Bookish appetites and desires

Author: Steve Vernon First Published: 2006 Genre: Folklore Rating: ★★☆ Have you ever stood on a pier or wharf, inhaling the fresh ocean breeze, and wondered to yourself, "Gee, I wonder who haunts these waters?" Well, if you're traveling to Nova Scotia then look no further! This book is packed end-to-end with ghost stories from all over the province, including some of the surrounding islands. As much as I hate horror movies -yes, because I'm a scaredy-cat- I do love a good ghost story, so this book to me, as a native Nova Scotian, held so much promise. That promise fell a bit short. Spooky! What did I enjoy about this book? It was an honest trip around the province, full of rich history and varying locales. From colonial and privateering times to the more recent 20th century, there's plenty of history for everyone. It paints Nova Scotia, which has an admittedly short recorded history in comparison to other areas of the world, as the place to be if y...

Author: Cameron Dokey   First Published: 1997   Genre: Fantasy   Rating: ★★★★    Have you ever met someone who was a fantastic story teller? What was it about them that enchanted you? Was it their ability to potentially save an entire kingdom from utter ruin just by telling a story? If so, your storyteller sounds like our very own Shahrazad, the storyteller's daughter. What a refreshing read this was compared to some of the books I've been reading lately. At times it was quick-witted, at times it was mysterious, and throughout the smaller stories it wove a larger tale all-together. From struggling with accepting who we are, to love, loss and betrayal, with all the heartache and self-doubt to boot, and a few stumbles and surprises along the way, Cameron Dokey has created something to pull on the heart strings. With deep, hidden messages in a larger, easy-to-read format, this is definitely worth the time, especially if you're in...

Author: Nnedi Okorafor     First Published: 2015     Genre: Science Fiction     Rating: ★★☆     Have you ever had the urge to just up and leave it all behind? Your people. Your culture. Your family. Your planet. Binti did, despite it going against the grain of everything she knew and cherished, in the pursuit of higher education. The premise of this novella is fantastic! A young woman from a technologically advanced, yet relatively reclusive and superstitious people, is the first of her people to leave Earth, motivated by the opportunity to study at a prestigious school, all-expenses paid, in the Milky Way galaxy. Despite her family and friends having forbade her from leaving their desert and their community, she snuck off into the night, arriving in time to meet her transporter. This transporter is where her dreams and nightmares collided as disaster struck and surprising events took place. Th...

  Author: M. Verano   First Published: 2016   Genre: Horror    Rating: ★★★☆   Do you remember what it's like to be a teenager? Full of life a vigor? What were your passions? What did you want to be when you grew up? Maybe a singer like Laetitia? How about possessed and tormented by evil? Or is it something evil? The way that M. Verano set up this book, doing it in blog and diary form I thought was an interesting style choice - and as someone who writes a blog, I'm a bit partial to this choice. It allowed for a sort of stream of consciousness that, given that this is all supposed to be taking place to a 15-year-old in modern times, was very appropriate. It also allowed for more of the raw chaos, panic, and emotion to show through as a bystander, which added to the intrigue of the story. With the writing itself my only complaint would be that I felt that at times there were events or characters added that, to me, added no rea...

Author: Allen Williams   First Published: 2010   Genre: Fantasy   Rating: ★★☆   Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be trapped in the dark, twisted, and enchanted kitchen of witches who have evil intentions towards you? Then this is the book for you! Welcome to The Witches' Kitchen, where everything is trying to eat or destroy you, you happen to make a few friends, and - oh! - don't forget, you're a magical toad. This book has been on my shelf -again- for around a decade, and unlike A Company of Swans I can understand why I left this one for so long. There was so much promise in the premise of this book that it did not deliver on. Everything seemed a little too convenient, a little too fast paced, and too many characters and things coming out of nowhere, many of which held no significant value to the story. While this book is considered Young Adult, I would recommend it more to children, maybe 10-13, just because of some o...