Category Archives: Book Club

November 8, 2025 · 3:45 pm

Curiosities: Delightful

So you have to trust me that it’s worth getting into Anne Flemming’s Curiosities. You’re going to start it and think ‘this reading old english-style spelling is too annoying’ or ‘the narrator as archivist is a bit of a gimmick’ but then! It’s going to be so great. You’ll get to romp through the plague, and arctic exploration/starvation, and witch trials, and romance – and you’re going to be rewarded with a fantastic love story OR WAIT fantastic love stories that offer the wide range of ways people love and are loved.

Past-Erin who geeked out endlessly historical fiction surfaced throughout reading Curiosities imagining what a fun addition this could be to any seminar on the genre for its playful engagement with the making of history. Read in that genre it does the usual work of acknowledging the limits of the historical record, the ways we have to interpret scraps to piece together a full picture, the way perspective of the writer limits what and how something is told (and who gets full voice).

Celebrated among reviewers for its exploration of sexual and gender identity, I found this part of the book a welcome inclusion but as a background to other questions about care, community, and – yes- curiosity.

So please – put aside your initial irritation at having to Really Focus on the reading (cough, clearly some self-reflection here) and enjoy.

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Filed under Book Club, Canadian Literature, Fiction, Giller prize, Governor Generals, Historical Fiction, Prize Winner

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August 19, 2025 · 12:19 pm

The Wedding People: What fun.

Alison Espach set my vacation off to the best possible reading start with The Wedding People. Such a good start, in fact, that I found myself unable to really get going with book number two because it wasn’t the same great romp. So promise me if you have a plane ride, a long weekend, a sick-day where you are well enough to read a novel but not nearly well enough to work on a report you’ll grab this one.

Oh sure, it’s not brilliantly written (though it is not at all badly written), and it oozes with privilege (despite the nod to the adjunct salary and the lack of benefits that come with being an adjunct it is still very much a book that derives some of the joy of reading from the opportunity to read about how rich people throw a wedding), but if you can – if you can – park these critiques and settle in for the rom-com ride you shall not be disappointed.

What the book does best – amid the laugh out loud funny moments of dialogue and situational humour – is remind the reader that where happiness and love come from (first and always) is within and not (as so many rom-coms promise) from the perfect other person. It’s not an overly complex idea or nuanced theme, but the book presents it carefully and warmly in ways that let the reader knowingly agree in a way that doesn’t feel like reading a motivational poster in a home decor shop – live! laugh! love! – but instead like several years of therapy: ah, yes, love comes from within. Which is to say, it’s an explicit theme (like I think our protagonist, Phoebe, says it directly at one point lol) but it’s not hammered and, more importantly, we feel like Phoebe earns the revelation through actual character development and introspection.

So enjoy, enjoy.

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February 24, 2025 · 3:02 am

Long Island: Bets on the ending

Put Colm Tóibín’s Long Island in your library cart and you won’t be disappointed when it (eventually) makes it to you (I say eventually because inevitably it will have a wait list as everyone wants to read this one).

*many spoilers ahead*

It’s probably because I’d just finished the Elizabeth Strout, but the style of this one read as similar. Direct, descriptive of character’s thoughts, weighted moments that are not Literary – just excellent, and the interweaving of characters from previous works. Pressed I’d say I liked Strout better, but it would be hard pressed.

Long Island opens with a knock at the door. Eilis opens it to learn that her husband, Tony, has been having an affair. The woman he’s been sleeping with is pregnant, and her husband is at the door to explain that when the baby is born he will be dropping it off with Tony. And for some reason Tony thinks Eilis should go along with this plan. All of Tony’s family seems to think the same. Eilis is not so keen.

So off she goes (home?) to Ireland, bringing her grown children with her. With the unanswered question of whether she’ll return, and if she does return, if she’ll stay with Tony. She makes it seem like it’s his choice – like if he takes in the baby she won’t, and if he doesn’t, she will – but the reader knows (even if Eilis doesn’t) that this will always be her choice. Tony is not a choice maker.

Complications abound when she returns to Ireland. Her mother’s ailing health. Her former flame, Jim Farrel – now engaged to her best friend (but secretly!). Her adult children and what they want and expect from her.

How she can make a choice when so many people Expect So Much of her. What choices are hers, in the end. Well, that is the ending, and it’s a cliff hanger, so buckle up your book club and let everyone have their say.

For me? I want Eilis and Jim together on Long Island. And I want it to be a world where what Eilis wants she can choose. Want, we know, isn’t always get.

Delightful, great writing, absorbing (make it past the first 30 pages) and heart-full. Romance? I don’t know I’d call it that – stop slinging around genre words like you need them. Just read it, ok?

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October 22, 2024 · 1:40 am

How to Read a Book: Just so lovely and get it for Nov 5

When M. suggested Monica Wood’s How to Read a Book and I read the book jacket I worried it was going to be another very annoying book like 100 Year Old Man or Eleanor Oliphant where you are just so annoyed the whole time you’re reading because everything is so cute and sweet and all the cantankerous characters are just misunderstood until they are fixed.

And it was a *teeeeeeny bit too happy an ending (what can I say. I live for the heartbreak.) but throughout there were all sorts of unexpected happenings that were somehow also entirely believable, and there was just such abundance of kindness and generosity and willingness to see people as just trying their best.

We follow three characters – Violet who begins the book in prison, Frank who begins the book in a bookshop, and Harriet who begins the book facilitating a book club in the prison – as their lives intersect in spectacular (and let’s admit it, somewhat predictable) ways.

Throughout we meet some parrots and cats and eat good meals and take many leisurely strolls and no one moves at a pace faster than a retiree and we think about how books and stories can heal and how in all of our lives there is the main story and there is the meanwhile.

So yes. You will almost certainly no matter what want something soft and gentle and heart-filling to take you through November, and let this be the one. Good writing and kind, kind people.

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