Showing posts with label #War. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #War. Show all posts

#IMWAYR February 24, 2015

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. I'm also connecting up with the Sunday Salon. These are fabulous places to start your search for what to read next.


February has been a challenging month! I haven't been able to get much reading done. I've read a lot of news and magazine articles, but not many books. I did manage to finish up my Valentines day fridge magnets, but the grandkids told me they liked the brownies more. 

 
My Aunty Joan finally passed away so the house was full of people for a while. Isn't it fascinating to learn about early life of someone you only new as an over worked wife and mother? I had no idea that in her teen years she took flying lessons to become a pilot!

Then we headed off to Vancouver where we had tickets to see Ronnie Burkett's Wonderful Joe show. We visited with family and friends and tried to do more in six days than we would have done in a month when we were living there.

Adding to all that, the political upheaval has left me feeling worried and anxious. The following cartoon from the New Yorker describes my feelings completely.


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

PREVIOUS BLOG POST
BEGINNING CHAPTER BOOKS

4 stars

The Weird Sisters: A Note, a Goat, and a Casserole by Mark David Smith & Kari Rust (Illustrator) April 15, 2022  🍁

When three witch sisters move to the town of Covenly, not everyone is happy. They open up a pet store, and their first customer is Jessica Nibley, who is missing her pet goat. Together they head off in search of the goat, and whoever is sending nasty messages to the new citizens. Thankfully it all turns out alright in the end.
I really appreciated the humour and Kari Rust's fun illustrations. I'm looking forward to reading more of this series and sharing it with my grandkids.
 
YA GRAPHIC


This is the third book in the Surviving the City series. The teens are forced to address the discovery of children's bodies buried on the grounds of residential schools. 
In the end they conclude that together they can help each other and their people heal from the injustices of the past, as well as those in the present. 
Natasha Donovan's art work is just gorgeous. 

YA/ADULT FICTION


In this third book in the Tiffany Aching series, her new mentor, Miss Treason, takes her to a dark Morris dance - a ceremony where Summer passes the world over to Winter. Unable to stop herself, she joins the dancers and the Wintersmith becomes smitten with her. Because of this, she unwittingly disrupts the passage of the seasons and begins to take on some the characteristics of Summer with greenery sprouting from her feet.
Under the direction of Nanny Ogg the Nac Mac Feegles enlist Roland, Tiffany's childhood friend, to be a hero. Once they've taught him how to use a sword, they descend into the underworld to waken and return the real Lady Summer to the world.
There's another subplot where Miss Treason dies and an incompetent witch, Annagramma, is appointed to take over for her. Tiffany and the other young witches figure out a way to help her.
This time round I was more fascinated by Tiffany's relationship with the Wintersmith, who in his effort to woo her, tries his best to become human. At the same time as he terrifies her, she is also flattered that a god is interested in her. In the end, just in time, she figures out how to stop him. It's all part of how Pratchett messes around with Story and in the process, shows us how we too are capable of disrupting them. 


I listened to this, but think it might have been better to have read it with my eyes. Perhaps it's just that I listened to it in bits and pieces and lost track of the individual stories of these remarkable teens who worked at Bletchley Park.
On a positive note, listening to this against the backdrop of current events I was reminded of the brilliance, bravery, and strength of youth and ordinary people in times of war, conflict, and disaster. It inspired me with hope for the future.


This was a book club book. It's a complicated story about being a Yemeni immigrant in Israel. There are two distinct story lines. One tells the story of a young man and woman, Saida, living in a refuge camp in the 1950's. Although the two fall in love, she is already married. The other story line, set in the 1990's focuses on Zohara, one of the woman's daughters. When her mother dies, she returns  for the funeral. While cleaning up the family home, she learns about her mother's life ends up discovering secrets about her past. In the process, she embraces what it means to be Yemeni. 
There are a lot of characters in this book and at times I got confused. I appreciated learning about what it means to be a minority Jew inside Israeli culture. 


