Week 3: Readers' Square

I am currently reading "Looking For Jane" by Heather Marshall. It is historical fiction about abortion and it's legalization in Canada. It  looks at this from the perspective of 3 different women in three decades, the 50's, 80's and 2010. I am enjoying the read and find it very timely in view of the fact "Roe vis Wade" was overturned in the states a few weeks ago. 

I just started Juniper & Thorn written by Ava Reid. Reid’s previous work, The Wolf and the Woodsman, was one of my favourite reads of last year. Juniper & Thorn is a dark fantasy retelling of The Juniper Tree. I love folktale & fairy tale reimaginings, particularly those that are less familiar to us. 

Just finished Carley Fortune's debut novel and it was lovely. A story of spending summer at a lakeside cottage in Barry's Bay, teenage love (and all its excitement and hormones and sense of urgency) and growing up. It was very compelling and heartfelt. Kingston gets mentioned! 

I’m about 70 pages into What the Fireflies Knew. After a few weeks of a reading slump, it’s been a great book to get into this weekend. It’s captured my attention and interest. 

I am doing a re-read of the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan, starting with the Lightning Thief. It's my little sisters favourite book, so we're doing a buddy read. We're about 1/4 of the way through, and it's a delight as always. Great for anyone looking for a quick, witty, comforting story that does a great job modernizing Greek mythology and bringing these stories to light for a new generation! 

Bonjour, 

je lis présentement le tome 2 de la série: La nuit leur appartient: La désirer c'est la condamner par Sylvia Day. 

Je suis rendu à lire le chapitre 10. Ce n'est pas son meilleur livre écrit. J'ai de la misère à accrocher. Si je le recommande, oui et non, mais ça fait différent comme lecture.

I am currently reading 'The Girl with the Wrong Name' by Barnabas Miller. I am about half way through it right now but the suspense of what is happening has me not wanting to put it down. 

It is a very engrossing read. Although I do not yet know the ending, I recommend this novel and I really appreciate the writing style. 

I finished the Winter Rose and am now on the conclusion of the trilogy, the Wild Rose.  So far, so good - which means all chaos is gonna break out soon! 

After reading most of Drew Hayden Taylor's plays, this is the first novel of his I've read. I started it today and am totally carried by the characters and scenes. So far we have 31 year old Officer Thomas of the Toronto Police, formerly of the Otter Lake Reserve, and "Harry" a homeless man living on a grate in Graffiti Alley in Toronto. We have yet to learn how Harry ended up here, and the two are about to meet at Tim Hortons. Sound Canadian yet? ;-)

I really like this book; I'm on my third week of reading it; the reading may only last a few days, but applying the author's methods takes time.

I highly recommend this book.

I am really enjoying this autobiography by Barbara Walters!  She has had such a fascinating life and it really talks about how many challenges she faced and the walls she broke down for so many women!

I'm currently reading The Iliac Crest by Cristina Rivera Garza.

I first came to know about this book because of a Booktuber, Emmie. She loved the book fully. I'm just about 20 pages in and I can already tell this is a book where Magical Realism is strongly present. So far, the characters are very mysterious and we don't know much about their real intentions yet, but I hope I end up liking it just as much as Emmie did.

I am reading Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel which so far it is amazing! I am only on page 25 which I know I am a slow reader but I’m taking my time and I’m really enjoying it so far. So many people I know have read this book and they tell me to just sit tight as it will get better so hopefully that happens soon, fingers crossed!! 

I am about halfway done with this book and I am really enjoying it. Now, this is HIGH praise coming from me considering it is science/fantasy fiction, which I do not typically enjoy. I think I am mostly that this book makes sense. So many books in this genre use unnecessarily difficult language. There isn't much plot it is just the daily lives of beings floating on a spaceship.

I am currently rereading the heartstopper series for the first time since watching the show.  I, like a lot of queer teens, read the comic online back from 2016-2018, impatiently waiting for updates, absolutely in love with the extremely relatable characters Alice Oseman brought to love.  Rereading they now as a young adult, I remember the joy these books and characters brought me years previous when I was less confident in my identity and very firmly closeted.  

I have been leafing through this part cookbook, part history book for a little bit now. It talks about the history of small-town Ontario, both from the settler and the Indigenous perspective, using recipes and ingredient lists. I find food to be a very interesting way to learn about the past, because you can also enjoy it in the present! I will be trying the bannock recipe. 

This week I started and finished Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates. The story is told through the perspective of Quentin P, a serial killer who wants to create a loving zombie slave. It was interesting reading from his perspective and learning about the ways his mind worked. Overall though, I thought it was just okay. I've read a fair amount of horror (and some extreme horror) too so this didn't terrify me like I thought it might. 

I’m super excited to see the movie and have heard such good things about the book, I had to give it a go. I’m really liking it so far!

This week I finished Circe by Madeline Miller. I then read Mooncakes which is a graphic novel about a nonbiary werewolf and thier journey of discovering thier own magic, alongside thier old freind who is an orphaned chinese witch who lives with her lesbian granmothers. It was a really cute quick read with really great illistrations. Now I am in the last 100 pages of If We Were Villians by M.L. Rio. It follows a group of shakespearean thespians in 1997 through thier last year at a very competitive private arts school in illinois. Everything is fine until someone dies and they have to convince themselves that them and thier freinds are innocent. Its not a book a would typically pick up simply because I hated, no loathed, shakespear in highschool. I got through my entire 10th grade shakespear unit on faking until you make it and that one episode in doctor who when 10 and Martha stop alien witches from using shakespear and his new play to take over the world. Thankfully i didn't relise it was so heavily inspired by shakespear when I got it, i just had heard that it was queer dark acedemia and went 'that will do.' because I have actually really enjoyed it. 

I just finished The Lost Apothecary. It's not really my kind of book and the ending was a bit odd, but it was loaned to me by someone I like very much so I tried to embrace it. Honestly, my favourite part might have been the poison recipes at the end. 

Week 3 Reading Update, July 3, 2022 

Children of Blood and Bone was written in 2018 and I am thrilled to learn there is a second book after it. During this time I was around page 50/525, I know I am a slow reader but I got a lot of reading done this week. The characters are so well written that you can almost relate to every single one without feeling too lost or discounted from the story. Highly recommend this book to any age!