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Memoirs of a Geisha Uk by Arthur Golden

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Beloved Land: The World of Emily Carr by Emily Carr

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll

Addiction Is a Choice by Jeffrey A. Schaler

The Handmade Soap Book by Melinda Coss

How We Survived Communism & Even Laughed by Slavenka Drakulic

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CollectionsYour library (694)

Reviews145 reviews

Tagsnon-fiction (439), fiction (254), classic (170), reference (108), history (104), Russian (69), Jewish (61), vintage (58), Canadian (55), cooking (50) — see all tags

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GroupsArt & Books, Atheists review books, Book Care and Repair, BookCrossers, Books Compared, Broke!, Canadian Bookworms, Canadian LibraryThingers trade!, Dostoevsky, Dystopian novels — show all groups

About meThe picture of me above was taken at 'Word on the Street' in Vancouver, B.C. Canada which is where I live with my two teenagers.

About my libraryI favour non-fiction....instructive, memoirs, biographies, holocaust, books like Fast Food Nation and other depressing social issues LOL. I highly enjoy the works of foreign authors that have been translated into English, many of whom are not widely known in the English speaking world, though I own very few of these myself. Presently I am working my way selectively through classics that interest me.

Reading Now: *The Gulag Archipelago* by Solzhenitsyn

What I have Read in 2006
*The Passion of Artemisia* by Susan Vreeland
*The Forest Lover* by Susan Vreeland
*One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch* by Solzhenitsyn
*Candide* by Voltaire
*Utopia* by Sir Thomas More
*Walden* by Henry David Thoreau
*Herland* by Charlotte Gilman
*Sidhartha* by Herman Hesse
*Better Not Bigger: How to take control of urban growth* by J.Leslie
*Crime and Punishment* by Fyodor Dostoevsky
*Girl in Hyacinth Blue* by Susan Vreeland
*The Book of Lights* by Chaim Potok
*Bill Bryson's African Diary*
*The Metamorphosis and other Stories* by Franz Kafka
*The Eye* by Vladimir Nabokov
*Night* by Elie Wiesel
*The Shot* by Alexander Pushkin
*The Nose* by Nikolay Gogol
*Taman* by Mikhail Lermontov
*Bezhim Lea* by Ivan Turgenev
*A Strange Man's Dream* by Dostoevsky
*The Scarlet Flower* by Vsevolod Garshin
*The Make-up Artist* Nikolay Leskov
*The Party* by Anton Chekov
*Twenty-six Men and a Girl* by Maxim Gorky
*The Grand Slam* by Leonid Andreev
*After The Ball* by Lev Tolstoy
*Ida* by Ivan Bunin
*Guy De Maupassant* by Isaac Babel
*The Lion* by Evgeny Zamyatin
*The Third Son* by Andrey Platonov
*Spring in Fialta* by Vladimir Nabokov
*Streams Where Trout Play* by Konstantin Paustovsky
*The Winter Oak* by Yury Nagibin
*On The Island* by Yury Kazakov
*Zakhar-the-pouch* by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
*Chelkash & Makar Chudra* by Maxim Gorky
*Three Tales* by Gustave Flaubert
*Beloved Land, the World of Emily Carr* by Carr
*The Broken Wings* by Kahlil Gibran
*The Better World Handbook* by Jones, Haenfler, Johnson, and Klocke
*The Diving-Bell & The Butterfly* by Jean-Dominique Bauby
*The W.A.S.P.* by Julius Horwitz
*The Virgin Blue* by Tracy Chevalier
*Therese Raquin* by Emile Zola
*The Masterpiece* by Emile Zola
*Mountain of Victory, a Biography of Paul Cezanne* by Lawrence Hanson
*Brave New World* by Aldous Huxley
*Cliff's Notes to Brave New World*
*junky* by William Burroughs
*Once Upon the River Love* by Andrei Makine
*L'Assommoir* by Emile Zola
*Les Miserables* by Victor Hugo
*Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper* by Harriet Chessman
*A Child Called It* by David Pelzer
*The Stranger* by Albert Camus
*War and Peace* by Tolstoy
*Au Bonheur Des Dames* by Emile Zola
*The Bone House* by Luanne Armstrong
*Workers of the World Relax: The Simple Economics of Less Industrial Work* by Conrad Schmidt
*Steppenwolf* by Herman Hesse
*The Da Vinci Code* by Dan Brown
*The Seven Daughters of Eve* by Bryan Sykes
*Hitler's Black Victims* by Clarence Lusane

What I have Read in 2007
*The God Delusion* by Richard Dawkins
*The Pearl Diver* by Jeff Talarigo
*We* by Yevgeny Zamyatin
*Hiroshima* by John Hersey
*The Pearl* by John Steinbeck
*Black Like Me* by John Griffin
*How To Tell When You're Tired: A Brief Examination of Work* by Reg Theriault
*Dispatches From the Poverty Line* by Pat Capponi
*A Gentle Creature and Other Stories* by Dostoevsky
*The Life of a Useless Man* by Maxim Gorky

