JUNE 2016 - What are we reading?

I'll finish The Master and Margarita by the weekend. Not really my thing, but it's sort of fun and very different.

I'm almost finished The Orenda. My strategy of reading it on the bus is paying off.

At home I'm just about to start Coastlines, by Patrick Barkham.

More Prairie Doctor / Lewis Draper
3.5 stars

Dr. Draper was one of the doctors in the small town in Southern Saskatchewan where I grew up (population, about 1300). He was not my doctor, but the town is small enough, we certainly knew him (and I think I did see him as a doctor at least once...that I vaguely recall!) and my Dad was on town council with him for a while.

Anyway, this book is mostly anecdotes from when he was one of the resident doctors in the small town of Gravelbourg, Saskatchewan. It includes stories of his own home life and about his family, some medical/patient stories, his political life (he was a town counsellor, then mayor, and later went on to serve in the provincial legislature), and other stories about various people and/or events in town.

This book is obviously of more interest to a local audience. I enjoyed it. I got some updates on some people (though for some stories – I expect the medical ones – he used pseudonyms), which was nice. Stories of being a doctor in a small town were interesting; he was well-known for speaking his mind and he certainly does so in this book, as well. The book is – I believe – self-published (though there is the name of a small publisher, but I believe it's his own publication; he has also written a couple other books, presumably under the same publisher), so there are grammatical errors here and there, but overall, I enjoyed the book. It brought back some small-town/Gravelbourg and area memories for me.

Oops! Finished this last night, so I probably should have posted in the May thread. Oh, well!

I'm reading Man by Kim Thuy.

Now I'm reading Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan

Just finished a psychological thriller Hesitation Cut by Giles Blunt

Clearing my head with a light mystery: The Case of the Half-Wakened Wife, by Erle Stanley Gardner.

Finished The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper, by Phaedra Patrick, which I very much enjoyed. Currently just started into Chris Cleave new book, Everyone Brave is Forgiven. Seems interesting so far.

I put aside Penelope Fitzgerald's The Bookshop to read The Master and Margarita. Now that I've finished the later, I've picked up The Bookshop again. I'm also reading a Thomas King's short story collection One Good Story, That One. Some of his stories are amazingly good, some are borderline unreadable.

Finished The Case of the Half-Wakened Wife (the solution felt convoluted) and now I'm reading an old history of Scotland Yard, creatively titled Scotland Yard.

Some light "fluff" reading after a gruelling week or two at work: Grace by T. Greenwood, a family drama sort of story.

I just read the graphic novel Seconds by Bryan Lee O'Malley. It's one of the Forest of Reading books for this year. The book club members at my local library are reading as many of them as we want to, to be discussed at the September meeting. I liked Seconds, and have passed it along to my teenagers. Earlier, I read Local Customs by Audrey Thomas, which was excellent, and They Left Us Everything by Plum Johnson, which was okay.

Now I'm reading Lambsquarters by Barbara McLean. It's this month's book club book. (I haven't read this much Canadian literature in a six month period since my highschool Can Lit course.) This one isn't doing much for me, but maybe it will grow on me.

Fans of the John Cardinal series by Giles Blunt (of which I imagine there are a few in these parts) may be interested to know that CTV has ordered a six-part series titled "Cardinal":

http://fallpreview.ctv.ca/new-shows/cardinal

I'm reading Banana Boys by Terry Woo.

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri. I loved this set of stories about ambitious Bengalis who emigrate to the US. There are conflicts when their children do not want to follow Asian traditions and behavioural expectations.

I've finished The Bonjour Effect, a great look at French culture through conversation: very relevant. I also finished Le Lagon noir by Arnaldur Indridason today, a little bit of Icelandic detective fiction.
I've started The Productivity Project by Carelton student Chris Bailey: whereas I'm not a big fan of productivity as an end goal, Bailey does a good job of showing how it's a balance of time and energy.
Finally I've started Tout ce qu'on ne te dira pas, Mongo, the latest by Dany Laferrière whom I got to meet a few weeks ago (and positively swooned with excitement).

Loved Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave. I am now reading Nora Webster by Colm Toibin.

Continuing a history binge with Magna Carta: The Birth of Liberty, by Dan Jones. After having watched him present the series "Secrets of Great British Castles" (on Neflix), I can "hear" his voice as I read.

THank you! I have read them all and look forward to this.

Not feeling well this past week, so lots of "comfort" reading and food:
The Woman in Blue by Elly Griffiths, Undressing the Moon by T. Greenwood and Gathering the World also by T. Greenwood.

Just finished The Women in Black by Madeleine St John. This is my favourite book so far this year. It's the story of a group of women who work at a department store in Sydney Australia in the 1950s. Not a lot of plot, but wonderful characters, subtle lovely writing, and some humour. Highly recommended; unfortunately, it's out of print and difficult to find.

>20 ted74ca:, >21 Nickelini:, now you're making me want to grab The Woman in White off my to-be-read pile. Some kind of theme going on here ...

>22 Cecrow: Ha ha! I have that on my TBR pile too but never seem to get to it. Maybe this is the "Women in" . . . year.

I enjoyed The Woman in White which I read earlier this year. It is considered one of the earliest examples of its genre.

I've re-read All My Friends Are Superheroes by Andrew Kaufman and am on to The Mistress's Daughter by A.M. Homes. Also reading Twenty-one Cardinals by Jocelyne Saucier.

Just finished A Little Stranger by Canadian author Kate Pullinger. It was very readable -- so much so that I almost missed my stop on the Skytrain. Now I'm starting Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen. I find her to be a difficult author but hope to turn the corner with this novel.

Reading Still Midnight by Denise Mina. A bit of " tartan noir."

Today, I'll be starting two books: For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway and Now You See Her by James Patterson.

My current bus book is Gideon's Fire, by J.J. Marric, and at home I think I might start the new Stephen King, End of Watch.

It has been a long time since I posted here. I just finished a very good book set in British Columbia, Medicine Walk by Richard Wagamese.

I'm reading Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler. I'm so happy, because I thought her previous book was her last one. I'm also reading Fall of Giants by Ken Follett.

I lingered in bed this am - currently on a few days vacation time from work- to finish Rush Home Road by Lori Lansens. Loved it.

I'm reading Oryx and Crake, but I'm finding it a bit slow going. Probably because I've been pretty busy, and haven't been able to really settle down to get into it.

Now reading HMS Ulysses, by Alistair MacLean, on the bus, and SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, by Mary Beard, at home.

I finished A Lesson in Secrets by Jacqueline Winspear and I am half way through Vinegar Girl. Compared to The Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler I'm finding Vinegar Girl a bit " fluffy" , but it's improving as I go along.

>33 SylviaC: I've discussed Oryx and Crake with a lot of people, and generally readers are slow to warm to it because it's difficult to know what is going on. As you start to figure it out, the book gets better and better. And at the end, you feel rather clever. The side-quel, Year of the Flood, I think is less confusing. Not sure it matters what order your read them in, but if I'd read YotF first, Oryx and Crake would have been less confusing.

>36 Nickelini: I had a chance to read a bigger chunk at one sitting last night, and that definitely helped. I've seen a lot of really positive reviews of The Year of the Flood, and am looking forward to reading it. I didn't realize that the order didn't matter, or I might have started with it. Have you read MaddAddam?

>37 SylviaC: not yet but I really want to.

Maddaddam really helps pull the other two together and make sense of it all.

I just saw that the Kindle versions of Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, and MaddAddam are on sale at Amazon Canada for $4.99 each, for this weekend. I got MaddAddam, since I didn't have a paper copy of it.