Unexpected Saturday-morning post...

It’s a sunny, chilly Saturday morning, and we’re going to be heading out to the local farmers market soon, but I just finished a book last night that I wanted to tell you about before I started a new book and the impact of this one begins to lose its gravity. 

Last week I read The Drowned by award-winning Irish author John Banville.  This novel opens with a reclusive man, Denton Wymes, returning to his caravan after a day of fishing and coming upon an abandoned car in the middle of a field.  He knows he shouldn’t get involved, but against his better judgement, he heads towards the vehicle.  As he is about to leave, a man runs towards him claiming that his wife has drowned in the sea, or maybe she hasn’t drowned, but she’s missing.  Trying to extricate himself from the situation, Wymes indicates the big house up the lane, but this man wants Wymes to accompany him.  What follows is the search for this missing woman by DI Strafford, along with Detective Crowley, a man well past retirement and a nasty piece of work, as well as a whole cast of unique and interesting characters.  I was intrigued by this book, as I associate Banville with Booker-Prize-winning literary fiction, and this plot seemed to focus on the search for a missing woman, so more mystery, less literari-ness.  But I was surprised to learn that this literary master is also the author of a whole series of mysteries featuring Strafford and his pathologist colleague, Dr Quirke, written under the pseudonym Benjamin Black.  It appears that Banville has revealed his true identity and brought together his two halves, first in The Lock-Up, and now in The Drowned.  It was a literary tour de force, managing to successfully blend these two genres together, keeping this reader on the edge of my seat and making time to read more because I wanted to know what happens next, yet imbuing every word with significance. This novel was a deep-dive into the darker side of human nature and motivation, and an exploration into the human condition.  It was not an uplifting book in any way, but the glimmer of hope at the end, while faint, somehow took the edge off my initial feeling of despair. I’m now intrigued to read the Benjamin Black books, and have made a list so I can try to find them at the used book stores and read them in order.  I’m always excited to discover a new mystery series, and if The Drowned is anything to go by, this one will not disappoint. 

That’s all for today.  Stay warm and keep reading!

Bye for now... Julie

Super-quick post on a Tuesday evening…

It’s 8pm on a Tuesday, a school night for me, but I have about five minutes to write a post about the book my Volunteer Book Club discussed on the weekend, The Library of Lost and Found by Phaedra Patrick.  All but one member was able to make it, and, while not everyone loved the book, everyone seemed to enjoy it.  This novel tells the story of Martha, a woman approaching middle age, who volunteers at a small public library in her small English seaside town.  Martha takes on all kinds of tasks for others, never considering doing something for herself… until one day a mysterious book turns up for her at the library with a cryptic dedication.  What follows is her search for the truth behind this book, uncovering shocking family secrets, making friends in the most unusual places and discovering who she really is along the way.  This is not an original idea (these types of books seem to always involve a used bookstore or library!), but it was an easy read, just the kind of “feel-good” book we all needed as we come to the close of another year.  It actually had the perfect ending, Christmas and a book group meeting, which was a pleasant surprise.  We mostly all felt sorry for Martha, but understood how a life can slip away one day at a time until decades have passed and you look back on a life unfulfilled, particularly in a small town.  We discussed Martha’s grandmother, her parents, and her relationship with her sister.  We discussed the eccentric used bookstore owner Owen (they’re always eccentric!!), as well as the enigmatic Siegfried.  One thing we noted was that there were almost more things to discuss that were left out of the book than things that were actually mentioned and written about. All in all, it was a great discussion, and I would recommend this for any book group looking for an uplifting, feel-good novel.

That’s all for tonight.  Stay dry and keep reading!

Bye for now... Julie

A very short post...

I’ve got a killer headache tonight but wanted to get this written before my book club meeting tomorrow night.  I finished reading our book choice today, Alice Feeney’s Rock, Paper, Scissors, and I have to say that I didn’t really enjoy it.  I won’t bother giving a summary, but I’ve read or listened to a couple of her books in the past, I think Daisy Darker and Sometimes I Lie, and I think I enjoyed them more than this one, but I don’t really recall any details.  Anyway, I found this book to be repetitive and totally unrealistic, even by “unreliable narrator” standards.  I would not recommend it.  I wonder what the others will say. But since there were “word of the year” headings for some of the chapters, I at least learned a couple new words:  Metanoia, literally changing one's mind, means a change in one’s way of life as the result of penance or spiritual conversion; and schadenfreude, a term I’m familiar with but never quite knew the proper meaning, is the the emotional experience of pleasure at another’s misfortune. 

That’s all for tonight.  Stay warm and keep reading!!

Bye for now... Julie

Amazing book, but short on time...

