This is the second installment of my unsolicited advice column for authors, check out my first one here, which includes the reasons why I believe I’m qualified to give this advice. My rule this week may seem obvious to some, but I’m upset to discover that many new authors have fallen into this trap, so…
I recorded my last ‘summer’ book segment for the CBC this past week, so I wanted to focus on a popular genre that lots of people get excited about: the police procedural. Aside from mistakenly referring to the author+book title as the title of the first book (no, Michael Connelly doesn’t use his own name…
So I’ve done something a bit different with this Booktube review. I typically record 60 second(ish) book reviews, which is quite challenging. But because I was on vacation when I read these books, I let loose a little and extended my vlog to 4 minutes! (apologies to reading in bed for using the ‘vlog’ term-give…
I recently hosted the final day of my summer reads threesome book club, which SHOULD mean I’m about to take a little break from ‘book clubbing’. But I don’t believe in breaks because reading good books is a year-round activity for me so Wordfest and I are continuing the book club into the Fall and…
So the theme for my latest radio segment was ‘great titles’. Now some of you may assume I’m running out of ideas, and scraping the bottom of the barrel for themes to group books into, but I’m actually quite proud of this one because it’s something that we don’t normally talk about; the title of…
I read Rich People Problems by Kevin Kwan in a matter of days, racing through the 400-ish pages in the heart of cottage country, Muskoka. It was a fitting place to read a book titled ‘Rich People Problems’ considering that’s about all I encountered while there. Complaints I overheard at a restaurant included: “My boat isn’t…
I didn’t have huge expectations for this book before I picked it up. Beyond the Wild River by Sarah Maine is historical fiction with a small side of romance which as my dear readers will know, isn’t something I usually get excited about. The fact that it took place in the ‘wilds of Canada’ did…
Clearly I am some sort of masochist because I picked up Little Deaths by Emma Flint knowing it was a book based on the real-life murders of two small children. Did I think this was going to be an easy book to read? Of course not, yet I read it anyway because my curiosity was…
So I shot this video on vacation in a rental home, therefore the lighting is terrible and the sound is echo-ey. My bad. Oh, and Smokey isn’t with me, because my husband draws the line at taking our cats on vacation with us (sigh). I’m reviewing Terry Fallis’s latest book One Brother Shy, which I…
Oohhhh boy. I’m struggling with how I’m going to word this review because The Change Room by Karen Connelly is full of…sex. A lot of it. Not like, harlequin romance sex where almost every other page is full of sweaty bodies, but like, at least 5 fairly descriptive sex scenes: some between a man and…
My latest segment for the CBC focused on memoirs, two in particular. You can listen to it here. Bleaker House by Nell Stevens (which Smokey has read and adored) and You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie. After listening to the recording just now, I’ve realized how depressing these two books…
As I’ve mentioned perhaps once or twice before, I’ve got my own book club. And this book club is the best book club in the world, with the best people organizing it, and the best people taking part in the discussions. Last week we had our second meeting where we discussed The Substitute by Nicole…