Once a year I spend time with women friends in a cabin on the ocean in what is the traditional territory of the Stz’uminus people. On the edges of the Gary Oak forest are the remains of camas plots originally developed by them. In a small bay just north of the cabin are the remains of oyster and clam beds established by these same people. Learning about this place began to change the way I understood what it meant to live in a hunter gatherer society. 
Jennifer Grenz's book helped me grasp this more fully. It is a book meant to change the way we look at and understand the 'natural' world. She shows us that trying to heal ecosystems in North America, and maybe even the world, without knowing how the Indigenous populations lived on the land, will inevitably fail. Part of this is about realizing that these peoples had an active responsibility for shaping and caring for where they lived, but more than this, it's about how they lived and continue to live, in relationship with their land. 

CURRENTLY 

The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich

UP NEXT (MAYBE)

The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer November 19, 2024

2025 READING GOALS

#MustRead2025 9/25

NonFiction 8/30 

Poetry 1/12 

Canadian Authors 15/50

Indigenous Authors 4/25

Goodreads Reading Challenge: 29/200

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IMWAYR July 15, 2024

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.

I worked hard on a paper pieced unicorn quilt last week. I am determined to have it finished before the end of the month. I've had the pattern and most of the fabric for over a year. I started on it last spring but other projects got in the way. I need to get it completed before my granddaughter decides that she doesn't like unicorns anymore. 

The pile on the left are finished. I am almost finished the ones in the middle - just need to add the blue background fabric. I have yet to start the pile on the right.

In the process of that, (and weeding in the garden) I listened to a lot of audiobooks. 

At the same time as I was working on my projects, I travelled across time and space, made new literary friends, and came to understand the world and its denizens in new ways. I'm so thankful to be a reader. 

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.

PICTURE BOOKS

4 stars

Perla The Mighty Dog by Isabel Allende & Sandy Rodriguez (Illustrator) May 28, 2024

Everyone needs a Perla in their life. Perla's super powers include making people love her and barking really loudly. Her boy, Nico Rico, is being bullied at school. Perla teaches him how to deal with his bully. 
I'm not really a dog person, but I fell in love with Perla. 

4 stars

Métis Like Me by Tasha Hilderman & Risa Hugo (Illustrator) April 2, 2024 🍁

What does it mean to be Métis? I'm not sure there is an American equivalent. The Métis here in Canada are a group of Indigenous people whose ancestors originate with the union of European men and Indigenous women. They have their unique history, culture, and even language. 
This book introduces us to a number of Métis children who tell us about their lives. Some of them are aware of their heritage, while others know next to nothing. No matter what, they are all Métis.

MG FICTION

5 stars

Tree. Table. Book. by Lois Lowry & Hope Newhouse (Narrator) April 1, 2024

The two Sophies are best friends. Sophie Winslow is in elementary school while Sophie Gershowitz is 88. The elder Sophie is having memory trouble these days and her son is planning on moving her to a home near him. The younger Sophie is heartbroken. She comes up with a plan to test Sophie G. to show that she is competent. In the process we learn about her earlier life. 
Like all Lois Lowry novels, this one is full of brilliant characters aside from the main ones. The younger Sophie's other friends, Ralphie and Oliver are equally memorable. 
I loved this book. I'm sure that even if I wasn't already sucker for intergenerational relationships, I would have loved it. 
I was also terrified for Sophie Gershowitz. I'm now of age to have visited people living in the best kinds of care homes. Warehousing is not an ending I want for myself or anyone else I love. This book was a reminder to me of how imminent and important it is to find a better way. 

ADULT/YA FICTION


All the hype about this book is well deserved. I don't usually read family sagas but I was sucked into this from the first few pages.
It's filled with characters I took into my heart. I feel like I travelled back in time and made new friends. There are a couple of what seem at first to be disparate story lines. 
It begins with Mariamma, a 12 year old girl grieving the loss of her father, being married to a 40 year old man. I came to love this couple and all the other people who come into their lives in the next three generations. 
The other story lines are of different doctors. Dr. Rune Orquist ends up devoting his life to caring for leprosy patients. Digby Kilgour is a Scottish doctor who joined the Indian Medical Services. 
The lives of the different people intersect across time and come to a satisfying and heart wrenching conclusion at the end of the novel.