It’s Monday evening and I’m tired from a long week (book fair last week) and a busy weekend, but I just finished a fabulous book that I wanted to tell you about before I forget too much about it.  I just finished Claire Messud’s latest novel, This Strange Eventful History, which was brilliant.  This novel, loosely based on Messud’s own history, follows the Cassar family over three generations and across several continents. From 1927 to 2010, this strange, nomadic family seem never to find a place to call home, but whose members keep wandering, relocating and searching for happiness and a place to belong.  I can’t really tell you much more about the plot than this, but the themes that are dealt with are ones of family, relationships, what “home” means, and what it means to belong somewhere. She also explores the power of words, and I found L.J. Austin's concept of "performative utterances" (the idea that saying something makes it so), as well as the notion of anti-performatives (if I din't say it, it's not real) fascinating.  Messud’s use of language is brilliant and every character is riveting.  I don’t usually enjoy novels that portray family histories, particularly ones that are multi-generational, but this one was gripping from the opening page to the final paragraph.  I would highly recommend this literary novel if you’re in the mood for a gripping story that has you wanting to race ahead to find out where the story will lead while simultaneously wanting to read slowly, to savour each word and phrase.

That's all for tonight. Stay warm and keep reading!

Bye for now... Julie

Short post on a dreary evening...

It’s been busy this past week, and this weekend was also super-busy, as we went to see the musical “Something Rotten” in Stratford yesterday - it was excellent!  I would highly recommend it to anyone, so if you get a chance to see it, don’t pass it up!!  These past few weeks I’ve been finishing books in the middle of the week, which kind of throws me off-schedule. 

Last week I finished reading Liane Moriarty’s latest novel, Here One Moment.  If you could know your age of death and cause of death, what would you do?  Would you want to know?  And if you knew, would it change the way you lived your life?  These are just some of the questions that this novel asks readers to ponder as we’re plunged into what appears to be an elderly clairvoyant delivering age of death and cause of death proclamations to passengers on a short flight from Hobart to Sydney, held hostage in their seats as the plane is mid-flight.  Some of the passengers who receive this news are middle-aged workaholic Leo, newlywed bride Eve, eighteen-year-old Kayla, and twenty-eight-year-old flight attendant Allegra.  Initially these are not taken too seriously (but a little bit seriously), until first one death occurs at the time and in the same manner as predicted, then two more follow.  Suddenly everyone is doing their best to avoid death by the causes predicted by the "Death Lady".  But as we follow the passengers into their futures, we delve into the deep and detailed past of Cherry Lockwood, the “Death Lady” herself, and discover what has occurred in her life that would lead her to be on this flight.  I don’t want to give too much away, but it was an excellent read, and in true Moriarty fashion, the conclusion looks very different from what we are led to assume at the beginning.  We get stories from many different points of view, so also in typical Moriarty fashion, it may seem a bit confusing at first, but soon you’ll know who everyone is and also what their prediction is.  I would highly recommend this to anyone, whether you’re already a fan or new to this bestselling Australian author’s books.  I guarantee you won’t be disappointed! 

That’s all for tonight.  Have a good week and keep reading!

Bye for now... Julie

First post for November...

It's hard to believe, since we’ve had such mild, late-September-like days, but this is, in fact, the beginning of the first full week in November, for many a difficult month due to shorter days and more dreary, drab weather.  We’ve actually had lots of sunny, clear days, so hopefully that’s helping some people who usually suffer at this time of year.  I like November, with generally crisp, chilly days, bare tree branches and brisk winds.  Strangely enough, I still have my sandals out, as it’s going to be 22 degrees one day next week!  Anyway, it’s a “long” weekend, with the extra hour due to the time-change, so I finally feel like I'm “ahead of the game”. 

Yesterday my Volunteer book group met to discuss Laura Dave’s bestseller, The Last Thing He Told Me, which prompted great discussion, even though most of us thought the book was just OK.  This novel tells the story of Hannah, a wood sculptor who is left to cope with her sixteen-year-old step-daughter Bailey after her husband Owen disappears following the announcement that the tech company he works for is under investigation for fraud.  Hannah has no idea where Owen is or how to connect with the reluctant, distant Bailey, but she manages to piece together clues that lead her to Austin, Texas, where she believes she will find the truth.  What she discovers, however, is not what she expected, and she must find a way to go forward and do the right thing for not only herself, but for Bailey and Owen.  This novel was not perfect, but we all agreed that it was a page-turner that kept us reading (or listening) to find out what would happen next.  It had many moments that made us go “What??”, moments that forced us to suspend our sense of disbelief, but we all finished it and had many things to discuss.  We talked about Hannah’s choices at the beginning and at the end of the book, and how she determined what to do based on little information.  We discussed her relationship with Bailey, and how difficult the discoveries at the end of the book would have been for her.  We talked about whether Hannah told Bailey about her choices or whether she as the adult just made the choice for both of them.  Mostly we discussed the ending, the improbability of it, how confusing it was, how Dave left many questions unanswered, and how difficult it would have been for Hannah to live her life after making the choices she made for everyone involved.  We also discussed the writing, which we felt was fairly simplistic, so this was not a book you would choose to read if you were looking for a literary mystery. Overall, while we didn’t love the book, it was a great discussion and so I would say that if you’re booking for a mystery/thriller, this would not be a bad choice. 

