BOOKWORM
JANE AUSTEN: 250 YEARS OF RELEVANCE
A Jane Austen Year, Pitkin, $47. Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, and this year marks 250 years of her unwavering popularity.
A Jane Austen Year charts the life, novels and legacy of one of the world’s most beloved authors. It offers a seasonal guide to Jane Austen’s House, the enchanting Hampshire cottage, now a museum, where her genius flourished. Here, she wrote, revised and published all six of her globally loved books – Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.
The book is written from Jane Austen’s House and photographs give an idea of the unparalleled collection of Austen treasures visitors discover, including items of furniture, household objects, items of jewellery, portraits of friends and the tiny writing tablets at which she wrote.
Dip into Jane’s affectionate letters to her sister Cassandra – reproduced in her beautiful handwriting – detailing the minutiae of running a home. In March she writes of spring cleaning and of the joy of purchasing a sponge cake in June.
Recipes for food, drink and salves and ointments, and recipes that Jane herself would have loved.
Discover the story of the publication of Pride and Prejudice. First thought to be written as a series of letters and called First Impressions. While a literary acquaintance assured her brother that it was “much too clever to have been written by a woman,” she herself harboured doubts about it being “rather too light & bright & sparkling – it wants shade”. She received 110 pounds for the manuscripts, – she was hoping for 150.
Austen mania gets its fair share in the book with photographs from film adaptations of her books including Gurinder Chaddha’s Bride and Prejudice. All in all, a beautiful book that Janeites will treasure.
Homepage image credit: DEXTER FERNANDES on Unsplash.
A WOLF IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING
The Black Wolf by Louise Penny, Minotaur, $30. In The Grey Wolf, readers were introduced to the Indigenous legend of the Grey Wolf and the Black Wolf. Both reside within us. Who wins depends on which one we feed.
In it, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache came close to losing his life in the line of duty, but was saved, and averted a domestic terrorist attack in Montreal.
But did he? What if he nabbed the wrong wolf? What if the Black Wolf is still out there, feeding, gaining strength, waiting?
Gamache believes he may have fallen for deliberate misdirection and allowed the conspiracy to grow.
And knows that the Black Wolf must have powerful allies – in law enforcement, in industry, in organized crime, and in government. How high, how deep, does the rot go? Can he and his small team trust anyone?
They regroup in the sanctuary of Three Pines and comb through every possible clue, every minute detail they might have overlooked.
An internationally best-selling author, Louise Penny does not presume that you have read all her previous books, or if you have, that you remember all of the details. She reminds readers how the paths of the main characters came to intersect. The lack of arrogance is refreshing.
She also sprinkles little anecdotes about historical and other figures. Wilson Bentley who, on January 15, 1885, became the first person in the world to photograph a snowflake. Canadian pilot Billy Bishop (yes, the one with the airport named after him). The Haskell Free Library in Stanstead, Quebec, which straddles both Canada and the US.
In a masterful bringing together of strands of eco terrorism and political corruption at the highest levels, she has come up with yet another page-turner.
Her books have always been more than whodunits, as she delves into misogyny, the rights of Indigenous Peoples, the horror of residential schools. Now she turns to climate change and ecological disasters – man-made in more ways than one. To the threats that lurk – and proliferate – in the dark web.
It is unbelievable how topical it is.
But water security had all sorts of meaning. The danger to it was not simply from pollution or even deliberate poisoning. A whole new threat was emerging globally, and Canada was about to demonstrate to the rest of the world how insecure a water-rich country could be.
As Penny writes in her Author’s note, “I wrote this book over the course of 2024, and turned in the final draft to my publisher in September 2024. Imagine my surprise when I started spotting headlines in the new year that could have been ripped right from the book...”
Days after I finished reading the book Trump shut off access to the Haskell Free Library.
Life imitates art.
TRAVELLING WITH A “WEAK” PASSPORT
Airplane Mode by Shahnaz Habib, Catapult, $23. The book cover offers “an irreverent history of travel”. I started reading expecting a somewhat humorous take on the pleasures and perils of travel. Airplane Mode is not quite as it’s advertised. I realize I am at the wrong departure gate, but Shahnaz Habib takes the reader on a flight to destinations hitherto unexplored.
Airplane Mode explores the socio-political history of travel “from the perspective of a Third World-raised woman of colour”. What does it mean to travel with a passport that has a lower ranking (based on the number of countries offering visa-free entries to its holder)?
