Mini Book Expo For Bloggers

The Black Book of Colors [Anne's longwinded review]

Well, fellow MBE book-o-philes, I picked a challenge for my own first book to review... The Black Book of Colors.
I won't even try to write something punny or insightful.... damnit, I can't help myself... so instead I'll procrastinate. And while I try to figure out my reaction to this book - with a subject I feel rather unqualified to write about - I will share with you, in run-on sentences, how I came to this MBE scene with all ye good MBE bloggers...
I'm going to put it out there right now that all of my terrible puns are a direct and bad, bad influence of the excellent paronomasiac, Nathan Baker, with whom I and 30 other eager, fledgling Creative Book Publishing students just spent an intensive 4 months this summer submerged in books, book workings, book makings, book haggling, book legal stuff, book celebrities, and a fantastic host of industry leaders past and present brought together by ex-Penguin president, Cynthia Good, at Humber's beautiful Lakeshore campus.
This is where I first heard about our own Lex here at Mini Book Expo, and since that first meeting (in which the poor woman found out she had a volunteer completely new to bloggers and blogging to whom she was going to have to teach everything), we've been having fabulous monthly chitchats at net-equipped lunch places!

And here I am, now ready to give you my opinion of another subject with which I am not familiar, books for/about the blind... enjoy:

Just imagine never seeing colour. Imagine having no concept of what colour is.  Menena Cottin and Rosana Faria have developed a book called The Black Book of Colours, translated from Spanish and published by Groundwood and Anansi.

For sighted people, it "endeavors to convey the experience of a person who can only see through his of her sense of touch, taste, smell or hearing", and it has received global praise for its innovative approach.  So the text and the braille attempt to describe colour through these senses, attributing specific qualities of things the blind can know to a quality that can only be seen.  A braille alphabet follows as end matter so the reader can feel what it's like to read the bumps on the paper.  There is one sentence per page, usually starting with, "Thomas says...", implying to me that Thomas is a sighted person, or that Thomas has been told by a sighted person that a certain colour is like a certain experience. 

The raised, all-black "pictures" attempt to feel like some of the nouns the text describes; for instance, "Thomas says that blue is the color of the sky when kites are flying and the sun is beating hot on his head" is illustrated with a raised line drawing of an airborne kite.  While I liked the idea that the feeling of the sunny day could help describe blue, the 2D line drawing certainly brought it home to me that if you've never seen a kite flying, it is difficult to "get" it by only feeling it on paper.

Of course, I think it's important to get people of any age thinking about how others experience the world, about how sometimes we take for granted what we've always had, but there is a part of me that wonders if someone who has never -- and will never -- see colour would really care about colour.
If it isn't, and will never be a part of their realities, should we feel it necessary to make them understand it by subjectively equating it with other sensory experiences?  This particular point came up for me when, over another lunch with our Lex, she read the line,

"He says that green tastes like lemon ice cream and smells like grass that's just been cut."

While she totally agreed with the text, saying that when she thought of the colour green, lemon ice cream came to mind, I fully disagreed!
So here's a question; if indeed, a blind person cared to understand the concept of colour, wouldn't it be more confusing when 2 sighted people can't even agree on it?
And I am not sure how comfortable I would feel to tell someone that, "Brown crunches under his feet like fall leaves. Sometimes it smells like chocolate and other times it stinks."
I doubt that I would want to forever attribute the delightful smell of chocolate to the stench of a recently used bathroom, would you?

If this is a book for sighted kids to get them thinking about different realities, I get it, and I like it, and if this is a book that a blind child may pick up to try to understand the concept of colour, good luck!

The way I feel about this book is dependant on its potential audience, but regardless, I like that it made me ask all of these questions...

---

More information

• Anansi | Chapters.ca  | Amazon.com
• ISBN-10: 0888998732 
• ISBN-13: 978-0888998736

Order of Good Cheer [Bill Gaston]

Order of Good Cheer by Bill Gaston

Courtesy of House of Anansi

Indian summer, 1607. Intrepid explorer and map-maker Samuel de Champlain has founded a new and precarious settlement in Annapolis Royal, "New France" (present-day Nova Scotia). As winter looms, two threats emerge: boredom amongst the men and the deadly sickness scurvy. Champlain hits upon the idea of a moveable feast - an order of "good cheer" - where nobles and men can enjoy good local food, excellent wine, and camaraderie.