That’s all for today!  Get outside and enjoy the sunshine!

Bye for now... Julie

Last post for October...

It’s late afternoon (well, really it’s early evening) and it’s been a busy, productive, tiring weekend.  I wish I had more time to discuss the book I read last week, because it was amazing, but alas, I’m tired and hungry so this will be another quick post. 

Last week I flew through The Sequel by Jean Hanff Korelitz, which was, you got it, a sequel to her previous bestselling literary thriller, The Plot.  Here’s what I posted when I first read The Plot:   

“I also read a page-turner last week, The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz.  Jacob (Jake) Finch Bonner is a middle-aged writer with one successful novel to his name.  After failing to produce anything else of worth, he’s been reduced to teaching a Creative Writing workshop in a low-residency MFA program in the less-than-noteworthy Ripley College.  Trudging through his third year of this workshop he meets Evan Parker/Parker Evan, an arrogant, over-confident student who is convinced he needs nothing from this program because he is going to write a bestselling novel with the kind of plot that will make him famous:  everyone will be reading it; Oprah will want to interview him; book clubs will discuss it; it will be optioned for a film with an A-list director.  He is very private about his writing, but one day during a one-on-one session, he reveals his plot to Jake, who is shocked into finally believing that Parker may indeed have the makings of a bestseller.  The workshop ends, and three years later, Jake is working at a hotel that has been repurposed as a writers’ retreat, still with no new work worthy of publication.  He is reminded of Parker one day by a brash, cocky resident, and he goes online to find out if this amazing book was ever written.  What he finds instead is that Parker died shortly after his time at Ripley.  Jake ponders this new information, and wonders (briefly) what to do now that he alone is in possession of this amazing plot.  Well, write the book, of course!  After all, as any writer knows, stories are meant to be told, even if they belong to someone else.  Fast-forward another three years, and Crib is published to great acclaim.  Everyone is reading it, it is optioned for a film being directed by someone who could certainly be classified as “A-list”, he’s met a wonderful woman, and life is good… until he receives that first message accusing him of being a thief, and his life begins to spiral out of control.  I would love to tell you more, but that would spoil the fun.  I wish I knew someone else who has read this book, as the plot was so complex and detailed, with so many twists and turns, that it would make for a really interesting discussion.  Alas, I will settle for telling you that it was a roller-coaster read that kept me wishing for more free time.  According to the “Kirkus” review, this isn’t even Korelitz’ best book, so I will definitely seek out her other books.  I will agree with most reviews that it was easy to guess in which direction the novel was going well before it was revealed, but I was still shocked by the "BIG" reveal.  It began as a study of the writing process and the struggles writers go through to put together a new book, a great example of metafiction, but from the point where he receives his first threatening message, it becomes a mystery-thriller that, while very compelling, somehow felt a bit flat.  Having said that, it was totally worth the time spent to read it, if only because it has introduced me to a writer I'd never read before, which is much like opening a door I’d never realized was there!”  

I don’t want to give anything away in case you haven’t read The Plot, so I’ll just say that The Sequel takes up where the previous book left off, and answers all the questions I felt were left unanswered at the end of the first novel.  But it’s the way that this book answered these questions, the narrative taking us on a twisting turning road through the recent and not-so-recent past of the characters to reveal even more family secrets, hidden agendas and nefarious deeds (I just wanted to use that word!) of these characters, that makes it  one helluva roller-coaster ride that brought this reader to a most satisfying-I was hooked to the very last page.  And I mean the actual last page, which held a surprise of its own.  I now want to read Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley!  If you haven’t read either of these novels, I would encourage you to place a library hold on The Plot asap, and when you’re finished, request a copy of The Sequel (which was every bit as wickedly good as the first book!). 

That's all for today.  Happy Hallowe’en!!

Bye for now... Julie

Short post on a lovely fall afternoon...

It’s late afternoon, and the light is golden as it shines through the leaves, leaving shimmering dappled shadows on the carpet.  It’s been so mild and sunny this past week, perfect weather for late summer/early fall. 

I have two books to tell you about today, but if it turns out to be brief summaries of each, just blame it on the lovely weather!  I finished reading Ruth Ware’s novel, One Perfect Couple, about five couples who are chosen to participate in a new reality tv show, “One Perfect Couple”, set on a remote desert island.  Each couple has one partner who is participating in the hopes that this will launch their acting/modelling career or provide their 15 minutes of fame.  But all is not what it seems, and when they are stranded on the island after a severe storm with few supplies and no way off, things start to unravel quickly.  It was much like William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, with one participant taking control and the others trying to alternately stand up to them and just survive.  It was pretty good, quite a page-turner, but I really resented Ware’s blatant plug for one of her earlier novels right in the midst of this one, which I found kind of shameful.  But it was an interesting ending, and I was intrigued enough to wade through all the excess (there was plenty of padding in this book) to get to the end and find out the truth.  It’s not her best book, in my opinion, but it’s certainly not her worst, and I’m being pretty objective, since I don’t even like reality shows! 

