April, 2015: Here's What We're Reading

I'm staring the month with Frog Music by Emma Donoghue.

Decided to revisit an old favourite: Barometer Rising, by Hugh MacLennan.

I'm reading Cold-Blooded Kindness by Barbara A. Oakley.

I'm reading The Demonologist by Andrew Pyper, my favourite Canadian horror storyteller.

I'm reading Final Verdict by Adela Rogers St. Johns. It's a biography of her lawyer father.

I've moved on to Charlotte by David Foenkinos, a novelised biography of Charlotte Salomon, a Jewish German painter who was victim of the Holocaust. Not a light read, but it's beautifully written, like a long poem.

Finished one of the 2015 Bailey Long List books, A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler . The review is on the main page. I just loved the story!

I am about 3/4 through And No Birds Sang by Farley Mowat. Apparently my grandpa made his acquaintance during WW11 during the invasion of Italy , so that is what prompted me to read it.

I've moved on to Le Train by Georges Simenon, also set during World War II. It's making me very thankful about where I live...

I just started reading "Ellen in Pieces" by Caroline Adderson, a West Coast author - so far pretty good, but why are all the novels about middle aged women, my age, always so neurotic? Is it finally safe to say that the Gen Xer's are a self loathing, neurotic bunch?

JFMC - I've always blamed it on Ally McBeal... my least favourite character, ever.

maybe they think we're only interesting if we're neurotic?

I just started Bury your Dead by Louise Penny and for some strange reason I have started to reread Middlemarch.

Just enjoyed reading Sally Bedell Smith's Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch. A good biography. Well-researched and well-written.
(Edited for touchstone)

I'm reading The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing. So far it's shaping up to be the best book I've read this year. It's about a murder of a farmer's wife in Rhodesia.

I read that one in the 1980s....it may be time for a re-read.

Currently reading The Midwife's Daughter by Patricia Ferguson.

I'm reading my ER book, The Surfacing by Cormac James

After finishing Barometer Rising, I think another historical novel is in order. Fortunately there are lots to choose from on my shelves :)

i am reading The Stuff that Never Happened by Maggie Dawson.

Finished The Grass is Singing, which is the best-written book I've read this year (and an interesting story too0, now I'm just about finished Poor Cow (Nell Dunn) which is a Virago Modern Classic about a single mum in 1960s working class London. Not sure what will follow that one.

Reading Some Great Thing by Lawrence Hill, which I think was his first published novel.

I just finished Dawson's book this afternoon. I'd be interested to hear what you think when you're done.

I've finished Almost French by Sarah Turnbull, an Australian journalist who moved to France. It's a charming, fun read about cultural differences.

I am reading The Surfacing for LTER. This is the second "Franklin" book I have won on LTER and this one might be almost as good as the first Inukshuk.

Since I seem to be reading a lot of WWII books lately, I've started Night by Elie Wiesel. There's no good time to read about the Holocaust. I'm sure it will be a harrowing but rewarding read.

More than half way through The Evening Chorus by Helen Humphreys and loving it! I seem to reading a lot of books that take place during WW1 or WW2, Cecilturtle.

The Detective's Daughter by Lesley Thomson

Reading Leaving Tomorrow by David Bergen.

I started A trick of the light.

#29 - oo loved it!

I've moved on to Wiesel's second in the trilogy Dawn.

Just finished Lori Larsen's The Mountain Story.

And just finished One Day.

Finished the very well written The Millstone by Margaret Drabble, and now I'm starting my book club read The Children Act. So far it's very, very good, and I really like the main theme, "Courts should be slow to intervene in the interests of the child against the religious principles of the parents. Sometimes they must. But when?" I think this is an important question that is going to arise more often in the coming years. Anyway, I like Ian McEwan because although there is a familiar something to his books, they are all so very different from each other.

22: I liked The Stuff that Never Happened because of the way it dealt with how we reshape our memories, and how reality and fantasy can clash. I liked the way it talked about what marriage can and should be. What did you think?

Since finishing that one, I've read Elle by Douglas Glover, The Secret Life of Lobsters by Trevor Corson, Watch How We Walk by Jennifer LoveGrove, One More Thing, a collection of stories by B.J. Novak, Michelangelo: Biography of a Genius by Bruno Nardini and have just started The River Burns by Trevor Ferguson.

Further to my post 33, I whipped through The Children Act. It's not a long book, and I found it very interesting. I love novels that pose questions--in this case, many questions about ethics. One of the best books I've read in forever. Or a very long time, at least.

After loving the Children Act, by Ian McEwan, I started a non-fiction book that at first seemed completely different: The Secret Lives of Saints: Child Brides and Lost Boys in Canada's Polygamous Mormon Sect, by Daphne Bramham. But 61 pages in I see that I'm again looking at ethical issues and when the state needs to get involved to protect people (sometimes from themselves) and issues of religious freedom. We live in interesting times.

I finished Le liseur du 6h27 by Jean-Peul Didierlaurent, a delightful little book about a book-lover who finds love through... a book.
I've started the third of Wiesel's trilogy, The Accident. I'm not sure why the three form a trilogy; they're all very different.

I'm about to start Sweet Jesus by Christine Pountney

A very good read (a memoir, of sorts): Into the Blizzard: Walking the Fields of the Newfoundland Dead by Michael Winter.

I'm reading Shoot the Buffalo by Matt Briggs

I am reading Sidetracked.

2/3 of the way through Madame Bovary

42, my book club is thinking of reading Madame Bovary, but I don't think I could stand it again...I recall it as being very dense. How are you finding it?

Just finished The Elusive Mrs. Pollifax, a very old (1950s) mystery set in the Cold War era. Surprisingly readable still.

I've started Le livre des enfants ( This Children's Book) by AS Byatt. I'm loving it but find reading a challenge in this finally!! delightful weather, so I'll be at it for a while.