My Secret Sister by Helen Edwards and Jenny Lee Smith

Autobiography

Helen and Jenny had very different childhoods. Helen was raised by an abusive father and narcissistic mother. Jenny had nothing but love with her parents. When Jenny found out that she was adopted in her teenage years, she tried to question her mom about it by couldn't get anything out of her. She didn't want to hurt her adoptive mother's feelings but knew that she wanted to search for her family. It took 50-some odd years for Jenny to finally become successful in her search and meet her sister, Helen. The two start to piece together how they are connected.

There aren't many books where the cover spoils the book. The two sisters don't even know they are twins until the book has been completed! They need to write an afterwards for the book to explain this. Why bother having this as a prominent book description? That should have been left for the afterwards to handle as a nice surprise. Instead, I spent the whole book wondering when I was going to find out that they were twins.

Aside from this weird spoiler, the book was quite interesting. I really don't get Helen's mother. To react in such a way to your own children, both Helen and George, and not care at all about them but to then treat your grandchildren with love; how does this happen? I'd love to hear a psychologist's explanation on why this was the case.

Quite an unbelievable story!

First Line: "This could be the most important email I ever send."

Rating:
(3.5/5)

Some Girls: My Life in a Harem by Jillian Lauren

Some Girls: My Life in a Harem by Jillian Lauren
Memoir

Jillian Lauren grew up an adopted child in a New Jersey Jewish family with a dad who had a horrible temper to the point of physical abuse and a mom who did nothing about it. Lauren left her house still a teenager and started dancing at clubs, eventually joining an escort services. She was interviewed for a position within the harem of Prince Jefri Bolkiah, brother to the Sultan of Brunei. Lauren accepts the job and flies over to Brunei with a couple of other American girls and becomes part of the craziness in the Prince's world. There are parties with many other girls from all over the world that last until the wee hours of the morning. The Prince takes one girl each night to have sex and some times during the day girls could get called. They usually get jewellery for their troubles. These girls get paid handsomely for their troubles before they are sent on their way back home.

Lauren manages to become one of Jefri's favourites. She's frequently called on and though she's not in love with him, she does feel some tenderness towards Jefri. Lauren stays around Brunei for a while but starts to feel empty inside and eventually returns home. Not surprisingly, there was typical drama that happens between women when fighting over a man. Sort of like The Bachelor but with higher stakes.

Lauren is very honest about her history and her flaws. The honesty makes her come off a bit abrasive at times, which rubbed me the wrong way at the beginning of the book but I eventually got used to it. For the most part, Lauren tells her history and doesn't judge other but there was one section of the book that pissed me off:
"In fact, the girls who came from normal jobs, normal boyfriends, normal lives were the quickest to lap up the new lifestyle. I was embarassed for them, the way they drooled all over their Rolex birthday presents. Just because you're sequestered in some parallel-universe sorority house doesn't mean you can't have a little dignity."
Really Lauren? A little dignity? Because travelling half the way around the world to be a prince's prostitute means you are 100% dignified. Wow. This part of the book kind of ruined it for me. I was having a tough time connecting with and caring for Lauren but was managing to maintain enough of a balance of respect until this line.

Putting aside Lauren herself, it was rather interesting to read about a world that otherwise I would know nothing about. It was kind of sad at the same time too. Though Lauren tried to indicate that the girls didn't mind much, it obviously tore some of them apart. This really is a rather sad story of what women will do for money.

First Line: "The Shah's wife was unfaithful to him, so he cut off her head and summarily declared all women to be evil and thereby deserving of punishment."

Rating:
(3.5/5)

The Sex Lives of Cannibals by J. Maarten Troost

The Sex Lives of Cannibals by J. Maarten Troost
Non-Fiction/Travel

Maarten Troost doesn't feel like he fits in his normal American job, so when his fiancee is asked to work at a non-profit at the end of the world, Troost follows. The country is Kiribati, located in the central Pacific Ocean, requiring many flights to get there. The island has history, as Japanese and American fought on the island during WWII. Tarawa is also an incredibly populated city, despite being in such a small area. Troost describes with humour his two year adventure on Kiribati, including run-ins with people pooping in the sea water he was swimming in, a dry spell with no beer, and how the locals only seem to listen to the Macarena.

The book labels itself as laugh-out-loud funny but I didn't find it that funny. It was quite quirky though. I noticed that had the author's name not been on the front of the book there's no way I would have known what his name was because I don't think he mentions it at all throughout the book. Rather, Kiribati residents call him an I-Matang, which means a foreigner.

I don't think I would actively seek out Troost's two other books but if I ever came across them I'd certainly read them.

