The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap by Wendy Welch: A Review

“Third places are those needed spaces, neither home nor work, where we are known by our names and valued for being whatever we decide to be — the clown, the intellectual, the quiet person. Being part of a family is a wonderful thing, and I’m all for team-building at work, but having a place where you don’t have to be anything to anyone makes a pleasant breather.”
Wendy Welch, The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap

Like a lot of people who love to read, sometimes I wonder what it would be like to chuck in my day job and work in a funky little bookstore somewhere. It was that kind of daydreaming that prompted me to pick up Wendy Welch’s memoir about opening Tales of Lonesome Pine Used Books in Big Stone Gap, Virginia. Wendy and her husband, Jack, might seem unlikely entrepreneurs: Jack is a Scottish folks singer, and Wendy has her Ph.D. in ethnography and neither of them is exactly, (ahem) in the spring of their youth. They made the decision to open a used book store at a time when Wendy had given up her job in what she called the “Snake Pit” (no actual snakes or pits involved) and Jack had retired. They were travelling through Big Stone Gap and fell in love with a big old house that was on the market. Over nachos and sangria at a local restaurant, they decided almost on a whim to throw all of their savings into the house, which would become both bookshop and home.

I really enjoyed Welch’s self-deprecating way of recounting their early months as booksellers. When they opened Lonesome Pine, they had no idea how to run a book store, no inventory beyond their own books and a few yard sale finds and very little money. Big Stone is a small town, and both Wendy and Jack did not realize how significant putting down roots would be in the success of their business. After some unpleasant interactions, the couple threw themselves into not only book selling, but also making their store a community space – what Welch calls a “third place” – where people could come to connect. The store hosts craft nights, music nights, semi-annual murder mysteries and a myriad of other things to make it feel like a community space. I loved reading about all the ingenuity and elbow grease it took to get the store up and running. Welch writes about her store, her community and her husband with open affection. Welch talks about how leaving a job she hated to open Lonesome Pine feels like she is, “no longer renting space inside my skin” and her writing communicates that. She is unflinching in describing the mistakes she and Jack made, their interactions with annoying customers, and unpleasantness within the town, but she is also generous in describing the bookstore’s regulars, her pleasure in talking books with others and the fun of finding a home in Big Stone. There is something very reminiscent of The Little Engine that Could in the way that the couple kept plugging away at their dream until they made it a success.

The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap is full of energy and charm. I love memoirs of everyday people because I think it shines a light on acts that we often take for granted. Welch is also a blogger and you can visit her here if you want to get a sense of what the store is all about.

That’s it for this post! Until next time, happy reading!

Tell Me More by Kelly Corrigan: A Review

“Like the padre, said, life is a mystery to be lived. Live your mystery.” – Kelly Corrigan, Tell Me More

I really liked the concept behind Tell Me More. Sitting around their dinner table one night, Corrigan’s family began debating the question: what are the hardest things we have to say to others? The conversation became the inspiration for Corrigan’s book, which includes the 12 hardest (and often most important) things to say. She gives each its own essay and weaves together experiences from her life to illustrate the moments when she realized what really needed to be said, and the moments where she was actually brave enough to make herself say them.

Some of the essays deal with very difficult experiences, like when Corrigan lost both her father and a close friend to cancer in a very short period of time. She writes about both experiences with vulnerability and grace but also with attention to the bigger lessons – how do we move on when we feel profound loss? How do with deal with regret? But the book is also very funny and relatable. The essay, “Yes” is just a list of things Corrigan will always say ‘yes’ to – everything from, “more sleep, more volume, more help” to “breath mints”. In her essay “It’s Like This”, which largely deals with her grief over the loss of her beloved father, she also writes about how she breaks up a fight between her daughters over a T-shirt managing narrowly hanging onto her cool while her husband calmly flips bacon in the kitchen. The insights into Corrigan household dynamics she includes could be any family and this is what makes her writing ring so true. While many of the topics she tackles are profound, she uses self-deprecating humor that keeps her writing from becoming sentimental or preachy. Her writing invites you in, so that you are rooting for her in her struggles to make sense of it all, to own up to her short-comings and to say the hard things. Her stories are really warm and heart-felt. She had me laughing and tearing up on the same page. As I read it I could imagine putting it in the hands of so many friends.

