Short post on a lovely fall afternoon...

It’s late afternoon, and the light is golden as it shines through the leaves, leaving shimmering dappled shadows on the carpet.  It’s been so mild and sunny this past week, perfect weather for late summer/early fall. 

I have two books to tell you about today, but if it turns out to be brief summaries of each, just blame it on the lovely weather!  I finished reading Ruth Ware’s novel, One Perfect Couple, about five couples who are chosen to participate in a new reality tv show, “One Perfect Couple”, set on a remote desert island.  Each couple has one partner who is participating in the hopes that this will launch their acting/modelling career or provide their 15 minutes of fame.  But all is not what it seems, and when they are stranded on the island after a severe storm with few supplies and no way off, things start to unravel quickly.  It was much like William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, with one participant taking control and the others trying to alternately stand up to them and just survive.  It was pretty good, quite a page-turner, but I really resented Ware’s blatant plug for one of her earlier novels right in the midst of this one, which I found kind of shameful.  But it was an interesting ending, and I was intrigued enough to wade through all the excess (there was plenty of padding in this book) to get to the end and find out the truth.  It’s not her best book, in my opinion, but it’s certainly not her worst, and I’m being pretty objective, since I don’t even like reality shows! 

Then I read a YA book that one of my former students, now helping out at the school and in my library to get his volunteering hours, is reading for one of his English classes.  The Things She’s Seen by Ambelin and Ezekiel Kwaymullina is told mainly from the point of view of Beth Teller, a teen who died in a car accident but still hangs out with her father, a police detective, who can see and hear her.  He’s not been able to get over her death, and with her mother dead for many years already, he seems to have no one to go to with his grief.  When he is recruited to help investigate a routine inquiry into a fire at a children’s home in a small town, he undertakes this task with little enthusiasm.  But all is not what it seems, and when he goes to interview a witness, a girl who supposedly ran away from rehab, things become more complicated and dire, and Beth’s father must do everything he can to uncover the truth about the home and the children living there, as well as the adults who ran it, before there are more deaths and coverups.  This was a quick but intense read, dealing with the horrors of colonization in Australia and the generational harm suffered by the Aboriginal people at the hands of the violent, power whites.  I would never have read this on my own, but it was an excellent book by this brother-sister writing team.  

That’s all for today.  There’s still time to get outside and enjoy the lovely evening!  Take care and keep reading!

Bye for now... Julie

No post today...

I'm not posting today as I'm not finished reading Ruth Ware's latest thriller, One Perfect Couple, about five couples who are chosen to be contestants on a new Reality TV show on a desert island, where all is not what it seems and unfortunately, not everyone will leave the island alive.

More info next week...

Bye for now...
Julie

October evening post...

It’s late afternoon/early evening on this first Sunday of October, and it was a beautiful, warm-ish sunny day that is turning into a twilight filled with golden sunlight and the rippling shadows of the leaves in the breeze.  We’ve been so fortunate with our weather here in Waterloo Region so far, particularly if you consider other areas in Canada, the US and around the world.  But I feel like this weekend most likely marks the end of the real “summer-like” weather we’ve had, what I consider “shorts and t-shirts” weather.  That’s fine, as I’ve been ready for fall for a few weeks now and can’t wait for the cooler days and chilly evenings. 

My Volunteer book club met yesterday to discuss Robertson Davies’ classic, Fifth Business, the first book in “The Deptford Trilogy”, and it was a huge success!  We’ve actually read it in this book club before, in June 2014, but since most of my members joined post-2014, it was new for nearly everyone, at least as a book club selection.  Several people have read it before on their own, and one member was with me in 2014, but it was still an excellent book to discuss.  This book begins on a snowy evening in 1908 in the small fictional town of Deptford, when our narrator, nearly-twelve-year old Dunstable Ramsay, is engaging in a snowball fight with his friend/enemy Percy Boyd Staunton.  While he is racing home for dinner, in order to dodge the last snowball thrown by Percy, Dunstable darts in front of the figure of the heavily pregnant wife of the Baptist parson, Mary Dempster, who is hit, falls to the ground and is helped home by her husband, only to later go into premature labour and give birth the their son Paul, who is in need of special care round-the-clock to keep him alive.  Mrs Ramsay, a firm Scots woman, steps in and takes charge of the little one and helps Mary recover as well, although she never really does recover fully and is considered “simple” by the ladies in the town from this point forward.  Dunstable feels tremendous guilt for this, because, although he didn’t actually throw the snowball, if he hadn’t stepped in front of Mrs Dempster, she would never have been hit.  He thus takes it upon himself to care for her throughout his life inasmuch as he is able, while Percy and Paul remove themselves from Deptford altogether.  All three, Dunstable, Paul and Percy, are “twice born” (you’ll have to read the book to find out what that means), and their lives crisscross and intersect at sometimes interesting, sometimes highly unusual moments, until the final satisfying conclusion to this wondrous, psychological, mythical, spiritual, saintly, literary mystery… except that there’s more to explore in the other two books in the trilogy, The Manticore and World of Wonders.  Everyone loved it.  They loved the language and the characters, and they loved following these characters in their individual development as well and their ever-changing relationships with one another throughout the story.  Even the secondary characters, such as Leola and Ignacios Blazon and Diana, were fascinating, and we could have discussed for a whole afternoon and still not finished with everything there is to be said and discussed about this book.  We loved the deviousness and manipulative nature of the characters, and talked about the ways in which they recreated their histories to suit their purposes.  One member who listened to this as an audiobook said that at first she thought, "oh no, it's such a slow story", but ended up deciding that, while it was in fact a slow story, it was a good story. Several members said they wanted to read the other books in the trilogy, and I recommended that they do so.  In fact, I would highly recommend any of the books in “The Salterton Trilogy”, “The Deptford Trilogy” and maybe even “The Cornish Trilogy”, although my recollection of that one is not as strong as the other two.  If you have never read anything by this Canadian literary icon, you should run, not walk, to your nearest library to check out a copy of Fifth Business today! 

