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My Goodreads Star Ratings Guide (As of February 25, 2025)
Prior to this date, all books were automatically given 5 Stars - except for those falling to 1 Star.
Prior to this date, all books were automatically given 5 Stars - except for those falling to 1 Star.
★★★★★ = exceptional, transformative, enduring.
★★★★ = strong, compelling, worth your time.
★★★ = mixed, but interesting.
★★ = flawed in craft or execution.
★ = harmful, careless, or ethically troubling.
★★★★ = strong, compelling, worth your time.
★★★ = mixed, but interesting.
★★ = flawed in craft or execution.
★ = harmful, careless, or ethically troubling.
CLICK AUTHORS NAME TO BE WHISKED TO THEIR WEBSITE
Top 2026
This is my order, yours may; likely will be, different!
Books Read in 2026
- The Comedian's Book of the Dead - Gary Barwin
- The Things We Never Say - Elizabeth Strout
- I Who Have Never Known Men - Jaqueline Harpman
- My Heart Soars - Chief Dan George
- You Will Not Kill Our Imagination - Saeed Teebi (Canadian Author)
- Pizza Before We Die - Hassan Kanafani
- Batshit Seven - Sheung-King (Canadian Author)
- Everything is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer
- Snow Road Station - Elizabeth Hay (Canadian Author)
- The Disappearing Act - Maria Stepanova
- The Bad Indians Book Club - Patty Krawec (Canadian Author)
- A Mind Spread Out on the Ground - Alicia Elliott (Canadian Author)
- A Fast Horse Never Brings Good News - Cary Fagan
- Three Women - Lisa Taddeo
- Intolerable - Kamal Al-Solaylee (Canadian Author)
- Honey In The Wound - Jiyoung Han
- Amapiano Eyes - D. Nandi Obiambo
- Trickster Drift - Eden Robinson (Canadian Author)
- Letters to Kafka - Christine Estima (Canadian Author)
- Anything is Possible - Elizabeth Strout
- The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion
- Skin and Bones - Paul Doiron
- Animal Farm - George Orwell
- Cleo Dang Would Rather Be Dead - Mai Nguyen (Canadian Author)
- Just Watch Me - Lior Torenberg
- The Healing Hippo of Hinode Park - Michiko Aoyama
- We Do Not Part - Hang Kang
- Worldly Girls - Tamara Jong
- Queenie is Working on It - Candice Carty-Williams
- The Ocean at the End of the Lane - Neil Gaiman
- White World - Saad T. Farooqi (Canadian Author)
- Let Me Go Mad In My Own Way - Elaine Feeny
- Red River Road - Anna Downe
- Disturbing the Dead - Kelley Armstrong
- Outspoken - Betty Baxter (Canadian Author)
- Staying Power - Zena Sharman (Canadian Author)
- The Fall Down Effect - Liz Johnston(Canadian Author)
- Jelly Belly - Therese Estacion (Canadian Author)
- I Used to Be Pices - Camilla Gibb (Canadian Author)
- Them Bones - David Housewright
- The Road to Bard - Christopher Gaze (Canadian Author)
- The Thrashers - Julie Soto
- Darkhearts - James L. Sutter
- Mr. Good-Evening - John MacLachlan Gray (Canadian Author)
- Radiant White Light - Mo Duffy (Canadian Author)
- The Sacred Heart Motel - Grace Kwan (Canadian Author)
- Gold Star - Emma McKenna (Canadian Author)
- Me and Earl and the Dying Girl - Jesse Andrews
- Shades of Mercy - Bruce Borgos
- Bag Man - Rachel Maddow
- Entangled Life - Merlin Sheldrake
- The Hidden Life of Trees - Peter Wohlleben
- Return to Pauru Gai - Emiko Morita (Canadian Author)
- Canada in the Age of Rum - Allan Greer
- Friends with Benefits - Marisa Kanter
- Nymph - Sofia Montrone
- The Wax Child - Olga Ravn
- Koh-i-Noor - Michael Eddy
- The Roman Empire Got it Right - Steven Marr
- Warhead - Nicholas Wright
- Why We Drink Too Much - Dr. Charles Knowles
- Habits of The Sea - Shea Ernshaw
- The Angels' Share - Jane Bow
- Honeysuckle - Bar Friedman-Tell
- The Liars' Playbook - Leslie Bradford-Scott (Canadian Author)
BLUE = MEMOIR OR BIOGRAPHICAL
BLACK = FICTION
DARK RED = EDUCATIONAL + Historical Fiction
PURPLE = ESSAY OR STORIES
ORANGE = POETRY
BLACK = FICTION
DARK RED = EDUCATIONAL + Historical Fiction
PURPLE = ESSAY OR STORIES
ORANGE = POETRY
Reading Myself: A Life in Books (and the Lives They Unlocked).
Book Thoughts: The Reading Life of Lindsay Wincherauk.
Reading is a strange contract. A writer promises a world. A reader agrees to believe in it.
Sometimes the most interesting thing about a book is not the story it tells, but the story it reveals about the reader.
Sometimes the most interesting thing about a book is not the story it tells, but the story it reveals about the reader.
Book Thoughts: What a book does to me—how it lands, lingers, and connects to the world outside its pages.
Number of Books Read
Before 2022: A lot.
2022: 72
2023: 64
2024: 46
2025: 25
2026: 65 and counting.
Before 2022: A lot.
2022: 72
2023: 64
2024: 46
2025: 25
2026: 65 and counting.
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The Comedian’s Book of the Dead – An Intimate Walk With Death.
How did the book make me feel/think?
Death takes the microphone.
His timing is impeccable.
His humour obsidian. Laugh out loud.
Ricky Gervais-ish. Unwavering.
I’ve met him... Ricky.
--- --- ---
My first encounter with Death was when my father died of cancer. I could see his spirit leave his body. I could also see Death in the corner of the room smirking. My father turned out not to be my father.
2.
When my mother died. She whispered in my ear, “Goodbye.” She knew I had abandonment issues. Turns out she wasn’t my mother.
3.
Twenty-nine years later, my birth mother cried as she called out to me as I left her death room, “I’m never going to see you again, am I?” And then she died.
There were countless other encounters, but these were the only 3 where the Reaper’s hot breath was on my neck.
In a sense, for survival, Death runs a comedy school. You know where they say comedy is birthed: PAIN. In ALLCAPS, of course.
--- --- ---
What if I’m Death?
1.
A friend is in the hospital. I texted him, my love, at 3:29. The text is marked: read. It was the last thing he read. He died at 3:30.
2.
I message a friend. He immediately has a stroke. He survived.
3.
I message a friend 3,000 miles away. The message bounces back as an orange exclamation mark. Google tells me he died, albeit one year prior.
--- --- ---
It’s a beautiful late summer day. Hot and sunny.
Across the street from our home is a park that has a water feature running down the middle. At the end of the feature, seven concrete squares criss-cross it.
The water has been drained for repairs.
A blindfolded child could easily hopscotch the feature. I used to be a competitive athlete.
I step on the second square. I feel a slight nudge. A beat of time passes.
When the missing moment returns, I’m sitting prone in the waterless feature. My knuckles on my right hand are scraped. I’m holding onto the edge of the water feature with my left hand, much like a non-swimmer trying not to drown. The back of my left hand is scraped and leaking blood. The palm of my hand where my thumb and forefinger connect is throbbing. There is no visible damage, but blood starts pouring from it. I pull a napkin out of my bag to try to staunch the flow. The flow resists.
I do an inventory check. Watch, okay. Glasses and hat still on. Head okay. I think.
I’m confused about why I’m sitting in the empty water. The blood keeps flowing. Who nudged me?
Ten minutes earlier, I was in Vancouver Center by the Tim Hortons. I needed a washroom break. Who knew there were washrooms there?
On the floor of the washroom lay a man. About thirty. He was apparently in overdose distress.
I propped myself up from the water feature. At the precise moment I do, a rush of wind blasts toward the Vancouver Center. At the exact moment I find my footing, I imagine the man’s heart stopping.
Death leads him to the Skytrain to Richmond; they transfer to the IKEA—and in the “as is” “were” section, a portal opens into another realm. Death gives the man a gentle nudge, and the man disappears to spend eternity, trapped inside his last overdose.
I debate telling J I had just gone swimming in a waterless pool.
I’m scared.
--- --- ---
“The Comedian’s Book of the Dead” is outrageously hilarious. Triggering, at least for me. Therapy for the living.
Great books have a way of rewiring our thinking.
If we all have G-d in us, wouldn’t it make sense that Death is there as well?
WRITTEN 13 August 2026
★★★★★ = Great Books Linger like Ghosts.
How did the book make me feel/think?
Death takes the microphone.
His timing is impeccable.
His humour obsidian. Laugh out loud.
Ricky Gervais-ish. Unwavering.
I’ve met him... Ricky.
--- --- ---
My first encounter with Death was when my father died of cancer. I could see his spirit leave his body. I could also see Death in the corner of the room smirking. My father turned out not to be my father.
2.
When my mother died. She whispered in my ear, “Goodbye.” She knew I had abandonment issues. Turns out she wasn’t my mother.
3.
Twenty-nine years later, my birth mother cried as she called out to me as I left her death room, “I’m never going to see you again, am I?” And then she died.
There were countless other encounters, but these were the only 3 where the Reaper’s hot breath was on my neck.
In a sense, for survival, Death runs a comedy school. You know where they say comedy is birthed: PAIN. In ALLCAPS, of course.
--- --- ---
What if I’m Death?
1.
A friend is in the hospital. I texted him, my love, at 3:29. The text is marked: read. It was the last thing he read. He died at 3:30.
2.
I message a friend. He immediately has a stroke. He survived.
3.
I message a friend 3,000 miles away. The message bounces back as an orange exclamation mark. Google tells me he died, albeit one year prior.
--- --- ---
It’s a beautiful late summer day. Hot and sunny.
Across the street from our home is a park that has a water feature running down the middle. At the end of the feature, seven concrete squares criss-cross it.
The water has been drained for repairs.
A blindfolded child could easily hopscotch the feature. I used to be a competitive athlete.
I step on the second square. I feel a slight nudge. A beat of time passes.
When the missing moment returns, I’m sitting prone in the waterless feature. My knuckles on my right hand are scraped. I’m holding onto the edge of the water feature with my left hand, much like a non-swimmer trying not to drown. The back of my left hand is scraped and leaking blood. The palm of my hand where my thumb and forefinger connect is throbbing. There is no visible damage, but blood starts pouring from it. I pull a napkin out of my bag to try to staunch the flow. The flow resists.
I do an inventory check. Watch, okay. Glasses and hat still on. Head okay. I think.
I’m confused about why I’m sitting in the empty water. The blood keeps flowing. Who nudged me?
Ten minutes earlier, I was in Vancouver Center by the Tim Hortons. I needed a washroom break. Who knew there were washrooms there?
On the floor of the washroom lay a man. About thirty. He was apparently in overdose distress.
I propped myself up from the water feature. At the precise moment I do, a rush of wind blasts toward the Vancouver Center. At the exact moment I find my footing, I imagine the man’s heart stopping.
Death leads him to the Skytrain to Richmond; they transfer to the IKEA—and in the “as is” “were” section, a portal opens into another realm. Death gives the man a gentle nudge, and the man disappears to spend eternity, trapped inside his last overdose.
I debate telling J I had just gone swimming in a waterless pool.
I’m scared.
--- --- ---
“The Comedian’s Book of the Dead” is outrageously hilarious. Triggering, at least for me. Therapy for the living.
Great books have a way of rewiring our thinking.
If we all have G-d in us, wouldn’t it make sense that Death is there as well?
WRITTEN 13 August 2026
★★★★★ = Great Books Linger like Ghosts.
Queenie #2: Is Working on It
Candice Carty-Williams
I’m Working on It – A Laugh, A Cringe, A Mind Rewired
How did the book make me feel/think?
The patriarchy. Race. Cultural nuances. Child rearing.
Another book outside of my trains of thought.
A breezy summer read. A laugh on most pages. Self-deprecation.
A writer.
A passage where Caucasian journalists, wanting to be more culturally aware, suggest that writers writing about the Black experience need to be diversified.
Queenie is Jamaican.
Queenie is investigating the plight of being a woman of colour trying to conceive.
A laugh. A cringe. Jamaican patois.
Biological clocks beating. Time is running out. Early thirties. Unattached. The desire to bear children is unrelenting. A laugh hidden in the pain of the beating clock.
A RomCom. But is it?
It’s much more.
Worth and esteem wrapped inside motherhood. Another laugh.
The worker bees violently clear the way for another queen. A story told by matriarchs in Jamaican patois, reminding Queenie what happens in a man’s world when the queen becomes barren.
I want to laugh. I had an opinion on childbirth. Maybe some women aren’t meant to.
And then I kept reading.
With each laugh, I found my mind being rewired.
What do I know?
I’m part of the patriarchy.
Queenie Is Working on It is a laugh-filled, breezy read that touches on friendship, the ticking clock, motherhood, and bodily autonomy. A comedy with a message about bodily autonomy, the delight of cultural differences, the bonds of genuine friendship—and where true love may have been on the same page all along, hidden in compelling prose.
I know this: When I read the last word on the final page, my unfounded opinion had changed.
I realized what I thought was simply what I thought.
And it has no bearing on what women go through. Because I, as part of the patriarchy, could never fully understand.
Maybe that's why I’m working on it, too.
WRITTEN 10 August 2026
★★★★★ = I laughed. I cringed. I reconsidered what I thought I knew.
Candice Carty-Williams
I’m Working on It – A Laugh, A Cringe, A Mind Rewired
How did the book make me feel/think?
The patriarchy. Race. Cultural nuances. Child rearing.
Another book outside of my trains of thought.
A breezy summer read. A laugh on most pages. Self-deprecation.
A writer.
A passage where Caucasian journalists, wanting to be more culturally aware, suggest that writers writing about the Black experience need to be diversified.
Queenie is Jamaican.
Queenie is investigating the plight of being a woman of colour trying to conceive.
A laugh. A cringe. Jamaican patois.
Biological clocks beating. Time is running out. Early thirties. Unattached. The desire to bear children is unrelenting. A laugh hidden in the pain of the beating clock.
A RomCom. But is it?
It’s much more.
Worth and esteem wrapped inside motherhood. Another laugh.
The worker bees violently clear the way for another queen. A story told by matriarchs in Jamaican patois, reminding Queenie what happens in a man’s world when the queen becomes barren.
I want to laugh. I had an opinion on childbirth. Maybe some women aren’t meant to.
And then I kept reading.
With each laugh, I found my mind being rewired.
What do I know?
I’m part of the patriarchy.
Queenie Is Working on It is a laugh-filled, breezy read that touches on friendship, the ticking clock, motherhood, and bodily autonomy. A comedy with a message about bodily autonomy, the delight of cultural differences, the bonds of genuine friendship—and where true love may have been on the same page all along, hidden in compelling prose.
I know this: When I read the last word on the final page, my unfounded opinion had changed.
I realized what I thought was simply what I thought.
And it has no bearing on what women go through. Because I, as part of the patriarchy, could never fully understand.
Maybe that's why I’m working on it, too.
WRITTEN 10 August 2026
★★★★★ = I laughed. I cringed. I reconsidered what I thought I knew.
Three Women – Man. Woman. Can we ever figure it out?
How did the book make me feel/think?
“Three Women” is a fabulous read for everyone, especially those men who don't see the monsters in their mirrors.
Attention grabbed.
There is a lot of sex in this book.
Hard thoughts to write for a man of my demographic who never married.
A man. Not a woman. What do I know?
I open my mind. Do we really willfully hurt each other because of insatiable desires?
Is the grass ever greener?
The patriarchy stunts men.
We hurt with impunity. I open my mind. Do some men instinctively recognize when another person’s hope outweighs their self-protection?
Abuse. Abuse. Abuse.
He loves me... please... love me. My wish is your desire; embrace the pain you cause others by straying to me.
“Three Women” was, for me, a book about agency, bodily autonomy... and the lengthy delusions we convince ourselves of.
Does love… exist?
After reading “Three Women,” I think the better question is: Who controls the narrative?
Is privilege and entitlement attached to everything?
If men benefit from patriarchy, why do women sometimes become its fiercest enforcers?
At the end of the day, isn’t a man willing to stray nothing more than a pariah who is too stupid to realize he's not deserving of you?
