Reluctant Genius: The Passionate Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bell by Charlotte Gray

Best biographical work I have ever read. There may be better ones, but none that I've experienced. I have just put on hold at my local library everything else that Charlotte Gray has ever written. A complete page-turner and just chock full of information one might never have known otherwise. For instance, did you know that it was Alexander Graham Bell and his fatehr-in-law who kept alive, then transformed the National Geographic Magazine? Absolutely fascinating and great read.

Of This Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest by Rudy Wiebe

I like the comparison made in the Globe review - "Canada's own Grapes of Wrath." It is true that, like that other great work, the insight into a world that the average reader cannot begin to compare to one's own, is bound to add to one's understanding of another life and time. Autobiographical, and including family photos and excerpts from his sister's diary, the novel is touching as well as revealing.

Sixtyfive Roses - A Sister's Memoir by Heather Summerhayes Cariou

One of the most readable memoirs I've ever read. Another one-day read! For the first time, I'm going to quote from the Globe and Mail list because they have it exactly right: Sixtyfive Roses is a love letter, a thank-you note, a defence, a please, a setting straight, a reaching out. From me now: It is also a page-turner, and heartwrenching without being soppy.