book club

this is the book that i left at my parent's house without a bookmark. when i got it back a couple of weeks later i struggled to find my place.  and since i didn't learn my lesson the first time, i continued to throw it in my purse without a bookmark and must have re-read the same pages at least 20 times... in any case... miriam toews is one of my favourite canadian authors.  you may know  a complicated kindness or more recently the flying troutmans.  i think this is the fourth of her books that i've read and despite focusing on a heavier subject, it still made me laugh out loud.  she has a real honesty to her humour that i appreciate.  swing low: a life is a memoir of her father that she wrote through his point of view.. several years after he took his own life.  miriam provides insight into her father that i'm sure he would be proud of.  it wasn't sad, it was inspired. 


slapstick came from santa.  i wonder how santa knows i like kurt vonnegut?  the best word i could use to describe this book is... wacky.  it was a science fiction, futuristic and somewhat post apocalyptic tale.  the storyteller is the former president of the united states who now lives in the empire state building with his granddaughter.  he goes through his life, and explains in detail his bizarre relationship with his twin sister.  when separated, they are just average (or below average people), but when they put their heads together they become insanely intellectual.  he describes the physical closeness as a crucial part to their "genius" and it kinda weirded me out.  but overall i enjoyed it.  the forward was the best part because i liked reading about vonnegut himself, but the fiction was disturbing, humourous and entertaining.

i wasn't able to recover my copy of douglas coupland's hey nostradamus!  but i did find it at bmv for $2.99.  what a steal!  anyway it took me a while to find my place, but once i did i quickly got back into coupland's stylistic flow.  i love reading his books so far.  there is something about the way he writes that really appeals to my brain.  this book was based around a high school shooting. there was an account of the shooting through the eyes of a deceased victim (from... heaven?).  prior to the incident she had eloped with her highschool sweetheart.  they got fake ids and flew from vancouver to las vegas at the age of 17 without anyone knowing. each chapter is entitled after a different character connected in some way to the shooting. and includes the subsequent life events of the husband who survived while his young bride died in his arms.  i'm not going into too much detail here.  it was interesting, and funny, so read it.