Fave Reads 2022

Happy Hogmanay. I'll be honest: the last several years, my reading criteria has narrowed. Is it under 250 pages? Did someone I love recommend it? Life is too short to finish an underwhelming book. None of these underwhelmed me for one second. In no order (three are Canadian), I loved these books and these authors made me miss books, again. and I'm grateful for their lessons. 

It will gut you. Like
its comedian-actor-author,
this memoir is painfully
& proudly honest as well
as ferociously funny.
This is grief dialed up
and it will heal people.

In less than 250 pages,
Toews thoughtfully
presents us with a 
group of vulnerable
Mennonite women & one
 man as they dissect the
violence and ideology
that minimizes and
marginalizes them.
In other words, it's a
thoroughly modern
and on-going story.

Come for the truth &
the reconciliation; stay
for these characters' 
resilience, hope, and
humour. 

These Canadian children
and those who love them
will break your heart.
This Canadian novel
should be the 
first read in a social
work degree. 

I saw the film first. 
Cinematography at its
finest. Written in 1967(!)
For readers who love
complex and broken
characters in pain,
and for those forced to live
with their bullies or endure
imagined bullies.