Early fall, 2007. Grain-mill worker Andy Winslow, the best-read man in the seaside town of Prince Rupert, British Columbia, has lost a chunk of his property to the ocean during an unseasonable storm. As winter approaches, Andy knows there are two things he must do: hold together the fraying emotional bonds among his friends and nurture a glimmer of hope for his town despite creeping environmental and economic decline. In his reading, he stumbles across a reference to Champlain's now-famous "Order of Good Cheer."

The Outlander [Gil Adamson]

The Outlander by Gil Adamson

Claim this book courtesy of
House of Anansi Press

In 1903 a mysterious, desperate young woman flees alone across the west, one quick step ahead of the law. She has just become a widow by her own hand.

Gil Adamson's extraordinary novel opens in heart-pounding mid-flight and propels the reader through a gripping road trip with a twist -- the steely outlaw in this story is a grief-struck nineteen-year-old woman. As the young widow encounters characters of all stripes -- unsavoury, wheedling, greedy, lascivious, self-reliant, and occasionally generous and trustworthy -- Adamson weds her brilliant literary style to the gripping, moving, picaresque tale of one woman's deliberate journey into the wild.

About the Author

Gil Adamson cites as her influences Michael Ondaatje, Raymond Carver, Richard Ford, and Mark Richard. Her acclaimed short fiction has been widely published in magazines and literary journals, and her collection of stories received rave reviews. The Outlander, ten years in the writing, is Gil Adamson's first novel. Adamson lives in Toronto, Canada.

---

  

More information

• view reading guide | download reading guide (PDF)
• Author's Site: Gil Adamson
• Anansi Press | Chapters.ca  |  Amazon.com

Product Details

• 1 copy available This book is no longer available
• Hardcover: 400 pages 
• Publisher: House of Anansi (April 15, 2008) 
• ISBN-10: 006149125X 
• ISBN-13: 978-0061491252

Shipping sponsored by House of Anansi

Die with Me [Elena Forbes]

 

Die with Me by Elena Forbes

Claim this book courtesy of
House of Anansi Press

Somewhere in London, a lonely young woman is reaching out to the wrong man. It's up to Detective Inspector Mark Tartaglia and the rest of the local murder squad to find her before it's too late.

When fourteen-year-old Gemma Kramer's broken body is found on the floor of St. Sebastian's Church, the official ruling is that she jumped to her death from the organ gallery above the altar. But then a witness comes forward claiming to have seen Gemma kissing a much older man before the two disappeared into the church together. And after the toxicology report comes back showing traces of the date-rape drug GHB and alcohol in the girl's system, a full-scale murder investigation is launched.

At the helm is Mark Tartaglia, a stubborn detective known for following his hunches. It's Tartaglia's first time in charge, and he walks right into a political minefield as the murder squad turns up three more suspicious deaths - all originally ruled suicides - involving vulnerable young women falling from high places. Bombarded with conflicting theories from the media, criminal profilers, and ambitious colleagues, Tartaglia and his detectives must connect the dots between victims in order to capture a serial killer with a chilling predilection for lonely girls and deadly heights.

About the Author

Elena Forbes grew up in London, England. After earning a degree in French and Italian from Bristol University, she worked in portfolio management for a number of international investment groups before becoming a full-time writer. Die With Me is her first novel, and she is currently at work on the sequel. She lives in central London with her husband and two children.

---

More information

• view reading guide | download reading guide (PDF) 
• Anansi Press | Chapters.ca  |  Amazon.com

Product Details

• 2 copy available  This book is no longer available
• Paperback: 352 pages 
• Publisher: House of Anansi (October 1, 2007) 
• ISBN-10: 159692277X 
• ISBN-13: 978-1596922778

Shipping sponsored by House of Anansi

De Niro's Game [Rawi Hage]

De Niro's Game by Rawi Hage

Courtesy of House of Anansi Press

"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide."

In Rawi Hage's astonishing and unforgettable novel, this famous quote by Camus becomes a touchstone for two young men caught in Lebanon's civil war. Bassam and George are childhood best friends who have grown to adulthood in wartorn Beirut. Now they must choose their futures: to stay in the city and consolidate power through crime; or to go into exile abroad, alienated from the only existence they have known. Bassam chooses one path: Obsessed with leaving Beirut, he embarks on a series of petty crimes to finance his departure. Meanwhile, George builds his power in the underworld of the city and embraces a life of military service, crime for profit, killing, and drugs.