Book Buzz

Jack W. Brinks

For 6000 years First Nations hunters on the prairies used their knowledge of the land and of buffalo behaviour to drive their quarry over cliffs. Archaeologist Jack Brink has written a major study of the mass buffalo hunts and the culture they supported before and after European contact. Brinks draws on his 25 years excavating at Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump in southwestern Alberta – a UNESCO World Heritage Site. “I love the story behind the jump – the events and planning that went into making the whole event work. I continue to learn more about the complex interaction between people, bison, and the environment, and I continue to be impressed with how the ancient hunters pulled off these astonishing kills.”

When the first Europeans hunted bison they would shoot the biggest oldest male. The First Nations hunters would laugh. The meat would not be good for eating nor would the hide be good for tanning. A hunt for meat would take place in the fall when the cows would be fat. For hides they would hunt in the spring when hides would be thinner and easier to work with.

The workers at Smashed in Head were unsuccessful at creating a tipi made of buffalo hides. They found a group of people who made tipis for Wanuskewin Heritage Park, a buffalo jump near Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. But when they contacted these people they were no longer process buffalo hides the tradition way. It was too much work!

Filled with facts and stories and beautifully illustrated. An excellent read.

A JOURNEY THROUGH THE REALM OF VANISHING CULTURES

WADE DAVIS

Ethnobotanist and anthropologist Davis has traveled the world for 25 years to study the myriad ways indigenous people live in physical and spiritual intimacy with the natural world. Though listed as a book of photographs, LIGHT is much more. The pictures are amazing but the writing is a synthesis of many of the cultures he has explored. A beautiful, stunning book that is ultimately somber and sorrowful for it is describing “vanishing cultures.” Davis wrote that genocide, the deliberate and systematic extermination of a racial,  or cultural group is abhorred in modern times but ethoncide the systematic destruction of an ethnic culture in many ways is accepted. While discussing Andean culture of South America he wrote how nutritionally important the coco leaf contributing large quantities calcium and other minerals that were not traditionally found in their diet. Gems like this are found throught the book. Much of what he writes is the spirituality of the culture. Davis reflects on the effects of colonialism in these areas and laments the uncertain fate of groups like the Penan of Borneo, the nomads of Kenya and the Inuit in Canada is Russia.

An excellent read and an excellent collection of photographs.

KAREN CONNELLY

This memoir highlights the year Connelly spent living in a small town in northern Thailand. She was seventeen when she left for Thailand and the writing reflects this. It is not a mature work. But I enjoyed it for the insights into daily life of the Thai people, their language and their culture. When I was in Thailand I asked someone to teach me to count to ten. “Nung.” I repeated, “Nung” and the people howled with laughter. I couldn’t hear the tones of the language. The same word can have five or six meanings depending on the tone used in speech. I really never learned any Thai. But Karen lived with families and went to school with the young people. Immersion is the best way to learn a language. But of course it wasn’t easy learning the language and accepting the restraints of the culture. Being the only “farang” (foreigner) in the area she had little privacy. Being a woman she didn’t have the freedom and choices she was used to in Canada. The writing improves through out the book. She calls Thailand “the green country” and the inhabitants “the gentle people.”

What drew me to this book is some of Connelly’s other writing. The Lizard Cage is an excellent novel of modern Burma.

A good read if you are interested in Thailand and Asia.

Vikas Swarup

This is the book that the movie Slumdog Millionaire was based on. And the book is completely different than the movie except for the basic theme and structure. Ram Mohammad Thomas is a contestant for a billion rupees. The book highlights an excerpt from his life that explains how he knew the answer. And what a life! Poverty, desertion, murder, prostitution, abuse, it is all in his life. But there was always some fascit that mattered most. I find it astounding, and if it’s typical of the things she’s asked, no wte of his life that he remembered thas that mattered most. I find it astounding, and if it’s typical of the things she’s asked, no ws that mattered most. I find it astounding, and if it’s typical of the things she’s asked, no wt provided an answer. The neighbour naming the pet Pluto because the kitten is tiny and Pluto is the smallest planet in the solar system. Despite the torture and abuse it is aThis is the book that the movie Slumdog Millionaire was based on. And the book is completely different than the movie except for the basic theme and structure. Ram Mohammad Thomas is a contestant for a billion rupees. The book highlights an excerpt from his life that explains how he knew the answer. And what a life! Poverty, desertion, murder, prostitution, abuse, it is all in his life. But there was always some fascite of his life that he remembered that provided an answer. The neighbour naming the pet Pluto because the kitten is tiny and Pluto is the smallest planet in the solar system. Despite the torture and abuse it is actually a light read. Fun. Now I would like to revisit the DVD.ctually a light read. Fun. Now I would like to revisit the DVD.

JAMES A. LEVINE

Not an easy book. Batuk is a child prostitue. She was sold into the trade by her father.  Auctioned to wealthy man, her owner likely received more from that first customer than the father was initially paid. Life goes downhill from there being sold to increasingly cheaper, less classy brothels.

She befriends a boy in the brothel. Puneet earns at lease double to what men pay for her because he is a boy. But after a visit from two police officers he is left bleeding and wounded from have a night stick inserted into his wiry  frame. The men leave the brothel laughing.

