📚 Book Reviews! 📕

I was so happy to see the sunshine. And it is WARM in the sun. I sat out in my winter coat, under a blanket, reading! It was delightful! I finished this book Tuesday afternoon.

 Wonderland (fiction 2015)

This is a psychological thriller, by Jennifer Hillier, who resides in Toronto, Ontario, with her family. It is not for the faint of heart. 

Originally, it was only released as an eBook (which I do not, as a rule, read). Happily she persuaded her US publisher to release it in paperback in 2023. It was a great, gruesome murder mystery. In terms of the setting, it is loosely based on Hillier's experiences at Canada's Wonderland, north of Toronto, and time spent in Seattle. She is quite the tricky writer, with a vivid imagination. 

Moon of the Turning Leaves 

Waub Rice is a former CBC Ottawa reporter (20 years). He has written a sequel to his previous book, as well as moving back home to Sudbury. He is now a full-time author, living on his ancestral lands in Northern Ontario. Here is an excellent review of this book. 

When I reviewed his first book (BOOK REVIEW: Moon of the Crusted Snow) in 2018, he had one child. He and his wife now have three sons. 

The response was amazing to his first book. I was anxious for the sequel. He writes about the end of times, when people are fighting for what little food there is. He lauds Anishinaabe culture and Anishinaabe people! He provides a pronunciation guide online: 

 

The Dive 

This is a heckuva book, published in 2021. It is the true story of a deep sea rescue.

On August 29th, 1973, a routine dive to the telecommunication cable that snakes along the Atlantic sea bed went badly wrong. Pisces III, with Roger Chapman and Roger Mallinson (Wiki) onboard, had tried to surface when a catastrophic fault suddenly sent the mini-submarine tumbling to the ocean bed—almost half a mile below.

After a deep sea diving submersible exploded, the Titan (Wiki) in 2023, I was curious. ←This book provides a lot of information about the history of  submersibles. I got bogged down, put the book down, and skipped to the rescue. I finished it when sitting with a client. The Dive is being made into a movie, apparently. 

McGinty, Stephen (2021). The Dive: The Untold Story of the World's Deepest Submarine Rescue. New York: Pegasus Books. ISBN 978-1-64313-746-9. OCLC 1202305663

The In-Between, by Hadley Vlahos, RN

This is an interesting book, basically an autobiography by a palliative care nurse. I was quite amazed. Since I do regular hospice and respite care work, I was curious. It is a good book for anyone caring for loved ones who are dying. The end-of-life care people recieve truly depends upon where they live, their socioeconomics, and how much help they find. The important piece is to find peace of mind.

What I find interesting was that she confirmed many things I've heard, seen, done or read about end-of-life care. It is complicated. I remember sitting with my first mother-in-law who was dying of lung cancer, as well as a secondary brain tumour. She was worried about my sister-in-law, and I assured her that her daughter fought hard for her parents (both in the same hospital),  and she would be able to cope. When my father was in a coma, dying, I said that he was OK to leave us, and that mom would be waiting for him to take him under her wing.