“It is a fundamental paradox of visa regimes that the poorer your nation is, the more you have to pay to obtain a visa, while the citizens of wealthy nations pay less or nothing at all. There is an injustice here at the level of human rights, but it is even more stark when we consider how free trade is thrust down the throats of poor countries, while free movement is so blithely denied. The paradox deepens when you adjust visa costs against the purchasing power of different currency regimes and the wage discrepancies across the globe. How does the cost of an average tourist visa translate across the world? An April 2021 article analyzed data sets of visa-application costs across the globe and concluded that while Western, Northern, and Southern Europeans, North Americans, and Australians and New Zealanders have to work for less than two hours to pay for the average tourist visa, Central Asians have to work more than ten days, Southern Asians have to work two weeks, and sub-Saharan Africans have to work three weeks to pay for the same document. Travel is not just less bureaucratic; it is also much cheaper with a Western passport.”
Habib threads the ever-evolving dynamics of travel into her personal history as a child growing up in Kerala, as an adult curious about the world, and as an immigrant in the United States with loved ones across continents.
Living in the First World, her soul in the Third World, and bridging that divide with endless wait for visas, check-ins and sometimes difficult immigration officers...travel these days is very personal and political.
STORMY WATERS
Journey from the North by Storm Jameson, Pushkin Press, $48. After a lifetime of writing a novel every year, Storm Jameson turned to a memoir with the ambition ‘to write without lying’. The result was an extraordinary reckoning with how she had lived: her childhood in Whitby, shadowed by a tempestuous, dissatisfied mother; an early, unhappy marriage and her decision to leave her young son behind while she worked in London; a tenaciously pursued literary career, always marked by the struggle to make money; and her lifelong political activism, including as the first female president of English PEN, helping refugees escape Nazi Germany. In a conversational voice, Jameson tells of the great figures she knew and events she witnessed: encounters with H.G. Wells and Rose Macaulay, and travels across Europe as fascism was rising. An honest, unembellished autobiography.
SUBLIME READ
How to Catch a Mole by Marc Hamer, Greystone Books, $29.95. Marc Hamer, a former mole catcher, tells the story of what led him to his strange career – from sleeping among hedges as a homeless teen to weeding windswept gardens in Wales – and why he eventually gave it up.
Here I am myself, an animal like the others: I have no behaviour that I must explain, nobody to explain it to. I am here to catch the moles. The simplicity of being here in this solitary task leads me deeper and deeper into the magnificent connectedness that gives me what I need.
He shares the secrets of his craft. And his poems about the land and the people and the universe that envelope us all in a deep embrace.
A sublime read.
VERY MURAKAMI
End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland by Haruki Murakami, Everyman’s Library, $39.99. As you would expect him to, Haruki Murakami takes you “across two parallel narratives, in and out of a Town surrounded by walls” drawing “a mind-bending universe in which Lauren Bacall, Bob Dylan, unicorns, a split-brained data processor, a deranged scientist, his shockingly undemure daughter, and various thugs, librarians and subterranean monsters collide”. The book promises a deep dive into “the very nature of consciousness”
ISIS BRIDES
Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis, Tiny Reparations Books, $37.99. When Nadia Amin, PhD, publishes an article on methods for rehabilitating ISIS brides, the UN offers an opportunity to lead a deradicalization program for ISIS-affiliated women.
In Iraq, she quickly realizes the UN is a mess of competing interests, the Iraqi government has no intention of approving her program and her team isn’t much help. Then she meets Sara, a hilarious foul-mouthed East Londoner who joined ISIS at just 15 and vows to get her home. But as her brown-saviour fantasies crumble, Nadia begins to wonder if one can save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.
A fierce, funny and razor-sharp exploration of radicalism, family and the quest for belonging.
OLD FRIENDS
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, illustrated by Dave Aikins, Random House, $12.50. Some cherished traditions never lose their magic. Belting out Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer with your kids being one. This sweet little book adds a layer to the story with Rudolph helping find homes for his friends on the Island of Misfit Toys. Because he knows what makes you different makes you special!
TEEN REVIEW
By LAMAR KASSAB
Powerless by Lauren Roberts, Simon & Schuster, $24.99. Lauren Roberts’ Powerless is set in the brutal realm of Ilya, where society is divided between the magically gifted Elites and the powerless Ordinaries. Paedyn Gray, an Ordinary, survives by tricking others into believing she has powers – a dangerous game in a world where the powerless are executed. Her disguise draws her into the deadly Purging Trials, a competition designed to showcase strength and eliminate weakness.
Like The Hunger Games, Powerless features a heroine who masks vulnerability with wit and resilience, challenging corrupt hierarchies. Where the first builds a sweeping political rebellion, Powerless narrows its lens to Paedyn’s personal struggle, romance, and the tension between deception and truth.
Its fast pace, sharp banter, and the chemistry between characters, will appeal to fans of romance and dystopia. The Purging Trials echo the spectacle of the Hunger Games, though at times the romantic focus overshadows the deeper exploration of class injustice. Still, the blend of danger, strategy, and forbidden love makes the story compelling. Powerless is a bold tale of survival, identity, and defiance against a system built to erase difference, a thrilling reminder that even the powerless can shape destiny.
• Lamar Kassab is a Brampton Library youth member.