Kings of the Yukon by Adam Weymouth

May 10, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction – print. Little, Brown and Company, 2018. 288 pgs. Library copy. Subtitled “One Summer Paddling Across the Far North”, Weymouth’s memoir covers the fourth months he spent canoeing the Yukon River from Canada’s Yukon Territory through Alaska to the Bering Sea. The Yukon is 2,000 miles long, the longest free-flowing river in the United States and the longest salmon run in the world. Each summer, king salmon (known as Chinook in Canada) migrate the distance of the Yukon to […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Canada, Food, Indigenious Peoples, Nonfiction, North America, United States • Tags: Adam Weymouth

When Calls the Heart by Janette Oke

April 25, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition. Bethany House, 2005. Originally published 1983. 228 pgs. Library copy. One of my (not so) guilty pleasures these days is watching the television show ‘When Calls the Heart’ on the Hallmark Channel. The show is sweet and kind, and any anguishing problem is solved by the end of the ten episode season — if not in one episode. Since the show has been such a nice break from the police procedural or dramas I normally watch, […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Canada, Fiction, North America • Tags: Janette Oke

Fifteen Dogs by André Alexis

December 8, 2015 by Christina

Fiction — print. Coach House Books, 2015. 171 pgs. Library copy. In this imaginative, little book, the Greek gods Hermes and Apollo visit a dog kennel near Toronto and gift the fifteen dogs there with consciousness. The two have wagered a bet over whether or not intelligence — or, maybe more appropriately,  awareness of one’s place in society outside the insular pack — makes humans happier than other beings. If one of these fifteen dogs gifted with human intelligence dies […]

Categories: 2015 Reads, Animals, Canada, Fiction, Giller Prize, North America • Tags: André Alexis

Tell by Frances Itani

January 29, 2015 by Christina

Fiction — print. Black Cat, 2014. 321 pgs. Purchased. Shortlisted for the 2014 Giller Prize, Itani’s novel is set in a small Canadian village named Deseronto in Ontario following the Great War and reintroduces readers to the characters first presented in her 2003 novel, Deafening. That novel, apparently, focused on a deaf woman named Grania and her sister Tress (I haven’t read the novel); this novel focuses on Tress’ partner, Kenan, and the impact his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD, or […]

Categories: 2015 Reads, Canada, Fiction, Giller Prize, North America • Tags: Frances Itani

All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews

December 29, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — print. McSweeney’s, 2014. 330 pgs. Library copy. Raised in a Mennonite household haunted by remembers of religious persecution in Russia, Elfrieda and Yolandi are expected to conform to particular expectations for their life and live in a community where people gossip and whisper about the nonconformists. Elfrieda, known as Elf to her family, is a progeny at the piano offering her an opportunity to escape from the insular community and her sister, known as Yoli, an example of […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Canada, Fiction, Giller Prize, North America • Tags: Miriam Toews

The Girl Who Was Saturday Night by Heather O’Neill

October 16, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — print. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014. 416 pgs. Library copy. Set against the backdrop of the 1995 Quebec referendum for national sovereignty, O’Neill’s novel introduces readers to the Tremblay family, a colorful cast of characters whose identities are entwined with the independence movement by a documentary produced about their lives during the first referendum in 1980. Told through the eyes of nineteen-year-old Nouschka, the novel follows her as she returns to school after dropping out at sixteen with her twin […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Canada, Fiction, Giller Prize, North America • Tags: Heather O’Neill

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

May 26, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Ruth Ozeki. Penguin Audio, 2013. 14.7 hours. Library copy. In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao plans to document the life of her great-grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace—and will touch lives in a ways she can scarcely imagine. Across the Pacific, a novelist named Ruth lives […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Asia, Audiobook, Book Club, Canada, Fiction, Japan, Man Booker Prize, North America • Tags: Ruth Ozeki

Mark of the Grizzly by Scott McMillion

June 5, 2013 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Falcon Publishing, 1998. 252 pgs.  Borrowed from my mother. Subtitled “True Stories of Recent Bear Attacks and the Hard Lessons Learned”, this book examines a series of grizzly encounters (I loathe to use the word “attacks”) to provide lessons on how to behave in bear country for visitors and attempts to piece together a more in-depth explanation of bear behavior. Incidentally, however, I was quite happy to be reading this one on the plane away from bear […]

Categories: 2013 Reads, Animals, Canada, Mountain West, Nonfiction, North America, United States • Tags: Scott McMillion

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

July 13, 2011 by Christina

In need of help on their farm, siblings Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert send word to a friend to fetch a boy from the orphanage. Instead, they were sent a freckle-faced, redhead eleven-year-old girl with a very active imagination named Anne (spelled with an e, please). Marilla is set on sending Anne Shirley back to the orphanage the next morning, but this charming young girl desperately wants to stay at Green Gables with Marilla and her brother and promises to keep […]

Categories: 2011 Reads, Canada, Classics, Fiction, Juvenile, North America • Tags: L. M. Montgomery

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

November 16, 2010 by Christina

Fiction — print. Anchor Books, 1997. Originally published 1996. 468 pgs. Received from PaperBackSwap. Based on a real Canadian murder (allegedly) committed by Grace Marks in 1843, Atwood’s novel examines the murders in a fictional manner and explores the burgeoning field of mental illness during that time. The last couple of books I’ve read have been pretty bad, and I’m so glad that I decided to start Atwood’s novel because it’s just fantastic. Overall, the novel is very well-written with […]

Categories: 2010 Reads, AP Literature, Canada, Chunkster, Fiction, Giller Prize, Man Booker Prize, North America • Tags: Margaret Atwood

Obasan by Joy Kogawa

December 16, 2008 by Christina

Kogawa’s novel is narrated by Naomi, a sheltered and pampered child who is five years old when her life is drastically changed by the events at Pearl Harbor and the Second World War. As a Japanese Canadian, Naomi is separated from her parents, persecuted and eventually placed in an internment camp – common practice in Canada during WWII. “If all this sounds like a bird’s-eye view to you, Nesan, it’s the reportage of a caged bird. I can’t really see […]

Categories: 2008 Reads, AP Literature, Canada, Fiction, North America, Textbook • Tags: Joy Kogawa

The Birth House by Ami McKay

December 15, 2008 by Christina

McKay’s novel is the story of Dora Rare, the first daughter to be born in five generations of Rares. As a child in an isolated village in Nova Scotia, she is drawn to Miss Babineau, an outspoken Acadian midwife with a gift for healing and a kitchen filled with herbs and folk remedies. During the turbulent first years of World War I, Dora becomes the midwife’s apprentice. Together, they help the women of Scots Bay through infertility, difficult labours, breech […]

Categories: 2008 Reads, Canada, Fiction, North America • Tags: Ami McKay