature. In this outing we discover that the Factionless have united to form their own unique faction.

Midway through the book seems to drag but the pace picks up as it moves toward the climatic conflict.

Divergent

I enjoyed reading this book. From the opening pages it engages the reader and carries you forward. Forget the labels, this is a morality tale about human nature—its good and evil nature. There is violence and risk taking but since these are teens there is also tenderness and love though its expression is often ambiguous. This is book one of a trilogy so expect to be drawn to read the following books in the series. I'm about to watch the movie based on this book.

Fifty Shades of Grey

Began reading this to see what all the fuss was about. More worrisome than the fact that someone felt compelled to write these books and that they found a publisher is the fact that there are people who who enjoy reading them and express interest in their subject matter. The writings of the Marquis de Sade have long been considered pornographic and virtually unreadable and although I resist the practice of censorship and book bannings I find little literary merit in these books. Although I may be aware that there are people who derive perverted sexual pleasure from bondage and sadomasochism I have better things to do with my time than read about them. Whether or not the object of these practices consents to domination it still smacks of assault on another fellow human and sexual abuse.

Golden Son

Max is transgendered, his body possesses both male and female genitalia. Add a rape scene in the opening chapters and this hardly seems like a young adult novel. The book is told from multiple points of view, at least the narrator's name heads each section. The language seems aimed at teenagers not adults but the philosophical and psychological discussions are very mature. Some of the philosophical discussions distract from the narrative flow but on the whole this book tackles a difficult subject with candour and empathy.

We, the Drowned

We the Drowned
by
Carsten Jensen

There's a sameness about the lives of sailors before the mast and miners below ground and whether you drown at sea when a ship goes down in a howling gail or die of starvation and foul air after a mine collapse the result is the same and men feel powerless to act in their own defence. In spite of this generations of sailors and miners ply their trade with a sense of fatalism as their fathers did before them. Alas, little seems to have changed over the centuries and despite advances in technology man is still powerless in the face of a raging sea.

The brutality of life in the mid-1800’s as described in these pages is unsettling. I'm reminded of the story of the little girl who arrives at school eager to learn who is lined up with her classmates and watches as each in turn is beaten by their new master. An entire chapter is devoted to the description of a sadistic Danish Schoolmaster who administers daily flailings with a rope. In the end the only thing his male students learn in their 6 years with him is how to take a beating. This lesson they take with them when at 12 to 14 they go to sea as cabin boys and the beatings continue.

The captain of a sailing vessel that could be at sea for years at a time had the power of life and death over his crew, to this day captains have the right to perform marriages. Given the dregs of society that were often rousted out of bars and jails to fill out a ship's complement iron discipline was probably necessary but the cruelty and hazing here described makes one wonder why anyone in their right mind would submit to such indignities.

Given the conditions in which these men live the language used is salty and the sufferings they endure are described in a frank and forthright manner. In battle men soil themselves and as cannon and musket balls fly bodies are rended and blood and guts flow. This is not a book to be read by the squeamish.

All this said the stories told here ring true and bring to life an era that is now history. Never boring they keep one turning pages to find the outcome. There is a matter-of-factness about the way these sagas are related and a fatalism about the way the hardships these men must endure are described. While their menfolk are at sea for years on end their wives back home keep the family together cooking and cleaning without an end in sight and without any certainty that their men will ever return or that word of their demise will ever reach home.

It’s one of the ironies of a sailing vessel that calm seas are not a good thing. While a ship lay becalmed in the horse lattitudes fresh water and food supplies could run out leaving a crew in dire straits. With no land in sight and a cloudless sky desperate things could happen. On the other hand storms at sea can drive a ship onto a lee shore, a reef, or a rocky shoal and when water temperatures are near freezing or the waves 100 foot high the ability to swim means little.

This book gives a unique perspective on the life of the women and children back home that would not go amiss in much of Newfoundland. Husbands and fathers went to sea for periods of up to 5 years and were not heard of until their boat came back in port. Children were born never knowing their fathers or meeting a stranger after they attained school age. Boys became midshipman at age 12 to 14, cabin boys in less exalted contexts and likely objects of sexual favours. The wives back home became defacto widows for years at a time and all too often never heard of their husbands again if their ships went down without a trace. The transition from sail to steam to diesel engines and iron ships was horrendous for many. Ship to shore radio and the internet has ushered in an entirely new communication age but sailors whether navy or merchant marine are still physically absent for extended periods of time.

Indian Horse

White society's treatment of the original aboriginal residents of North America constituted variations on two themes: assimilation or annihilation, a process that came close to succeeding. The Christian Church was more than complicit in abetting this process. In their missionary zeal Jesuits brought Christianity to the heathen and with it European disease. In their hubris missionaries failed to understand that a people's theology is tied to their culture and way of life. The dislocation that these priests began was continued by the residential schools. Traditional life was hard and children were allowed to be children and physical punishment was unknown as was mental cruelty. Children forcibly removed from their parents were forbidden their own language and religious practices. Many were physically and sexually abused. Several generations of this system produced a cohort who had lost their traditional heritage, their language, culture, and myths; drank too much; ate unhealthy diets, and suffered from alcoholism, obesity, and diabetes.
The Old Ones, elders, who still remembered the traditional values were spurned by their offspring who shamefully rejected the Old Ways. Children were torn between their grandparents values and their parent's beliefs. Should the dead for example be buried in a traditional manner or be placed in expensive coffins and exposed to the ministrations of priests whose schools exposed them to the diseases that killed them in the first place.

