BOOKWORM
GATHER AROUND, LET ME TELL YOU A STORY
Canada We Are The Story by Richard Wagamese, illustrated by Mangeshig Pawis-Steckley, Swift Water, $24.99. Listen. Can you hear the voices of the Old Ones speaking to you in a language you’ve forgotten?
The enduring words of a powerful poem by beloved Ojibway author Richard Wagamese are brought to life for the first time alongside stunning original art by Anishnaabe artist Mangeshig Pawis-Steckley.
An evocative way for the youngest generation to honour the past, find belonging in the present and look toward the future in this place now called Canada.
CAN YOU KEEP A SECRET?
The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown, Doubleday, $52. Symbologist Robert Langdon is in Prague to attend a ground-breaking lecture by Katherine Solomon, a prominent noetic scientist with whom he has recently begun a romantic relationship.
She’s on the verge of publishing a breakthrough book that contains explosive scientific discoveries about human consciousness that threaten to disrupt centuries of established belief – and the world order as established by the US.
A brutal murder catapults the trip into chaos. Katherine goes missing. The servers of Penguin Random House, “the world’s largest book publisher,” (and incidentally also the publisher of this book) are hacked. Her manuscript is destroyed. The only logical conclusion is, Whoever wants to kill this PRH book has killed a PRH author.
And in the midst of his panic, editor Jonas Faukman wonders when the world would finally accept that the word data was plural. Data that were accessed.
Dan Brown leads readers through the mystical landscape of Prague, with the action expanding to London and New York, navigating a labyrinth of codes and symbols. A masterful building of dread, a narrative sprinkled with red herrings and the meaning of ancient and modern symbols hiding in plain sight.
Human perception is riddled with blind spots, as Katherine says.
Langdon quotes from the Vedanta, from Sufis, Kabbalists and Buddhists.
The many symbols Brown describes include the Vel spear – the Hindu symbol of power, carried by Murugan, the god of war. There’s also a fun fact about the Starbucks logo.
Brown informs us that all artwork, artifacts, symbols and documents mentioned in the book are real. All experiments, technologies, and scientific results are true to life. All organizations in this novel exist.
Which just makes it all the more engrossing. And terrifying.
THE ONCE AND FUTURE WORLD
What We Can Know by Ian McEwan, Alfred A. Knopf, $38. It’s 2119, not too distant in the future. A climate catastrophe has already extracted its price. Sea levels have risen. In the highlands of the UK, Tom Metcalfe, a scholar at the University of the South Downs, part of Britain’s remaining archipelagos, pores over the archives of the early twenty-first century, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith.
At the heart of his obsession is a legendary lost poem read aloud once in 2014 and never heard again. As the century progressed into climate catastrophe and war, the poem, A Corona for Vivien became a myth, a symbol of what could have been and all that has been lost.
When the professor uncovers a clue that may lead to the poem, revelations of entangled love and a brutal crime emerge, destroying his assumptions about a story he thought he knew intimately.
Many reasons have been given for the decline of the climate- change movement in the twenty-first century. I would propose Derangement itself. The planet, with almost 200 jostling nations, was already tense. Some historians have marked the beginning of the new dark age with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and that is where quite a few history books begin or end. I would propose the first climate war in 2036, one in a sequence, between two nuclear states, India and Pakistan, traditional enemies. One issue was water, once plentiful in the form of Himalayan glacier-fed ice-melt. Now, as long predicted, drying up. The two states were prepared to obliterate one another. The world, as the cliché ran, held its breath, and it is not easy to organise or attend mass protests in favour of decarbonising civilisation or write books about it when you are holding your breath.
What We Can Know is a call for course-correction. A love story for the world that we can’t seem to wait to see destroyed. But all is not lost. At least not yet.
Ian McEwan liberates the reader from an all-too-familiar, looming sense of calamity.
OKAY THEN!
We Did Ok, Kid by Anthony Hopkins, Summit Books, $49. The man with one of the most beautiful voices in the industry, and someone who has made me cry and terrorized me by turn (think Remains of the Day and Silence of the Lambs), when not being the swashbuckling Zorro, came up with yet another stellar performance in One Life.
His book details his life. In all its ups and downs, in all its glory.
Born and raised amid war and depression in a small Welsh steelworks town, Sir Anthony Hopkins grew up around men who were tough, who eschewed all forms of emotional vulnerability. A student who struggled at school, he was deemed a failure with no future ahead of him. But watching a performance of Hamlet set him on a trajectory no one could have predicted. In this candid memoir, he takes readers behind some of his most iconic roles and his meetings with legends of the stage and screen. It is also a deeply honest look at his personal life. The addictions that ruined relationships and nearly took his life.
And we learn of the small photograph of little Tony at age three that he carries with him everywhere. A child to whom he can say, “We did OK, kid”.
