“What’s in a name?” Juliet famously queried. “That which we call a rose, would smell as sweet” were it called something else, she noted as she contemplated the trouble that was caused by her true love having the last name of her family’s sworn rival. In his latest novel, Terry Fallis has taken that question to the next level and the result is the hilariously funny No Relation
Book review – Juliet’s Nurse by Lois Leveen
The Roman Philosopher Marcus Aurelius said that: “Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth”. This is true even of the greatest works of fiction. The stories we know and love come to us from one perspective – that which the author has chosen to give us. Major characters are (usually) well developed and minor characters are often not given a second thought by the reader. [Read more…]
Book Review: Emily Giffin’s The One and Only
For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a complete and total football junkie and have been since I was a toddler. I’m also an avid reader and quite enjoy the genre known as “chick lit”. One of my favourite writers in this genre has been Emily Giffin . I find her work engaging and fun to read with characters I can relate to. Given this, imagine my glee when I found out that Giffin’s latest book, The One & Only, was going to feature a female football reporter as the protagonist. I may have squealed. Loudly. Then I made an almost fatal mistake – I crowd sourced. I often hit up Goodreads when I find a book I like just to see what others have thought about it. I saw a lot of negative Nellies complaining about the book making generalizations about women who love football always being in it for a guy, that there was too much football (no such thing imho) and not enough plot, or that the characters weren’t relatable. I hate feeling disappointed or let down by an author I love so I put the book aside for a few days to think about whether or not I wanted to read it. I took it up to the cottage with me because I’m always running out of books to read (especially when the weather is as dismal as it was this summer, rainy and cold for most of my vacation) and I’m really glad I did. Had I not read the book based on those few Goodreads users who really disliked the book, I would have missed out on one of my favourite books so far this year.