Have you ever read a book that features a family that makes you think “Hey, that’s kind of like my family”? I just had the pleasure of muttering that to myself as I turned the pages of this latest novel by Elise Juska. Now, The Blessings does not feature characters that resemble people in my…
Nigeria has been in the news quite a bit lately, for awful reasons, so reading a book that showed the lighter side of this controversial country was a welcome change from what I’ve been hearing these past few weeks. That’s not to say that Americanah is a light romp through the complicated territory of race,…
As many of my readers know, I have a soft spot in my heart for Wordfest, mainly because I worked there for five years and 100% support their festival’s mandate of bringing readers and writers together. So, not surprisingly when I received an invitation to the launch of their Book Rapport/Festival des mots program, I…
I’ve gotten into a terrible habit lately. I visit the Buzzfeed website quite often these days, and I frequently find myself clicking through their lists of whatever, marveling at the fact that whatever they come up with seems to be right up my alley. Literally, whatever they combine into some sort of list or tally,…
On Tuesday night, I joined a small but mighty crowd of book lovers in the upstairs of the Rose and Crown on 4th to hear this year’s shortlisted W.O. Mitchell Book Prize authors read from their nominated works. Those were: Glenn Dixon for Tripping the World Fantastic (Dundurn Press) Juleta Severson-Baker for Incarnate (Frontenac House)…
Yup, you read that right. Jessica Fletcher, my favourite heroine from my favourite television show Murder, She Wrote has written a book. If you follow the show, you will know that Miss Fletcher has written many books, but this is the first book of hers that I’ve actually read! Because Jessica Fletcher is a television…
I don’t typically dwell on book design on this blog, but I do want to state, for the record how much I enjoyed the cover of Nancy Lee’s novel The Age. Based on my comment above, you can probably tell that I’m grasping at straws a bit here. Not because I didn’t like The Age,…
Want to know how successful a writer is? Take a look at their website, that’s a clear indication of how many books he/she has sold. How can I make this bold statement? I’ll give you an example-take Roberta Rich, the author of The Harem Midwife, sequel to the popular Midwife of Venice released a few…
If I had taken science past the required grade 11 in high school, I’m pretty sure I would have failed it. And reading books like this, books that reference physics and other sciency-things of a similar nature remind me of this sad fact. Good thing I stuck to what I knew-English literature. If I had…
Oh hi there Alberta book lovers (and book lovers in general). Many of you may already be aware that the Alberta Literary Awards Shortlist was announced, but if you’re not, you can find the list of nominees here. There, now that you’re up to speed, you can decide whether to purchase your tickets or not….
The horror genre is a paradox for me. I love reading scary books and watching scary movies, but as soon as I close the book or turn off the television, I regret my actions immediately. I’m the kind of person that has an overactive imagination (I blame all the books I read) so whenever I’m…
A good friend of mine posted this on my facebook page this past weekend. If you read it first, the following few paragraphs will make a lot more sense. Now, there are so many aspects to facebook postings that are ripe for complaining about (see below). However, I think I’ve been lucky enough to surround…