One of my 2017 reading goals is to read more short stories. Readers seem to have a love 'em or hate 'em relationship with short stories (especially short story collections) but I fall firmly into the love 'em category. Particularly in my life right now, I enjoy being able to finish a whole story in… Continue reading Book Review: Barrelling Forward by Eva Crocker
Here I Am is 500+ pages and it took me about half of that to begin enjoying the novel. Having read Foer's work before, I was sure my commitment would pay off. At the same time, my expectations of Foer's work led to some initial disappointment with Here I Am. Foer's two previous novels, Extremely… Continue reading Book Review: Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer
The Conjoined - Sookfong Jen Lee (ECW Press, 2016) Here I Am - Jonathan Safran Foer (Hamish Hamilton, 2016) Jacob was a man who withheld comfort but stood at thresholds long after others would have walked away. He always stood at the open front door until the car pool drove off. Just as he stood… Continue reading What I Read – February 2017
The Conjoined is filled with everything you hope will never happen to your daughter. Although set in the city of Vancouver whose streets and neighbourhoods I recognize, the story seems to exist in some alternate universe where Vancouver is terrible, always dangerous, where nothing good exists, everyone is evil, and you might as well not… Continue reading Book Review: The Conjoined by Jen Sookfong Lee
Lotto and Mathilde meet at the very end of their final year of university and marry two weeks later. They're young, broke, and both shocked by the fact of falling in love. Fates and Furies follows them through the next twenty or so years of their marriage, detailing the ups and downs, the secrets that… Continue reading Book Review: Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
Sandra Boynton is currently one of Pearl's favourite authors. Her books are colourful, goofy, and full of animals. While Boynton has many, many books for children, the ones pictured above are the titles we own. Boynton uses lots of rhyme and song to keep the books entertaining and fun to read. Pearl will ask for… Continue reading Reading with Pearl: Sandra Boynton
Father Dowling is a young Catholic priest in a city parish. One day he happens to meet two young women, prostitutes, and begins a sort of friendship with them. His love for them is strong - perhaps even Christ-like - but shockingly naive and his increasing single-mindedness and involvement in their lives becomes distorting and… Continue reading Book Review: Such is My Beloved by Morley Callaghan
Read: The Sellout - Paul Beatty (Picador, 2015) Reflections on the Psalms - C.S. Lewis (A Harvest Book, 1958) A vocation is a terrible thing. To be called out of nature into the supernatural life is at first (or perhaps not quite at first - the wrench of the parting may be felt later) a… Continue reading What I Read – January 2017
Izzy has just graduated from high school when she finds herself pregnant, the result of an ongoing affair with her art teacher. Without support or finances to raise her child, she opts to join an experimental unit run by the young genius Dr. Grind. For ten years, ten families will live together as one family,… Continue reading Book Review: Perfect Little World by Kevin Wilson
She had watched other women with infants and eventually understood what she craved: boundless permission - no, the absolute necessity to hold and kiss and stroke this tiny person...Where else in life, Mabel wondered, could a woman love so openly and with such abandon? Eowyn Ivey brings a powerful edge to this re-telling of a… Continue reading Book Review: The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
Karissa Reads Books 