My mom and I decided to meet for lunch today in a small town halfway between our homes. I got there early and went for a stroll along the river and then through the downtown and - oops! - found the lovely local bookstore (and yarn shop!), Happenstance. Charming little shop with a wonderful selection. I was a very very good little bookworm and only added one to my collection. Can't resist these McNally Editions - will tag in comments.

In other incredibly cool music news for #TuesdayTunes, one of my favourite rap artists/MIT professor Lupe Fiasco found inspiration in the “plein air“ artistic movement to record music in outdoor settings, allowing for the ambient sounds to inspire and collaborate with the music. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/may/01/lupe-fiasco-new-art-project

@TieDyeDude

#TuesdayTunes @TieDyeDude

Just in time for Tuesday I discovered this initiative from the Museum of the United Nations - UN Live. Sounds Right brought artists into the studio to record songs using nature sounds, and Nature gets an artist credit. Nature's artist royalties (and donations) are then directed to conservation and restoration projects.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DX7C5zJGrQEji?si=RbNCww-SRrqL3eQLJvev...

We'll see how long this moment of peace lasts...

Unsurprisingly, given all the Litsy love for this one, I loved this book! I love how Espach took contemporary comedic fiction tropes and found genuine humanity underneath. The day drinking mother of the bride, the uptight sister of the groom, the perfectionist verging on bridezilla? They are all wrestling with their own vulnerabilities and trying to get through their days.

Cont'd

Reason 654 to love independent bookstores. Yesterday my son went to our local indie (tagged), armed with a list of books I was interested in. Unfortunately, they didn't have any of them in stock. So the clerk helped him pick out a few titles, let him bring them home without paying to double check that they weren't on my shelves, then being them back to the store and decide which to pay for.

Cont'd

"If a whale's life is a marvel, its death is its legacy."

It's a beautiful day to read outdoors!

My feelings on this one are complicated and still a bit muddled. While overall I really enjoyed reading it, and deep diving into a lot of the music talked about, a lot of the time I just really didn't love Percy and Joe themselves. Percy's college age/post college self absorption was often grating, but it did feel very genuine, and there was just enough self awareness (and side characters willing to call her out on her BS) to shake it off. cont'd

In perhaps the least surprising book news of all time: James by Percival Everett has received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction! https://bookriot.com/here-are-the-winners-of-the-2025-pulitzer-prize/?fbclid=IwY...

Totally deserved! But so unsurprising that when I saw the article, I honestly thought, "Didn't it already win?"

"I was wearing the plain black T-shirt and skinny jeans that I had started wearing every day and would wear some version of for the next several years, having decided that my bangs could do the heavy lifting in signifying the existence of a personality."

It has been a rough couple weeks, but there's still lots of joy for #5JoysFriday

1. Independent Bookstore Day! Always a favourite 😍
2. A beautiful Sunday in the city with the kids to watch Cat Kid Comic Club: The Musical, followed by patio beers with good friends
3. Canada voted 🗳 🇨🇦
4. My washing machine FINALLY got fixed
5. Maple Leafs are through to the second round!

@DebinHawaii

A mother and her child come to a small town in Saskatchewan, desperate for help. Their presence sets off a shock wave through the town and its residents.

A story about finding one's place, even within one's own body. About honouring each other and respecting everyone's lives and struggles, even when you don't understand them.

Cont'd in comments

Code Noir by Canisia Lubrin won the 2025 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction yesterday, beating out some incredibly strong competition. Definitely boosting it up my TBR!

1. I have books everywhere in my house! I wish I had one room that could be a purposeful library, but I'll take shelves wherever I can get 'em! I don't have a count, but there must be over 1000.

2. Tough call. I didn't read as many books as usual this month, but I read some excellent ones. Runners up: Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips, and The Followers by Rebecca Wait.

#Two4Tuesday @TheSpineView

It is Election Day here in Canada, and I've been oscillating wildly between cautiously optimistic and absolute bundle of nerves weighed down by the boulder of dread in my stomach. I may or may not sleep tonight. Wish us luck!

#MentalHealthMonday @Kerrbearlib

Not book related, but it is an important message to spread far and wide. With Trump threatening and removing funding for LGBTQ+ focused suicide hotlines, Canadian resources are opening up access to those south of the border. This number is for Trans Lifeline, the Canadian number is now toll-free for Americans in need as well.

Happy Election Day, Canada. Get out there and vote (if you haven't already)!