Then I read a YA book that one of my former students, now helping out at the school and in my library to get his volunteering hours, is reading for one of his English classes.  The Things She’s Seen by Ambelin and Ezekiel Kwaymullina is told mainly from the point of view of Beth Teller, a teen who died in a car accident but still hangs out with her father, a police detective, who can see and hear her.  He’s not been able to get over her death, and with her mother dead for many years already, he seems to have no one to go to with his grief.  When he is recruited to help investigate a routine inquiry into a fire at a children’s home in a small town, he undertakes this task with little enthusiasm.  But all is not what it seems, and when he goes to interview a witness, a girl who supposedly ran away from rehab, things become more complicated and dire, and Beth’s father must do everything he can to uncover the truth about the home and the children living there, as well as the adults who ran it, before there are more deaths and coverups.  This was a quick but intense read, dealing with the horrors of colonization in Australia and the generational harm suffered by the Aboriginal people at the hands of the violent, power whites.  I would never have read this on my own, but it was an excellent book by this brother-sister writing team.  

That’s all for today.  There’s still time to get outside and enjoy the lovely evening!  Take care and keep reading!

Bye for now... Julie

No post today...

I'm not posting today as I'm not finished reading Ruth Ware's latest thriller, One Perfect Couple, about five couples who are chosen to be contestants on a new Reality TV show on a desert island, where all is not what it seems and unfortunately, not everyone will leave the island alive.

More info next week...

Bye for now...
Julie

October evening post...

It’s late afternoon/early evening on this first Sunday of October, and it was a beautiful, warm-ish sunny day that is turning into a twilight filled with golden sunlight and the rippling shadows of the leaves in the breeze.  We’ve been so fortunate with our weather here in Waterloo Region so far, particularly if you consider other areas in Canada, the US and around the world.  But I feel like this weekend most likely marks the end of the real “summer-like” weather we’ve had, what I consider “shorts and t-shirts” weather.  That’s fine, as I’ve been ready for fall for a few weeks now and can’t wait for the cooler days and chilly evenings. 

My Volunteer book club met yesterday to discuss Robertson Davies’ classic, Fifth Business, the first book in “The Deptford Trilogy”, and it was a huge success!  We’ve actually read it in this book club before, in June 2014, but since most of my members joined post-2014, it was new for nearly everyone, at least as a book club selection.  Several people have read it before on their own, and one member was with me in 2014, but it was still an excellent book to discuss.  This book begins on a snowy evening in 1908 in the small fictional town of Deptford, when our narrator, nearly-twelve-year old Dunstable Ramsay, is engaging in a snowball fight with his friend/enemy Percy Boyd Staunton.  While he is racing home for dinner, in order to dodge the last snowball thrown by Percy, Dunstable darts in front of the figure of the heavily pregnant wife of the Baptist parson, Mary Dempster, who is hit, falls to the ground and is helped home by her husband, only to later go into premature labour and give birth the their son Paul, who is in need of special care round-the-clock to keep him alive.  Mrs Ramsay, a firm Scots woman, steps in and takes charge of the little one and helps Mary recover as well, although she never really does recover fully and is considered “simple” by the ladies in the town from this point forward.  Dunstable feels tremendous guilt for this, because, although he didn’t actually throw the snowball, if he hadn’t stepped in front of Mrs Dempster, she would never have been hit.  He thus takes it upon himself to care for her throughout his life inasmuch as he is able, while Percy and Paul remove themselves from Deptford altogether.  All three, Dunstable, Paul and Percy, are “twice born” (you’ll have to read the book to find out what that means), and their lives crisscross and intersect at sometimes interesting, sometimes highly unusual moments, until the final satisfying conclusion to this wondrous, psychological, mythical, spiritual, saintly, literary mystery… except that there’s more to explore in the other two books in the trilogy, The Manticore and World of Wonders.  Everyone loved it.  They loved the language and the characters, and they loved following these characters in their individual development as well and their ever-changing relationships with one another throughout the story.  Even the secondary characters, such as Leola and Ignacios Blazon and Diana, were fascinating, and we could have discussed for a whole afternoon and still not finished with everything there is to be said and discussed about this book.  We loved the deviousness and manipulative nature of the characters, and talked about the ways in which they recreated their histories to suit their purposes.  One member who listened to this as an audiobook said that at first she thought, "oh no, it's such a slow story", but ended up deciding that, while it was in fact a slow story, it was a good story. Several members said they wanted to read the other books in the trilogy, and I recommended that they do so.  In fact, I would highly recommend any of the books in “The Salterton Trilogy”, “The Deptford Trilogy” and maybe even “The Cornish Trilogy”, although my recollection of that one is not as strong as the other two.  If you have never read anything by this Canadian literary icon, you should run, not walk, to your nearest library to check out a copy of Fifth Business today! 

