thebacklistborrower's reviews
538 reviews

This was cozy :) After his grandfather unexpectedly dies, quiet hikikomori Rintaro inherits his bookstore. Still in high school, Rintaro loves books but isn’t seen as capable of looking after the store, and he prepares it to close -- but not before a talking tabby cat demands that Rinatro help him with three challenges to save books. 

Fans of Le Petit Prince will see similarities between the book villains and the residents of the Prince's planets. Each is a caricature of readers', and society’s worst reading habits and mindsets. Rintaro one by one challenges them, helping the reader also come face to face with those bad habits and trains of thought. Along the way, he gains confidence and even friends!

Definitely a cute little book and worth the read for anybody who loves books. 

 

 After finishing this book, I am very conflicted about which book to champion in Canada Reads this year. I loved Hench, but I love this book as well, but they are just so different, so how do I decide?

Two Trees Make a forest is a braiding together of Jessica Lee’s family history in Taiwan, and the natural history of the island, showing the reader how the land is shaped by people and how people shape the land. Lee tells the story of how her family ended up in Taiwan from China, and then in Canada from Taiwan, interspersed with stories of colonialism and Taiwanese mythology, descriptions of hikes, plants, birds, and even the formation of the island itself.

I listened to the audiobook, narrated by the author, and think it is one of the best things I have listened to in a long time. The poetry of Lee’s descriptions of plants, birds, and geology, interlaced with both the Mandarin and latin names, was something I felt I could listen to all day.

This book transported me deeply into the forests, beaches, and mountains of Taiwan. The descriptions of each are deep, thorough, and lyrical. Listening felt meditative. At the same time, I learned about Taiwan’s colonized history, the impacts of war, and also the impacts of humans on the natural world. I finished this book feeling peaceful yet also troubled. Its not hard to see the parallels of Chinese colonization of Taiwan against Canadian colonization, both of the impacts of the indigenous people, but also the land, evident in this line: “In cataloguing territory, map-making was a tool of colonial governance”, which reminded me of HBC maps tracing the routes of rivers in order to claim ownership of them.

I would recommend this book, especially the audiobook, to anybody who appreciates the vastness of nature, from the smells of a tiny flower clinging to a cliff to the grandness of tectonic action creating new earth, or anybody who understands that as humans we are connected to land, and wanted to hear a new story about connections made and lost. 

Just wasn't feeling it. 

“I wanted to protect you, but I'm starting to think that the best thing you can do for people is teach them how to protect themselves. Every girl needs to be at least a little dangerous.”

Grimm’s Fairy Tales meets the 21st century in Fierce Femmes. There are grey oceanside towns where it is always rainy, where you can catch a perfectly normal bus to take you to what seems like a perfectly normal city, except the city has the Street of Miracles where it is always night. There are mermaids and sex work, trans people, and magical fountains. 

I was entranced by this book. It truly felt like this story is meant to be heard orally, from a friend, who maybe embellishes a little differently, or more, every time. And frankly, because I listened to it, that’s exactly what it felt like. Our narrator is telling us her story, without the filter of a third-person view, or self-references. 

It isn’t a Disney fairy tale though. If you’ve read Grimm’s, you know they have blood and death, true fear and violence, and this book is no different. It has beauty and trauma, so please check the CWs before reading. 

But I would absolutely recommend it - and listen if you can. I’ve never read anything like it, and I’m not confident I’ll read anything like it again. 

I made a serious mistake in not reviewing this right away, so here’s the vibes:

In this last book of the Cornish Trilogy, we are back in the setting of the first book, The Rebel Angels, about a year later after it ended. The main characters: Maria Theotoky, Arthur Cornish, and Simon Darcourt are the board of the Cornish Foundation, started with substantial funds from Francis Cornish’s death. They decide to sponsor a grumpy, misanthropic, yet genius graduate student, Hulda Shnakenburg, to finish an unfinished opera. Hijinks ensue with a campy cast of characters that seem as theatrical and larger-than-life as written characters could be.

The story of the development of the opera titled “Arthur of Britan, AKA the Magnanimous Cuckold” is nested within the comings and goings of Arthur, Maria, and Simon, creating a house of mirrors. Everything reflects off everything else and makes it larger or more bizarre, or funnels into recursive themes and bizarre refractions within this book, but also with the others of the trilogy. 

I did think there was some pieces that didn’t age super well, like a rather intense relationship between a supervisor and the doctorate student, and some parts I couldn’t tell-- like one pregnant woman derisively mocking another for not drinking during pregnancy-- if they were “of the time”, satire, misogyny on the part of the author, or a mix of all three. Overall, the book continues the mastery of the first two books and made me laugh repeatedly, but I just didn’t like it as much as the first two. 

This book was so incredibly dull, for the first third I expected some fantastical realism or a break with reality was coming for the main character. Until it never showed up. It was about halfway I increased the playback speed because I was too committed to DNF but it wasn’t so enjoyable I didn’t want it to end faster (thanks audiobooks!).

Selin started her first year at Harvard, in 1995. She’s interested in language, and Russian literature, and writing. The Idiot is about her first year at school, taking a Russian language class, navigating classmates and roommates, and having a first crush/boyfriend.

There are things I really liked about this book. I’ve always wished I’d had the opportunity to do an arts degree and talk about arts and books and language in a classroom setting, and this book has a lot of those experiences. It made me want to start writing again (and maybe I did **eyes**). I also love the Russian language and literature (and food -- fortunately for my borscht addiction, there’s a large Doukhobor community where I live).  