Totally over the top, and ultimately it probably won't stay with me for long. But I needed something mindlessly entertaining and engaging, and this certainly fit the bill. And, quite frankly, I could happily listen to Raul Esparza read the phone book for 8 hours. So it gets a pick for being the easy book distraction my brain needed!

Happy Independent Bookstore Day! Took my boys to the tagged. I was very good and only bought two books 🎉 The third was a free ARC with purchase.

What a stunning, thoughtful, exquisite gem of a book. Following the death of Emily Dickinson, the women in her orbit attempt to continue their lives amidst the shadow of grief. They live, love, and find small joys while finding their own ways to honour the woman they loved and admired, and to preserve her singular voice.

cont'd in comments

#CarolSheildsPrizeforFiction #Shortlist

Two sisters disappear from a city on the Kamchatka peninsula. Over the following year, the ripples from this event pass ever outwards through the lives of the women of this isolated landscape. This is not a traditional mystery, but rather a study of a place and its people, its women in particular, and the various ways violence - physical, sexual, societal, patriarchal - touch their lives. Beautifully, thoughtfully rendered.

cont'd in comments

When she thinks of Emily, Gilbert, or her cousin Sophia, who died at age fifteen, Lavinia sees them as they were in the spring or summer of their lives, carefree as puppies. But she knows that the truth is entirely different, more marvellous still; their fragile flesh has broken down, their bones are as smooth as piano keys, their hair is like spider silk, their hearts, their lungs, the whites of their eyes...

cont'd

When the book is just too good to stop, but you have to leave for school. Teaching kiddo the second how to read and walk safely.

#LikeMotherLikeSon #RaisingReaders

#WhereAreYouMonday @Cupcake12

I've been bone watching more than reading lately, my brain is just not up for it, but when I do read I'm loving this one, set on Russia's isolated Kamchatka Peninsula

📷 Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky from The Lonely Planet

•What are your favorite genres? I always say Literary Fiction, because it's so vague I feel like I don't really have to decide. I like messy stories, grey areas, and people just trying their best.

•What are a few of your desert island reads? I'm a mood reader, so this is a bit of a torturous question. Becky Chambers' Robot and Monk books, The Bell Jar, Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, Hamnet, and Never Let Me Go

#BibliologistBio @monalyisha

Congrats on your milestone @dabbe so glad to have you as part of this community ❤️

I grounded my mood board with a forest, because that's where I always turn for grounding. And took inspiration from the local beavers who are knocking things down to build something new, the bright and hopeful first flowers of Spring, the wise words of Bill Watterson, and a cursing horse. And always, always tea in my tired hands.

#moodboardcontest #mbc

“Emily's poems are bolts of lightning, flashpoints on which Susan burns her hands and her eyes. She spends the morning and then the afternoon slowly reading them over, sometimes holding the same lines cupped in her palm for twenty, thirty minutes, squeezing so tight that she feels blood beating in her fingertips.
They form the short verses of a secret gospel. They are magic formulas...

cont'd

Definitely my favourite of the Brodie series so far. A train derailment, a critically injured Brodie, a missing woman with a past, and a teenager trying to find someone who will listen. I adored Reggie and Sadie :)

Slowly making my way towards @CarolynM's selection for #AuldLangSpine - two more to go until I'm ready for the Rook!

Totally cheating here, because I already posted my four nominees for #CampLitsy25 but I just read about this upcoming release and it sounds like such a great one to read with this wonderful group! So if I'm allowed to sneak in a fifth nomination....

@BarbaraBB @squirrelbrain @Megabooks

Forget Angel vs Spike. #TeamGiles Forever! Library Power!

Waiting on a washing machine repair tech (5 people in a house with a broken washing machine - the piles are taking over!). "Sometime between 9 and 1." I know I could be doing other chores, but it feels like if I start on something, I could be interrupted right away, so instead, I read.

Super excited for another year of #CampLitsy25 Thanks to the always wonderful hosts @BarbaraBB @Megabooks and @squirrelbrain

I was prepping my list earlier this week (it was a VERY quiet night at work), so I'm all set to go! Tagged one, will tag the others in the comments! Happy Camping! Can't wait to see what everyone nominates, apologies to my overloaded TBR 🤣🤣🤣

"Somewhere, in some Utopian nowhere, women walked without fear. Louise would sure like to see that place.

Give medals to all the women."

I had a rough day. So hubby is taking care of dinner with the kids, and I'm starting a new book with a giant tea... I might even have to go back for a second cup...

