flitting on fiction

Navigating Canada’s Health Care is, as you might expect, nonfiction rather than the fiction I more often review. But it came in the box of fiction for review - doesn’t that count?

Anyway, Navigating Canada’s Health Care is written in plain, straightforward language. It was written by Michael Dector, an economist who has served as the Deputy Minister of Health in Ontario among his many other roles, and Francesca Grosso, who has been involved in heath policy and health care communication for more than 15 years and who, along with Dector, worked to establish the Health Council of Canada. 

The book contains a huge amount of information, and to be honest, I have not read all of it. Rather, I jumped right through the early chapters, in which the authors provide information about having a baby in Canada (been there done that - twice), getting the best care for your child (they do that themselves now that they’re ~supposedly~ all growed up) and child safety in Canada (maybe I’ll read that if/when I ever get to spend more time with the grandbabies) …. and started my more attentive reading in The Middle Years.

Okay, so maybe I fit in the tail end of that section or into the next …but the middle years section includes the sort of helpful information that I can use. It provides advice for finding a doctor - no easy task given the shortages around here - and, once you have one, working with your health care team, and assembling your own health record. I have no doubt that that particular task would be particularly useful for me… although once I started to read it, I kind of lost interest - sounds like a fair bit of work to me! Yes, I am lazy as a matter of fact. 

The most useful section of the entire book, at least for me right now, is the last one (after Managing Aging which includes altogether too many sections that apply to hubby & I) …. Navigating Care Swiftly and Safely …. that would be the one that gives guidance and advice about needing to be your own advocate - or have someone that can do that for you - and about being a squeaky wheel. I have read the whole section through once… and will probably read it again once more before I head off to my next doctor’s appointment. 

Navigating Canada’s Health Care seems to be a very practical, usable guide to Canadian health care…. I will definitely be trying some of the suggestions. 

Gotta love the baby sister!

She had forgotten to bring the copy of Wake she’d set aside for me this weekend (my fault; I had forgotten to remind her) …so she offered to mail it to me.

And so she did.

And she filled the box nice & full, too.

So… over the next bit, look for reviews of any or all of the following:

Navigating Canada’s Health Care - a very timely choice, given my own health issues, and the fact that I’m off to the specialist next Wednesday FINALLY. 

Black and White by Eric Walters, the author of more than fifty novels for children and young adults, and winner of the Silver Birch Award, the Red Maple Award, and other prizes …oh, and also by Eric Walters, Wounded .

The third book in the Cook’s Cove series (which I have never heard of, but hey, that’s what it says on the cover); Three for A Wedding by Mary C. Sheppard.

Mountain Girl River Girl , by Ting xing Ye; Kalooki Nights by Howard Jacobson,  The Girl Next Door by Elizabeth Noble, and The Disappeared by Kim Echlon. 

And of course, last but not least, Robert J. Sawyer’s latest, Wake .

And nope - you can not have my sister…I think I’ll keep her   

One of my favourite places to read is in the tub - except that today that did not work so well.

Enjoyable book - I was reading a YA novel by Jonathon Scott Fuqua - King of the Pygmies .

In some ways, this novel reminds me of one of my favourite novels of all times - Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet by Joanne Proux. Anthem is better written on the whole, I think ….  but both are what Joseph Gold, author of Read For Your Life defines as “misfit literature”.

And given my interest in working with misfits, misfit literature is just the sort of thing that I am interested in. It has all sorts of therapeutic possibilities that I will be exploring over the course of the next 4 years or so.

King of the Pygmies is about Penn, an adolescent boy who suddenly begins to hear voices. Not, apparently, the voices of schizophrenia that his social worker mother suspects, but rather, the thoughts of those around him. A black-sheep uncle reveals that this ability is common among the pygmies - shorter than normal people who have special abilities. Penn seems to have exceptional talents, which Uncle Hewitt tells him are a mark of kingship.

