Good Reads

Over the winter holidays, I got back into something I absolutely love to do — read.

When I was younger, in elementary, middle and high school, I spent a lot of my free time reading. I'd read in the car on the way to skating or dance lessons, or stay up way too late finishing "one more chapter". My favourite Sunday afternoons were spent reading next to my two siamese cats as they sunned themselves in the light streaming through my bedroom window.

I've been busy the last couple years, but I'm not complaining. I love the program I'm taking in school, the people I'm taking it with and what I'm working toward. But there's not a lot of time for reading books for pleasure when you're on the fast-paced track to graduating college and building your career. But, I'm fine with that. As I said, I picked up some books on my bucket list over the holidays and three of them were simply too good not too share.

You may remember the news coverage from 2008 about a young female journalist kidnapped in Somalia. That young woman was Amanda Lindhout from Calgary, Alberta.

Taken by anti-government Somali terrorists, Amanda was held hostage for 460 days along with a photojournalist from Australia. Amanda survived rape, torture and countless days on the edge of despair as her captors left her in complete darkness for days with hardly no food or water. Five years later, Amanda has written a memoir that is unbelievably riveting and inspiring all at once. She is truly one heck of a woman to write about her experience, and find forgiveness in her heart.

Alice Munro is simply a master-writer of the small things in life. She has a remarkable ability to make the details of any ordinary relationship interesting. Her latest collection of short stories, Dear Life shows us how the most seemingly small decisions can truly alter a person's life and the lives of those around them. 

I love this collection for bringing me back to my childhood with rich descriptions of what ice cream tastes like on a hot summer day and at the same time, propelling me into the lives of characters who I've never met anyone like in real life.  

The Giver meets The Hunger Games in this breakout novel by Veronica Roth. The first of a three-book series, Divergent takes place in dystopian Chicago, where society is divided into five factions. At 16-years-old the main character, Beatrice Prior is now considered an adult and forced to choose which faction she will live and work among for the rest of her life.

There's plenty of thrill and action in this page-turner as Beatrice navigates her way through this oddly organized world and negotiates her place among others in her faction. If you've never read dystopian fiction, I highly suggest reading this book as an introduction to the genre.