WRITTEN 29 July 2026
★★★★★ = I’m a guy. What do I know?
How did the book make me feel/think?
“Three Women” is a fabulous read for everyone, especially those men who don't see the monsters in their mirrors.
Attention grabbed.
There is a lot of sex in this book.
Hard thoughts to write for a man of my demographic who never married.
A man. Not a woman. What do I know?
I open my mind. Do we really willfully hurt each other because of insatiable desires?
Is the grass ever greener?
The patriarchy stunts men.
We hurt with impunity. I open my mind. Do some men instinctively recognize when another person’s hope outweighs their self-protection?
Abuse. Abuse. Abuse.
He loves me... please... love me. My wish is your desire; embrace the pain you cause others by straying to me.
“Three Women” was, for me, a book about agency, bodily autonomy... and the lengthy delusions we convince ourselves of.
Does love… exist?
After reading “Three Women,” I think the better question is: Who controls the narrative?
Is privilege and entitlement attached to everything?
If men benefit from patriarchy, why do women sometimes become its fiercest enforcers?
At the end of the day, isn’t a man willing to stray nothing more than a pariah who is too stupid to realize he's not deserving of you?
WRITTEN 29 July 2026
★★★★★ = I’m a guy. What do I know?
Worldly Girls – When Belonging Demands the Loss of Self
How did the book make me feel/think?
I enjoyed this book. The wrong description.
I don’t like writing about it—religion is a slippery slope.
Tamara was raised in the Jehovah’s Witness faith.
A place of belonging. A place where being oneself is shunned. Conformity seems to be the desired outcome.
A cult. Her words—slipping into mine.
It is 2026. I walk the streets of Vancouver. Religious recruiters are everywhere. “Free Bibles.” “Free Bible Study Courses.”
It feels oppressive.
If you do not conform. If you are a free thinker. If you are other. You are shunned. How could anyone sit in that? Tamara couldn’t.
A place of belonging becomes a lifelong haunting. A stalking monster.
I may burn in Hell for my thoughts. I’ll take my chances.
My disdain is strong. My mother was unwed. Religion and shame forced her to birth me in a place of the unwanted. I was deemed a demon seed. To be removed and never spoken of again. Religion did this.
How could I ever write a supportive word for something that deemed me unworthy of being loved? Religion and shame taught people that my very existence was something to be hidden.
This is not a review. This is a reckoning.
Worldly Girls is an important read for everyone to understand the machinations of having your individuality stripped from you under the premise of man’s interpretations of a deity that may or may not be real.
Read “Worldly Girls” to drop judgment and to understand the hypocrisy of the term “Free Bible Study.”
Believers shout out, “We are sick of the others, because they try to shove their way of life down our throat.”
This gets me wondering. On any given day as I stroll the streets of Vancouver… I pass countless duos and trios acting in the name of their Lord. Trying to recruit more people into a worldview that defines everyone outside it as “other”—non-believers.
Worldly Girls is an important read that may help you understand what it is like to be trapped inside someone else’s interpretation of how to live.
WRITTEN 23 July 2026
★★★★★ = The Courage to Become Yourself
How did the book make me feel/think?
I enjoyed this book. The wrong description.
I don’t like writing about it—religion is a slippery slope.
Tamara was raised in the Jehovah’s Witness faith.
A place of belonging. A place where being oneself is shunned. Conformity seems to be the desired outcome.
A cult. Her words—slipping into mine.
It is 2026. I walk the streets of Vancouver. Religious recruiters are everywhere. “Free Bibles.” “Free Bible Study Courses.”
It feels oppressive.
If you do not conform. If you are a free thinker. If you are other. You are shunned. How could anyone sit in that? Tamara couldn’t.
A place of belonging becomes a lifelong haunting. A stalking monster.
I may burn in Hell for my thoughts. I’ll take my chances.
My disdain is strong. My mother was unwed. Religion and shame forced her to birth me in a place of the unwanted. I was deemed a demon seed. To be removed and never spoken of again. Religion did this.
How could I ever write a supportive word for something that deemed me unworthy of being loved? Religion and shame taught people that my very existence was something to be hidden.
This is not a review. This is a reckoning.
Worldly Girls is an important read for everyone to understand the machinations of having your individuality stripped from you under the premise of man’s interpretations of a deity that may or may not be real.
Read “Worldly Girls” to drop judgment and to understand the hypocrisy of the term “Free Bible Study.”
Believers shout out, “We are sick of the others, because they try to shove their way of life down our throat.”
This gets me wondering. On any given day as I stroll the streets of Vancouver… I pass countless duos and trios acting in the name of their Lord. Trying to recruit more people into a worldview that defines everyone outside it as “other”—non-believers.
Worldly Girls is an important read that may help you understand what it is like to be trapped inside someone else’s interpretation of how to live.
WRITTEN 23 July 2026
★★★★★ = The Courage to Become Yourself
A Fast Horse Never Brings Good News – Everyone Carries a Big Story
How did the book make me feel/think?
Five stories. All riveting.
Some relatable. One connective tissue. We become readers living on the pages.
Big Story
Everyone has a ‘Big Story’—that shapes their lives.
What is yours?
Mine is.
Born in a place wrapped in shame. A familial lie. Shame. Shame. Shame.
Birth parents not who I thought they were. Birth parents found. Truths unravel. Solitude follows as the lies are too much to live on the surface. A mother. A father. Unknown.
Raised by. Biological. Possibilities.
A young child. A fantasy. A family living in a tree in a family’s yard. A lesson about compassion. A lesson about privilege. Connection made. Be better. Be caring. Don’t judge. A lesson brought to us by a child. Care.
In my life a little girl looks at her mother after the mother says, “If you misbehave, I will embarrass you in front of all of these people.” I perform this in a stand-up set—the set kills because the child looked at her mother and said, “I don’t know any of these people.”
Higher and Higher
Art. A book “The Animals.” Written by this author. Found. Its journey documented. Tattered. Torn. Shared. Humanity on the pages. A journey touching many. I’ve read the book. I write. I understand the dream. Who do we touch?
The pages speak to me.
Two more stories. A story about living in an awkward world, as an outsider trying to find one’s place. Another. What would you do to survive… and how do you fit into a world leaving you behind?
The last two stories. Deep connections. They settle inside the psyche long after the last pages are consumed.
Fagan is a master at skirting the boundaries between the ethereal and reality. The final page is read. The journey has only begun. Fagan … give us more.
WRITTEN 19 July 2026
★★★★★ = Every Stranger Carries a Story Worth Hearing
How did the book make me feel/think?
Five stories. All riveting.
Some relatable. One connective tissue. We become readers living on the pages.
Big Story
Everyone has a ‘Big Story’—that shapes their lives.
What is yours?
Mine is.
Born in a place wrapped in shame. A familial lie. Shame. Shame. Shame.
Birth parents not who I thought they were. Birth parents found. Truths unravel. Solitude follows as the lies are too much to live on the surface. A mother. A father. Unknown.
Raised by. Biological. Possibilities.
A young child. A fantasy. A family living in a tree in a family’s yard. A lesson about compassion. A lesson about privilege. Connection made. Be better. Be caring. Don’t judge. A lesson brought to us by a child. Care.
In my life a little girl looks at her mother after the mother says, “If you misbehave, I will embarrass you in front of all of these people.” I perform this in a stand-up set—the set kills because the child looked at her mother and said, “I don’t know any of these people.”
Higher and Higher
Art. A book “The Animals.” Written by this author. Found. Its journey documented. Tattered. Torn. Shared. Humanity on the pages. A journey touching many. I’ve read the book. I write. I understand the dream. Who do we touch?
The pages speak to me.
Two more stories. A story about living in an awkward world, as an outsider trying to find one’s place. Another. What would you do to survive… and how do you fit into a world leaving you behind?
The last two stories. Deep connections. They settle inside the psyche long after the last pages are consumed.
Fagan is a master at skirting the boundaries between the ethereal and reality. The final page is read. The journey has only begun. Fagan … give us more.
WRITTEN 19 July 2026
★★★★★ = Every Stranger Carries a Story Worth Hearing
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Everything is Illuminated – When the Wall Between Reader and Writer Falls
How did the book make me feel/think?
I’m standing outside “Everything is Illuminated” by Jonathan Safran Foer.
I flip into the book. For some strange reason, I’ve brought a sledgehammer with me.
I laugh on every page, mostly cringe-laughs.
Is the story offensive, enlightening, just plain weird, or transcendent?
Foer snatches the sledgehammer from me and demolishes the wall between us.
I’m now part of the book.
One line, bedazzled. The next deeply and beautifully profound.
He’s speaking to us, ‘individual’ readers.
Is the entirety of humanity his muse?
We share the pages.
It doesn’t matter what the book is about (but it does). It is a delight to be invited inside.
It just so happens the book explores the depths of survival and historical memory through one of the most inventive novels I’ve read.
“Everything is Illuminated” became a favourite, tickling my mind, inviting me into the creative process, and shining a light on the importance of humour in the often “impossible” healing processes.
WRITTEN 9 July 2026
★★★★★ = A mind-expanding masterpiece.
How did the book make me feel/think?
I’m standing outside “Everything is Illuminated” by Jonathan Safran Foer.
I flip into the book. For some strange reason, I’ve brought a sledgehammer with me.
I laugh on every page, mostly cringe-laughs.
Is the story offensive, enlightening, just plain weird, or transcendent?
Foer snatches the sledgehammer from me and demolishes the wall between us.
I’m now part of the book.
One line, bedazzled. The next deeply and beautifully profound.
He’s speaking to us, ‘individual’ readers.
Is the entirety of humanity his muse?
We share the pages.
It doesn’t matter what the book is about (but it does). It is a delight to be invited inside.
It just so happens the book explores the depths of survival and historical memory through one of the most inventive novels I’ve read.
“Everything is Illuminated” became a favourite, tickling my mind, inviting me into the creative process, and shining a light on the importance of humour in the often “impossible” healing processes.
WRITTEN 9 July 2026
★★★★★ = A mind-expanding masterpiece.
We Do Not Part – Beneath the Snow, Memory Awaits
How did the book make me feel/think?
It is said that it takes seven generations for calmness to arrive in one’s soul.
The Jeju Island massacres of 1948-49. A blight on Korean history.
Water is a finite resource. Recycled infinitely.
A snowflake falling forty years ago might contain the same moisture as a flake falling today.
Generations crossing paths in the essence of nature.
A mother and daughter sharing the same tears. Ambiguity keeps us bound together.
Han Kang’s writing is extraordinary. The pages sing.
The first part of the book is riveting. Inseon, a friend injured and in hospital (in Seoul). A budgie in crisis. One day, maybe two days, water and food left to survive. A rush through a once-in-a-lifetime snowstorm. The budgie is a metaphor. The snow is a metaphor. Is it cleansing or does it simply cover evil?
I can’t stop reading. I need to know if the budgie, Ama, survives.
Kyungha rushes through the weather to try to save Inseon’s Ama as Inseon recovers in Seoul.
A fall. An injury. Ambiguity ensues. The scars of generations lost emerge.
What’s real? What’s a fever-dream?
Inseon’s mother had survived the horrors of the massacres, leaving a record of the atrocities humanity is capable of.
Kyungha’s mind is rattled. Ghosts of the past appear. Inseon appears. The ambiguity is confusing. The prose tormenting.
This is a five-star book, but I can only give it four stars because the ambiguity rattled my mind to the point where I questioned what was real and what was a fever dream, and the Jeju Island massacres have melted some of the snow, revealing the horrors lying beneath.
Does Ama survive? You must read to find out.
I know the next time I’m out in the snow, I will wonder if the flakes falling on me know who my father is.
Water is a finite resource. Because of its essence, we never part.
WRITTEN 2 July 2026
★★★★ = The pages sing, even when the mind becomes lost.
How did the book make me feel/think?
It is said that it takes seven generations for calmness to arrive in one’s soul.
The Jeju Island massacres of 1948-49. A blight on Korean history.
Water is a finite resource. Recycled infinitely.
A snowflake falling forty years ago might contain the same moisture as a flake falling today.
Generations crossing paths in the essence of nature.
A mother and daughter sharing the same tears. Ambiguity keeps us bound together.
Han Kang’s writing is extraordinary. The pages sing.
The first part of the book is riveting. Inseon, a friend injured and in hospital (in Seoul). A budgie in crisis. One day, maybe two days, water and food left to survive. A rush through a once-in-a-lifetime snowstorm. The budgie is a metaphor. The snow is a metaphor. Is it cleansing or does it simply cover evil?
I can’t stop reading. I need to know if the budgie, Ama, survives.
Kyungha rushes through the weather to try to save Inseon’s Ama as Inseon recovers in Seoul.
A fall. An injury. Ambiguity ensues. The scars of generations lost emerge.
What’s real? What’s a fever-dream?
Inseon’s mother had survived the horrors of the massacres, leaving a record of the atrocities humanity is capable of.
Kyungha’s mind is rattled. Ghosts of the past appear. Inseon appears. The ambiguity is confusing. The prose tormenting.
This is a five-star book, but I can only give it four stars because the ambiguity rattled my mind to the point where I questioned what was real and what was a fever dream, and the Jeju Island massacres have melted some of the snow, revealing the horrors lying beneath.
Does Ama survive? You must read to find out.
I know the next time I’m out in the snow, I will wonder if the flakes falling on me know who my father is.
Water is a finite resource. Because of its essence, we never part.
WRITTEN 2 July 2026
★★★★ = The pages sing, even when the mind becomes lost.
The Healing Hippo of Hinode Park – The Wisdom of Weathered Things
How did the book make me feel/think?
Mind. Speak. Listen. Move. See. Age. Understand. Hope.
Sometimes a book is needed.
Sometimes we need a push to change our thoughts.
Simple. Loveable. Matters.
A lesson… a better way of thinking in every story.
A clouded mind, chasing the superfluous.
A legend is born in a story told by an elderly lady. A cleaner. The ephemeral erased by wisdom.
A playground. A child’s permanent ride. A hippo. Kabahiko. Aging as well. Paint peeling. What do you see? Some see decline. Others see tears. In reality, Kabahiko provides guidance and an ear, therapy through permanence. Judgement absent.
I connect. Every element speaks to me. I make a drawing of a scene in a book I’m reading. The drawing is juvenile. I know this. But I’m proud of being able to draw like a child at my age. I ruefully boast, a smirk on my face as I do. A friend dismisses my art as if it were garbage. At first, I’m roused. Kabahiko tells me not to care. I continue to smile instead of lament.
How did the book make me feel/think?
Mind. Speak. Listen. Move. See. Age. Understand. Hope.
Sometimes a book is needed.
Sometimes we need a push to change our thoughts.
Simple. Loveable. Matters.
A lesson… a better way of thinking in every story.
A clouded mind, chasing the superfluous.
A legend is born in a story told by an elderly lady. A cleaner. The ephemeral erased by wisdom.
A playground. A child’s permanent ride. A hippo. Kabahiko. Aging as well. Paint peeling. What do you see? Some see decline. Others see tears. In reality, Kabahiko provides guidance and an ear, therapy through permanence. Judgement absent.
I connect. Every element speaks to me. I make a drawing of a scene in a book I’m reading. The drawing is juvenile. I know this. But I’m proud of being able to draw like a child at my age. I ruefully boast, a smirk on my face as I do. A friend dismisses my art as if it were garbage. At first, I’m roused. Kabahiko tells me not to care. I continue to smile instead of lament.
Don’t listen to the naysayers. Listen to your soul.
I’m a young boy being called to run… in a race I can’t win. I feign an injury to avoid the race. Another boy is forced to take my place. He’s not a good runner. Kabahiko tells me to run with him; glory comes not from winning the race but from helping someone be part of the game… outsider, no more. A friendship is found.
Clothing tattered. What do you see?
Most see garbage. The elderly lady, the cleaner sees history. A chronicled past. Kabahiko is connecting people.
My full connection comes in the end. An estranged relationship between mother and son. I’m not simply connected. I’m wrapped up in the pages. A thesis in living, a legend born by an elderly lady. A son and mother reconnecting. When time changes the dynamics, we often long for what was. Kabahiko and the elderly lady instill in us the idea that chasing what was is an unattainable dream, and every moment you chase… is a moment when new beginnings get lost in the murk.
