Tag: canadian (Page 2 of 4)

Clear Thinking by Shane Parrish | Book Review

August 26, 2025 / Monique

Shane Parrish’s book Clear Thinking is my best nonfiction read so far, well for personal development. He outlines the four default responses that lead to poor decision making and how to create safeguards and routines to ensure intentional, deliberate choices are made instead. The four, instinctual, defaults are emotion, ego, social and inertia.

When we have an emotional response, it is to feelings vs. facts. Stress, fatigue, hungry, anger can all trigger an impulsive reaction.
When we have an ego response, it is a reaction to threats to our self-worth or status.
When we have a social response, it is to conform to group norms. That need to belong can block independent thought.
When we have an inertia response, it is about resisting change by doing nothing. Maintaining the status quo.

The next part of the book deals with the ways you can overcome those defaults with self-accountability (taking responsibility for your actions, no more “it’s not my fault”), self-knowledge (knowing your strengths and weaknesses and adjusting for your biases), self-control (mastering emotions and taking a pause before reacting), and self-confidence (trusting your abilities and taking action).

The last part of the book is about the decision-making process. Much of this section is similar to an online workshop Shane Parrish ran through his Farnam Street blog. It’s a 5-step process for making better decisions. The first step is actually defining the problem in a clear and specific way to ensure you are solving for the right issue. He has lots of tips for exploring solutions and avoiding binary (do it, don’t do it) options. Then evaluating the options gets full treatment in the book with clear steps on how to gather info (not too much, and from diverse sources but ideally as close to the source of expertise). The execute stage is about when decisions are either reversible or irreversible, consequential or inconsequential and how knowing what type of decision it is can then impact the speed of your decision. And last is learning from your decisions–documenting your process vs. “resulting” or assuming if it worked out that it was more than chance.

Clear Thinking is a great book to read if you are in the early stages of a big decision: do I seek out a higher position, do I invest a chunk of money into something, do I move cities. If you’re in the middle of a big change, then this might be too much, too late in the process. But if you’re interested overall in how you react to the world around you—everything from retorts at work to major decisions—then this is a self-help book mascarading as a business book in the best possible way.

If you like James Clear’s Atomic Habits or Brianna Wiest’s 101 Essays That Will Change the Way You Think then this is a great follow-up read.

The Maid’s Secret by Nita Prose | Book Review

August 25, 2025 / Monique

The Maid’s Secret—the last book in the Molly the Maid series—features a wedding, a heist, and long-held family secrets. It’s a wonderful goodbye to our favourite maid and an excellent cast of supporting characters: Mr. Snow the hotel manager, Cheryl the delinquent maid, Mr. Preston the former doorman and Molly’s grandfather, Angela the bartender and friend to Molly, Detective Stark, and sweet Juan the fiancé.

Molly and Juan are quietly planning their city hall wedding when they are derailed by the filming of an Antique’s-Roadshow style tv show called Hidden Treasures. The Regency Grand Hotel is hosting the event and staff are invited to bring in their treasures for review. Turns out one of the trinkets Molly brings from her Gran’s collection is worth millions. Before Molly can wave a duster, her rags-to-riches story becomes a media sensation and she’s the target of an art heist and death threats. Poor Molly. Luckily, Gran’s diary comes to the rescue in more ways that one.

There are 4 books in the series and they are all heart-warming whodunnits. Check out NitaProse.com for the scoop.

The Break by Katherena Vermette | Book Review

August 22, 2025 / Monique

The Break is a heart-breaking debut novel about the trauma of missing and murdered women. The story is set in Winnipeg’s North End and begins with Stella, a young Métis mother, witnessing a rape from her baby’s bedroom window. It’s winter, she is shaken, she has two young kids asleep (then crying), and she does call the police but is otherwise too frozen to take action.

The police take their time to respond and by the time they do, Stella feels ignored and dismissed by them and her white husband, who’d prefer to believe it was gang related and not their business. That said, one of the policemen, Officer Scott, is a Métis. He works to understand what is happening with this crime but never truly learns the full story.

Told through a series of shifting narratives, Vermette introduces the reader to Stella’s Kukum (grandmother) and her aunties (Lou, a social worker, and Cheryl, an artist). We are also introduced to Phoenix, a teenager who has slipped away from a young detention centre, and her uncle, a local drug dealer/gang member, both of whom are known to Lou and Cheryl’s children. Then through a series of connections we come to understand the true scope of this tragedy, the number of women who’ve died, and the intergenerational grief that continues to haunt this family.