COLONIAL VICTIMS
The Great Game by Arvind Ethan David, Thomas & Mercer, $16.99. London, 1905. Members of the Brtish aristocracy are being brutally murdered. Who is behind the attacks? Why are they being targeted? What is the obsession with the removal of the right hand of the victims? With all either “agents of empire, soldiers or administrators tasked with enforcing Britain’s will abroad,” could the murders be symbolic?
AJ Raffles – who served in the Boer War, faced down the great batsman Ranji at Lords, and is now a gentleman thief – and his partner in crime “Bunny” are roped in to help solve the case.
Bunny is Lieutenant Balvinder Dev Singh. Late of the 2nd Patiala Infantry and now a pupil barrister at Lincoln’s Inn. Yes, dear reader, you have found me out. I am not a white man. You didn’t get that from “hullabaloo” and “tiffin”?
He discovers that then, as now, there were few options available to one with his qualifications and experience: “Security guard at the docks, fish porter at the market, night waiter at a late-nigh Hindoostan cafe.”
Then there’s Maud Adler, a musical prodigy, who plays Shankarabharanam, among other Indian ragas.
Lord Kitchener makes an appearance. And the science fiction writer Herbert Wells (better known as HG Wells!). Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson pay a starring role. As does a certain young Winston Churchill. And oh, Lord Greystoke.
Delicious tidbits of information:
The word status comes from the root word stha, Sanskrit for to stand, to stay, to be situated.
And Balvinder Singh questions Dr Watson on the names of the characters in The Sign of the Four. Abdullah Khan and Dost Akbar, both Muslim, but one more Arab than Indian. And the improbable Mahomet Singh.
Picture the scene. For a quick revision confirms that those are indeed the names in the famous book by Arthur Connan Doyle!
One can either read the book straight up and enjoy a dazzling, daring thriller that brings together historical figures and historical fiction.
Or read it like I did, stopping every few pages, and turning to trusty Google to see if that really happened, or if this person is real – and find another way into a rollicking good story from the Tony and Grammy Award-winning producer.
It’s such a clever mix, almost sly in its humour, that it’s hard to untangle fact from fiction as he treats icons from the turn of the century not as nostalgic relics but as architects of a violent modern world.
LAUGH WITH ME
This American Woman by Zarna Garg, Ballantine Books, $39.99. Award-winning comedian Zarna Garg, America’s first Indian immigrant mom comedian, burst on to the scene with her special One in a Billion.
Escaping an arranged marriage in India at the age of fourteen, she’d fled. First to the streets of Mumbai, and ultimately to Akron, Ohio. On a quest to find herself and her calling, she threw herself wholeheartedly into roles like dog-bite lawyer, crazy perfectionist stay-at-home mom, Indian matchmaker, prize-winning screenwriter, and more. But it was a dare that led her to a stand-up comedy open mic – and to getting paid for having a big mouth.
This American Woman is the exuberant story of a woman who can’t stop laughing her way to the top.
STARS WITH FEET OF CLAY
Good Guys by Sharon Bala, McClelland & Stewart, $26.95. From the bestselling author of The Boat People, a moral page turner about money, the dark side of philanthropy, and what happens when you try to change the world for all the wrong reasons.
Claire Talbot is a publicist at an NGO that funds international aid projects. It is also in the verge of bankruptcy. When an A-list actress she arranges to volunteer at one of their overseas orphanages adopts a baby and promises a massive donation, it seems like Claire has saved the day. But when a shocking crime is revealed, Claire and her colleagues must reckon with their complicity and all the ways their work abroad has harmed the very people they set out to save.
So very topical in this age of celebrity endorsements and news reports about mega rich donors with feet of clay.
PALLY DATE
Spring! by Leslie Petricelli, Candlewick Press, $12.50. Bunnies to hop with, puddles to splash in, and so much fun to be had.
The best part?
Sharing the day with a friend!
TEEN REVIEW
By DENETHI PERERA
Huda F Are You? by Huda Fahmy, Dial Books, $23.49. This book is about a teenage Muslim girl who goes through a rough journey where she starts to question who she really is.
It all started when she moved to a new school and she starts to realize that she doesn’t fit in with any of her peers.
The story shows Huda trying to figure out who she really is while going through and dealing with the challenges among her friends, family and fitting in.
This narrative is both funny and emotional at the same time.
What makes this book special is the fact that Huda’s story feels relatable.
By reading this book we can learn more about self confidence, how to deal with and handle different stressful situations and the importance of family in a person’s life.
This book is also a graphic novel. I like the author’s humour and how the drawings made each scene more expressive.
Compared to the book Smile by Raina Telgemeier which is also a book that focuses on finding who you are, Huda F Are You? takes a more down to earth and reflective approach. Overall, it is quick, and can provide important life lessons to teens in a fun way. It’s entertaining, meaningful and shows that finding who you are takes time and baby steps.
• Denethi Perera is a youth volunteer at Brampton Library.