What book has kept you turning the pages recently? We were looking for your recommendations and Review readers did not disappoint!

These days we are focusing on local things to do outdoors, but here is a list of ‘good reads’ for those days when you need to stay indoors. And best of all, Cynthia Martin says the Champlain Library has most of the titles mentioned below!

Review publisher Louise Sproule will kick things off. She is currently listening to ‘The Pull of the Stars’ by Emma Donoghue — in the form of an audio book available through Overdrive when you are a member of your local library!

Editor Reid Masson is a big fan of local history and says the recently released ‘Caledonia Springs – The Rise and Fall of One of Canada’s Grandest Hotels’, by Colin Affleck, graces a permanent spot on his coffee table – when it’s around. “So many people have borrowed it, that I’m never sure where it is.”

Review staff, Dorothy Hodge is reading ‘Jonny Appleseed’, by Joshua Whitehead. “Every year my youngest daughter and I each try to read a different book from the Canada Reads book list and then share our options and thoughts. We try to follow the radio discussions on the CBC Listen app, so our schedules don’t have to line up. Neither of us are big on book clubs so it is away of sharing and enjoying that works for us. The Canada Reads list has not let us down yet!”

And below is what Review readers are reading these days!

Alice Higginson MacLaurin – The Mystery of Mrs Christie by Marie Benedict
Diane Bourgault – The Spoon Stealer by Lesley Crewe
Deb Chamberlain – The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny
Lisha Merrill – Year One by Nora Roberts
Mary Weese – Any one of David Baldacci’s books
Brad Ingram – The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music by Dave Grohl (Listen to the audio book, he adds so much!)
Kathy Dandy Gray – The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
Christine Anderson – The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab
Susan Assaly – The Mountain Shadow by Gregory David Roberts (3494 Pages the 2nd part of Shantram!)
Cynthia Martin – Yellow Wife by Sadeqa Johnson
Camille Campeau – Kukum by Michel Jean (Michel Jean is a Innu television journalist and author. He is currently the noon news anchor of TVA Nouvelles on TVA, and was formerly an anchor on TVA’s newsmagazine JE and for the 24-hour news channel RDI. Kukum means grandmother in Innu. It is a “roman” based on his great-grandmother and ancestors’ lives before us. Every Canadian should read this book. The English translation is coming soon. I also read Atuk in which Mr. Jean talks about residential schools, his grandmother’s life and the discovery of his culture and Tiohtiáke (Montreal) where the story makes you enter the lives of homeless Indigenous and Inuit people Cabot Square encampment in Montreal.)
Louise Goulet Dodd – Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty by Anderson Cooper/Katherine Howe
Angie Plant-Powered Parker – The Lost Apothecary
Donna Parker – A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles.
Charmaine Overbeek – Had to laugh at this .. I am a primary Ed teacher. . The best reads I get are, “We’re going on a Bear Hunt”, and, “The Hungry Hungry Caterpillar” . Can recommend “The Three little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig” . These books do make the list of good reads if you are a little person.

L’Orignal author Colin Affleck (above) documents the history of the luxurious Grand Hotel in his new book ‘Caledonia Springs – The Rise and Fall of One of Canada’s Grandest Hotels’. The book has found a permanent spot on Review Editor Reid Masson’s coffee table – when it’s not being borrowed by friends. PHOTO: REID MASSON