The Jungle Book - Rudyard Kipling

Anyone between the age of say 2 and 98 will know the story of Mowgli, Bagheera, Baloo and Shere Khan. But did you realize that the movie was filmed in 1967? I did not even realize that colour existed in the 1960s (come to think of it, I guess it was the summer of love). The book by Kipling is actually a collection of horror stories, meant to scare children into eating their vitamins. No, just kidding. But maybe I should post that to Wikipedia? It should take 8 hours to discover that Carl Lewis was not in fact the first black man in the Olympics (for the record, he was actually the 2nd one). But I stray off the point. The Jungle Book, as written by Kipling, is actually a colleciton of children's stories, only one of which centers on the movie of the same name. As you will remember, Mowgli is raised by a pack, taught the laws of the jungle by a panther and bear, and then slays an evil tiger by the end. Kind of like Trainspotting, but without Ewan McGragor. Well, in the book, there are also stories involving further personification of cute cudly yet in reality ferocious animals, namely stories on a mongoos, white seal and an elephant. Finally, if I remember my pre-pubescent years correctly, the Jungle Book was also the inspiration behind many of the Boy Scouts of America movement - especially the one where young children are sent out into the woods to try and sleep with a "mother cub". This really sets a boy up to suceed at Cougar bars - I'm pretty sure, in the end, that was the moral behind the Jungle Book.

Indeed, indeed, I might have remembered that the children of kings are men from the beginning.

The Cellist of Sarajevo - Steven Galloway

A novel so sonorous, I dare call it an album. From the salient scream of the first mortar blast to the innocence of the a sniper saying her name aloud, Galloway has created a shear Wall of Sound. Phil Spector would be proud. It is indeed the tonal quality of his writing which draws the reader in, much like those who stood by and listened to the cellist play. The cellist plays for 22 days. He plays to mark the passing of 22 souls. Yet, aside from the opening paragraph, we do not hear the story through the cellist's eyes, but rather the story is told through the cellist bow. Plucking the stories from the rubble, Galloway has woven a masterpiece.


The siege of Sarajevo, as we learn in the afterword, is the longest city siege in modern warfare (biblical fold really knew how to throw a siege - something that seems to have gone out of style with the advent of ballistic missiles and stealth bombers). When Bosnia declared independence from Yugoslavia, Serbian forces attacked peace protestors and set up barracades. It became essentially a war between the Yugoslave army and the Bosnian forces. When international pressure helped decale Bosnia - Herzogovinia an independent state, the siege escalated as Milosevic wanted to ethnically cleanse all Bosnians from Yugoslav lands. That is as simple as I can put it. For more on the Bosnian war, consult your local library :)

He doesn't hear the bullet hit, but he does hear the gunshot. He doesn't think he's hurt but he isn't certain. As he pulls the body of the hatless man the final few steps to safety he waits to feel some sort of pain, waits to feel the wetness of bleeding. It doesn't come. He sits down on the ground, breating hard, sweating.

The way of all flesh - Samuel Butler

You can just tell from the cover that this book is a real keeper right? Wow, what a boring book. Somehow though, it ranks as the #12 book on Modern Library's list of top 100 from the 20th Century. This should be a misnomer, as the book itself was written in the 1870s, but not published until 1903. It makes the list mostly for its attack on Victorian ideals and the rejection of Calvinism. I know, you are really starting to get a literary boner. Believe you me, it was hard to keep it in my pants while reading, luckily I was outfitted with my cranial chastity belt - this prevented my brain from being too understimulated while reading the book.

To be fair, it is simply a case that the book's slow pace is basically antiquated. The ideas themselves are quite progressive for the time, but read today, it takes a person of supreme patience (or someone equipped with my aformentioned cranial chastity belt) to slog through the book.

Conclusion: Unless you are reading all the ML top 100, no real reason to pick this one up.

It was proved incontestably that its ultimate foundation was and ought to be faith, there being indeed no other ultimate foundation than this for any of man's beliefs. If so, the writer claimed that the Church could not be upset by reason. It was founded, like everything else, on initial assumptions, that is to say on faith, and if it was to be upset it was to be upset by faith, by the faith of those who in their lives appeared more graceful, more lovable, better bred, in fact, and better able to overcome difficulties. Any sect which showed its superiority in these respects might carry all before it, but none other would make much headway for long together. Christianity was true in so far as it had fostered beauty, and it had fostered much beauty. It was false in so far as it fostered ugliness, and it had fostered much ugliness

Federal Election

Well, well, well, what do we have here. Another federal election. If you happen to be American, and are bit caught up in your own national election - for which I don't blame you - here is a tiny little synopsis of the political action north of the 49th parallel. Mostly ramblings, but then, what else is it that you expect from me? The only question is should I use bullets or numbers....