This is a sad and shocking book to read but it also offers insights into the non-fiction stories about missing and murdered Indigenous women, the landfill search for the remains of First Nations women in Winnipeg, and “Every Child Matters.”

Discover more of Katherena Vermette’s novels on her website.

The Man Who Saw in Seconds by Alexander Boldizar | Book Review

April 6, 2025 / Monique

The Man Who Saw in Seconds is an absolute thrill ride. The first hundred pages read like the single, continuous long shot opening of a Jason Bourne film. The novel is also packed with physics, philosophy, and intel on military and police procedures.

If you liked “The Queen’s Gambit,” this novel has a bit of chess in it and a lot of human dynamics, mastermind thinking, and an anti-hero prodigy. If you liked, the British science fiction mystery thriller miniseries “Bodies,” featuring detectives from different eras investigating the same murder, then you’ll appreciate that time is not absolute. Our main character Preble Jefferson, can see 5 seconds into the future. To paraphrase Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, the past, present, and future is a stubbornly persistent illusion.

Preble finds himself in a Kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmare when his snarky comments to New York police officer in a subway car has him running through a hail of bullets to escape custody. Things escalate from there (truly possible). Preble, with the help of his paranoid, anarchist, Hungarian friend (and lawyer) named Fish, turns himself into police, which makes matters worse (truly possible).

Political thriller, spy novel, science fiction time travel, philosophy of time, police satire, revolutionary drama—this book is exciting.

The Adversary by Michael Crummey | Book Review

March 31, 2025 / Monique

Michael Crummey is shortlisted for the 2025 Dublin Literary Award and this submissions is a stellar read. The Adversary has hints of Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell (The Wolf Hall trilogy) in the character of Mr Clinch (also known as The Beadle). The Beadle’s formidable opponent is the Widow Caines and his charge, boss, and godson Abe Strapp is a thorn in the side of all concerned.

The Beadle effectively runs the show in his isolated corner of Newfoundland’s northern coast (Mockbeggar). He is second in command to Cornelius Strapp and after Cornelius’ death, then to his son Abe Strapp). The Beadle is a meddler and plots Abe’s marriage to a young woman who stands to inherit one of Mockbeggar’s largest mercantile firm. It’s a marriage to bring together two of the shore’s largest mercantile firms vs. one of love. And the wedding is sabotaged by the Widow Caines who is equally conniving (and the owner of Mockbeggar’s next largest firm). The Widow Caines is also the sister of Abe Strapp. What follows is a story of lies and betrayal, petty grievances, community gossip, and all the animosity, vendettas and violence you can imagine in a mid-18th century Newfoundland outport.

If you enjoy Michael Crummey novels, then The Adversary has the dark, quirky setting and superbly crafted characters you have grown to love from Crummey. I was a huge fan of River Thieves and The Wreckage. The Adversary picks up from some of the characters in The Innocents, and it’s a top-notch read.

The Tenants by Pat Dobie | Book Review

January 14, 2025 / Monique

The Tenants by Pat Dobie is a delight. Gosh, I have had such a string of mediocre reads that I was worried. But this little novel is charming and gritty. The Tenants is the winner of the 45th annual 3-day novel contest. The writing is tight and evocative, just like the Vancouver housing situation. Ok, maybe that sounds dull. But no! The Tenants is about three Vancouverites. Dave and Scott are partners who live in a rental off Victoria drive. Maeve is a homeless woman who is tenting near the blackberry bushes in an unattended/undeveloped area nearby. Happenstance brings the three of them together. And I think what’s so delightful is that you learn just enough about each characters in the same way you might if you too randomly met a neighbour over a few intersecting errands.

Writing a novel in three days requires an economy of language, and that perfectly suits the character of overly frugal Scott. It also suits Maeve, whose survival is too limit how much she says to anybody. Dave is perhaps the most hospitable in that he interacts with Maeve, welcomes her into the secret garden he’s developing on city land, but he too is holding back. So the writing style, the time constraints of the contest, and the constraints of living in an overly expensive city make this weirdly funny story a page turner. Maybe you have to live here to get it, but the story struck a chord for me.

