Once Upon a Bookshelf

This is my thirteenth, and last, book for the Canadian Book Challenge; I heard about it earlier during this challenge as another participant read it. As soon as I saw that there was a butter tart featured on the cover of the book, I knew I was meant to read it. (Slight tangent: Butter tarts are one of my all-time favourite dessert-ish foods, and I feel only the greatest pity for anyone who is not living in Canada and cannot get one whenever one darn well pleases. Best Things Ever.)

Only in Canada, You Say is a collection of words that are truly Canadian - whether they are words only Canadians use, or whether they have developed a different meaning than what is typically associated with the word. It’s pretty much a glorified dictionary, with words separated into different themes - politics, food, sports, etc. I was surprised, not only by the number of words that I didn’t know (as they came from different parts of the country), but also by the number of words that I did know - I would never have thought if I used them elsewhere in the world (or possibly even elsewhere in the country) that no one else would understand what I was talking about. For example, a stag and doe is apparently an event that typically only happens around here (or at least by that name) - an event to help a couple raise money for their wedding by having guests buy drinks, pay to play games, etc.

It was very informative, and could be used as a great conversation starter. I was reading it while visiting my parents this past weekend, and don’t even know how many times I had to pause and relate to my parents the newest word I had discovered was a Canadian word or had a truly Canadian meaning that we never would have supposed. A little dry at times (as I said it was pretty much a glorified dictionary), and the introductions to each section sounded like they were meant to be funny but weren’t… but other than that, it was quite fun, and I’ve already passed it on to my grandparents, who not only have fabulous taste in books as it is (my grandfather was talking about Will Ferguson this weekend!) but who will also enjoy this book as much as I did.

Michael Adams formed the Environics group of marketing research and communications consulting companies. When he first wrote and published this book over a decade ago, he had been working as a pollster in Canada for twenty-five years. He wrote this book in order to

… portray the diversity of the Canadian character in a way that has not been done before. It is a pschographic geography of Canada. Sex in the Snow is based on in-depth surveys of Canadians’ social values, scientific investigations of the underlying motivations that propel our culture.

While this was rereleased in 2006, Adams assures us in the preface that what was discussed when this was first published is only more evident today. I found it not only to be very educational and thought-provoking, but to also be written in a way that is really easy to understand. It’s not dry and isn’t something that takes a long time to get through, but was completely interesting and even rather humorous at times too.

A good majority of the book talks about how different generational groups think, and what drives them. He even goes so far as to break down each generational group into even more segments to show how different people in these generational groups can really be from each other. The other part of the book talks about how males and females relate and differ from each other, how we feel about technology, and how Canadians differ from Americans.

The last chapter (about Canadians and Americans) was the most interesting for me. I hadn’t realized how vastly different Canadian and American values were. I don’t know how much these differences in values are still present, as the preface doesn’t touch on that, but I would be interested to see how it is today. Some points that Adams said about how Canadians compared to Americans ten years ago are:

• Canadians are “even more critical of institutional authority and of our élites than Americans are of theirs”
• Canadians are now less religious than Americans, though we used to be more so
• Canadians consider our culture to be a “mosaic” whereas Americans consider theirs to be a “melting pot”
• Canadians “treasure equality” while Americans “treasure freedom”

I would highly recommend this book to people who are interested in learning more about how Canadians think and act, whether you are interested in it from a marketing perspective or a personal perspective. Definitely an interesting book.

This was my twelfth book for the Canadian Book Challenge.

It was interesting to read this from the perspective of a person who does not live in a country where Starbucks is the predominant coffee chain. Here, people are either a huge Timmies fan, or a huge Starbucks fan, and it’s hard to find someone who enjoys the coffee from both. Me? I love Starbucks, and so this book has given me food for thought.

The book was divided into two parts - the first talking about the history of coffee and the company, and the second of the effects that Starbucks has on the world. It was interesting to read from a business and marketing perspective to see how Starbucks has become such a huge corporation.

The main ideas that the author seemed to be getting across was (a) that the quality of both the service and coffee at Starbucks has been on a downhill slide ever since it started as a mass-market coffee house machine, and (b) this has allowed for the opportunity for mom-and-pop coffee houses to succeed as never before. That said, however, it’s hard to tell how much the author was approaching the subject with complete objectivity - it went in spurts from feeling like the author extremely disliked the Starbucks corporation to feeling like he was telling you that although the corporation isn’t good, it isn’t as evil as people say it is.

