A little humour and a disaster
23. The Zucchini Warriors by Gordon Korman (Children's Fiction, Humour)

Fifth book in Gordon Korman's Bruno and Boots series. Definitely not my favourite. Korman's early works were his best; his later books, although still very funny, began to lose some of the magic of the early ones. I still enjoyed re-reading this, though.

Anyone looking for funny kids' books should try some of Korman's stuff: Go Jump in the Pool!, Beware the Fish!, I Want to Go Home, and The Twinkie Squad are all good places to start. Don't Care High and Son of Interflux are YA Fiction, but just as funny.

24. Curse of the Narrows by Laura M. Mac Donald (Non-fiction, History)

On Thursday, December 6, 1917, at 9:05 a.m., a ship carrying a load of high explosives caught fire and exploded in Halifax Harbour. Killing 2,000 people and injuring 9,000 others, it was the largest artificial explosion in the world until the first atomic bomb test explosion in 1945. Halifax was completely devastated.

An account of the Halifax Explosion of 1917. Well-written and interesting, this is closer to a novel than most works of non-fiction; the book follows the lives of many specific individuals, from the night before the explosion, through the aftermath and recovery.

Curse of the Narrows provided a very clear explanation of how the collision between the ships Mont Blanc and Imo came to occur, as well as a good overview of the different types of explosives and explosions, and an outline of the specific causes of the explosion of the Mont Blanc.

The book also introduces some interesting side-issues to the main disaster, like the complications caused by the blizzard that began the day after the explosion, the politics involved in the medical response to the crisis, and the prejudice displayed towards the poor, the less respectable, the Black Haligonians, and the nearby Mi'kmaq villagers in the aftermath.

A really interesting read for anyone interested in history, particularly disasters.

Books read: 24/50
Pages read: 5,879/15,000

I've been inspired by Curse of the Narrows; does anyone know of any really good non-fiction about urban disasters of the last couple of centuries, like the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, the 1871 Chicago fire, or the 1919 Boston molasses disaster? No recent disasters, please - reading about historical catastrophes is hard enough.