Every girl needs her squad and every squad needs to read the books recommended to her by the others in her squad so that she may come to understand them and appreciate their taste better. It’s getting towards the end of the year, a time when I’m itching to return things I’ve borrowed anyway, so this winter I figured I’d finally get down to reading all of the books my girlfriends have gifted or loaned me (and try not to read too much into their choices).
The Lotus Effect by Pavel G. Somov
Skinny Girls by Lesley-Anne Bourne
A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose by Eckhart Tolle
We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Psst- wanna see which books have previously graced my bookshelves? Click here. Want even more fun reading recommendations? I’ve got some for you here. Don’t forget to find me on Goodreads so we can snoop each other’s bookshelves and dish about our favourites.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not really into war movies. I don’t often like things that are violent anyway and I can’t help but cry hysterically every time I see one of those films. The honest-to-goodness truth is that they make me uncomfortable.
So when I was asked if I was going to do a post to commemorate Remembrance Day (which in Canada falls on November 11) I was a little bit hesitant. I couldn’t feel like I could talk about “war books” because I don’t read them that often. Like I said, I can barely watch a “war movie”.
I was discussing this with a friend of mine when he asked me what a “war book” was exactly, and I realized that I didn’t have an answer. When I really started thinking about it, I could come up with a long list of titles of books that take place during a war (specifically World War II) that have inspired me, moved me, and on occasion even made me laugh.
War, or even political conflict, isn’t just about fighting, or the soldiers, or the weapons. War is about culture, religion and social tradition. It’s about history, and political borders, and the men, women and children who find themselves within or without those confines. It’s about the things that we have in common as human beings, and the things that divide us; the things we stand for and the things we won’t tolerate. It’s about the rules we break, the choices we make, and most of all it comes down to whether or not we believe in something.
So in fact, I do like “war books”. I like them a lot. You won’t see me picking up any military study anytime soon, but I’m sure the following books won’t be the last ones about war to grace these bookshelves.
Atonement is probably my favorite of Ian Macewan’s books. It’s not just about the war- it’s a coming-of-age story really, and a look at how the choices we make can sometimes have far-reaching consequences that can last for a lifetime. (It’s a great movie, too!)
Before French author Irene Nemirosky was arrested by Nazis in 1942, she was working on the book now known as Suite Française– the first two novellas in an intended series of three that encapsulate the sweeping effects of war across the French countryside, touching rich and poor alike. The story behind the author’s mysterious disappearance and the investigation that ensued makes this book even more beautifully haunting. (It was also one of my favourite books of 2017.)
I had the honor of hearing Elie Wiesel speak while I was in university and it was one of the most haunting speeches I’ve heard in my life. The most remarkable thing about Elie Wiesel was his unwavering faith in the goodness of humanity despite all of the atrocities he faces. If you pick up any of the books on this list, I hope you pick up Night by Elie Wiesel.
Honorable Mentions
These woeful tales have been featured on my blog before but are still worth a second look.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is one of my favorite epistolary novels, and one of my favorite books about World War II, and as such is constantly missing from my shelves (described in this post here about books of mine that are frequently borrowed and never returned).
An ordinary man takes a peaceful, yet musical stand against the troops that continue to occupy and terrorize his city in Canadian author Steven Galloway’s book The Cellist of Sarajevo.
Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief has a unique narrator that gives this epic tale about a young girl growing up in Nazi Germany a surreal feeling, like you’re watching a movie as it’s happening in real time. (So much so that someone decided to adapt it into a movie, which I think is just as beautiful and haunting.)
Two boys form an unlikely friendship in John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, which earned a place among the most devastating books I’ve read in this post here.
The Clothes They Stood Up In by Alan Bennett may be short but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t pack an emotional punch. (Also featured on my list of books that will shock your system.)
A tragedy that occurs during the Holocaust becomes a modem day mystery in Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay.
