Je vais vous dire un secret: j'ai envoyé un dossier de candidature à l'Université de Toronto le 15 décembre... pour faire une maîtrise... en droit! En 2024 j'ai commencé à apprendre le japonais (et j'en fais toujours au minimum une heure tous les jours!) et je suis allée au Japon; en 2025 j'ai organisé une... Lire la Suite →

Your Brain on Art, by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross, was not quite the book I expected. I expected something light and easy to read, but it was a deeply researched and fascinating book about every single aspect of art and beyond. It made me think "oh, I need to do this!" and "oh, I... Lire la Suite →

At a conference I was attending in Toronto this week, I noticed that I had a hard time understanding speakers who had a foreign accent. This is weird, because I worked with international students until I changed jobs recently, and some had foreign accents that were sometimes quite strong but I had no difficulties understanding... Lire la Suite →

Five minutes into this book, I was already regretting my purchase! It was read by a narrator that I found over-the-top although she nailed the auntie accents, and the story itself was really stupid — as in, "oh my god, this boy is so cute and his eyes are sparkling and I am so in... Lire la Suite →

This book by Sandra Perron was painful to read, but also amazing. It is the true story of a young woman who, in the 80s and early 90s dreamed of being in the military and ended up being the first Canadian woman in the infantry. Throughout her training and career, she faced terrible sexism, bullying,... Lire la Suite →

This book, by Rachel Barr, took me a little while to read even though it wasn't long because I found the narrator (who is also the author) a bit soporific--which was not a bad thing when I listened to her in the evening, but not so great while I was driving. It was a pretty... Lire la Suite →

I am trying to read books by Canadian authors instead of American authors, so I found this, by André Alexis, on a list of award-winning books. This book was weird and amusing and depressing and very creative. This is the story of 15 dogs who receive the gifts of consciousness and language from the two... Lire la Suite →

"History is a damn dim candle over a damn dark abyss." W. Stull Holt. It is weird to say that this was an incredibly fascinating book and also a very boring book. Maybe boring is not the right word, maybe "too packed with information to be read easily" might be better. This very dense and... Lire la Suite →

This book looked very interesting and was indeed quite good. At the beginning, we learn about the beginnings of forensic science ("forensic" meaning "used in connection with the detection of crime"), with the first time it was possible to tell if blood came from an animal or a human, blood types, DNA comparisons, etc. Very... Lire la Suite →

Nothing to See Here (Les Enfants sont calmes, en français), by Kevin Wilson, was one of the sweetest books I've read in a while. It looked very weird, and sounded even weirder, but I found it by googling "books that are not too depressing, too complicated, or too stupid" and that was a suggestion, so... Lire la Suite →

The Uncommon Reader, by Alan Bennett, is a very short book--took me only two hours to read it (in electronic format). And I loved it. In this story, Queen Elizabeth II one day discovers a "travelling library" near her palace and feels compelled to borrow a book, any book (because her dogs were barking loudly).... Lire la Suite →

This collection of essays is fascinating because it spans about 35 years! Some of the essays are written during the reign of the first Bush, while others were written during Clinton, the second Bush, Obama, and even the first orange nightmare. So, even though some of the issues she discussed then may seem "old," they... Lire la Suite →

The research I did for my master's and doctoral studies was about "the native speaker." More specifically, I wondered if native speakers of a language were better teachers of that language than non-native speakers. While I was studying, I was also working as a language teacher. First, I taught French—my "native" language—to university students, and... Lire la Suite →

This is a book, narrated by the author herself, with the letters she received and the answers she sent back to many people in her column, Dear Sugar. She usually first tells some stories about her own past to explain what she is trying to say, and some of the stories are simply heartbreaking. Others... Lire la Suite →

This book was really, really interesting! It tells the story (narrated by the author himself) of the life of a forensic pathologist in the UK—his childhood, how he became a forensic pathologist, his first few years on the job, the famous and less famous cases he worked on, infanticide, how things unfold during a trial,... Lire la Suite →