I have a couple of minor beefs about the book - one about the writing - it irks me that Penn’s dad keeps calling him “sweetie”. What kind of dad calls his teenage son “sweetie”? Seriously!  And the other relates to my experience of reading it in the tub.

I DETEST having anything dirty or staining on my hands… and the dark blue cover of the darn thing (I always take off the dust jacket - they annoy me) STAINED MY HANDS DARK BLUE.

YUCK YUCK YUCK!!!!   Had to scrub my poor hands to death to get rid of the blue stain. BAD book cover!

End of an Era is the novel that Robert J. Sawyer ’s wife recommended when I asked her, via email, for “the best” Sawyer novel to read if one was interested in the topic of viral contagion, since that was the subject of one of my courses this semester.

End of an Era is a  relatively short novel, easily read during one rather longish soak in the tub (no, I did not drown) And it does indeed address the topic of viral contagion, although not explicitly so until the latter part of the novel. Archeologist Brandon Thackery and his colleague & friend, Klicks, travel back in time in an effort to study dinosaurs before their extinction, and to attempt to discover the reason for their eradication. And yes, of course they are successful…but beyond that, I ain’t telling. 

In addition to dinosaurs, time travel, and viral contagion, the novel includes aliens, space & astronomy - all packed into an engaging and highly readable package. As always, Sawyer succeeds in incorporating so much actual science that by the end of the book you feel like you’ve learned a whole lot - given that it is, after all, science fiction, you don’t necessarily know how much of it could actually happen (might have to Ask Stephanie ) …but it all feels pretty believable. That is, I think, one of the major differences between Sawyer and many other science fiction authors, and it is one I very much enjoy.

To read Chapter 1 of End of an Era , visit Sawyer’s webpage - you can also order signed copies there, at no extra cost. There are also several other resources there, including a A Discussion of the Book’s Opening Line and a Reading Group guide. And of course, Amazon.com and Amazon.ca both carry End of an Era as well. 

I’m looking forward to Sawyer’s next book, which  will be released in April - if you are in or near Ottawa or Toronto, check out Sawyer’s blog for details of the book launch for Wake . 

Thursday night is my favourite night for television…. mostly because I like my doctor shows.

Right now, we’re watching Grey’s Anatomy …. and then ER , of course…. although I am fading fast and am not sure I will manage to stay awake long enough. Sure going to try though!

Talked about William Gibson ’s Pattern Recognition in my class this aft…. interesting discussion ….and good food too  

We met at the prof’s house and she fed us - again. Got to like going to classes where there is food - and where dogs are welcome too. Not that they add much to the discussion…but it does make for a relaxed atmosphere. 

Anyway, Pattern Recognition is described on Gibson’s website :

Cayce Pollard is an expensive, spookily intuitive market-research consultant. In London on a job, she is offered a secret assignment: to investigate some intriguing snippets of video that have been appearing on the Internet. An entire subculture of people is obsessed with these bits of footage, and anybody who can create that kind of brand loyalty would be a gold mine for Cayce’s client. But when her borrowed apartment is burgled and her computer hacked, she realizes there’s more to this project than she had expected.

Still, Cayce is her father’s daughter, and the danger makes her stubborn. Win Pollard, ex-security expert, probably ex-CIA, took a taxi in the direction of the World Trade Center on September 11 one year ago, and is presumed dead. Win taught Cayce a bit about the way agents work. She is still numb at his loss, and, as much for him as for any other reason, she refuses to give up this newly weird job, which will take her to Tokyo and on to Russia. With help and betrayal from equally unlikely quarters, Cayce will follow the trail of the mysterious film to its source, and in the process will learn something about her father’s life and death. 

It took a while to get going, I found…but there were certainly a great many issues that related to the topics we have been discussing this semester, both in my Viral Contagion course, and also in Public Texts. The bit that most interests me is the development of the community around the footage…. looking at the ways in which publics form via the Internet is to be the topic of one of my papers - so should be able to find a use for this novel