Patriot Hearts

With the one year anniversary of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games this month, we wanted to review one of February's new releases, Patriot Hearts by John Furlong. We were intrigued with the behind the scenes look into the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games. We would be fibbing if we didn't say that we shed a tear or two and in turn were frustrated by the review of some of the home grown media and political antics. At the end of it all Patriot Hearts is a candid look at a games that left their mark on Vancouver and Canada. With each turn of the page we were reminded of the pride we felt to be Canadian during those two history making weeks. We highly recommend this great read.

Pick up your copy at your favourite bookstore. Partial proceeds of Patriot Hearts will be contributed to the Own the Podium program supporting Canadian athletes.

The synopsis for Patriot Hearts -

When John Furlong emigrated from Ireland in 1974, the customs officer greeted him with "Welcome to Canada. Make us better"-an imperative that has defined Furlong's life ever since. A passionate, accomplished athlete with a track record of community service, John was a volunteer for Vancouver's incipient Olympic bid movement when it began in 1996, and then spent the next 14 years living and breathing the Olympics. Furlong and his organizing team, including 25,000 Blue Jacket Volunteers and many partners, orchestrated a remarkable Winter Games. Patriot Hearts is the story of how they did it.

Early on, Furlong realized the Olympics weren't about highways and buildings and tourism, they were about people: the athletes, but also everyday Canadians who wanted to see their country shine on the world stage. He pioneered a vision for the games that would capture the hearts and minds of Canadians. A games for the many and not the few.

Working with Globe and Mail columnist Gary Mason, Furlong recounts the lead¬up to the Games and describes how he handled seemingly insurmountable setbacks - such as the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, a global recession and the washed¬out snow at Cypress Bowl - to achieve a runaway success and, ultimately, a pivotal moment of nationhood.

Posted under Book Club •

A Soft Place to Land

This month's choice, A Soft Place to Land, is a story that will tug at your heartstrings so be sure to keep a hanky handy.

Here's the synopsis:

For more than ten years, Naomi and Phil Harrison enjoyed a marriage of heady romance, tempered only by the needs of their children. But on a vacation alone, the couple perishes in a flight over the Grand Canyon. After the funeral, their daughters, Ruthie and Julia, are shocked by the provisions in their will.

Spanning nearly two decades, the sisters' journeys take them from their familiar home in Atlanta to sophisticated bohemian San Francisco, a mountain town in Virginia, the campus of Berkeley, and lofts in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. As they heal from loss, search for love, and begin careers, their sisterhood, once an oasis, becomes complicated by resentment, anger, and jealousy. It seems as though the echoes of their parents' deaths will never stop reverberating-until another shocking accident changes everything once again.

Right now it is available online at Chapters.ca for a great price of only $15.19.

Author: Susan Rebecca White
Other Books by this Author: Bound South

Posted under Book Club •

House Rules by Jodi Piccoult

Jodi Piccoult is an extremely popular writer.  Her books are thought provoking and grab your attention with the first sentence.  Over the holidays we read her new release, House Rules, and absolutely loved it!  We could barely put it down.  Here's the synopsis from Piccoult's website:

HOUSE RULES is about Jacob Hunt, a teenage boy with Asperger's Syndrome. He's hopeless at reading social cues or expressing himself well to others, and like many kids with AS, Jacob has a special focus on one subject - in his case, forensic analysis. He's always showing up at crime scenes, thanks to the police scanner he keeps in his room, and telling the cops what they need to do...and he's usually right. But then one day his tutor is found dead, and the police come to question him. All of the hallmark behaviors of Asperger's - not looking someone in the eye, stimulatory tics and twitches, inappropriate affect - can look a heck of a lot like guilt to law enforcement personnel -- and suddenly, Jacob finds himself accused of murder. HOUSE RULES looks at what it means to be different in our society, how autism affects a family, and how our legal system works well for people who communicate a certain way - but lousy for those who don't.

Posted under Book Club •

The Help

Synopsis as per The Help website:

Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women--mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends--view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.

The Help is written by Kathryn Stockett and will soon be a major motion picture.

Posted under Book Club •

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

If there ever was a quintessential Summer read, this is it. Alan Bradley's debut novel is a murder mystery of the best kind. A rollicking good read, it keeps its readers guessing, procuring an insatiable curiosity of the kind that will have you up into the wee hours of the morning. Set in a small English town in the Summer of 1950, the story has all the charm that comes with such a time and place. The novel's protagonist, eleven-year-old Flavia De Luce, is a heroine to be championed. A precocious chemistry prodigy, young Flavia wins you over at once with her cleverness, wit, and bravery. Just when you think her brash, bold actions will lead to her inevitable demise, her intelligence and tenacity take you by surprise.

After eavesdropping on a heated argument between her father and a strange visitor at their estate of Buckshaw the previous evening, Flavia wakes in the morning to discover a man taking his last breath in their vegetable garden. Any initial fear or repulsion at the sight of the death is quickly replaced by a curiosity that propels her headlong into a murder investigation that she is determined to solve before the town's authorities can. Word spreads quickly in their small English town, and it does not take long before whispers of the murder are on the lips of everyone in the village. The town's past secrets and present scandal all conspire to link its quirky inhabitants with the murder in a tangled web of events. A delightful mystery, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is a delicacy that you'll want to devour in one swift bite.

by Chloe Berge

Posted under Book Club •