• The Right Honourable (attention blogger, since this posting is about Canada, I am choosing the "ou" rather than simply "o" to spell this wourd) Stephen Harper requested of Her Excellency the Right Honourable Governor General, Michaelle Jean (there should an umlau on the first e, for those fastidious grammaticians out there) (also, grammatician is a made up word)...hmmm, where am I, I have opened up too many brackets....point of the story, September 8th, the 40th general federal election was called.
• Canadian elections last 40 days. I'm pretty sure that is just about as long as an Obama - McCain debate.
• Speaking of master debators, Canada's consortium (what an awesome word) of broadcasters oversees the national debates in this country. There are two debates - one in English, one in French. Simple enough right. Well, not so fast. You see, there are 5 "major" parties in Canada. Wait, cancel that. There are 2 major national parties, one party that thinks it's a major national party, one party that knows it is a regional party and finally one party that is most definitely not a major party, but is a national party. Did you get all that? Maybe I should start another bullet....
• The point I was trying to make, prior to be drawn into tangential thought paterns (oops, there it goes again)....the point is that in the Leader's debates, the broadcasting consortium has decided to not allow Elizabeth May, leader of the Green party. The Green party, prior to September 5th (yes, of this year) did not have a sitting candidate - ever. Yes, they are polling around 10% and over 600,000 people voted for them in the last election, and yes they have candidates all across the country (with one notable exception that I won't discuss here), but they are essentially teenagers in a Legion Hall. Nobody cares what they have to say. Oops, when I say nobody, I mean the party leaders - Canadians themselves, who don't really care about politics, do seem to care about letting her into the debate. But that is because Canadians are "nice". Not really because they care about what she has to say.
• Which brings me to another point - Canadians, almost overwhelmingly, don't care about politics. The level of political discourse in our country is fairly elevated when compared to the lunchroom discussions of mentally retarded patients, but nobody would ever call that discussion elevated - so to speak. No, even at 40 days, Canadians feel the campaign is too long and costs too much money. What's more, most Canadians don't feel that the outcome will be much different than the previous two elections - minority governments.
• So why are we having an election? Well, because having one, at this stage, is illegal - or at least some pundits would say so. Yes, by law, we were suppose to have fixed elections, the next one scheduled for October 2009. But the Governor General has the power to dissolve parliament prior to these fixed dates. And of course, to avoid having the Queen's undies get all wedged up her ass, the GG pretty much has to listen to the PMOC (a.k.a. Stevie Harper). So, basically, to avoid a Constitutional reform - because then some province that starts with Q and ends in C would probably want to go take a dive in the waters of Lake Meech - Canada can have an election whever it wants.
  
• But, we don't want an election, so could sobody please tell me why we are having one? Oh right, so Jack Layton's mustache can get more air time.

For my part, I'm voting for the Work Less Party - http://www.worklessparty.org/

The Plot Against America - Philip Roth

Imagine if you will - the year is 1940. Hitler has already overun Poland and Czecolslovakia (believe it or not, I spelt that correctly on the first try). The British have entered the war. The French have entered the war - and quickly exited the war. Meanwhile, in America, isolationists are arguing to keep America out of "Europe's" war. Timely enough, there is a general election slated for November of 1940. The Democratic candidate, Franklin D. Roosevelt, has been in office for 8 years and has come off the greatest political victory in US history by carrying 46 of the 48 states (damn you Vermont and Maine). At the Republican national convention, there is a standoff between a number of candidate until another icon of American heroism - one Charles A. Lindbergh - steps onto the convention floor. And the rest, as they say, is alternate history.

Roth has portrayed a "what if" scenario, by having Lindbergh as the Republican candidate of 1940 election - in reality it was New York businessman Wendell Willkie. In Roth's alternate retelling of history Lindbergh, who was in fact staunchly against the US' involvement in the war, becomes the President of the US by inspiring the populace and by portraying FDR as a warmonger. In Lindbergh's US, the nation does not go to war, as Lindbergh makes a secret pact with Hitler. However, as a part of this pact, the Jewish people of America go through an frightening escalation of controls, as anti-semitism reaches a zenith heretofore not seen in America.

I had expected more of an action novel, but what I got was a political novel. The storyline follows the Roth family - in a sense it is autobiographical as Roth's alternate history reflects the all too real anti-semitism that he faced growing up. The story itself is wonderfully constructed and delivered, as you would expect from such a decorated novelist. More interesting however are the questions it poses. If America had not entered WWII, how would it have turned out? Could Hitler have really succeeded, in not only conquering Europe but in successively implementing in nightmarish Final Solution; a plan whereby he hoped to rid the world of the Jewish people. It also begs the question, how does it feel to be an outsider in one's own country? What does it feel like to be discriminated against? To have all of one's possessions taken by the very country you have come to believe in? When will you stand up and say enough is enough, when it is the government that is persecuted you? Roth renders these fears all too tangibly, through the eyes of a young Jewish child, whose only desire to increase his stamp collection.

My main criticism is that the novel has a somewhat Hollywood approach, in that Roth seems to have loss the ability to end the damn thing - a bit long in the tooth, so to speak. By the end - in which Roth delivers a rather astute plot twist - the reader is left fatigued by the whole production, and, rather than appearing clever, it seems a bit cartoonish.

Haroun and the Sea of Stories - Salman Rushdie

Easily the most accessible of Rushdie's novels, Haroun and the Sea of Stories is certainly his most efficient, if not to say proficient. Much like Paulo Coehlo's The Alchemist, Rushdie has sown a fantastical children's tale with a magical realist's yarn.

If you have always wanted to read Rushdie, but had trouble slogging through some of his more, shall we say, dense work, then Haroun's tale is indeed a story for you.

Highly recommended for children and adult alike :) Embark on a young boy's quest to the land of Kahani, where he searches for a cure to his father's - the Shah of Blah - sudden silence, lamentably laconic.

As for "impossible", he went on, 'most people would say that everything that's happened to you lately is quite, quite impossible. Why make a fuss about this particular impossible thing?'