I was determined to finish this book but realized somewhere past p.100 that I wasn't just finding Heti's pretentious, insight-sparse navel-gazing annoying, but was physically stressed and seized up by my agitation with her. That was my limit--after all, my leisure time is precious. It is a shame that the first(?) literary exploration of ambiguity in the face of motherhood had to come from someone whose thoughts are so hollow.

Homes is told through the five senses--a portrait of everyday life in war-torn Syria made tangibly vivid and immediate. What strikes also is how a child's drive to live his world through the basic need to play can ground the events of war in the normality of experience at the same time as it frames the surreality of brutal violence. Finally, this book reminds us not to turn our backs on refugees in the age of Trump. #canadareads #1bk2moveus

This was a failure of expectations rather than material. When I heard that this was Christie's most ingenious, I took it to mean novelty of form as well as end. However, the ingenuity is all in the ending (and granted, its concealment throughout). Otherwise a conventional Christie puzzle mystery--I just happened not to be in the mood for more of the same (multiple suspects and plots surrounding a wealthy household told by a Hastings-like narrator)

As a younger sister to a sister, I did not expect a portrait of masculinity thru a brother's eyes to be so tender, even as it gave lessons on male posturing, and how one's tastes define a man. The book hits tender spots in the heart, spots discovered more than known. It also had my heart in my throat at every turn; reading the black experience, past every corner is the threat of police posturing and its devastating costs. #canadareads #1bk2moveu

Buffy is so inspiring--her songs were so powerful she was blacklisted by two American presidents, and was ahead of her time, time and again. The journalistic prose is just a little stiff and I only wish Warner had taken the personal tone of the last chapter into the whole book. She describes a negotiation between her deconstructive tendency and Buffy's eye for possibility--that frame between indigenous women could have provided a revealing lens.

I've given this book away 2x and now own my 3rd copy. Godfrey-Smith is the kind of academic that can make his topic as engaging for the layman as the specialist. But then, what's more fascinating than octopuses and consciousness? He investigates the history of cephalopod evolution as a way into the philosophy of consciousness on the premise that cephalopods developed intelligence not because they are like us but thru an entirely parallel process.

It is the kind of book that just invites you in. The author wanted to write about the refugee experience, but wanted to cut out the long flight from home and concentrate on culture clash and class conflict in the host country. Hence the magical realist device of doors that transport one instantly, that you have to step into before you know where you will land. This is primarily a love story, and has an economy of language that is Hemingway-esque.

I put this on my to read list ever since I read some brilliant pans of the new Netflix version. This article on the genius of Shirley Jackson is brill:
"Jackson was the first author to understand that “houses aren‘t haunted – people are”, " https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/oct/11/textbook-terror-how-the-haunting-o...

A vivid memoir of her time in China from my fave cookbook author. I almost bailed the first time due to the unavoidably western lens that sets the tone. Knowing her better now as a true advocate for a much prejudiced cuisine, I was able to get past that. Her writing is alive (and so, often, is the subject matter!) and ultimately fair. If you only read the chs abt her training at the Sichuan Culinary Institute, it is worth the book price.

I wanted so much to love this mother of Afrofuturism. This was the book in her oeuvre whose premise spoke the most to me in terms of a more subtle weaving of the black experience into a conventional spec fic theme. It is certainly a brilliant take on vampires and she definitely shows her worldbuilding abilities. But why, WHY the gratuitous pedophiliac theme?!? I can think of a dozen other ways to explore the theme of sexual power dynamics.

I'd been avoiding Heti but this book abt ambiguity in the face of motherhood hits close to home. It's now on hold at the library. However... I was in a book shop and read: "...there was half a hotdog on the table and I called it a banana"... I found it annoying on the first page! Reminded of this crotchety article about today's self-congratulatory literary stars: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/07/a-readers-manifesto/302270/

The Dame is so plot-driven that reading her is often unnecessary when good screen adaptations exist. This one is worth the read. AllAboutAgatha the podcast gives the best review of this psychological thriller. My favourite passage (Christie shines suspicion on everyone in turn): "Carefully, Justice Wargrave removed his false teeth and dropped them into a glass of water. The shrunken lips fell in. It was a cruel mouth now, cruel and predatory."

I like the idea that this book exists more than the execution. You will smile though, at some meta self referential winks that Her Worship adds in. This was my summer reading book last summer. Good porch company.

I finally picked up this book again after starting it last Canada Reads. It is a near perfectly conceived book, one that feels fresh at the same time as it makes you wonder how it hadn't yet been written before this. It is a slow build which is why it took me a while to read, but the last third of the book is exquisite. The vignettes of the lives of these women are luminous here, vivid, subtle and alive. This book should have won Canada Reads.