Up From Freedom by Wayne Grady is the next stop on my ‘can-lit’ tour, which I read in preparation for the Wordfest event I just hosted on Tuesday. I read his last book Emancipation Day in 2013, and in true Anne Logan style I can’t remember a thing about it because it was literally hundreds of…
When I finished reading the last page of this book I said ‘Awwwww’ out loud. This is a sweet little book, (although not THAT little, because it’s 300 pages long) and one I will recommend to all sorts of readers, young and old. How To Stop Time by Matt Haig is about a man named…
Alexander McCall Smith is just one of those guys-he’s super nice in person (yes, I’ve spent one-on-one time with him, and he wore a kilt!), he writes wonderful books, and he’s super prolific, even though he’s a millionaire and no longer needs to work. What’s not to love? The premise of this book didn’t even…
It’s strange timing that I read this book while pregnant, as The Home for Unwanted Girls by Joanna Goodman describes not one, not two, but three (!) different childbirth experiences. I raced through this book, and everytime I reached one of these scenes, I could feel my body tensing in anticipation (and let’s be honest,…
Whenever I personally know the author of a book I’m reviewing, I always like to state that outright. Rona Altrows and I are regular acquaintances in the Calgary literary scene, it’s a small industry here in cowtown so we inevitably run into each other at various events. And as I mentioned before, to keep my…
So I’ve never really watched the television show Murdoch Mysteries, but of course being Canadian and a long-time devotee of the CBC I had certainly heard about it, so it’s definitely on my Netflix list of ‘to be watched’. Because of this, when I was given the chance to review a forthcoming Murdoch Mystery book…
There’s something about mysteries that take place on a mode of transportation that seem to get people excited. This is most likely due to the fact that when there is a murder (as there inevitably is in most mysteries), the suspect list is quite limited, making the capture of the criminal imminent. Most recently I…
It doesn’t take much to please me these days, as you’ll hear on my latest radio segment with the CBC Homestretch. I admit to wanting to take a vacation on my couch, but don’t we all? An uninterrupted stretch of reading time is all I need for my ‘paradise’, although I realize some people may…
I won’t lie, the cover of this book threw me off so I didn’t even read its back blurb (yikes!) so THEN I had no idea the story of Dazzle Patterns by Alison Watt was set during the Halifax Explosion of 1917, which resulted in me relegating it to the back of my TBR shelf….
I felt like a bit of a rebel picking up this book back in December because I got it from the library, and no one had asked me to read or review it for them, I was simply reading it for (gasp!) pleasure. By Gaslight by Steven Price is one of those books that I…
If the title of this book is confusing, the subtitle will make everything clear: A Collection of Soho Crime Christmas Capers. As you can see by the cover of the book, it’s all about ‘Christmasy’ stories of crime, and who doesn’t love to read a holiday-themed book at this time of year? There are 18…
I can’t remember ever reading a book or story by Alistair MacLeod before today, but I do know I should be ashamed of this fact because he’s one of Canada’s greatest writers. Although he died in 2014, his legacy still lives on in his writing, as well as through his son Alexander MacLeod (pictured below) who is…