What are you reading this month? I’d love to hear about it.

gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson: A Review

“There are gods in Alabama: Jack Daniel’s, high school quarterbacks, trucks, big tits, and also Jesus.” – Joshilyn Jackson, gods in Alabama

Full disclosure: I read this book on audio, which is something I wouldn’t have said until this year. I am not a stranger to audio books – my partner listens to them from time to time on his commute to work, and on long car trips, I always try to have a couple queued up for the kids (this is a genius parenting hack by the way, the are silent the entire time the book is playing). I don’t know why it took me so long to make the connection that I could increase my reading time by using audio books myself. Maybe it’s because it feels a little bit like cheating, but after trying it, I think I’m a convert. There are times when reading a physical book just isn’t convenient and there are a lot of times when it’s not even possible – driving and folding my family’s unending piles of laundry come to mind – but those are perfect times to listen to books on audio. Before I downloaded one, I got some tips from people who make audio books a regular part of their reading lives. I think different people have different preferences, but here are some general rules I think are safe: listen to the clip on your app before you download – if you don’t like the reader’s voice in that 60 seconds, you probably don’t want to hear another 6 hours of it. Choose books that work well for hearing rather than seeing – novels, memoirs, or histories are all good choices. It’s a great way to increase how much you read and may make things like housework or waiting for an appointment just a little more enjoyable.

gods in Alabama was a good choice for audio. I already knew I liked Joshilyn Jackson, having read The Almost Sisters. She is also an actor and reads some of her own works on audio, but this one was read by Catherine Taber. Most of the novel is set in Alabama and I think it added an element to the experience to hear the story in the proper accent. The novel centers around Lena (known as Arlene to her family back in Alabama) who fled her hometown after high school and never looked back. Her uncle’s retirement party, coupled with the fact that her long-time boyfriend won’t marry her until he has met her family forces her to take the trip home for the first ten years later. As the story unfolds, there are many complications both past and present: Lena’s boyfriend, Burr is black, and her family is not exactly progressive in their views of interracial relationships. Lena’s mother is not well and her aunt is furious that it has taken a decade for Lena to come home.

Bit by bit, Jackson reveals Lena’s motivations for fleeing the South in the first place, and why she is so reluctant to return home. There is an element of mystery to the novel but it is really about family, and how far families will go to protect their own. It is also about how dangerous it can be for people to go against what Lena refers to as the “gods of Alabama” and how much pressure their is to fit into certain ‘types’ in their small Alabama town. A characteristic of Jackson’s writing that I really appreciate it that her female characters are really strong but still flawed in ways that make them relatable. Lena is secretive and sometimes purposely misleads people without outright lying, her Aunt Flo is sharp and not afraid to show her temper, Burr’s mother is kind to Lena but makes no bones about the fact that her loyalties lie with her son. Jackson’s writing touches on so many elements of the South: religion, racism, the internal dynamics of small town life. The story moves quickly but the quality of the writing doesn’t suffer for it. Jackson is adept at making you think one thing is happening before pulling back the curtain and showing you what has actually been going on the entire time.

Do you ever read books on audio? I would love some recommendations if you have any!

June Line Up

Okay, they say better late than never, right? Apologies for getting this post up after June has already begun but this month kind of crept up on me. When June comes around I usually start anticipating what I’m going to be reading over the summer. This year, I had a really hard time settling into what kind of books I felt like reading so I picked up a few with the idea that I would read a chapter or two and then make up my mind. It resulted it me reading five books at once, which is something I never do. Because I am rotating between books, the theme for this month is In No Particular Order. As I finish each book, I will post about it.

gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson: This is the first audio book in my reading challenge (which is why it’s not in the picture). It’s another novel set in the South. The story follows the main character, Lena as she returns to her hometown in Alabama for the first time since she left it ten years before. The novel is contemporary fiction and mixes mystery with family drama. Listening to it adds an extra element of fun because the narrator has an Alabama accent so it really helps to capture the sense of place in a way that reading it in my head probably wouldn’t.