That’s all for now.  Take care and read on!

Bye for now... Julie

Super-quick post for a Satrday night...

I haven’t posted in a while, but it’s been very busy and there’s been no time.  It’s nearly 9pm on a Saturday night and I’m just finishing off a cup of homemade butternut squash soup as my very late supper, but I wanted to get this written before I got too busy tomorrow and ran out of time.  I’ve read and listened to a few books since my last post. 

The first is an audiobook that I finished, Chris Hadfield’s The Apollo Murders.  Set in the mid-1970s, this book explores the Apollo 18 Mission to the moon, which was supposed to be an exploratory mission. But this mission is plagued with unexpected, sometimes deadly, occurrences. When Russian activity is detected, the agenda changes and the astronauts are expected to follow the new directives.  Before they even leave earth, a tragedy strikes and plans must again change, and once they reach the first destination of their journey, there is yet another unexpected development and the astronauts must work to stay on top of these events and complete as much of their mission as possible while keeping the crew safe from outer space… and each other.  This was a real page-turner, a plot-driven book that also contained a lot of scientific and astronomy facts, a “Canadian Tire” book with a scientific twist! 

The next book I want to tell you about is one that I received as a Christmas gift more than a year ago, but never found time to read until a couple of weeks ago.  Set in the US in the near future, The Future by Naomi Alderman asks the question:  what would you do if you knew the world was going to end and you had access to a “golden ticket”, a way to save yourself, but you can’t bring anyone with you and you can’t choose the company you’ll keep?  This post-apocalyptic novel explores what three high-tech giants are planning to do when they receive notification that the end of the world is likely to occur very soon.  There’s also a few wild cards in the mix, the loyal PA of one tech giant and a reporter who appears to be the target of someone out to get her for some undefined reason.  This was also a roller-coaster ride of a novel, a bleak look at what could happen to our world if we don’t do something drastic right now that was incredibly dismal, but very well-written, with an ending that made the read worthwhile even though I wanted to cry while reading about some of these very grim yet very real scenarios. 

And I just finished reading a new standalone novel by Kelley Armstrong (written under the pseudonym K L Armstrong) which was also a page-turner.  Known to the Victim is told from the point of view of Amy Gibson, a woman in her mid-twenties who is working on her PhD while recording sessions for her moderately successful podcast “Known to the Victim”, which explores murders committed against women by their partners.  She knows more than most about this subject, as her mother was murdered by a man she was dating nearly a decade earlier.  Amy managed to get through that experience with the help of her half-brother Oliver, but when someone at one of her appearances suggests that he is not as wonderful as he may seem, Amy can’t bury her head in the sand and ignore it.  While digging into Oliver’s past, events spiral out of control and Amy must search for the truth while keeping herself and those she cares about safe, a task made more difficult when she’s not sure who she can trust.  This was an excellent book, with the voice and character of Amy very much resembling Casey Duncan in the “Rockton” series.  I wanted to keep reading until I reached a satisfying conclusion.  Will this be the beginning of a new series for her?  Is there a new “Haven’s Rock” book on the horizon?  Whatever is coming next, I’m sure it’ll be amazing. 

That’s all for tonight.  Sorry for the brief descriptions and commentary for each book, but I’m feeling very tired and my eyes are threatening to close.  Happy Fall!!  The perfect season to pick up a good book!

Bye for now... Julie

Prisoners of the Castle post...

It’s Sunday evening, and I finally have a chance to tell you about the book I finished this weekend.  My book club met yesterday to discuss Prisoners of the Castle by Ben Macintyre, and it was one of the best discussions we’ve ever had.  This book presents details of the prisoners who were held as POWs in the “elite” prison of Colditz Castle between 1940 and 1945, along with their many escape attempts, some successful, others decidedly not.  I’ve always enjoyed Macintyre’s books, which for me have mainly been stories of espionage, spies and double-agents, and at first, this one seemed to not much more than a catalogue of escape attempts, but as the book went on, the prisoners became real as we learned about them, their backgrounds, their many skills before and during their imprisonment, and their relationships and interactions with other prisoners and officials and guards.  These characters, too, became not just two-dimensional stereotypes of German prison officials and guards but real people who had difficult jobs to do during extremely difficult times.  There were eight of us at the meeting, probably the first time we’ve all been able to make it out to a meeting in… maybe a year or more.  We all loved the way that Macintyre was able to infuse so much humour into this anything-but-humourous story, and we were astounded at the way he could take so much information about so many people and historical events and mesh it all together to make one coherent story that flowed seamlessly into an unputdownable book that was both entertaining and educational.  We were beyond impressed with the ingenuity of the prisoners and the various schemes they came up with to try to escape.  We learned so much about this prison and these characters, these people who endured years there as both guards and prisoners, officials and orderlies.  One of my group members was reluctant to read this because she was a young girl in Holland during WWII and she worried that it much be too difficult to read, and others also expressed their initial reluctance to read it due to the seriousness of the topic, but they were all glad they read it, and some are planning to share their books with other family members and friends.  We also talked about some new words that we learned, "escapologist" (one who studies escape techniques) and deutschfeindlich ("German-unfriendly"). All in all, it was a most successful discussion, and I would highly recommend this or any other book by Ben Macintyre if you’re looking for a well-written non-fiction selection. 

