Sunday 8 September 2024

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

Monday 2 September 2024

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

Sunday 25 August 2024

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

Friday 19 July 2024

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

Friday 5 July 2024

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

Sunday 2 June 2024

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

Sunday 12 May 2024

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

Sunday 28 April 2024

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

Monday 15 April 2024

Short post on a Spring-y Monday evening...

It’s late-ish on a Monday evening, but I wanted to get a quick post written before another week goes by.  I was reading Silver Birch contenders last week, which I can’t mention, but the week before, my book group discussed Katherina Vermette’s The Break, which I can talk about.

So The Break is the story of a young Indigenous teen who was raped after going to a party.  This incident was witnessed by another Indigenous woman who called the police but didn’t go out into the winter storm to check on the girl, choosing to stay inside to care for her two young children instead.  The two police officers who took her statement were not completely convinced that she really saw what she thought she saw, but the young Indigenous officer was more inclined to believe her and pursue the investigation, while the older white officer just wanted to close the case.  What follows is details of the official investigation and the response, processing and acceptance of this horrific event by the Indigenous community (mainly women).  Told from many varying points of view and including stories and memories spanning generations, this novel was heartbreaking and hopeful, horrific yet necessary.  My book club ladies found it so sad and difficult to read, but we all agreed that, while we knew about the stats regarding the increased likelihood of Indigenous women being sexually assaulted, we admitted that we didn’t really know much about it at all.  It’s the kind of book that needs to be written and read, but it was certainly not uplifting.  We found it confusing because there were so many characters who were all related, mothers and grandmothers, daughters and grand-daughters, and they were not always referred to by their proper names, so that, along with the fact that there were multiple points of view, made for a challenging story to follow.  I think that we had it all figured out by the end of our discussion, but we each had points that needed clarifying as well as each adding information that led to clarification for someone else.  It was a great book club selection, but I don’t think I’ll be reading the sequel, The Strangers, at least not any time soon.

And this weekend is the big CFUW’s book sale, Friday from 9am-9pm and Saturday from 9am-1pm:  https://www.cfuwkw.org/book-sale.  I’ve got the afternoon off work and am looking forward to leisurely browsing the aisles and checking out the thousands of books on offer.  

That’s all for tonight.  Have a great week!

Bye for now... Julie



Tuesday 2 April 2024

First post for April...

It’s Tuesday evening and I’ve had a busy day at work so I’m not really in the mood to write a post, but it’s been more than two weeks since my last post and I don’t  like to leave it too long.  So, since I spent last week reading Silver Birch contenders which I can’t tell you about, here is a very brief post about one book I finished two weekends ago. 

I finished reading Ruth Ozeki’s All Over Creation, and I have to say… WOW, it was all I was hoping for and so much more!  Unfortunately, I can’t even begin to describe the plot, so here’s a quick summary:  a young girl living on a potato farm in small town Idaho gets involved in a difficult relationship and runs away from home.  Twenty-five years later, she is called upon to return home because her father is dying, which she agrees to do, although she is filled with unresolved angst and does so reluctantly.  When she returns with her three children in tow, she is surprised to see that everything and nothing has changed.  Throw into this mix of nostalgia and recollected nightmares a trailer full of tree-hugging activists who are fighting the evils of big agribusiness and monoculture and you’ve got one heck of a story.  It is a story about biodiversity and the importance of saving seeds, about what it means to be family, about love and friendship, connection to the earth and each other, oh, and a lot about potato farming… I’m not kidding!  Despite that, this book was riveting from beginning to end, at times very funny and at others heart-wrenching and deeply moving.  I would highly recommend this book to just about anyone, and I think it’s going to be my Friends’ Book Club recommendation for our July meeting. 

That’s all for tonight.  Stay warm and pick up a good book!  

Bye for now... Julie

Sunday 17 March 2024

Notes on a bright chilly Sunday morning...

It’s sunny and chilly outside this morning, reminding us that it’s still winter, even though this past week has felt more like late-spring.  It’s perfect weather for drinking a hot cup of chai, then heading out for a brisk walk, which is exactly my plan for the day.  I don’t have a book to tell you about today, as I’ve been reading contenders for Silver Birch nomination, so this is not really a "post", more like notes on my reading plan for the next few days, as I'm trying to get back in the habit of posting on Sunday mornings. 