First Line: "One day, I moved with my girlfriend Sylvia to an atoll in the Equatorial Pacific."

Rating:
(3.5/5)

Kabul Beauty School by Deborah Rodriguez

Kabul Beauty School by Deborah Rodriguez
Non-Fiction

Debbie Rodriguez is a hair dresser who decides to go to Afghanistan and open up a beauty school to teach Afghan women about hair dressing, makeup, and other similar activities to make them more self-sufficient. As expected, there's a lot of problems for women in Afghanistan and Debbie is right in the middle of it. She learns of her students' problems, some of which are heart wrenching. Debbie only sort of tries to assimilate to the culture. She never really seems to learn the language but ends up marrying an Afghan man. She takes her mission to teach the women of Afghanistan to be self-sufficient through opening up a beauty school and becomes fairly successful.

I enjoyed this novel's story, but I couldn't really understand or connect to Debbie. She left her kids behind after a bad divorce and it seems like she didn't give much thought to them after landing in Afghanistan. She also married an Afghan man without being able to speak the same language as him or understand who he was. She knew he had another wife, but would throw a tantrum when that wife got pregnant. She seemed to throw tantrums quite frequently which became annoying. How she survived in that environment with her attitude is beyond me. If you can ignore this part of the book, the rest of it is quite touching and a good idea of how to help out women in a troubled nation.

First Line: "The women arrive in the salon just before eight in the morning."

Rating:
(3.5/5)

One Red Paperclip by Kyle MacDonald

One Red Paperclip by Kyle MacDonald
Non-Fiction

Kyle MacDonald was having trouble making ends meet and felt like he was continuously sponging off his girlfriend Dominique. He looks around his desk and sees one red paperclip, then decides that he's going to trade that paperclip for bigger and better things until he eventually has a house. It starts small, trading the paperclip for a pen, the pen for a doorknob. He meets many different people along the way and eventually the media starts to catch on, interviewing him and following his journey.

This definitely is not the best written book in the world (in fact I think I could have written it just as well), but the journey from each trade is captivating. It's such a simple idea and yet it amazes me how much effort was required to make some of the trades. At the end of each chapter, which is the story of moving from one trade to the next, there were "lessons" that MacDonald learned from that trade (or didn't, because some of them honestly had nothing to do with the chapter before it), which were very out of place in the book. I stopped reading them after a few chapters because it felt insulting that a guy trading from nothing to something was going to try and teach me life lessons.

This is a fun book and should be treated as such, if you're interested in how a Canadian boy traded a paperclip for a house.

First Line: "Dom and I round the corner."

Rating:
(3.5/5)

The Night Shift

The Night Shift by Dr. Brian Goldman
Non-Fiction

Dr. Brian Goldman is an emergency room doctor at Mount Sinai in downtown Toronto. He is also a Radio medical journalist having his own show on CBC. In this book he goes through one of his night shifts highlighting the various cases.

One case is about a woman who is giving birth having never realized she was pregnant. Also highlighted are the people who come in in search of a 'fix' and the creative ways they attempt to get their drugs. Although Mount Sinai does not get the gun shot and knife trauma there is more than enough interesting cases.

I found some of the way our health care system works to be very troubling. For instance, older people have more difficulty finding a GP because GPs do not want to deal with the increased health demands of an older person. It is much faster and more economical to treat a younger person with one problem than an older person with a host of problems.

Dr. Goldman seems to be a doctor who really cares about his patients and our health care system. He is basically working on two careers and how he finds the time to do both and write a book is phenomenal.

First Line: "Some people choose to work nights."

Rating:
(4.0/5)

The Night Shift by Dr. Brian Goldman

The Night Shift by Dr. Brian Goldman
Non-Fiction

Dr. Brian Goldman works the night shift in the ER at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto and has been doing so for more than 20 years. With another career as a radio broadcaster, Goldman uses his journalistic skills to take the reader through his 11pm to 7am shift and showcase some of the cases he has seen. This includes a woman who was in labour yet didn't realize she was pregnant, a suicidal elderly man, and a victim of a bar fight. This book shows you what kind of people and problems an ER sees, how doctors and nurses work together, and what doctors think about when they diagnose patients.

Interestingly, Goldman views his job as a part time job. He works more than 8 hours, as he often stays past his shift to make sure he doesn't leave any patients on the next doctor's plate (a very important item for him as he mentions it multiple times throughout the book). He describes how fatigue can affect doctors and nurses who work these hours and yet he still has a job as a radio show host. One wonders how he finds the time and energy to do this.

