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Welcome to a new year – 2022.  I still remember the excitement of the new millenium, the 1900s sliding into the 2000s.  When I was young, looking ahead to that, it felt like the future.  But here we are, 22 years on, and things don’t feel all that different.  Except maybe the masks… I hope you had a good holiday.  It was one of my best.  A lot of reading, Read More …

In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas.  This classic Charles Dickens story, published in 1843, is as relevant to our world as it was to the Victorians.  Ebenezer Scrooge has, over his adult life, slowly grown to love money to the exclusion of all else.  It will take a review of his earlier life and a view of the future to help him recognize what he has become and Read More …

The Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women was issued by the UN General Assembly in 1993.  It defines violence against women as “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.” Nearly 1 in 3 Read More …

The Queen of Crime.  Outsold worldwide by only The Bible and Shakespeare. Dame Agatha Christie’s first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was published in 1920 and her last, Postern of Fate, in 1973.  Known best for her detective mysteries, Christie also wrote plays, one of which, The Mousetrap, ran in London from 1952, becoming the world’s longest running play, closing only in March 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic Read More …

World building, magic, magical creatures, a possible saviour character, good vs. evil; these are just some of the characteristics of a good fantasy story.  In Hunted By the Sky, in a world inspired by medieval India, Gul watches her parents be murdered by the king’s warriors because she has a sun-shaped birthmark on her arm.  Because it was prophesied that a girl with such a birthmark would vanquish the king, Read More …

If you are a fan of The Maze Runner, The Fifth Wave, or The Darkest Minds, you will want to dive into Ben Oliver’s The Loop. It is a story of a futuristic dystopia where prisoners live in The Loop, a death row for teens under the age of 18.  Execution can be pushed back by opting into “Delays,” scientific and medical experiments for the benefit of the elite in Read More …

Today I’m introducing two books, both by the same author.  One is a novel that is an old favourite, the story Gary Paulsen is most known for.  The other is a very recently released memoir. Hatchet is an adventure and survival story.  Brian is flying across the Canadian wilderness on a visit to his father.  The small plane in which he is travelling crashes and he is the only survivor.  Read More …

I am, and have been since discovering Agatha Christie in grade 9 English, a mystery reader.  I also love stories of magic that happen to regular people in the kinds of places I can recognize.  A new story by Indigenous author, Darcie Little Badger, combines these two.  Ellie, the main character, lives in a world like our own, but shaped by magic, myth, and monsters that are real.  Alongside everyday Read More …

An older favourite, now a Netflix series.  This is the first book of the GrishaVerse.  Alina is an orphan of the wars, a nobody, now a soldier and cartographer in the King’s Army.  Dividing her country from the coastline is the Shadow Fold, on maps shown as a black slash, magically formed and home to dangerous flying creatures called volcra.  Any journey through the Fold was dangerous, approached with caution, Read More …

A new favourite: for fans of We Are All Made of Molecules and Optimists Die First, Susin Nielsen’s newest book will be welcome.  Wilbur Nunez-Knopf, almost 15, lives in Toronto with his moms.  On his first day of grade 7, in a new city, in a new school (his first after being homeschooled), Wilbur’s teacher asked his students to “Write a letter to yourself.  Debscribe who you are today.  Then Read More …