Dickens is always a rich literary feast. That richness is not always to every reader’s taste, of course. However, for those readers willing to devote the time and attention, Dickens returns the investment on many levels. Great Expectations is just such a challenging but rewarding reading experience.

The story is sprawling and circuitous, with many seeming detours in plot and character that eventually all converge and resolve, as Dickens always satisfyingly does for the most part. The cast of characters is broad and lively, almost to a fault, but Dickens has an unerring way of taking figures that initially appear to be caricatures or cartoonish and evolving them into intriguing, fully dimensional human beings. The ending is ambiguous, tinged with remorse but possibly some hope, and haunting in all the best senses. (The Penguin edition includes in its endnotes and appendices the original ending devised by Dickens, with a much clearer resolution of Pip’s and Estella’s relationship – but the more ambiguous one with which the book was published actually makes the book that much more powerful and memorable.)

David Lynch’s quirky, laconic yet somehow articulate style is well suited to a practical, accessible approach to meditation and spirituality and how they feed creativity. The insights into his creative process are intriguing and elucidating, and they also provide inspiration for one’s own.

For his first novel, David Chariandy handles a surprisingly complex story in an assured and compelling fashion. In the story of a young man returning to his home in Scarborough (Toronto) to care for his Trinidadian mother as she struggles with early onset dementia, Chariandy skilfully blends past and present, choreographs multiple plotlines and assembles a believable cast of vivid, diverse, intriguing and sympathetic characters.

Chariandy intertwines the themes of remembering and forgetting in a way that is haunting and fascinating. The flashbacks to Trinidad prompt me to seek out more about this country. This book is an immensely satisfying read on many levels. I look forward to what David Chariandy will do next.

A review I read somewhere characterized “The Importance of Music to Girls” as a feminine “High Fidelity.” I think it’s much more emotionally unsettled, ambiguous and thorny than that, although it does share the same fundamental passion for music as an informing thread in one’s formative years. And yes, the mix tape as love letter and personal statement makes appearances here, too.

Uneven at first (perhaps attributable to some of the pieces being published or read elsewhere), the collection picks up momentum and cohesiveness and gains focus as Greenlaw gets to punk music and, ironically, struggles with what she wants to do with her future. “Unquiet,” which links Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther” and Shakespeare’s Hamlet with Joy Division’s enigmatic and tragic Ian Curtis, is particularly moving.

Patricia McConnell is an applied animal behaviorist and dog trainer with over 20 years’ experience who is also besotted with her own dogs, who include border collies and a Great Pyrenees. She posits an approach to dog training and human-dog relations that is both refreshing and remarkably common sense. She contends that many of the miscommunications between humans (primates) and dogs (canids) stem from the fact that primates vocalize and employ physical cues that often convey to canids the opposite message of what is intended. For example, primates use ventral-ventral (face-to-face, chest-to-chest and eye-to-eye) physical approaches such as hugging and kissing to show affection … and canids typical find such approaches rude and aggressive.

When primates can understand how to use body language that is more appealing to a canid, such as side and perpendicular approaches and avoiding eye contact, they will achieve the obedience and cooperation, not to mention affection, that they are seeking with their canine friends.

McConnell’s style is down-to-earth and appealing, with memorable stories and examples.

From the book’s introduction:

“Every year several students come to see me at the university and ask how they can become an Applied Animal Behaviorist. Some of them tell me they are interested primarily because they love animals so much and work themselves up to confessing that they don’t really like people much at all. But we humans are an integral part of the lives of domestic dogs, and we can’t fully relate to a domestic dog without taking our own species into account. The more you love your dog, the more you need to understand human behavior. The good news, speaking as a biologist, is that our species is as fascinating as any other. I find myself just as enamored of Homo sapiens as I am of Canis lupus familiaris, because even when we humans are idiots, we’re interesting ones. So I invite all of you to show our own species the same patience and compassion that we show dogs. After all, dogs seem to like us a lot, and I have the utmost respect for their opinion.”

