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The Bridge , by Bill Konigsberg, is the best YA novel I've read since Eleanor & Park in 2012. Unfortunately, I know that many readers won't go near this book, because of its subject matter: teen suicide. This would be a terrible missed opportunity. It's a great book that both teens and adults -- especially adults who have contact with teenagers -- should read. Yes, it's sad, but it's also hopeful, and it's powerful, and it's necessary. Konigsberg, author of several excellent YA books, approaches the subject with a brilliant twist that makes the whole book work. Two teenagers stand on New York City's George Washington Bridge, feeling suicidal. They don't know each other; their presence on the bridge at the same moment is a coincidence, a quirk of fate, if you will. The story unfolds four times. She jumps, he doesn't. He jumps, she doesn't. They both jump. Neither jumps. Each timeline explores the ripple effect of each choice. Through this

Ever since reading, in 2006, The National Dream and The Golden Spike , Pierre Berton's books about the building of the Canadian railroad, I've been interested in the Chinese railroad workers. Two details stuck in my memory: Chinese workers retaining their food traditions (and the racism and abuse they encountered over this) and that they went on strike . I was excited to know that these underpaid, undervalued, and abused workers organized themselves to fight back. So when I saw a very positive review of The Ghosts of Gold Mountain: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad , I immediately requested it from my library. Gordon Chang, one of the preeminent historians of the Chinese experience in North America, writes from an American context, but the story applies to Canada and other countries, as Chinese labour built railroads all over the world. Outsized labour under outsized conditions To say that the Railroad Chinese (as they are called) toiled und

This post has been half-written and sitting in drafts for many months. Days after an armed mob tried to violently subvert the results of an election seems like a good time to finish it. * * * * Here's a statement that should be completely obvious. You cannot wave the Confederate flag or the Nazi flag and also be a patriotic American. History Lesson #1 In 1861, a group of terrorists attacked the United States. This was an act of war, by a group who would soon be known as the Confederate Army.  Representing a self-declared country, the Confederate Army fought against the United States in a prolonged act of treason that lasted four years. 620,000 people died in this conflict, at a time when the population of the country (excluding Indigenous people) was about 31 million. Until 58,000 Americans lost their lives in the Vietnam War, more Americans were killed in the Civil War than in all foreign wars combined. Thus someone who waves the Confederate flag aligns themselves with treason an

2018: Titles and reading projects that were languishing on my List . 2019: The year of the biography . The first time I created a reading plan for the year. 2020: I liked having the 2019 plan, and created a new plan for 2020 . In each case, I read many titles from the plan, and many off-plan -- enough that I feel I've accomplished part of a goal, but not so much that the goal became a chore.  For 2021, I consulted The List, and selected sub-lists of nonfiction, fiction, and YA. Add to that the authors I want to read or read more of (from the 2018 list), plus the long-term goals that may or may not advance.  Recently I made a brilliant discovery: I enjoy reading on the treadmill! I use a treadmill for exercise in bad weather or if for some other reason I don't want to outside. In the past I've always listened to music while walking to nowhere. A few weeks ago I tried reading, just as an experiment, and found that I love it. This new habit has made it possible to increase tim

I have read many essays and op-eds by Farley Mowat , the legendary Canadian naturalist, but until now, had never read any of his many books. (He was incredibly prolific .) When visiting Russell Books in September, I noticed a copy of Never Cry Wolf  and picked it up. I'm so glad I did! It's a short, easy-to-read book that would appeal to any nature lover, not only wolf enthusiasts like me. Never Cry Wolf: The Amazing True Story of Life Among Arctic Wolves , first published in 1963, chronicles three seasons that Mowat spent observing wolves in the Keewatin Barrens, an area north of Manitoba, in the Northwest Territories. Farley was originally working for the government, sent to study how to control the wolf population that was supposedly laying waste to caribou herds. Armed with faulty equipment and faulty assumptions, Mowat discovered that everything the government -- and all of society -- believed about wolves was false.  Mowat camped in very close proximity to wolf families

Tl; dr: Greetings Island is the best e-greeting-card site.  * * * * I love greeting cards -- birthdays, anniversaries, thank yous, "glad you're my friend". I used to love spending time choosing unusual and relevant cards for family and friends. No Hallmark drivel, and no holidays that are meaningless to me -- but lots and lots of birthdays and thinking-of-yous.  I also used to send winter-season cards to a lot  of people. My partner and I would carefully choose what card would represent us that year, and every year the list got longer and longer... At some point our list was out of control, and card-sending became a huge chore. Time to cut back! Or maybe to end the practice? When we moved to Canada, and I discovered that  Papyrus  products, my card of choice, were outrageously expensive here. On a month when I had a lot of birthdays on my calendar, the price of cards alone, without postage, could easily top $30! Of course the practice of sending cards is environmentally

I've always loved working at home.  I loved it when I first started writing fiction and working as a freelance proofreader in 1985, and I loved it even more when I started writing for magazines in the mid-90s.  As much as I find great satisfaction in my new career as a librarian, I've always missed the working-at-home lifestyle -- all the comfort, flexibility, and increased productivity, plus the company of my dogs, and the absence of so many annoyances. Returning to working at home was a huge silver lining of the pandemic for me (and not the only one).  Towards the end of 2020, my workload sharply increased, and I began working longer and longer hours. Working from home, this was very easy to do. Being a morning person, I simply began work earlier and earlier. It's one thing putting in some extra time for a project deadline, but working an additional three or four hours every day is not healthy.  I started feeling stressed and anxious about work, waking up at night with wo

Librarians like to ask readers about their reading habits. How do you read? What format do you most prefer? Do you have a secondary format? These days, most avid readers have found a use for e-books -- travel being the number one reason -- but generally prefer print. But some people read only e-books, and some only print. Many people listen to audiobooks in their car or during their commutes, often listening to one book and reading another. Some people are audio only, especially now that most audiobooks are available digitally. One book at a time, two books, multiple? Series? Every day, or how many days per week? What time of day? Where? Bed, couch, outside in good weather? How long do you give a book that you don't care for -- how many pages or chapters? (Please don't say you force yourself to read books you don't like! Life's too short and there are too many better books for you!) Do you ever go back to a book you didn't like... and does your opinion ever change?