Peroosnik
The official weblog of peroosnik.com and Elizabeth Campbell Books
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Looking for Dog Books?
18 January 2013
If you are looking for reviews of dog books, don’t forget to check out Stella the ECB Bookshop Dog’s Tail Thumper of the Week Blogs.
Each week Stella talks about a dog book available at Elizabeth Campbell Books. And even better, Stella donates her sales commission on any Tail Thumpers she sells until March 31 to It’s a Dog’s Life, Kenora’s dog fostering network! After March 31, 2013, she’ll go back to donating on sales of the week’s Tail Thumper only.
One of Stella’s Book Paws magnetic bookmarks
You can also contribute to It’s a Dog’s Life through the purchase of Stella’s Book Paws magnetic bookmarks. 83 1/3% of every Book Paws sold goes directly to the shelter (we need to pay for making the bookmarks). You can pop a Book Paws into a card as a gift, or give it with the book you’re giving. Or you can enjoy its unique ability to grip the page exactly where you left off reading yourself!
Go ahead and make Stella’s tail thump! You may order online, or come into the brick and mortar shop and give Stella a scratch behind the ear while you’re here. She’d love that, too!
The House on the Point – Benjamin Hoff
9 January 2013
How many North American children over the past century, I wonder, have not taken up a Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew mystery? I read every one in both series when I was young, and I’m sure they are responsible for my current addiction to mystery novels.
I wasn’t surprised to discover a kindred spirit in Benjamin Hoff when I picked up House on the Point, his tribute to Franklin W. Dixon and the Hardy Boys – not because I’d ever read Hoff before (I hadn’t) or because I recognised him as author of the Tao of Pooh and saw the connection (I did, but I don’t). I just can’t imagine there being many out in Bookworld who haven’t been exposed to those serial mysteries for children that I still can’t keep in stock on my shelves almost 90 years after the first one was published!
Intrigued, though, I was. I haven’t picked up a Hardy Boys novel to read since I was a child. I somehow knew instinctively that they wouldn’t hold the same appeal for me that they did when I was a pre-teen. Reading one now, I felt, would somehow spoil the memory. Hoff’s novel, being a tribute, though…. Well, that might make it a bit different. And I was right.
Hoff begins with a preface that gives readers a history of the Hardy Boys and Dixon. He talks about taking the opposite choice to mine. When he bought one for his nephew, he decided to read it. He experienced the same disappointment that I feared, but refused to allow it to destroy his memory. Instead, he decided to write a better Hardy Boys novel, beginning with the same outline given to the ghost writer who wrote Hardy Boys No. 2: The House on the Cliff.
While The House on the Point is a better Hardy Boys, it isn’t a great mystery novel. It wasn’t meant to be, though, so that is quite forgivable.
The point of this novel is to take adults who remember the series on a nostalgic trip back to childhood, and that it does without disappointment! I had a lot of fun reading it, remembering the whole aura of hiding under the blanket with a flashlight to read the next chapter (and the next… The Hardy Boys may also be responsible for my early myopia) because I just couldn’t bear the suspense of the cliff-hanger ending of the last.
Hoff had another goal in writing House on the Point, though. He wanted to provide a revision that moved the Hardy Boys from a shallow serial for young readers into novels of substance for youth. He shares how he achieved that purpose in an afterword at the end of the book.
He also includes an essay, The Art of Seeing, which provides an interesting history of the classic mystery novel in the 19th Century and its progression into the Golden Age of Mystery of the early to mid-20th Century. In this essay he examines the close connection of the mystery novel to art, which is in itself an intriguing read. I found it so from a writers perspective as well as just enjoying the history as a reader.
Mead and Wine: A History of the Bronze Age in Greece – Jean Zafiropulo
3 January 2013
Something about the Greek myths and Homer has fascinated me since I was a child. I don’t know what stimulated the interest; it seems to me that it has always been there. I’d read both Bulfinch’s Mythology and the Harvard Classics’ Homer before I entered high school.
I knew all about Schliemann and his amazing discoveries at Troy, by then, too. Unlike students a hundred years before me, I understood, thanks to Schliemann’s archaeological work, that Homer was based in historical fact. I had never considered the same of the Greek myths, however; it has taken reading Mead and Wine to think about them as memories of a distant past.
When I learned that this was the first book detailing this period in Greek history, I found myself checking the publication date: 1966! But archaeology was more treasure hunting than a scientific discipline until the 20th Century. And the written records that have survived from the period Zafiropulo considers (c. 1450-1100 BC) were written in Linear A, which has yet to be deciphered, and Linear B, which was decoded during the 1950s, just a few years before this book was written. The author gives an interesting summary of that process in his second appendix.