Wagamese makes all this plain in an engaging manner in a story that makes compelling reading. The story is filled with tragedies and heartache, this is no child's fairy tale.

Wildest Dreams

Book nine in Robyn Carr’s Thunderpoint Series. Introduces Ironman Blake Smiley. Not sure how a pro triathlete affords a million-dollar home; those endorsements and sponsorships must be lucrative. Hearing about the training, supplements, diet, and exercise schedule this lad endures makes his life sound more like a science experiment than an actual living person. Elite athletes are anything but amateurs these days.

This being a romance he has to have a love interest. Blake moves in next door to Grace and Troy. We continue to hear about most of the other residents of Thunderpoint. Somehow after 9 books the story ends rather abruptly.

A New Hope

Book 8 in the Thunderpoint Series continues the series as if this is one extended story continuing with the wedding we ended with in book seven. The focus simply shifts to another couple.

What has always made these books worth reading is the fact that the action takes place inside a community in which all the characters are given equal attention. The world they live in isn’t just background, it becomes real  in our minds.

One quibble, the dog on the cover should be a Great Dane like Ham, Sarah’s dog....

One Wish

Book 7 of Robyn Carr’s Thunderpoint series. As the book begins we meet Grace, the florist shop owner introduced to us in The Homecoming but it’s as if we are meeting an entirely new individual, or learning new aspects of her life barely hinted at in the previous book. Troy, the high school teacher with interests in skiing and river rafting, was introduced in Book 6 as well but here the focus has shifted to their relationship. The timeline continues seemlessly taking up where Book 6 left off.

Romance is not my normal genre so there are conventions here that are new to me. One of them seems to be that the happy couple go through perilous trials on the way to marital bliss but that ending always seems to be inevitable. Somehow it doesn’t seem realistic to me that every liaison have a happy ending however....

It is the character development and the sense of place that makes these novels worth the read. These people seem real to us, they are not cut out figures who end up in twisted bedsheets with clothes scattered along the way.

The Homecoming

Robyn Carr’s Series of Romance Novel’s set in Thunderpoint, Oregon near Coos Bay is a better than average set of novels or I wouldn’t be reading them. I’ve visited the area and loved it. Her characters are well developed and continue to appear in succeeding editions. In short these aren’t cut out figures used as a means of writing about bedroom gymnastics. It’s there of course but these people have lives outside the bedroom.

That being said this particular entry is totally predictable, the outcome telegraphed from the opening chapters. Boy next door is best friends with girl next door. Fails to appreciate his true feelings and hurts hers. Years later they reconcile. This isn’t a spoiler, the plot is self-evident from the beginning. What make the book worth the read is the fact that both the lovers in this tale have professional lives and family and friends who interact with them. Thunderpoint is a small town and everyone knows everybody.

To Reap and to Sow by JP Roberts

Having read Louis L'Amour and Zane Grey I've come to understand that cowboys were a randy lot. Bookbub has introduced me to Harlequin's Western Division. The present tome is the 311^th in Penguin's All-Action Western Gunsmith Series which as of 2007 had apparently sold nine million copies. The hero Clint Adams makes ample use of his modified Colt but equal use of another gun when he goes for rolls in the hay. Unlike so many movie Westerns the writer here is realistic about the accuracy of the metal weapons, plenty of lead flies to little effect. This paperback was given me by a fellow camper at an RV Park in Fort Davis, Texas. The chapters are short, the point of view constantly changing, this is a quick read. Don't expect too much.

The Bean Trees

The print in my trade paperback copy is rather tiny.

Barbara Kingsolver grabs the readers’ attention from the first page and holds it however by the half-way point I had fallen asleep reading this tome 8 times. It does pick up later on.

Modern fuel-injected vehicles cannot be started by popping the clutch in third gear while they’re being towed, pushed, or run downhill.

The bean trees of the title are Wisteria Vines. The story involves illegal aliens from Guatemala and an orphaned Cherokee child who is the victim of child abuse.

Devious

This is a better than average teen romance. Volume one of the trilogy, Dangerous, is still offered free to get one interested. The book has some grammatical errors but otherwise is well written and edited. It’s a cliché that in these stories the male is always tall, dark and handsome, hard bodied with narrow hips, wide shoulders and bulging rock-hard biceps. Wimps, it would seem never get the girls. And only a voluptuous beautiful suitor would be worthy of this hunk of manhood. This first person narrative is told alternately from the guy’s and the girl’s point of view. 

Are all high school romances as fickle, untrusting, jealous as this one. This couple run hot and cold as quickly as a Texas weather pattern. Does a girl have to “put out” to keep her guy interested? The fact that Dara’s drunk father killed Stone’s twin brother is a complicating factor in inter-family relationships.

No one will accuse this YA Novel of being great literature. The offer of book one got me interested in seeing where the author would take the storyline. I was rather disappointed when book 2 turned out to be a mushy teenaged soap opera.

Dear Life

Alice Munro’s latest collection of short Stories published just before she won the Nobel Prize. This collection is very adult in its content the situations not suitable for children though written about children caught up in very mature circumstances. The ‘you’re too young to understand’ clause applies all too often. The writer has long since lost her innocence and even in rural small towns rather tawdry goings on occur. Life is raw and given the Great Depression and the War Years that followed somewhat lacking in romance and fantasy. The writer escaped in books but the reader here is brought up short. The era was that of my own mother and Munro evokes it unerringly.