On November 30th, the lovely Ashleigh Gardner opened her doors to the book loving hordes for our annual Holiday Edition. This time we celebrated with our biggest group to date (22 people), loads of holiday treats, mulled wine, and a version of the present game that might as well have been called “Just steal whatever Jen has.”
We also managed to talk about books, with each person given 140 seconds by timekeeper Erin Balser (who now had a good reason for yelling regularly). Here’s what everyone crammed into their commercial-length presentations:
JK — Motorcycles & Sweetgrass, by Drew Hayden Taylor
Warm, funny retelling of the Nanabush legend
A little big of magic, a lot of hi-jinks and some vengeful raccoons
JK’s Advent Book Blog recommendation!
Emily — Plainsong, Kent Haruf
Weaving together the stories of a small town outside Denver, Colorado
Crusty old bachelor brothers — favourite characters
Descriptive passages, sparse but meaningful
Description of cattle branding spot on — cure for country town nostalgia
Recommendation from her smart mom.
Loretta — The Emperor of All Maladies, by Siddharta Mukherjee
“It’s a cancer book, and I’m not into cancer”
One of the best books she’s ever read
History of the war of cancer, enough stories to make a great narrative
Loretta had a little “cry on [...]
