LET’S TALK BOOKS
I love reading books. I’ve always loved reading books. I think this love came from my mother who taught me to read before I went to school. She had a bookcase headboard crammed with yellowing thrift store paperbacks—some you wouldn’t expect your mother to read like Messalina and Peyton Place—along with fat, hard-cover, Reader Digests. My mother was an armchair adventure who got “tight” after one glass of wine, giggled, and crossed her legs. Sorry, Mom, but I love that memory of you.
My criteria? If I like a book, I write about it. So, naturally, my reviews and musings end up here. I know what it takes to write a book, the endless hours, the sleepless nights; so I don’t write about a book if I don’t connect with it.
I’m a proud Canadian and have been writing reviews of fellow Canadian authors for the Ottawa Review of Books for the past few years. This has allowed me to discover some brilliant writers. They may not be New York Times Bestselling authors—because Canadian publishers cannot submit to the NY Times—but they’re wonderful just the same. So, if you like to discover new authors too, read on. Oh, interspersed you may find some superstar authors, like Maggie Stiefvater, who lives in the state of Virginia, and I read just because I wish I could write like her. Literary Envy. Argh!
A Tragic Tapestry of Exploitation, Murder & Mayhem
What do you get when you cross an emergency-room doctor with an award-winning novelist? An insanely-twisted thriller that’s more connected than the vascular system. White Lightning is book nine in the Hope Sze medical thriller series but reads like a standalone. It...
Falling in Love Again: Widdershins Take Two
I recently reread Widdershins, the 11th book in Charles de Lint’s Newford series (published 2006). At 560 pages, it’s a hefty tome. I fell in love with it in chapter one when Lizzie Mahone’s car runs out of gas at a lonely crossroads in the middle of the night. Of...
Hunting by Stars. Cherie Dimaline
Cherie Dimaline never intended to write a sequel to her dystopian novel, The Marrow Thieves, but after earning the Governor General’s Award and the Kirkus Prize for Young Readers’ Literature, she went into schools to talk with teens about writing the book. When the...
Under an Outlaw Moon. Dietrich Kalteis
At its heart, Under an Outlaw Moon is a love story about two kids trying to escape the Depression. Based on a true story, Dietrich Kalteis breathes life into a couple of real-life outlaws. This is not an easy thing to do. An author needs space to allow the muse to...
The Bean Trees. Barbara Kingsolver.
The Bean Trees, 1988 I first read this story back in the early 90s. I say “story” rather than book. A book is a collection of paper glued together with a spine. A story has heart. And this story has a bloody muscle that pulses like the Mother Earth herself. First...
Elements of Indigenous Style. Gregory Younging
The subtitle of Elements of Indigenous Style is A Guide for Writing By and About Indigenous Peoples. I read this book to learn what is appropriate and what is not, as the two fiction books I’m now writing include references to Indigenous Peoples and are set on...