After a week of power-reading juvenile fiction, I decided to read something just for me, an adult book that will (hopefully!!) immediately suck me in.  I opened a few books from the library but they didn’t work out, then I pulled a few books off my shelf to try and found one that seems to be perfect.  I have very high hopes for All Over Creation by Canadian author Ruth Ozeki.  I’ve read and really, really enjoyed A Tale for the Time Being, but not really enjoyed The Book of Form and Emptiness, both later books by this author, but I think this earlier one will be engaging enough to bridge the gap between now and the next time I start on other juvenile novels.  I’ll tell you more about this next week. 

That’s all for today.  Enjoy the sunny day, but stay warm!  

Bye for now... Julie


Tuesday 12 March 2024

Post on a Tuesday evening...

It’s been a really busy couple of weeks, and the one thing that I’ve let slide to make room for other things is this blog.  So while I’m quite tired right now, I’ll take this cat-free opportunity to write about the books I’ve read over the past two weeks.  WOW, I just checked the list of books that I’ve read (yes, I still keep a paper copy of this list!) and see that I’ve got three books to tell you about.  These will be brief summaries and opinions, as I thought there were only two books. 

The first book was for my March Volunteer Book Club, and it was Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, a book about censorship to (hopefully) be read during Freedom to Read Week.  I’m sure most people know what this book is about, so I won’t summarize it at all.  What I will say is that I enjoyed most of it far more than I expected, and found it a quick yet thought-provoking read.  My book club members didn’t necessarily “enjoy” it, but they appreciated the writing and the message.  We agreed that we didn’t understand the role of “the war” in the book, and wondered why it was even included.  We felt that it was not hopeful at all, and marveled at how many things mentioned in the book were actually part of our reality today.  How did Bradbury know what was going to happen 60+ years ago?  I think it’s an important book, one that needs to be read to remind us of the perils of censorship and the need to protect our intellectual freedom, a right that is protected under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms but which faces challenges all the time.  I just wish now that I’d chosen a more uplifting book for April, but alas, we’re reading Katherena Vermette’s The Break, which I doubt very much is light or uplifting!! 

The next book I read was What We Buried, the latest book by Robert Rotenberg.  It arrived as a hold from the library and I dove right in and devoured it in a few days.  It features some of the same characters as his other books, but mainly focuses on Daniel Kennicott and his determination to finally investigate the murder of his brother Michael ten years earlier, which he believes is linked to the car accident that left his parents dead two years before that.  Daniel has put off going to Italy to the small town of Gubbio until now.  Michael was murdered the night before his own trip to Italy, and Daniel feels that the clues he needs to solve his murder lie in Gubbio, a town that saw Nazi occupation near the end of WWII.  Back in Toronto, Daniel’s mentor and boss, Ari Green, is conducting his own investigation into the accident that killed Daniel’s parents.  Were the two incidents connected?  And if so, how?  Delving into WWII history and blending fact and fiction, Rotenberg has broadened his scope and proven that he is more than just a crime writer of legal thrillers.  It was an excellent novel that provided details of the ruthlessness of the Nazi regime in even the smallest town in Italy, even as the Nazi defeat was imminent.  I would highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys legal thrillers or historical mysteries.  And even though it’s part of the “Old City Hall” series, this one can truly be read as a stand-alone with no background knowledge of any of the previous books.  As an aside, I happened to visit Rotenberg’s website and saw that he was coming to my local library for an author event two days after I finished the book, so of course I went.  And I have to say, he’s such a nice guy!!  He even offered to do a Zoom visit with my book club if we ever read another of his novels.  How awesome is that?! 