That’s all for now.  Take care and read on!

Bye for now... Julie

Super-quick post for a Satrday night...

I haven’t posted in a while, but it’s been very busy and there’s been no time.  It’s nearly 9pm on a Saturday night and I’m just finishing off a cup of homemade butternut squash soup as my very late supper, but I wanted to get this written before I got too busy tomorrow and ran out of time.  I’ve read and listened to a few books since my last post. 

The first is an audiobook that I finished, Chris Hadfield’s The Apollo Murders.  Set in the mid-1970s, this book explores the Apollo 18 Mission to the moon, which was supposed to be an exploratory mission. But this mission is plagued with unexpected, sometimes deadly, occurrences. When Russian activity is detected, the agenda changes and the astronauts are expected to follow the new directives.  Before they even leave earth, a tragedy strikes and plans must again change, and once they reach the first destination of their journey, there is yet another unexpected development and the astronauts must work to stay on top of these events and complete as much of their mission as possible while keeping the crew safe from outer space… and each other.  This was a real page-turner, a plot-driven book that also contained a lot of scientific and astronomy facts, a “Canadian Tire” book with a scientific twist! 

The next book I want to tell you about is one that I received as a Christmas gift more than a year ago, but never found time to read until a couple of weeks ago.  Set in the US in the near future, The Future by Naomi Alderman asks the question:  what would you do if you knew the world was going to end and you had access to a “golden ticket”, a way to save yourself, but you can’t bring anyone with you and you can’t choose the company you’ll keep?  This post-apocalyptic novel explores what three high-tech giants are planning to do when they receive notification that the end of the world is likely to occur very soon.  There’s also a few wild cards in the mix, the loyal PA of one tech giant and a reporter who appears to be the target of someone out to get her for some undefined reason.  This was also a roller-coaster ride of a novel, a bleak look at what could happen to our world if we don’t do something drastic right now that was incredibly dismal, but very well-written, with an ending that made the read worthwhile even though I wanted to cry while reading about some of these very grim yet very real scenarios. 

And I just finished reading a new standalone novel by Kelley Armstrong (written under the pseudonym K L Armstrong) which was also a page-turner.  Known to the Victim is told from the point of view of Amy Gibson, a woman in her mid-twenties who is working on her PhD while recording sessions for her moderately successful podcast “Known to the Victim”, which explores murders committed against women by their partners.  She knows more than most about this subject, as her mother was murdered by a man she was dating nearly a decade earlier.  Amy managed to get through that experience with the help of her half-brother Oliver, but when someone at one of her appearances suggests that he is not as wonderful as he may seem, Amy can’t bury her head in the sand and ignore it.  While digging into Oliver’s past, events spiral out of control and Amy must search for the truth while keeping herself and those she cares about safe, a task made more difficult when she’s not sure who she can trust.  This was an excellent book, with the voice and character of Amy very much resembling Casey Duncan in the “Rockton” series.  I wanted to keep reading until I reached a satisfying conclusion.  Will this be the beginning of a new series for her?  Is there a new “Haven’s Rock” book on the horizon?  Whatever is coming next, I’m sure it’ll be amazing. 

That’s all for tonight.  Sorry for the brief descriptions and commentary for each book, but I’m feeling very tired and my eyes are threatening to close.  Happy Fall!!  The perfect season to pick up a good book!

Bye for now... Julie

Prisoners of the Castle post...

