Welcome! It's #IMWAYR time again, when bloggers share what they have been reading and find out what others have been up to. Kathryn hosts the adult version of this meme at Book Date. Kellee and Ricki at Unleashing Readers host the kidlit rendition. These are fabulous places to start your search for what to read next.
The grandkids have come and gone. I did nothing for close to 24 hours after they left except relax and finish up some adult books. Then I started cleaning the house and doing laundry. It still isn't under control, but the main part of the house is almost presentable.
As usual, we read a lot of books together! Today I'm only mentioning those that were new to us.
Titles with a 🍁 indicate this is a Canadian or Indigenous Canadian Author and or Illustrator.
Clicking on the title will take you to the Goodreads page of the book.
BOARD BOOKS
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| 5 stars |
I'm Hungry! by Elise Gravel 🍁 September 12, 2023
I've most likely written about this book before. It's part of Elise Gravel's Funny Little Books series. The patterned language in these books is hilariously brilliant. It's really fun to read aloud. Both of my three year old granddaughters loved this! Ellis carried it around 'reading' it by herself.
This book is a celebration of community - of coming together and creating beauty with other people. After a cold winter has kept children inside, they emerge into the street. Amanda brings a container of sidewalk chalk with her. Each child creates something unique to them. In the end they create a collective masterpiece.
This book is pure joy to read. Both the illustrations and the words are absolutely drop dead gorgeous.
A mother tells her bicultural son stories of dragons that comprise his different backgrounds. On the one hand are the dangerous Western dragons who hoard gold. On the other are the benevolent Eastern creatures who are related to water and agriculture.
I read this with my two half Korean granddaughters. This book could have been written for them. I wish we had had time to read it more than once. I might renew it and take it to Vancouver at the end of April when we go for the younger one's birthday. I'm now on the look out for good books about Korean dragons. Do you have recommendations?
NON FICTION PICTURE BOOKS
My grandson actually sat down and read the book about rocks and minerals all by himself. (He did occasionally come and ask me for help with a big word.)
CHAPTER BOOKS
My grandkids and I are thankful to Earl Dizon for introducing us to this series. I started reading it to two granddaughters, and then put it aside since the three year old wasn't really interested. (Alas there are no dinosaurs or monsters.) Her six year old sister took it and finished it on her own.
It turns out that my grandson, who I gave the first in the series to as a Christmas gift, also loves these books. The glint in his eye when he spied it was a delight to see.
The Ratsos and their friends clean up an empty lot and set up an arcade in the transformed space. In this book Louie has to overcome his fear of whatever/whoever lives in the adjacent house when they accidentally break a window. Ralphie has his own challenges. After being nice to a bullied girl at school, rumours abound that he likes her. When he finds out who started the rumours, he ends up having to take responsibility for something he did to that person first. In the end, both boys go out of their way to make the other person's life better.
I really love this series. It's full of humour. The illustrations by Matt Myers are delightful. Mostly though, I love that it is full of heartfelt lessons about how to live a good life.
I read this one with my granddaughter, Ada. We started the first chapter and then I downloaded Salma the Syrian Chef so she could have some background on Salma's life.
Salma and her mother have been in Canada for a couple of years without her father. When word arrives that he is finally arriving, Salma is filled with big, complicated emotions. She is happy that he is coming, but worried that he will not like it in Vancouver and will want to return to Damascus without them. Then she will have to experience missing him all over again.
This book packs an emotional wallop. Ada and I had some good conversations about what life is like for her mother who left her home in Korea to marry their dad.
Finding readable chapter books that deal with complicated issues isn't easy. If I was still working, I would purchase a set of these for literature circles for younger students.
I'm looking forward to reading the next in this series, Salma Writes a Book. Hopefully it will arrive for me to take with me on my visit to see the grandkids at the end of April.
MG FICTION
Grace has magical power and needs to find someone to help her learn to use it. She ran away from the orphanage in search of a witch who is purported to live in the nearby woods. After narrowly escaping being cooked in a witches oven, the two make a deal. If Grace can complete all the spells in the witches grimoire before the cherries blossom in the spring, she will take Grace on as her apprentice. If she can't, the witch will take her magic.