The best thing about historical fiction, is how much we can learn about times and places we previously knew next to nothing about. This is set in a small town near Philadelphia.
It begins in 1972 with the discovery of a skeleton and a mezuzah.  Then it takes us back to the 1930's. A Jewish immigrant, Moshe, meets and marries a young woman, Chona, whose father owns a grocery store in Chicken Hill, a Black, Jewish, and immigrant neighbourhood. When the rest of the Jewish community moves, they stay. Chona has become one of my favourite female protagonists, but all the women in this novel are remarkable: Addie Timblin, who helps out in the store; Patty Millison, AKA Paper, who knows all the news, and figures out how to get the kind of help they need to rescue Dodo, the young deaf boy trapped in Pennhurst, an insane asylum; and Miggy Fludd who works at Pennhurst. 
We discover eventually who the skeleton was and how it and the mezuzah ended up in the bottom of a well. It feels like justice, however erroneously, was meted out. 
This is a book about friendship, resilience, love and overcoming. I didn't want the book to end so I started it all over again. I've decided to read everything by James McBride that I can get my hands on. 


I don't generally like books where the mother dies, but this one was different. It focuses on on what her loss means to people close to her for the year after her death. It's told from three points of view, Ali, her daughter, her husband, Bill, and her best friend Annemarie.  Through them we see how the rest of the family is coping - or not coping. While there is grief, there's also growth as they all, especially Bill, have to take on the roles she once managed. 
In spite of the fact that nothing really happens, it's not an easy book to read. Ali discovers that her best friend, Jenny, is being abused by her father. Annemarie sinks back into addiction. 
I really appreciated how important therapy was for the children and Bill. 
I loved that all these people felt real - like the kind of family who might live on the same block as me. 

5 stars

The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden, (Author and Narrator) and January Lavoy & Michael Crouch (Narrators) February 13, 2024

This fascinating story is told from the perspectives of two siblings caught up in the horror of WW1.
Laura Iven was a front line nurse until she was injured when her hospital was bombed and sent home. Shortly after arriving back in Halifax, two ships collided in the harbour. The ensuing explosion wiped out huge sections of the city and killed her mother and father. When she finds out that her brother, Freddie, has died she returns to Begium working in a private hospital to find what happened. 
Freddie almost died when he was trapped in an overturned pillbox with Hans Winter, a wounded German soldier. In the process of keeping each other alive and sane, the two of them bond. They manage to escape and go searching for Laura so that she can help Hans who was badly injured. Along the way they meet up with a mysterious man who can bring solace in the midst of all the terror. 
I became a Katherine Arden fan from reading The Bear and the Nightingale Trilogy. I ended up liking this book even more. I adored all these characters. I liked that while there is a bit of romance, it's a very small bit of the over all story. There is a plot twist near the end that took me completely by surprise!

CURRENTLY 

Betty: The Helen Betty Osborne Story by David Alexander Robertson & Scott B. Henderson (Illustrator) April 27, 2015 🍁

Woke Up Like This by Amy Lea, Mindy Kaling (Introduction) September 5, 2023 🍁

UP NEXT (MAYBE)

A Crane Among Wolves by June Hur May 14, 2024 🍁

READING GOALS 

#MustRead2024 13/25 

NonFiction 20/24

Canadian Authors 38/50 two on the go

Indigenous Authors 18/25 one on the go

Goodreads Reading Challenge: 128/200   

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#IMWAYR April 22, 2024

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.


I almost didn't post this week because I have been busy trying to get the house and yard under control before we head off to Vancouver to visit with family and celebrate one of our granddaughters turning four. We won't be around next weekend because we will still be there celebrating. I wouldn't ordinarily worry so much about the house, but some of my extended family will be staying here to celebrate one of my aunts' birthday. 

