More Alberta writers to love! That’s really how I should title every book review that I write on an Alberta-born book. People don’t typically see Alberta as the literary hot-spot that it truly is, but I’m hoping to change that by highlighting amazing books by Western writers that don’t get the attention they deserve. Lee…
I haven’t read much Ruth Rendell in my day (in fact, this may be the first book of hers I’ve ever read!), but her name is always mentioned alongside other major mystery novelists, so I knew I was in a for a good read when I picked up No Man’s Nightingale. If you enjoy Peter…
I never thought I would willingly pick up a book about the Civil War, mainly because the idea of it bores me. People may find this offensive, because granted, the various wars in our history are an important part of who we are today, but that doesn’t mean I need to spend my spare time…
“…how can a man be so headstrong about not asking for directions, and such a wimp about pain?” These, and other answers can be found in the collection of essays titled What I Meant to Say: the Private Lives of Men edited by Ian Brown. Although not all my questions about men were answered (which…
I am a big fan of Alexander McCall Smith. Granted, I’ve just started making my way through his most famous series, but I love it already, and I know there’s only months of delightful reading ahead of me when it comes to his novels. However, his foray into the ‘romance’ genre has left a little…
Have you ever attended the reading of a book you hadn’t read yet, and gotten a pre-conceived notion of what it was going to be like before you actually bought it? Or just based on the few pages the author reads to you, you think you already have a good idea of what the story…
Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes is a very dark book. It takes place in dark territories (the crumbling city of Detroit being the main setting), but it also delves into the darkest parts of people’s psyches and souls. It shows the dark side of everything: from the mediocre visual art industry, to the crude jokes…
A woman who is so obsessed with Michael Jackson she roasts her chicken on the ‘clean’ setting of her oven because she’s distracted by listening to his music, a man who wears a t-shirt that says “Thank you for Having Me” at a wedding, a married couple who met at a peace movement but have…
I’ve had this book sitting on my shelf for a few months now, so I apologize this review is so late. It was originally published in India in 2012, and the lovely Calgary-based Freehand Books released it in the fall of 2014. If I had known that the book was so good (and such a…
I’ve always enjoyed stories about ‘regular people, doing regular things’. They hold a certain fascination for me, simply because I can relate to those kinds of characters more than others, my life being pretty uneventful in general. I definitely like a good cozy mystery or thriller every once in a while, but family dramas, introspective…
Some may already be familiar with this book; it was first published in 1976, and at the time, it was considered very controversial, although it still won the Governor General’s award for fiction that same year. It has been re-released by Penguin/Random House Canada in 2014, and although not as shocking as it was in…
A beautiful, short book about getting trapped in a library; what more could a girl ask for? Books, mystery, illustrations and a small word count-it’s perfect for me! Quite clearly, The Strange Library by Haruki Murakami is right up my alley. The book is gorgeous-as many Murakami fans are aware, only Chip Kidd is allowed to…