As time slips by, Kabahiko becomes weathered; if you think, speak up, listen, look, and move, there is something profound for every reader resting on the pages of Hinode Park. And reading between the lines will bring you closer to this world, helping you realize it is draped in softness and beauty that connect us all.
Thanks, Kabahiko, for giving us pages to grow on.
WRITTEN 27 June 2026
★★★★★ = Sometimes a book doesn't change your mind. It changes the way you see the world.
I’m a young boy being called to run… in a race I can’t win. I feign an injury to avoid the race. Another boy is forced to take my place. He’s not a good runner. Kabahiko tells me to run with him; glory comes not from winning the race but from helping someone be part of the game… outsider, no more. A friendship is found.
Clothing tattered. What do you see?
Most see garbage. The elderly lady, the cleaner sees history. A chronicled past. Kabahiko is connecting people.
My full connection comes in the end. An estranged relationship between mother and son. I’m not simply connected. I’m wrapped up in the pages. A thesis in living, a legend born by an elderly lady. A son and mother reconnecting. When time changes the dynamics, we often long for what was. Kabahiko and the elderly lady instill in us the idea that chasing what was is an unattainable dream, and every moment you chase… is a moment when new beginnings get lost in the murk.
As time slips by, Kabahiko becomes weathered; if you think, speak up, listen, look, and move, there is something profound for every reader resting on the pages of Hinode Park. And reading between the lines will bring you closer to this world, helping you realize it is draped in softness and beauty that connect us all.
Thanks, Kabahiko, for giving us pages to grow on.
WRITTEN 27 June 2026
★★★★★ = Sometimes a book doesn't change your mind. It changes the way you see the world.
The Things We Never Say – The Secrets We Carry
How did the book make me feel/think?
I crack the book. Expectations are high. One of my favourite authors.
Why?
Elizabeth Strout gives us (the ordinary)… life. Never shying away from life’s messiness.
I’m reading in the library. A senior is on his phone, begging with the housing authority for a break. A break lost in the paperwork. A senior trying to prove he is poor enough to be worthy of dignity.
A friend approaches him. His demeanour switches to upbeat. The man protects his vulnerabilities. Attempts to paint a different picture. In a sense, he’s lying to his friend.
--- ---
I come to a section where the protagonist’s son tells him he’s not his biological father.
A plot point springs from the page.
The day after I turned 25, I watched my father die. Sixteen years later, I found out he wasn’t my father. Five years after that, I met the man my mother listed as my father on my birth record. One week after meeting him, I phoned him to tell him my mother had lied and he wasn’t my father after all. The pages are speaking to me.
Strout captures life like few others. Life is rich. If we listen, life will tell us secrets.
I’m living on the pages.
Simple conversations propel the narrative forward. A thought feels like the most important thing in the world. Little happens on a page, except for everything. Ordinary life is not ordinary at all.
A flawed character on the page is unlikable until the layers are pulled back. We learn what shaped them. Division is shattered. Empathy and compassion are found.
As I read the last page, I find cemented in my thoughts: We never know what others are dealing with or enduring in their seemingly little lives; thus, it is imperative to drop judgment and listen with kindness because nothing is ever as it seems.
Some families are saddled with lifelong lies, and Elizabeth Strout makes it clear on every page that it is okay to be who we are. Life is a mess. Love and complexity live inside what some may think is the mundane.
Three things make us whole: Vulnerability. Nakedness. Openness.
Blending that into the prose is a gift Strout effortlessly gives the world.
Seriously, I had to tell my father he wasn’t my dad, and reading The Things We Never Say is the first time I was told it is okay to feel the way I do.
WRITTEN 20 June 2026
★★★★★ = A gift of empathy and understanding.
How did the book make me feel/think?
I crack the book. Expectations are high. One of my favourite authors.
Why?
Elizabeth Strout gives us (the ordinary)… life. Never shying away from life’s messiness.
I’m reading in the library. A senior is on his phone, begging with the housing authority for a break. A break lost in the paperwork. A senior trying to prove he is poor enough to be worthy of dignity.
A friend approaches him. His demeanour switches to upbeat. The man protects his vulnerabilities. Attempts to paint a different picture. In a sense, he’s lying to his friend.
--- ---
I come to a section where the protagonist’s son tells him he’s not his biological father.
A plot point springs from the page.
The day after I turned 25, I watched my father die. Sixteen years later, I found out he wasn’t my father. Five years after that, I met the man my mother listed as my father on my birth record. One week after meeting him, I phoned him to tell him my mother had lied and he wasn’t my father after all. The pages are speaking to me.
Strout captures life like few others. Life is rich. If we listen, life will tell us secrets.
I’m living on the pages.
Simple conversations propel the narrative forward. A thought feels like the most important thing in the world. Little happens on a page, except for everything. Ordinary life is not ordinary at all.
A flawed character on the page is unlikable until the layers are pulled back. We learn what shaped them. Division is shattered. Empathy and compassion are found.
As I read the last page, I find cemented in my thoughts: We never know what others are dealing with or enduring in their seemingly little lives; thus, it is imperative to drop judgment and listen with kindness because nothing is ever as it seems.
Some families are saddled with lifelong lies, and Elizabeth Strout makes it clear on every page that it is okay to be who we are. Life is a mess. Love and complexity live inside what some may think is the mundane.
Three things make us whole: Vulnerability. Nakedness. Openness.
Blending that into the prose is a gift Strout effortlessly gives the world.
Seriously, I had to tell my father he wasn’t my dad, and reading The Things We Never Say is the first time I was told it is okay to feel the way I do.
WRITTEN 20 June 2026
★★★★★ = A gift of empathy and understanding.
The Year of Magical Thinking – Grief Has No Timeline
How did the book make me feel/think?
Didion gives us permission. Something we know but need to hear.
Grief is a beast. It has no timeline.
I’m reading in a café. I’m about to turn 66. I’m male, not that that matters—in the eyes of judgment and how we are supposedly supposed to be—shamefully, it does.
I don’t care that the tears are leaking. I’m being moved.
Losing loved ones, at the risk of lazy writing, defies words. Didion lost her rock, her anchor, her husband, while at the same time her daughter Quintana was gravely ill.
Western culture times grief. Didion bravely shatters that preposterous notion.
Grief is mental. It’s an illness.
In my life, I’ve lost 29 people I know of; it is more like 50, the football teammate in a car crash, a brother’s friend in a float plane disaster, where I’m asked to attend the funeral in my brother’s absence, and many more, lying in the periphery of my capacity to remember. Absences that lessen the weight of the pain.
Since 2016, I’ve lost 19 people, five family members.
I struggle to rise some mornings. I hide behind humour and fleeting denial. My brain has been rewired.
And that’s okay. The preposterous notion has been challenged.
Didion lets us know. It’s okay to be not okay.
I keep reading. I learned that profound loss is not only life-altering but can also free our capacity for empathy and compassion.
In the end. We must find joy. A snicker. A reason to go on.
We need to break the chains of “if only I had…”
There is likely nothing we could have done. Sometimes we need to accept that destiny is in control. That might be the only way we move on.
We must thank brave writers like Didion, who, through their deepest anguish, gift us with a salve that might help us get to the next day.
“I love you more than one more day.”
WRITTEN 14 June 2026
★★★★★ = A companion for the journey.
How did the book make me feel/think?
Didion gives us permission. Something we know but need to hear.
Grief is a beast. It has no timeline.
I’m reading in a café. I’m about to turn 66. I’m male, not that that matters—in the eyes of judgment and how we are supposedly supposed to be—shamefully, it does.
I don’t care that the tears are leaking. I’m being moved.
Losing loved ones, at the risk of lazy writing, defies words. Didion lost her rock, her anchor, her husband, while at the same time her daughter Quintana was gravely ill.
Western culture times grief. Didion bravely shatters that preposterous notion.
Grief is mental. It’s an illness.
In my life, I’ve lost 29 people I know of; it is more like 50, the football teammate in a car crash, a brother’s friend in a float plane disaster, where I’m asked to attend the funeral in my brother’s absence, and many more, lying in the periphery of my capacity to remember. Absences that lessen the weight of the pain.
Since 2016, I’ve lost 19 people, five family members.
I struggle to rise some mornings. I hide behind humour and fleeting denial. My brain has been rewired.
And that’s okay. The preposterous notion has been challenged.
Didion lets us know. It’s okay to be not okay.
I keep reading. I learned that profound loss is not only life-altering but can also free our capacity for empathy and compassion.
In the end. We must find joy. A snicker. A reason to go on.
We need to break the chains of “if only I had…”
There is likely nothing we could have done. Sometimes we need to accept that destiny is in control. That might be the only way we move on.
We must thank brave writers like Didion, who, through their deepest anguish, gift us with a salve that might help us get to the next day.
“I love you more than one more day.”
WRITTEN 14 June 2026
★★★★★ = A companion for the journey.
The Road to Bard – One Man’s Gift to a City
How did the book make me feel/think?
The curtain opens.
On the stage crawls Christopher Gaze, and for the next 75 years and going, he is gifting us the performance of his life.
A charmed life. An at times arduous life.
A marriage crumpled under the weight of creativity.
A literal who’s who in the global theatrical world—a world where rubbing shoulders with legends becomes family.
Thousands of performers and support staff... all cherished and praised.
Loving parents who instilled in him the idea that chasing who you are destined to be is okay, giving him the strength to want it bad enough that the rest of us reap the rewards of his relentless efforts and vision.
By founding Bard, Gaze has helped in shaping a world-renowned city.
Part of the city's fabric.
Part of what makes this place special.
A moment for his mother.
A single tear.
If my math is correct, this year will be the festival’s thirty-seventh year.
It is a lovely night to head to Bard. Under the stars. A perfect backdrop.
We are meant to be of service to each other.
Like reading this book, you may find yourself enriched.
Christopher has given so much of his life to us.
Let’s give something back by supporting the arts.
WRITTEN 13 June 2026
★★★★★ = The rare memoir that leaves you grateful.
How did the book make me feel/think?
The curtain opens.
On the stage crawls Christopher Gaze, and for the next 75 years and going, he is gifting us the performance of his life.
A charmed life. An at times arduous life.
A marriage crumpled under the weight of creativity.
A literal who’s who in the global theatrical world—a world where rubbing shoulders with legends becomes family.
Thousands of performers and support staff... all cherished and praised.
Loving parents who instilled in him the idea that chasing who you are destined to be is okay, giving him the strength to want it bad enough that the rest of us reap the rewards of his relentless efforts and vision.
By founding Bard, Gaze has helped in shaping a world-renowned city.
Part of the city's fabric.
Part of what makes this place special.
A moment for his mother.
A single tear.
If my math is correct, this year will be the festival’s thirty-seventh year.
It is a lovely night to head to Bard. Under the stars. A perfect backdrop.
We are meant to be of service to each other.
Like reading this book, you may find yourself enriched.
Christopher has given so much of his life to us.
Let’s give something back by supporting the arts.
WRITTEN 13 June 2026
★★★★★ = The rare memoir that leaves you grateful.
I Who Have Never Known Men – Are Any of Us Not Alone
How did the book make me feel/think?
40 women. Most older, they are in a bunker, a cage, imprisoned. No sense of time. No sense of the past. There is no explanation of what's happening. No answers… why?
One young woman. Curiosity. Hope.
Time is irrelevant.
The women's captivity transports me to my father's deathbed.
It’s my 1,500th visit. I'm still young.
The hospital reminds me of the bunker's mental prison.
What’s the point of words when nothing new happens?
My father drifts into the unknown.
It’s been decades... I think since Dad left, many people have joined him in the unknown.
I’m older now. I think.
It’s been seven years since I travelled further than I can walk in a day.
I’m in Vancouver. Living inside my thoughts. Getting up with the birds.
Day 1,894: The birds are gone.
Day 3,311: City streets, once bustling, are empty. No life except for me. I’m alone.
Day 4,333: All the vehicles disappear. Glass no longer reflects. My phone dies. It hasn’t been a phone for decades.
Day 4,363: I feel my memories are being erased. I have no past. I must belong somewhere.
Day 6,333: Life is a fantasy. I look at my hands, and I’m aging.
Everything is mine. A spree: Clothing. Food. Technology. All the homes belong to me. At first, I chose to live in luxury. It seemed excessive. Pointless. Wrong.
Day 9,333: The birds are gone. I wake up anyway.
I stroll the streets talking to myself.
I decided I needed a new shirt. I enter a store. I talk to myself. I wonder if I can hear my own voice? Am I crazy?
I’m startled. I see someone staring at me. Whatever it is, it is mimicking my movements. Is it my father?
I scream. No sound comes out of me.
Have I forgotten who I am?
I smash the person staring at me. They shatter.
The lights in the empty store go out.
I'm swallowed by darkness.
I stare out the window. Storm clouds are rolling over the deserted city.
It starts to rain.
I think “I Who Have Never Known Men” may have rewired my brain.
A psychological masterpiece that transcends the bunker it begins in and the unknown it ultimately confronts.
Are any of us not alone?
WRITTEN 4 June 2026
★★★★★ = A novel that rewires the brain.
How did the book make me feel/think?
40 women. Most older, they are in a bunker, a cage, imprisoned. No sense of time. No sense of the past. There is no explanation of what's happening. No answers… why?
One young woman. Curiosity. Hope.
Time is irrelevant.
The women's captivity transports me to my father's deathbed.
It’s my 1,500th visit. I'm still young.
The hospital reminds me of the bunker's mental prison.
What’s the point of words when nothing new happens?
My father drifts into the unknown.
It’s been decades... I think since Dad left, many people have joined him in the unknown.
I’m older now. I think.
It’s been seven years since I travelled further than I can walk in a day.
I’m in Vancouver. Living inside my thoughts. Getting up with the birds.
Day 1,894: The birds are gone.
Day 3,311: City streets, once bustling, are empty. No life except for me. I’m alone.
Day 4,333: All the vehicles disappear. Glass no longer reflects. My phone dies. It hasn’t been a phone for decades.
Day 4,363: I feel my memories are being erased. I have no past. I must belong somewhere.
Day 6,333: Life is a fantasy. I look at my hands, and I’m aging.
Everything is mine. A spree: Clothing. Food. Technology. All the homes belong to me. At first, I chose to live in luxury. It seemed excessive. Pointless. Wrong.
Day 9,333: The birds are gone. I wake up anyway.
I stroll the streets talking to myself.
I decided I needed a new shirt. I enter a store. I talk to myself. I wonder if I can hear my own voice? Am I crazy?
I’m startled. I see someone staring at me. Whatever it is, it is mimicking my movements. Is it my father?
I scream. No sound comes out of me.
Have I forgotten who I am?
I smash the person staring at me. They shatter.
The lights in the empty store go out.
I'm swallowed by darkness.
I stare out the window. Storm clouds are rolling over the deserted city.
It starts to rain.
I think “I Who Have Never Known Men” may have rewired my brain.
A psychological masterpiece that transcends the bunker it begins in and the unknown it ultimately confronts.
Are any of us not alone?
WRITTEN 4 June 2026
★★★★★ = A novel that rewires the brain.
My Heart Soars – Humanity on Every Page
How did the book make me feel/think?
95 pages.
What am I reading?
Poetry. Inspiration. A Way of Being.
A one-hour read. Humanity on every page.
Why am I reading?
A found gem.
95 pages expand into infinite wisdom.
“Young people are the pioneers of new ways…”
We must give them the tools to change our ways… we are lost.
Consumption and greed have replaced civility.
We are not enemies.
We must become one.
This book was written in 1974. The wisdom within is more relevant than ever today. Today. Tomorrow. Forever.
We are all stewards of our survival. Keepers of Gaia. We are willfully killing it.
For what?
“Nothing belongs to you of what there is, of what you take, you must share.”
We seem to have forgotten the importance of sharing. Suffering on our streets and in our communities.
We kill what we fear… update… what we are conditioned to fear.
95 ginormous pages. A better way on every page. Read. Listen. Let the words seep into your soul.
I close the book. My heart skips a beat.
I want to pay attention. I want to be a better person. I want to do my part.
A little book turns large and moves to the top of my list.
WRITTEN 4 June 2026
★★★★★ = Humanity on Every Page
How did the book make me feel/think?
95 pages.
What am I reading?
Poetry. Inspiration. A Way of Being.
A one-hour read. Humanity on every page.
Why am I reading?
A found gem.
95 pages expand into infinite wisdom.
“Young people are the pioneers of new ways…”
We must give them the tools to change our ways… we are lost.
