7. Wolf in White Van

By John Darnielle                   

Disappointing.

Here I am exactly three years later retroactively adding this as an entry and I cannot for the life of me recall what this novel was about.  It has such a great cover though.

6. Through Black Spruce

By Joseph Boyden

Picked this up at a secondhand book shop in Charlottetown a couple of years after reading the excellent Three Day Road.  I think I would have read this sooner had I not learned about the controversy of Boyden’s indigenous ancestry, which blew up in 2016.  I remember talking about this with an old friend who was visiting from Winnipeg. 

She still recommended that I read Through Black Spruce, saying if I liked Three Day Road, I’ll like this one too, as she thought TBS was even better. 

So I finally gave it a go, and was disappointed with the book as a whole.  Although it was meant to be a follow up, as the son of the protagonist from TDR, Will Bird, is now an old bush pilot who spends most of the novel in a coma at the hospital. The narrative weaves between Will's life before his accident and his niece Annie, who is looking for her sister, a model who went missing in NYC. 

As you can tell from the summary,   was not like Three Day Road - at all. It was inferior in every way, from narrative cohesian, characterization and quality of writing. The one aspect I did appreciate was seeing how First Nations characters who are at home in the wilds, but can also navigate the urban streets of Toronto and social in-circles of Manhattan. 

But compared to brilliance of Three Day Road, I found Through Black Spruce rather superficial, lifeless and boring.  I had trouble getting into the character of Annie.  The writing was very distant and unrelatable, and because I didn't really care what would happen, I had to force myself to finish the book.

5. The Last One

By Alexandra Oliva

The second loaner from my boss L.

Almost 3 years later, I had to look up the premise of The Last One to remember what it was about.  Since L. was quite stoked that I enjoyed Dark Matter so much, he immediately lent me this “literary” post-apocalyptic novel about Survivor-type contestants.  

Sadly, The Last One proved to be a mild dud.  I recall not enjoying the inner dialogue of the protagonist and finding the secondary characters annoyingly two-dimensional.

4. Dark Matter

By Blake Crouch 

My colleague/manager L. lent this to me.  I think we were talking about books we had read, and how he likes to follow up on amazon recommendations for contemporary sci fi.  He actually likes to purchase hardcovers as he prefers the bigger format.  He was psyched to lend me Dark Matter, which turned out to be a big hit with both myself and Olman, whom I lent the book to after I was done.   

I read the book over the weekend; I think OIman read it in a single evening!  That’s how tight and gripping a thriller it was. 

Crouch also wrote the series Wayward Pines.

3. The Circle

By Dave Eggers

As a thriller, it was pretty good.  I loved the backdrop of the vast Google-like corporate campus and its hierarchical hive of employees.

How the protagonist gets sucked into social media, earning points and climbing the ranks.  It was just when my own tech company had a new, youngish (under 50) CEO at the helm and was trying to rebrand itself, update its backend infrastructure, and modernize its corporate culture into one that encouraged (but not push) collaboration and extroversion. 

Even though I found the protagonist unlikable and unrelatable, I didn’t mind that fact, as the annoying naivete of her character suited the story, especially with what she did to her poor parents at the end, accidentally bursting in on them with her live camera.  That was brutal. 

Soon after finishing the book, I watched the competent movie adaptation on Netflix.  Even though I was given this book as a Xmas gift from my BIL, I didn’t like it enough to keep it, so I traded it at SW Welch.  Too bad, as Olman asked about it several months later, when he read about how it portrays life at a giant tech company.  You snooze, you lose.

 

2. The Cutting Room

By Louise Welsh 

I picked this up when we were used book hunting in Charlottetown at one of their many excellent book stores.  I think this copy was at The Book Emporium, but not sure.  It was big, with different floors.  I was upstairs in their huge fiction section.  Surprisingly I only found a few books to purchase, but Olman found a pile as usual. 

 I remember I also got a charming fairy craft book for my daughter.  They were cut-out fairies with cut-out outfits painted in a Rosetti-esque Romantic style.  We played with the cut-outs while was had an early dinner el fresco at a nearby brewery.  It was a pleasant day.

This is the 2002 debut novel of Louise Welsh.  It had an interesting premise, which was why I had this book on my list (which I consulted at The Book Emporium).  The narrative was competently executed but I didn't enjoy it as much as I had expected. 

1. A Visit From the Goon Squad

By Jennifer Egan

I'm usually good at remembering where I bought or found a book, but for some reason, I can't quite remember where I acquired this one, but it certainly didn't have this cover.  I don't know why I like to recall where or how I came upon a book, but it's not dissimilar to how my neighbour/real-estate agent would remember all the homes she had ever visited.  

Now that I'm jogging my mind as I type, I'm fairly sure that this was a BMV find.  It was a mass market paperback, exactly something that would end up at the BMV.