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ssing everyone speculates about where she might be and what might have happened to her but her disappearance doesn t really become central to the story till the very last couple of chapters what s central instead is how the various characters feel about their history their tragedies being fodder for commercial television ranging from those who are horrified at the thought of reliving it all and think the past shouldn t be dragged up again to those who can t wait to get a background role and make a few bucks off it it takes a long time to see the threads come together to see how what happened in the past is still impacting what s happening in the story s today and when it was finished i wanted to go back and read it again haven t yet but may just to see those connections more clearly if there s a flaw here i think that it s that the book is quite short and that none of the characters perspectives except for that of the screenwriter is used more than once so we dip in and out of characters viewpoints very quickly don t return to them and in the end the reader has to do quite a bit of the work in seeing how they all connect both thematically and plotwise however i am not opposed to a novel that asks me to do a bit of the work and the thing that makes prestige drama such a joy is not the plot anyway it s the voice the energy the humour and the tragedy the brilliant figures of speech and turns of phrase that run through these character monologues o reilly captures not just the accent of derry but the specific voices of each of these people and the way he plays with language is such a tour de force that i could hardly look away i can t wait to see what he does next hither page by cat sebastian june 3 2026 trudyj65 leave a comment uh oh it s that most common of all crimes a murder in a quiet english village this was a quick read with a moody post ww2 small town two emotionally wounded heroes who find each other both as crime solving partners and lovers and a satisfying solution the mystery itself didn t leave a big impression on me but it s a sweet gentle gay love story and i m somewhat sorry to learn there s only one sequel as i d quite happily read a whole series about these two characters maybe more to come in future the beartown trilogy by fredrik backman june 3 2026 trudyj65 leave a comment there s been more hockey in my life this year than i would have expected actual hockey watching not playing because both the canadian men s and women s teams had heartbreaking overtime losses to team usa in the olympics then montreal made it to the stanley cup semifinals before another heartbreaking loss but also reading about hockey early in the year i read and watched heated rivalry and the long game which presumably will be most of season 2 of the tv series i was probably one of the few people reading watching who thought what this series really needs is more hockey then i committed to reading all 5 books on the canada reads shortlist so ended up reading searching for terry punchout another hockey adjacent novel and after numerous people recommending fredrik backman s novels to me i picked up beartown got really absorbed by this story about bitter rivalries and power struggles in a remote hockey obsessed northern town in sweden and had to read the rest of the series i say in sweden because backman is swedish and the novels were originally written in swedish but in fact he never names the country where the stories are set beartown and its neighbouring rival town hed are in the forest obviously far to the north of the big city where some of the characters occasionally end up which is not called stockholm although presumably it is stockholm even though these novels feel very rooted in a specific place and subculture the fact that the place is never named also gives it an eerie feeling of placelessness a kind of universality the story wouldn t be exactly the same if say it was set in a small canadian town in northern ontario where everyone is obsessed with hockey but there would certainly be similarities generally i really like backman s writing i like how he uses omniscient point of view in a way that almost no writers do anymore the way he plays with our perceptions of characters and our sense of empathy throughout the three novels there are a few things he does with foreshadowing and misdirection that i started to have some issues with by the third book i can t say more than that without getting into major spoiler territory but it s the kind of thing i d love to discuss with someone else who s read the books despite this i ultimately found the series both engrossing and also very moving crying in h mart by michelle zauner june 2 2026 trudyj65 leave a comment it s just chance that i read a couple of grief memoirs back to back lately while geraldine brooks s memorial days had been on my to read list for awhile michelle zauner s crying in h mart which i d seen lots of references to in the few years since it came out made it to my current reading list because of my online book club which chose to discuss this book last month this is the story of a young woman who lost her mother with whom she had a close but complicated relationship while she was in her 20s zauner s mother s agonizing death from cancer and zauner s sudden shift from borderline rebellious young adult into caretaker is beautifully detailed as are zauner s attempts to connect to her mother s korean family and heritage much of these connections both before and after her mother s death take place through zauner learning to prepare the korean foods her mother made and there s a lot of loving descriptions of food and cooking in this memoir which makes it feel very real and grounded i thought both the mother daughter relationship and the use of food as a connection to culture were very well done and made this an evocative memoir salt houses by hala alyan june 2 2026 trudyj65 leave a comment this book was a sweeping family epic drama of the best kind one that gives a glimpse into someone else s world in a way i won t soon forget it begins in 1963 in nablus palestine with a palestinian family who have been living there since they lost their original home in jaffa years earlier after the 1948 arab israeli war the novel then traces this family s descendants through the next four gendrations through the death of a family member in the 1967 six day war to a new home for two branches of the family in kuwait where their peace is disrupted by the iraqi invasion and another war to jordan to lebanon to france and the us various members of the family create new homes and new legacies but their experience is always shaped by loss and violence it s a deeply human story about identity and relationships set against an inescapable background of war and politics that continues to impact everyone s lives the story ends in 2014 with the great granddaughter of the woman we met in the first chapter who knows her mother s family is palestinian but doesn t even know for sure what town in palestine they used to live in despite the generations in between her connection to that history is still there the whole family is part of a diaspora their lives impacted by successive waves of war and violence over six decades this novel put personal faces an entire family of them on what we in the west often dismissively describe as the conflict in the middle east memorial days by geraldine brooks may 26 2026 trudyj65 leave a comment a