2018 Reading Challenge Prompt: A past Goodreads Choice Awards winner: Inferno  by Dan Brown

Every year Goodreads holds its annual “Goodreads Choice Awards” contest where people vote for the best books of that year. There is a variety of different categories so there’s a wide representation of books that are selected. In 2013 Inferno  by Dan Brown was voted as “Best Book” in the Mystery & Thriller category. Although I wasn’t on Goodreads yet in 2013, I’ve been a fan of Dan Brown’s books since The Da Vinci Code. I enjoy the fast pace of the stories, plus the historical and cultural information included in each book.

Inferno  is book #4 in the Robert Langdon series. Here’s what the book is about: “In the heart of Italy, Harvard professor of symbology Robert Langdon is drawn into a harrowing world centered on one of history’s most enduring and mysterious literary masterpieces . . . Dante’s Inferno. Against this backdrop, Langdon battles a chilling adversary and grapples with an ingenious riddle that pulls him into a landscape of classic art, secret passageways, and futuristic science. Drawing from Dante’s dark epic poem, Langdon races to find answers and decide whom to trust . . . before the world is irrevocably altered.” (Goodreads).

I listened to the unabridged audio-book version of this novel. I really enjoyed hearing the story, especially as it’s a fast-paced story-line. I liked that there were some twists in the story-line as well (although one of the twists I was sort of onto from the beginning).

Red 5 gives this book a 3/5!!

2018 Reading Challenge Prompt: A book about feminism: Their Eyes Were Watching God  by Zora Neale Hurston

“Fair and long-legged, independent and articulate. Janie Crawford sets out to be her own person -no mean feat for a Black woman in the 30’s. Zora Neale Hurston’s classic 1937 novel follows Janie from her nanny’s plantation shack to Logan Killick’s farm, to all Black Eatonville, to the Everglades, and back to Eatonville- where she gathers in “the great fish-net” of her life. Janie’s quest for identity takes her on a journey during which she learns what love is, experiencess life’s joys and sorrows, and comes home to herself in peace.” (Goodreads).

I found this book on a list entitled “Best Feminist Fiction” on Goodreads. It was an interesting read to see the character of Janie grow and progress in her own skin. At first I found it a little tricky to get into the vernacular of the African American culture, but soon got the hang of it and could read it quite smoothly.

Red 5 gives this book a 2/5!!

2018 Reading Challenge Prompt: A book about a villain or anti-hero: Snape: A Definitive Reading  by Lorrie Kim

For many people, the character of Severus Snape in the Harry Potter  series may seem like an anti-hero for a majority of the series. However, the author of Snape takes a deeper look at this character and shows him as always being where the story is. According to the author,

When Ron sees Snape glaring at Lupin and hisses at Harry to ‘look at Snape,’ those words encapsulate Snape’s function in the overall story. Anytime you want to know where the story is, look at Snape. Snape is always the story, whether he wants to be or not, and even if his work sometimes requires him to remain unseen.”   (page 46)

This is an absolutely different way of looking at this character. As the author takes us through the entire series and shows us that every time Snape dealt with Harry (even through his snarky and sarcastic and loathing manner) he was secretly trying to teach Harry something or protect him, preparing him for the inevitable battles that will come Harry’s way.

As an avid HP fan who has read the series numerous times over, it was so refreshing to read a different take on a character in the story. I must admit, in the books Snape was never a favourite of mine (until his redemption is revealed), but in the movie versions Alan Rickman’s portrayal of Snape was one of my favourites of the entire movie series.

I loved reading this book, and it’s definitely one of my favourites of the year thus far! And I would say this is a must-read for those HP fans who enjoy going deeper into aspects of the characters.

Red 5 gives this book a magically enthusiastic 5/5!!

This is one of my most favourite book events that my local library does every year. Every year I look forward to this and I get so excited when I see that it’s finally time! The Library also has a great variety and selection and numerous books to choose from. I read through all of the descriptions and then comes the difficult part: choosing just one book to take home. This year there were a few that sounded appealing to me, but I had to choose just one and this is the one that came home with me:

What book could it be? Here’s the description:

“Nearly forty-five years before our story begins, in a birthing room at Hillel Yaffe Hospital in Hadera, a city in central Israel, two children come into the world at almost precisely the same time.”

Well, it got me hooked enough to choose this one for my Blind Date!!

And now for the reveal…it’s The Lie  by Hesh Kestin. This is a new-to-me book and author and it sounds quite interesting.

