🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟➕ Every now and then one of those books comes along that makes you stop, take a beat, and reset. This is just such a book - a heartbreaking, gorgeous compendium of interviews, journal entries, and notes concerning who must be (and still is) “the greatest Canadian hero ever”. This,…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 Absolutely gripping and quite possibly the scariest book this reader has encountered this year, this real-life memoir, written by a first-person female former practicing member of Christian Fundamentalism (at its most devout) is a harrowing deep-dive into toxic patriarchal religious dogma and its stealthy indoctrination of the most horrifying…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 A clear-eyed look at the tragedy of aging with dementia, and the enormous burden placed on those left behind. In this detailed and chilling memoir, the author, a hospital speech pathologist in her fifties, must cope with the rapid cognitive decline of not only her father, as he approaches…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 A memoir packed with heartrending revelations, damning the instigator and obfuscating the author’s grief over the sudden death of her husband, Sean, at the young age of forty seven. For Sean was, in fact, a bastard. A terrible one - being both a liar and a cheat and hiding…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 “Can I be a boy?” A question asked by a six-year-old, born a girl, to their mother - without guile - rooted in an innocence that is devastating in its clear-eyed belief in a world that can simply make things right. A world that does not unfortunately, and in…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 This candid and beautifully written memoir is a heartbreaking look at family, sisters in particular, and the healing we can and cannot do. As Kelly, an officer in the Canadian Armed Forces, comes to terms with her relationship with her maddening, often dishonest and drug-addicted sister, Meghan, it’s not…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟➕ “I am out with lanterns, looking for myself” - Emily Dickinson With perfect alignment, the cover quote (copied above), encapsulates the beauty and the wonder that is this book. Written by the poet Maggie Smith, this memoir details, with incredible candor, what it may take to find yourself, or…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Quite likely the most heartbreaking memoir this reader has encountered, and without a doubt, the most hopeful. A present-day top-tier Hollywood stunt-woman, as a child, Kimberly Shannon Murphy endured pain and trauma no child should ever encounter. Left vulnerable and entirely unprotected by her parents, Kimberly was targeted by…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 “It’s only when we feel safe, not judged, not crazy, that a lot of other people feel some of the exact same things, that we can better identify what we are really feeling, and what we really need. We can better hear our own voice. And not just with…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 A warm and remarkably candid memoir shared by the man who became a TV sensation as Arthur Fonzarelli aka “The Fonz”, a role so iconic many of us have come to equate the actor with the TV persona himself. Henry Winkler however, as we see clearly here, is quite…