Consumption and greed have replaced civility.
We are not enemies.
We must become one.
This book was written in 1974. The wisdom within is more relevant than ever today. Today. Tomorrow. Forever.
We are all stewards of our survival. Keepers of Gaia. We are willfully killing it.
For what?
“Nothing belongs to you of what there is, of what you take, you must share.”
We seem to have forgotten the importance of sharing. Suffering on our streets and in our communities.
We kill what we fear… update… what we are conditioned to fear.
95 ginormous pages. A better way on every page. Read. Listen. Let the words seep into your soul.
I close the book. My heart skips a beat.
I want to pay attention. I want to be a better person. I want to do my part.
A little book turns large and moves to the top of my list.
WRITTEN 4 June 2026
★★★★★ = Humanity on Every Page
Koh-I-Noor - Searching for Light in a World of Vampires
How did the book make me feel/think?
Vampires walk amongst us. Not how you think?
Greed, corruption, late-stage capitalism, devouring life, hope, and our futures.
We consume.
Religious vulnerabilities try to stem the onslaught.
Four stories running parallel.
I’m lost on the pages. The writing is profound. The stories are, at times, confusing. I blame the font. A weak critique.
It takes hundreds of pages before a light goes on and I find my footing. My place on the pages. I stay because, at times, a line or two feels as though it was written just for me. I’m connected.
I find the breadth of the story to be somewhat overwhelming. Maybe it is because I’m from a different generation than the writer.
I’m enjoying the prose. I’m not sure what I’m reading.
And then, the light blasts on. Religion, youth and a longing for a better way dominate the story. How can young people possibly navigate a world full of vampires when they have to forgo their desire for ethics and morals in a world where survival demands you live outside of them if you have any hope of surviving?
Is there a way?
Or are we all doomed?
Gold mining destroys the earth, but gold’s usage in medicine and other realms often keeps us alive.
A conundrum?
Five stars deserved. But only four are given because I found my head spinning too often.
I don’t know what to feel, but I most certainly felt something.
WRITTEN 27 May 2026
★★★★ = Ambitious, Philosophical, Disorienting, Rewarding
How did the book make me feel/think?
Vampires walk amongst us. Not how you think?
Greed, corruption, late-stage capitalism, devouring life, hope, and our futures.
We consume.
Religious vulnerabilities try to stem the onslaught.
Four stories running parallel.
I’m lost on the pages. The writing is profound. The stories are, at times, confusing. I blame the font. A weak critique.
It takes hundreds of pages before a light goes on and I find my footing. My place on the pages. I stay because, at times, a line or two feels as though it was written just for me. I’m connected.
I find the breadth of the story to be somewhat overwhelming. Maybe it is because I’m from a different generation than the writer.
I’m enjoying the prose. I’m not sure what I’m reading.
And then, the light blasts on. Religion, youth and a longing for a better way dominate the story. How can young people possibly navigate a world full of vampires when they have to forgo their desire for ethics and morals in a world where survival demands you live outside of them if you have any hope of surviving?
Is there a way?
Or are we all doomed?
Gold mining destroys the earth, but gold’s usage in medicine and other realms often keeps us alive.
A conundrum?
Five stars deserved. But only four are given because I found my head spinning too often.
I don’t know what to feel, but I most certainly felt something.
WRITTEN 27 May 2026
★★★★ = Ambitious, Philosophical, Disorienting, Rewarding
All Batch 47 Reviews
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Snow Road Station – Always what they are.
How did the book make me feel/think?
Always what they are--
Life goes through seasons.
Short bursts to come to terms with who and what you want to be.
A season comes. You get six, maybe five weeks, to make a change.
Subtle. Like a forest, slow.
With time. Memories fade. We grasp tightly who we’ve become.
The harsh memories clash with the here and now as we try to erase the pain of living life.
One day, passion slips into “cannot” or “do not want to do” anymore. A search for peace. A search for meaning. A final act. If lucky, you can make amends, and, like the seasons, blast by, and, like a forest, change slowly. You come to a place where the burden of things beyond our control is let go, and before the final curtain closes, we hold on to love, hope, and happiness. And the final sentence closes a book that sneaks up on you and reminds you what the point of living is in the first place.
—and so changed from what they were.
WRITTEN 30 May 2026
★★★★★ = Profound. Quiet. Human.
How did the book make me feel/think?
Always what they are--
Life goes through seasons.
Short bursts to come to terms with who and what you want to be.
A season comes. You get six, maybe five weeks, to make a change.
Subtle. Like a forest, slow.
With time. Memories fade. We grasp tightly who we’ve become.
The harsh memories clash with the here and now as we try to erase the pain of living life.
One day, passion slips into “cannot” or “do not want to do” anymore. A search for peace. A search for meaning. A final act. If lucky, you can make amends, and, like the seasons, blast by, and, like a forest, change slowly. You come to a place where the burden of things beyond our control is let go, and before the final curtain closes, we hold on to love, hope, and happiness. And the final sentence closes a book that sneaks up on you and reminds you what the point of living is in the first place.
—and so changed from what they were.
WRITTEN 30 May 2026
★★★★★ = Profound. Quiet. Human.
Friends With Benefits – I need a beat.
How did the book make me feel/think?
I am not the target readership. I’m in my sixties. Male. No longer hopelessly romantic. Hopefully, logical.
Advice. Wisdom. Preaching.
Never become roommates with a friend. Only the love of your life until divorce.
Friend. Roommate. Fractured. No longer friends.
Update:
Never marry a platonic friend, even if, on the surface, the intentions are good.
Shattered realities. True colours: Manipulation. Neediness. Dishonesty. Friends no more.
In Friends with Benefits, one character is an emotional trainwreck and the other a doormat—tragic backstories can’t save either of them.
I need to take a beat.
I’m older now. The despair and toxic neediness of the characters make me worry about younger people–I repeat, I am not the target audience.
An entire book of two people lying to themselves.
That’s not love, it’s exhaustion.
Friends with Benefits is akin to having a friend keep telling you, from different angles, how important their life is, hoping you will eventually agree.
Is this what love is like for younger people?
IDF.
WRITTEN 5 May 2026
★★★ = The writing kept me reading. The characters made me want to stop.
How did the book make me feel/think?
I am not the target readership. I’m in my sixties. Male. No longer hopelessly romantic. Hopefully, logical.
Advice. Wisdom. Preaching.
Never become roommates with a friend. Only the love of your life until divorce.
Friend. Roommate. Fractured. No longer friends.
Update:
Never marry a platonic friend, even if, on the surface, the intentions are good.
Shattered realities. True colours: Manipulation. Neediness. Dishonesty. Friends no more.
In Friends with Benefits, one character is an emotional trainwreck and the other a doormat—tragic backstories can’t save either of them.
I need to take a beat.
I’m older now. The despair and toxic neediness of the characters make me worry about younger people–I repeat, I am not the target audience.
An entire book of two people lying to themselves.
That’s not love, it’s exhaustion.
Friends with Benefits is akin to having a friend keep telling you, from different angles, how important their life is, hoping you will eventually agree.
Is this what love is like for younger people?
IDF.
WRITTEN 5 May 2026
★★★ = The writing kept me reading. The characters made me want to stop.
Trickster Drift – Fog Between Worlds. Laughter in the Ruins.
How did the book make me feel/think?
The supernatural is all around us. We walk in a fog. The ghosts of our pasts are forced upon us in a circle. Whales turn into monsters, and humanity is saved by the mythical Thunderbird. In its wake, a 600-foot tsunami. Saved for the moment.
The haunting continues. Generational divides. We want to be whole. Human. Resist what curse genetics has given us. A blessing. Who we are. Embrace.
A laugh on almost every page softens reality.
Interdimensional.
“Bathrobe” sits on the page—my favourite character. A floating head protects. Fireflies provide hope. We hope. The floating head talks.
Robinson’s writing resonates. There wasn’t a moment when the unreality felt unreal.
Because of that, stereotypes don’t survive here.
They need distance.
This story has none.
Robinson doesn’t bow to them.
And because of that, every page lives.
I’m at the gym. It’s 7 AM. People stare at themselves in the mirror. Outside, seven people at various stages of bent over, bodies failing, smoke from glass pipes. What’s the difference?
A break from the day is needed.
Thanks, Eden.
WRITTEN 30 April 2026
★★★★★ = Reality Bent Until It Tells the Truth
How did the book make me feel/think?
The supernatural is all around us. We walk in a fog. The ghosts of our pasts are forced upon us in a circle. Whales turn into monsters, and humanity is saved by the mythical Thunderbird. In its wake, a 600-foot tsunami. Saved for the moment.
The haunting continues. Generational divides. We want to be whole. Human. Resist what curse genetics has given us. A blessing. Who we are. Embrace.
A laugh on almost every page softens reality.
Interdimensional.
“Bathrobe” sits on the page—my favourite character. A floating head protects. Fireflies provide hope. We hope. The floating head talks.
Robinson’s writing resonates. There wasn’t a moment when the unreality felt unreal.
Because of that, stereotypes don’t survive here.
They need distance.
This story has none.
Robinson doesn’t bow to them.
And because of that, every page lives.
I’m at the gym. It’s 7 AM. People stare at themselves in the mirror. Outside, seven people at various stages of bent over, bodies failing, smoke from glass pipes. What’s the difference?
A break from the day is needed.
Thanks, Eden.
WRITTEN 30 April 2026
★★★★★ = Reality Bent Until It Tells the Truth
Batshit Seven – Choirs in the Ceiling, Portals in the Mind
How did the book make me feel/think?
I can’t sleep. Night fifty-seven. Midnight arrives on cue, delivering a freight train of thought.
I look up. When did I get a stucco ceiling? It looks like worms. Are you stucco? It doesn’t answer no.
A portal opens. I levitate.
Now I’m in Tung Chung, riding in a Ferrari. May might be driving. May might have stolen something from my dresser. Glue’s in the back seat—twenty-six, a Canadian-born-Chinese (sorry about the definition), unravelling.
Canada. Hong Kong. ESL. Immigration consulting. Transaction times four.
I slip inside his mind. Another portal.
Short bursts. Non-sequiturs. A life resisting the script—family, stability, career. Glue sees bleakness everywhere. Everything is transactional.
This shouldn’t work. It does. I shouldn’t find a connection. Not millennial. I’m in the Ferrari.
Four decades separate us. The feeling doesn’t.
A wandering mind, collecting fragments, trying to assemble something whole in a transactional world that won’t allow it.
Glue isn’t scattered. He’s calibrating. Calibrating. Calibrating. Glue might embody existentialism. At twenty-six, I wrestled with whether to eat McDonald’s daily—affordable death disguised as a new choice.
Glue’s parents want stability. Mine never flashed the porch lights.
I’m left alone with monsters. Hey, I’m scarier than you. You look rested. I need a better pillow.
Resistance disguised as dysfunction.
May disappears. Glue drifts toward adulthood. I fall through the ceiling, back into bed.
I look up.
“I’m not stucco.”
I fall asleep.
Rarely does a book speak directly to me. Batshit Seven felt like a choir singing my name—occasionally out of tune.
WRITTEN 25 April 2026
★★★★★ = reflective, disorienting, connective, eerily familiar, faintly hopeful.
How did the book make me feel/think?
I can’t sleep. Night fifty-seven. Midnight arrives on cue, delivering a freight train of thought.
I look up. When did I get a stucco ceiling? It looks like worms. Are you stucco? It doesn’t answer no.
A portal opens. I levitate.
Now I’m in Tung Chung, riding in a Ferrari. May might be driving. May might have stolen something from my dresser. Glue’s in the back seat—twenty-six, a Canadian-born-Chinese (sorry about the definition), unravelling.
Canada. Hong Kong. ESL. Immigration consulting. Transaction times four.
I slip inside his mind. Another portal.
Short bursts. Non-sequiturs. A life resisting the script—family, stability, career. Glue sees bleakness everywhere. Everything is transactional.
This shouldn’t work. It does. I shouldn’t find a connection. Not millennial. I’m in the Ferrari.
Four decades separate us. The feeling doesn’t.
A wandering mind, collecting fragments, trying to assemble something whole in a transactional world that won’t allow it.
Glue isn’t scattered. He’s calibrating. Calibrating. Calibrating. Glue might embody existentialism. At twenty-six, I wrestled with whether to eat McDonald’s daily—affordable death disguised as a new choice.
Glue’s parents want stability. Mine never flashed the porch lights.
I’m left alone with monsters. Hey, I’m scarier than you. You look rested. I need a better pillow.
Resistance disguised as dysfunction.
May disappears. Glue drifts toward adulthood. I fall through the ceiling, back into bed.
I look up.
“I’m not stucco.”
I fall asleep.
Rarely does a book speak directly to me. Batshit Seven felt like a choir singing my name—occasionally out of tune.
WRITTEN 25 April 2026
★★★★★ = reflective, disorienting, connective, eerily familiar, faintly hopeful.
The Hidden Life of Trees – Raised Without a Forest
How did the book make me feel/think?
I’m a seed. I will become a tree. If the conditions are right.
I’m a free spirit. My parents don’t want me. I will grow under their canopy in darkness.
A jay takes me away.
I can see home, but I’ve been trapped in the concrete of the city. I’m a street kid. My roots are constricted by asphalt and sidewalk. I’m alone. Depressed. Lonely. I reach for the sun—but I’m exposed to the elements. No roots to a community. No mycorrhizal networks to nourish me. No warnings from neighbours. No neighbours.
Meanwhile, in the forest, a community is growing. Aid is given, even when resources are scarce.
One. Two. Three hundred. One thousand years together.
Drought. Famine. Infestation.
Evolving slowly. Adapting.
Learning the strength in belonging.
The Hidden Life of Trees takes us on a dense journey toward understanding life beyond the human.
Without nature, there is no us.
Everything humans endure has echoes in the forest—including migration.
Nature is violent. Glacially slow.
And still—when something weakens, something else often holds it up.
Back on the street, I grow, reaching for the sky.
I’ve been shorn—my canopy thinned, my protection gone.
At 65, in human terms, I’ve become Old Growth.
But Old Growth without a forest doesn’t last.
This isn’t a book you absorb all at once. It lingers. Quietly. Working its way in.
At times, it’s too much—pages drifting … just out of reach. You don’t need to understand it all. I didn’t.
But the seeds stay.
And they take root.
My street roots dig into a pipe.
The city installs a steel cage around them—protection for infrastructure.
I’m a street kid (tree).
Unlike my forest brethren, my life is being shortened by progress.
We need to slow down.
And listen.
WRITTEN 25 April 2026
**** stars = rootless, searching, aching, connected, not giving up.
How did the book make me feel/think?
I’m a seed. I will become a tree. If the conditions are right.
I’m a free spirit. My parents don’t want me. I will grow under their canopy in darkness.
A jay takes me away.
I can see home, but I’ve been trapped in the concrete of the city. I’m a street kid. My roots are constricted by asphalt and sidewalk. I’m alone. Depressed. Lonely. I reach for the sun—but I’m exposed to the elements. No roots to a community. No mycorrhizal networks to nourish me. No warnings from neighbours. No neighbours.
Meanwhile, in the forest, a community is growing. Aid is given, even when resources are scarce.
One. Two. Three hundred. One thousand years together.
Drought. Famine. Infestation.
Evolving slowly. Adapting.
Learning the strength in belonging.
The Hidden Life of Trees takes us on a dense journey toward understanding life beyond the human.
Without nature, there is no us.
Everything humans endure has echoes in the forest—including migration.
Nature is violent. Glacially slow.
And still—when something weakens, something else often holds it up.
Back on the street, I grow, reaching for the sky.
I’ve been shorn—my canopy thinned, my protection gone.
At 65, in human terms, I’ve become Old Growth.
But Old Growth without a forest doesn’t last.
This isn’t a book you absorb all at once. It lingers. Quietly. Working its way in.
At times, it’s too much—pages drifting … just out of reach. You don’t need to understand it all. I didn’t.
But the seeds stay.
And they take root.
My street roots dig into a pipe.
The city installs a steel cage around them—protection for infrastructure.
I’m a street kid (tree).
Unlike my forest brethren, my life is being shortened by progress.
We need to slow down.
And listen.
WRITTEN 25 April 2026
**** stars = rootless, searching, aching, connected, not giving up.
Intolerable – Conditioned Worlds. Shared Longing.
How did the book make me feel/think?
