Review: Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden

NOTE: May contain **SPOILERS**

Another great one from my Canadian Literature class!  This book gave me a deeper appreciation of what natives went through in residential schools and how they were treated by colonists.  This is something I was admittedly ignorant of.

The story takes place over three days and slides back and forth with past and present events.  I have decided to stop giving too much of a synopsis of the books I read, and instead share my opinion of the book so that you might be more interested in reading it.  To give you a brief summary, a young man returns from the war quite damaged and over the course of the three day road with his aunt back to his home in the woods, you learn about his experience overseas and the awful consequences of participating in the war.

For someone who doesn't read or seek out war books, this is the second one in a row that I have read and  enjoyed.  It is less about the war and more about native issues, but a lot of the story takes place while two young native men are stationed overseas in the trenches.  I felt that the paralells it pointed out between serving in the military and living in residential schools frightening.  I don't know much about residential schools, but I have no illusions about them being good places.

My favourite part of this book is the regular reference to the lore of the Windigo and how it relates to certain people in the war.  There is something so disturbing about actual canibalism, but when you start to see the similarities that Boyden is showing between actual canibalism and bahivours during the war it is distressing.

I liked this book a lot and recommend it (as I did with Generals) to anyone who might normally hesitate to pick up a war novel like I would but enjoys a good story.   


Title: Three Day Road
Author: Joseph Boyden
Year of publication: 2005
Publisher: Penguin
Rating: 4/5

Doug's Top 51 Preferred Books Of All Time (...so far!)

Doug, my wonderful and charming fiance (brownie points), reads significantly more than I do.  So I asked him one day when we were on the 5 1/2 hour drive to our cottage if he would let me post a list of his favourite books on my blog.  When he agreed, we started drafting his list right away.  That was 5 months ago.  We forgot to finish it, and when I was going through some papers a few days ago I found the list we started making.  So today he finally finished it for me, and I am now presenting it to you.  The list is in no particular order and it is 51 because Doug has a slight case of OCD when it comes to even numbers (he can't even set his alarm clock to an even number!).

So finally, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you...


Doug's Top 51 Preferred Book Of All Time (...so far!)

1. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
2. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
3. Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
4. Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
5. All My Sons by Arthur Miller
6. The Adventures of David Simple by Sarah Fielding
7. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
8. I, Claudius by Robert Graves
9. The Short Reign of Pippin IV by John Steinbeck
10. Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
11. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
12. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
13. The Europeans by Henry James
14. The Americans by Henry James
15. All the Kings Men by Robert Penn Warren
16. The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene
17. Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell
18. Animal Farm by George Orwell
19. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
20. Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
21. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
22. Silas Marner by George Eliot
23. Persuasion by Jane Austen
24. Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
25. Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
26. Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
27. The Odyssey by Homer
28. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
29. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
30. Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
31. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
32. Native Son by Richard Wright
33. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
34. Deliverance by James Dickey
35. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
36. Poison Wood Bible by Barbare Kingsolver
37. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
38. Secret Diary of Adrian Mole (Series) by Sue Townsend
39. Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
40. A Man For All Seasons by Robert Bolt
41. The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
42. Utopia by Thomas More
43. Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
44. Still Alice by Lisa Genova
45. The Quiet American by Graham Greene
46. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
47. Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels
48. From Here to Eternity by James Jones
49. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
50. Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
51. Barney’s Version by Mordecai Richler

Quirk Classics

So I was looking around the web for upcoming book releases when I found out the newest Quirk Classic has been announced.  I must admit that I haven't read any of these yet but it seems like everyone I know has.  To be honest, to me these books are talent piggy backing, but what do I know... (I'm sure Zombies will come after me for saying that!)  So here is the info on all of the Quirk Books (and other) for those of you who are interested... 

UPCOMING QUIRK CLASSICS:

                                    Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls
by Jane Austen and Steve Hockensmith
Releasing: Feb 5th, 2010

In this terrifying and hilarious prequel, we witness the genesis of the zombie plague in early-nineteenth-century England. We watch Elizabeth Bennet evolve from a naive young teenager into a savage slayer of the undead. We laugh as she begins her first clumsy training with nunchucks and katana swords and cry when her first blush with romance goes tragically awry. Written by acclaimed novelist (and Edgar Award nominee) Steve Hockensmith, Dawn of the Dreadfuls invites Austen fans to step back into Regency England, Land of the Undead.


