I got through three books from start to finish in Florida - in the spirit of the Olympics, two were about hockey, in the spirit of being in a foreign land, all were by Canadians. Here's what I thought of them.
Leafs AbominationThere were two books available this hockey season about oh wow the Leafs suck. This one, by the Toronto Star's Dave Feschuk and The Globe And Mail's Michael Grange, and Why The Leafs Suck by Al Strachan of the Toronto Sun.
I chose Abomination over the other one because, upon quick glance, it seemed more light-hearted and fun than Strachan's book (for example, it was priced at $19.67, a price any Leafs fan can understand quite quickly). Abomination turned out to have a fair bit more legitimate journalism than I expected - not necessarily a bad thing, but I'm still pining for a book that chronicles the mid-90s, the last era in which I was a Leafs fan, when the Leafs trotted out no-hope players like Mark Kolesar, David Harlock, and Sean Haggerty one after another.
Abomination sums up the history of the Leafs quite succintly, going from Conn Smythe to Stafford Smythe to Harold Ballard to the present day, hitting all the key points along the way. But the majority of the words are saved for the present day - Feschuk and Grange seem to think one of the major problems with the Leafs is the absence of a single, public owner in the vein of Smythe and Ballard, and go to great lengths to paint different figures within MLSE and the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan as sharing the responsibilities of a true owner (interviewing most of them).
The writing is crisp - a few minor copy-editing errors, but overall a decent quality (as it should be, considering the authors are two longtime newspaper sports reporters). All chapters end with 'The Leafs do it again', a few short blurbs detailing great Leaf blunders since 1967.
The conclusions Grange and Feschuk reach - that corporate fans are still fans who attend Leaf games because they like the Leafs, and that the Leafs will not likely achieve on-ice success until they have a sole owner in the mould of Smythe and Ballard, as OTPP is ultimately more concerned, as any corporate owners would be, with the bottom line - are not particularly original or inspiring, but they are laid out in such a way that they do make sense.
A good book for anybody with a strong interest in the Leafs, otherwise take a pass.
Generation ADouglas Coupland's latest novel (released 2009) is also the first Coupland book I have ever read. Some have claimed that Generation A is too derivative of Generation X, Coupland's breakthrough hit twenty years ago, but having never read X, I can say that I mostly enjoyed Generation A for what it was.
The plot, without giving away anything major: In the near future (2022 if the math adds up), honeybees are thought to be extinct. Suddenly, over the course of a few weeks, five people around the world are stung. The five victims are taken to special buildings designed for this possibility, where they are isolated and medically tested for about a month - then they're sent home. Before long, the five of them are brought together in Alaska - and that's when things get weird.
The first half of the book - everything up until they meet in Alaska, really - is superb. Each chapter alternates through the point-of-view of a different stingee, and I was able to distinguish between the characters after one chapter of each - four of them, I was able to compare their characteristics to people I know in real life - but none of them felt like a cliché, like they'd been done before. (Admittedly, Samantha from New Zealand was flat and never really defined, but she's the only exception.)
But when the characters get together, the storytelling takes a more literal turn - the actual interaction between the five is almost completely dropped, instead they each, at the urging of a scientist, tell stories to each other. The stories serve as little parables of the entire book, taking into account information we already know about the characters from our introductions to them - and while I suppose there is a bit of literary merit in the parables, they get boring after a while and do not make for a fun read.
Things get even stranger at the very end, as the (real) story takes a few unexpected twists and turns - the last one of which I still don't really understand.
On a tangenial note - in the chapters told through the eyes of the Canadian, Coupland frequently mentions specific Canadian things (newspapers, foods, stores, etc.). Robert J. Sawyer likes to do the same thing, and I find it one of his most irritating characteristics as a writer - yet I have no problem with Coupland doing it. The difference? Coupland mentions them in passing - "Lucy stopped at Mac's Milk for a lottery ticket" - while Sawyer, choosing to bore his audience rather than potentially alienate them, explains every Canadian reference in excruciating detail.
Overall, Generation A is a book that starts out great, drags itself down to decent, and finishes up weird. At least you won't be guessing the ending before you get there.
Gretzky's TearsStephen Brunt has long been considered the best sportswriter in Canada, and I'd start expanding that honour - even though he mainly writes about sports, he's one of the best writers in Canada.
I've read a few of Brunt's books in the past, going back as far as Diamond Dreams, his 1996 history of the first twenty years of the Toronto Blue Jays' existence. Diamond Dreams demonstrates Brunt's amazing ability at pure journalism - exhaustively resarching an issue, getting quotes from key players, and distilling it all into an interesting book - but the prose isn't anything special. Gretzky's Tears combines that journalistic ability with some excellent writing, beautiful descriptions of hockey and what it means to Canadians (occasionally and sharply contrasted with lines like "Bruce McNall was pretty much fucked").
Gretzky's Tears is a mini-biography of Wayne Gretzky - going through his childhood and junior career, but only relaying information that relates to its central themes. All those themes can be found in the lead-up to and August 1988 announcement of the trade that would send Gretzky from the Edmonton Oilers to the Los Angeles Kings.
Most amazing is that Brunt is able to paint a vivid picture of Gretzky and get inside his mind - all without ever once speaking to him (at least not for this book). Initially I thought this was done on purpose - I remember in one journalism class or another, being told that the most powerful stories are often the ones where you interview everyone except the principal character involved - but as the acknowledgments at the end make clear, Gretzky denied Brunt's interview request (as did Peter Pocklington, for the more obvious reason that he was working on his own book about the trade).
My only real gripe with the book is how quickly everything after the trade is glossed over. I realize that Brunt didn't set out to write a biography, but that is to some extent how it reads - until Gretzky leaves LA for St. Louis, at which point his short run there, his years with the New York Rangers, and his involvement with the Canadian Olympic teams and Phoenix Coyotes are explained in the tiniest amount of detail.but
One of Brunt's main themes is that Gretzky somehow remained a cultural icon in Canada even after he left the country and rejected overtures to return (he mentions this so often that I anticipated the epilogue's mention of Gretzky refusing to leave Phoenix even for the chance to coach an NHL team in Hamilton, just down the road from where he grew up, well in advance of even getting to the epilogue).
I would suggest, though - in a counter-argument that Brunt never gives - that if Gretzky were to return to Canada, he might find his celebrity status overwhelming. He's a celebrity in the US, yes, but on nowhere near the same level - he's just a celebrity. In Canada, he'd be a celebrity and a friend - constantly being hit up for golf games, speaking engagements, and whatever else. I'd get sick of that pretty quickly, and maybe Gretzky would too.
Still, it's a very good book, recommended to anybody with at least a passing interest in Wayne Gretzky as either a hockey player of a celebrity.
--Ryan
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