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 […]

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.  […]

by Ali SmithAli Smith’s How to Be Both is not an easy read, but it is a clever and engaging one. Split into two separate sections, one set in the Renaissance and one set in the modern era, the stream-of-consciousness style of writing can make it a challenge to grasp the two separate stories and […]

Secret Daughter   Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda interweaves the stories of Kavita and Somer, two mothers connected by one daughter.  When Somer, in America, realizes she cannot have a child of her own, she and her husband, Krishnan, decide to adopt. Kavita, having already lost one daughter in a country that favours boys, decides […]

by Joshua Ferris Healthy teeth are much more important to one’s overall constitution than I ever gave them credit for. It all ties in, as I learned from reading Joshua Ferris’ To Rise Again at a Decent Hour- not a dentistry textbook but an offbeat novel about a dentist who becomes the victim of an […]

Indian HorseBy Richard Wagamese Lately I have been fascinated by Canadian First Nations writers, and the writing of Richard Wagamese shimmers.  Indian Horse is the story of Saul Indian Horse, an Ojibway from northern Ontario.  His life is marred by the horrors of the residential schools, which systematically separated children from families and tore the […]

City of the Lostby Kelley Armstrong Murders, cannibals, and the gorgeous Canadian wilderness, Kelley Armstrong really knows the way to my heart.  I always get a little giddy when Armstrong releases a new book because I know that more often than not, I would like if not love whatever she writes. I really liked City of the […]

Murder in the mystery suiteBy Ellery AdamsI picked up this book on the recommendation of a friend. She told me that I would love the setting of this mystery novel. Well she was more than right! Set in the countryside near a quaint town is the hotel of every library employees dreams. The resort hotel […]

by Randall Munroe Sometimes we find things in the world that are hard to understand, especially things that are very hard to build or that are made of lots of little parts.  This book by Randall Munroe called Thing Explainerhelps make these hard things easier to get.  What makes this book (and this group of […]

by Patrick deWitt Patrick deWitt’s Undermajordomo Minor is a strange book. But wait, don’t put it away- it’s the good kind of strange, the type that makes you marvel at deWitt’s imagination while attempting to make sense of the world into which he’s dropped you. The titular undermajordomo (the assistant to the assistant) is Lucy […]