Then I read Verity by Colleen Hoover for my upcoming Friends Book Club meeting.  I’m not a Colleen Hoover fan, and had to struggle to get to the end of this book, an “unreliable narrator” sort of novel that has little-known writer Lowen Ashleigh being offered a job ghost-writing for best-selling author Verity Crawford who is unable to finish her series due to “medical issues”.  The offer is tempting, since Lowen’s mother just passed away, leaving her daughter in financial straits, and it doesn’t hurt that Verity's husband Jeremy is hot, hot, hot!  She ends up at the author’s house and tries her best not to get caught up in fantasizing about Jeremy while sifting through Verity’s chaotic office as Verity herself lies upstairs in a state of near-total immobility and speechlessness after a car accident that left her, well,  immobile and speechless.  Lowen stumbles upon a manuscript for an autobiography that she can’t resist reading, one that paints a very negative, very disturbing picture of Verity, and as unexpected events begin to occur, she faces the question of whether she should share this information with Jeremy or keep it to herself.  As things get stranger and stranger still, Lowen must act in order to save herself, Jeremy and Jeremy’s son before it’s too late.  I felt that this book was a bit of soft porn, right up there with 9 ½ Weeks and Fifty Shades of Grey (which I haven’t read).  There were entirely too many “intimate details” shared in this book, which was a surprise to me.  I also was not able to identify or connect with any of the characters, so it was challenging for me to stay engaged to the end.  But finish it I did, and am interested in hearing what the others have to say about it.   

That’s it for tonight.  Enjoy the unusually mild weather and enjoy the rest of the March Break!

Bye for now... Julie

Sunday 25 February 2024

Another Sunday afternoon post...

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last post, and I blame it on my cat’s neediness.  One of my cats is so emotionally needy that nearly every minute that I’m sitting in my reading chair, he wants to be lying on my lap, making it incredibly hard to write a post using just one hand (sometimes only two fingers!).  But he’s found another cozy spot to nap right now so I thought I’d take advantage of the ability to type with both hands and write a quick post before I start getting my supper ready.  

Two weeks ago I started reading Kelley Armstrong’s Murder at Haven’s Rock, the first in her new series that is a spin-off of the “Rockton” series.  This new series features most of the same characters as the original series, but with a few new characters thrown in.  Haven’s Rock, the new town imagined by and under the care of Sheriff Eric Dalton and Detective Casey Butler, is not quite open for business yet, but when Casey and Eric get a call from the project manager that two of her crew members have gone missing, they immediately fly in to help locate them.  When a body turns up, it’s just like Rockton all over again, dead bodies at every turn; it sort of reminds me of the small fictional British villages that always have such a high murder rate, except colder and more isolated!!  Anyway, while they are there to solve the case, they can’t help checking out the new town, this rare and unexpected sneak peek a real treat.  Haven’s Rock, named partly in honor of Rockton but with an emphasis on the “safe haven” part of the plan, is set in another remote location in the most northern part of the Yukon, but you won’t find this town on any map, either.  Strange, then, that so many individuals unconnected to the building of the town keep turning up in the wilderness for various reasons.  The plot and investigation is much like a middle-of-the-road “Rockton” novel, not her best, but not her worst (I don’t know if there IS a “worst”), but my guess is that the focus is really on setting the stage.  I definitely enjoyed it, and found it a real page-turner, although I found the plot to be a bit confusing at times in terms of the relationships between the new characters.  Still, the resolution made sense, but the real treat was the very ending, a plot twist I totally did not see coming.  And now the new book is out, so I’m planning to pick up a copy from my local bookstore soon.  Last week I read six juvenile fiction novels and graphic novels to make a start on the list of Silver Birch fiction (SB) contenders for next year, and this week I’m reading Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury for my book club meeting next Saturday, so I’m not really in a rush to get a copy, as I have no time to read it (I’ve got a stack of thirteen more SB books on the table waiting to be read right now!) 

That’s all for today.  Oh, and Happy (end-of) Freedom to Read Week!!  I thought it was next week, but it was actually this past week, so although it’s a week late, I would encourage you to pick up a banned or challenged book today!! 

Bye for now… Julie

Sunday 11 February 2024

Late afternoon post...

It’s late afternoon and I’m in that in-between stage of the day, where it’s definitely the end of the weekend, but it seems wrong to already be thinking about work… *sigh*...  That’s ok, as I have the upcoming long weekend to look forward to, and there are lots of exciting things happening at work this week, so it should be fun.

