Misty River Books

Favourite Novels In Order

(book/series/author)

1.Masquerade/Blue Bloods No.2/Melissa De la Cruz

2.Vampire Academy/Vampire Academy No.1/Richelle Mead

3.Pretty Little Liars/Pretty Little Liars No.1/Sara Shepard

4.Eclipse/Twilight Saga No.3/Stephenie Meyer

5.Blue Bloods/Blue Bloods No.1/Melissa De la Cruz

6.The Naming/Pellinor Quartet No.1/Alsion Croggon

7.Twilight/Twilight Saga No.1/Stephenie Meyer

8.Brisingr/Inheritance Cycle No.3/Christopher Paolini

9.East/Edith Pattou

10.Prophecy of the Stones/Flavia Bujor

Favourite Series In Order

(series/author)

1.Blue Bloods/Melissa De la Cruz

2.Vampire Academy/Richelle Mead

3.Twilight Saga/Stephenie Meyer

4.Pretty Little Liars/Sara Shepard

5.Pellinor Quartet/Alison Croggon

6.Inheritance Cycle/Christopher Paolini

7.Harry Potter/J.K.Rowling

Reviews (in no particular order)

With the Blue Bloods series you start the first book (Blue Bloods) and you feel like you have been placed right in the story. Melissa De la Cruz is a wonderful author, who has written many other books.  She puts so much detail into her writing but you still have room for imagination.  Set in modern day Manhattan Scuyler Van Alen attends a private prep school called Duchesne where she has never fit in.  But it is when Schuyler discovers she is one of the many Blue Blood vampires, European settlers who came to America aboard the Mayflower that her world really turns upside down.  Schuyler’s journey continues along with her friend Oliver in “Masquerade” and then on in “The Van Alen Legacy” (August 31).  If you enjoyed the Twilight Saga then here is another series for you!!

Pretty Little Liars is the first instalment in the Pretty Little Liars Series. This the story of five girls; Spencer, Emily, Alison, Aria and Hanna.  But three years after Alison disappears strange things start to happen to the remaining girls.  Things such as mysterious text messages and IM’s. They are all signed by a mysterious A.  But Alison has been gone for years, so it couldn’t really be her.  Or could it??? Sara Shepard is a very descriptive author and this novel will leave you hanging, wanting more.  But don’t worry, four other Pretty Little Liars books have already been published so you will be set for a while.

Written by Flavia Bujor, originally in French and translated to English by Linda Coverdale, the Prophecy of the Stones is a brilliant fantasy meets real life in this marvellously written story about three girls and the magical realm of Fairytale.  Jade, Amber and Opal fight to protect Fairytale from evil creatures and dark magic.  Their success or failure will determine the fate of a young girl named Joa fighting for her life in a Paris hospital.  Ribbed with magic this novel will capture you interest the moment you pick it up and after that you won’t be able to put it down.

In the first book in the Pellinor Quartet, The Naming, Mearad works as a slave in Gilman’s Cot, a well guarded settlement where she was taken after the sack of Pellinor.  From here she is rescued by the bard Cadvan who becomes the mentor of her newly discovered bardic powers.  Mearad discovers the comfort and wonders of the bard’s school from where Mearad is sent on a quest to find the Tree Song, which will explain all of her history.  But before she realises it she is being perused by the dark master, The Nameless One.  Cadvan and Mearad flee and are soon not only pursued by the dark but by the light also.  Mearad’s journey continues in The Riddle (second book of Pellinor) and The Crow (second book of Pellinor). Coming soon is the fourth and final book in the Pellinor series, The Singing.  Alison Croggon is a wonderful author that spins the story right before your eyes.

Popularity: 92% [?]

1. Skeena Stories – Strangers No More, Skeena Diversity Project
2. Eclipse – Twilight Saga – Book 3,  Stephenie Meyer
3. Notes from the North, Alice Chiko
4. Twilight – Twilight Saga – Book 1, Stephenie Meyer
5. Monkey Beach, Eden Robinson
6. Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell
7. Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz
8. Water for Elephants,  Sara Gruen
9. Obama – From Promise to Power, David Mendell
10. Glitter Baby,  Susan Elizabeth Phillips

 

Popularity: 63% [?]

I LOVE, love, love many of the <fill in the blank> for Dummies and the <fill in the blank> for Idiots books. They’re fun and I always learn something!

Great Expectations, Charles Dickens I know, a lot of folks were TORTURED by having to read this novel in literature classes, but I adored it, and went on to read several other of Dickens’ novels.  His imagery  is so realistic  and accurate that I could feel the cold murky fog as I read and when I came to the end of the novel, I felt cheated because I wanted more, so much more.

