I am not a horror movie person. I’m a “hide behind a pillow until the monster is gone” kind of person. But when Merry Scary Christmas time rolled around again at WWAC, I decided to challenge myself a little and take part. Now, the one exception to my no-horror-movies rule is John Carpenter’s The Thing…
2016 CanLit Recommendations for Julian Barnes (And Everyone Else Too)
I am a big fan of Canadian literature a.k.a CanLit. But it can sometimes be difficult to find people who share this passion. The two most common reasons I’ve found are 1) people don’t live in Canada and are therefore not exposed to it or 2) they assume it’s all about people in cabins up…
Dogears: Velvet Wrapped Steel and Homicidal Royals
The Mothers Brit Bennett Riverhead Books October 11, 2016 Disclaimer: An Advanced Reader’s Copy (ARC) of the book was provided by the publisher for an honest review. I found out about this book while reading the October 2016 issue of Vogue. Lupita Nyong’o was on the cover looking gorgeous as usual, and I came across…
The Slight Madness that Make Us Sane: A Q&A with Yann Martel
The 37th International Festival of Authors (IFOA) in Toronto runs from October 20-30 and has been attended by a number of outstanding authors, including Canada’s own Yann Martel, author of the international bestselling novel Life of Pi. Martel, who currently lives in Saskatoon, is also the author of 2016’s The High Mountain of Portugal — a book which explores love, faith…
The Thursday Book Beat: All of the Book Awards, Chanie Wenjack & Fake Autographs
Hello from Christa your friendly neighbourhood Book Editor! I’m filling in this week for Ashley and have a bunch of interesting news from the literary world for you so let’s jump right in. This week the winners of two major book awards were announced. The first was the Man Booker Prize, which, for the first…
Dogears: An Unfinished World of Unrequited Love
The Unfinished World Amber Sparks Liveright January 25, 2016 The Unfinished World invites readers into the slightly off-center realities characteristic of Amber Sparks’ fabulist short stories. The stories are quirky and interesting, proving that the only thing readers can expect from Sparks’ work is that the stories will be unexpected.
3 Fictional Characters That Describe Me: The WWAC Edition
As self-identified geek girls, lovers of pop culture, and general all-around fangurls, we couldn’t resist jumping on the #threecharactersthatdescribeme challenge.
The Thursday Book Beat: New Reads for Your Morning Commute
Happy Thursday Booklovers! Christa here, stepping in this week to share the latest news from the literary world. Penguin Random House has launched their new Subway Reads program to celebrate the installation of free Wi-Fi in the New York City subway system. The program offers “40,000 pages or 50-plus hours of reading time” to commuters….
Losing It by Emma Rathbone Doesn’t Scratch That Itch
Losing It Emma Rathbone Riverhead Books July 19 2016 Julie Greenfield is a virgin—a twenty-six year old virgin to be precise. She’s not saving herself for marriage, or waiting until she’s in love, or anything like that. But somehow there’s just never been the right moment. Now here she is a college graduate with a…
Books That Made Us Cry Laughing in Public
Claire: In the summer of 2001 my family visited North America. We saw relatives in Connecticut (which tickled me; I kept an eye out for signage toward Stonybrooke), went to Boston (Heinz’ beans are better), New York (very tall), Martha’s Vineyard (horseshoe crabs? AWFUL), and up on some kind of hell train to Niagara Falls….
To Bullet Journal or Not to Bullet Journal?
I am an obsessive list maker. I make full use of the ToDoist app, I always have sticky notes in my purse, Excel is one of my favourite pieces of software ever, and I constantly keep Notepad open on my computer with a running tally of what I want to accomplish that day. I also…
Dogears: The Power of Symbolism and Storytelling
Mama’s Nightingale: A Story of Immigration and Separation Edwidge Danticat & Leslie Staub Dial Books September 1, 2015 The complexity of immigration policy may be difficult to explain to a child, but many are affected by it. Saya’s mother is an undocumented Haitian immigrant who has been detained by ICE. To ease Saya’s suffering, her…