Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen

I read this on a friend's recommendation. The story is about a young man who joins a circus, having just gotten out of veterinary college. It's a good book, the type that swallows you up into another place. The characters are interesting and maybe the best part is simply learning about what circus life was like back in its heyday. The plot itself keeps a good pace although as things started to snowball towards the climax I started skipping paragraphs in order to get there faster. Guess I'm not one for suspense!

Stardust by Neil Gaiman

There are probably a few people who've read this book, seeing as I borrowed it from the family bookshelf. Neil Gaiman seems to be the It guy of fantasy these days, with his name popping up everywhere. Having read this book, I can say that he seems well-deserving of it.

Stardust, to me, had everything a classic fantasy novel should have, with a magical world that is both long ago and far away but with enough here-and-now to give it a sense of timelessness yet also of having taken place not-so-long ago. The villains are appropriately wicked, there are plenty of magical elements, and the plot keeps a brisk pace without leaving out any of the elements that make for a satisfying read. I definitely found it both amusing and engaging!

Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden

I borrowed this book from the library on the basis that it won the Giller Prize, having read all of last year's nominees which, although weren't all necessarily my type of book, were all very well-written, good reads (and last year's Giller Prize winner made it into the ranks of my all-time favourite books.) This year's winner did not disappoint and was engaging from page one.

Set in Moosonee, far in northern Ontario near James Bay, the story alternates between an old Cree bush pilot and his niece, jumping from past to present to follow their paths to the current circumstances. Mixed in is a lot of story about life in this small town far north in Ontario, I enjoyed the descriptions of hunting, fishing, and trapping and the beauty and isolation of the surrounding wilderness. The story revolves around an old rivalry between two families in the town and the two main characters, Will Bird who battles with the sorrows of his past and tries to protect his loved ones, and his niece Annie Bird who goes south to search for her disappeared sister and for her own identity. It's beautifully written and a pleasure to read and the characters are well-developed and engaging. I enjoyed it so much that I am going to reserve all of this authour's other books for future reading! Read it!

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

"Barbara Kingsolver and her family sweep readers along on their journey away from the industrial-food pipeline to a rural life in which they vow to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it." -from inside book jacket-

I was inspired by some of Tach's reads about the food industry to do a little reading in this area too, figuring that I enjoy reading about cooking and nutrition, and this book was a pretty good introduction. Barbara Kingsolver is a fiction novelist so this non-fiction memoir about her family's commitment to eating only locally-grown food for one year was as engaging as a good fiction novel. It's a nice, broad read on the US food industry as it intersects with the farming industry and the politics, economics, and energy costs involved in bringing food to today's table, going into all kinds of topics such as local eating, food security, sustainable farming, food policy, organic versus conventional farming, fair trade, nutrition, big business, and preserving farming traditions and heirloom seeds. The book doesn't go into so much depth as to overwhelm you but I think it gives enough information to really motivate change and provides some good resources for further research, too.

If you're interested in the local food movement and understanding why it's important, this is a good book choice. If you are already well-read on this topic then maybe not so much. The authour undertook this project around the same time as other local food projects such as the authours of the 100 Mile Diet and Gary Paul Nabhan's local food project in the Arizona desert, but Kingsolver wanted to prove that you didn't have to be an extremist to eat local (that being said, some people might not consider homemade cheese-making and turkey-breeding exactly typical of the average person) and I would say that it is written for a general audience. I did find her to be a tad too earnest at times (y'know- such a noble, valiant quest and all) but I guess that comes with the enthusiasm of any new project. All in all a pretty good read!