Not finished the Chris Hadfield audiobook yet, but over halfway there, so maybe next week… 

That’s all for today.  Take care and keep reading! 

Bye for now…

Julie

A brief "no book" post...

I wanted to start the "new year" off right by posting, even though I don't have much to tell you.  It's Labour Day afternoon at 4pm, and while I've been back to work for a week already, and September has some lovely warm weather, this feels like truly the end of summer.  We did all the things this weekend that you do on the last long weekend of summer, like go to the beach, go to several farmers markets (where I discovered "black garlic"!  tastes sweet, and you can eat it raw right out of the bulb!), did yard work, hung all the beach laundry outside to dry, and took long walks.  What I did not do this weekend is read, but I'm going to do that right after I finish this short post.  Because I was back to work last week, and we have a new cat that is causing our existing cat to feel very territorial, and there was a rally to fight for farmland that I attended on Wednesday, and we went to a very strange movie last night, I'm not very far into the book club selection for Saturday, Prisoners of the Castle:  an epic story of survival and escape from Colditz by Ben MacIntyre.  I'll be able to tell you more about this book next week, as well as hopefully tell you about The Apollo Murders by Chris Hadfield, which I'm listening to right now.  

That's all for today.  Happy Back to School! and Happy September!  

Bye for now...
Julie

Quick post...

This will not be a very inspired post, since, although it’s been more than a month since I last posted, I’ve read very few books that I can actually tell you about.  I’ve spent most of the past month reading Silver Birch nominee contenders, which I have to keep secret until the nominee list is announced in mid-October.  But now that the selection lists are done, I’m free to read whatever I want until mid-January - WOO HOO!!!. 

I wanted to briefly tell you about two books that I read, one for my August book club meeting and one just for fun.  Simon Sort Of Says by local award-winning YA author (and astrophysicist!!) Erin Bow tells the story of how a boy who is the sole survivor of a random school shooting learns to overcome his PTSD after his family leaves Omaha to live in a small town that is part of the National Quiet Zone (no internet, no tv, no radio), a place where he can be Simon Now instead of Simon Then.  I’ve read this book a couple of times and it was so incredibly impressive both times.  Every word and phrase and humorous moment (there were many, if you can believe it!) were placed precisely where they should be and chosen to convey exactly what the author was trying to say.  I took a chance that my ladies would also enjoy this book, and they did!  And, as an added bonus, the author joined us via Google Meet from BC where she is house-sitting for a friend, and was willing to answer all our questions and listen to our comments.  She was quite happy to do this, too, I think, since she usually speaks to grades 6 and 7 students - this was her first seniors’ group!  It was awesome, and one of my members thanked the author for writing it and also thanked me for choosing it for our list, as she would never have read it otherwise, which made my day. 

The other book I read is also by a Canadian author, Susan Juby, who lives in BC and who has written mainly for a YA audience until recently.  I read Mindful of Murder last year and loved it, so I was thrilled to discover that there was a second book in the “Helen Thorpe” series, A Meditation on Murder.  Helen Thorpe is a former Buddhist nun, professional butler and reluctant amateur sleuth.  In her second mystery, she must learn if the deaths of several of her new client’s friends are connected, and if so, whether her client could be next.  I found this book unputdownable, and reached the final satisfying conclusion far too quickly.  I especially enjoy the way Juby drops in Buddhist teachings throughout the story, but not in a jarring way, just as a natural part of the story.  While I think I enjoyed the first book slightly more than this one, I would still highly recommend it, and I was thrilled to learn that there is to be a third book in this series - HURRAY!!  At that discovery, I identified my feelings as pleasant, pleasant. 

That’s all for today.  I hope to be back to my routine again by next week.  Until then, stay cool and keep reading!

Bye for now... Julie

Quick post on a perfect summer morning...

The birds are singing, the sun is shining, it’s not too hot or windy… I couldn’t have asked for a better summer morning!  I’ve got just a short time to write this post, as I’m going away this weekend and am heading to the airport in just over an hour, but I wanted to tell you about a real page-turner that I finished last night. 

