I want to make a habit this year of sharing a few highlights and updates, as I always enjoy when other bloggers do this and it can help keep my mind focused on the positive. It feels a bit strange to begin on such a week, when the news is full of chaos and unrest,… Continue reading 2021 Highlights: Week 1
What Kind of Woman: Poems - Kate Baer (Harper Perennial, 2020) Kate Baer's debut poetry collection is full of short, punchy poems. They are about women - friends, mothers, wives - and often about how women navigate a world of men. They are sometimes advice, sometimes for a friend or a daughter. My particular favourite… Continue reading Book Review: What Kind of Woman by Kate Baer
Bookish: As I've said before, 2020 was not the year for reaching grand book goals. So I'm hesitant to set big goals for this new year. At the same time, setting goals helps me to ensure I'm spending my time the way I want to spend it. In both 2019 and 2020 I set a… Continue reading 2021 Goals
Here's where I share my entire reading list for the year as well as a few observations. Primarily for my own interest but feel free to let me know how it compares to your reading year or if we read some (or a lot) of the same books! Some stats on my 2020 reading: Read… Continue reading What I Read – 2020
Read: A Book of Good Stories - edited by G. Fred McNally (The MacMillan Company of Canada, 1934) Say Nothing - Patrick Radden Keefe (Doubleday, 2019) Under Milk Wood - Dylan Thomas (J.M. Dent & Sons, 1970) Short Stories Read: (see note below) Yermolai and the Miller's Wife - Ivan Turgenev (3 stars) A Day… Continue reading What I Read – December 2020
Say Nothing - Patrick Radden Keefe (Doubleday, 2019) Patrick Radden Keefe's delve into the history of the Irish Troubles is immensely readable and formative. This isn't a topic that particularly grabs my attention and as such is one I know very little about. I can recall, as a child, hearing about Ireland or seeing snippets… Continue reading Book Review: Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe
There are obviously many ways that Christmas has looked different for our family this year. We feel very fortunate to have our girls - little kids bring a certain magic to the Christmas holidays and have kept us focused on celebratory things. One (non-COVID difference) for us this year was getting to look forward to… Continue reading Christmas 2020
Fiction being what I read the most of, I always feel like the Best Fiction category is the best reflection of my favourite books of the year and I would say this year is no exception. So far this year I've read 62 novels. I narrowed the least down to sixteen, then down to five,… Continue reading Best Fiction – The Third Annual Karissa Reads Books Literary Awards
We're somewhere around 5 or 6 weeks into this current lockdown. About two weeks ago it was extended to January 8th and while I don't believe that the government is (or even has the power to) cancelling Christmas, there have been the ups and downs of emotions surrounding that announcement. We are, however, very fortunate,… Continue reading Life Lately: Lockdown Week ???
Hi there! Thanks for following along with my Third Annual Literary Awards! I'm having a lot of fun reading comments and hearing your thoughts. Today's category started out as non-fiction but when I looked over what I'd read and what I'd enjoyed, it made more sense to make the category simply Memoirs. These are books… Continue reading Best Memoir – The Third Annual Karissa Reads Books Literary Awards
Karissa Reads Books 