After a short hiatus from my booktube reviews, I’m back with a new one: The Italian Teacher by Tom Rachman. As I mention in the recording, this is the July pick for my book club (register for the discussion here if you’re interested and live in Calgary!), and I really enjoyed it. Didn’t think I…
As I write and post this, I am 39 weeks pregnant with a baby boy: a younger brother to my 3-year-old daughter. I’m well past my ‘nesting’ phase of cooking frozen meals and making sure our diaper stash is stocked- my feet are swollen to hell, so the best thing for me to do at…
Word by Word by Kory Stamper is a non-fiction book about dictionaries. Wait! Before you close out of this blog post, I promise you reading my review will be worth it, because this my friends, is a great book full of entertaining writing. Yes, a book with the subtitle of “The Secret Life of Dictionaries” may…
Long-time readers of this blog will already know how much I love the Flavia de Luce novels by Alan Bradley. Perfect examples of the cozy mystery, these books depict the precocious 12 year old Flavia who solves mysteries that seem to fall in her lap. Much like my other murder mystery hero Jessica Fletcher, death…
It’s been awhile since I’ve really LOVED a short story collection, but I can finally say that The Dead Husband Project by Sarah Meehan Sirk is definitely one of the best I’ve read in a long time. Each piece in this collection is strong and emotionally affecting, but there are a few that really stood…
So, I don’t normally review ‘coffee table’ books but I made an exception for this one because it’s a picture book of cats on outdoor adventures. Yes, you read that right, cats are in canoes, hiking mountains and perching on paddle boards in the great white north that is the Canadian wilderness. Bolt and Keel…
I’ve been reading more non-fiction lately…not for any particular reason other than publishers just seem to be churning out more these days so I’m receiving more for review. Although I read far more fiction than non-fiction, I find real-life stories stick with me for longer, probably because the people are real and truly endured what…
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…
My Canadian readers won’t be at all surprised to see I’m reviewing Bellevue Square by Michael Redhill because it won the richest literary prize in Canada back in November: the Giller Prize. I’ll be honest though, I had no intention of reading it until my book club chose it. I’m glad I did because first of…
I was hesitant to pick up this book knowing it begins with the grisly discovery of a newborn’s bones, simply because I’m a) pregnant right now, therefore very emotional and b) already a mother of one child, which means I’m much more sensitive to stories that include any harm coming to kids of any age….
I adored this book. I found it difficult to read, and when I finished each chapter I had to put it down and sigh out my emotions, but I already know this will be one of the best books I read this year, if not THE best. And yes, I’m aware this year just started. The…
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…
