BINGO! What do I win?! Cash? Prizes? What’s that you say… just the enjoyment of discovering new books and telling my loyal followers about them? Good enough for me.
A GRAPHIC NOVEL OR COMIC BOOK
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, by Alison Bechdel
(232 pages, published June 5, 2007 by Mariner Books)
3.5 stars
Graphic memoir pro: I enjoyed Bechdel’s touching story. Graphic memoir con: I got a bit of a headache sometimes from my eyes roving all over the page in my attempt to fully take in all the illustrations as well as the words. Now I’m curious to see the stage production. (Thanks for bringing this one to my attention Jennie!)
AN AWARD-WINNING NOVEL
The Party Wall, by Catherine Leroux, translated by Lazer Lederhendler
(246 pages, published July 12, 2016 by Biblioasis (first published September 24, 2013))
4.5 stars
The Party Wall didn’t win the Giller Prize (boo, Giller committee!), but it did win a Governor General’s Literary Award for translation. The book is a unique series of stories-as-chapters all focussing on pairs of people. Do they share a history, a figurative “party wall”? Some of the stories are inspired by events that you wouldn’t think would have ever happened in real life but apparently did.
A BOOK PUBLISHED IN THE YEAR YOU WERE BORN
All the President’s Men, by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
(368 pages, published June 3, 2014 by Simon & Schuster (first published 1974))
4 stars
It was a no-brainer to pick this one – All the President’s Men has to be the book of 1974, right? I figured reading it in 2016 would be a much different experience than it would have been when the book was hot off the press – so much more has come to light, Nixon is long dead, we’ve seen books and movies and TV galore covering his life and the events that brought his presidency to an end, we know who Deep Throat is, and the Watergate Hotel now looks like this. (Side rant: its being the eponym for every scandal – big or small, real or imagined – for the last 42 years is so bloody annoying.) But then, the tire-fire that U.S. politics turned out to be this year made Woodward and Bernstein’s work hit closer to home. It especially goes to show how important investigative journalism is. But holy smokes 1970s people, you were freaking out about THAT?!?! Seems like even “normal” politicians do worse things these days. And just wait until after January 20.
A BOOK YOU FIND IN #WENEEDDIVERSEBOOKS
George, by Alex Gino
(195 pages, published August 25, 2015 by Scholastic Press)
4 stars
The publishing industry is notoriously full of people who are white, straight, cisgender and without disabilities. Who tend to mostly publish, promote and review books by other people who are white, straight, cisgender and without disabilities. We Need Diverse Books has a mission of “Putting more books featuring diverse characters into the hands of all children.” The hashtag is meant to promote books for kids and youth that feature diverse experiences (the organization’s website notes that includes but is not limited to LGBTQIA, Native, people of color, gender diversity, people with disabilities, and ethnic, cultural, and religious minorities). On occasion publishers co-opt it to promote adult books, so I was debating reading one of those. But I think that goes against the original spirit of the Reading Bingo square, so I read a kid’s book that I discovered by searching the hashtag. At the centre of this heartening story is George, who the world knows as a boy, but who is really a girl, and who, more than anything, wants to play the role of Charlotte in her class’s upcoming production of Charlotte’s Web. I suspect the mothers and older brothers of many transgender children might not be so very quick with their acceptance as George’s are – but no doubt it’s important to tell such a wonderfully positive story.
A BOOK WRITTEN BY A PERSON OF COLOUR
The Mothers, by Brit Bennett
(278 pages, published October 11, 2016 by Riverbed Books)
4.5 stars
Twenty-seven per cent of the books I read so far this year fall into this category. (Damn, you know how I hate having to choose things!!) Alright, The Mothers it is. This is a debut novel by Bennett, and she is garnering much praise and a couple of award nominations for it. All well-deserved!! Her writing is divine, the characters are compelling and at the heart of the story is a big ol’ secret that hooks you, so you want to find out how far it reaches, and whose life it will upend.
AN AUTHOR WHO SHARES YOUR INITIALS
The Year of the Runaways, by Sunjeev Sahota
(484 pages, published September 25, 2015 by Knopf Canada)
4 stars
This novel of people thrown together by circumstance spans India and Britain, and the lifetimes of its characters. They hope that when they leave their families behind they are also leaving poverty, but no surprise, things in their adopted home are not what they expected. These characters face real and desperate first-world problems (not the superficial kind we like to make smart-ass jokes about).