A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza: If you are keeping score at home, I was supposed to have read this book in May, that didn’t quite work out but I am enjoying it so far. It’s a fairly long novel and I don’t want to rush through it. Some books are page turners and some are meant to be savoured. I promise though – I will finish it this month.

The Wonderling by Mira Bartok: This is a middle grade novel. I confess to reading young adult and middle grade fiction on a fairly regular basis. There are a lot of great books written in these genres that I think adults pass over because they are marketed as being for younger audiences. The Wonderling is set in a world where there are humans and groundlings – characters that are hybrids of humans and animals or animals and animals. The story begins with Number 13, a groundling who has lived his whole life at the Home for Wayward and Misbegotten Creatures. Number 13 manages to escape, and then sets off to find what happened to his real family. And so far, it’s good.

Tell Me More by Kelly Corrigan: I just learned about Kelly Corrigan recently. She writes memoirs but this is a collection of essays based on the twelve hardest things that Corrigan has learned to say. Things like, onward, and I was wrong, and I don’t know. She approaches each phrase with the stories from her own life that taught her the importance of having to say things even when you struggle for the words. She writes about her experiences in ways that are funny and heart-breaking on the same page. The essays are short enough that you can easily read one in a single sitting. Between Corrigan and Sedaris, I may be a convert to essays as a genre.

Drive Your Plow Over The Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk: I recently learned that compared to other parts of the world, North Americans read very few translated works. It made me wonder what kinds of things people were writing in other languages, and then I had a crippling case of FOMO (fear of missing out). I’ve started to look for more works in translation lately and this one caught my eye because of the title. It’s originally written in Polish and the main character, Janina, is an elderly woman living in a remote Polish village. When bodies start turning up, Janina is sure she knows who did it but no one will listen to her because of her reputation as cranky and maybe a little crazy. This is the first Tokarczuk novel I have ever read, but according to Google, she is a very big deal on the international writing scene.

So this is me for the month of June. If you have any recommendations for some great summer reads, I’d love to hear them! Until next time, happy reading!

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris: A Review

“Boys who spent their weekends making banana nut muffins did not, as a rule, excel in the art of hand-to-hand combat.” – David Sedaris, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

As a Canadian, when I first heard that David Sedaris writes funny, true-to-life essays that he sometimes reads on NPR, I pictured Stuart McLean, – a fellow Canadian – who wrote funny, true-to-life stories and essays that he read on the CBC. I picked up Sedaris’ book expecting heart-warming and sweet with a side of contemplative musing because that is what Stuart McLean used to write.

David Sedaris is not Stuart McLean. Maybe the naked Barbie torso on the cover should have been my first clue.

In fact, he is more like Stuart McLean’s outrageous younger brother who always manages to shock your aunt at Thanksgiving dinner. Sedaris is funny and smart and also muses at times, but instead of sweet, he is snarky – really snarky. His essays are honest (sometimes painfully so) and self-deprecating but reading the whole collection, you also get a strong sense of how Sedaris’ identity emerged against the backdrop of a somewhat unconventional family. The essays range from stories about his parents, to ones about his partner, to times in his twenties when he was trying to find himself as an artist. Sometimes I found myself shocked by his honesty but mostly they read like a really good story your friend would tell you that starts, this one time …

I’m not usually a big non-fiction reader but I think this collection does a great job of exploring all the wonderful, terrible, wacky and just plain hilarious stories that come with growing up in a large family. I especially loved how Sedaris wrote about his mother, who was strong and forthright. He admits that his family doesn’t exactly love being the focus of his essays most of the time, but he also pokes fun at himself and at times drops the sarcasm long enough for you to see the tender heart inside.

And he’s a grown man who’s not afraid to admit that when he is alone in his house at night, his biggest fear is a zombie apocalypse. Like in a very real way that keeps him from sleeping. And I can’t help but kind of love that.

Next up, I will be posting about June’s TBR. Until then, happy reading, everybody!