“A “page-turner that will engage your mind and emotions in a way few novels do” (Stephen King) about a left-wing Israeli lawyer—famous for defending Palestinians—whose views face the ultimate test when her own son is captured and tortured by terrorists.Devoted mother, soon-to-be divorced wife, Dahlia Barr is a brash and successful Israeli attorney whose life’s work is defending Palestinians accused of terrorism. One day the Israeli national police approach Dahlia with a tantalizing proposition: Join us, and become the government’s arbiter on when to use the harshest of interrogation methods—what some would call torture. Dahlia is intrigued. She has no intention of permitting torture. Can she change the system from within? She takes the job. Then, one horrible day, Dahlia’s son Ari, a twenty-year-old lieutenant in the Israel Defense Forces, is kidnapped by Hezbollah and whisked over the border to Lebanon. As fate would have it, the one man who may hold the key to Ari’s rescue is currently locked in a cell in police headquarters. He is an Arab who has a long and complicated history with Dahlia. And he’s not talking.” (Goodreads)

This was a quick read, interesting, and fast-paced (short chapters seemed to help it go faster).

2018 Reading Challenge Prompt: A book with a female author who uses a male pseudonym: The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith

Robert Galbraith is the pseudonym of J.K. Rowling. There were a few options on my list for this prompt, but I decided to give Robert Galbraith another chance as I wasn’t a huge fan of the first book in the Cormoran Strike series. For this one I listened to the audiobook version as I thought it might help me get through it easier to listen to a male reader with a British accent. I enjoyed the storyline, and I think I enjoyed it more than the first book (The Cuckoo’s Calling).

Here’s what the story is all about: “When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, Mrs. Quine just thinks her husband has gone off by himself for a few days—as he has done before—and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home. But as Strike investigates, it becomes clear that there is more to Quine’s disappearance than his wife realizes. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel were to be published, it would ruin lives—meaning that there are a lot of people who might want him silenced. When Quine is found brutally murdered under bizarre circumstances, it becomes a race against time to understand the motivation of a ruthless killer, a killer unlike any Strike has encountered before…” (Goodreads).

Red 5 gives this book a 2/5!!

2018 Reading Challenge Prompt: A book about a problem facing society today: Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Randy O. Frost & Gail Steketee

Originally I had chosen an alternate book to read for this prompt, but I happened across this book on display at my public library and picked it up on a whim. While reading it, I realized I could use it for this prompt as it is definitely a problem in our society.

Here’s how Goodreads describes the book: “Randy Frost and Gail Steketee were the first to study hoarding when they began their work a decade ago; they expected to find a few sufferers but ended up treating hundreds of patients and fielding thousands of calls from the families of others. Now they explore the compulsion through a series of compelling case studies…With vivid portraits that show us the traits by which you can identify a hoarder’s piles on sofas and beds that make the furniture useless, houses that can be navigated only by following small paths called goat trails, vast piles of paper that the hoarders “churn” but never discard, even collections of animals and garbage; Frost and Steketee illuminate the pull that possessions exert on all of us. Whether we’re savers, collectors, or compulsive cleaners, very few of us are in fact free of the impulses that drive hoarders to the extremes in which they live. For all of us with complicated relationships to our things, Stuff answers the question of what happens when our stuff starts to own us.”

Books like this are so interesting as I’ve had experience in homes afflicted by hoarding. One of my former jobs was with a professional organizing company, and there were a few homes in which we tackled some hoarding situations. Some were quite extreme. In reading this book all of those memories came flooding back to me. From a person who collects and hoards things such as garbage, to brothers who move from apartment to apartment after they fill their current spaces, to hoarding in children, the case studies in this book were so interesting, and it showed that this is really an epidemic as the things we own and possess have the ability to take over and completely control how we view our world and our homes.

Red 5 gives this book a 3/5!!

2018 Reading Challenge Prompt: A book with an animal in the title: Birds of a Feather  by Jacqueline Winspear

In the Maisie Dobbs series, this is book #2. I discovered this series last year and am slowly making my way through the series. I really enjoyed this book and admire the Maisie Dobbs character and how she works. To sum up, she’s a private investigator who has been “hired to find a runaway heiress. When three of the heiress’s old friends are found dead, Maisie must race to find out who would want to kill these seemingly respectable young women before it’s too late. As Maisie investigates, she discovers that the answers lie in the unforgettable agony of the Great War.” (Goodreads). The book is set in 1930s England. I must admit that I didn’t see it coming as to who would end up being the murderer. Love it when a book can surprise me like that! I thought it was one character, only to find out it was someone else entirely! There’s more I would love to talk about but I don’t want to give away any spoilers! It’s a great series, though, for anyone who enjoys mysteries!

