This book, by Walter Isaacson, was very long to listen to (16 hours) but totally worth it. Jennifer Doudna won the Nobel Prize for the discovery, in 2020, with her collaborator, Emmanuelle Charpentier, for discovering the gene-editing process called CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) and Isaacson tells that story. The book talks about... Lire la Suite →

This was an interesting book to listen to. Michael Slepian talks about several studies done on the psychology of secrets, why we keep secrets, when, how, the effects on our mental and physical health, and the fact that we all keep secrets, sometimes small ones, but we all do! He also talks about children and... Lire la Suite →

Across the Universe--The Past, Present, and Future of the Crossword Puzzle, by Natan Last, was one tough book to read! It felt like I was reading a dictionary sometimes! It was dense, the language was highly sophisticated, and the information was packed tightly! But it was also extremely interesting and sometimes even funny 🙂 I... Lire la Suite →

The perks of being a wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky, is one of those commonly banned books (a list of some of which I posted there) and was published in 1999, so it's definitely a "classic." It's often labeled as "young adult literature" because the narrator is young and in high school, but I mostly enjoyed... Lire la Suite →

Less, by Andrew Sean Greer, was a weird book, and I still don’t know whether I liked it or not. It tells the story of Arthur Less, a homosexual man and semi-successful writer who is about to turn 50 and is panicking about it because it feels terribly old. On top of that, his boyfriend... Lire la Suite →

I got this nice small book by Hwang Bo-reum on December 25, and I read it all in one day. It was an easy book to read, and very enjoyable. The only small problem is that it took me longer than expected to read it because the author cites hundreds of books and I had... 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 →