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.

MG FICTION


Lulu lives with her sister and mother in a small community outside of Manilla, Philippines. During an earthquake she discovers that she has superpowers. Soon after that she learns that her supportive neighbourhood and best friend are not who they appear to be. Lulu discovers that she is the salamangkero, a special being born to protect the different realms. When her adopted mother is kidnapped by a wakwak, Lulu, her adopted sister, Kitty, and her best friend, Bart, a shape shifter, set off to rescue her. The trio meet up with numerous personages from Philippine mythology.
I liked the merge of ancient mythology and modern pop culture in this book. Fans of Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series will enjoy this. 
The physical book includes a glossary of Tagalog mythology. The problem with listening to this book is that I didn't realize this until I finished the novel. Villanueva does a good job of introducing them and their importance in the novel, but I really could have used it earlier on to provide background knowledge keep track of them all. 


Thanks to Max for the heads up about this sweet romantic graphic novel. It's the story of two young women who become friends and then more than that. Momo Gardner is an introvert. She's a good friend, but really doesn't value her own worth. She's the kind of friend who wants to think the best of others, but is sometimes taken advantage of by them. PG is more of a flirt and an extrovert. In spite of this, she's really a private person. When she falls for someone, she falls hard.
This graphic novel addresses important issues. At the same time as it deals with the romance between these two characters, it addresses friendship, love, self worth, and being honest with oneself and those closest to us.
I enjoyed this, but I think I might have appreciated it a lot more if I hadn't picked it up after having read Mexikid.

ADULT/YA FICTION


The Future was the winner of the Canada Reads debate this year. The theme was "looking for one book to carry us forward. When we are at a crossroads, when uncertainty is upon us, when we have faced challenges and are ready for the future, how do we know where to go next?"

"In an alternate history of Detroit, the Motor City was never surrendered to the US. Its residents deal with pollution, poverty, and the legacy of racism—and strange and magical things are happening: children rule over their own kingdom in the trees and burned houses regenerate themselves. When Gloria arrives looking for answers and her missing granddaughters, at first she finds only a hungry mouse in the derelict home where her daughter was murdered. But the neighbours take pity on her and she turns to their resilience and impressive gardens for sustenance."

After her daughter's death, Gloria moves to Detroit to live in her daughter's house. As she learns more about her daughter and granddaughters' lives, she has to come to terms with who her daughter became. Even when her attempts to connect with her grandchildren go nowhere, she never gives up hope that she will be reunited with the two girls. 
I am not generally a fan of dystopian realities, yet I fell head over heels in love with this one. Even though it's got that end of the world scenario, it's mostly about hope. It's a world that seems to be populated with old people and feral children. Getting to know them was pure joy. The Future is a story about resilience, found family, community and using that community to make everyone's lives better. I didn't want it to end. 




5 stars

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong (Author and Narrator) June 4, 2019

I started this book a while ago, but for all kinds of reasons, put it aside. When I picked it up again, I was in a better mental space for it. Emotionally this is a hard read. The beauty of the language only serves to emphasize the horrors experienced by Ocean, his mother, and his grandmother. I don't regret listening to this semi-autobiographical novel: Ocean Vuong's narration was profound. Yet I suspect I missed much not seeing the organization of his words. 
I contemplated writing more about this book, but honestly, nothing I could write could compare to this review on Goodreads by chai. Even if you have read the book, go and read this. 

CURRENTLY

Doppelganger by Naoimi Klein 🍁 

Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin January 1, 1978

Naked: Not Your Average Sex Encyclopedia by Myriam Daguzan Bernier & Cécile Gariépy (Illustrator)  🍁

Wolfsong by TJ Klune

UP NEXT (MAYBE)

Rez Ball by Byron Graves

Woke up Like This by Amy Lea  🍁

READING GOALS 

#MustRead2024 8/25 one on the go

NonFiction 11/24 one on the go

Canadian Authors 17/50 two on the go

Indigenous Authors 7/25

Goodreads Reading Challenge: 75/200 
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