After two weeks of reading, reading, reading Silver Birch books, I just needed to dive headlong into an adult book, preferably a mystery, so I headed to my shelves and found a book I don’t remember purchasing (maybe it was from the big CFUW book sale in April), The Woman Outside my Door, a debut novel by Irish author Rachel Ryan.  This novel tells the story of Georgina, Bren and their seven-year-old son Cody, an ordinary family living an uneventful life in Dublin until Cody comes home from the park one day with a lollipop.  When Georgina asks where he got it, he tells her that his “new granny” gave it to him, which shocks her because both Cody’s grandmothers are dead.  Bren explains this away by claiming that “new granny” is probably an imaginary friend that Cody made up to deal with the recent loss of Georgina’s mother, an explanation she reluctantly accepts.  But when strange things keep happening, Georgina’s suspicions grow, despite Bren’s rationalizations.  Is she right to suspect that something strange is going on, or is she just being paranoid?  And if Cody is in danger, will she be able to figure out what’s going on in time to save him?  This was an absolute page-turner, which I read in one day while waiting for the Rogers tech to come and set up our new system, as well as during the many, many, many hours I waited on hold with other Rogers customer service people as they tried to figure out a way to make it work, which was incredibly frustrating. But on the bright side, it provided lots and lots of reading time!  Once again, a good book cheered me up and saved the day from being a complete write-off!!  Anyway, if you’re looking for a good mystery/thriller that features an unreliable narrator, and if you’re planning to call Rogers (or Bell, or your bank, or Service Canada!), this might be a good choice for you!

Bye for now... Julie

It’s been a month since my last post, and that’s due to a combination of factors.  It’s been super-busy with the end of school prep, so more busy on the weekends and less time to read.  I’ve also been reading Silver Birch contenders, which I can’t write about.  I’ve been in a rut for adult books and audiobooks, too, so that was quite a frustrating waste of time.  But the main reason I haven’t posted is because of my cat, Riley, who comes and lays on my lap whenever I sit down.  Well, I can’t very well have him on my lap and type a post, can I?  I blame it all on Riley - he just got up to have something to eat, so I’ll have to make this a quick post! 

The first two weeks of June I spent reading Silver Birch books, then for the next two weeks I tried and failed to get into a few adult fiction titles from home and from the library.  I hate wasting valuable reading time, so on a Friday afternoon that I had off work, I wandered into my favourite used bookstore end ended up buying Less by Andrew Sean Greer, a light, comedic novel about Arthur Less, a failed American writer who, as his fiftieth birthday approaches, receives an invitation to his ex-boyfriend’s wedding.  Unable to decline but also refusing to attend, Less agrees to speak at all the various awards ceremonies he’s invited to and accepts the invitation to teach a creative writing course, all in various parts of the world, making him “unavailable" to attend the wedding.  These romps around the world, including Japan, Germany, Italy, Morocco and India, lead Less to personal discoveries as his birthday nears, arrives and passes.  This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel was not, as the cover boasts, “hilarious”, but it was light reading that still had enough substance to keep me reading until the last page.  There’s a sequel, Less is Lost, but I won’t be reading that - Less was good, but in this case, Less was also enough. 

And I just had a book club meeting this morning to discuss Michelle Good’s Governor General Award-winning novel and CBC Canada Reads winner, Five Little Indians. This novel follows five young people after their release from a residential school in BC in the 1960s until they are older adults several decades later.  Having been brutally ripped away and kept separated from their families, each of these children experienced physical, sexual and emotional abuse at the hands of the nuns and priest at their school.  In their mid- to late teens, they were then thrust into the world with nothing but a bus ticket to downtown Vancouver, no money, skills or experiences to help them get on with their lives.  Each young adult copes in a different way, from drinking and drugs to running away to lashing out, but they manage to maintain connections that (mostly) help see them through the worst times.  No one was looking forward to reading this, probably because the last book we read by an Indigenous writer, The Break by Katherena Vermette, was so difficult to read and so utterly depressing, so it was wonderful to hear that everyone loved it.  We all loved the characters, and while they all suffered trauma and developed coping strategies that may not have been the healthiest of choices, we felt for all of them and agreed that there was quite a lot of hope in this book.  It was definitely a great book club choice and I’d recommend it to anyone.

Oh, Riley's back so that’s all for today.  Happy Summer, everyone!  Stay cool and don’t forget to read!

Bye for now... Julie

Quick post on a rainy Sunday night...

It's raining and it's late so I've given myself five minutes to tell you about the books I've read over the past few weeks, both for book club meetings.

The Librarianist by Patrick De Witt was a mostly interesting book - I enjoyed the 75% that was more realistic fiction, but the 25% that veered off into the realm of the absurd was tedious enough that I won't recommend it to anyone.  This author is known for his absurd plots, but this one had me mostly fooled, which was a good thing, as it kept me reading and I experienced what a brilliant and talented wordsmith he is.  Too bad his stories are not for me.

And Spare by Prince Harry was the other book I read for my Volunteer group.  It was so long but soooo good!  Of course it was biased, but I have to believe that, since he's putting it out there, most of it must be true, at least as Harry experienced it.  It was so revealing, so detailed, so informative, and so well written!  We all agreed that we didn't think we'd like it but that it surprised us and far exceeded our expectations.  I hate memoirs, so this is high praise from me indeed!

