Kathryn's Inbox

Beautiful and at times, sad, The Girl Who Rides on the Metro is a story about the transformative power of books. Juliette travels on the train to a job that she despises each morning. She takes some pleasure in taking note of what other passengers are reading. Then one day, Juliette finds a strange urge to get off the train, and soon finds herself in front of a second hand bookshop. When she meets the eccentric owner, he tasks her with giving away five books to strangers. What begins is an adventure on the transformative power the books have on other peoples lives. I very much enjoyed the concept of this one. While parts of the story were quite strong and I was more than willing to suspend my disbelief in places, I found other parts of the story infuriating for their lack of backstory and depth. We never really see, or know the people that Juliette gifts the books to, in spite of it being a major theme of the story. In fact, I often felt little sense of Juliette or of Soliman, the mys...

Anna Benz is an American living in Switzerland, who is playing the part of the perfect wife and mother to her Swiss husband and their three Swiss born children. She is living a comfortable life, free from responsibility to anyone or anything but her family.  But if her life is so comfortable, then why does she have so much trouble connecting with her husband? Why is she slipping in and out of various extra-material affairs with such ease? And what happens when moral thresholds continue to be crossed? From the moment I discovered that the protagonist was named Anna, and that trains and the Swiss rail networks were a huge part of the story, I instantly drew parallels with Anna Karenina. More than that, I had a sense that this story was not going to end well. What I didn't count on was the lows that Anna, her supposedly goody-goody friend Mary, and Anna's husband Bruno would stoop to before the novel's tragic end. However, what shocked me most was not what Anna did but her l...

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  “Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.” ~ William Shakespeare

  Queen Elizabeth II is a trained mechanic.

Steven Rowley is back with The Guncle a novel that is funny, touching and has a whole lot of heart. Patrick is a former sitcom star living a quiet but luxurious life in Palm Springs. The rest of his family live on the other side of the country. When a tragic turn of events occurs, Parick, or Gay Uncle Patrick as he is sometimes known, is tasked with looking after his niece Maisie, and his nephew Grant for a while. Patrick loves the kids, but up until now, time spent with them has always been in small doses. Is he up to the task of looking after two kids who are grieving for their mother, and whose father is in rehab? There's only one way to find out. This was a fantastic read. In some ways, the story reminded me a lot of Uncle Buck, one of my favourite movies from my childhood. But there are also some deeper twists in there--for example, the real reason why Patrick gave up on acting and became reclusive is utterly heartbreaking, and its touching to see the way he helps Maisie and...

In the 1980s and 1990s Australian author Robin Klein was at the top of her game. Each of her books were utterly beloved by young readers (and a few older ones, I suspect,) including Penny Pollard's Diary, Hating Alison Ashley, People Might Hear You and Came Back to Show You I Can Fly. Many, many children from across Australia would write to Robin to tell her how much they loved her books. Jon Appleton, growing up in New South Wales went one better. He was Robin's pen pal and the creator of Rippa Reading, a magazine for schoolchildren about books. Letters From Robin celebrates the unique friendship between the pair, while shedding a light on what was a golden era for Australian middle grade fiction.  This was an enjoyable read. Many of the books and authors mentioned in the book were immediately familiar to me--as they were the same ones that I had grown up with. In fact, I can even remember seeing Jon Appleton on The Afternoon Show talking about books and getting enthusiasti...

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  Show me a good mouser and I'll show you a cat with bad breath ~ Garfield

Deceptively packaged as a love story, We Are Inevitable is a story of addiction, the many forms that it may take and its impact. Aaron Stein isn't the happiest of eighteen year olds. His older brother is dead. His mother has left the family home to find herself. His father is in denial from well, everything. The family bookshop he now owns is one step away from ruin. And they're all struggling with the huge medical bills that his older brother Sandy left behind. Then two things happens to change Aaron's life. The first is that he secretly sells the bookshop to this selfish and infuriating old woman who lives in the town. The second is that he strikes up an unlikely friendship with Chad, a popular boy from his high school who is now wheelchair bound following an accident. Through Chad, he meets Hannah, a musician with whom Aaron feels a strong bond, and with who he believes a relationship is inevitable. Then Chad and some other locals come up with a plan to save the booksto...

