By Mary Roach While there are plenty of books that cover the political and human impacts of war, we rarely see and examination of more unusual aspects of maintaining a military force. Grunt by Mary Roach isn’t about new guns and tanks, drones and missiles. This is the kind of stuff that most people don’t […]
The Wild Robot By Peter Brown Can a robot survive in the wilderness? Robot Roz must do exactly that when she discovers that she has washed up on the shore of a remote island. Although Roz has been programmed to know many things, she does not know how to survive in the outdoors. But Roz, […]
Boundless By Kathleen Winter When Kathleen Winter is offered a chance to journey through the relatively unknown waters of the Northwest Passage, she responds truthfully, “My bags are already packed.” As a writer, Winter is always ready to embark on a journey and she’s fascinated by the mysteries of the Arctic. In her memoir, Boundless, […]
Space CaseBy Stuart Gibbs Dashiell Gibson is only 12 years old, but he has the privilege of being one of the first people to live on the moon. Although that sounds exciting, life on the moon can be pretty boring. Seeing the same people and doing the same things every day can get tedious. And […]
The Paris Wife Paula McLain The Paris Wife by Paula McLain, is a lilting story of the life of Ernest Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley Richardson. Written from Hadley’s perspective, we get an inside look to what it was like to be a woman in the 1920’s married to a chauvinistic, self-obsessed man who […]
The Kill by Jane Casey I read a lot of mysteries, but surprisingly I have not read anything by Jane Casey before. I’m not sure how I missed her over the years, but I am really glad I stumbled upon her books. The Kill is the fifth book in Jane Casey’s fantastic Maeve Kerrigan’s series. […]
A Darker Shade of Magic by Victoria SchwabJust when I thought that there was nothing new under the sun, I stumbled upon “A Darker Shade of Magic” by Victoria Schwab. At first glance, this fantasy has many elements that might be familiar to readers of the genre: invented languages, magic, a large cast of characters, […]
BirdieBy Tracey Lindberg Everything I read about Tracey Lindberg’s Birdie told me to expect humour. So naturally, I thought I’d be reading a fairly lighthearted novel. Not so. In fact, Birdie was not what I expected at all. Birdie, or Bernice Meetoos, is a young Cree woman from Loon Lake, Alberta. Raised by her mother […]
The Great Paper CaperBy Oliver Jeffers Trees, branches and sticks are mysteriously disappearing. The forest animals are confused and at first, accuse each other. An investigation is launched. The animals follow the paper trail to a house in the woods where, to their dismay, they discover Bear and his wood chipper. What is going on […]
by Steve Olson I was just a baby when Mount St. Helens blew up. I remember my parents telling me about the ash fall, but I always wondered how that could be: the mountain is 500 km away. After reading Eruption: the Untold Story of Mount St. Helens by Steve Olson, now I get it. […]