The One-in-a-Million Boy by Monica Wood: A Review

“These signs of care made him careful. He wanted to be generous – no to appear generous, but to be so.” – Monica Wood, The One-in-a-Million Boy

The One-in-a-Million Boy defines the word bittersweet. In many ways, this novel is about grieving but ultimately it is about how through a life remembered, we can become more than who we were before.

The boy, who is never named, dies of a one-in-a-million complication with his medication. Left behind are a 104 year-old woman named Ona, who had befriended the boy just months before his death, and his twice-divorced parents, Belle and Quinn. In case your are worried about the premise of this novel, I will say right off the bat that I am not interested in books that use the death of a child as a kind of cheap trick to invoke an emotional response in the reader.

But this is not that kind of book.

Although Woods is certainly using the boy’s death as a way of exploring heavy subject like grief and regret, she does this with a high degree of sensitivity and at no point did I feel that she was trying to exploit the reader’s emotions. On the contrary, I think the book does an excellent job of making the reader understand why the boy was so special to the adults in his life in ways that felt very real. The boy dies before the novel opens, but he feels very present throughout because of the people who cared about him. Wood uses his loss to gently probe the ways her characters react to their grief: Ona becomes determined to see through the plans she and the boy had made to get her into his beloved Guinness Book of World Records, Belle is completely undone by the loss of her son and Quinn feels he has no right to grieve because he was a largely absent father who struggled to connect to his quirky son while he was alive.

A novel like this risks tipping into sentimentality but Woods keeps this from happening by using moments of humor and sadness in equal measure. We get a sense of the boy through Ona’s memories of him, and the meticulous lists he kept to help him navigate his world. Ona is first introduced to the boy as a Scout who is tasked to help her around her house for 10 Saturdays. When the boy doesn’t show up one week, his father arrives instead, dedicated to seeing his son’s task through to completion. The relationship that develops between Ona and Quinn is the driving force behind the plot, but the boy’s influence is a constant undercurrent as the events of the novel unfold.

If heart-warming stories appeal to you, then I think it’s hard to go wrong with The One-in-a-Million Boy. It will have you laughing and crying, sometimes on the same page. Until next time, happy reading!

The Almost Sisters by Joshilyn Jackson: A Review

“‘Things feel hard now, but it will pass. Everything passes, and something new comes along to fill the space … You can’t go around holding the worst thing you ever did in your hand, staring at it. You gotta cook supper, put gas in the car. You gotta plant more zinnias'” – Joshilyn Jackson, The Almost Sisters

I have never been to the South (unless you count Florida, and I’m pretty sure Southerners don’t) but I have always loved stories set there. Like in Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe or The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, the South feels more like a character than a setting in Jackson’s novel; it’s hard to imagine the events unfolding as they do anyplace else. The Almost Sisters takes place mainly in the tiny town of Birchville, Alabama – named after the Birch family. The last remaining Birch in Birchville is Leia’s beloved grandmother. When the novel opens, Leia is confronted with several family crises all at once: she finds out she is pregnant and the father is an anonymous Batman she slept with after a drunken encounter at a Comicon, her step-sister Rachel’s marriage has just fallen apart, and then she gets the call to go to Alabama to look after her grandmother, Birchie. Birchie has been hiding her progressing dementia from Leia and it has just outed itself in a very public – and scandalous – way at the local Baptist church’s Summer Fish Fry.

This book is contemporary fiction and I want to say it would make a great summer read, but not in a way that implies it is a marshmallow book by any means. Leia’s return to Birchville unearths family secrets and explores family dynamics in ways that keep the plot moving. It is alternately funny and moving by turns. One of the most poignant moments is when Leia comes face-to-face with the racism that she equates with what she calls ‘the Second South’ – one that white Southerners are aware of, but can never truly experience. Leia’s unborn child is biracial and she has to come to terms with the idea that he could never grow up in Birchville the same way she did as a child because his skin colour would make it impossible.

There are several plot lines that weave together in this novel. Birchie and her best friend Wattie are fighting to maintain their independence, Rachel is trying to pick up the pieces after her husband betrays her and Leia is trying to construct a future for her baby while meeting the deadline for the comic book she has been commissioned to write. Through these women, Jackson is exploring how we create families and how those families shape our own identities, but she does it in a way that is really accessible and keeps you turning the pages. The novel isn’t heavy-handed but Leia is a smart, interesting character and Jackson’s writing keeps the story from becoming sappy or sentimental.