I appreciate that this book is inspired by Anne of Green Gables. Grace has all the heart and energy of Anne. I love that her friendships and the plot follow so delightfully the story line of the original novels.
GRAPHIC NOVELS
June is one of the few remaining holdouts. She can't bear to lose her passion for art. She still has her heart but is under a lot of pressure from her parents to have it removed. Then she finds an abandoned heart in a bottle outside of the Tabularium, a facility that houses all the removed hearts. Shortly after this June befriends Max. The two of them set out to discover if hearts can be replaced.
June and her sister, Maya, had a close relationship until Maya had her heart removed. After that, June became an outsider at home and school. Her loneliness is so palpable, my heart ached for her.
I really appreciated that there are all kinds of moral and ethical issues being addressed here. Should we be expected to give up parts of ourselves in order to fit in? What is the role of art in living a full life? I loved Kerilynn Wilson's artwork.
The only part of this book that didn't really work was the ending. It didn't seem plausible enough. I know this is absurd given the the whole premise of surviving heart removal, but still, it felt too simple for me.
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| 4 stars |
Look on the Bright Side by Lily Williams & Karen Schneemann
I loved this duo's Go With the Flow, so when I saw they had another graphic novel with the same characters, I was excited. It didn't let me down. I enjoyed my visit with Brit, Christine, Abby and Sasha. I appreciated that we are shown Brit recovering from endometriosis surgery when the book begins. The school is stocked with tampons and pads as a direct result of the girl's activism in the first book. In this one, the focus is more on their romantic entanglements. Through it all, first and foremost, they remain friends.
ADULT/YA FICTION
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| 4 stars |
A World of Curiosities (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #18) by Louise Penny & Robert Bathurst (Narrator) November 29, 2022 🍁
All is not well in the small town of Three Pines. A brother and a sister from Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir's past are visiting the village for a graduation celebration. A boarded off room in Myrna's loft reveals strange messages that send the Sûreté du Québec investigators down some very dark alleys into the heart of a psychopathic serial killer who is hunting them.
I appreciate that this book honours the victims of the École Polytechnique massacre without naming their murderer. I appreciated learning more about how Armand got his start as a policeman. I also appreciated reading more about how Jen-Guy became a member of Armand's team.
My problem with this book is that it is a thriller, not just a complicated cosy mystery. A couple of times I had to pull my ear buds out and do something else for a while. In the end, I just downloaded the print version of the book and finished it that way. Even that was so terrifying I mostly skimmed the pages until I got to where the worst of it was over.
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| 4 stars |
The Secret Hours by Mick Herron & Gerard Doyle (Narrator) September 14, 2023
Two years prior to the events in this book, the government of the day created the Monochrome Inquiry, a special task force directed to look for misconduct in MI5. Of course the head of MI5 ensured that nothing important would ever be released.
Just when it looks like the inquiry has reached the end of its life, a confidential MI5 file is slipped to one of the leaders. This file takes us back in time to 1994 Germany, just after the Berlin wall came down. If you have read the other books in the Slough House series, you can't help but realize that this file tells us the back story of some of its important characters.
The individual responsible for the release of the files has a very good reason for having them come to light. She's got her eye trained on a former KGB agent now masquerading as a London businessman.
I am a hardcore fan of these Mick Herron's spy novels. I love his humour and how he incorporates the malfeasance of politicians and other high level public sector employees into each book. Now that I have finished all these (until the next one is published) I might have to give his oxford mysteries a try.
ADULT/YA NONFICTION
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| 5 stars |
Cobalt: Cradle of the Demon Metals, Birth of a Mining Superpower by Charlie Angus & (Narrator) February 1, 2022 🍁
This is book that focuses on the history of Cobalt, a mining town in Northern Ontario, Canada. I agree with Charlotte Gray that, “Cobalt is the best kind of popular history: carefully researched, vigorously narrated, respectful of the period it describes, but also informed by today’s concerns.”
Often these kinds of historical narratives are told from the perspective of the white miners and settlers. Angus integrates the impact the discovery of silver had on the Indigenous population in the area and describes how these original people ended up displaced and slaughtered.
I appreciate how thorough this book is. Global patterns in resource management, business and industry policies, union building and busting, government regulation and taxation have their roots in the history of this small community.
