Tag Archives: 50BookPledge2015

Event Recap | Fourth Annual Ontario Book Blogger Meet-Up

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One of my favourite things about being a book blogger in Toronto is having so many other book bloggers in the area attending the same events. Here’s the thing: squee-ing over the once in a lifetime chance to see Judy Blume in person is pretty amazing. Seeing half a dozen familiar faces in the same room all squee-ing along with you is even better.

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So how awesome is it that five book bloggers banded together and decided to organize an event just for book bloggers to squee over books together? I remember hearing about the first Ontario Book Blogger Meet and thinking it was the best idea ever. Scheduling conflicts kept me from attending previous years’ events, so I’m really glad I was able to attend this year. I’ve heard a lot of great things about the event over the years, and I can say now — it was definitely worth the hype!

Organizers Book Blog Ontario posted a pretty comprehensive recap of the event, and you can read it here. It was held at The Ballroom, in downtown Toronto, which had yummy food, cute staff, and a relaxed vibe perfect for mingling and chatting about books. I got to meet and mingle with book bloggers from around Ontario, and chatted with awesome authors Sally Christie, Erin Bow, Danielle Younge-Ullman and Leah Bobet. To give you an idea of how many bloggers turned up – I swear I probably got to talk to only about half the people in the room, and missed out on meeting authors Kevin Sands and K.A. Tucker. No clue about actual attendance numbers, but it’s pretty incredible to see so many people so passionate about books in one room…and to know that we represent just a tiny fraction of the entire book reading, book loving population in Ontario.

Mainly though, what I remember most from the event is being overwhelmed with gratitude. I feel unbelievably lucky to be a book blogger in Ontario, and to be part of such a warm, welcoming community.

So thank you, first and foremost to Angel, Wendy, Michele, Christa and Liz — the hardworking women behind Book Blog Ontario, who must have spent hours (days / weeks / months) putting this event together. They coordinated the author appearances, worked with publishers to put the swag bags together, booked the venue, and basically did all the hard work so the rest of us bloggers could have a great time. They did a great job, and you can read more about them here.

Books in the swag bag

Books in the goodie bag (not pictured: tea and other swag)

Thank you as well to the publishers who generously provided us with more than enough reading material for the rest of the summer. Thank you, Simon & Schuster Canada, Penguin Random House Canada, Scholastic, HarperCollins Canada, Harlequin, Raincoast, Hachette Canada, Dundurn, PGC, and Quirk Books.

I won a prize pack! (Awesome Book Nerd tote courtesy of Raincoast Books.)

I won a prize pack! (Awesome Book Nerd tote courtesy of Raincoast Books.)

Thank you to all the authors who attended, particularly to Leah Bobet and Erin Bow who kindly signed my copies of their books. It may be cliche, but it’s still always a thrill to realize that authors are regular people too, and you may fangirl like mad over their books but still have enough poise to eat a nacho dripping with guac in front of them.

I haven’t had a chance to read Leah Bobet’s An Inheritance of Ashes yet, but Erin Bow’s The Scorpion Rules kept me captivated from the very first page. Incredible world building.

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Finally, a heartfelt thank you to my fellow bloggers. It was so much fun hanging out with all of you and talking about books, the weather, and I’m pretty sure someone mentioned otters at some point. A special shout out to Jen, whom I haven’t seen in years — it was awesome geeking out with you again!

And thank you, fellow bloggers Michele, Hayley, Chandra, Gisele and Wendy, for the books, and an extra special shoutout to Lynne, who I think may be my book twin because we have such similar tastes in books.

Some book recommendations: Lindsey Kelk’s Always the Bridesmaid (so much frothy fun!), Melissa Clark’s Bear Witness (good, not great) and Frances Brody’s A Woman Unknown (really good British cozy!).

This has been a pretty incredible week of reading for me, mostly thanks to this event, and I’m getting giddy just thinking of which bit of bookish goodness I’ll pick up next.

Any suggestions?

Review | A Robot in the Garden, Deborah Install

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23995237This book caught my attention at the Random House Canada Blogger Preview because it was marketed as “like if Up and Wall-E had a baby.” I love Up, and while I never watched Wall-E, the premise of the book sounded too intriguing to miss: 34 year old Ben Chambers discovers a robot in his garden and embarks on a journey around the world to find out where it came from and return it home.