I stopped reading anything except bodybuilding/fitness books from June 2007 to recently because I've had to improve my health before I could concentrate on reading again. The books that I have read lately are:

*Strength Training Anatomy* by Frederic Delavier
*Strength Training Anatomy for Women* by Frederic Delavier
*Superpump!* Hardcore women's Bodybuilding by Ben Weider and Robert Kennedy
*Pumping Up!* by Ben Weider and Robert Kennedy
*Super Chest!* by Robert Kennedy
*Fit or Fat* by Covert Bailey
*Macrobolic Nutrition* by Gerard Dente
*Bruce Lee, The Art of Expressing the Human Body* by Bruce Lee
*The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur* by Daoud Hari

I don't read horror, chick lit, plays, romance, humour, sports, fantasy, mysteries, thrillers, teen, erotic, porn, occult, poetry, astrology, get rich quick, or travel.

My favorite authors are Naguib Mahfouz, Chaim Potok, Vladimir Nabokov and Emile Zola.

Homepagehttp://www.bookcrossing.com/mybookshelf/PaperbackPal

Membership LibraryThing Early Reviewers/Member Giveaway

LocationVancouver, B.C. Canada

Favorite authorsNone

Account typepublic, lifetime

Connection NewsConnection News

URLs http://www.librarything.com/profile/BookAddict (profile)
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/BookAddict (library)

Common KnowledgeSeries (51), Awards (175), Characters (1278), Places (289)

Member sinceMar 20, 2006

Most recent activity

BookAddict reviewed, added:
The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur by Daoud Hari (read review)

BookAddict added:
Strength Training Anatomy by Frederic Delavier

BookAddict added:
Women's Strength Training Anatomy by Frederic Delavier

BookAddict added:
Written in Bones: How Human Remains Unlock the Secrets of the Dead

BookAddict added:
Watercolor Made Easy: Techniques for Simplifying the Painting Process by Janet Walsh

BookAddict added:
White Nights/a Gentle Creature/the Dream of a Ridiculous Man by Fyodor Dostoevsky

I am happy to find that someone else on LibraryThing has listed Rhoda Kaellis's book, The Last Enemy: A Novel.

I see also that you are in Vancouver. So am I!

Cheers,
Casey

posted by thesmellofbooks at 9:11 pm (EST) on Nov 17, 2008

Hi, I'm sorry to be soooo long in responding: things have been extremely busy. Anyway, I am quite familiar with Clarence Lusane's (proper spelling) book Hitler's Black Victim's and yes, I agree that it is an excellent historical analysis of a shockingly overlooked issue, although tragically its German is haunted by a more than than an acceptable number of very minor spelling errors. These errors mean nothing important, but they have allowed some detractors to unfairly malign the accuracy of the book as a whole.

Harriet

posted by drharriet at 11:17 am (EST) on Dec 27, 2007

You are so right, and I apologize for my haste!! I admit I hadn't read your profile thoroughly before posting that comment re: your review of Vidal. What a kind reply to my hasty comment, thank you!

I just really enjoy Vidal, and thought the book was very eye-opening. I din't see "errors," that you mention~ but then, Vidal doesn't stick to scholarship always, as would say, Chomsky, and Vidal can be very sarcastic with humor, trying to get a point across. Never-the-less, I think he is a great authority on dissent in the U.S., and he does include sources and references in PWFPP
which back up his contentions.

I think yours was the only review of PWFPP, so I was discouraged that another reader might turn away from the information within.
I need to put my "reviewers cap" on, and write one myself! lol!

Thanks ever so much for the kindness and patience shown to a new Library Thing-er!

posted by sweetdissident at 3:42 am (EST) on Aug 26, 2007

I disagree (politely) with your review of Gore Vidal's Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. He listed the wars the U.S. is involved in to demonstrate a point, not to go into deep detail about each. The topic of the book is focused:

The U.S. has engaged in and started illegal "pre-emptive" wars;
thus inciting terror;
terror strikes;
the given administration uses the terror to scare the populace into giving up their Bill of Rights.

That's an elementary synopsis, but it covers Vidal's point. He tries, I think eloquently, to trace a line from our imperialism and aggressive behavior in our foreign policy, to "terror," or one might say, the response to our irresponsible foreign policy, to the spawning of what is quickly becoming a dictatorial presidency (the seeds of which have long been germinating over several decades and administrations). That's very dangerous because in our republic, the sovereignty, as Vidal reminds us many times in much of his work, the sovereignty rests in US- the people.

I fear that your lack of understanding of the book may betray some ethnocentric or "patriotic" sympathies you have. I will be quick to remind you Vidal isn't the only writer/ thinker/ scholar to come to the same conclusions. Arundhati Roy, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and many more share his views. Also quick to remind you that a true patriot, if that's what your problem with this book is about, a true patriot cares enough for one's country, to question the content of its character.

To see fabulous interviews with Vidal, go to democracynow.com archives and click on "special features." He is so entertaining and charming, yet intelligent and insightful. I think you might get something out of it.

