This past week I talked about very Canadian books on the Homestretch for my book column, which you may have realized comes around a little more often in the summer. Canada Day had just happened a few days ago, and with the Canada 150 celebrations still fresh in everyone’s mind, I wanted to take advantage…
So now that my summer book club has successfully completed its first meeting, it’s time to turn our thoughts to our July meeting and book pick. In June we voted on what our next book would be; the choice was between Taylor Jenkins Reid’s The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Nicole Lundrigan’s The Substitute-the…
I’ve been jumping on a lot of bandwagons lately, most notably Bloglovin’ (which has been nothing short of a disaster) and Twitter, which is slowly but surely accepting me. And then a blogging bud of mine Laura Frey mentioned that all book bloggers are now booktubing (which I’ve gone ahead and just assumed means recording…
So I hosted my first book club at the new Wordfest digs, and it was a lot of fun. Over 30 people came out (!!!) and enjoyed treats by Terry Bakes, and Davids Tea. We had a rousing discussion and debate around Zoey Leigh Peterson’s debut novel Next Year, For Sure, which got everyone fired up for…
Paula Hawkins has released her second book! I’ve been anticipating this for awhile now because I did enjoy her hugely successful debut The Girl on the Train despite the fact the genre was weighing a bit on me at the time. But I was a bit concerned when I read the early reviews of this one,…
Once again Barbara J. Taylor has NAILED IT with her historical fiction. A few years ago I reviewed her first book Sing in the Morning, Cry At Night, which I really enjoyed reading. She has now released a sequel called All Waiting is Long, which is just as good, if not better.It continues with the…
Ah yes, the psychological thriller. They seem to bloom like dandelions in the summer, don’t they? One after the other, it’s hard to keep track of where they are coming from, and why are there so damn many of them? They’re definitely a trendy genre right now; with the popularity of Paula Hawkins, Gillian Flynn…
Aside from the fact that I’m using the word ‘saucy’ way too much these days, I think you’re really going to like my latest radio segment. A few highlights you can listen for: I make a crude joke near the beginning of the interview and the host laughs despite himself, I try to defend the…
I don’t get the chance to read a lot of Australian writers (not sure why that is…) so when I realized the book A Small Madness, which had been sitting on my shelf for almost a year, was written by an Aussie it spurred me to pick it up. It’s also sort of based on a…
I was recently discussing the trend of ‘books about alternative relationships’ with another bibliophile, and we both agreed that there is a real appetite for comic as well as literary explorations of this topic. I recently reviewed a book by Zoey Leigh Peterson that explores a couple attempting to have an open relationship; it was…
Do you live in Calgary? Have you always wanted to be a part of a book club, but felt that your friends weren’t ready to actually commit? Do you want to talk about books with treats readily available? Me too! That’s why I’ve started a summertime book club in partnership with Wordfest, to run from…
I’ve always wanted to be a book reviewer, but when I was younger I saw this as an unattainable goal, like being a celebrity or something. I thought to myself “who cares what I think about books? Just because I read a bunch of them doesn’t mean I’m in any position to give a critical…