look back through my blog here shows that i ve read four novels and one non fiction book by geraldine brooks in fact i ve definitely read more than that year of wonders and march just happened to have come out before i started this blog i ve read all her books i m a big fan year of wonders is a grief memoir about the sudden death of brooks s husband journalist and author tony horowitz and the story of their life together it unfolds over two timelines the days immediately following horowitz s death from a heart attack in 2019 and the time brooks spent alone on flinders island in australia in 2023 taking time to process the grief she had been living with for four years and write about their marriage this is a powerful story uplifted by brooks s beautiful writing i read another memoir about loss and grief recently where the story itself was just as moving but the author was not a professional writer and i think the difference shows losing someone you love is a terrible experience no matter who it happens to but someone who has the ability to craft a story and express it in beautiful language has the ability to make that terrible experience deeply moving to others i listened to the audiobook of this memoir and found it thoughtful and touching the correspondent by virginia evans may 19 2026 trudyj65 leave a comment it s great when you ve heard a lot about how good a book is and then it actually lives up to the hype the correspondent is an epistolary novel it s the letters and a handful of emails to but mostly from sybil van antwerp a retired divorced lawyer who is in her early 70s as the story starts sybil values the art of letter writing even in the 2010s and writes to her family and friends but also to writers whose books she enjoys as well as to people she needs to correct or take to task for various reasons sybil at first appears as a somewhat austere chilly character though she s by no means a hermit she has had an interesting career and still maintains a lively schedule of activities along with spending time with a couple of friends who live nearby and keeping up her correspondence with far flung family and friends her life is full for a woman in her 70s and yet a sense of remoteness comes through in her letters she has many contacts and many interests yet feels like a woman who holds herself apart emotionally gradually over a period of about seven years as we read her correspondence the secrets of her past unfold and we not only understand why sybil holds her emotions in such close check but also see her begin gradually to change this is what i really liked about this novel it is a beautiful exploration of aging but one that suggests that no one is so set in their ways that they cannot in small and believable ways make changes to their life and relationships another poignant of this element is that sybil an avid reader as well as letter writer is losing her eyesight for reasons not explicitly explained in the novel but it sounds like macular degeneration or something similar so is losing her ability to do two of the things that matter most to her and yet as her physical limitations increase and her abilities narrow we also see her emotional world and her connections with others grow broader and deeper i thought this was a lovely novel queen james a new history about the life and loves of britain s first king james stuart by gareth russell may 18 2026 trudyj65 leave a comment i first saw this book in a bookstore in london where it grabbed my attention right away i ve been doing some research on the stuart era over the last couple of years and it s amazing to me that the larger that life colourful characters of this dynasty haven t gotten the kind of attention in popular culture that the tudors have when i looked up the book later i could only find it under the title the sis loves of james i so i guess there was a change of title either between editions or between countries as it s definitely the same book i guess the newer title is more accurate but i kind of like queen james as this is a book about britain s most openly homosexual monarch and focuses specifically on his relationships with his favourites although it s also quite a good comprehensive biography and history of his reign it s also a really interesting glimpse into how homosexuality was viewed in that place and time as an unmentionable almost unthinkable sin and yet at the same time as something that the rich and powerful particularly the king could get away with people kind of turned a blind eye but also mocked james for being effeminate and unmanly basically for treating his favourites in the same way other kings treated their mistresses james himself apparently also considered gay sex a sin but that didn t stop him at all from engaging in it all in all a complex and interesting portrait of a man in the early modern world the stuarts definitely deserve several miniseries the love songs of w e b dubois by honoree fanonne jeffers may 18 2026 trudyj65 leave a comment what an amazing book this truly deserves to be called epic it s the story of ailey pearl an african american girl growing up in the late 20th early 21st centuries but it s also the story of all ailey pearl s ancestors going back hundreds of years to the indigneous people who originally lived on the land where her black ancestors were eventually enslaved and where her georgia family still lives we go back and forth between the near present day stories of ailey her parents and her sisters and the ancient stories of the families of creek black and white settler ancestors who lived on the land and became part of the rich blood soaked tapestry of the world ailey inherits this is a book that challenges the reader to think deeply about history and how it impacts the present day it also isn t an easy story there s violence there s sex some of it loving and consensual but the majority of it forced and stolen there s far too much early and painful death because these are the histories that today s reality is built on i found this long book with its huge cast of characters and many storylines absolutely engrossing and though sometimes painful to read ultimately hard to put down posts navigation older posts i m trudy morgan cole a writer and teacher i love to read and i love to talk about what i ve read the header image on this page is from that one time my daughter and i made a book fort out of 800 books from our shelves then slept in it overnight with the dog it was a charity thing but also it was lockdown so you do what you do to get by recent posts the book tour by emily ohanjanians prestige drama by seamas o reilly hither page by cat sebastian the beartown trilogy by fredrik backman crying in h mart by michelle zauner search search for categories categories select category audiobook 68 canada reads 22 canadian author 328 children s 18 fiction romance 2 fiction scifi 24 fiction fantasy 125 fiction general 453 fiction historical 440 fiction inspirational 39 fiction mystery 81 humour 25 lentbooks 56 newfoundland author 115 nonfiction general 224 nonfiction memoir 252 old favourites 17 uncategorized 146 young adult 52 archives archives select month june 2026 may 2026 april 2026 march 2026 february 2026 december 2025 november 2025 october 2025 august 2025 july 2025 june 2025 april 2025 march 2025 february 2025 january 2025 december 2024 october 2024 september 2024 july 2024 june 2024 may 2024 april 2024 march 2024 february 2024 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