Incompetent Book Critic Extraordinaire

Life, lately, has involved a great deal of retching and sobbing and laying semiconscious and wishing for the sweet release of death. Providing respite from my own morbid thoughts has been the only form of entertainment which has been mildly tolerable: listening to audio books.

Listening to another person read a book out loud is a favourite past time of young and illiterate children, the blind, and the incompetently lazy. I have gladly found myself in that final category. I can brush my dog (or chop off all of his fur), or try to apply mascara, or lay with my eyes shut and try to quell the urge to projectile vomit, all while experiencing any number of literary works. There is probably something very blasphemous about this, and I’m sorry if any readers are offended by my laziness, but the Vancouver library has offered this service to me (and to you, too!) free of charge via library-to-go, and I would be stupid and lazy not to take advantage (as opposed to being merely lazy).

Having now “read” more books than I have since I started my bachelor degree and lost my taste for reading, I will now take on the role of incompetent Literary Critic. Please enjoy.

The Camera My Mother Gave Me by Susanna Kaysen - The author of Girl, Interrupted presented a second memoir from later in her life, and so I downloaded this book without any idea of its content. I found that there was no camera, and there was no mother. There was, however, a sore spot on the woman’s vagina. This was the entire subject of the book. I have never thought of myself as opposed to listening to a woman talk for extended periods of time about her sore vagina…but then again, the opportunity to do so had never really come up. I did enjoy the book, sort of - the writing was good, the characterizations and dialogues adept - but the splendours of genealogical exams make for a slightly off-putting subject matter (and I am aware that saying so probably makes me a prude and a very bad feminist. I am sorry.) Grade B-

Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen - Really, this is the book I wanted to read to begin with. The author’s writing style is perfect for describing the oddities and inconsistencies of life, or more specifically two years of young adulthood within a psychiatric hospital. The movie, which everyone the world over has already seen, is similar but strikingly different in many fundamental ways - most of the major plot points are fabricated, along with the character arches and Susanna’s pursuit of ‘recovery.’ Instead, the book simply presents the facts, which make a far more interesting portrait of the world: Susanna met with a doctor she had never seen before, and after twenty minutes (and the fact that she had scratched a pimple) she was admitted to a hospital for two years, where she hung out, met many other young women, and then was released two years down the road without any major changes or epiphanies. Did I say interesting? Perhaps I should have said ‘disturbing.’ Or simply ‘realistic.’ I would definitely recommend the book - which is short enough to manage even if you can’t find someone to read it aloud. Grade A-

The Dogs Who Found Me by Ken Foster - I was very sick, and this book seemed easy to take. It was, but the adventures of saving a few stray dogs, coupled with a straightforward and somewhat annoying writing style, don’t make for anything compelling enough to recommend to others. The author does take on a moral stance of ‘just trying to do the right thing’ which I think is a message that needs to be heard - he starts noticing abandoned and stray dogs shortly after adopting his own dog, while other people ignore or simply don’t see them at all. This rings disturbingly true. I have myself successfully returned two strays to their owners - but both in the last year, since I’ve had my own dogs. Maybe we should all try a little harder to notice stray dogs, and stray children, and stray cell phones…and just be better neighbours in general. And if you can do that, there’s no need to read this book. Grade C

If I Stay by Gayle Forman - I had placed a hold on this book ages ago, and when I received a notice telling me to download it, I couldn’t remember why. It was a young adult novel. It featured a happy family. The characters were compelling, relatable, and endearing…but I don’t go out of my way to read anything so blatantly happy and well-adjusted. And then, two chapters in, the family gets in a horrible car crash and everyone, save the teenage daughter, is killed. Oh. Well that sounds like a book I’d read. Now, through flashbacks and observing her own injured body as it makes its way through surgery and the ICU, the young woman must decide whether or not she wants to go, to be with her parents and her little brother, or if it is worth it to fight to live, and stay. The book is well written, the characters are all compelling, and the author is guilty of tugging on heartstrings in an obvious but effective manner that will have all but the most black-hearted readers curled up in the fetal position and sobbing, again and again. My recommendation is coupled with a recommendation for Kleenex, a loved one, and a solid afternoon to recover from the wrenching ordeal. Grade A

The Sex Lives of Cannibals by J. Maarten Troost - This book is written by me. Or, it would have been, if I had a slightly better vocabulary, the willpower to write an entire book, and a far more interesting life involving graduate school in Washington followed by a relocation with my wife to an isolated island in the South Pacific. The adventures of the surly author, as he can feel his freckles “morphing into something interesting and tumorous” on a tropical paradise/hellhole, make for a hilarious and thoroughly enjoyable read which has me wanting to drop everything and move to Kiribati or, far more likely, going to Chapters to buy his second book. Grade A+