Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Funeral Songs for Dying Girls by Cherie Dimaline
Funeral Songs for Dying Girls by Cherie Dimaline My rating: 5 of 5 stars It’s difficult to write this review without creating spoilers so I advocate caution if choosing to read ahead. I love the way that Dimaline portrays Winifred as a protagonist who is almost watching her life from the sidelines until she meets…
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Everything Beautiful is Not Ruined by Danielle Younge-Ullman
Everything Beautiful Is Not Ruined by Danielle Younge-Ullman My rating: 5 of 5 stars Of all of the books nominated by the Ontario Library Association for the White Pine program this year in the Forest of Reading, I really liked this one and I would put it in my top 3 of the season. Firstly…
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The Colony by Audrey Magee
The Colony by Audrey Magee My rating: 5 of 5 stars This book was so wonderfully written. Magee’s style of dialogue somehow emphasizes the lilt of this Irish dialect and the tension between the characters. Other critiques have said it’s about art and war but I think it’s about voice — young James and the…
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Our Voice of Fire by Brandi Morin
Recently I had the opportunity to hear Brandi Morin speak in recognition of Canada’s national day of Truth and Reconciliation. Brandi expertly spliced together news reels that she had covered about the Indigenous stories across the globe of their struggle for recognition and reparation. She finished her talk by reminding us that the Indigenous struggle…
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Coming Home by Tu Vuong
Coming Họmẹ by Tu Vuong My rating: 4 of 5 stars When I read poetry, I try to let it sort of wash over me like rain, because to capture all of the nuance in meaning at once isn’t possible at the first read. I admire Tu’s ambition of trying to create an arc to…
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TMC7: the Tour de Force that is Heather Daly
I have long followed Heather Daly‘s work and you need to know that most of the time I’m simply gobsmacked by what she is able to accomplish. So it was an absolute thrill to listen to her in our small table talk – a 20 minute, small group protocol — that is a legacy piece…
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The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman
The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman My rating: 4 of 5 stars It’s dry — but if you let ideas percolate, rather than racing to finish it, I think almost everyone would find the intersections of engineering and design really useful to their work. Things I will take away: the product needs…
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Talking to Canadians by Rick Mercer
Talking to Canadians by Rick Mercer My rating: 4 of 5 stars It’s a healthy romp back into the history of Canadian drama and television and politics. I enjoyed reliving my own personal history with these topics through his parallel life — it turns out we’re almost the same age so his references to music…
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Toufah: The Woman who Inspired an African #MeToo Movement by Toufah Jallow and Kim Pittaway
Toufah: The Woman Who Inspired an African #Metoo Movement by Toufah Jallow My rating: 5 of 5 stars Really really enjoyed reading this for it’s YA/Adult crossover nature. I can imagine handing this to students to help them get some perspective. It has a lot of great intersections with the newcomer to Canada experience —…
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The Centaur’s Wife by Amanda LeDuc
The Centaur’s Wife by Amanda Leduc My rating: 4 of 5 stars This book must have been like a difficult birth as it was so ethereally emotional for me to read, that I can’t begin to understand what it would have been like to write. I find it really hard to read anything dystopian in…
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Shadow Life by Hiromi Goto, illus. by Ann Xu
Her stroppy daughters want her to be in nursing care but she thinks out she can live independently
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Gawd I want to teach poetry
Whoever said that teachers don’t work in the summer, doesn’t get it. Summer is when I reflect and wallow in the shortcomings of the work that I’ve done and if I reached my intended goals with students. This year I was blessed with a glorious creative writing class that was entirely online and yet ….my…
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The Wild by Owen Laukkanen
The Wild by Owen Laukkanen My rating: 4 of 5 stars There’s something about this book that makes me think I’ve read it before. We don’t get deep into main character Dawn’s history before she’s thrown into The Wild, a camp to rehabilitate young people into conforming with society’s standards. Dawn’s story is a familiar…
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Zara Hossein is Here by Sabina Khan
Zara Hossain Is Here by Sabina Khan My rating: 4 of 5 stars I really liked this book. I found that Zara’s story was compelling as it was told in first person (without any competing voices) and it flowed through to its conclusion in a present tense, chronological order. I think it would be a…
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Don’t Breathe a Word by Jordyn Taylor
Don’t Breathe a Word by Jordyn Taylor My rating: 5 of 5 stars I really enjoyed this book! The pace was fine at the beginning, but when Erik entered Eva’s story, I couldn’t put it down. It reads like a grown-up Trixie Belden — sneaking around a private school, having teen morals tested in two…
Got any book recommendations?
threadbare beauty 