Author Levine is a doctor at the Mayo clinic. He was inspired to write NOTEBOOK after doing medical research in India. He devoting the proceeds from the sale of the book to help exploited children.

Well worth reading despite the pitiful ending.

AMITAV GHOSH

What pulled me into this novel were the great characters. Characters were introduced with such rapidity that I wrote a character sheet to keep them straight. Deeti  is a young mother living by the Ganges some 50 miles east of Benares. She grows poppies because she must (the destruction of the rural economy is of no concern to the British), but though she is not  user, her husband is an opium addict. The people are no longer aloud to grow crops to feed themselves, they must supply the British with opium to sell to the Chinese, who don’t want it. This book reminds me of all I learned in Liquid Jade about the opium trade and wars in colonial times. Historical fiction puts it in a human context.  All the main characters come alive. Ghosh’s characters breath life into the story.

I also enjoyed the use of local and antiquated vocabulary. There are words and expressions from Hindi, Urdu, Hindustan and others as well as colonial and sailing vocabulary.  Though it got waring by the end of the novel.

At almost 500 pages the novel was too long. It dragged in the last quarter though the very ending picked up speed. The final ending seems to lead to a sequel and isn’t  diffinative  which was disappointing.

But all and all worth the read. And this type of  historical fiction usually isn’t my first choice.

NOTE:  image not the book cover but Sea of Poppies by Louise Southan watercolor landscape (http://images.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://www.dreamgallery.co.uk/watercolor_e_detail/sea_of_poppies.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.dreamgallery.co.uk/watercolor_e_amain/aimage04.htm&usg=__6bc7Hqj9dvlZEQK-yofZVwVX6lE=&h=300&w=432&sz=72&hl=en&start=7&sig2=nREF97fXnX68HDPZWom2PQ&tbnid=3PTuBbYAJUKgsM:&tbnh=88&tbnw=126&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dsea%2Bof%2Bpoppies%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG&ei=cEe0StqpBovUMtb7-doO

MAGGIE SIGGINS

BITTER is a powerful account of what has happened to the people in and around Pigeon Lake over the past 200 years. For over two hundred years, Pelican Narrows has endured an equally torturous relationship with the encroaching European culture, from the Hudson’s Bay Company factors and missionaries of earlier times to the bureaucrats and police of today. Siggins used oral history and documented the personal stories of contemporary Pelican Narrows Rock Cree. She gives us the human faces behind the newspaper stories of native issues. Bitter Embrace is an extraordinary contribution to our history and our understanding of ourselves and what our First Nations Communities have under gone and have to deal with now.

It is a difficult read but should be read by all Canadians and read and discussed by all high school students in Canada.

MICHEL TREMBLAY

I’ve been wanting to revisit this old friend ever since it was part of Canada Reads on CBC. I had forgotten what a challenging read it is. I had to map the author’s family tree – the characters in the book – to keep them straight. Tremblay said he wrote this novel and the next three in the series to tell his family how much he loved them. Beautiful. The novel takes place in one day. The Fat Woman is Tremblay’s mother pregnant with him. Welcome to the family.

I tried to included the family tree but the format is lost so I created a web page. Please take a look. Other character besides family are listed as well.

ARAVIND ADIGA

I discovered this book by reading this review in the New Internationalist:

Top of the swaying piles of books that pedestrian street-hawkers navigate through Mumbai’s traffic jams is Adiga’s controversial first novel. Apart from winning the prestigious Man Booker prize in Britain, The White Tiger has also taken India by storm. But in his native land, Adiga’s efforts have elicited admiration and anger in equal measure. For some, The White Tiger is a bold, honest work that unflinchingly ‘tells the truth’ about contemporary India; others have dismissed it as ‘inauthentic’ and peopled with ‘grotesque caricatures’.

The first-person narrative is dominated by the book’s hero, Balram Halwai, who is writing a letter to the Chinese Premier. The latter is about to visit India to find out about ‘entrepreneurship’ – something ‘India Rising’ has in abundance and China lacks. But what do Indian politicians and élites know about it, asks Balram? Listen to me, he says, and he starts to tell his own dark, intriguing journey to success, from low-caste village boy in ‘The Darkness’ (the northern state of Bihar) to wealthy business owner in the IT hub of Bangalore. It’s a tale of servitude, abuse, betrayal, murder, corruption, theft and ruthless cunning. The message is stark: if you start life at the bottom, this is how you escape poverty and humiliation in India’s ‘democracy’.

The wit is mordant; the politics trenchant; the vision as unforgiving as neon light. Compassion is entirely lacking in Balram’s dog-eat-dog world. There is just one perspective – the protagonist’s – and his distinctive voice, as he tells his story brilliantly, incisively and – of course – controversially.

http://www.newint.org/columns/media/books/2009/01/01/white-tiger/

Great read. Interesting picture of Indian society.

ERIC STONE

Not a great book by any means, almost trashy but an interesting theme. Great for an asiaphile. IMPORTS centers around the illegal trade of Cambodian antiquities. How these jewels of cambodian culture are stolen and sold by Khemer Rouge, the same people who so decimated the population and the country years ago. How much of the Khemer Rouge leadership was educated at the Sorbonne in Paris. All this is told through the story of Ray Sharp, an American expat living in the East. He stumbles on this illicit business while perusing a Chinese Art supply store in Hong Kong.