Category Archives: B’s Bookshelf

Spring 2019 Reading List

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Here’s a funny thing that happened: shortly after I published my reading picks for fall 2018, the same neighbour who had recommended those books to me dropped off another stack at my door. I’m not sure if he reads this blog, but if he doesn’t it sure was one heck of a coincidence!
In any case, he definitely has picked up on the fact that I have eclectic reading tastes. I get the feeling that his are just as eclectic. Here’s some of the books that he recommended to me that I’ll be reading this spring:
  1. Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
  2. Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in 15 Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  3. Holding On to Normal by Alana Somerville
  4. Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson

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.

Best Books of 2018

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I posted my picks for 2017 so late this year that I couldn’t pass on the opportunity to share with you some of my favorites books I read in the year 2018.

Fiction
The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton is one of the few books of the epic-story-sweeping-across-generations type that actually caught me off-guard with all of its plot twists and turns. It kept me guessing right until the end.

It’s easy to see why We’ll All Be Burnt in Our Beds Some Night by Joel Thomas Hynes won the Governor General’s Award (which is pretty much the prize you want to get if you’re a Canadian author). It was so beautifully written that it got passed around to all of the neighbours in my building. Warning: foul language afoot! (But it feels more colourful than gratuitous.)

I’ve been waiting for Arundhati Roy’s follow-up to The God of Small Things for years now and although The Ministry of Utmost Happiness doesn’t quite compare in my opinion (although really what follow-up does?), it’s worth the read simply to experience the magic gift Roy has with words.

One of my besties has been begging me to read My Brilliant Friend by Italian author Elena Ferrante for pretty much forever, and I was so glad I finally did. The writing is beautiful and intimate; Ferrante has an amazing talent for finding the words to express even the deepest, darkest emotions of a human being. It’s the first in the The Neapolitan Cycle and I can’t wait to get my hands on the rest.

Arcadia by Iain Pears is one of those novels that’s hard to define: it takes its readers across time and space in a way that’s comparable to Cloud Atlas, then takes the best parts of The Chronicles of Narnia, Alice in Wonderland and The Lord of the Rings and kind of mushes them all together into this suspenseful, epic tale. (A little psycho-mathematics helps too!)

Non-Fiction
Your life is possible pretty much because of this woman, so you owe it to her memory to read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. I’m not even kidding. This book will change the way you think about modern medicine.

Logomaniacs unite! Simon Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary is fascinating not only because of the people behind the authoritative dictionary; it’s the sheer breadth and scope of the task and how they pulled it off that amazed me the most.

What were some of your favorite books that you read in the past year? Did anything on my list show up on yours? Share your recommendations with me by commenting below or by emailing keepingbusyb@gmail.com

Winter 2019 Reading List

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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).

  1. The Lotus Effect by Pavel G. Somov
  2. Skinny Girls by Lesley-Anne Bourne
  3. A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose by Eckhart Tolle
  4. We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
  5. 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.

Fall 2018 Reading List

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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:

  1. Friendswood by René Steinke
  2. America Pacfica by Anna North
  3. A Reunion of Ghosts by Judith Claire Mitchell
  4. Arcadia by Iain Pears
  5. 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.

Summer 2017 Reading List

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Back in the spring I was working on a project about women’s empowerment through music, and it got me thinking about all of the fabulous females out there who had to fight for many of the privileges we enjoy today. Hey, decades ago there were practically no women authors, and even fewer books featuring female heroines.

Even today women have to fight gender stereotypes as authors, and have to defend their female characters as well.

So this season my reading list is (mostly) by women, presumably for women, featuring women and miraculously all have a woman’s name in the title. (It’s also the first time I’ve included two books by the same author on my reading list!)

Here are some of the diverse ladies with whom I’ll be spending my summer:

  1. Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
  2. Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout
  3. Elizabeth and After by Matt Cohen
  4. My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
  5. Always Alys by Harriet Lane

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.

Spring 2017 Reading List

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kbb-spring-2017-reading-list

It feels like I’ve been cooped up inside too long; after a whole winter of being tucked away with all of my novels it’s beginning to get warm enough to go outdoors and take pleasure in some of the things that “real world” has to offer.

Don’t get me wrong-I’m not okay with a lot of the things the real world has going on these days. That’s why I think it’s important to read books about all the other beautiful, wonderful, wondrous things that still exist (though they may become harder to find).

That’s why I’m devoting this spring’s reading list to all of the delightful, intriguing non-fiction that I can find.

  1. Love! Loss! Betrayal! Ok so maybe Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees won’t play out like a botanical soap opera, but the idea that trees live in families and can even communicate with each other still has me full of suspense.
  2. I walk a lot and am fortunate to live in a neighborhood by the water that’s perfect for a stroll, no mater what the season. There’s always something different to look at so I’m excited to read On Looking: A Walker’s Guide to Observation by Alexandra Horowitz for more thoughts on observing the world around us from someone who loves it as much as I do.
  3. I’m more of an armchair traveler than a world adventurer but Chuck Thompson’s Smile While You’re Lying, a book promising to expose the dark side of travel industry, just might make me that much more okay with exploring other countries from the safety of a magazine.
  4. I love stories about people taking on hare-brained journeys in a last-ditch attempt at changing their lives (see here and here). I’m hoping that Wild by Cheryl Strayed is exactly that- a wild adventure.
  5. Going on a journey with Bill Bryson isn’t always a wild adventure but it is usually a hilarious one. Notes on a Small Island is one of my Dad’s favorite books so I think it’s about high time I got around to reading it.

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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.