The book talked a lot about how Starbucks has had an influence on the coffee industry in general, but it has also gone into a bit of detail as to how other coffee companies has influenced the world economy as well. This is one of the areas I am going to want to look more into at a later date, when I have the time to do some research on my own. Specifically, I want to look more into the difference between Coffea robusta and Coffea arabica - according to Clark, not only is robusta easier to cultivate, but it’s also the worse of the two tasting types of coffee. He also claims that robusta is the type that is used for instant coffee, and because the big companies buy only this for the instant coffee, before removing any of it’s natural flavour and adding all sorts of artificial flavours to actually make it taste good, it is part of the reason why coffee farmers in Brazil and other countries that harvest arabica (the tasty kind of coffee) are suffering. Again, it’s something I want to look more into. If this is the truth, then I’ll definitely start using my perculator with real coffee more and more often.

This was definitely a thought-provoking read and while it wasn’t as easy a read as other non-fiction books I’ve read recently, it was still thoroughly enjoyable.

I was sent this book a few weeks ago, and I have to say that I loved it. I don’t think anyone who is interested in vampires couldn’t like this book. (And I definitely recommend it to anyone who’s already looking for books for the R.I.P. Challenge next year.) Paul Bibeau, a journalist who has written for numerous reputable publications, explores how vampires (and specifically Dracula) went from a Wallachian prince to what we think of vampires today. He takes us through Romania, explores numerous subcultures, and talks about various movie-vamps, all the while keeping it not only informative but entertaining as well.

This was definitely a thought-provoking read. He brings up numerous things that one probably never thought of, as well as going more in depth into things that may have crossed your mind. When Bibeau mentioned a few times how people these days tend to take a bit of the historical as well as a bit of the literary when they form their ideas about Dracula, I was reminded of how well-researched Kostova’s The Historian was - she had put so much history into her book. Contrary to popular belief, it appears that Stoker did not actually base Dracula on Vlad Tepes - which begs the question, why do people think they (Vlad the Impaler and Dracula) are the same person? After thinking on this for a bit, you can certainly see how some modern-day vampire stories and the such are based partially on Stoker’s Dracula and partially on Vlad. (Again, The Historian.)

I think the parts I enjoyed reading about the most were the chapters that explored various subcultures - ranging from the Goth scene to RPGers to people who believe they really are vampires. There were a couple of bits that I couldn’t comprehend and made me a bit squicky (take the chapter about politician Jonathan Sharkey for example, who wanted to impale criminals) but for the most part Bibeau helps you to understand why some people enjoy and believe the things that they do, and how those beliefs help to form them into the people they are.

What Marshall McLuhan said about our tools applies to our beliefs as well: We shape them and afterward they shape us. Some beliefs help us treat each other well. Some force us to engage in rituals that many people don’t accept or understand. And some beliefs make us do terrible things. But when do beliefs become delusions, and when do delusions become dangerous? If we are all essentially living in our heads, how do we figure out who’s crazy and who isn’t?

Good thought to ponder, and applicable to how we view everyone, not just the people Bibeau was writing about.

As I said previously, I definitely recommend this book - not just to anyone who has a thing for vampires, but also for those who would like to understand vampire subcultures in our society. An amusing and educational read.

I will admit right now that I picked up this book because I am addicted to shoes. Hated them until I spent 4 years of my life working in a shoe store. It will change a person. No joke. So between my obsession with shoes and the cute cover on this book, I couldn’t walk out of the store with this book.

I have to say that I was rather disappointed. It got off to a really good start - it was funny as well as informative, but as the book went on it got drier and drier and drier. It picked up again at the Epilogue, but by then I just wanted to be finished with the book.

Not that it was all bad. Like I have already said, it was very informative. Jacobbi tells the history of shoes, why certain shoes are called by certain names, who made what famous, as well as why they are still around today. It brings in bits of pop culture and relates it to shoes - for example, Jacobbi talks about how Sex & The City made the name Manolo Blahniks such a well known name to the average woman.

Another good thing about this was the illustrations, done by Sara Not. They were utterly adorable.

And it does give good insights as to why women love having a different pair of shoes for every outfit:

As adults, we ask shoes to be our representatives in the world. The beauty of this is that they needn’t define us permanently. At any given point in our lives, and even at different times in a single day, shoes are indicators of our age, mood, desires. Shoes say everything about a woman.

So, in those respects it was a good book. But boy, am I glad this was as short as it was (125 pages, if you include the glossary), because it was just so dry for the majority of the book.