I read a fabulous book last week that I would highly recommend to anyone who likes satire or novels that mock traditional religions and also cults.  If this sounds like you, then maybe Tom Perotta’s The Leftovers would be a good choice for you.  In this novel, October 14 was the day that 2% of the world’s population disappeared.  Was it the Rapture?  Some believed that it was, but it made no sense, as “Hindus and Buddhists and muslims and Jews and atheists and animists and homosexuals and Exkimos and Mormons and Zoroastrians, whatever the heck they were - hadn’t accepted Jesus Christ as their personal saviour.  As far as anyone could tell, it was a random harvest, and one thing the Rapture couldn’t be was random.  The whole point was to separate the wheat from the chaff, to reward the true believers and put the rest of the world on notice.  An indiscriminate Rapture was no Rapture at all” (p. 3).  I love that passage and had to find a way to put it in this blog.  Anyway, all these people disappeared with no explanation, and three years after what the people of Mapleton, a small, typical US town, refer to as the Sudden Departure, family and friends are still trying to cope with the loss, the grief, the feelings of abandonment and hopelessness.  Some are trying to move on and lead what they consider “normal” lives, but their efforts are constantly hindered by a small cult group calling themselves the Guilty Remnants (GR), who dress all in white, take a vow of silence, smoke ceaselessly and take it upon themselves to follow these people and remind them of what they’ve lost - they will not let them forget.  Some others are so mired in guilt and loss that they have joined the Healing Hug Movement, led by spiritual leader Holy Wayne.  Still others join the Barefoot People, modern-day hippies who seek pleasure at every opportunity.  Mayor Kevin Garvey is a man who would love to move on, but his wife has joined the GR, his son the Healing Hug Movement, and his daughter Jill just seems to be coasting through life after years of academic and sports excellence.  What can Kevin do to help people move on, and how can he, too, actually move beyond his loss?  Kevin’s family members make up the central casting of this novel, but readers are treated to a myriad of community members who are all trying to cope in different ways and are at different stages of acceptance.  Never has a book exploring the different ways people grieve been so humourous  or managed to be both lighthearted and also insightful, at least in my experience.  Perotta certainly understands the human condition, and looks at the situation of loss and grief, and the ultimate experience of not knowing, from so many varied perspectives.  I borrowed the first season of the HBO series from the library, but I could barely watch it, as it was so angry and violent.  It seemed to miss the point of the novel completely, and while I didn’t think I was that invested in the book, I guess I am, as I had to turn it off.  Needless to say, I will not be watching the rest of it, but my husband, who hasn’t read the book, found it really interesting, so he may finish all three seasons.

And I hope to tell you about Kelley Armstrong’s Murder at Haven’s Rock next week.  I’m finally reading it, a year after it came out and just in time for the next book in the series, The Boy Who Cried Bear, to be published.  So far, it’s very good, like a “Rockton” novel, but not.

That’s all for today.  Have a good week, stay warm and keep reading! 

Bye for now... Julie

Sunday 28 January 2024

Short post, lots of books...

I’ve been quite sick since last weekend and have barely been able to read, let alone write a blog post.  Still, I’m a bit better today so I thought I should at least give you the titles and short summaries of the books I managed to finish over the past two weeks.  

I finished our book club book, The Change by Kirsten Miller, but was too ill to go to the meeting.  This book tells the story of three women living in a Long Island tourist community. Nessa, Harriett and Jo, each in the throes of menopause, discover that they have special gifts:  the ability to commune with and command nature, the ability to see the dead, and possession of superhuman strength/heat. When a body is discovered in the bushes near the beach, the police write the death off as a sex worker who OD’ed, end of investigation. But Nessa, Harriett and Jo know this is not true, and they come together to find the identity of the dead woman and discover who murdered her. They meet obstacles at every turn, but fight back with their special gifts and find creative ways to uncover the truth while also seeking revenge on the men who used them.  I’m glad I didn’t go to the meeting, because I didn’t enjoy this book at all, and I hate going to a meeting where someone has recommended a book and I didn’t like it.  How do you talk about that without offending the person?  Anyway, I don’t think I would recommend this book to anyone, but don’t listen to me, as it was fairly well reviewed.  

