Anthony Bidulka’s Amuse Bouche Russell Quant, #1 Insomniac Press, 2003 Things that I like about the first book in Anthony Bidulka’s mystery series: 1. Barbra; 2. Saskatoon; and 3. Russell Quant. 1. Barbra is a four-year-old Standard Schnauzer who’s firmly attached to Anthony Bidulka’s sleuth but also adores sleepovers and
Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) Bantam, 1971 It’s ironic that what most stands out in the first volume of Maya Angelou’s autobiography is her voice; when she was a girl, she stopped speaking for a time, but, in looking back on the experiences of her
Lois Lowry’s The Giver (1993) Bantam-Random House, 1999 “It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened.” From the opening sentence, this novel has an ominous tone. Doesn’t it? ::squirms in chair:: And it’s pervasive. Only a few pages later, his younger sister is whispering about “The Ceremony
Jeff Lemire’s Essex County (Collected) Top Shelf Productions, 2010 Here’s what I scribbled in my notebook when I finished reading Tales From the Farm in 2008: The first in Jeff Lemire’s Essex County trilogy feels in some ways like the antithesis to [Craig Thompson’s] Blankets – a very slim volume, with
Terry Fallis’ The Best Laid Plans McClelland & Stewart, 2007 Daniel Addison arrived on Partliament Hill in Ottawa to work as a speech writer, “[n]aïve, innocent, and excited” and left five years later, “embittered, exhausted, and ineffably sad”. The Best Laid Plans begins after that, so you might expect a