  The holder of the most Academy Awards is Walt Disney.

A college reunion is always a perfect setting for a guilty pleasure read, with past loves, conflicts and tensions conflicting with the present.  The Reunion by Polly Phillips offers readers a revenge story with twist after twist after twist. Emily  has done her best to put her time at university--and the devastating events that led to her sudden departure--behind her. She's built a good life as a mother to twins and wife to a loving, successful husband. But when she and her husband receive an invitation to a college reunion, something snaps and a plan for revenge clicks into place. Shifting between the past and the present, Phillips tells the story of how Emily escaped her impoverished childhood to study at university, her so-called friendships there and the devastating event that led to her exit--an event that if it happened today, would come under significantly more scrutiny. Meanwhile, in the present, Emily’s desire for revenge leads her to make some startling discoveries ...

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  "Dwell in possibility." ~ Emily Dickinson

No One is Too Small to Make a Difference is a collection of speeches by Climate Change activist Greta Thunberg. A Swedish teenager with Aspergers, Thunberg first came to prominence a few years ago through an unusual form of activism--striking from school every Friday and protesting outside Sweden's parliament about that countries environmental policies. From there, other activists and the media caught on, the movement grew worldwide and Thunberg has been able to bring her message in the form of speeches, ones that are often frank and uncomfortable, at various global conventions and summits.  This volume collects those speeches. While I don't agree with absolutely everything Thunberg says or even how she gets her message across, there is no denying that her story and her unwavering belief that she is doing this because she feels it is right, is an important and powerful one. Very few people are able to achieve the level of activism that Thunberg has at such a young age, and in ...

  Venus is the only planet that spins clockwise.

After being away for six years, Addison Potts has returned to Charleston just in time to crash the wedding of her perfect (and very secret,) half-sister Naomi to Elijah Du Point, the wealthy, ex-military man touted to be the next Mayor of Charleston. It's a match made in heaven. Or at least it would be, if Naomi hadn't jilted Elijah at the altar. Addison finds herself offering Elijah a ride out of the church to keep him away from the prying eyes of the town and the media, the pair strike up an unlikely friendship and ... Well, who says that two of the most unlikely people can't find love in the most unusual of circumstances? This started off as an entertaining read, with a couple of great characters and a fun situation. And on the whole, this one is a lot of fun and there is a lot to enjoy within the pages. Unfortunately the whole thing gets a little too bogged down in love scenes and romance. Combined with Tessa Bailey's somewhat limited vocabulary, it all gets a littl...

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   “And in the end, we were all just humans... drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness.” ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

The long-running Popular Culture and Philosophy series turns its focus to legendary and beloved author Neil Gaiman, drawing comparisons between his work and the musings of various famous philosophers. Unsurprisingly, a great deal of the work is spent discussing American Gods, but the volume really picks up momentum when it discusses some of Neil Gaiman's other works, in particular Coraline and the Sandman Comic. Told in a series of academic essays penned by a variety of readers with a background in philosophy who are very clearly fans of Neil Gaiman, this was an entertaining look at the work of one of my favourite authors. At first, I was a little concerned that this was going to be full of so-called "hidden meanings" that could be found within Neil Gaiman's work, ones that could only be interpreted by special people (ie the authors and editors of this book,) but thankfully the volume was free of that. It works more like an introduction to philosophy, taking somethi...

  Rachel McAdams was twenty-five years old when she played teenager Regina George in Mean Girls.

Once upon a time Tate and the boy next door, Jared were the best of friends. The pair were practically inseparable until one summer, when Jared went away. He returned a different boy. Moody, unapproachable and with an almost insatiable and unexplained hatred for Tate that spilled over when the pair started high school. Tate became the victim of a cruel and almost relentless bullying campaign created by Jared and his friends, one which most of the other kids at school played along with. To escape the bullying, Tate spent a year studying in France. But now she's back for her senior year, smarter, stronger and more determined than ever not to let the likes of Jared get to her.  As for Jared ... well, it seems that he likes this new version of Tate. Bully may be set in a high school, but this is most definitely not a YA novel. In fact, it is not one that I would recommend to teenagers at all--I found many of the themes to be quite harmful, and the story full of unfair and toxic male an...