The connection arrived early.
I was born into a form of religious extremism—church-sanctioned erasure. The diminishing of women. An unwed pregnancy. An expectant mother deemed “unfit.” An unwanted child. A lifetime of searching—for meaning, for belonging.
I don’t confuse my experience with Yemen’s upheaval. But I recognize the structure: zero-sum. “Wrong place. Wrong time.”
Evolution moves slowly—like a tree through stone. Curiosity grows in upheaval.
Are the extremes of patriarchy—Islamic or Christian—so far apart? Or just different languages?
Kamal invites us into his life.
Gay. Youngest of eleven.
A mother—loving but constrained by illiteracy and too many lives.
Love is there.
Buried—under doctrine, expectation, repetition. Conditioning obscures it.
State TV. Fox News.
Different channels. Often the same function.
History presses in—colonization, ideology, power shifting hands.
Lives caught in the wake.
Economic precarity. Escape. Depression. A life made unlivable by being who you are.
Belonging, fractured.
And still—Al-Solaylee shares it.
Not to accuse. To reveal. To soften something in us.
Because beneath it all, most of us want the same things.
And the only true enemy might be intolerance.
By the end, one thought lingered:
Are we really that different? Or shaped by different propaganda?
Yemen and the quiet prison I was born into in Edmonton—worlds apart. But are they?
I felt his mother’s pain.
And found forgiveness for my own.
When I finished Intolerable, something shifted. My conditioning loosened. The world felt smaller.
Curiosity won.
WRITTEN 19 April 2026
***** = reflective, disarming, connective, forgiveness-seeking, gently hopeful.
How did the book make me feel/think?
The connection arrived early.
I was born into a form of religious extremism—church-sanctioned erasure. The diminishing of women. An unwed pregnancy. An expectant mother deemed “unfit.” An unwanted child. A lifetime of searching—for meaning, for belonging.
I don’t confuse my experience with Yemen’s upheaval. But I recognize the structure: zero-sum. “Wrong place. Wrong time.”
Evolution moves slowly—like a tree through stone. Curiosity grows in upheaval.
Are the extremes of patriarchy—Islamic or Christian—so far apart? Or just different languages?
Kamal invites us into his life.
Gay. Youngest of eleven.
A mother—loving but constrained by illiteracy and too many lives.
Love is there.
Buried—under doctrine, expectation, repetition. Conditioning obscures it.
State TV. Fox News.
Different channels. Often the same function.
History presses in—colonization, ideology, power shifting hands.
Lives caught in the wake.
Economic precarity. Escape. Depression. A life made unlivable by being who you are.
Belonging, fractured.
And still—Al-Solaylee shares it.
Not to accuse. To reveal. To soften something in us.
Because beneath it all, most of us want the same things.
And the only true enemy might be intolerance.
By the end, one thought lingered:
Are we really that different? Or shaped by different propaganda?
Yemen and the quiet prison I was born into in Edmonton—worlds apart. But are they?
I felt his mother’s pain.
And found forgiveness for my own.
When I finished Intolerable, something shifted. My conditioning loosened. The world felt smaller.
Curiosity won.
WRITTEN 19 April 2026
***** = reflective, disarming, connective, forgiveness-seeking, gently hopeful.
I Used to Be a Pisces – Restless in a World That Won’t Hold Still
How did the book make me feel/think?
This one isn’t about poetry. It’s about whether we’re paying attention.
Earth. Us. One. Stewards.
Without connection—grim.
I Used to Be a Pisces evokes the interconnectedness of all living things through lyrical writing and quietly menacing imagery.
Not heavy-handed. Not preachy. Just there—like something we already know but keep choosing to ignore.
Without a living earth… what exactly are we loving? What are we trying to regenerate?
Four women sit in a field. Hair in dryers. Eyes buried in magazines. Oblivious to a world burning in toxicity around them.
Apathy drying out their minds. Our minds.
Apathy feels like the eighth deadly sin—the one that doesn’t shout, doesn’t demand attention, but may end us all.
Our thirst for oil. Our ease with excess. Quiet acceptance.
This collection doesn’t accuse. It lingers. It unsettles. It asks:
Can love survive this?
Is renewal still possible?
What will be left when the updos are finished?
Hope?
Yes. Uneasy. Persistent. Still here.
WRITTEN 15 April 2026
***** stars = restless, searching, gently unmoored, hopeful.
How did the book make me feel/think?
This one isn’t about poetry. It’s about whether we’re paying attention.
Earth. Us. One. Stewards.
Without connection—grim.
I Used to Be a Pisces evokes the interconnectedness of all living things through lyrical writing and quietly menacing imagery.
Not heavy-handed. Not preachy. Just there—like something we already know but keep choosing to ignore.
Without a living earth… what exactly are we loving? What are we trying to regenerate?
Four women sit in a field. Hair in dryers. Eyes buried in magazines. Oblivious to a world burning in toxicity around them.
Apathy drying out their minds. Our minds.
Apathy feels like the eighth deadly sin—the one that doesn’t shout, doesn’t demand attention, but may end us all.
Our thirst for oil. Our ease with excess. Quiet acceptance.
This collection doesn’t accuse. It lingers. It unsettles. It asks:
Can love survive this?
Is renewal still possible?
What will be left when the updos are finished?
Hope?
Yes. Uneasy. Persistent. Still here.
WRITTEN 15 April 2026
***** stars = restless, searching, gently unmoored, hopeful.
All Batch 46 Reviews
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Entangled Life - Fed by What We Don't Understand
How did the book make me feel/think?
A mycorrhizal network feeds my brain.
Pathways fire—growth, speech, thought.
Others: fight.
Others: flee.
At birth, the network struggles.
Nourishment is required.
We stand.
We reach for the sky.
And still—something inside pulls us down.
Not to harm us.
To balance us.
I’m sure none of this is correct.
That’s the point.
The text provokes.
At times, it reads like a textbook—dense, demanding attention.
And still, something underneath it keeps pulling.
Without nature, we die.
Not metaphorically. Completely.
Walking through a forest will never be the same.
It won’t feel quiet again.
Beneath every step—connection, exchange, survival.
For some, Entangled Life creates experts overnight.
Voices eager to explain the unseen.
Not me.
I’m a neophyte.
Close enough now to listen without feeling out of place.
We are lucky to have minds studying what lives below the surface.
Feeding the living. Devouring the dead.
A fungus poisons a nematode and consumes it from the inside—nightmares, created.
Nature isn’t kind.
It’s complete.
We build statues of athletes. Of celebrities.
Perhaps we should build them, too, for those who study the living earth—the ones who show us that everything we depend on is happening out of sight.
Mycelial. Of course.
WRITTEN 22 April 2026
**** restless, searching, unmoored, aware of something deeper.
How did the book make me feel/think?
A mycorrhizal network feeds my brain.
Pathways fire—growth, speech, thought.
Others: fight.
Others: flee.
At birth, the network struggles.
Nourishment is required.
We stand.
We reach for the sky.
And still—something inside pulls us down.
Not to harm us.
To balance us.
I’m sure none of this is correct.
That’s the point.
The text provokes.
At times, it reads like a textbook—dense, demanding attention.
And still, something underneath it keeps pulling.
Without nature, we die.
Not metaphorically. Completely.
Walking through a forest will never be the same.
It won’t feel quiet again.
Beneath every step—connection, exchange, survival.
For some, Entangled Life creates experts overnight.
Voices eager to explain the unseen.
Not me.
I’m a neophyte.
Close enough now to listen without feeling out of place.
We are lucky to have minds studying what lives below the surface.
Feeding the living. Devouring the dead.
A fungus poisons a nematode and consumes it from the inside—nightmares, created.
Nature isn’t kind.
It’s complete.
We build statues of athletes. Of celebrities.
Perhaps we should build them, too, for those who study the living earth—the ones who show us that everything we depend on is happening out of sight.
Mycelial. Of course.
WRITTEN 22 April 2026
**** restless, searching, unmoored, aware of something deeper.
Shades of Mercy – Nothing Is What It Seems. Not Even Mercy.
How did the book make me feel/think?
This story is outside my lane. I didn't know I had one.
Mercy is the star.
A child genius. Weaponized. Used to bend narrative and power.
Porter Beck knows something is off.
Not American. Not quite what she presents.
He sees it. Or thinks he does.
The story sprawls—Cartels. Hackers. Opioids.
An incinerated prize bull.
Military capability folded into the margins.
It races.
A guess on every page.
Wrong. Wrong again.
Like Mercy—nothing is as it seems.
--- --- --- --- ---
My Life – Panama (1990): The roots of fiction.
I’m trying to buy a hotel in Jamaica.
I don’t have any money.
I pay for my flight with a friend’s expired passport.
--- --- --- --- ---
I fly in for funding.
Military helicopters circle my hotel 24/7.
Smoke rises in the distance.
There’s an attempted coup.
I walk into a meeting.
The doorman is holding an AR-15.
The funders have ties to Noriega.
I leave.
Closest I’ve ever come to international drama.
Is fiction ever just fiction?
--- --- --- --- ---
Will Mercy survive?
Who are the good guys?
Are there any?
Shades of Mercy earns 4 stars.
Not because it falls short—but because 5 has to mean something.
The first book to feel that line.
I read a lot.
If I give 5, it should be frame-worthy.
Ego in check.
A strong thriller—twisting, turning, always moving.
Is there a happy ending?
If there’s any mercy—there will be.
WRITTEN 18 April 2026
★★★★ = fast-moving, layered, unpredictable, and quietly unsettling.
How did the book make me feel/think?
This story is outside my lane. I didn't know I had one.
Mercy is the star.
A child genius. Weaponized. Used to bend narrative and power.
Porter Beck knows something is off.
Not American. Not quite what she presents.
He sees it. Or thinks he does.
The story sprawls—Cartels. Hackers. Opioids.
An incinerated prize bull.
Military capability folded into the margins.
It races.
A guess on every page.
Wrong. Wrong again.
Like Mercy—nothing is as it seems.
--- --- --- --- ---
My Life – Panama (1990): The roots of fiction.
I’m trying to buy a hotel in Jamaica.
I don’t have any money.
I pay for my flight with a friend’s expired passport.
--- --- --- --- ---
I fly in for funding.
Military helicopters circle my hotel 24/7.
Smoke rises in the distance.
There’s an attempted coup.
I walk into a meeting.
The doorman is holding an AR-15.
The funders have ties to Noriega.
I leave.
Closest I’ve ever come to international drama.
Is fiction ever just fiction?
--- --- --- --- ---
Will Mercy survive?
Who are the good guys?
Are there any?
Shades of Mercy earns 4 stars.
Not because it falls short—but because 5 has to mean something.
The first book to feel that line.
I read a lot.
If I give 5, it should be frame-worthy.
Ego in check.
A strong thriller—twisting, turning, always moving.
Is there a happy ending?
If there’s any mercy—there will be.
WRITTEN 18 April 2026
★★★★ = fast-moving, layered, unpredictable, and quietly unsettling.
Them Bones – On an Island of One
How did the book make me feel/think?
--- --- --- --- ---
How do you connect thoughts on a thriller, crime mystery, book?
I don’t know.
Rushmore McKenzie. That’s a cool name.
A beautiful woman rides in on a white horse. Halo surrounding her. Saving the protagonist from certain death.
A lifetime favour owed.
An archaeological dig. Paleontologists. On the take.
A dinosaur uncovered. Worth millions. Stolen. The black market.
And then--
I’m a child in Saskatoon. Three friends and I head into the forest. Walk with me (Stand by...).
We find a bunker.
We walk the railroad tracks.
We find bones. Crushed animals. Worthless.
Or so we think.
Rushmore starts talking past the story—almost through it.
Meta flashes. A narrator aware of the dig. A writer aware of the reader.
Is this David Housewright speaking directly to me?
A book about million-year-old bones shouldn’t move like this.
But it does. Fast. Clean. Relentless.
The story veers north to Saskatchewan. Regina. Close enough to feel personal.
Drumheller—the land of dinosaurs—666 kilometres away. The sign of the devil.
Coincidence? Sure.
But it doesn’t read like a coincidence.
From page one, Them Bones pulls you into the excavation.
Not just of fossils—but of memory, value, and what we decide is worth something.
What we leave behind.
What gets taken.
What gets found again?
WRITTEN 16 April 2026
★★★★★ = propulsive, reflective, quietly haunting, and sharply self-aware.
How did the book make me feel/think?
--- --- --- --- ---
How do you connect thoughts on a thriller, crime mystery, book?
I don’t know.
Rushmore McKenzie. That’s a cool name.
A beautiful woman rides in on a white horse. Halo surrounding her. Saving the protagonist from certain death.
A lifetime favour owed.
An archaeological dig. Paleontologists. On the take.
A dinosaur uncovered. Worth millions. Stolen. The black market.
And then--
I’m a child in Saskatoon. Three friends and I head into the forest. Walk with me (Stand by...).
We find a bunker.
We walk the railroad tracks.
We find bones. Crushed animals. Worthless.
Or so we think.
Rushmore starts talking past the story—almost through it.
Meta flashes. A narrator aware of the dig. A writer aware of the reader.
Is this David Housewright speaking directly to me?
A book about million-year-old bones shouldn’t move like this.
But it does. Fast. Clean. Relentless.
The story veers north to Saskatchewan. Regina. Close enough to feel personal.
Drumheller—the land of dinosaurs—666 kilometres away. The sign of the devil.
Coincidence? Sure.
But it doesn’t read like a coincidence.
From page one, Them Bones pulls you into the excavation.
Not just of fossils—but of memory, value, and what we decide is worth something.
What we leave behind.
What gets taken.
What gets found again?
WRITTEN 16 April 2026
★★★★★ = propulsive, reflective, quietly haunting, and sharply self-aware.
Jelly, Belly – On an Island of One
How did the book make me feel/think?
--- --- --- --- ---
I have some understanding of what it is like to feel erased. I do not compare my life to Therese’s. Doing so would be rude.
The book opened feelings inside of me.
Being an unwanted child, born into secrecy and familial shame, is not the same as losing limbs—but they share threads.
You feel alone. On an island of one.
You need to talk. But you don’t want to. The curiosity of others is often unknowingly cruel. A hundred people may ask what happened. Few take the time to live inside your pain. You might feel fetishized.
It might be easier to make a recording and press play. Unfortunately, every time you are asked about your plight, it can feel like erasure—again and again.
I understood Therese’s pain. Her frustration. Her solitude.
A few days ago, I was with a friend who has Parkinson’s. He said something I didn’t like. I was short with him.
Later, I thought about it. Not what he said—but what I hadn’t taken the time to understand.
Reading Jelly Baby felt like that. Learning something you should have known before you needed it. And realizing that understanding isn’t loud—it asks you to listen differently, and to carry that knowledge without making it about you.
Jelly Baby is an intense read. Therese has endured much. It is a blueprint of what ableism does to a person—the frustration, the anger, the slow erosion of being treated as if you are no longer here.
In one passage, Therese speaks candidly about her disdain for the happiness of childbirth—something taken from her. I understood that in my own way. Being unwanted, I have struggled, at times, to be around happy families with children.
Jelly Baby is a profound read. Not because it explains pain—but because it lets you feel it.
WRITTEN 14 April 2026
***** stars = unflinching, necessary, intimate, human.
How did the book make me feel/think?
--- --- --- --- ---
I have some understanding of what it is like to feel erased. I do not compare my life to Therese’s. Doing so would be rude.
The book opened feelings inside of me.
Being an unwanted child, born into secrecy and familial shame, is not the same as losing limbs—but they share threads.
You feel alone. On an island of one.
You need to talk. But you don’t want to. The curiosity of others is often unknowingly cruel. A hundred people may ask what happened. Few take the time to live inside your pain. You might feel fetishized.
It might be easier to make a recording and press play. Unfortunately, every time you are asked about your plight, it can feel like erasure—again and again.
I understood Therese’s pain. Her frustration. Her solitude.
A few days ago, I was with a friend who has Parkinson’s. He said something I didn’t like. I was short with him.
Later, I thought about it. Not what he said—but what I hadn’t taken the time to understand.
Reading Jelly Baby felt like that. Learning something you should have known before you needed it. And realizing that understanding isn’t loud—it asks you to listen differently, and to carry that knowledge without making it about you.
Jelly Baby is an intense read. Therese has endured much. It is a blueprint of what ableism does to a person—the frustration, the anger, the slow erosion of being treated as if you are no longer here.
