A couple of weeks ago, in the midst of an epic tantrum, I picked Pearl up and carried her outside. Sometimes a simple change of scenery can help calm her down and give us a fresh start so I held her, thrashing and screaming, against my body and walked to the end of the driveway.… Continue reading
You may have noticed that I don't read a lot of mysteries. The very simple reason behind that is that I find them too scary. Overactive imagination + gory tale is not a good combination for me in the middle of the night. However, when my sister-in-law was in New Zealand just before Christmas, she… Continue reading Book Review: Trust No One by Paul Cleave
Silence - Shusaku Endo (Picador Classic, 2015) translated from the Japanese by William Johnston But Christ did not die for the good and beautiful. It is easy enough to die for the good and beautiful; the hard thing is to die for the miserable and corrupt - this is the realization that came home to… Continue reading What I Read – May 2017
After reading Zoe Whittall's most recent novel, The Best Kind of People, I was eager to see what her earlier work was like. I enjoyed Holding Still for as Long as Possible and would even go so far as describing it as more realistic than The Best Kind of People. The description on the front… Continue reading Book Review: Holding Still for as Long as Possible by Zoe Whittall
It's a bit unfair to lump these two story collections in together but I read them almost back to back and, a few weeks later, am struggling to differentiate them in my mind. A Manual for Cleaning Women and Collected Stories are collections of a life's worth of short stories by Lucia Berlin and Grace… Continue reading Book Review: 2 Short Story Collections
I was familiar with the concept of the Five Love Languages and what they were long before I ever read this book but when I saw Chapman's book in a thrift store thought it might still be interesting to see what his ideas were in more detail. Basically, Chapman proposes that humans each have a… Continue reading Book Review: The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman
Eleanor Oliphant, thirty years old, works in an office, does things exactly how she wants them without worrying what others think. Eleanor Oliphant is perfectly fine on her own, thank you very much, and always has been. She goes to Marks & Spencer every Friday, talks to Mummy on the phone every Wednesday night, and… Continue reading Book Review: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
The Unwomanly Face of War - Svetlana Alexievich (Random House, 2017) (translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky Do Not Say We Have Nothing - Madeleine Thien (Knopf Canada, 2016) The Hate U Give - Angie Thomas (Balzer + Bray, 2017) A Manual for Cleaning Women - Lucia Berlin (Farrar, Strauss and… Continue reading What I Read – April 2017
While Angie Thomas' first novel is being marketed as a young adult novel. I would greatly encourage all readers interested in modern America, racial issues, or violence among youth to read it. The book is probably most appropriate for older teen readers (15+) due to violence and some language. It's a fairly easy read but… Continue reading Book Review: The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
I've been to Beijing and stood in Tiananmen Square three times in my life. The first time was, I believe late 1988 or early 1989, before our family moved to Canada at the end of 1989. I would have been about three years old on that first trip and I have no memories of the… Continue reading Book Review: Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien
Karissa Reads Books 