Pinning
July26
I’m still unpacking the things I brought back from my mom’s in Ontario -and somewhere in there are the notes I made about the books that I read last October through December. I need to find those so I can finish off 2013 and start on 2014. This, just to explain why there might be another gap in posting here.
In the meantime, I’m also busy pinning all (or, at least the ones I remembered to record) of the books that I’ve read in the last 17 (that’s right – I said seventeen) years. I have only three years to go (2007-2009) but I just thought to tell you all. You can find me here if you want to follow along while I finish up.
by Ernest Buckler (Literary Fiction, Vintage, Canadian author, Atlantic Canadian) 
It’s the story of three generations of the Canaan family, particularly David Canaan of the last generation, and illustrates the eternal struggle between generations and the subsequent breakdown of families.
by Marina Endicott (Fiction, Contemporary, Canadian) 
Open Arms, a finalist for the 2003 
But I wasn’t aware that Regeneration is based on real-life decorated British officer, poet, and pacifist 
One of Pym’s favourite subjects is the behaviour of anthropologists as they study the behaviour of others. In Crampton Hodnet, she again examines this through a young anthropologist who has moved into her mother’s village home in North Oxford to complete a paper. She cannot help observing the inhabitants of the community. This, of course, serves as an outlet for Pym’s observations of human nature. This story is a little more “tied-up” than some of her others and was first published posthumously in 1987.
When a full-page photo of his 
The protagonist, J.P. Beaumont, is retired from policing when some papers belonging to his deceased ex-partner surface and raise perplexing questions. J.P. reminisces about a particular case with said partner and does some current sleuthing to find the answers.
This stars Nicolaos, a young Athenian in 461 BCE, just after the (still unsolved) assassination of 
Okay, this one I remember – but not fondly. MacNeice, police detective in the southern Ontario Canada industrial city of Dundurn, investigates the murder of a beautiful young musician.
Set in modern Nigeria, this book follows Kingsley Ibe, a young village man, who wants to fulfill the responsibilities of oldest son and is encouraged to do so by his traditional parents, who think that education is still the way to a well-paying job. But rapid changes in modern society have altered “the rules” and Kingsley finds himself turning to a black sheep uncle who involves him in 
Georges and his parents have recently had to sell their house in Brooklyn and move to a near-by apartment. There Georges meets Safer and his younger sister, and reluctantly joins their spy club.
McCoy wrote in the 1930s in a contemporary setting. This story revolves around Ralph, a small-town hick who’s come to Hollywood to break into pictures, and his roommate Mona who is equally desperate to become a star. McCoy didn’t sugar-coat the reality of Hollywood life or the effects of the Depression on Americans of all stripes. 
Fourteen-year-old Miles undertakes a mission for an ailing elderly friend, and finds himself transported from today’s Vermont to the English countryside of 1928. There he must find “a girl and a secret”. With not much more than that to go on, he bravely sets out to fulfill his mission.
Reviewer Trixie says: “After writing about London settings, Pym returns to the small country village of her beginnings. But, this village lacks the comfortable traditionalism of her earlier Some Tame Gazelle. Much of the book dwells on the changes that have come about in the English countryside by 1980.”
Although this could be said to about the books that Schwalbe and his mother read and discussed as she underwent treatment for pancreatic cancer, it really is about Mary Ann(e) Schwalbe: her life, and her battle with that cancer. If you know that going in, you might not find this as disappointing as I did.
Bridget was already divorced; Bill left his family; they’ve booked their hasty wedding—Bridget has breast cancer—at a Massachusetts inn that another college classmate owns. Instead of inviting current friends and extended family, they have chosen to gather their college classmates. 
, compiled by Bill Rompkey and Bert Riggs (Non-Fiction, Epistolary, Memoir, WWI, Newfoundland) 
In 1916 Fanny Cluett, a nurse from Belleoram Newfoundland, volunteered to serve in the nursing corps in WWI France. During her journey, training, and posting in Europe, she wrote letters to her mother. Many of these have been collected and reproduced in this book, along with a foreword by Nfld politician Rompkey.
Two young immigrants from the Indian community in the city have been murdered. Maisie is hired to find the killer
As the obesity issue in North America becomes critical, we want to be informed consumers. This fine piece of investigative journalism by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Moss is not so much a shocking exposé of the processed food industry as confirmation of what we’ve suspected all along.
When the civil war in Sierra Leone came to Ishmael Beah’s village, he was a thirteen-year-old boy, doing what other boys all over the world do: hanging out with friends, listening to music and practicing dance moves. In fact, he was in a neighbouring village to enter a competition. He was not able to return to his home village that day and he never saw his family again
This is the feeling encapsulated in Pym’s story. 
I didn’t really understand what this book was about before I started it, and had expected a story set in a home for “juveniles with disabilities” to be darker than this ultimately is.
who weaves words into art so lovely you’ll be bewitched by her language even when her stories don’t have the impact you wish they did.
Beautifully written, this modern-day story feels like a folkloric myth and although it is based on Japanese lore, it has universal appeal and could easily be Ukrainian, Finnish, or Native American.
The adult children of Robert & Gretta Riordan converge at their mother’s house after their father disappears one morning on an errand to the corner store.
Drew Silver’s life is in the toilet: he’s divorced from the woman he loves, estranged from his teenage daughter, and he’s living in a community of other pathetic lonely divorced men who are also waiting for their wives to take them back. When he’s diagnosed with an aorta that’s going to split and kill him, he opts to not have surgery since he feels his life isn’t worth living. Instead, he’ll use the remaining time to repair relationships with the people in his life.
This is a new series starring Drew Farthering, a young member of the gentry, who is pressed into service as a detective when an obviously murdered body turns up at his parents’ country estate during a weekend party. This first offering is set in 1932.
Cameron Flaherty, downsized from her corporate job, has moved from the city to take over her inheritance: her great uncle’s farm in rural Massachusetts. There, she sets up a 