In one passage, Therese speaks candidly about her disdain for the happiness of childbirth—something taken from her. I understood that in my own way. Being unwanted, I have struggled, at times, to be around happy families with children.
Jelly Baby is a profound read. Not because it explains pain—but because it lets you feel it.
WRITTEN 14 April 2026
***** stars = unflinching, necessary, intimate, human.
The Thrashers – Who Gets In, Who Gets Left, Who Pays
How did the book make me feel/think?
--- --- --- --- ---
A propulsive tale—twisting, turning, breaking—skirting the limits of believability just enough to keep you leaning forward.
Do you remember high school?
I do.
Wrong side of the tracks. A predominantly rich school. Designer clothes. Fancy cars. I drew a penguin on my shirt in chemistry class and drove a 1963 Epic Envoy—a box on wheels with a vice grip for a gear shift and a trouble light for a headlight.
Humour (the penguin) and athletics let me orbit the edges. Not quite in. Not fully out.
“Let’s go for coffee,” the cool kids would say.
I declined. I didn’t drink coffee.
I “Thrashed” myself.
A group of five. One is let in as a target. A joke.
Another kept at the door—shown the entrance, never allowed through. Cruelty as currency.
YA isn’t my lane. I don’t know what it’s like to be a teenage girl. But I know what exclusion feels like. That translates.
What’s changed? The stage. The audience. The permanence. The technology.
What hasn’t? The damage.
The Thrashers remind us that bullying isn’t a phase—it’s formative. It leaves marks that don’t fade neatly with time. The ghosts don’t just follow the victims. They follow everyone.
I sit at my desk, the past not so far away.
The penguin is still talking.
It says I never fit in.
The Epic gets a flat.
WRITTEN 9 April 2026
★★★★ = propulsive, thrilling, relatable, and thought-provoking.
How did the book make me feel/think?
--- --- --- --- ---
A propulsive tale—twisting, turning, breaking—skirting the limits of believability just enough to keep you leaning forward.
Do you remember high school?
I do.
Wrong side of the tracks. A predominantly rich school. Designer clothes. Fancy cars. I drew a penguin on my shirt in chemistry class and drove a 1963 Epic Envoy—a box on wheels with a vice grip for a gear shift and a trouble light for a headlight.
Humour (the penguin) and athletics let me orbit the edges. Not quite in. Not fully out.
“Let’s go for coffee,” the cool kids would say.
I declined. I didn’t drink coffee.
I “Thrashed” myself.
A group of five. One is let in as a target. A joke.
Another kept at the door—shown the entrance, never allowed through. Cruelty as currency.
YA isn’t my lane. I don’t know what it’s like to be a teenage girl. But I know what exclusion feels like. That translates.
What’s changed? The stage. The audience. The permanence. The technology.
What hasn’t? The damage.
The Thrashers remind us that bullying isn’t a phase—it’s formative. It leaves marks that don’t fade neatly with time. The ghosts don’t just follow the victims. They follow everyone.
I sit at my desk, the past not so far away.
The penguin is still talking.
It says I never fit in.
The Epic gets a flat.
WRITTEN 9 April 2026
★★★★ = propulsive, thrilling, relatable, and thought-provoking.
The Roman Empire Got it Right – Or at Least Wrote it Down Well
How did the book make me feel/think?
Am I reading Cliff Notes, Coles Notes, an encyclopedia, or a time-travel brochure about the Roman Empire?
Informative, certainly. Moments of “oh, I didn’t know that.”
A trivia goldmine. A writer’s reference manual.
An easy read lightening a darkening world.
500–1,400 years of control.
I liked it. My mind wandered and then--
Caveat emptor if you are looking for depth. Ergo, read with a curious mind. Ipso facto, the Empire gave the world much. Mea culpa, my previous lack of casual conversation on law and order, military, science, and math—oh, Roman Empire, you have given much.
You better have. You were in charge for a long time.
Your quid has given us a musical and theatrical pro quo.
For the longest time, you were the vox populi.
In the pursuit of the good life, the rich got richer, and everyone else has been given history to study.
Any book that provides snippets of history, in this reader’s mind’s eye, is a good thing.
A reader’s warning:
When trivia becomes identity, history stops teaching and starts performing.
“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” — Marcus Tullius Cicero
My thoughts drift.
I’m 39% Norwegian. I did a search; I’m about 1% descended from the Roman Empire.
That’s okay. With 1,400 years of control, they had better have gotten some things right.
Where are they now?
WRITTEN 7 April 2026
★★★★ = informative, accessible, and thought-provoking.
How did the book make me feel/think?
Am I reading Cliff Notes, Coles Notes, an encyclopedia, or a time-travel brochure about the Roman Empire?
Informative, certainly. Moments of “oh, I didn’t know that.”
A trivia goldmine. A writer’s reference manual.
An easy read lightening a darkening world.
500–1,400 years of control.
I liked it. My mind wandered and then--
Caveat emptor if you are looking for depth. Ergo, read with a curious mind. Ipso facto, the Empire gave the world much. Mea culpa, my previous lack of casual conversation on law and order, military, science, and math—oh, Roman Empire, you have given much.
You better have. You were in charge for a long time.
Your quid has given us a musical and theatrical pro quo.
For the longest time, you were the vox populi.
In the pursuit of the good life, the rich got richer, and everyone else has been given history to study.
Any book that provides snippets of history, in this reader’s mind’s eye, is a good thing.
A reader’s warning:
When trivia becomes identity, history stops teaching and starts performing.
“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” — Marcus Tullius Cicero
My thoughts drift.
I’m 39% Norwegian. I did a search; I’m about 1% descended from the Roman Empire.
That’s okay. With 1,400 years of control, they had better have gotten some things right.
Where are they now?
WRITTEN 7 April 2026
★★★★ = informative, accessible, and thought-provoking.
Gold Star – Witnessing, Not Belonging.
How did the book make me feel/think?
I find poetry difficult to write about. It’s a personal journey, and sometimes you’re not the one on it.
Emma McKenna identifies as a queer feminist writer. I read from a different lens.
I didn’t find myself on the pages.
The poems are intense—bodily autonomy, poverty, child abuse, and the struggle to escape conditioning. A life trying to become something other than what it was told to be.
“Gold Star,” the title poem, gutted me—innocence traded in the longing to be seen, heard, respected. To be more than a conquest. Predators, patient and practiced. Trust eviscerated.
Looping prose. A poem in flux.
For a stretch, the poetry rises like smoke, trying to leave the page.
Queer. Exposed. Disabled. Vulnerable. Manipulated. Longing. Desire. Exploitation.
The poverty and isolation sang loud enough. That’s where I connected. That’s where I felt concern—not as a reader, but as a human being reading another human being.
This is a courageous collection.
For many, it will feel like recognition. For others, like me, it is something to witness rather than inhabit.
That distance matters.
This collection is deserving of five stars. I gave it four—not because of its power, but because of where I stand in relation to it.
WRITTEN 6 April 2026
★★★★ = strong, compelling, worth your time.
How did the book make me feel/think?
I find poetry difficult to write about. It’s a personal journey, and sometimes you’re not the one on it.
Emma McKenna identifies as a queer feminist writer. I read from a different lens.
I didn’t find myself on the pages.
The poems are intense—bodily autonomy, poverty, child abuse, and the struggle to escape conditioning. A life trying to become something other than what it was told to be.
“Gold Star,” the title poem, gutted me—innocence traded in the longing to be seen, heard, respected. To be more than a conquest. Predators, patient and practiced. Trust eviscerated.
Looping prose. A poem in flux.
For a stretch, the poetry rises like smoke, trying to leave the page.
Queer. Exposed. Disabled. Vulnerable. Manipulated. Longing. Desire. Exploitation.
The poverty and isolation sang loud enough. That’s where I connected. That’s where I felt concern—not as a reader, but as a human being reading another human being.
This is a courageous collection.
For many, it will feel like recognition. For others, like me, it is something to witness rather than inhabit.
That distance matters.
This collection is deserving of five stars. I gave it four—not because of its power, but because of where I stand in relation to it.
WRITTEN 6 April 2026
★★★★ = strong, compelling, worth your time.
Skin and Bones – The Things Watching Back
How did the book make me feel/think?
Gather around the fire, readers, I have stories to tell. Flashlight please. S’mores on sticks. Logs crackling. Face blurred by light. A deep timbre.
A row of sugar maples surrounds the campsite.
A reader screams.
Eyes peer out from behind the trees: a large hermit. High-pitched squeaks, clicks, and chirps—bats fluttering. A Vietnamese woman with a gouged eye and a missing digit, her child crying. A mirrored image of self. Translucent skin. Rattling. Snakes everywhere.
A tamed wolf, surrounded by predators, grifting innocence.
The author steps into the firelight. A reader faints as a snake slithers over her leg.
I imagine storytellers living in these scenes, spinning yarns to a terrified audience. A classic in pacing. A classic in delivery.
The author slips from story to story, each one leaving readers gasping—and likely never to venture alone into the darkness of Maine’s nights.
Stephen King and Elizabeth Strout, members of Maine’s writing royalty, invite Paul to join them at the table.
What is in the water in Maine that has blessed us with these gems? Maybe it’s the lobster.
WRITTEN 4 April 2026
***** stars = exceptional, thrilling, cringy, enduring.
How did the book make me feel/think?
Gather around the fire, readers, I have stories to tell. Flashlight please. S’mores on sticks. Logs crackling. Face blurred by light. A deep timbre.
A row of sugar maples surrounds the campsite.
A reader screams.
Eyes peer out from behind the trees: a large hermit. High-pitched squeaks, clicks, and chirps—bats fluttering. A Vietnamese woman with a gouged eye and a missing digit, her child crying. A mirrored image of self. Translucent skin. Rattling. Snakes everywhere.
A tamed wolf, surrounded by predators, grifting innocence.
The author steps into the firelight. A reader faints as a snake slithers over her leg.
I imagine storytellers living in these scenes, spinning yarns to a terrified audience. A classic in pacing. A classic in delivery.
The author slips from story to story, each one leaving readers gasping—and likely never to venture alone into the darkness of Maine’s nights.
Stephen King and Elizabeth Strout, members of Maine’s writing royalty, invite Paul to join them at the table.
What is in the water in Maine that has blessed us with these gems? Maybe it’s the lobster.
WRITTEN 4 April 2026
***** stars = exceptional, thrilling, cringy, enduring.
Canada in the Age of Rum – The Blueprint Still Holds
How did the book make me feel/think?
These thoughts aren’t about rum. They’re about recognition.
This book reads like a template for the world we’re living in: commerce, control, exploitation—disguised as opportunity.
I’ve worked inside it.
You have too.
A labour agency. Insurance. Bars. Coffee.
Different industries. Same system.
I ran a labour agency for fifteen years. The owner exploited me—a phone, vehicle, and expense account—to exploit the workforce—people already falling through societal cracks. We advanced their pay daily, leaving them owing by nightfall.
They owed us. That’s how we owned them.
The fur traders and fishermen were paid the same way: partially in liquid. Enough to keep them working. Never enough to leave.
An insurance executive once told me the ideal employee is in debt, with a pregnant wife at home.
Strip away the misogyny and what’s left?
Indentured servitude—modernized.
A bar pays staff in “free” pints. A perk. An addiction.
A coffee chain offers caffeine on breaks. A perk. A future dependency.
I’ve seen every version of it.
The company pays wholesale.
The worker pays for life.
The model hasn’t changed. Only the packaging.
Colonizers introduced alcohol into Indigenous communities, then labelled those same communities as the problem. Control the substance. Control the narrative. Ignore the disease, the displacement, the resistance that came long before prohibition.
Rewrite the story. Keep the power.
Canada in the Age of Rum doesn’t just explain early Canada—it exposes a system that never left.
We like to think we’ve evolved.
We haven’t.
We’ve just refined the delivery.
WRITTEN 1 April 2026
***** = exceptional, transformative, enduring.
How did the book make me feel/think?
These thoughts aren’t about rum. They’re about recognition.
This book reads like a template for the world we’re living in: commerce, control, exploitation—disguised as opportunity.
I’ve worked inside it.
You have too.
A labour agency. Insurance. Bars. Coffee.
Different industries. Same system.
I ran a labour agency for fifteen years. The owner exploited me—a phone, vehicle, and expense account—to exploit the workforce—people already falling through societal cracks. We advanced their pay daily, leaving them owing by nightfall.
They owed us. That’s how we owned them.
The fur traders and fishermen were paid the same way: partially in liquid. Enough to keep them working. Never enough to leave.
An insurance executive once told me the ideal employee is in debt, with a pregnant wife at home.
Strip away the misogyny and what’s left?
Indentured servitude—modernized.
A bar pays staff in “free” pints. A perk. An addiction.
A coffee chain offers caffeine on breaks. A perk. A future dependency.
I’ve seen every version of it.
The company pays wholesale.
The worker pays for life.
The model hasn’t changed. Only the packaging.
Colonizers introduced alcohol into Indigenous communities, then labelled those same communities as the problem. Control the substance. Control the narrative. Ignore the disease, the displacement, the resistance that came long before prohibition.
Rewrite the story. Keep the power.
Canada in the Age of Rum doesn’t just explain early Canada—it exposes a system that never left.
We like to think we’ve evolved.
We haven’t.
We’ve just refined the delivery.
WRITTEN 1 April 2026
***** = exceptional, transformative, enduring.
All Batch 45 Reviews
| 45._book_thoughts_-_batch_45.pdf |
44
★★★★★
|
★★★★★
|
★★★★★
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★★★★★
|
|
|
|
|
★★★★★
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★★★★
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★★★★
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★★★★★
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★★
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★★
|
Pizza Before We Die – For What?
How did the book make me feel/think?
Not a single word of this is political. This is an attempt to find humanity in the sickness of our species.
What is the killing for?
What is the end goal of our endless conflicts? Ending us?
Our leaders position themselves as the ones who carry difficult decisions, but I don’t want to kill anyone. I don’t think anyone wants to kill me. We all want the same things: love, warmth, fleeting moments of happiness, and full bellies.
Instead, we are handed destruction—where a humane ending becomes a bomb strike instead of freezing or starvation.
My soul feels torn in two. A man in Gaza must prove he is worthy of pity to receive aid for his family. When I turned 65, I had to prove I wasn’t trying to outlive my years to receive a few hundred dollars—to prove I was worthy of dignity.
These are not the same. Not even close. But something in that proving feels broken.
Each day, I wake up strange. I wake up scared. I wonder if anything will change. A friend once said, “At least they are not bombing Burnaby Street.” We are far removed from the horror. Our lives are blessed. They are coming to clean my dryer vents this week.
I walk past a playground in Vancouver. Empty ball diamonds. Children inside, on their phones.
Pause.
Now imagine children playing in fresh bomb craters.
I have no answers. Only a deep sadness and a need to bear witness—to look, even when it would be easier not to.
It’s 2026, and we are still killing each other.
For what?
Thank you to the author for the bravery of these words—offering light from within one of humanity’s darkest failures.
There is no place for silence.
These words are not political.
They are human.
WRITTEN 19 March 2026
5 stars = exceptional, transformative, enduring.
How did the book make me feel/think?
Not a single word of this is political. This is an attempt to find humanity in the sickness of our species.
What is the killing for?
What is the end goal of our endless conflicts? Ending us?
Our leaders position themselves as the ones who carry difficult decisions, but I don’t want to kill anyone. I don’t think anyone wants to kill me. We all want the same things: love, warmth, fleeting moments of happiness, and full bellies.
Instead, we are handed destruction—where a humane ending becomes a bomb strike instead of freezing or starvation.
My soul feels torn in two. A man in Gaza must prove he is worthy of pity to receive aid for his family. When I turned 65, I had to prove I wasn’t trying to outlive my years to receive a few hundred dollars—to prove I was worthy of dignity.
These are not the same. Not even close. But something in that proving feels broken.
Each day, I wake up strange. I wake up scared. I wonder if anything will change. A friend once said, “At least they are not bombing Burnaby Street.” We are far removed from the horror. Our lives are blessed. They are coming to clean my dryer vents this week.
I walk past a playground in Vancouver. Empty ball diamonds. Children inside, on their phones.
Pause.
Now imagine children playing in fresh bomb craters.
I have no answers. Only a deep sadness and a need to bear witness—to look, even when it would be easier not to.
