ontario

Instructor by Beth Follett

by

When Ydessa Bloom’s husband dies in a Cessna crash in a mid-Ontario lake, she rents a cottage at that lake, without really comprehending why, and stays for three months. There she meets three people who will influence her life dramatically—her landlady, a yoga teacher, and a precocious eight-year-old boy named Henry Rattle.

Majority of Borrowed Books Across Ontario Libraries in 2020 Weren’t Published This Year

by

In a year dominated by a global pandemic and American politics, some might find it fitting that the library book most likely to be checked out across Ontario was a hopeful memoir written by the former first lady of the United States.

Michelle Obama’s Becoming appeared on the top 10 list of most-borrowed books for eight of the 10 library systems CBC News surveyed from across the province.

The memoir also shares one quality with the vast majority of the other books that topped the 2020 lists: It wasn’t published this year. That’s a fact that Wendy Banks, a librarian with the Toronto Public Library, says shows that these lists — like 2020 generally — are not normal.

“It’s a really weird list this year,” she said. “Normally we would have more new and different books populating the list from one year to the next.” 

Read more of the CBC article here: http://bit.ly/2X2N1Sk

Things Worth Burying by Matt Mayr

by

Living in New Brunswick, one is all too aware of the position logging played in its history. Masts and wood for sailing ships, houses, fireplaces and the list goes on. It is a similar story with other heavily forested parts of Canada such as Quebec and Northern Ontario, where Matt Mayr’s exceptional sophomore novel Things Worth Burying is set.

The Way to Go Home by Catharine Leggett

by

Catharine Leggett’s debut novel The Way to Go Home (2019, Urbanfarmhouse Press) is an ambitious one, and it comes on the heels of her shorty story collection, In Progress. While I enjoyed that book, I was anticipating how good a full-length novel by Ms. Leggett might be.  At a little over 370 pages, it is a far cry from the short-story length, yet the essence of her mature writing style has remained intact, I am happy to say.