Then I read the book I purchased as a “Blind Date with a Book” at our Christkindl Market in December, which I’d planned to unwrap and read on Christmas Day but that didn’t happen.  Finding Lucy by Diane Findley tells the story of Alison, a middle-aged woman who, upon the death of her mother, decides to steal a child.  She selects a gravestone for two-year-old Lucy Brown as a starting point, and moves on from there until she has successfully “rescued” a young girl from a poor, neglectful home and made her over into her own “daughter”.  Of course she has to move and start over as “mother and daughter”, but she manages this fairly easily. As Lucy grows up, though, she wants to know more and more about her past, a past that, of course, is all fictional.  Alison has her own struggles, obviously, but at heart, she truly thinks she’s doing the right thing.  Unfortunately, she didn’t anticipate all of these various complications, and the complex lies she would be forced to tell and keep track of over the years.  This book explores the many repercussions of abducting a child, not just on the child’s real family and community, but on the child and the new “mother”, too. It was pretty good, although I found it lagged about two thirds of the way in, but then picked up again to deliver a satisfying conclusion.  I’m not sure if I would recommend it, although Alison’s character was very interesting.  I wondered, throughout the book, whether she was on the spectrum, which, I think, would explain a lot.  I found Lucy’s adult character to be less interesting than her voice when she was a child, and I would have liked to read a bit more about the story of Lucy’s real family, but overall, it was a decent book that I think readers would enjoy. 

And I finished listening to a fabulous audio book, Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid, narrated by Nicole Lewis.  I just learned that this is Reid’s debut novel, and wow, this is definitely an author to watch.  This novel, set in Philadelphia, opens with a late-night weekend call from privileged White mom Alix Chamberlain to her twenty-five-year-old Black babysitter Emira, begging her to come and take her three-year old out of the house for an hour, as there has been an incident and Alix doesn’t want Briar to see the police.  Emira is at a friend’s birthday party and is dressed for the occasion, but Alix says she doesn't care, she’ll pay double plus cab fare.  Emira needs the money, so she and her friend Zara go to the Chamberlain house and take Briar to the 24-hour grocery store down the street ("the Whitest grocery store in town"), where a customer alerts a security guard, who accuses Emira of kidnapping Briar.  This ends up being resolved and Emira doesn’t want to pursue it any further, but another customer, Kelley, records the whole thing on his phone and tries to convince Emira to go public.  The rest of the book follows the ways these three characters' lives intersect, their pasts and presents, and the underlying racial tensions that just won’t go away, no matter how often Alix and others may deny them.  This book had everything - plot, dialogue, atmosphere, characters.  It’s hard to believe that Reid packed so much into such a relatively short book.  And the narrator really brought the characters to life.  I think it’s one of the best books I’ve read or listened to in a very long time, and I would highly recommend it to just about anyone.  And I dare you not to fall in love with Briar - so cute!!

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

Bye for now... Julie

Sunday 14 January 2024

Post on a chilly, snowy morning...

We’ve had mild, snow-free weather up to this point in our coldest season, but I think we’ve caught up to our “snow quota” this weekend.  It’s been blowing and snowing since Friday evening, and I don’t think it’s going to stop until much later today.  Good thing I have a steaming cup of chai and a stack of good books to keep me busy!

I’ve always enjoyed books by British author Gilly MacMillan, such as Odd Child Out and I Know You Know, so I was quite excited to start reading The Nanny, which I had on my shelf.  When I started reading it, though, it seemed very, very familiar, and I wondered if I’d read it before or if it’s such a common plot that I read another book with the same storyline.  When I checked my blog posts, it looks like I started this book a few years ago but it didn’t grab me so I went on to something else.  This time I stuck with it, and it was ok, but paled in comparison to her other books, in my opinion.  This novel tells the story of Jocelyn/Jo, a middle-aged mother who, after the death of her husband and with no money and no family in the US, is forced to return home with her ten-year-old daughter Ruby to Lake Hall, her childhood home in a village outside of London, where her mother still resides.  She has never had any emotional attachment to her mother, believing her to be bitter and unfeeling, and has long been haunted by the disappearance of her beloved nanny, Hannah, during a dinner party when she was just a child.  Her own father died a few years earlier, so this move causes Jo’s compounded grief for the loss of both her father and her husband.  While she is having a tough time, Ruby seems to have formed a real connection with this grandmother she never knew.  When, during a boating excursion on the lake, Ruby discovers a skull, Jo begins to suspect that her past was not at all what it seemed.  Things become more complicated with the arrival of an unexpected visitor claiming to be Hannah, and what follows is a descent into Jo’s past where everything she believed is called into question, and she must discover who she can trust and what she can believe in order to save herself and those she loves before it’s too late.  This sounds like the kind of gothic tale I love to gobble up in a few sittings, and as I said before, it was ok, but not earth-shattering.  There were too many inconsistencies, and too many plot twists, and I found Jo to be a very frustrating character.  I think I enjoyed her other books because they are set in present-day, and maybe she doesn’t write gothic as well as regular mystery/thriller.  Anyway, if you are looking for a gothic mystery, this book may be a good choice, but I’ve definitely read better books in this genre.