The most endearing part of this book, however, is how humane and honest Goldman comes across. You often think of doctors as being egotists that think they can never make a mistake or admit to making one. Goldman makes it clear that he is always afraid of making a mistake and hearing the three dreaded words "Do you remember" which usually implies a patient has died after being treated by the doctor. Goldman is also honest about how he selects cases not always based on how long the person has been waiting in the ER, but on how much the case interests him (let's hope that when I go to the ER, I'm considered interesting enough to be seen more quickly!).

I notice with non-fiction reads I really enjoy that I commonly say "I'm reading this book about ..." and mention some interesting fact about the book. I've done that a couple times while reading The Night Shift. This book looks at not only a Toronto ER, but our overall health care system and how doctors perceive their roles. A very interesting read!

Browse Inside

First Line: "Some people choose to work nights."

Rating:
(4.5/5)

The Zookeeper's Wife

The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman
Non-Fiction

Jan and Antonina Zabinski are the keepers of the Warsaw zoo when WWII starts and Poland is invaded. Their life before the invasion is a life of caring for the animals even to the point of keeping sick animals in their home with them to heal and recover. The Germans move into Warsaw and set up their headquarters right beside the zoo.

As the war progresses and the Warsaw Ghetto is created, the resistance movement becomes stronger and Jan and Antonia become involved. They house many Jews over the course of the war some for longer periods and some for very short periods. They house resistance workers. They use the former houses of the animals and the bombed out structures of the zoo. They had 'lost' their animals to German zookeepers who came and looted the animals.

This is a true story and one can only wonder at the bravery of this couple. This book depicts the hatred of the Germans for not only the Jews but also the Poles. The horror and absolute terror the Germans used is sickening. I did not realize the Germans were also interested in the perfection of certain animal species.

This story is an interesting one but at times the author got bogged down in details of natural history. The insect collection of a Pole was described for pages. I found the writing to be a bit choppy and scattered. I would also have liked to hear more about the Zabinskis after the war.

First Line: "At dawn in an outlying district of Warsaw, sunlight swarmed around the trunks of blooming linden trees and crept up the white walls of the 1930s stucco and glass villa where the zoo director and his wife slept in a bed crafted from white birch, a pale wood used in canoes, tongue depressors, and Windsor chair."

Rating:
(4.0/5)

Dewey's Nine Lives

Dewey's Nine Lives by Vicki Myron
Non-Fiction

Dewey's Nine Lives is nine stories about or inspired by Dewey, the library cat. The stories are told from the viewpoint of Dewey's 'mom', author Vicki Myron. There is a story about how Dewey affected a lady who was a regular at the library and how his legacy lives on without him since he has died. Another story is about a soldier who returns from the Viet Cong a troubled and unhappy soul. A rescue cat helps him open himself up to relationships by being persistent and loving.

An Alaskan divorced mom saves a kitten from drowning on Christmas Eve to form a life-long bond. This cat inspires her to do her best and persevere in her own life. And then there is the story of the cats of Sanibel Island and how the cats of the Colony Resort touched those who lived and visited there. I can just imagine dozens of cats sitting on the rungs of a ladder.

I am not a cat lover but I am an animal lover and these stories can not help but captivate the reader. Time and time again a cat is shown to have 'picked' the person who needs him or her most. By unconditional love the cat has managed to 'save' or help when they are needed. Each of these stories is heart-warming and inspiring. I, too, believe in the magic of these cats.

First Line: "Thank you, Vicki, and thank you, Dewey ... I don't believe in angels, but Dewey comes close."
Buy this Book

Dewey's Magic Facebook Page

Rating:
(4.0/5)

Monique and the Mango Rains by Kris Holloway

Monique and the Mango Rains by Kris Holloway
Non-Fiction

Kris Holloway travelled to Mali after she graduated college and became a Peace Corps volunteer. She was placed in a small village called Nampossela and her host was Monique Dembele, the midwife for the village. Holloway becomes quickly immersed in the culture and is given her own African name: Fatumata. A home is built for Holloway out of mud with a corrugated metal roof and she spends each day with Monique, learning the ins and outs of midwifery and the health clinic that Monique runs. These two bond quickly and a strong friendship is forged that last their lifetimes, even when Holloway is back in America.

It was interesting to read about the differences in culture and how a clinic for babies operates. They weigh babies and place each baby's weight in a chart the shows green for healthy, yellow for underweight, and red for severely underweight/malnourished. However the story that draws you in is how Holloway and Monique came to be such good friends. You can't help but smile when Monique explains how she thought people travelled via airplane. This was an uplifting story and a great read.

First Line: "Your two-year assignment is in the country of Mali, West Africa."

Rating:
(4/5)