City of Bones: The Mortal Instruments Book One

City of Bones: The Mortal Instruments Book One
Cassandra Clare

Before I left Guelph for a graduate program in New Zealand I was given a copy of City of Bones: The Mortal Instruments Book One, by Cassandra Clare. I, being the YA lover that I am, had spotted the cover but had never gone for it. Needless to say, the mammoth book had me from the start and I was nose in spine for most of my twenty-five-hour flight.

As a newbie in a new town, the majority of my company has been me, myself, and I plus City of Bones, which has wined and dined with me on many an occasion. I'm not ashamed to say I always carry a solo-outing safeguard in my bag, whether it be a book, notebook, pen, or what have you to keep me entertained and occupied rather than staring off into a wall or at an adjoining table.

It was just after arrival that I took myself out to the movies to go see Beautiful Creatures, yet another YA book I've not read (it was entertaining...and starred babe Jeremy Irons). During the previews, the Mortal Instruments movie trailer came on, which made me want to get home and continue with my reading. 

City of Bones is dark, and Clare paints a vivid portrait of a mythic underworld in New York City with angel guardians (shadow hunters), werewolves, faeries, vampires, and other demons no human can see. The main human character, Clary, has the Sight, and witnesses a crime at a bar one night that changes her life forever. The detail and characters are all intriguing, and whether you love them or hate them, they add to the tale. Without giving shocking reveals away, I have to say that by the end I was yelling at the book and couldn't believe where Clare had taken the tale (Let me know your thoughts!).

I finished book one late Thursday morning and on my Friday to-do list was "Buy book two." After scouring all the bookshops in the downtown core, which were completely sold out, I became that customer--the one that doesn't want to order it because she wants INSTANT gratification and turns almost animalistic in demeanor while on the hunt. Blinded by the need but frustrated, I gave up and figured I should get back to my neglected research. My pen ran out and I popped into the campus bookshop to grab a new one. When I saw the last copy of Book Two: City of Ashes calling my name on a distant shelf, I swear I almost cried out.  In a line that stretched at least ten people long, all with with piles of textbooks, there was me with my pen, my teen book, and the hugest grin on my face.

The Mortal Instruments series is now up to book six, The City of Heavenly Fire, which comes out in May 2013, and there is a prequel series, The Infernal Devices, which is set in Victorian London. For more information, see Cassandra Clare's website.

- Ashley

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Dr. Brian Ostrow Wins Award

Twenty-two years ago a wonderfully eccentric customer, Brian Ostrow, asked Barb Minett to see Woman in the Dunes, directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara, upstairs in The Bookshelf cinema. The next day there was a bike ride, and born from that has been twenty-two years of highly entertaining companionship. How lucky we are that this character joined our family, fully engaged and open about his "Brian-ness." He is the gentleman mowing his lawn in a lungi--a passionate opera goer, excellent reader and critic, and outdoor enthusiast. I have sung Leonard Cohen with him in the Himalayas, fought with him over cards in France, and watched him make impossible structures of whimsy out of mini marshmallows with his grandchildren. Call on him to recite any song or poem (seriously) and he can with gusto. Speaking of gusto, he is my fellow Neruda enthusiast about food. Last Friday I called him and he was preoccupied and muttering about how to make pomegranate molasses for a special dinner that night.

The reason for the fancy dinner, and for this blog post, is that Dr.Ostrow has just been given the 2013 Journal of Wound Care Award for Best Research From a Developing Country. Brian has been leading a research team that, by working with local health care professionals, has reduced by more than fifty per cent the number of leg amputations due to diabetes in Guyana, South America. Mazel Tov to The Bookshelf's madame's guy. We are so proud of you and your team. May you continue to change the world around you, even when few are aware of your tremendous work.

- Hannah

While Brian couldn't attend the award ceremony in London, England in person, he did send along a brief acceptance speech via video, which we'll also offer here.

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Essays, Michel de Montaigne

Michel de Montaigne

The Complete Essays, Trans. M. A. Screech

The Complete Works, Trans. Donald M. Frame

Imagine you’ve been granted your wish of hosting a dinner party to which you can invite any writer, living or dead. But things are going badly. William Shakespeare and Sam Beckett stare blankly at each other. Salman Rushdie looks utterly bored as he listens to Ralph Waldo Emerson prattle on. Virginia Woolf and Henry Miller are exchanging heated barbs. You stare at your appetizer, wondering how to rescue the situation.

Suddenly a late guest arrives (he would be late). He doesn’t look promising—a sixteenth-century Frenchman—but in a moment he’s sweeping around the room, amazing the party with his erudition and worldly wisdom, disarming everyone with his soul-baring honesty, entertaining with anecdotes both ribald and profound. There’s nothing he doesn’t have an opinion about, but somehow he doesn’t have that “me me me” air most opinionated people have. In fact, he’s set your party on fire. Things are hopping and people just can’t stop talking to one another. Hours later, as the guests are playing caps (or maybe a rollicking round of the Jane Austen drinking game), the conversation drifts to whom everyone would invite to his or her ideal writers’ party. And it’s no surprise that even before your invitations went out, your late guest was already at the top of everyone’s list—famous among the famed. His name: Michel de Montaigne.