If anyone has read gods in Alabama, another of Jackson’s novels, I would love to hear what you think. And if you are an audio book lover, Jackson is a former actor, and reads her novels herself on audio. I haven’t listened myself but I’ve heard she does a great job.

That wraps it up for this week. Until next time, happy reading!

Stay With Me by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀: A Review

“Besides, what would be left of love without truth stretched beyond its limits, without those better versions of ourselves that we present as the only ones that exist?”
― Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, Stay With Me

Adébáyọ̀’s novel opens with a premise few North Americans could imagine: Yejide’s family has come to present her with her husband’s second wife – a woman and a marriage that Yejide knew nothing about until this woman showed up in her living room.

Yejide and her husband, Akin, married for love. They were professionally successful and happy in their relationship. But four years into their marriage, Yejide has not borne any children. Presuming her barren (despite medical tests to the contrary) Yejide and Akin’s families conspire to marry him to another woman. In Nigeria in the 1980s, where the novel is set, polygamy was no longer the norm but it was also not unheard of. It is amid this cultural context that Adébáyọ̀ begins a story that will go back and forth over the decades of Yejide and Akin’s relationship to examine the price that people will pay for love.

Before I started this novel, I assumed it would center around the introduction of a second wife and how that impacted Yejide and Akin’s marriage, but the book is about so much more than that. (If you are looking for a novelization of Big Love or Sister Wives, you have come to the wrong place.) The couple is committed to saving their marriage but the pressures put on them by their families and their society drive them to increasingly desperate acts that eventually warp and twist their relationship out of all recognition. Most affected is Yejide, who is blamed for the couple’s barrenness and manipulated by people she believed cared about her and her well-being. Neither spouse is blameless in the events that unfold and Adébáyọ̀ is careful to make their reasoning understandable, even as they make choices that are difficult to defend. It’s an emotionally powerful novel that could be compared to An American Marriage in the sense that the corruption of marriage in both books is used as a vehicle to critique society’s prejudices.

Ultimately, the Stay With Me asks difficult questions about how far we are willing to go for love. Often the characters make choices that they tell themselves out of love for another but are actually self-serving and at times cruel. It examines the role of the individual within family and asks how far an individual should be willing to reshape themselves for the sake of duty. Adébáyọ̀ also takes aim at particular aspects of Nigerian culture – especially as they apply to women and expectations of motherhood.

If you like Chimamanda Ngoza Adiche or Tayari Jones, Adébáyọ̀’s writing has a similar quality and her subject matter evokes that same unblinking intimacy between the reader and the characters.

Next week, we are off to Alabama! Until then, happy reading!

May Line Up

This month, the theme is Family Matters. I think family dynamics make for great reading and it’s interesting to read about situations that can be similar enough to your own to feel familiar yet different enough to make you feel like you’ve stepped into another life for a while. Regardless of how you define your family, it is often through these relationships that we learn to navigate our world and understand ourselves in relation to others. For May I have tried to choose works that explore notions of family in unexpected ways.

If you look at the list and it seems like I’ve added an extra weekend to May (I wish), I am trying to make up for lost time. There have been two weeks since I started this challenge that I didn’t make my reading goal, so I am going to add a book this month and next to get back on track (32 down … 20 more to go). Wish me luck.

May 4, 2019: Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo

Since discovering Chimamanda Adiche, I feel like my eyes have been opened to all this great fiction coming out of Nigeria. Recommended by one of my colleagues, Adebayo is a new author to me. The novel is set in Ilesa, Nigeria and follows the relationship of a couple who seem like they should be happy and secure in their marriage. Despite being deeply in love, Yejide and Akin are unable to have a child. The increasing pressure put on the couple to have a family begins to test the strength of the marriage. When Akin is coerced into taking a second wife, Yejide knows that she must get pregnant at any cost in order to save her marriage. Before picking up this book I hadn’t realized that polygamy used to be common practice in Nigeria; although it doesn’t seem to have had the same religious connection that it has in other cultures and I will admit that I am very curious about how it plays out on the page.