A BOOK RECOMMENDED BY A LIBRARIAN
Britt-Marie Was Here, by Fredrik Backman, translated by Henning Koch
(324 pages, published May 3, 2016 by Atria Books, audiobook by Simon and Shuster Audio)
4 stars
This one was at the top of the Library Reads list for May, which means it was recommended by many librarians! Britt-Marie is delightful; even her habits that should be annoying are endearing. I was in her corner through her surprising journey, as she strikes out on her own for the first time in her life.
A BOOK YOU PICKED UP BECAUSE OF THE COVER
The Association of Small Bombs, by Karan Mahajan
(288 pages, published March 22, 2016 by Viking)
4 stars
Another novel for our times. (If my reading list is ever full of sunshine and lollipops, you’ll know world peace has been achieved.) This one shows us the aftermath for two families when two young boys are killed by a terrorist bomb at a market in Delhi in 1996. The cover is a simple but beautiful graphic of different points of colours shooting outward, I figure to illustrate the reach of tragedy or perhaps the different angles that Mahajan explores it from.
A BOOK IN A GENRE YOU’VE NEVER READ BEFORE
I Am Pilgrim, by Terry Hayes
(624 pages, published December 2, 2014 by Atria/Emily Bestler Books (first published July 18, 2013)
2.5 stars
It’s true, I have never read a spy thriller before. (At least, I don’t remember doing so! That doesn’t actually mean much because I never remember where I left my phone and more than zero times this week I forgot to turn off the stove*, so clearly my memory is not steel-trap calibre.) My BIL and SIL both recommended this one. It was about what I expected from the genre, and kinda like 24 in book form – plot driven with a story that rips right along, good guys and bad guys, a little back story here and there but nothing too deep. That was all entertaining enough most of the way along, but the end was just too far-fetched for me.
*No really, I actually did use the stove!
A BOOK SET IN CANADA
The Big 50: The Men and Moments that Made the Toronto Blue Jays, by Shi Davidi
(368 pages, published May 1, 2016 by Triumph Books)
4 stars
I feel like my cheeks were very involved in the reading of this book: they were either puffed up smiling (see: 1992; 1993; the bat flip and the holy trinity of homers; Delgado’s awesomeness) or wet with tears (see: Jonny Mac Father’s Day; AA’s departure; Delgado’s awesomeness wasted).
A RETELLING OF A CLASSIC
The Gap of Time, by Jeanette Winterson
(288 pages, published October 6, 2015 by Knopf Canada)
3 stars
Have you guys heard of the Hogarth Shakespeare project? It’s a series Crown Publishing Group launched in 2015, that “sees Shakespeare’s works retold by acclaimed and bestselling novelists of today.” So far there are four books in the series by Winterson, Howard Jacobson, Anne Tyler and Margaret Atwood retelling The Winter’s Tale, The Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew and The Tempest respectively. (More to come in the next five years from Jo Nesbø, Tracy Chevalier, Edward St. Aubyn and Gillian Flynn on Macbeth, Othello, King Lear and Hamlet.) I’d never read or seen a performance of The Winter’s Tale, so dutifully tucked into that one first. Pure Shakespearean splendiferousness! At first I thought I was reading a tragedy. Then I thought I was reading a comedy. Then there was a bear. And heartbreak and intrigue and love and surprises in true Shakespearean form. But, I made the mistake of picking up The Gap of Time right after. It might well be very good, but it paled a bit in comparison. Sure, there were the modern-day equivalents of Leontes, and Hermoine, and Perdita, and Polixenes, and Autolycus, and even the bear, but the overall effect just wasn’t the same. (I should have left a bigger gap of time!) I will read more of the series, but with the opposite approach – I remember absolutely nothing of The Tempest, so Atwood’s Hag-Seed is up next.
A BOOK WITH A CHARACTER WHO HAS A DISABILITY
Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot, by John Callahan
(224 pages, published April 14, 1990 by Vintage)
3 stars
You’ve heard of shock jocks? Callahan, who passed away in 2010, is described by one reviewer as having been a “shock cartoonist.” This is his memoir about his struggle with alcoholism and becoming quadriplegic. His drawings are interspersed throughout the text, and a lot of them are amusing. But I didn’t find the book as shocking or hilarious as the blurbs all promised.
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Me, every December: I don’t know if I’m going to do another reading challenge next year.
Me, every January: Reading challenge tiiiiiiiimmmmmmeeeeeee!!!!!!!
Stay tuned.