                                Android Karenina
by Leo Tolstoy and Ben H. Winters
Releasing: June 8th, 2010

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters co-author Ben H. Winters is back with an all-new collaborator, legendary Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, and the result is Android Karenina—an enhanced edition of the classic love story set in a dystopian world of robots, cyborgs, and interstellar space travel. As in the original novel, our story follows two relationships: The tragic adulterous love affair of Anna Karenina and Count Alexei Vronsky, and the more hopeful marriage of Nikolai Levin and Princess Kitty Shcherbatskaya. These characters live in a steampunk-inspired world of robotic butlers, clumsy automatons, and rudimentary mechanical devices. But when these copper-plated machines begin to revolt against their human masters, our characters must fight back using state-of-the-art 19th-century technology—and a sleek new model of ultra-human cyborgs like nothing the world has ever seen. Filled with the same blend of romance, drama, and fantasy that made the first two Quirk Classics New York Times best sellers, Android Karenina brings this celebrated series into the exciting world of science fiction.


AVAILABLE NOW:
                                      Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies -- "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains." So begins Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an expanded edition of the beloved Jane Austen novel featuring all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton-and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she's soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers-and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Can she vanquish the spawn of Satan? And overcome the social prejudices of the class-conscious landed gentry? Complete with romance, heartbreak, swordfights, cannibalism, and thousands of rotting corpses, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies transforms a masterpiece of world literature into something you'd actually want to read.


                                    Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters
by Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters

"Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters" expands the original text of the beloved Jane Austen novel with all-new scenes of giant lobersters, rampaging octopi, two-headed sea serpents, and other biological monstrosities. As our story opens, the Dashwood sisters are evicted from their childhood home and sent to live on a mysterious island full of savage creatures and dark secrets. While sensible Elinor falls in love with the Edward Ferrars, her romantic sister Marianne is courted by both the handsome Willoughby and the hideous man-monster Colonel Brandon. Can the Dashwood sisters triumph over meddlesome matriarchs and unscrupulous rouges to find true love? Or will they fall prey to the tentacles that are forever snapping at their heels? It's survival - and only the swiftest swimmers will find true love!


YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE:
                                    Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
by Seth Grahame-Smith
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Releasing: March 2nd, 2010

Indiana, 1818. Moonlight falls through the dense woods that surround a one-room cabin, where a nine-year-old Abraham Lincoln kneels at his suffering mother's bedside. She's been stricken with something the old-timers call "Milk Sickness.""My baby boy..." she whispers before dying. Only later will the grieving Abe learn that his mother's fatal affliction was actually the work of a vampire. When the truth becomes known to young Lincoln, he writes in his journal, ""henceforth my life shall be one of rigorous study and devotion. I shall become a master of mind and body. And this mastery shall have but one purpose.".." Gifted with his legendary height, strength, and skill with an ax, Abe sets out on a path of vengeance that will lead him all the way to the White House. While Abraham Lincoln is widely lauded for saving a Union and freeing millions of slaves, his valiant fight against the forces of the undead has remained in the shadows for hundreds of years. That is, until Seth Grahame-Smith stumbled upon "The Secret Journal of Abraham Lincoln," and became the first living person to lay eyes on it in more than 140 years. Using the journal as his guide and writing in the grand biographical style of Doris Kearns Goodwin and David McCullough, Seth has reconstructed the "true" life story of our greatest president for the first time-all while revealing the hidden history behind the Civil War and uncovering the role vampires played in the birth, growth, and near-death of our nation.


BUT WAIT... THERE'S MORE:
It has also been announced that the movie adaptation of "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" will be produced by Natalie Portman, who will also star in the film.  According to IMDB, the movie is set to be released in 2011.

For more information on Quirk Classics, go to their site: http://www.quirkclassics.com/