Revenge of the Vinyl Cafe, by Stuart McLean

Here is yet another example of how I sometimes feel as though I am on a foreign planet, when really, I am just in Canada and reading Canadian books.
I checked this book out of the library and the librarian asked me if I listened to Stuart McLean on the radio. I had NO idea who Stuart McLean was, but I smiled and nodded as I do when I am completely confused.
I took the book home and read it in one sitting and I FELL IN LOVE.
I laughed (out loud for REAL), and I cried, and I decided right then and there I was googling Stuart McLean the very next opportunity I had in front of a computer.

I did it. I googled Stuart McLean. I have learned something today people. Something I am going to share with you here so you don’t have to go out and google him yourself.

A MILLION people listen to his radio show. AS THEY SHOULD – and so should I  – and so should you!!!!!!

This is all from the CBC website which I am siting here so as not to be accused of plagiarism:
Here is all you ever needed to know about Stuart McLean but didn’t (or maybe you did)

Stuart McLean is a best-selling author, award-winning journalist and humorist, and host of CBC Radio program The Vinyl Cafe.
Stuart began his broadcasting career making radio documentaries for CBC Radio’s Sunday Morning. In 1979 he won an ACTRA award for Best Radio Documentary for his contribution to the program’s coverage of the  Jonestown massacre.
Following Sunday Morning, Stuart spent seven years as a regular columnist and guest host on CBC’s Morningside. His book, The Morningside World of Stuart McLean, was a Canadian bestseller and a finalist in
the 1990 City of Toronto Book Awards.
Stuart has also written Welcome Home: Travels in Small Town Canada, and edited the collection When We Were Young. Welcome Home was chosen by the Canadian Authors’ Association as the best non-fiction book of 1993.
Stuart’s books Stories from the Vinyl Cafe, Home from the Vinyl Cafe, Vinyl Cafe Unplugged, Vinyl Cafe Diaries, Dave Cooks the Turkey, Secrets from the Vinyl Cafe, Extreme Vinyl Cafe and Vinyl Cafe
Notebooks have all been Canadian bestsellers. Vinyl Cafe Diaries was awarded the Canadian Authors’ Association Jubilee Award in 2004. Stuart is also a three-time winner of the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour for Home from the Vinyl Cafe, Vinyl Cafe Unplugged and Secrets from the Vinyl Cafe. New out in the fall of 2012 is another story collection, Revenge of the Vinyl Cafe.
Vinyl Cafe books have also been published in the U.S., the U.K., Australia and New Zealand.
In December 2011 Stuart McLean was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada. He is a professor emeritus at Ryerson University in Toronto and former director of the broadcast division of the School of Journalism. In 1993 Trent University named him the first Rooke Fellow for Teaching, Writing and Research. He has also been honored by:
Nipissing University (Ed.D.(H.); University of Windsor (LL.D), Trent University  (D.Litt) and Saint Mary’s University (D.C.L.). Stuart served as Honorary Colonel of the 8th Air Maintenance Squadron at 8 Wing, Trenton from 2005 to 2008.
Since 1998 Stuart has toured with The Vinyl Cafe to theatres across Canada and the United States, playing towns from St. John’s, Newfoundland to Whitehorse in the Yukon; from Bangor, Maine to Seattle, Washington.
Over one million people listen to The Vinyl Cafe every weekend on CBC Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio and on a growing number of  Public Radio stations in the United States. The program is also broadcast on an
occasional basis on the BBC.

Cures for Hunger by Deni Bechard

This is the SIXTH book I am reading for this challenge – even though I STILL have not been updated on the book page itself!

 

I just read the book “Cures for Hunger” by Deni Bechard. This is the true story of a young man who grows up in BC and is taken with his siblings by his mom when she leaves his dad and returns to the USA. Deni learns about his dads criminal past as he is growing and becomes captivated with finding out who his dad “really is”. I dont know who was hungry or what the cure for it is either.

 

I absolutely hated this book. It was a pain to get through and I found it tedious and boring. One of the reviewers commented that the book made readers want to explore their own relationships with their parents – I certainly didn’t come up with that through the story. I am glad I read for book for one purpose only and that’s because the author was Canadian and I can cross off another book on my list for this challenge. That’s it – and to be honest it may not even have been worth that!