It’s 2026, and we are still killing each other.
For what?
Thank you to the author for the bravery of these words—offering light from within one of humanity’s darkest failures.
There is no place for silence.
These words are not political.
They are human.
WRITTEN 19 March 2026
5 stars = exceptional, transformative, enduring.
The Disappearing Act – You Carry the Beast
How did the book make me feel/think?
If you had a burning desire to escape, where would you go?
If your heart was being scarred because your country was willingly attacking a neighbouring country, indiscriminately killing its citizens.
Sounds like the times we are living in.
When I was a child, I escaped into a closet—a fantasy world—to avoid the assaults of my siblings chanting, “Lindsay, you are not one of us.” I wasn’t. We were all prisoners of the times. Unwanted. Forced into assimilation.
As I read, M felt like me.
M is an author, wordless, unravelling. Her homeland has become a beast. She wants no part of it.
But she was raised inside it.
The realization doesn’t arrive gently: the beast lives in her.
Worse—everywhere she turns, it lives there too.
You enter the subway. You try to escape back up the stairs. A sign greets you: There is NO Escape.
An escape room appears. You pay for one hour with a stranger. A puzzle for freedom. Or a choice. Talk. Say something real. Because when the hour ends, they let you back into the same life anyway. Nothing solved. Nothing erased.
A travelling circus passes through—an illusion of escape. But even here, there are rules. It doesn’t want her. Rejected for who she is. There is no outside. Only different versions of inside.
A foreign city. You try to blend in. Impossible. “Where are you from?” rains down. A reminder: you carry where you’re from. You are not one of us. In her homeland, there are two classes: the rich and the Petukh. Petukh: prisoner. Criminal or common. It hardly matters.
At one point, she checks into the Grand Petukh Hotel.
Even escape has a name.
M wants to disappear. Technology chains her—until her phone dies.
And just like that, something loosens.
Not freedom.
But a beginning.
My closet had a sign too. I just didn’t see it then: There is no escape.
You don’t step outside the system.
You carry it.
If you’re given an hour, use it. Talk. Because when the door opens, you’re still inside it all.
WRITTEN 18 March 2026
5 stars = exceptional, transformative, enduring.
How did the book make me feel/think?
If you had a burning desire to escape, where would you go?
If your heart was being scarred because your country was willingly attacking a neighbouring country, indiscriminately killing its citizens.
Sounds like the times we are living in.
When I was a child, I escaped into a closet—a fantasy world—to avoid the assaults of my siblings chanting, “Lindsay, you are not one of us.” I wasn’t. We were all prisoners of the times. Unwanted. Forced into assimilation.
As I read, M felt like me.
M is an author, wordless, unravelling. Her homeland has become a beast. She wants no part of it.
But she was raised inside it.
The realization doesn’t arrive gently: the beast lives in her.
Worse—everywhere she turns, it lives there too.
You enter the subway. You try to escape back up the stairs. A sign greets you: There is NO Escape.
An escape room appears. You pay for one hour with a stranger. A puzzle for freedom. Or a choice. Talk. Say something real. Because when the hour ends, they let you back into the same life anyway. Nothing solved. Nothing erased.
A travelling circus passes through—an illusion of escape. But even here, there are rules. It doesn’t want her. Rejected for who she is. There is no outside. Only different versions of inside.
A foreign city. You try to blend in. Impossible. “Where are you from?” rains down. A reminder: you carry where you’re from. You are not one of us. In her homeland, there are two classes: the rich and the Petukh. Petukh: prisoner. Criminal or common. It hardly matters.
At one point, she checks into the Grand Petukh Hotel.
Even escape has a name.
M wants to disappear. Technology chains her—until her phone dies.
And just like that, something loosens.
Not freedom.
But a beginning.
My closet had a sign too. I just didn’t see it then: There is no escape.
You don’t step outside the system.
You carry it.
If you’re given an hour, use it. Talk. Because when the door opens, you’re still inside it all.
WRITTEN 18 March 2026
5 stars = exceptional, transformative, enduring.
All Batch 44 Reviews
| 44._book_thoughts_-_batch_44.pdf |
43
★★★★★
|
★★★★★
|
★★★★★
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★★★★★
|
★★★★★
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★★★★
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★★★★
|
★★★
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★★★★
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★★★★
|
Where the Roads Narrow
How did the book make me feel/think?
First off, I adore Strout’s writing.
She captures small-town life like no other — a dichotomy of characters from all walks of life. The mundane brought to life. Boredom made whole.
A colourful collection: rich, poor, fat, trim, predators, PTSD, fractured family histories — all trapped inside small-town memory and judgemental eyes.
Lucy Barton grows up in poverty. Her brother Pete, a veteran of war, unable to find a place among the living. Her sister Vicky, tormented by their upbringing. Lucy escapes to the big city through writing.
I keep reading.
At times, I find myself lost on the pages as the dots quietly connect. In every Strout book I’ve read, an amazing thing happens at some point, I feel like my life is dancing on the pages — like she is writing directly to me. The clouds of uncertainty clear, and the small-town folk become each and every one of us.
Scenes spring forward — a highway to escape widening into multiple lanes. But for those unable to leave the mundanity of their lives, we return to where we are from. The roads into our beings narrow. The places we grew up look tired and worn yet are trapped inside the beauty of a story needing to be told to heal.
Escaping to the bright lights carries its own burden. When you sacrifice who you are, you risk never being able to go home.
Strout writes our lives as if she is witnessing the very essence of who we are.
WRITTEN: 25 February 2026
How did the book make me feel/think?
First off, I adore Strout’s writing.
She captures small-town life like no other — a dichotomy of characters from all walks of life. The mundane brought to life. Boredom made whole.
A colourful collection: rich, poor, fat, trim, predators, PTSD, fractured family histories — all trapped inside small-town memory and judgemental eyes.
Lucy Barton grows up in poverty. Her brother Pete, a veteran of war, unable to find a place among the living. Her sister Vicky, tormented by their upbringing. Lucy escapes to the big city through writing.
I keep reading.
At times, I find myself lost on the pages as the dots quietly connect. In every Strout book I’ve read, an amazing thing happens at some point, I feel like my life is dancing on the pages — like she is writing directly to me. The clouds of uncertainty clear, and the small-town folk become each and every one of us.
Scenes spring forward — a highway to escape widening into multiple lanes. But for those unable to leave the mundanity of their lives, we return to where we are from. The roads into our beings narrow. The places we grew up look tired and worn yet are trapped inside the beauty of a story needing to be told to heal.
Escaping to the bright lights carries its own burden. When you sacrifice who you are, you risk never being able to go home.
Strout writes our lives as if she is witnessing the very essence of who we are.
WRITTEN: 25 February 2026
Humour on the Edge of Tenderness
How did the book make me feel/think?
A high school. Like many others. Not in the best part of the city. Cultural diversity. Cliques everywhere.
It threatens to become a childish saga. A comedy skating toward offence.
But it doesn’t.
Jesse Andrews captures the essence of being seventeen — the awkwardness with parents, the social choreography with classmates, the burnt-out teachers watching it all unfold.
Three unlikely friends. Complicated families. Odd, loving homes.
A mother who forces her Jewish son to befriend a girl with leukemia.
A Black friend navigating a fracturing family.
A household in quiet crisis.
All the ingredients for a juvenile disaster.
But no.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl holds a tenderness beneath the pubescent humour. Greg Gaines follows his mother’s instructions and awkwardly befriends Rachel, the dying girl. His “non-friend” Earl shares a gentleness that sneaks up on you. Through discomfort, sarcasm, and badly made films, the characters grow. Heartache arrives. So does something close to love.
On the surface, it reads like a young-reader comedy — laughs scattered generously across the pages. But by the final chapters, the humour gives way to something heavier. You may find tears leaking out before you quite understand why.
A book you might read in one sitting.
Or two.
Or however long it takes to find the tissues.
WRITTEN: 24 February 2026
How did the book make me feel/think?
A high school. Like many others. Not in the best part of the city. Cultural diversity. Cliques everywhere.
It threatens to become a childish saga. A comedy skating toward offence.
But it doesn’t.
Jesse Andrews captures the essence of being seventeen — the awkwardness with parents, the social choreography with classmates, the burnt-out teachers watching it all unfold.
Three unlikely friends. Complicated families. Odd, loving homes.
A mother who forces her Jewish son to befriend a girl with leukemia.
A Black friend navigating a fracturing family.
A household in quiet crisis.
All the ingredients for a juvenile disaster.
But no.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl holds a tenderness beneath the pubescent humour. Greg Gaines follows his mother’s instructions and awkwardly befriends Rachel, the dying girl. His “non-friend” Earl shares a gentleness that sneaks up on you. Through discomfort, sarcasm, and badly made films, the characters grow. Heartache arrives. So does something close to love.
On the surface, it reads like a young-reader comedy — laughs scattered generously across the pages. But by the final chapters, the humour gives way to something heavier. You may find tears leaking out before you quite understand why.
A book you might read in one sitting.
Or two.
Or however long it takes to find the tissues.
WRITTEN: 24 February 2026
Love in a World on Fire
How did the book make me feel/think?
The world is in flux. The climate is changing. Giant corporations consume resources for profit — resources that fuel economies and provide the lives we’ve grown accustomed to, enjoy, and desire.
A conundrum. Something has to give. Or else — a world on fire.
It’s already on fire.
The Fall Down Effect is more than a story about stopping logging. It follows Tom and Liz and their children — Fern, River, and the outlier Sylvia — across decades of environmental activism. But at its core, it is a generational love story. Once the timbre of the pages settles in, you’re hooked.
At first, I resisted the activism. I questioned the methods. Many will. But as the story deepened, so did my understanding. I don’t agree with all the tactics — yet I’ve come to see how fortunate we are to have people angry enough to speak for the planet. Without them, we might drift in a comfortable fog, waiting for someone else to act.
The novel doesn’t romanticize protest. Stop logging — yes. But what about the livelihoods intertwined with it? Relationships become casualties. Families strain. Movements evolve. The struggle between consumption and ethics, right and wrong, greed and morality isn’t theoretical — it’s intimate.
What lingers is the love. However fractured the characters become, love never fully leaves. Nor does the need for people to live their truth while trying to make sense of a destabilizing world.
How much time do we have left?
We are lucky there are people willing to risk comfort — and conflict — to find the right mixture of protest to make a difference for all.
WRITTEN: 22 February 2026
How did the book make me feel/think?
The world is in flux. The climate is changing. Giant corporations consume resources for profit — resources that fuel economies and provide the lives we’ve grown accustomed to, enjoy, and desire.
A conundrum. Something has to give. Or else — a world on fire.
It’s already on fire.
The Fall Down Effect is more than a story about stopping logging. It follows Tom and Liz and their children — Fern, River, and the outlier Sylvia — across decades of environmental activism. But at its core, it is a generational love story. Once the timbre of the pages settles in, you’re hooked.
At first, I resisted the activism. I questioned the methods. Many will. But as the story deepened, so did my understanding. I don’t agree with all the tactics — yet I’ve come to see how fortunate we are to have people angry enough to speak for the planet. Without them, we might drift in a comfortable fog, waiting for someone else to act.
The novel doesn’t romanticize protest. Stop logging — yes. But what about the livelihoods intertwined with it? Relationships become casualties. Families strain. Movements evolve. The struggle between consumption and ethics, right and wrong, greed and morality isn’t theoretical — it’s intimate.
What lingers is the love. However fractured the characters become, love never fully leaves. Nor does the need for people to live their truth while trying to make sense of a destabilizing world.
How much time do we have left?
We are lucky there are people willing to risk comfort — and conflict — to find the right mixture of protest to make a difference for all.
WRITTEN: 22 February 2026
It’s such a gift to have someone respond like this, with such thoughtfulness and care, to the book. Means a lot, thank you!
Liz Johnston
Liz Johnston
Second Stories
How did the book make me feel/think?
As I started reading The Bad Indians Book Club, every book mentioned — and every book I’ve ever read — began talking to me. Words, passages, reflections. My life fell from the pages.
Thousands of people have origin stories sharing threads with mine — each story individual, yet reduced to a single box. I hesitate to share mine because someone is always ready to tell me how I should feel about it.
I was born in a home for “unfit” mothers. From my first breath, I was labelled “at risk.” Vulnerable. Exploitable. Marginalized.
I’m not sure where my story begins. Not at the beginning. Maybe the second story — the one shaped by silence. Nobody told me who I was. Society prefers comfortable narratives. The rest are controlled, softened, erased.
Erasure isn’t accidental. Columbus “discovered” lands already inhabited by millions. What does discovered mean? Narrative control enriches latecomers and expedites the disappearance of “others.”
Erasure leads to racism. It isn’t just the joke — it’s the story beneath it.
Safe Spaces: How can a place be safe if you don’t see me?
When we speak and are met with dismissiveness, we are lost in time. If my life makes you uncomfortable, don’t sweat it. You aren’t us. Our lives are not yours. I’m sorry if your mind is not open.
A flaw of the vulnerable — even when upset — is that we defend the very people who silence us. Who knows what origin story they were told? What second story are they protecting? We protect at great cost.
But resisting the narrative has blessed me with something unexpected: a superpower for seeing people. When you grow up unseen, you learn to notice who else is.
Searching for our stories keeps history alive.
A thousand stories are not enough.
Always carry a book.
WRITTEN: 21 February 2026
How did the book make me feel/think?
As I started reading The Bad Indians Book Club, every book mentioned — and every book I’ve ever read — began talking to me. Words, passages, reflections. My life fell from the pages.
Thousands of people have origin stories sharing threads with mine — each story individual, yet reduced to a single box. I hesitate to share mine because someone is always ready to tell me how I should feel about it.
I was born in a home for “unfit” mothers. From my first breath, I was labelled “at risk.” Vulnerable. Exploitable. Marginalized.
I’m not sure where my story begins. Not at the beginning. Maybe the second story — the one shaped by silence. Nobody told me who I was. Society prefers comfortable narratives. The rest are controlled, softened, erased.
Erasure isn’t accidental. Columbus “discovered” lands already inhabited by millions. What does discovered mean? Narrative control enriches latecomers and expedites the disappearance of “others.”
Erasure leads to racism. It isn’t just the joke — it’s the story beneath it.
Safe Spaces: How can a place be safe if you don’t see me?
When we speak and are met with dismissiveness, we are lost in time. If my life makes you uncomfortable, don’t sweat it. You aren’t us. Our lives are not yours. I’m sorry if your mind is not open.
A flaw of the vulnerable — even when upset — is that we defend the very people who silence us. Who knows what origin story they were told? What second story are they protecting? We protect at great cost.
But resisting the narrative has blessed me with something unexpected: a superpower for seeing people. When you grow up unseen, you learn to notice who else is.
Searching for our stories keeps history alive.
A thousand stories are not enough.
Always carry a book.
WRITTEN: 21 February 2026
Checkout Time
How did the book make me feel/think?
Excess. Consumption. A well-worn path.
Stop. Rest. Motel.
Unpack our take.
Luxury. A view. Designer shoes. Popcorn. Pretzels.
A bouquet of roses without worth.
Room 209.
A long journey — to nowhere in particular.
A body in ambient shadows. Writing. Shaking. Peace.
Boy. Girl. In-between.
Does it matter?
Who gets to decide?
Who does a body belong to?
Outsiders. Sold more.
Forced assimilation dressed as opportunity.
Meanwhile, the ghost of Didion writes for a heartbeat, then steps outside.
Franky Choi. C Pam Zhang. Ocean Vuong.
The siding cracks. Storm clouds inch closer.
Occupancy drops.
Checkout time.
Nobody swims in the overgrown pool.
WRITTEN: 17 February 2026
How did the book make me feel/think?
Excess. Consumption. A well-worn path.
Stop. Rest. Motel.
Unpack our take.
Luxury. A view. Designer shoes. Popcorn. Pretzels.
A bouquet of roses without worth.
Room 209.
A long journey — to nowhere in particular.
A body in ambient shadows. Writing. Shaking. Peace.
Boy. Girl. In-between.
Does it matter?
Who gets to decide?
Who does a body belong to?
Outsiders. Sold more.
Forced assimilation dressed as opportunity.
Meanwhile, the ghost of Didion writes for a heartbeat, then steps outside.
Franky Choi. C Pam Zhang. Ocean Vuong.
The siding cracks. Storm clouds inch closer.