Kiss of the Fur Queen by Tomson Highway | Book Review

January 6, 2025 / Monique

First published in 1998, Kiss of the Fur Queen opens like a Greek tragedy. We are introduced to the Okimasis family through the caribou-hunter father, Abraham Okimasis, who is striving to win a dog-sled race, which seals upon himself and his family the kiss of the crowned Fur Queen.

Abraham names his next-born child Champion. And early on, Champion is a gifted musician. The next boy, Ooneemeetoo, is a gift dancer. The two boys, born in northern Manitoba, move through their world, hunting caribou with their parents and making music and dances for their family. These are well-loved boys.

When Champion is taken to residential school, he is excited to fly in the small airplane, but sad to leave his little brother. At school his hair is shaved, he is forbidden to speak Cree, and he is renamed Jeremiah. Jeremiah’s only highlight is discovering a piano and convincing the head priest to allow a nun to teach him.

Two years later his little brother joins him at school and is renamed Gabriel. Gabriel is an angel. His face is described as being so lovely that your heart aches; and of course he becomes prey to the priest.

The first part of the novel has so many Greek elements, in particular the repeating and spinning of the tale of the Fur Queen. In Greek tragedy, Athena—the bright eyed goddess—is described as the goddess of wisdom, craft, and battle. The Fur Queen appears many times in the story in different guises—perhaps meant to be a Trickster—but I think the Fur Queen is more like Athena.

More clear is that Greek tragedy deals with big themes of love, loss, pride, the abuse of power and the fraught relationships between men and gods. Kiss of the Fur Queen goes deep with these themes too.

The love between the brothers, loss of connection to family and culture, pride of personal artistic achievements, the abuse of power by members of the Catholic Church, and the fraught relationship both brothers have with god/God.

Residential school takes the boys away from their community and inserts them into melting pot of Cree children taken from across the North, who are then given new names, language, and religion. The boys are abused by the priests and this emotionally distances them from their Catholic-convert parents. As they grow up and move to the city to pursue their artistic gifts, they are away from the priests but not from the hostilities and limiting beliefs of colonialism. The triumph is that Jeremiah and Gabriel break expectations. Jeremiah becomes a concert pianist and playwright. Gabriel becomes a professional ballet dancer.

Kiss of the Fur Queen is a beautifully written novel of heartbreak and truth, told at a high cost. The mix of Cree words and mythology creates a sense of musicality that weaves through the story and echoes the life of the author.

Tomson Highway, like Jeremiah, is a playwright and musician. His brother Rene was an accomplished dancer and choreographer, who died too young. Their father was a caribou hunter. I do not know if the novel is autobiographical, but it draws on certain elements of their lives and reflects many of the traumas Indigenous children experienced.

Published by Penguin Random House Canada: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/79881/kiss-of-the-fur-queen-by-tomson-highway/9780385697217

The Grey Wolf by Louise Penny | Book Review

November 15, 2024 / Monique

The Grey Wolf is the 19th instalment of the Inspector Gamache series and readers are once again invited into the charming world of Three Pines. This time, our beloved Chief Inspector finds himself drawn into a perilous investigation where the enemies and allies are not clearly defined.

The story kicks off with a young man who breaks into the Gamache’s Montreal pied a terre. He takes a coat, yet returns it and asks to meet. Bizarre. More chilling is that the young man is run over in broad daylight while standing outside of a cafe with Gamache. He hasn’t provided any insights into who compelled him to break in, and Gamache isn’t even sure that the young man provided his real name; Charles. But obviously there is something worth investigating when the driver of the van is discovered dead.

Like all Gamache novels, Louise Penny delivers an intricately woven narrative that takes us to an isolated monastery in the Quebec wilderness, to the far reaches of the Atlantic coast, and all the way to Washington, Paris and Rome. Many secondary characters from previous novels make their appearance again. And this time the crime seems to be related to water security, but there are very few details for Gamache to work with and it looks more and more like an insight job or coverup by the RCMP and federal government.

The heart of The Grey Wolf lies in Gamache’s enduring humanity. Despite the dangers and moral quandaries, he remains the steadfast leader of his team and upholds his integrity. There is no easy route for Gamache.