Magebane by Lee Arthur Chane

This is the SEVENTH book out of 13 that I need to read for the Canadian Book Challenge.
It was a total accidental addition to the challenge, it was a book I wanted to read and it just HAPPENED to be written by a Canadian! BONUS! Lee Arthur Change was born in the USA but lives in and is married to a Canadian – so I’m counting it baby!

This is Chane’s first book and I wish he had written more already.

In the kingdom of Evrenfel, MageLords rule. MageLords are a powerful magic wielding race who have fled to Evrenfel from an older kingdom where they were under attack. In order to protect themselves in this new world they have created impermeable magic “barriers” for borders.
Like all kingdoms the political system is corrupt. A group exists whose purpose for many years has been to destroy the barriers and take over the leadership of the kingdom. Within the group the motivations for tearing down the barrier are varied and the leaders begin to doubt the commitment of one another. As the day draws near for the final plan to be set in motion this lack of trust deteriorates and pits MageLord against MageLord in a series of events that threats the success of the plan.
In the middle of the treason and plot all off a sudden from over the top of the Barrier arrive two men in a balloon – not powered at all by magic, but by science.
If the plan to remove the Barrier exists – what will the MageLords face?

Lost in the Barrens by Farley Mowat

I just finished Book number 8 out of thirteen for the Canadian Book Challenge, Lost in the Barrens by Farley Mowat.

I actually read this book in high school. The only thing I remember about the book from the last time I read it was that the two boys who were lost got snow blind in their travels and were in physical pain from the glare of the snow as they travelled unprotected in the winter. In my memory this event was a significant portion of the book, but as I re-read it I found this incident was not the most salient event at ALL in the story of Jamie and Awasin.

It was cool to go back and read something I have read such a long time ago. I enjoyed the story thoroughly, even though it was a very quick read and obviously designed for teen readers.

Here is the story synopsis:

Jamie’s parents have died in a car crash leaving him in the care of his trapper uncle, Angus. Angus had supported Jamie’s boarding-school fees for a long time, until the fur trade had declined. Angus could no longer support Jamie’s school. Thus, Jamie left the boarding school to live with his uncle. Jamie made friends with the Cree Tribe’s Chief’s son, Awasin. Angus and the tribe chief load up their skins for trading and head south to a more reputable trader who will not cheat them. Jamie stayed with Awasin for Angus’ canoe could not hold three people and other things. Shortly after the adults departure, some Chipeweyans come to the Crees for help. The Chipeweyans were starving because the deer did not come at its usual time in the year. Awasin’s mother was suspicious that the Chipeweyans may just be looking for a free handout, and so the boys agreed to go with them back to the Chipeweyan’s camp to prove they needed the supplies. Denikazi wants the boys to go with them on the hunt because they have bertter guns. This is how Jamie and Awasin start their journey for the caribou hunt out in the barrens.
Travelling further and further north the men do not encounter any caribou. The group decided to split up and Jamie and Awasin stay with two men while the rest of the men travel further.
While staying with the two young Chipewyan hunters, Jamie decides he wants to take the chance and explore. He tricks Awasin into it and they travel to find the ‘stone house’ that one of the two Chipeweyans had told them about. On the way to the stone house they unexpectedly meet a whirlpool and barely survive, and Jamie is badly injured. Gathering what they can salvage from the water and their broken canoe, they have barely enough to survive. They cannot use the canoe anymore, they are stranded in the barrens.
When the two young Chipeweyans found out that Awasin and Jamie were gone they went on searching for them. Their search is abruptly stopped when they catch a glance of an Eskimo kayak. Fearing the Eskimo they turn back, abandoning their search.
Jamie and Awasin decide to cut across the land and hopefully intercept Denikazi up the other leg of the river. They arrive and set up camp but miss Denekazi and his men travelling through the night with their canoes loaded with Caribou.
Knowing they have no way to reconnect with the Chipeweyans, and no canoe to travel home in, Awasin and Jamie realize their best chance at survival is to set up camp and survive until winter when they can travel south over the frozen ground. The rest of the story is about their survival and their reunion with family when they finally succeed and make it home.