May 11, 2019: The Almost Sisters by Joshilyn Jackson

Leia Birch Briggs is a comic book artist. She is also 38 and pregnant for the first time. The father is an anonymous Batman she met at a comi-con. Before Leia can tell her traditional Alabama family about her impending single-motherhood, her stepsister Rachel’s marriage falls apart. To add to the chaos, Leia’s beloved grandmother begins suffering from dementia and Leia must return home to help her put her affairs in order. Jackson’s writing sounds witty and has that wry sense of humour that I like with the added bonus of inter-generational family drama.

May 18, 2019: The One-in-a-Million Boy by Monica Wood

Ona is 104 years old. Every Saturday morning, an eleven year old boy comes to help her out. As he goes about his chores, Ona finds herself telling him the story of her life including secrets she’s held on to for years. One morning, the boy doesn’t show up and Ona thinks perhaps he wasn’t the person she believed him to be. But then the boy’s father arrives, determined to finish his son’s work, and his mother isn’t far behind. I have a feeling this one is going to be a bit of a heart breaker…

May 25, 2019: Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris

Despite hearing his name probably dozens of times, I’ve never read anything by David Sedaris. He’s a regular contributor to NPR’s This American Life (again, heard great things but I’ve never listened myself). In this collection of essays, he recounts stories from his own family that show the absurdity in the everyday. Sedaris is one of the most renowned humour writers in America today so if you love to laugh, you might want to read along with this one.

May 31, 2019: A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza

A wedding is often a time for families to come together and it serves as the linchpin for Mirza’s debut novel. Hadia, the daughter of an Indian Muslim family, is getting married but as everyone gathers for the wedding, the focus is not on Hadia so much as her estranged younger brother, Amar, who is returning to the family fold for the first time in three years. The novel delves into the family’s tensions and secrets that drove a wedge between them as they struggle to try to find their way back to each other.

One of my favourite things about blogging about books is the conversations I get to have with other readers. I love hearing what others are reading. So now that you know what I’ll be reading for May, it’s your turn – what’s next in your TBR pile? Let me know if there is anything you think I should add to my summer reading list!

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton: A Review

“How lost do you have to be to let the devil lead you home?”
― Stuart Turton, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

First of all I have to say, the whole time I was reading The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle I was thinking, ‘Stuart Turton is so much smarter than me.’ In this novel, Turton surprised me again and again with the ways he was able to weave a very intricate and intelligent story line into compulsively readable fiction. I love books with interesting narrative structures and I’ve never really read a book like this before. I will try very hard not to reveal anything about the plot that you couldn’t glean from the dust jacket but this book is so page-turning that I just want to shove it into everyone’s hands and say: “read this next!” Turton is able to take genres that feel really familiar and combine them in ways that make his novel fresh and unique. There are big twists in the plot but they never feel gimmicky or unnecessary. There are a lot of lose threads in the story and when they are brought together at the end it just made me sit back and marvel at how Turton was able to do that.

So, no spoilers but how is this for an opening: you suddenly find yourself in the woods with no idea how you got there or who you are. The only thing you think you know for sure is that there are two other people in the forest – a woman named Anna and someone who is trying to kill her. You are terrified and lost. And then the murderer gives you the means to find your way out of the woods and back to the manor house where you are staying. That night, the daughter of the house, Evelyn Hardcastle, will be killed during a lavish party. You have to figure out who her killer is. And you will wake up every day and live the events leading up to Evelyn’s murder over and over until you know who did it.

What made The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle so interesting is that Turton moves it beyond a genre-bending murder mystery. As the main character, Aiden, is forced to live the same day again and again, the novel really makes the reader start to question the forces that shape our lives and actions: how much is down to our nature? Can we change or are we following prescribed paths laid out by fate? How far can we trust other people and to what extent should we rely only on ourselves?

I love when a novel can manage to feel suspenseful and smart all at once. Seven Deaths is certainly one I would recommend, especially if like me, you love mysteries and old manor houses and books that take you by surprise. Until next week, happy reading everybody!