… and from the book’s conclusion:

“… just as I can’t discuss world peace with [my dog] Tulip, there’s something that I get from my connection to her that I can’t get from my other, human friends. I’m no even sure what it is, but it’s deep and primal and good. It has something to do with staying connected to the earth and to sharing the planet with other living things. We humans are in such a strange position – we are still animals whose behavior reflects that of our ancestors, yet we are unique – unlike any other animal on earth. Our distinctiveness separates us and makes it easy to forget where we came from. Perhaps dogs help us remember the depth of our roots, reminding us – the animals at the other end of the leash – that we may be special, but we are not alone. No wonder we call them our best friends.”

There are no new insights here into male-female relationships. That’s OK, though – this could still have been just be a fun buddy story. However, the two male protagonists aren’t likeable enough, and they’re not even strongly drawn enough to be thoroughly unlikeable – which might have been more interesting, in a perverse way. They are just walking cliches in the hands of an inept, indifferent puppetmaster. The only spark of life in this book is that some of the cliches do actually rise to the level of being actively offensive.

The author seems much more intent on getting that screenplay deal than on actually crafting a decent book, as the dialogue has that “you can film me straight from the page” rhythm to it. (At least the movie version redeemed this pedestrian book.) I just wanted the Miles and Jack of the book to guzzle their pinot noir (Miles is a wine afficionado …?) and leave, please.

Stephanie Nolen has crafted a series of haunting, absorbing and deeply moving profiles of people from many walks of life and circumstances (from a truck driver to a doctor to a beleagured grandmother to Nelson Mandela), all dealing with the scourge of HIV/AIDS in their lives and communities. I anticipated that this book might be a depressing read, but the individuals profiled are engaging and inspiring, even as their stories wrench at your heart.

Still, the societal forces that continue to allow the disease to spread through neglect, fear, prejudice, ignorance and worse are infuriating, and *that* is depressing. What the 28 individuals exemplify and what Nolen exhorts at the end of the book is that the most vital thing we can all do to fight this pandemic is to fearlessly and persistently talk about it. She also details and personally endorses AIDS care and treatment organizations in Africa that probably deserve everyone’s support.

Although some might consider Northanger Abbey a slighter or lighter part of the Jane Austen library, I think it compresses an accomplished lot in a slim volume. It’s as great a cast of characters, with all their charms and foibles, and as diverting a comedy of manners and intrigues as any of Austen’s works. It’s also a great takeoff on Gothic novels, and even incorporates some incisive observations on the writing and consuming of novels in general.

The book “Master of Reality” has the intensity, humour and fierce optimism against all odds of a Mountain Goats song or a live, manic John Darnielle performance. You can’t help but root for the damaged soul who is finding angry, determined salvation through Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne in this brief but powerful book. Darnielle’s assignment, as part of the 33 1/3 record review series of short volumes, was to capture how Black Sabbath’s “Master of Reality” album meant so much to him. He has done that with memorable, heartwrenching effect through the persona of a desperate, confused but still feisty and essentially good-hearted teenager named Roger, who is undoubtedly good portions both of Darnielle himself and of disturbed youth Darnielle encountered in an earlier career as a psychiatric nurse. Roger’s voice and desire to survive life on his own terms, with his own way of bolstering his spirits, is unforgettable.

Michelle Berry’s collection of short stories entitled “Margaret Lives in the Basement” is populated by a wide range of types of characters, but they all share variations of a deadpan, flat affect voice that suggests broken hearts and discouraged, downtrodden souls. Underneath that unhappy drone, there are hints of unspecified menace and sometimes revelations of depths of raw, yearning emotion. Most of the stories deal with misunderstandings, disappointments and disconnects between people and some, like the title story, unexpectedly resolve into celebrations of the joy of connecting when one least anticipates or thinks they deserve it.