The majority of my reading time this year has been devoted to the books which have been living for years, though neglected, on my own bookshelves. In May and June, I had a planned rebellion, and I enjoyed a great number of new books. But now I have returned to
Nick Cutter’s debut, The Troop, was one of those books about which I was truly ambivalent, literally thunking the book down after a haunting and visceral scene and snatching it up again because I simply had to know what was going to happen next. I recommended it widely to friends
The dedication to Padma Viswanathan's second novel: For the lost, and for the living. Random House of Canada, 2014 Therein, the reader haa a clue, for The Ever After of Ashwin Rao is equally preoccupied with losing and living. The novel opens in 2004, on the precipice of the trial which
Nothing like a good mystery. Some serial fun, with Giles Blunt, Ian Hamilton, Louise Penny, or my most recent discovery, the Nina Borg series by Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnete Friis. But one can find a good page-turner in the standalone novels on the fiction shelves too. Take Claire Cameron's freshly published The Bear, longlisted
"It is through weakness and vulnerability that most of us... discover our soul." (Desmond Tutu) Doubleday Canada - Random House, 2013 If you take Desmond Tutu's statement as truth, Jowita Bydlowska's Drunk Mom is arguably the ultimate discovery. Her to-the-bare-walls description of her alcoholism displays every weakness. It
