Not a "real" post for the last Sunday in April...

Between the big CFUW book sale last weekend, the Spring Pottery Sale this weekend, and weeding so many dandelions, there’s no time to write a post.  That’s ok, since I’ve mostly been reading Silver Birch books anyway.  I’m about halfway through rereading my book club book for next Saturday, Karma Brown’s Recipe for a Perfect Wife, which I listened to a while ago and loved, loved, loved.  I’m loving it in print, too, and will make time next weekend to tell you all about our discussion.  From the book sale, I restrained myself from attending on both Friday and Saturday, and was able to whittle down a full box full of books to just eleven:  

*All the Beautiful Lies Peter Swanson
*The Safe House  Nicci French
Borkmann’s Point  Håkan Nesser
An Unthinkable Thing and Glass Boys  Nicole Lundrigan
Autopsy of a Boring Wife  Marie-Renée Lavoie
Frida Barbara Mujica
*The Brooklyn Follies Paul Auster (one I haven’t read yet!)
The Ghost Bride  Yangsze Choo
Lying in Wait  Liz Nugent
*Coronation Year Jennifer Robson

* authors I’ve read before, but all of the above titles are new to me

That’s all for this afternoon.  Gotta get back to learning how to be a "perfect wife”!!

Bye for now…
Julie

Short post on a Spring-y Monday evening...

It’s late-ish on a Monday evening, but I wanted to get a quick post written before another week goes by.  I was reading Silver Birch contenders last week, which I can’t mention, but the week before, my book group discussed Katherina Vermette’s The Break, which I can talk about.

So The Break is the story of a young Indigenous teen who was raped after going to a party.  This incident was witnessed by another Indigenous woman who called the police but didn’t go out into the winter storm to check on the girl, choosing to stay inside to care for her two young children instead.  The two police officers who took her statement were not completely convinced that she really saw what she thought she saw, but the young Indigenous officer was more inclined to believe her and pursue the investigation, while the older white officer just wanted to close the case.  What follows is details of the official investigation and the response, processing and acceptance of this horrific event by the Indigenous community (mainly women).  Told from many varying points of view and including stories and memories spanning generations, this novel was heartbreaking and hopeful, horrific yet necessary.  My book club ladies found it so sad and difficult to read, but we all agreed that, while we knew about the stats regarding the increased likelihood of Indigenous women being sexually assaulted, we admitted that we didn’t really know much about it at all.  It’s the kind of book that needs to be written and read, but it was certainly not uplifting.  We found it confusing because there were so many characters who were all related, mothers and grandmothers, daughters and grand-daughters, and they were not always referred to by their proper names, so that, along with the fact that there were multiple points of view, made for a challenging story to follow.  I think that we had it all figured out by the end of our discussion, but we each had points that needed clarifying as well as each adding information that led to clarification for someone else.  It was a great book club selection, but I don’t think I’ll be reading the sequel, The Strangers, at least not any time soon.

And this weekend is the big CFUW’s book sale, Friday from 9am-9pm and Saturday from 9am-1pm:  https://www.cfuwkw.org/book-sale.  I’ve got the afternoon off work and am looking forward to leisurely browsing the aisles and checking out the thousands of books on offer.  

That’s all for tonight.  Have a great week!

Bye for now... Julie

First post for April...

It’s Tuesday evening and I’ve had a busy day at work so I’m not really in the mood to write a post, but it’s been more than two weeks since my last post and I don’t  like to leave it too long.  So, since I spent last week reading Silver Birch contenders which I can’t tell you about, here is a very brief post about one book I finished two weekends ago. 

I finished reading Ruth Ozeki’s All Over Creation, and I have to say… WOW, it was all I was hoping for and so much more!  Unfortunately, I can’t even begin to describe the plot, so here’s a quick summary:  a young girl living on a potato farm in small town Idaho gets involved in a difficult relationship and runs away from home.  Twenty-five years later, she is called upon to return home because her father is dying, which she agrees to do, although she is filled with unresolved angst and does so reluctantly.  When she returns with her three children in tow, she is surprised to see that everything and nothing has changed.  Throw into this mix of nostalgia and recollected nightmares a trailer full of tree-hugging activists who are fighting the evils of big agribusiness and monoculture and you’ve got one heck of a story.  It is a story about biodiversity and the importance of saving seeds, about what it means to be family, about love and friendship, connection to the earth and each other, oh, and a lot about potato farming… I’m not kidding!  Despite that, this book was riveting from beginning to end, at times very funny and at others heart-wrenching and deeply moving.  I would highly recommend this book to just about anyone, and I think it’s going to be my Friends’ Book Club recommendation for our July meeting. 

That’s all for tonight.  Stay warm and pick up a good book!  

Bye for now... Julie