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.