On my walk home from work the other day. It's hard to believe we are already halfway through April. Here on the Pacific West Coast, we've made it through the hardest part of the year, meteorologically speaking. While we'll surely still have rain in the coming weeks and months, the sun is shining more and… Continue reading Some 2024 Highlights and other Goings On
What I've appreciated most about Kevin Chong's work in the past is how Vancouver it is. And even though the city and the Chinatown that his latest novel takes place in is never named, it clearly felt like Vancouver to me. The Chinatown I remember in the 90s and early 2000s felt very present to… Continue reading (Audio) Book Review: The Double Life of Benson Yu by Kevin Chong
Read: The Future - Catherine Leroux (Biblioasis, 2020) (translated from the French by Susan Ouriou) The Double Life of Benson Yu - Kevin Chong (Simon & Schuster Audio, 2023) Games & Rituals - Katherine Heiny (Penguin Audio, 2023) Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit - Nadine Sander-Green (Anansi, 2024) The Other Valley - Scott Alexander Howard (Scribner Canada,… Continue reading What I Read: March 2024
Claude Simon was a French writer who wrote several semi-autobiographical works, many of which are inspired by his own experiences in World War Two. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1985, which is the reason I picked up a copy of The Flanders Road. After learning that Gabriel Garcia Marquez (one of my… Continue reading Book Review: The Flanders Road by Claude Simon
I picked The Future up when it was shortlisted for this year's Canada Reads competition. This is where 5 books are "championed" by famous Canadians over the course of one week until there is one final winner. I always follow along with interest but it doesn't generally add a lot of titles to my TBR.… Continue reading Book Review: The Future by Catherine Leroux
Antarctica by Claire Keegan and The End of the World is a Cul de Sac by Louise Kennedy are two short story collections by female Irish writers. Since I read them back to back, it was hard not to compare them as I was reading and I felt it made a sort of sense to… Continue reading Book Review: 2 Irish Short Story Collections
Read: The End of the World is a Cul de Sac - Louise Kennedy (Riverhead Books, 2023) (289 pages) Antarctica - Claire Keegan (Grove Press, 1999) (201 pages) The Flanders Road - Claude Simon (New York Review Books, 2022) (translated from the French by Richard Howard) (193 pages) The Secret Adversary - Agatha Chrsitie (Blackstone… Continue reading What I Read: February 2024
Our girl is 9! Entering her last year of single digits (as she is excited to point out), Pearl is growing like a weed and becoming more her own person every day. She is sweet, quirky, and hilarious. She loves animals (and especially Winnie) and hiking and camping. She's soft but tough and is a… Continue reading Pearl is 9!
A thought took her by surprise: I should have been born a man. But that wasn't it. She didn't want to be a man. She just wanted to be a woman with the same freedom to choose as a man had. Kate Grenville, Restless Dolly Maunder Dolly Maunder is sharp, smart, and ambitious. Born in… Continue reading Book Review: Restless Dolly Maunder by Kate Grenville
Lincoln in the Bardo - George Saunders (Random House, 2017) As you can see, this isn't a strict audio book review in that I read this book in a combination of audio and on the page. I started it on audio but then got a copy out of the library because I was having trouble… Continue reading (Audio) Book Review: Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
Karissa Reads Books 