It’s Sunday evening, and I finally have a chance to tell you about the book I finished this weekend.  My book club met yesterday to discuss Prisoners of the Castle by Ben Macintyre, and it was one of the best discussions we’ve ever had.  This book presents details of the prisoners who were held as POWs in the “elite” prison of Colditz Castle between 1940 and 1945, along with their many escape attempts, some successful, others decidedly not.  I’ve always enjoyed Macintyre’s books, which for me have mainly been stories of espionage, spies and double-agents, and at first, this one seemed to not much more than a catalogue of escape attempts, but as the book went on, the prisoners became real as we learned about them, their backgrounds, their many skills before and during their imprisonment, and their relationships and interactions with other prisoners and officials and guards.  These characters, too, became not just two-dimensional stereotypes of German prison officials and guards but real people who had difficult jobs to do during extremely difficult times.  There were eight of us at the meeting, probably the first time we’ve all been able to make it out to a meeting in… maybe a year or more.  We all loved the way that Macintyre was able to infuse so much humour into this anything-but-humourous story, and we were astounded at the way he could take so much information about so many people and historical events and mesh it all together to make one coherent story that flowed seamlessly into an unputdownable book that was both entertaining and educational.  We were beyond impressed with the ingenuity of the prisoners and the various schemes they came up with to try to escape.  We learned so much about this prison and these characters, these people who endured years there as both guards and prisoners, officials and orderlies.  One of my group members was reluctant to read this because she was a young girl in Holland during WWII and she worried that it much be too difficult to read, and others also expressed their initial reluctance to read it due to the seriousness of the topic, but they were all glad they read it, and some are planning to share their books with other family members and friends.  We also talked about some new words that we learned, "escapologist" (one who studies escape techniques) and deutschfeindlich ("German-unfriendly"). All in all, it was a most successful discussion, and I would highly recommend this or any other book by Ben Macintyre if you’re looking for a well-written non-fiction selection. 

Not finished the Chris Hadfield audiobook yet, but over halfway there, so maybe next week… 

That’s all for today.  Take care and keep reading! 

Bye for now…

Julie

A brief "no book" post...

I wanted to start the "new year" off right by posting, even though I don't have much to tell you.  It's Labour Day afternoon at 4pm, and while I've been back to work for a week already, and September has some lovely warm weather, this feels like truly the end of summer.  We did all the things this weekend that you do on the last long weekend of summer, like go to the beach, go to several farmers markets (where I discovered "black garlic"!  tastes sweet, and you can eat it raw right out of the bulb!), did yard work, hung all the beach laundry outside to dry, and took long walks.  What I did not do this weekend is read, but I'm going to do that right after I finish this short post.  Because I was back to work last week, and we have a new cat that is causing our existing cat to feel very territorial, and there was a rally to fight for farmland that I attended on Wednesday, and we went to a very strange movie last night, I'm not very far into the book club selection for Saturday, Prisoners of the Castle:  an epic story of survival and escape from Colditz by Ben MacIntyre.  I'll be able to tell you more about this book next week, as well as hopefully tell you about The Apollo Murders by Chris Hadfield, which I'm listening to right now.  

That's all for today.  Happy Back to School! and Happy September!  

Bye for now...
Julie

Quick post...

This will not be a very inspired post, since, although it’s been more than a month since I last posted, I’ve read very few books that I can actually tell you about.  I’ve spent most of the past month reading Silver Birch nominee contenders, which I have to keep secret until the nominee list is announced in mid-October.  But now that the selection lists are done, I’m free to read whatever I want until mid-January - WOO HOO!!!. 

I wanted to briefly tell you about two books that I read, one for my August book club meeting and one just for fun.  Simon Sort Of Says by local award-winning YA author (and astrophysicist!!) Erin Bow tells the story of how a boy who is the sole survivor of a random school shooting learns to overcome his PTSD after his family leaves Omaha to live in a small town that is part of the National Quiet Zone (no internet, no tv, no radio), a place where he can be Simon Now instead of Simon Then.  I’ve read this book a couple of times and it was so incredibly impressive both times.  Every word and phrase and humorous moment (there were many, if you can believe it!) were placed precisely where they should be and chosen to convey exactly what the author was trying to say.  I took a chance that my ladies would also enjoy this book, and they did!  And, as an added bonus, the author joined us via Google Meet from BC where she is house-sitting for a friend, and was willing to answer all our questions and listen to our comments.  She was quite happy to do this, too, I think, since she usually speaks to grades 6 and 7 students - this was her first seniors’ group!  It was awesome, and one of my members thanked the author for writing it and also thanked me for choosing it for our list, as she would never have read it otherwise, which made my day. 

The other book I read is also by a Canadian author, Susan Juby, who lives in BC and who has written mainly for a YA audience until recently.  I read Mindful of Murder last year and loved it, so I was thrilled to discover that there was a second book in the “Helen Thorpe” series, A Meditation on Murder.  Helen Thorpe is a former Buddhist nun, professional butler and reluctant amateur sleuth.  In her second mystery, she must learn if the deaths of several of her new client’s friends are connected, and if so, whether her client could be next.  I found this book unputdownable, and reached the final satisfying conclusion far too quickly.  I especially enjoy the way Juby drops in Buddhist teachings throughout the story, but not in a jarring way, just as a natural part of the story.  While I think I enjoyed the first book slightly more than this one, I would still highly recommend it, and I was thrilled to learn that there is to be a third book in this series - HURRAY!!  At that discovery, I identified my feelings as pleasant, pleasant. 

That’s all for today.  I hope to be back to my routine again by next week.  Until then, stay cool and keep reading!

Bye for now... Julie