House of Sighs
by Jocelyne Saucier
(translation by Liedewy Hawke)
This first novel by Jocelyne Saucier is a certifiable tour-de-force (translated from French by Liedewy Hawke). House of Sighs tells the first-hand story of one woman’s singular transformation into an adult. The narrator’s quiet life with her parents seems as sweet as a dream. But turmoil is the exclusive prerogative of her dramatic Aunt Clara, who fills the house with sighs as she relates her unnaturally numerous tragedies. However, the dream gradually turns sour.
When the narrator learns that her parents are still having sex (though they have no intention of having more children), two singles quickly replace their double bed. And soon, the seemingly kind-hearted father is driven from home, leaving the mother and daughter stranded in a string of outrageous stories that explain his absence. What was pleasant as a dream becomes black comedy, and then a nightmare. Ultimately, Saucier finds her own way of phrasing Leo Tolstoy’s famous quip (from Anna Karenina) that every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
This Is Not a Rave
by Tara McCall
Ever wonder what happened to the activity formerly known as a rave. Well, dance – which was the essence of rave culture, according to Tara McCall – has never gone away and never will. In McCall’s book, This is Not a Rave, she tracks the general public’s shifting perception of the contemporary dance phenomenon.
According to McCall, commercialism flushed it out of the underground, the average middle-class kid invaded it, the media demonized it, and police forces quickly set out to protect us all from it. It, of course, was at the heart nothing more than the subversive activity of dancing. McCall’s charting of ancient art’s modern trappings is a fascinating ride that takes some ups and downs.
On the up side, McCall offers a lucid account of rave’s development – including the oft neglected Toronto and Montreal scenes – as well as an engaging analysis of its decline. On the down side, the book is burdened slightly by an over abundance of spelling mistakes. And, as McCall herself points out: “Dance serves no purpose that can be qualified or quantified. It is simply a feeling expressed in motion.”
The Connected School: Technology and Learning in High School
by Barbara Means, William R. Penuel, and Christine Padilla
The Connected School is a thorough report on technology and education reform in urban American Schools. Three eminent education scholars examine in detail six U.S. schools in order to back up an extremely simple, but important thesis: Access to computers in high schools is nowhere near as important as how those computers are being used.
This is not to say that access is not an important issue. Access is, of course, a necessary precondition of any kind of “technology in education” reform debate. What authors Means, Penuel, and Padilla espouse is placing high school students in contact with technology in ways that empower them. They want situations where computers become tools that students use to complete projects, like French language websites created by students in Detroit area schools. The idea is to avoid situations where students are being passively instructed with the aid of computers.
Furthermore, case studies illustrate things that have been tried and have worked. However, these studies are limited to examples from urban high schools in Detroit and Chicago. The hope is that these may provide examples for the whole nation, and perhaps even examples for Canadian educators.
Back to the User: Creating User-Focused Web Sites
by Tammy Sachs and Gary McClain, PhD
What exactly is the point of books about very simple things that you really ought to know anyway? Well, those simple things that you really should know about are usually the most important things, as well as the things that most people overlook. Sachs and McClain take on the KISS philosophy (Keep It Simple Stupid) to new heights in Back to the User: Creating User-Focused Web Sites.
Their three-pronged approach to Web design is so simple that it seems almost laughable: Talk with users, listen to them and, finally, make them a part of the development team. Is making your audience a crucial part of your development team important? Definitely. Is it easy to do? Of course not. If Back to the User fails in any respect, it is in its ability to deliver on what it has promised. What it can do is draw attention to the problem of technical solutions that exclude the reader, but the punchy best-practices format of your typical how-to book don’t really give the authors the leeway to address the problem.
What you get is a litany of buzz-phrases: “Give the people what they want (and more)”, or “Don’t just lie there, give me some interaction.” This is clever and inspiring, but not necessarily what everyone is looking for.
Ribsauce
Edited by Taien Ng-Chan
(CD edited by Alex Boutros and Karla Sundstrom)
Activists, theorists and anthology makers might never be able to escape the rather constrictive box of identity politics, but they can always pretty the box up a little. For anthology editors, however, the draw of identity must be the strongest. Ribsauce suggests one alternative. Ribsauce is an anthology of new writing by women that steers clear of the usual “diversity of voices” schtick, while at the same time presentingâ wellâ a diversity of voices.
A few simple elements make this anthology quite effective beyond a collection of fresh, young voices. First is the neo-feminist iconoclasm of a title like “ribsauce” with its play upon American culture and biblical origins. Second is the inclusion of literal, rather than merely literary, voices in the form of a 16-track CD of stunning spoken word performances. This means that Ribsauce manages to entertain, while defying expectations.
Power: Journeys Across an Energy Nation
by Gordon Laird
Politics and productivity are seamlessly interwoven in author and journalist Gordon Laird’s account of power generation across this country. Canada, as one of the highest energy consumers in the world, is a sprawling land unified by its overwhelming hunger for power – electrical power, that is.
In Cape Breton, Laird documents the strange and circuitous process whereby coal is imported to be burned on the very doorstep of one of the world’s largest coal deposits. In Toronto, he finds a community effort to erect a windmill, bogged down in red tape and environmental assessments, as coal generators are quickly picking up the slack from closed nuclear facilities in the province. Meanwhile, in the small Quebec township of Val Saint-Franois, separatists and anglophones are united by one thing: their efforts to keep Hydro Quebec from exporting high voltage power through their community.
Laird’s fascinating account of one nation’s need for electrical power and its consequences takes him from Atlantic oil rigs to the high Arctic, where global warming is causing consternation among local hockey leagues. But don’t expect a bland leftist diatribe. Laird is a tireless critic of hypocrisy and inefficiency in all of its many guises.
The Universal History of Computing
by George Ifrah
Counting is as easy as one, two, threeâ . . . right? Well, maybe it used to be. It certainly isn’t that way anymore. And according to French scholar George Ifrah, it was never that simple. Ifrah’s detailed chronology of computing is a veritable textbook on the subject. The Universal History of Computing traces computing’s development from the very first abacus to the modern Quantum computer. Along the way, he dishes up billions of factual tidbits that amount to much more than any person could ever want to know about computing. This vast and detailed tome is not for the faint of heart. Ifrah has revealed what most of us may have thought was simple: counting in all of its difficult and magnificent glory.