Montaigne announced that “Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition,” and his Essays, arguably the most penetrating and revealing self-portrait of a human being ever written, demonstrate that. His pieces run the gamut from the trivial (“On Smells”; “On Thumbs”) to the profound (“To Philosophize is To Learn How to Die”; “On Freedom of Conscience”). He writes frankly about friendship and sex, arguing provocatively for the advantages of having both a spouse and a lover—for both men and women. He ruminates on disease, lying, books, education, customs, and aging. His book is thick because life is large. And in an era when dogma drove Protestants and Catholics into mutual slaughter, there was nothing Montaigne didn’t question. He inveighs against cruelty in all its forms and compares Frenchmen and cannibals, to the advantage of the cannibals. As the title of his work suggests (Essais, meaning attempts or tries), Montaigne doesn’t claim to have the truth. In fact, he baldly states that it doesn’t matter if he’s right or wrong on the many subjects he probes. Rather, his aim is to reveal accurately the dance of his own mind as he contemplates them: “I myself am the subject of my book.”

The one constant in this vast array of topics is Montaigne. Four hundred years stand between him and us, and perhaps the greatest shock of reading the Essays is how thoroughly time and distance are erased when another human being stands stripped so completely bare before us. By the time you turn the last page, you will know him better than you know many of the people you’re surrounded with day by day. Whether you choose the classic Donald Frame translation with its elegant prose or the M. A.Screech translation with its more muscular, vigorous voice, you will be entertained, educated, and, yes, befriended. 

- Bruce

p.s. For a taste of what the essays have to offer, see this collection of Montaigne quotations.

This is an expanded version of a review that ran earlier in Off the Shelf.

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1001 Books: On Beauty, The Romantics, War of the Worlds, The Sorrows of Young Werther

Having completed my first round of books from the 1001 List, I was eager for round two. Zadie Smith’s On Beauty was next to be tackled. Smith’s writing was sharp and witty, and the story itself was diverting enough, but it’s what I would call a “good book,” not a great one. I remember that I found Beauty to be a well-written, fast-paced read, and that the plot was somewhat soapy in nature. That being said, it would be a perfect book for reading during a vacation--but not exactly must-read-before-you-die material.

Next on the List was a book I’d never heard of --The Romantics, by Pankaj Mishra. At the time that I was reading this book, I’d had very little experience with Indian literature (although I’d loved  M. G. Vassanji’s Book of Secrets). For me, the lovely thing about The Romantics was how effectively it created the sensation of being transported to South East Asia. The setting of Mishra’s novel made a simple, beautifully told story even more fascinating.

The transition from reading a story set in India to one set in Britain would have been less jarring, had the U.K. not been in the midst of an alien invasion.  I’m referring, of course, to The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, a book so marvellously terrifying that everyone should just skip the movie adaptations (and the countless rip-offs) and just read it immediately. Here’s why:  If there is one thing more distressing than being attacked by malevolent Martians, it is being attacked by space creatures without the benefit of modern communication and transportation technologies! The War of the Worlds was published in 1898, but it still packs a solid action-packed punch today. Before the List, I thought I might like Wells; it turns out that I adore him. See also: The Invisible Man, The Island of Dr. Moreau, and The Time Machine.

The final book from round two was Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, which made no impression on me whatsoever. I’m not sure if I was losing something in translation, or whether it had been included on the List for its historical significance rather than any particular merit it might possess. But it strikes me as strange, that despite my vivid recollection of the other books I was reading during this period, that I do not have any strong memory of neither Werther’s content nor its execution. Perhaps further explorations of Goethe’s work will yield better results….

- Steph

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The Joy and Pain of Literary Obsessions

There's no greater thrill for me than finding a new writer. It's comparable maybe to the thrill a fly must feel once it's found the chink in a window screen after days of dumb bumbling.

I go a bit nuts. Once I find him or her, I glut myself on that author. And I'm a completist limned with obsessive tendencies. So I don't rest, and am bothered even, until I've got all there is to get of that particular author. Kerouac was the first. As a teen, I'd poke into Macondo and Sunrise here in Guelph a few times a week, hoping that some yellowed paperback had been left there for me since the last time. Looking at my order history here at the Bookshelf, I even see that the first book I ever ordered into this place was The Town and The City. That was way back in June 2001. Vonnegut was next and, Jesus, did I ever binge. Come university it was Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges, and likewise I obsessively skulked through the Anglo shops in Montreal hoping to find T Zero or Six Problems for Don Isidro Parodi. Post-university, I had to have everything by Flannery O'Connor and Lorrie Moore. 

For about fifteen years I had been propelled by this behavior until finally my author lust was mostly slaked. Which is to say, as far as authors and their books went, I wasn't really desirous of much. In the past few years there've been a cadre of stunning writers and their works, but nothing absolute, compelling, or, for lack of a better term, quest-worthy.  