Zafiropulo builds his chronology of the events of the Bronze Age in the Aegean world in the first chapter, creating parallels between Crete, mainland Greece, Troy and Egypt using three main disciplines of history, archaeology and linguistics. He then shows how the gods and heroic characters of mythology and Homer fit into his scheme. He limits the cultures of the Aegean world to variants of two main groups: bull worshippers, who controlled the lowlands and held the political power for the most part, and goat worshippers, who were generally pushed into less hospitable mountain landscapes and who became adept at guerrilla-type raid tactics to survive. The negative dynamic between these two groups led to the ultimate downfall of Greek civilisation, but also to the remnant cultural survival evident in Roman civilisation.
I thought Zafiropulos went a bit far in linking the Israelite tribe of Dan with the Achaeans or Danaans, all of whom, he maintains, were bull worshippers (think golden calf at Mt. Sinai). And he takes the conflicts between bull and goat worshippers right into Christian thinking where he says the goat is relegated to hell and the bull to heaven in the form of St. Luke, whose symbol is the bull. His arguments in these cases are interesting, but I’m not buying into them just yet!
Mead and Wine is a very readable book. Zafiropulo’s charts and genealogies really helped keep the tangled web of events clear and logical. One thing for sure… I’m going to be going over my Bulfinch again, and some of my Greek history and archaeology books, too! Time to pay long overdue visits to some old friends on the shelf….
Seven Generations
1 November 2012
This is a beautifully produced story of a young man struggling to overcome the legacy of Residential School told in graphic novel form. We have both the omnibus (in colour) and the four volumes bound separately (black and white illustrations) in stock now. Here’s the trailer for the Omnibus version for your pleasure!
Today’s front-page story in the Kenora Miner & News!
23 October 2012
Natural Acquaintances – Phil Burke
12 October 2012
A guest review by Lil Anderson, author, freelance nature writer and photographer, and wildlife custodian.
As a nature writer myself, I was curious how Phil would approach his observations on the plethora of wildlife found in this area in his book. I have to admit, I was very pleased.
Ever since I first read Natural Acquaintances, I have had occasion to use it as reference while I was tending to various injured or orphaned animals in my care. I pride myself on being observant of our local wildlife and their life history, but I know I miss a lot as their habits vary from individual to individual. Phil’s observations and readily available facts have helped me out more than a few times.
When the Burkes moved to Kenora area (the Canadian Shield), they came from a part of Ontario where bears were considered extinct and trees were considered the enemy. Once Phil and his family were initiated to the local wildlife, they were hooked.
Natural Acquaintances leads the reader through the seasons and with the seasons, what harbingers to watch for. He explains in delightful detail the aerobatics of courting ravens, and in more graphic detail, the circle of life that takes place, whether we like it or not. To add to our reading enjoyment, Doug Sharpe has included many excellent illustrations of the wildlife of which Phil writes.
I would recommend Natural Acquaintances to newcomers to the Shield, friends of newcomers to this area or even just folks who love nature as much as we do. It will answer a lot of questions that we never thought to ask about the wildlife we share this land with.
Stella has found another dog book to sell to raise funds for It’s a Dog’s Life, the Kenora dog rescue shelter. Click on Stella’s photo to read all about it!
28 September 2012
Stella the Bookshop Dog invites readers to her blog for this week’s Tail Thumper in support of Kenora’s It’s a Dog’s Life rescue service. Click on Stella’s photo to visit!
22 September 2012
Declina’s Tears – Georgina Williams
21 September 2012
A guest review by Lil Anderson
Georgina Williams writes great fiction! She has published four books so far, and a fifth is soon to be published. But they are only fiction in the eyes of the wise and just, Justice John Turnbull, as the good judge believes that the events Georgina writes about could never happen in Canada. But Georgina, who will be reading from her memoirs at Word on the Water Literary Festival in Kenora, is speaking of events that actually happened to her mother, Delcina, and herself. Georgina’s tale is not only true, but also horrific, humbling and gut wrenching.
Her first book, Delcina’s Tears tells of how rapists impregnated Delcina, at the tender age of 12, and how her religious family turned against her. She describes with great detail what happened to Delcina and her ‘bastard’ daughter, (Georgina herself), at the Reformatory of the Good Shepard.
The Catholic nuns and priests treated the inmates, these ‘sinful’ children, with anything from toleration to brutal and deadly attacks. Sexual molestation was a normal part of their stay. Torture, humiliation and degradation were part of their day-to-day life as they toiled as unpaid slaves in the lucrative laundry (similar to the Catholic laundries in Ireland described in the Shafia Trials) at the reformatory. If the laundry needed more labour, young girls were ‘enlisted’ by the local constabulary.
This story is a must read! It reveals just one more ‘dirty little secret’ of how vulnerable children were treated as recently as the ‘50’s and ‘60’s in this great country, and how church, government and Children’s Aid aided in keeping these secrets hidden.
Visit Stella the Bookshop Dog’s blog to see what she has chosen to sell this week as a fund-raiser for homeless dogs in her community! Click the pic to link to her blog…