What a book. Once I started, I couldn't put it down. Wait has a gift for crafting complex and engrossing stories that really get under your skin and make you think and feel deeply.

Single mother Stephanie gets drawn into the fold of a self-proclaimed "Prophet" and brings her daughter, Judith, to live with his isolated cult. Cont'd in comments...

In my quest to catch up to Death at the Sign of the Rook before years end, I'm starting on the third Jackson Brodie title. So far, so good, but I have to ask: what's with all the 'J' names? Jackson, his ex wife Josie, his ex girl friend Julia, now Joanna (and her late siblings Jessica and Joseph). They're all a jumble in my brain!

"... the personal, intimate parts of people's lives matter every bit as much as the famous, dramatic, narrative defining ones."

Another wonderful selection from the #wpnf25 long list. An interesting, engaging history of the Viking Age told through everyday objects and everyday people. Barraclough's narration is excellent, I highly recommend the audio!

This book has such potential. I was fully invested in the beginning, in what seemed to be a family story of a group of complex women who have been taught to strive for wealth and position over genuine human connection and love. But the book seemed to stall after the first half. It just never went anywhere, there was not really any character development (and what was there, wasn't earned). In the end, I just don't get the purpose. #wp25

It was a good day to stop at Dollar Tree!!!

"I watch the four women I work with and it is like an epiphany, discovering a waterfall during a walk in the woods, witnessing a secret smile. The men pretend not to notice, but I take pleasure in it, better than any party. There is beauty in small but radical exposures. I remember the women at Kian's - those long-haired revolutionaries."

A beautiful little novella about connection, distance, familial love, the pull of home vs the joys and possibilities of independence. Thoughtful, lovely, bittersweet.

A daughter leaves home in Brazil to attend a small Liberal Arts college in Vermont. She speaks to her mother regularly over Skype, savouring those “blue light hours“, while beginning to picture the possibilities of a life in America, and asking how to exist in both lives at once

Yes! One of my local indie bookstores (tagged) runs amazing book events, and a wonderful festival, Book Drunkard, in the fall. I get to volunteer at a lot of the events, which include signings. So far I've met: Fredrik Backman, Ann-Marie MacDonald, David Robertson, CS Richardson, Michael Crummey, Alissa York, Holly Hogan, Heather O'Neill, and Jane Urquhart.

@BookmarkTavern #SundayFunday

It's very important to match your donut choices to your book covers 🤣🤣🤣

This is a book you could read seven times and get something new each time. A woman leaves her life behind to live a quiet life at a priory, although she herself doesn't share the nuns' religious beliefs. The beauty and solitude of her daily life are haunted by her past and her grief. The creeping, claustrophobic feelings presented by an infestation of mice on the property play with these themes and keep the reader as unsettled as the narrator.

An author in a writing/confidence/romance slump wakes up next to a dead body. Instead of calling the police, he calls his agent, and together they hatch a plan to move the body across NYC.

It is chaotic, thrilling, a little bit goofy, thoughtful, and ultimately just the right touch of sweet. A fun diversion that I very much needed!

"A heavy spring frost this morning. Crossing the grass I made a clean track of footprints, deep green on the white spread of the lawn. It returned me to my childhood, to the sense of secret authority, imprinting one's presence into a place with those clear, sharp prints. I exist. The private, pleasurable sound of the finest layer of ice breaking beneath the weight of each step."

The usual wilderness, over-the-top, wild and crazy, palate cleansing visit to Haven's Rock. Whipped through it in 24 hours.

Happy St Paddy's Day! ☘️☘️☘️

I started my day with a couple stories from the tagged while drinking tea my parents brought back from their last trip to Ireland 🇮🇪 before jumping into the kitchen to bake soda bread to go with tonight's dinner. Next, on to Dublin Coddle while the music plays! If you're looking for a playlist today, I love this one: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0GpyyMiGai1OHwfmkSEG6c?si=P7_wQtDjQ_mvsSdrPqua...

In 90's Edmonton, Molly MacGregor dreams of a life worthy of her adored Penguin Classics and of writing The Great Canadian/Edmontonian Novel. But summers selling shoes at West Edmonton Mall and semesters with pretentious English Lit profs don't seem to be cutting it. But this year, she just might find truth and beauty in the place she finds herself.

Charming, witty, and thoroughly delightful. I loved spending time with Molly. Highly recommend!