Bay of Spirits: A Love Story by Farley Mowat

A wonderful and interesting story about a specific time during the author's life. A love story about Mowat's wife, Newfoundland, and the animals he loved and worked to protect. I would have loved to have heard more about his children and how they coped - a bit of an incomplete story but that of course must be up to the author.

Mick: The Real Michael Collins by Peter Hart

Wow - I can really appreciate the amount of scholarly work that went into this work, but I just couldn't get through it the first time around. The Globe and Mail review is correct that the work is "meticulous, doggedly factual and minutely detailed" and for me, that was the problem. I just couldn't cope with reading who was at every single meeting and where they met - I wanted more about what it meant! However, the review also says "Hart's account is so carefully considered, so detailed and so nuanced, that a final delight will land on the reader only after the book is finished." So I might have to try again at another time.

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.

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

This was my first graphic novel and I found the experience very compelling - this from a skeptic. I am so in love with the written word and it has been decades and decades and decades (I'll stop now) since I read a comic book - and of course this is nothing like a comic book. It is hard to explain. There is just an added element which adds another dimension to the whole experience of the story. Partly it is ironic I suppose because I associate graphic images in a cartoon-strip format with light entertainment - and this is about a dysfunctional family. Highly recommended.

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.

Before I Wake by Robert J. Wiersema

A good story, reasonably well-written, but I'm sorry to say that for me - I wondered why this was on the list. Sorry Mr. Wiersema - but there are a lot of wonderful Canadian fiction writers out there. Perhaps your second novel might capture me better!