The Second World War almost becomes its own character in the strange world that is Life After Life by Kate Atkinson, in which a perpetually reincarnating girl discovers she may have the power to alter the course of history. (Another favourite from 2017.)
I love to read and I love sharing my favorite books with you. (For more reading inspiration click here or here.) These lists are totally my own creation and I was not paid or perked to share my opinions with you by any author or publishing company. For more of what’s on my bookshelves, click here.
I made the most amazing discovery over the summer; one of my neighbors works for a big bookstore chain that apparently has crazy book sales every year for their employees. According to him, you walk away with a bag of books for pennies. Like, literally a bag. This works out in two ways: one, he gets a copious amount of reading material for a cheap price and two, I get to raid his bookshelves for free. Win-win. Here are some of the titles I picked out that are gracing my bookshelves this month:
Friendswood by René Steinke
America Pacfica by Anna North
A Reunion of Ghosts by Judith Claire Mitchell
Arcadia by Iain Pears
Sleeping Giants
Psst- wanna see which books have previously graced my bookshelves? Click here. Want even more fun reading recommendations? I’ve got some for you here. Don’t forget to find me on Goodreads so we can snoop each other’s bookshelves and dish about our favourites.
Am I a nerd for admitting that I kind of liked high school? At least, some parts I did. Mostly the academic parts. Not so much the emotional part. Looking back on those years, I remember them being something like this:
By the way, that is entirely accurate.
All teen angst aside, part of the reason I really liked school were the English classes. Smarty pants like me who performed well in their first year and maintained a certain grade point average had the opportunity to take an advanced English course with twice the amount of reading, and twice the amount of work.
And I was all like, where do I sign up?
Even though the following books were all required reading at some point time or another in my high school career, I’m not ashamed to say that they were some of the the things that I enjoyed the most during my time there.
Like, whoever was the genius who put Rule of the Bone (Russell Banks) on the course list should have gotten a raise. There wasn’t one kid in my class who didn’t rush out to read it. The characters were skipping classes, smoking spliffs, and having sex with highly inappropriate people- we were sixteen and we loved it. The whole class finished it, every single one of us.
Lord of the Flies, too, is the perfect example of a sinister book that works well in the classroom. William Golding’s classic novel sends a dark message in a time where students are prone to squaring off into social factions and in some ways I think it’s an appropriate and timely read.
Why none of John Wyndham’s novels haven’t been transformed into modern-day, big-budget sci-fi thrillers yet is beyond me. The Chrysalids is particularly creepy and perfect reading for a moody teenager. Although we were never required to read them for school, I would recommend Chocky and The Day of the Triffids as well.
Another popular (yet disturbing) read among my classmates was Timothy Findley’s Not Wanted on the Voyage, a dark re-telling of the Noah’s Ark story. It’s a fascinating read and one that opened the floor to a really interesting discussion, but it’s definitely not for the faint-of-heart. Newcomers to Findley’s work may want to try The Wars first for something a little less controversial.
Canadian authors like Findley always have a place on the reading lists of high school students. Some considered it a drag to be forced to read something simply because the author was born in the same country. I, on the other hand, was happy to discover that not only did Alice Munro and I share a birth country, we share the same birthday. Maybe I’m a little biased, but she’s one of my favorite Canadian authors and I have my high school English teacher to thank for that. Who Do You Think You Are? was the first collection of her stories that I read and it was the perfect read for a teenager trying to find her place in the world.
Lastly, a list that features books that I loved and read as an adolescent wouldn’t be complete without Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. Before The Twilight Series, it has to have been the favorite read of moody teenage girls everywhere. Heathcliff is kind of a bad boy, and Cathy is all angsty on the moors, and there’s an impossible love triangle, and ghosts and lots of fog- who knew an English lit class could get so emo?
Certain books hold up to the test of time because they deal with themes that are no less relevant in the world we live in today than the historical contexts in which they were originally written. Even though we experience adolescence differently today, we strive for the same things as these characters and identify with their struggles.