Cobalt is a companion metal to silver - and historically was discarded. With demand for it on the rise globally, Angus ponders if it will be mined in his area again, and if it is, can we do better for workers and the environment?
CURRENTLY
Double Eagle: A DreadfulWater Mystery by Thomas King
UP NEXT (MAYBE)
Mexikid by Pedro Martín
Doppelganger by Naoimi Klein (for bookclub)
READING GOALS
#MustRead2024 5/25 one on the go
NonFiction 8/24
Canadian Authors 12/50 two on the go
Indigenous Authors 4/25 two on the go
Goodreads Reading Challenge: 56/200
I so enjoyed your reviews that included what the grandchildren loved, or not, Cheriee. And I bookmarked quite a few new ones, like The Grace of Wild Things, & Salma Makes A Home, plus Cobalt. Whether I can get to any of them soon is the question, but they're on the list! Have a nice week 'after' the grandkids, which sounds fun and exhausting, too!
ReplyDeleteNice looking assortment of books. Come see what I'm reading here. Happy reading!
ReplyDeleteThe Truth About Dragons sounds wonderful. I love The Infamous Ratsos series and kids to, too.
ReplyDeleteI need to read Look on the Bright Side! The first book in the series was very popular, so I know that my students will love this one too.
ReplyDeleteHappy reading this week :)
If you enjoy reading fact based espionage thrillers, of which there are only a handful of decent ones, do try reading Bill Fairclough’s Beyond Enkription. It is an enthralling unadulterated fact based autobiographical spy thriller and a super read as long as you don’t expect John le Carré’s delicate diction, sophisticated syntax and placid plots.
ReplyDeleteWhat is interesting is that this book is so different to any other espionage thrillers fact or fiction that I have ever read. It is extraordinarily memorable and unsurprisingly apparently mandatory reading in some countries’ intelligence agencies’ induction programs. Why?
Maybe because the book has been heralded by those who should know as “being up there with My Silent War by Kim Philby and No Other Choice by George Blake”; maybe because Bill Fairclough (the author) deviously dissects unusual topics, for example, by using real situations relating to how much agents are kept in the dark by their spy-masters and (surprisingly) vice versa; and/or maybe because he has survived literally dozens of death defying experiences including 20 plus attempted murders.
The action in Beyond Enkription is set in 1974 about a real maverick British accountant who worked in Coopers & Lybrand (now PwC) in London, Nassau, Miami and Port au Prince. Initially in 1974 he unwittingly worked for MI5 and MI6 based in London infiltrating an organised crime gang. Later he worked knowingly for the CIA in the Americas. In subsequent books yet to be published (when employed by Citicorp, Barclays, Reuters and others) he continued to work for several intelligence agencies. Fairclough has been justifiably likened to a posh version of Harry Palmer aka Michael Caine in the films based on Len Deighton’s spy novels.
Beyond Enkription is a must read for espionage cognoscenti. Whatever you do, you must read some of the latest news articles (since August 2021) in TheBurlingtonFiles website before taking the plunge and getting stuck into Beyond Enkription. You’ll soon be immersed in a whole new world which you won’t want to exit. Intriguingly, the articles were released seven or more years after the book was published. TheBurlingtonFiles website itself is well worth a visit and don’t miss the articles about FaireSansDire. The website is a bit like a virtual espionage museum and refreshingly advert free.
Returning to the intense and electrifying thriller Beyond Enkription, it has had mainly five star reviews so don’t be put off by Chapter 1 if you are squeamish. You can always skip through the squeamish bits and just get the gist of what is going on in the first chapter. Mind you, infiltrating international state sponsored people and body part smuggling mobs isn’t a job for the squeamish! Thereafter don’t skip any of the text or you’ll lose the plots. The book is ever increasingly cerebral albeit pacy and action packed. Indeed, the twists and turns in the interwoven plots kept me guessing beyond the epilogue even on my second reading.
The characters were wholesome, well-developed and beguiling to the extent that you’ll probably end up loving those you hated ab initio, particularly Sara Burlington. The attention to detail added extra layers of authenticity to the narrative and above all else you can’t escape the realism. Unlike reading most spy thrillers, you will soon realise it actually happened but don’t trust a soul.