Occupancy drops.
Checkout time.
Nobody swims in the overgrown pool.
WRITTEN: 17 February 2026
All Batch 43 Reviews
| 43._book_thoughts_-_batch_43.pdf |
42
★★★★★
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★★★★★
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★★★★★
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★★★★★
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★★★★★
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★★★★★
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★★★★★
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★★★★★
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★★★
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★
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The Wound That Doesn’t Close
How did the book make me feel/think?
Honey in the Wound is a sprawling, essential, mythic tale of historical fiction that eviscerates the shackles of colonization.
How does one survive monsters?
Following Young-Ja from one unbearable tragedy to another, I found myself quietly cheering for her — hoping she might somehow transform the violence forced upon her into fury, redemption, maybe even hope.
The brutality is relentless, intimate. Not statistics. Not history-book distance. Family. Bodies. Memory.
As I read, I couldn’t stop thinking about what North American settlers did to Indigenous communities. Different geography. Same sickness. Colonization doesn’t just occupy land — it infects generations.
The horrors inflicted by Japanese imperialism on Koreans deserve to be brought into the light, not buried beneath denial or political convenience.
We’re often told to forgive and forget to move forward. But when the wound runs this deep, what does forgiveness even mean? How do you forget something etched into bloodlines?
Forgive? Never.
Forget? Never.
Healing can’t begin until the perpetrators admit the diagnosis.
Honey in the Wound isn’t just a novel — it’s testimony. A reckoning. A necessary act of remembering.
I’m better for having read it.
They say it takes seven generations to undo inherited trauma.
We’re only on generation three.
There’s still a long way to go.
WRITTEN: 5 February 2026
How did the book make me feel/think?
Honey in the Wound is a sprawling, essential, mythic tale of historical fiction that eviscerates the shackles of colonization.
How does one survive monsters?
Following Young-Ja from one unbearable tragedy to another, I found myself quietly cheering for her — hoping she might somehow transform the violence forced upon her into fury, redemption, maybe even hope.
The brutality is relentless, intimate. Not statistics. Not history-book distance. Family. Bodies. Memory.
As I read, I couldn’t stop thinking about what North American settlers did to Indigenous communities. Different geography. Same sickness. Colonization doesn’t just occupy land — it infects generations.
The horrors inflicted by Japanese imperialism on Koreans deserve to be brought into the light, not buried beneath denial or political convenience.
We’re often told to forgive and forget to move forward. But when the wound runs this deep, what does forgiveness even mean? How do you forget something etched into bloodlines?
Forgive? Never.
Forget? Never.
Healing can’t begin until the perpetrators admit the diagnosis.
Honey in the Wound isn’t just a novel — it’s testimony. A reckoning. A necessary act of remembering.
I’m better for having read it.
They say it takes seven generations to undo inherited trauma.
We’re only on generation three.
There’s still a long way to go.
WRITTEN: 5 February 2026
What Conditioning Leaves Behind
How did the book make me feel/think?
An essential read. A mind-bending read.
Reading A Mind Spread Out on the Ground as a Caucasian male is complicated. There’s an ever-present risk that attempting to understand exposes how deep one’s own conditioning and bias run. Sometimes, even reflection can sound like harm. I’m aware of that tension on every page.
For non-Indigenous readers willing to read with an open mind, this book offers a perspective that can’t be dismissed with the familiar escape hatch of “it was the times.” That phrase—so often used to absolve history—loses its power here. The consequences are not past; they are present, ongoing, and lived.
As I read, I hoped the book might help me shed some of my own ignorance. We grow when we admit our complicity. Just because we weren’t there does not give us a pass on the atrocities carried out by our ancestors—or the systems that continue to benefit some while crushing others.
A personal note: I was born into a religiously sanctioned home where unwanted children, for lack of a better term, were disposed of. Throughout my life, I’ve heard the same refrains: “It was the times.” “Get over it.” “You focus on the wrong things.”
What those voices refuse to acknowledge is that bias is ingrained and conditioned—and so is pain. Often, we carry it without knowing its origin, having been forced upon us long before we had language for it.
Listen to your friends. You may be surprised how many people are conditioned to fear or hate rather than understand. That conditioning is learned—and it’s not okay.
As I read, I hoped something loosened. That beneath the conditioning, a more empathetic mind might still be reachable.
WRITTEN: 2 February 2026
How did the book make me feel/think?
An essential read. A mind-bending read.
Reading A Mind Spread Out on the Ground as a Caucasian male is complicated. There’s an ever-present risk that attempting to understand exposes how deep one’s own conditioning and bias run. Sometimes, even reflection can sound like harm. I’m aware of that tension on every page.
For non-Indigenous readers willing to read with an open mind, this book offers a perspective that can’t be dismissed with the familiar escape hatch of “it was the times.” That phrase—so often used to absolve history—loses its power here. The consequences are not past; they are present, ongoing, and lived.
As I read, I hoped the book might help me shed some of my own ignorance. We grow when we admit our complicity. Just because we weren’t there does not give us a pass on the atrocities carried out by our ancestors—or the systems that continue to benefit some while crushing others.
A personal note: I was born into a religiously sanctioned home where unwanted children, for lack of a better term, were disposed of. Throughout my life, I’ve heard the same refrains: “It was the times.” “Get over it.” “You focus on the wrong things.”
What those voices refuse to acknowledge is that bias is ingrained and conditioned—and so is pain. Often, we carry it without knowing its origin, having been forced upon us long before we had language for it.
Listen to your friends. You may be surprised how many people are conditioned to fear or hate rather than understand. That conditioning is learned—and it’s not okay.
As I read, I hoped something loosened. That beneath the conditioning, a more empathetic mind might still be reachable.
WRITTEN: 2 February 2026
Snow isn’t pure
How did the book make me feel/think?
White World is set in a dystopian future that feels disturbingly familiar. A future built on the oldest lie we know, that history can be ignored if the walls are high enough and the gates are selective enough.
It offers a promise of a pristine world for those with means—clean, safe, empty. Empty of danger, yes, but also empty of pulse, reason, and vibrancy. A world achieved only by exporting suffering elsewhere and pretending it no longer exists. We’ve been here before. And the book suggests—correctly—that we are destined to repeat it.
Race hums beneath every page. So does religion. Islam. Christianity. The idea of “the chosen.” An impossibility dressed up as divine order. Sexuality is not condemned outright, provided desire remains dormant, hidden, obedient. The question lingers: are these systems really different, or simply rehearsing the same controls with different vocabularies?
Whiteness here is not an identity but an atmosphere—bland, anesthetized, stripped of contradiction. A ladder exists, but it’s fractured, warped by judgment, by God, by the sickness of certainty. Humanity, once again, proves it has no bounds when killing to protect what never belonged to them—what never belonged to anyone.
A kiss is condemned. A bullet is worshipped.
Snow becomes a symbol of purity—a lie we’ve told ourselves for centuries. It isn’t clean. It’s sickness falling from the sky, covering rot, so we don’t have to look at it.
History repeats. Not as a metaphor. As policy.
And the book leaves us with a question that refuses to sit quietly:
Are we already living in the dystopia?
WRITTEN: 29 January 2026
How did the book make me feel/think?
White World is set in a dystopian future that feels disturbingly familiar. A future built on the oldest lie we know, that history can be ignored if the walls are high enough and the gates are selective enough.
It offers a promise of a pristine world for those with means—clean, safe, empty. Empty of danger, yes, but also empty of pulse, reason, and vibrancy. A world achieved only by exporting suffering elsewhere and pretending it no longer exists. We’ve been here before. And the book suggests—correctly—that we are destined to repeat it.
Race hums beneath every page. So does religion. Islam. Christianity. The idea of “the chosen.” An impossibility dressed up as divine order. Sexuality is not condemned outright, provided desire remains dormant, hidden, obedient. The question lingers: are these systems really different, or simply rehearsing the same controls with different vocabularies?
Whiteness here is not an identity but an atmosphere—bland, anesthetized, stripped of contradiction. A ladder exists, but it’s fractured, warped by judgment, by God, by the sickness of certainty. Humanity, once again, proves it has no bounds when killing to protect what never belonged to them—what never belonged to anyone.
A kiss is condemned. A bullet is worshipped.
Snow becomes a symbol of purity—a lie we’ve told ourselves for centuries. It isn’t clean. It’s sickness falling from the sky, covering rot, so we don’t have to look at it.
History repeats. Not as a metaphor. As policy.
And the book leaves us with a question that refuses to sit quietly:
Are we already living in the dystopia?
WRITTEN: 29 January 2026
The Ghosts the Living Inherit
How did the book make me feel/think?
A recurring question surfaced while reading: What happens after you die?
Cleo Dang searches for an acceptable answer. I found myself doing the same.
Real Life: December 2025.
A friend’s mother dies. Another loses his grandmother. An acquaintance dies—not a particularly good person, but human, nonetheless.
An epiphany: those we lose haunt the living. The good and the bad. Death resurrects unresolved issues. Old relationships return uninvited, carrying unfinished conversations, buried hurts, and emotional debris we thought time had swept away. A lifetime of losses can arrive all at once.
Personal: A Memorial.
Grief storms back. The gathering becomes less about the person who died and more about the people still here—what was lost between us, what can no longer be repaired. We soften the bad and elevate the good, not out of dishonesty, but survival. Life is hard. Sometimes it’s easier—healthier—to grieve privately. There is no clock on grief. No correct posture. If the person we lost wasn’t a saint—because nobody is—that’s allowed too. We’re permitted to wash away the baggage they leave behind so it doesn’t follow us forever.
I think when someone dies, the only way to survive the onslaught of pain is through small, personal threads of comedy—tiny salves that make endurance possible.
Mai Nguyen takes an unfathomable premise—the loss of a newborn child—and renders it survivable by weaving humour into every page. Not to diminish grief, but to make space for breathing.
This is a book about the deeply personal nature of grief and how we find a way forward without pretending we’re healed.
Once, a doctor told me about a patient who asked if she had to take her medication for the rest of her life. He replied, “You can stop the week before you die.”
This weekend, I’ll attend another memorial. I hope I can survive the ghosts it resurrects. I feel guilty for my feelings—but there is no right or wrong way to grieve.
There is no timeline.
There is only grief.
WRITTEN: 28 January 2026
How did the book make me feel/think?
A recurring question surfaced while reading: What happens after you die?
Cleo Dang searches for an acceptable answer. I found myself doing the same.
Real Life: December 2025.
A friend’s mother dies. Another loses his grandmother. An acquaintance dies—not a particularly good person, but human, nonetheless.
An epiphany: those we lose haunt the living. The good and the bad. Death resurrects unresolved issues. Old relationships return uninvited, carrying unfinished conversations, buried hurts, and emotional debris we thought time had swept away. A lifetime of losses can arrive all at once.
Personal: A Memorial.
Grief storms back. The gathering becomes less about the person who died and more about the people still here—what was lost between us, what can no longer be repaired. We soften the bad and elevate the good, not out of dishonesty, but survival. Life is hard. Sometimes it’s easier—healthier—to grieve privately. There is no clock on grief. No correct posture. If the person we lost wasn’t a saint—because nobody is—that’s allowed too. We’re permitted to wash away the baggage they leave behind so it doesn’t follow us forever.
I think when someone dies, the only way to survive the onslaught of pain is through small, personal threads of comedy—tiny salves that make endurance possible.
Mai Nguyen takes an unfathomable premise—the loss of a newborn child—and renders it survivable by weaving humour into every page. Not to diminish grief, but to make space for breathing.
This is a book about the deeply personal nature of grief and how we find a way forward without pretending we’re healed.
Once, a doctor told me about a patient who asked if she had to take her medication for the rest of her life. He replied, “You can stop the week before you die.”
This weekend, I’ll attend another memorial. I hope I can survive the ghosts it resurrects. I feel guilty for my feelings—but there is no right or wrong way to grieve.
There is no timeline.
There is only grief.
WRITTEN: 28 January 2026
This is a book to be lived inside.
How did the book make me feel/think?
“Christine Estima doesn’t just write beautifully—she places the reader inside the prose and gives them a part to play.”
— Lindsay Wincherauk
Letters to Kafka might be the most beautifully written book I’ve read. Every page dances to life.
Christine Estima’s phraseology is intoxicatingly vibrant, each page standing on its own—visual, alive, and immersive. Her mastery places readers dead smack in the middle of the prose, giving them a role in the experience, something that becomes genuinely hard to put down.
At its heart, Letters to Kafka is an unrequited love story—about friendship, devotion, and the quiet damage done as feminism collides with a world struggling to adjust to shifting roles. The love here is unconditional. Kafka is reintroduced not as the symbol many reduce him to, but as a living presence—human, intimate, and reimagined.
Estima’s writing is profoundly visual. It feels dream-shaped, textured, and luminous, as if each page has already passed through the subconscious before reaching the reader. The result is prose that doesn’t just describe—it unfolds.
My own writing was once compared to Kafka’s. I took it as a compliment, though I assumed it meant I was a little unhinged. After Letters to Kafka, that comparison feels clarified. The brilliance isn’t madness—it’s exposure. Estima’s work makes that unmistakably clear.
This is a book to be lived inside.
Written: 4 January 2026
How did the book make me feel/think?
“Christine Estima doesn’t just write beautifully—she places the reader inside the prose and gives them a part to play.”
— Lindsay Wincherauk
Letters to Kafka might be the most beautifully written book I’ve read. Every page dances to life.
Christine Estima’s phraseology is intoxicatingly vibrant, each page standing on its own—visual, alive, and immersive. Her mastery places readers dead smack in the middle of the prose, giving them a role in the experience, something that becomes genuinely hard to put down.
At its heart, Letters to Kafka is an unrequited love story—about friendship, devotion, and the quiet damage done as feminism collides with a world struggling to adjust to shifting roles. The love here is unconditional. Kafka is reintroduced not as the symbol many reduce him to, but as a living presence—human, intimate, and reimagined.
Estima’s writing is profoundly visual. It feels dream-shaped, textured, and luminous, as if each page has already passed through the subconscious before reaching the reader. The result is prose that doesn’t just describe—it unfolds.
My own writing was once compared to Kafka’s. I took it as a compliment, though I assumed it meant I was a little unhinged. After Letters to Kafka, that comparison feels clarified. The brilliance isn’t madness—it’s exposure. Estima’s work makes that unmistakably clear.
This is a book to be lived inside.
Written: 4 January 2026
When Silence Is the First Violence
How did the book make me feel/think?
I read a page. I cry.
I read another page. I cry again.
I see myself in these pages — not in circumstance, never in scale, but in erasure.
I was born to an unwed mother, in a place of shame, where silence was the condition for being allowed to exist at all. Before my birth, the erasure had already begun.
I understand displacement. I understand the need to belong.
But how do you belong when no one is willing to say you exist?
My friends are conditioned. My life is heavy. They lack the bandwidth, and so I am dismissed — gifted the solitude of creativity, born of pain, born of being an outsider.
There are protests in our streets: Free Palestine.
Some ask why they don’t protest where they’re from — as if suffering should be kept out of sight — not understanding the complicity in suggesting people struggling to be seen return to an active genocide, simply because it took a few extra minutes to get to the store.
Saeed Teebi’s writing does not allow that silence.
This book is courageous.
It is an appeal for humanity.
We must not be erased.
We must never revert to lying.
This is an essential read.
Written: 2 January 2026
How did the book make me feel/think?
I read a page. I cry.
I read another page. I cry again.
I see myself in these pages — not in circumstance, never in scale, but in erasure.
I was born to an unwed mother, in a place of shame, where silence was the condition for being allowed to exist at all. Before my birth, the erasure had already begun.
I understand displacement. I understand the need to belong.
But how do you belong when no one is willing to say you exist?
My friends are conditioned. My life is heavy. They lack the bandwidth, and so I am dismissed — gifted the solitude of creativity, born of pain, born of being an outsider.
There are protests in our streets: Free Palestine.
Some ask why they don’t protest where they’re from — as if suffering should be kept out of sight — not understanding the complicity in suggesting people struggling to be seen return to an active genocide, simply because it took a few extra minutes to get to the store.
Saeed Teebi’s writing does not allow that silence.
This book is courageous.
It is an appeal for humanity.
We must not be erased.
We must never revert to lying.
This is an essential read.
Written: 2 January 2026
Batch 42 Reviews
| 42._book_thoughts_-_batch_42.pdf |