That's all for now.  Happy June!!

Bye for now...
Julie

Post on a sunny Sunday morning...

It’s a perfect spring morning, a welcome change after yesterday’s rain.  Everything is green and blooming, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing… it doesn’t get much better than this. 

I promised that I’d let you know what my book club ladies thought of our last selection, Recipe for a Perfect Wife by Canadian author Karma Brown.  This novel, told in alternating chapters, tells the stories of two women who are both trying to make the best of their situations.  Alice is a 30-something woman who has recently moved with her husband Nate from an apartment in New York to an old, run-down house in a quiet town outside of NYC.  She is trying to determine who she is and struggles to figure out what she should do with her life now that she is no longer an up-and-coming editor.  She claims to want to write a book, and Nate initially seems supportive of this, but he also wants them to start a family and Alice is not sure she’s ready for that.  One day, while searching through some of the boxes in the basement left behind by the woman who lived there before and who died a year earlier, she discovers a box of old magazines and cookbooks from the 1950s and begins reading them.  This is the beginning of Alice’s immersion into the life and experiences of Nellie, the former owner of the house.  Nellie and Richard lived in this house in the 1950s, when societal expectations of what makes a perfect wife were very different from what they are today… or are they?  Nellie is expected to look good, cook well, entertain her husband’s friends, and basically be subservient to her husband, all with a welcoming smile and the right words, even if they are delivered through gritted teeth.  As her story progresses, Nellie’s situation is revealed to be more and more unbearable, until she is finally forced to act.  Alice tries on many of Nellie’s characteristics and immerses herself in 1950s’ culture, claiming that it’s research for her book, but her husband and best friend don’t necessarily buy this explanation.  While Nellie’s struggles are clear, Alice’s issues are less obvious, which may seem frustrating to some, but this also serves to remind us not only of how far we’ve come in the past 70 years, but how far we still need to go.  My ladies mostly enjoyed this book, saying that Nellie’s situation reminded them of their own mothers (the cooking, not the abuse!).  Two members did not really take to Alice, and I’d have to agree that she’s the more complicated of the two main characters, as her situation is more ambiguous.  We discussed the parallels of the two women’s lives, and everyone really liked the older women who ended up befriending them.  We thought the inclusion of recipes and quotes on how to be a good wife, all from the 1950s, were particularly effective in highlighting the changes over the past seven decades. Over all, it was a good book club selection, and led to a lively discussion about cooking, gardening, and women’s rights. 

And I read another book by a Canadian author, Glass Boys by Nicole Lundrigan, one of the books I bought at the big CFUW book sale.  This novel tells the story of two dysfunctional families living in a small village in Newfoundland.  Eli Fagan is an unsavoury man who despises his step-son Garrett.  One day he follows Garrett and discovers a secret so abhorrent he must destroy all evidence, including Garrett himself.  Lewis Trench is back in the village as the new police constable, and on this day, he is drinking and fooling around with his brother Roy.  When they stumble onto the Fagan farm and the scene with Eli and Garrett, Roy confronts Eli and is killed during a struggle.  Deemed an accident, Eli walks free and Lewis holds onto his anger for years.  The incidents that take place on this single day serve to alter the lives of both men and their families.  Can they eventually find a way to get past this, or will it end up destroying everything for both of them?  This book was a mostly-riveting family saga that delved into family secrets and explored various relationships through the lens of a small village.  I found it a bit long, with the story dragging a bit in the middle, but overall, it was interesting and kept me turning pages to reach a satisfying conclusion.  

That's all for today. Happy Mother's Day and Happy Spring!!

Bye for now... Julie

Not a "real" post for the last Sunday in April...

Between the big CFUW book sale last weekend, the Spring Pottery Sale this weekend, and weeding so many dandelions, there’s no time to write a post.  That’s ok, since I’ve mostly been reading Silver Birch books anyway.  I’m about halfway through rereading my book club book for next Saturday, Karma Brown’s Recipe for a Perfect Wife, which I listened to a while ago and loved, loved, loved.  I’m loving it in print, too, and will make time next weekend to tell you all about our discussion.  From the book sale, I restrained myself from attending on both Friday and Saturday, and was able to whittle down a full box full of books to just eleven:  

*All the Beautiful Lies Peter Swanson
*The Safe House  Nicci French
Borkmann’s Point  Håkan Nesser
An Unthinkable Thing and Glass Boys  Nicole Lundrigan
Autopsy of a Boring Wife  Marie-Renée Lavoie
Frida Barbara Mujica
*The Brooklyn Follies Paul Auster (one I haven’t read yet!)
The Ghost Bride  Yangsze Choo
Lying in Wait  Liz Nugent
*Coronation Year Jennifer Robson

* authors I’ve read before, but all of the above titles are new to me

That’s all for this afternoon.  Gotta get back to learning how to be a "perfect wife”!!

Bye for now…
Julie