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it was interesting to read a pre-Robin-DiAngelo book where concepts like white women tears and Black bodies were being still being developed and hadn't yet landed on standard phrasing - made it seem more organic, more sincere, certainly not empty the way the the now-rote terminology rings: we've created new ways to speak about the problems we face but to no one's surprise, no real progress has been made. books like this (now four and a half years old) would not still be published. but they are.

using a letter to his daughter as a framing device was a real miss for me: much like The Last Lecture, it's ostensibly about his daughter but is really about him (and lots of him) and like The Last Lecture is more about wanting his daughter to know HIM than the other way around. but I will given him credit at his willingness to admit the unavoidable conflict: his daughter is a product of both the oppressor colonist and the oppressed coolie - her reaction is not only allowed to be more complex than her father, it's very much an experience he can know nothing about. (in the same vein he admits his luxuriating in the beauty of a foreign locale without knowing it's dark history or having his experience marred by it. in all, a very nuanced approach to a subject that tends to be framed today as obvious moral choice)

lastly, this slim book (that really should have been a magazine article if not for his connections to a publisher) is worth it alone for the re-introduction of Countee Cullen's poem Incident. I cannot write it out here as it contains the very word it's trying to illuminate, but the power in that poem demonstrates the need to confront what happens when we outlaw language, and what is lost in the process.

jk rowling's pseudonym and the 5th in a series, but you didn't need to read the first 4 to get into the story. it's a mystery - and I don't like mysteries - but I really enjoyed this one! it clocked in at over a thousand pages but I spent 5 separate days (in a span of 2 weeks) reading, it was that enjoyable. Instead of just looking for the who-dunnit murderer there's a list of at least 8 anonymous screen-names the reader is also trying to guess. (that was the one drawback of the book: too many characters. if I could have advised myself at the outset I would have gotten a piece of paper and wrote down who I thought was who - and why - to help my transition between non-reading days and reading days)

for me, the best part was how very topical and modern the book was: twitter, medium, on-line gaming, trolls and sjw's campaigns to spark moral outrage. no wait, the best part was the backdrop of the (self-described) disabled community who loved to cry Ableism! at every turn, meanwhile the protagonist detective is an amputee whose stump steadily worsens as the plot goes on. great contrast without a direct comment. (the same could be said for their accompanying and bewildered parents)

having read that Jon Hamm was reprising the role of Fletch but with a very different take than Chevy Chase, I figured it was time to go to the actual source (It was news to me that Fletch was a popular series from the 70s). Anyhow this is a book that will make a reader out of a teenage boy: it starts with a rapid-fire dialogue and before the first page is turned, proposed murder. Cool.

now of course this is a 70's protagonist: an unapologetic (and successful) womaniser. there's no 'comeuppance' for Fletch - it's pure enjoyment of a rat, being a rat, cause he's a charming rat. the humour is deadpan and the punchlines are subtlety revealed to the reader before they appear in print. in short, fluffing the reader to compliment himself on his deductive reasoning and astute observation. great story AND flattering your audience? no wonder this series took off.

While I enjoyed King's delivery during the Massey Lectures, in print I found his tone a bit pompous at the start which morphed into full blown full-of-himself by the end. Maybe the novelty of a scold offset the now-ubiquitous method? He also channels today's blanket anti-capitalism and anti-Christianity with ease if not logic. He unfairly chains the two together, as in: teach a man to be a Christian fisher and then you can sell them fishing gear. But, Jesus at the temple discovered plenty of merchants already there (not to mention how he rejected their proximity)

the greatest scholarship he adds to the canon is are the distinct but sometimes overlapping concepts of Dead, Live and Legal Indian. And he has a point: it is the Dead Indian that everyone reveres and semi-worships as some sort of noble fixed-in-history keeper of the land and traditions. what is a people if not free to adapt, evolve, and absorb new influences? But my additional challenge to that is: is it always the white man asking for the Dead Indian to appear? Because it seems a lot of money is made when the Live Indians play the role of Dead Indians (at tourist events, with native arts, and in their story-telling in print and on screen). so much so that a lot of white people have convinced themselves that they come from Dead Indian stock (hence the numerous pretendians). Thomas King is himself a pre-pretendian who sagely saw the writing on the wall and inched away from his Cherokee claims so slowly that most Canadians didn't notice (most still think he's the 1st Native this and 1st Native that)
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imagine my surprise to see I'd read & reviewed this book in 2014. here it is:

'Canada Reads' selected a book they thought all Canadians should read to change the world/our country and picked joseph Boyden's The Orenda but THIS is the book that all Canadians should read.
King is funny and he eases you into the topic by starting with Hollywood, light banter, and puns. but make no mistake - he knows his facts and soon hammers them hard. i finally have a handle on the oka crisis, what Elijah Harper did, and what happened at the Caledonia Estates. sure the papers reported the present day facts - but without the history, there's no context: no hope for understanding.