In that sense I think reading can provide great comfort to teenagers who feel isolated and misunderstood. I know reading was a great outlet for me while growing up, and although some of these books may come across as a little old-fashioned or slow to the quick-talking, Snapchatting youth of today, I hope they still might find some value from one of the classics on their high school course lists.
After all, that’s why they call it “required reading”.
I love to read and I love sharing my favorite books with you. (For more reading inspiration click here or here.) Don’t forget to friend me on Goodreads either! Btw: These lists are totally my own creation and I was not paid or perked to share my opinions with you by any author or publishing company.
I risked showing you my bad phone photography to prove how much I loved flowers in this post here. Flowers come up a lot in my baking too (the arrangement in exhibit A, the decoration in exhibit B, the wrappers in exhibit C and the cake stand in exhibit D). Even my logo is a flower.
Obviously, there is something missing in my life.
I don’t have a garden. Instead, I have a little patio just outside my apartment window that faces out onto our building’s back parking lot. It’s not much but each year I try to compensate by filling my outdoor space with plants and flowers. My apartment is filled with them too. It’s such a sweet and pretty space and I find tending it very fulfilling.
And yet…
When the weather starts to feel more spring-like, you’ll often find me drifting aimlessly around in the bookstore until I wind up in the gardening section. Maybe you’ve seen me there. I’m the one ogling the books about floral arrangements like they’re dirty magazines. It’s not that I’m not happy with my little garden. I just sometimes like looking at the other gardens and wondering what could be. That’s not cheating on my patio, right?
Over the weekend I treated myself to a latté and a little wander around my local bookstore to see if I could dig up a little inspiration as to how to style my porch this year. (Haha. See what I did there?) Here are some of my favorites:
For those who are clueless about flowers but love having them in their home, The Flower Chef offers simple step-by-step “recipes” on how to imitate eye-catching floral arrangements with attention to color, shape and time of year. Even if your home isn’t full of flowers, it’s kind of like flowering porn for the gardening set.
For the ecologically-concerned gardener (or in my case, person), The Bee-Friendly Garden is part-design book, part-biology and altogether a compelling (and beautifully photographed) argument for why bees are an such an important thread in the delicate fabric of our ecosystem.
For those who want to drool over impossibly gorgeous gardens that you’ll never have in your lifetime, Secret Gardens is worth a flip-through. I needed to physically remove myself from the store before I marched up to the cashier with the three remaining copies.
For the gardener who’s also kinda crafty and talented at all the things, you’ll want to add The Crafted Garden to your collection. This is not a book about crafts from your garden: this is a book about crafts from your garden and how you too can create beautiful vases, wreaths and other decorations from the home using bark, twigs, and other plant materials. Sounds like garden sorcery to me.
For the gardener who hails from Toronto, you may remember Frankie Flowers from the news from many, many years ago, but since then he’s also published several gardening books. I like Pot It Up one because it offers gardening advice based to my particular climate zone, but there’s tons of other great practical tips for the makeshift gardeners like me that rely on planters, pots and hanging baskets to create a little green vista in the big city.
For those who want to get in touch with their inner hippie, A Wilder Life is your modern guide. There’s literally something for everyone in here, whether you’re looking for new skills like star-gazing, or if you feel like making your own natural beauty products. Oh, and there’s lots and lots of plants for you to gaze at adoringly as well.
My dreams of having a giant garden in which I can frolic may still be a long way off, but in the meantime, a girl can read. And dream. And drool. Really soon, I hope to be doing just that outside one on my patio chairs. The reading and dreaming part, I mean. Definitely not the drooling.
I love to read and I love sharing my favorite books with you. (For more reading inspiration click here or here.) Don’t forget to friend me on Goodreads either! Btw: These lists are totally my own creation and I was not paid or perked to share my opinions with you by any author or publishing company.