Orys & Crake, Margaret Atwood

The protagonist of Oryx and Crake is Snowman, clad only in a bed sheet and a Red Sox cap, who appears to be the last human being on Earth. He’s not entirely alone, however; strange hybrid beasts such as wolvogs, pigoons and rakunks are roaming freely. As well, a group of what he calls Crakers—strange human-like creatures—lives nearby. They bring Snowman food and consult him on matters that surpass their understanding; thus, Snowman comes across as a post-apocalyptic hermit guru. As the story develops, these assorted lifeforms are revealed to be the products of genetic engineering.

Handmaids Tale, Margaret Atwood

The Handmaid’s Tale takes place in the Republic of Gilead, a country formed within the borders of what was originally the United States of America after nuclear, biological, and chemical pollution rendered a large portion of the population sterile and a staged terrorist attack killed the President and Congress. After the attack, a revolution occurred which deposed the United States government and abolished the US Constitution. New theocratic governments, including the Republic of Gilead, were formed under the rule of a military dictatorship.

Almost  everything written by Maya Angelou…here are a few:

AND finally…

Popularity: 60% [?]

Joseph Boyden for his novel Through Black Spruce, published by Viking Canada

Anthony De Sa for his collection of short stories Barnacle Love, published by Doubleday Canada

Marina Endicott for her novel Good to A Fault, published by Freehand Books/Broadview Press

Rawi Hage for his novel Cockroach, published by House of Anansi Press

Mary Swan for her novel The Boys in the Trees, published by Henry Holt/HB Fenn

Popularity: 40% [?]

Everyone is welcome at the Misty River Book Club.  We meet at 7:00 p.m., the last Thursday of each month.  If you have any questions, give us a call  at 250-635-4428.

January:   Stone Angel

In a series of vignettes, The Stone Angel tells the story of Hagar Shipley, a 90-year old woman struggling to come to grips with a life of intransigence and loss. “Pride was my wilderness, the demon that led me there was fear.”

February:   Three Cups of Tea

Three Cups of Tea is a New York Times bestselling book by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin published by Penguin in 2006. The book describes Mortenson’s transition from a mountain-climber to a humanitarian committed to reducing poverty and educating girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He did this by co-founding the “Central Asia Institute,” which has built over 78 schools in the most remote areas of the countries.

The book’s title comes from a Balti proverb:
“The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family…”

March:   Strawberry Fields

On an idyllic patch of English countryside, a handful of migrant workers spend their days picking strawberries and dreaming of a better life … and their nights in two tiny trailer homes-one for men and one for women. All is harmonious in this cozy vale, until Farmer Leaping’s wife comes upon him and the berrypicking boss, Yola, in a compromising position. Fury ensues, the police are called, and the migrant workers pile into one of the trailer homes and hightail it out of their little Arcadia, setting off on one of the most enchanting, merry, and moving picaresque journeys since Chaucer’s pilgrims set off to Canterbury.

April:  Fine Balance

A Fine Balance is the third book by Rohinton Mistry. Set in Mumbai, India between 1975 and 1977 during the turmoil of The Emergency, a period of expanded government power and crackdowns on civil liberties, this book is about four characters from varied backgrounds—Dina Dalal, Ishvar Darji, his nephew Omprakash and the young lad Maneck—who come together and develop a bond.

 

Popularity: 68% [?]

Fiction

Nino Ricci, Toronto, The Origin of Species.
(Doubleday Canada)
Alex Fratarcangeli, a modern Prufrock, must survive in the multiethnic complexity of Montreal in the 1980s. The Origin of Species is written with great humanity, realism and wit. Told in windowpane prose, this story reads as if it has come up through our collective memory. With the shock of recognition, we gain a new understanding of our fragility and our strength.

Marie-Claire Blais, Westmount, Quebec,
Naissance de Rebecca à l’ère des tourments.
(Les Éditions du Boréal)
The heart of a world in all its maledictions and beauty, the inexhaustible outpouring of life in the darkness of an end that began a long time ago, this breathtaking paroxysm of a novel turns any commonly held vision upside down. Marie-Claire Blais’ transcendental prose illuminates the depths of the characters with an extraordinary light of survival.

Poetry

Jacob Scheier, Toronto, More to Keep Us Warm.
(ECW Press)
More to Keep Us Warm invites the reader into a world of hope, pain, laughter and forgiveness – elements that reconcile the human drama through the power of love and sheer poetic invention. With deep affection for his work, Jacob Scheier manages his debut collection with precision, grace and stunning metaphor.