But other than that, I just found it so boring. Very few of us have the debaucherous and exciting 1st year in college that we see in media, and Selin is no exception. I don’t usually require excitement out of my books, but I didn’t find her introspection, struggles, and feelings all that interesting either. Even inside her mind. she felt like a robot. The romance scenes felt bizarre and alien, and most interactions with other people felt stilted.

Every once in a while, a bit of depth would appear, and the story being named after the Dostoyevsky novel was not lost on me, but it wasn’t enough. It seems like lots of people loved this book (although a survey on my stories revealed none of my followers have read it), but I won’t be recommending this, or picking up Either/Or anytime soon.

“The most depressing book about happiness you’ll ever read” - Me, at book club.

CW: disordered eating

In Tell the Machine Goodnight, a company called Apricity (defined as “the feeling of sun on one's skin in the winter”) has invented a machine that can tell you what will make you happy with just a cheek swab. Pearl operates an Apricity machine, and through her, and a collection of people connected to her, we see the impact that Apricity has on their world.

There were so many interesting perspectives. Pearl makes detailed models of animals at the suggestion of Apricity but doesn’t seem so happy as her son struggles with an eating disorder. He refuses to get his results, and Pearl can’t comprehend why he seems so deeply unhappy but still refuses to seek happiness. The book is a novel but almost feels like a collection of short stories, as we get chapters of Pearl, but also a horror movie starlet, Pearl’s husband and new partner, and a friend of her son’s, who all interact with the Apricity machine in unique ways. My personal favourite was her husband’s story. As an artist, he has a collection of performance art called “Midas”, where he takes people’s Apricity results to a perverse extreme.  

I hadn’t read this book before recommending it to my book club, but we all liked Klara and the Sun, and the blurb made it seem similar. I wouldn’t say it is, but it might touch on similar topics of AI and technological advancements. It's a very dark book, and I worried nobody would like it. But generally, people liked it, and it prompted a very interesting discussion about happiness and technology. 

Overall, I liked Tell the Machine Goodnight, but it was jarring, dark, and troublesome at points. It is not Klara and the Sun, and its not a light read. But if you like speculative fiction with an interesting dose of philosophy, it might be the book for you.

Part paranormal mystery, part natural history, part adventure memoir, this book should be your book of the summer!

Notable Canadian explorer Adam Shoalts, while doing some research about a mysterious creature that haunted a town in central Labrador in the early 1900s. Not too interesting, as mysterious creatures have haunted unknown lands since the dawn of human exploration--until he found corroborating reports from multiple sources! The mystery had his hook in him, and along with a high school acquaintance, he set off into Labrador the following week, in the late fall no less, to see if he could find the “Traverspine Gorilla”. 

Starting in Happy-Valley Goose Bay, they start by canoe, first attempting to find the town of the sightings itself. Town found, they followed the river up to the Mealy Mountains (I had no idea Labrador had mountains but do yourself a favour and look at them because they are GORGEOUS and I say that coming from BC), because if a mysterious creature *did* exist, it would probably live in the caves of mountains that have a history of ominous names by First Nations, and that are nearly impossible to get to. 

Adam and his friend Zach struggle to pass up streams choked with alder, through spruce forests dense and dark, and over wet, squishy marshes, to eventually summit a Mealy Mountain. All the while, they ponder what the creature could have been. Reported as tall, with an eerie grin, walking on two or four legs, with cloved prints, and large enough to scare even sled dogs, it was a total mystery. Adam discusses the local natural and human history of Labrador, but also the many eerie creatures of the Canadian spruce forests, from unnamed beasts to Loup-garou and the terrifying Wendigo.

I won’t tell you how it ends, but I’ll tell you I was thrilled. You’ll have to give it a read or listen yourself, and let me know what you think!

Just wasn't feeling it. Maybe better to read. 

If you didn’t know, I am a long-time member of the the Girl Guides of Canada! Starting when I was 5, I have been involved nearly every year of my life. So, when this book was found in my Grannie’s library, the family felt I’d find it interesting.

Written just a year after World War II, this book is a series of stories about how Girl Guides in Britain and the world helped the war effort. It is written to be read aloud to groups, to inform and inspire, but paints a high-level history of the war if read in its entirety. 

With badges proving competency, and a program that focussed on self-sufficiency and community service, Girl Guides were responsible for supporting salvage efforts, volunteering at aid centres and even in military bases, and helping refugees. As the adults working on the war effort, the book says many of these actions were youth-driven. Most impressive was the story where a global effort raised 46,216L in 1940 ($1.5 million today!), allowing the purchase of an air ambulance and a fleet of emergency boats. However, This book is definitely racist in certain descriptions of people of colour, particularly in the chapter “They Stood Beside Us” on overseas support for Britain during the worst of the war. 

Girl Guides is a global, with a membership of 10 million people in 152 countries. Seeing how those Guides came together in a time of war to support each other was inspiring, and made me wonder what would happen if there was a coordinated action by 10 million people from every continent, and three-quarters of the world's countries on an issue like climate change?

The book was interesting, with a good dose of guiding propaganda. For its own sake, and due to the problematic elements, I probably wouldn’t recommend it, but I appreciated the reminder that I am part of something much bigger than me, and the inspiration of what can be done if we all work together.