A Robot in the Garden is an endearing, feel good story. Ben’s quest to find the robot’s home adds a sense of purpose to his generally aimless life, and teaches him about love. The robot Tang is indeed written to be loveable — a child-like total innocent who latches on to Ben and comes to rely on him for everything. I personally found Tang annoying after a while — his helplessness at times struck me as neediness and his wonder at the simplest things was at times cloying. So I wasn’t completely in love with Tang, as I expected I was meant to be, but to be fair, his behaviour is fairly realistic given the world the author built.

To be honest, I was somewhat disappointed that the story took place in a world where robots were everywhere, and that the problem with Tang is that he’s practically obsolete as a model. I suppose when I heard the promo pitch at the Blogger Preview, I’d imagined a world like ours now, and Tang as a rickety, patched up robot that was truly alone in the world because humanoid robots haven’t hit the mainstream yet. (I was about to say that they haven’t been invented yet, but then I remembered this pretty awesome sounding hotel in Japan.) Tang being an obsolete model in a world full of robots makes the story feel a bit more predictable, and the themes raised feel more standard.

That being said, Install’s story is as charming as you’d expect it to be. There’s a hilarious chapter about an android hotel, and a nice subplot about two secondary characters finding love. My favourite part was a scene near the end where Ben goes to a family affair and runs into his ex wife, and it is she who most clearly notices the change that Tang has brought about in him. I love that, because it encapsulates what the whole journey to find Tang’s home has been about: a man finding the humanity in a robot, and a robot helping bring out the humanity in a man.

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Thank you to Random House Canada for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Review | When the Moon is Low, Nadia Hashimi

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23447506Spanning several decades and two generations, Nadia Hashimi’s When the Moon is Low is about an Afghan family forced to flee Taliban rule. Hashimi’s writing is beautiful and evocative, and gently takes us along with her characters’ journey.

When the Moon is Low almost feels like two separate novels in one. We begin with Fereida’s story — a free-spirited schoolteacher, she struggles against the constraints of her society’s codes of propriety for women. I loved reading about her romantic story arc, how what she viewed as true love turned out to be less than idea,l and how she thought an arranged marriage was settling for less, only to find true love within one. The rise of the Taliban threatens her comfortable life, and Hashimi’s depiction of life under Taliban rule is horrific in its strong but underlying current of tension and fear. In a way, I almost wish the story could have ended with Fereida finding love — that segment alone was romantic and beautiful, and spoke to the struggle of being a woman who wanted more than conservative society permitted.

Fereida’s family’s escape to London forms the rest of the book, and perhaps fittingly, feels like a completely different book altogether. The undercurrent of tension has become all too real and all too immediate, and at each step of the journey is a very tangible threat of being sent back home. It is in the second half of the book that Hashimi switches narrative gears and begins to tell the story from the point of view of Fereida’s son Saleem. In a way, I understand the rationale behind this move — Saleem’s story of trying to earn enough money to finish their journey is far more action-packed and reveals far more of their environment than Fereida’s, who has to stay home to care for her other child.

Hashimi doesn’t shy away from violence. A particularly horrific scene at a wedding reveals how suddenly one’s cocoon of safety can be stripped away. Along with other, similar incidents, it reminds us of how each moment can be filled with fear, and how Fereida, Saleem and other characters can barely afford to ever let their guard down.

Saleem’s story is interesting in many ways — he meets other undocumented refugees in Europe and a woman who is helping them find permanent homes — but I wish his narrative hadn’t come at the expense of Fereida’s. As a woman in that particular place and time, Fereida has such a rich, complex role to play, and I would have wanted to hear more of what she had to say. So it was disappointing to see her gradually disappear into the background as Saleem’s story took over.

True to the spirit of her subject matter, Hashimi doesn’t offer any easy answers. The book’s ending is ambiguous enough, but more than that, we’ve spent enough time with these characters and the people around them to know that there is no such thing as a truly safe haven. It’s a sad story, beautifully written, and it will move you.

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Thank you to Harper Collins Canada for an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.