For sure there's a comfort to obsession. It's nice to walk into a place with a directive. The flip side of this, for me at least, is the sallow waywardness that comes once I've got everything there is to get. And I find myself nostalgic about the time before I had any given corpus. I still find myself moping to the Ms to see whether that store has Like Life, or to the Cs to see if they have Six Memos for the New Millennium, and maybe to the Os, just to pick up the copy of Everything That Rises Must Converge to thumb through. It's a maudlin feeling I get, having already found what I was looking for. And so follows an aimless span where I drag my feet through bookstores, trying to get excited, being a weirdo, and double-checking whether books I already own are there or not, trying to—jeez—recreate that thrill.

In preparation for the The Big Lebowski screening in our cinema, I decided I'd have a look at Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, upon which I'd heard the Coens had loosely based their movie. The connections are diaphanous, but they're there. Chandler's been hailed much by writers I admire (and had been compulsive about), such as Michael Chabon and Jonathan Lethem, but I'd never given Chandler a shot. That was two weeks ago, and I'm now about four novels in. The rest are on the way. And while I'm reeling with this fresh discovery, I can't ignore the certainty that, in time, I'll have read everything Chandler left, and again find myself leering at the mystery section, just to double check that they've got The Little Sister on the shelf.

- Andrew

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Books on Managing Anger

I am happy to be collaborating with Joyce Pharoah and her staff at the Homewood Health Centre, a premiere Canadian mental health facility in Guelph, Ontario. We are creating short, carefully selected lists of books from the psychology and self-help sections for people to read on their own, or ideally with the support of a therapist. These lists will be focused on dealing with particular challenges such as phobias and depression, cultivating positive human qualities such as mindfulness and compassion, and exploring helpful therapeutic practices.

The focus of today's list is books that are helpful in managing or dealing with anger.

- Ken

	The Dance of Anger, by Harriet Lerner In this engaging and eminently wise book, Dr. Lerner teaches women to identify the true sources of our anger and to use anger as a powerful vehicle for creating lasting change.
	When Anger Hurts Your Relationship, by Matthew McKay A first-aid manual for angry couples. Psychologists and best-selling authors Matthew McKay and Kim Paleg present an array of tools and strategies that couples can use to reduce conflict, diffuse intense rages, and move beyond repeated anger dynamics.
	30-Minute Therapy for Anger, by Ronald T. and Patricia S. Potter-Efton Here are proven-effective skills developed by therapists for helping people process and control their anger instead of lashing out at others. These conflict-defusing techniques will help you "cool down" anger so that you can respond calmly and effectively, even in life's most aggravating situations.
	Anger: A Message for Men, by Keith Ashford Anger cannot be managed or massaged---chances are you know that already. Nor can it be denied, avoided, projected, or repressed with any satisfactory result. But here is the miracle: Anger can be transformed into its opposite, which is inner peace.
	The Compassionate Mind Guide to Managing Your Anger, by Russell L. Kolts and Paul Gilbert Show you how to take responsibility for your anger and your life by cultivating a new strength: the power of compassion. Based in compassion-focused therapy, these skills and techniques will help you replace angry habits, gain control of your emotions, and improve your relationships.
	A Volcano in My Tummy, by Elaine Whitehouse and Warwick Pudney The book offers engaging, well-organized activities which help to overcome the fear of children's anger which many adult care-givers experience, and distinguishes between anger the feeling, and violence the behavior. Primarily created for ages six to thirteen, it is accessible for use in class or at home.

See also the Canadian Mental Health Association's article on dealing with anger and the American Psychological Association's online guide to anger management.

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Bookcase Bookcase on the Wall

I don’t think I would be revealing too much if I admitted that whenever I go to someone’s house I head straight for their bookcase to see where their heads have travelled. If you are reading this, you probably do the same. So in this brave new world of e-reading where bookcases might disappear and you can’t tell what latté sippers or subway riders are delving into because all that you see is the back of a Kindle, what will happen to our curiosity about our fellow and sister travellers?

One trend that is floating around the interior design world is bookcase as decorating artifact. Recently we supplied a condo developer with ten feet of darkly spined books. It didn’t matter what the books were. OK, it seemed odd to me, but it was fairly easy to do and so we filled the order.

Another movement that seems to be gathering momentum is books as art, or at least as props in the artistic endeavor. (See, for instance, Jane Mount and Thessaly La Force's My Ideal Bookshelf.) At a recent contemporary art show that I attended, the artist who had the most red "sold" dots was someone whose sole output was heavily lacquered and shiny pictures of bookcases. They looked lovely to me, and obviously to others. The pieces were also expensive, so I guess this guy has caché.

I’m not sure what is going on here. It could be that people realize that books are an endangered species and so a picture of them is better than nothing. Or it could be that people still believe in the British writer Anthony Powell’s title and all that it implies metaphorically—Books Do Furnish a Room.

- Barb

p.s For those addicted to looking at photos of beautiful bookshelves and libraries, take a peek at the site Bookshelf Porn (yes, you can safely view the site at work).

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