Red 5 gives this a 4/5!!

2018 Reading Challenge Prompt: A book about death or grief: When Breath Becomes Air  by Paul Kalanithi

I looked through lists of books for this category and this one kept coming up, and it had been a book on the edges of my radar for a while now…hearing from numerous sources that it was a great book to read. So, I’m glad I finally got a chance to read this book and use it for this prompt.

Here’s what it’s about: “At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.” (Goodreads).

I found this to be a quick read, despite the serious subject matter. It’s definitely a worthwhile read and I found I could hardly put it down.

Red 5 gives this book a 3/5!!

2018 Reading Challenge Prompt: A book with a time of day in the title: The Remains of the Day  by Kazuo Ishiguro

I’ve heard of this book numerous times over the years, knew it had been made into a movie, knew it was set in England, but didn’t really know anything else about it. I’m glad I got around to reading it as it was actually quite good! Here’s the synopsis from Goodreads: “In the summer of 1956, Stevens, a long-serving butler at Darlington Hall, decides to take a motoring trip through the West Country. The six-day excursion becomes a journey into the past of Stevens and England, a past that takes in fascism, two world wars, and an unrealised love between the butler and his housekeeper.”

I quite enjoyed the story line and how the memories jump around from one time period to another, either years earlier or years later. Also, the running story line of Stevens on his journey to meet with Miss Kenton and whether anything would happen between the two of them.

Red 5 gives this book a 3/5!!

2018 Reading Challenge Prompt: True Crime: The Prison Book Club by Ann Walmsley

I love it when I can read a book and it accomplishes a few different things on my list: I chose this book to use for the True Crime prompt on my 2018 Reading Challenge list, only to realize that it’s Canadian and takes place in Kingston and Toronto so I can also use it for the Canadian Book Challenge that I’m participating in! Yay! Not sure what really lead me to choose this book for the True Crime prompt but I’m SO glad that I found this one!

This is a non-fiction book, about two women who become involved with starting up and participating in a book club with inmates in prison. The author’s note at the beginning of the book states, “This book is a memoir based on my experiences as a volunteer in two prison book clubs…Most dialogue is based on audio recordings that the men, the prison authorities and others graciously allowed me to make.” Names of each individual in the book have been changed, except for the author’s name and the other book club leader who was the founder of Book Clubs for Inmates Inc. The founder’s idea for the book club was basically “to encourage a love of books and to offer the men heroes and heroines worth emulating” and to help “the men connect to a broader culture.” (p 25).

I absolutely LOVED this book!!!!  I loved the way the book was written, with each chapter focusing on a book/meeting. I loved the insights and wisdom that the inmates gleaned from the books. I loved that it was basically about a book club and the ins and outs of how this one worked. I also really enjoyed the Reading List included at the end of the book, listing each book/poem that was mentioned in the book. I also loved coming across a book that I had also read and seeing how the men reacted to it and what their thoughts and opinions were on it. So much love for this book.

There were so many passages that I marked with sticky notes to go back to, things that resonated with me for my own life or simply for my experience with the book club of which I’m a part. One of the passages that literally almost brought me to tears: near the end of the book when Ann (the author) is visiting with some of the men who had been released from prison and were living in halfway houses. One of the men says to her: “And you know what I want for Christmas? I told my wife I want a new reading lamp so I can read at night.” Not sure why that struck me the way it did, but it totally showed that reading had become so important to this ex-inmate that something as simple as a reading lamp was all he wanted for Christmas. Reading had made such an impact on his life!! A reading lamp is such a simple item, and sometimes I take my own reading lamp for granted…this was this man’s Christmas wish!

I would recommend this book to anyone who is involved in a book club as it totally promotes a love of reading. As goodreads sums it up: “A heart-warming story about the redemptive qualities of reading.” That is totally how I found it to be for me! And it was great to see how seriously these men took their meetings. There was always great conversation/discussion around all of the books, no matter what the themes/topics were!

Red 5 gives this book an enthusiastic 5/5!!

*My progress for the Canadian Book Challenge is 17/13!!