Michel Pleau, Quebec City, La lenteur du monde.
(Les Éditions David)
In La lenteur du monde, Michel Pleau uses simple, moving images that go straight to the heart. He shapes words like a sculptor carves, with painstaking care, to give us moments of pure beauty and flashes of luminous landscape. He evokes the nostalgia of childhood in language as refreshing and bracing as the wind.

Drama

Catherine Banks, Halifax, Bone Cage.
(Playwrights Canada Press)
With her expert command of dramatic metaphor, Catherine Banks shows us the life-blood of rural Canada flowing through the conflicted, bone-caged human heart. What is the cost to the human spirit, she asks, when good people are forced by circumstance to kill the thing they love – in this case, the Canadian wilderness? The playwright finds that which is most noble in unexpected places, the heroic in what appears to be the simplest of lives.

Jennifer Tremblay, Sorel, Quebec, La liste.
(Les Éditions de la Bagnole)
Absolutely inspired. The author proposes a simple, syncopated tale of everyday to-do lists in which the essential and the ordinary are inextricably entwined. Jennifer Tremblay achieves the universal with economy and lucidity.

Non-fiction

Christie Blatchford, Toronto, Fifteen Days: Stories of Bravery, Friendship, Life and Death from Inside the New Canadian Army. (Doubleday Canada)
Christie Blatchford’s Fifteen Days: Stories of Bravery, Friendship, Life and Death from Inside the New Canadian Army is a dramatic and vivid chronicle that proves reportage and the language of common speech can rise to the challenge of literature. Blatchford’s writing allows the soldiers and their families to speak to us in their own voices, without adornment.

Pierre Ouellet, Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec,
Hors-temps: poétique de la posthistoire. (VLB éditeur)
Pierre Ouellet does an exceptional job of combining the inspiration of poetry with the rigours of philosophy. He positions himself at the dawn of post-history and, through the power of language, reveals a dazzling vision of the future. He blends the political, dreams and intimacy into a critical reflection of immense lucidity.

Children’s Literature – Text

John Ibbitson, Washington (D.C.), formerly of Ottawa and Toronto, The Landing.
(Kids Can Press)
A superbly crafted story, The Landing takes us to the Ontario Muskoka region of the 1930s. As an interpretation of a place and time and a young man’s coming-of-age, it never falters. It is a novel as timeless as the music and the adolescent imagination that lie at its centre.

Sylvie Desrosiers, Longueuil, Quebec, Les trois lieues.
(Les éditions de la courte échelle)
Sylvie Desrosiers has written a profoundly moving story about the difficult relationship between a father and son. The book takes us on an extraordinary adventure in the far North, a place where magic is closely connected to reality. A gentle reflection on courage, forgiveness, life, love and death.

Children’s Literature – Illustration

Stéphane Jorisch, Montreal, The Owl and the Pussycat, text by Edward Lear. (Kids Can Press)
Light, poetic, playful, imaginative, bizarre and ingenious illustrations match the text superbly. Stéphane Jorisch’s art brings new colour and depth to this well-known poem. Sit down in an armchair with this book and let it transport you into its magical world.

Janice Nadeau, Montreal, Ma meilleure amie, text by Gilles Tibo.
(Québec Amérique)
Janice Nadeau uses a quiet, sober approach to illustrate the delicate subject of death. Her brushstroke evokes ashes and dust, and the restrained use of colour imbues Ma meilleure amie with an emotional charge that goes straight to the heart.

Translation

Lazer Lederhendler, Montreal, Nikolski. (Knopf Canada)
English translation of Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner (Éditions Alto)
One senses the affinity between the translator and his writer in this English-language version of Nikolski, a delightfully light-hearted,
deeply-rooted story. The wonderful magic in the original is also present in the translation. Lederhendler is clearly a translator with imagination and a terrific sense of language. His work remains wickedly faithful to the original.

Claire Chabalier, Notre-Dame-de-l’Île-Perrot, Quebec, and
Louise Chabalier, Mascouche, Quebec, Tracey en mille morceaux
(Les éditions Les Allusifs)
French translation of The Tracey Fragments by Maureen Medved (House of Anansi Press)
This extraordinary feat of fragmentation, already a tour-de-force in English, ran the risk in translation of appearing juxtaposed, assembled artificially in an attempt to reproduce the original welter of words. But the fluidity is natural, and the tension is constant and palpable. The translation avoids any vulgarity or obscenity – a work utterly lacking in complacency or concession.

Popularity: 34% [?]