Okay I'll shut up now! Thank you for your forthcoming patience with me as I am new here and very passionate about human rights, freedom & liberty.

posted by sweetdissident at 1:46 pm (EST) on Aug 15, 2007

Welcome to Books Compared. Hope you'll join the discussion and feel inspired to contribute a comparison review - you've clearly done some interesting and varied reading over the last couple of years!

posted by margad at 9:21 pm (EST) on Apr 28, 2007

I see from your profile that you 'like' Holocaust literature. I am currently reading "The Periodic Table' by Primo Levi - which I am sure that you have read. Have you read "Fatelessness' by Kertesz, which is an excellent read. Or Nine Suitcases by Zlost, which was recommended to me?

I also live in the Lower Mainland, so it is nice to see another on Librarything. You are the only one that links up with some books in common. Cheers. Karen.

posted by kiwidoc at 2:08 pm (EST) on Apr 28, 2007

Hi. I'll be reading The Earth next as it's next in the series - I've ended up reading the cycle from the middle as the earlier issues are harder to find plus I'd read one or two before I found out about the other 20.
posted by judyb65 at 2:29 am (EST) on Feb 3, 2007

Hi, enjoyed reading your review of 'Germinal'. Zola is one of my favoutite writers and as you state his novels linger in the mind for a long time afterwards, and stand out from other 19th century texts as having a modern feel. Although full of evocative and detailed descriptions his writing is relatively concise - a lot of writing of that time can be quite wordy. I'm hoping eventually to read the complete Rougon-Macquart cycle but am not sure how available some of the less known novels will be. Happy Reading
posted by judyb65 at 2:15 pm (EST) on Feb 2, 2007

Thanks for editing your review. While I don't mind small spoilers - they're more like teases - I like to have some surprises left, and I know some people read the reviews to help them pick out a book.
posted by LisaLynne at 10:07 am (EST) on Aug 19, 2006

Hi, I saw your review of Dave Pelzer's A Child called It and thought you might like to know that his brother Richard has also written a book. It's called A Brother's Journey: Surviving a Childhood of Abuse by Richard B. Pelzer.
posted by Sodapop at 1:15 am (EST) on Aug 6, 2006

I was really shocked by your review of Bee Season - not because you didn't like the book, but because you completely spoiled it for any new reader! Every major event in the book, including the ending, spelled out in detail. If you didn't want anyone else to enjoy the book after reading your review, I think you succeeded; there are certainly no surprises left for them. That's doubly unfortunate because I enjoyed the book very much, recommended it to several friends and my book group, and yours is the only really negative response I've heard. You're certainly entitled to your opinion, but I don't think you're entitled to spoil it for everyone else. Very discouraging.
posted by LisaLynne at 12:06 pm (EST) on Aug 2, 2006

Your review of "Heart of Darkness" could not be more misguided. I suggest that you stop echoing Achebe’s criticisms and read the book fully, so that you can decide whether or not those claims are substantial. Western culture is not paraded around and shown to be more civilized than its African counterpart. Conrad describes the fetishes with which the white man is burdened; fetishes that are no more rational than certain “savage” tribal customs. By this I mean the complete obsession with ivory. Africans are referred to as ‘hollow men’ and when Marlow returns to Europe, he describes its residents are ‘ignorant, sheep like people in the streets’. One of the main themes of the book is cultural equivalence and whether Africa displays an unmitigated truth that European Culture has vainly-and incompletely-covered up. Your account of racism strikes me as the cliché par excellence of liberal guilt and pc paranoia. I truly hope you reconsider and give this book another try.
posted by kray at 1:38 am (EST) on Jul 26, 2006

Hi there. I just read your review of Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS, and I have to (politely) disagree. While I myself did not particularly enjoy the book (there's a huge metaphor that I am somehow not getting), I really wouldn't use the word "hypocritical" to describe Conrad's work. The descriptions of the "savages" are the words of the character that Conrad has created, not himself. I think that maybe the author was trying to get a point across: that although the teller of this tale may consider himself and his race/people to be more civilized than the "savages" he is living amongst, he is really no better. Each society is savage to the other, and neither will attempt to understand the other. It very much reminds me of Disney's "Pocahontas," although this book is definitely written from a different and more adult angle. Thanks for letting me discuss! -MissLizzy
posted by MissLizzy at 8:07 pm (EST) on Jul 25, 2006

Thanks!
posted by harambeegirl at 7:02 pm (EST) on May 15, 2006

Thanks - lost my jacket ages ago and am nowhere close to scanning in my older books. What a treat and a nice surprise. Thanks again.
posted by lfomom at 2:40 pm (EST) on Apr 5, 2006

Hi, thanks for sharing your Black history books. You list some that I hadn't gotten around to posting in my catalog. Thanks. Keep in touch.
posted by Bakari at 3:16 am (EST) on Mar 31, 2006

Hi Sneaky friend!

Your profile rocks!! I really would love to meet you someday. We have similar taste in books. :-)
posted by mlburgess at 12:57 am (EST) on Mar 30, 2006