Unlike previous novels, there is very little action that happens in Three Pines and I missed the comings and goings of Clare, Gabri, Olivier and Ruth, but Penny deepens the arc of characters we have met briefly before in previous novels, which keeps the richness of the story and broadens our knowledge of others in Gamache’s orbit.

Fans of the Gamache series will enjoy this must-read continuation of the story. If you’re brand new and enjoy shows like the Shetland drama series and DI Jimmy Perez, then you’ll like Gamache, who like Perez is a native to the land he serves and works together with a small group of trusted colleagues to solve crimes that often go beyond the close-knit communities being protected.

A Meditation on Murder by Susan Juby | Book Review

November 11, 2024 / Monique

A Meditation on Murder is the second book featuring Buddhist nun turned butler Helen Thorpe. Helen is happily working for the philanthropic Levine family when she is unexpectedly lent to friend-of-the-family Cartier Hightower. Wait, can that happen? It was NOT a scenario covered in butler school.

Cartier is an online influencer who is addicted to social media, is experiencing extreme online bullying, and is too selfish and pampered to sort herself out. The Levines are hoping that Helen can help Cartier get her act together so she is prepared to make good choices when she inherits her father’s vast fortune.

It’s a tall order.

Cartier is highly influenced by her content creation group The Deep State. None of her fellow creators treat her as a friend, but she’s the money bags so her inclusion in the group seems set. The group’s attitude to Cartier is dismissive, in fact someone is the group seems to be setting her up to be the focus of their audience’s hate. Every accident or insensitive move by the group is blamed on Cartier. But more alarming is that one by one, they are dying unexpectedly.

Can Helen’s meditation practice bring Cartier back to the down-to-earth kid she once was? Can Helen’s extremely efficient butlering get a handle on this wayward influencer group’s many needs? And can Helen tap into her keen observation skills to act, once again, as the detective on hand to solve the murder of Cartier’s friends?

A Meditation on Murder is published by HarperCollins Canada

If you like comedic, cozy mysteries like The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman or The Maid by Nita Prose, then give the Helen Thorpe books a try. The first in the series was Mindful of Murder, but you can read A Meditation on Murder as a standalone.

Mindful of Murder by Susan Juby | Book Review

September 22, 2024 / Monique

In Mindful of Murder, Susan Juby introduces readers to Helen Thorpe, a former Buddhist nun who is both surprisingly calm and unexpectedly thrust into the role of detective. The book marks the start of what promises to be an engaging and quirky series, filled with Juby’s signature wit and charm.

Helen, having just completed her butler training and ready to embark on her dream career, finds her plans interrupted when she is named the executor of the will of her late employer, Edna. This leads her back to Sutil Island, a tranquil, remote spot with a few less-than-tranquil residents. Tasked with evaluating four candidates to determine who is worthy of running Edna’s estate / spiritual retreat centre, Helen quickly discovers that the job is anything but serene. Her assignment involves sorting through a colourful cast of characters—each with their own motives, quirks, and less-than-mindful behaviour. It’s a world full of floral arrangements, meditation class, passive-aggressive feuds, and, of course, murder.

Helen’s Buddhist training is a central theme throughout the novel, offering a unique twist to the traditional cozy mystery genre. Her mindfulness practices and meditative approach to life are juxtaposed against the chaotic, petty, and sometimes ridiculous antics of the other characters, making for a delightful contrast. While Helen herself remains the picture of calm amidst the storm, her classmates—fellow butlers—follow suit, but their single local trainee and the four candidates demonstrate less composure. The way Juby weaves together these personality clashes—amid the pressure of solving a crime—makes for an entertaining, if unusual, detective tale.

Juby’s writing is clever, and she balances humour with the mystery’s unfolding drama well. The novel’s comedic moments are reminiscent of the dry, observational humour found in British mysteries, and the murder itself—believed to be a planned suicide due to Edna’s involvement in the death-positive club —is treated less like a shocking event and more like another quirky island incident to be handled.

If you enjoy cozy mysteries with a fun twist, Mindful of Murder will fit right into your bookshelf. Fans of Alexander McCall Smith’s The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency or Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club will find Helen’s blend of serenity and sly sleuthing refreshing. Or if mystery isn’t your thing, try Susan Juby’s other novels. I loved The Woefield Poultry Collective, and really enjoyed Susan Juby’s talk at the Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts.

Check out Susan Juby’s website for more:

https://susanjuby.com/books/mindful-of-murder/