That’s all for today.  Stay warm and pick up a good book!

Bye for now... Julie

Sunday 7 January 2024

Post on the last day of my holiday...

It’s chilly and snowy outside, which means it finally feels like winter.  I’m sad because I go back to work tomorrow and yet I still have so much I want to do.  *sigh* I’m not complaining, but I’m blaming my feelings of frustration on a book I was reading last weekend, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up:  the Japanese art of decluttering and organizing by Marie Kondo.  It all started with my desire to clear out and organize our “Alice in Wonderland” closet (a storage space under the eaves for which the door is only about 3 feet high - I need a bottle that says “shrink me” - or is it "drink me"? - to fit inside!).  While I was at my favourite used book store, I saw a copy of this book and thought it looked interesting, so I put it on hold at the library and started reading it after Christmas.  Well, it sucked me right in and next thing I know, I’m reorganizing my dresser drawers using a new and “better” way of folding so I can see everything, and my closets have also been weeded and reorganized.  Then I started on my bookcases… that’s another story altogether, but let’s just say that I never actually got to really, fully reorganizing and weeding the original storage closet, I just put everything back, but more neatly… I guess there’s always March Break! 

Anyway, my book club met yesterday for our first meeting of the new year to discuss The Queen’s Gambit by William Tevis.  As most people know from watching the recent Netflix series, this is the story of Beth Harmon, a girl who was orphaned at age eight when her parents died in a car crash, leaving her with nowhere to go, so she ended up at the Methuen Orphanage, where they gave all the children tranquilizers twice a day to regulate everyone’s moods.  While there, she stumbles upon Mr Shaibel, the custodian, who is playing chess.  Beth is fascinated by the game and is able to pick it up exceptionally quickly.  He agrees to teach her and they play regularly during Sunday mass, and Beth plays games in her head the rest of the week.  Fast-forward a few years, and she gets adopted by Mrs Wheatley (Mr Wheatley is hardly in the picture at all), at which time she begins to lead what we would call a “regular” life for a young girl.  But her fascination and true ability always lies in chess, and she begins to compete in tournaments, always winning despite having no formal training and playing against people who are much older than her.  This short coming-of-age novel follows Beth on her quest to compete in the World Championship in Russia, but I don’t want to give away any details and ruin the story, if you decide to read it.  Everyone loved it, and we all agreed that the Netflix adaptation did not stray from the original novel, which read almost like a screenplay, with not a word wasted.  We loved the intimate descriptions of the various characters, including Beth’s chess opponents, detailed descriptions of their clothes, shoes or physical attributes done briefly yet perfectly.  Despite the brevity of the book, Tevis was able to offer amazing character development, not just for Beth, but for other minor characters who don’t appear often, including Jolene, her friend from the orphanage.  We thought it was amazing that this middle-aged man could write so convincingly as an eight-year-old girl.  We discussed the relationship between Mr and Mrs Wheatley at length, as well as the possible reasons for the adoption.  We discussed the ending, which was excellent, the path that led Beth there, and what she might do next.  It was a great discussion, and while during my first reading I enjoyed it, now I want to read it again, keeping in mind some of the insightful points of our discussion.  Obviously I would highly recommend this book to just about anyone.  

That’s all for today.  Get outside and enjoy the day, but stay warm!

Bye for now... Julie
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