I sort of suspected this would be the case when I picked up this book, but I was determined to press on. It’s an important book on a very interesting and important subject – the missing women of Vancouver’s DTES, in particular Sarah de Vries, the author’s sister – but it is terribly written. Kind of like that last sentence. She gets all the information out by putting one foot in front of the other, from childhood until Sarah’s death with occasional interjections of emotion or family fluff.

It’s an autobiography, I know, so there is a need for some of those bits, but I think the problem here is that this is her sister and she maybe didn’t spend as much time with her while she was alive as she wanted to, so now she is writing a book and she is putting absolutely everything in it. That Christmas that Sarah said something funny. That story she wrote that was about death…everything becomes “important” because it’s all that’s left, and while that’s fine for a family history, it doesn’t make a very interesting narrative.

I am sad to say anything negative about this book because I live only a few blocks away from the DTES. I am obsessed with society’s negligence in dealing with the missing women and now that the Pickton trial has started I want this information to be available to everyone. I want to buy a copy of this book and give it to everyone I know, except it would be a symbolic gesture because it truly is not well written at all. A shame.

A quick read about the fringes of Colombia’s cocaine industry in the 80’s. It’s interesting because it’s told in the first person of a rather bumbling journalist who traipses around Colombia trying to find the story and finally gets himself into the thick of things right at the end. If you take away the fact that it doesn’t really tell you anything about Colombia and that the cocaine racket is much different now, it’s still entertaining and informative.

all in all, a pretty inspiring read. she hits the motivational nail on the head quite heavily at times, but she is a writer of children’s books and I guess quite used to putting it out there in as simple a manner as possible.

i did get kind of tired of her preaching about her lifestyle and her kids and her needing to find another place to go in order finish writing her book about her nomadic lifestyle, but if you ignore all that and just take it for what it is – the ramblings of a pretty adventurous woman who has changed her life around so she’s living it the way she wants to, it’s pretty good.

not bad, not bad… jumps around in spots, but otherwise a pretty good story about South America. For something in a similar vein, however, it can’t touch Bel Canto.

this book is pretty good if you don’t know anything about weight training or working out, but if you already know how to do free weights and some basic exercises in the gym, you won’t have trouble adapting them to a hotel room. the one thing I found useful was the idea of taking a skipping rope with you if it’s too dangerous/inconvenient to go for a run. but do I need a book to tell me where all the fitness centres are in the major US cities? I’m pretty sure a phone book would save me the trouble of packing it around.

At first I thought I had read this book already, and while it’s technically possible, I think I am getting that sensation because Wade Davis recycles his stories and essays over and over again. By now I think I’ve read everything he’s written (or getting very close, at any rate) and I love it all. He has great stories. But like a drunk uncle at a Christmas party, they are changing as he gets older and they are also getting a little tired. By my count, I’ve heard about the running of the borders in the Andes about 6 times now, and it’s fascinating, it’s a really great tradition and Davis tells it well, but honestly, I expect more from a man who’s travelled around the world, lived with the Penan and in the Amazon and in Haiti and in the Stikine…he’s got to have more stories than that. So in that respect I found this book frustrating because I kept skipping ahead for something that didn’t sound like something I’d already heard. And that’s a shame because his stories are enticing and he writing style is engaging, I’m just hungry for more new material.

My dad got me this book for Christmas, because someone he works with in the oil and gas industry wrote it. I find it fascinating and delightful that someone in that industry would be so interested in the fine arts as to write a book about it, but even more than that, I am fascinated and delighted that my dad actually put some thought into buying me a Christmas present. He’s been giving me money for a gift for as long as I can remember, and while I’m usually too broke at Christmas to send it back, I hate that it takes him about 2 minutes to to think of it, “shop” for it and wrap it. But anyways, aside from all that, it’s also a really interesting book.

This is a great book. It’s really informative about how most of the masterpieces of Europe were either hidden away or stolen during the war and the great mess it was to uncover the treasures and return them to their original owners. It’s not something that you really ever stop and think about when looking at a piece in a museum and this book does a great job of telling the story, with lots of photos to go along with it. It’s really mind-boggling to think of masterpieces being rolled up and stored in salt-mines, etc, but luckily people had the forethought to do it, otherwise a lot of the images hanging in museums and galleries today would be empty spaces.

One thing that bugs me is the play on Da Vinci in the title. Clearly anything Da Vinci is hot right now, after the incredible sucess of the Da Vinci Code, and it seemed like a cheap way to draw attention to a book whose scope was much broader than that one artist.