Remarkably Bright Creatures stars Lewis Pullman as Cameron and Sally Field as Tova- photo courtesy of Netflix My husband and I watched the movie Remarkably Bright Creatures on Sunday night. Starrin…

My sister-in-law absorbed in a book Everyone is talking about an article in The Atlantic by Rose Horowitch who predicts the end of reading in the United States is inevitable. She says surveys show …

My latest newspaper column was inspired by the news that the Manitoba premier will attend the Pride Parade in Steinbach this fall. He has invited a local politician to join him. The parade had to b…

Authors Fall Prey to Scam Artists and Fraudsters. That was the headline for an op-ed in the Winnipeg Free Press by Allan Levine yesterday. It’s all about the scam artists who try to take adva…

As my regular blog readers know, I am a weekly volunteer at a Mennonite Thrift Store that recycles goods and raises money for charity. Normally, my area of work is Christmas donations. Usually sort…

In Saturday’s Winnipeg Free Press, there was an article profiling Lori Klassen. Her videos about the Mennonite connections she finds daily in the newspaper have become hugely popular. Photo o…

I spent quite a bit of time this past week working in the library at my church. I’m the official librarian. There is a bulletin board outside the library, and I changed all the book covers di…

My latest newspaper column for The Carillon explores the idea that buildings are more than just their outward structures. They do, in fact, have a kind of soul. In my column, I look at some buildin…

During the six years we lived in Asia, I was a regular writer for a website called Things Asian. I was surprised to learn the other day that many of the pieces I wrote for them were still available…

My husband enjoying a summer read Every summer I use one of my newspaper columns in The Carillon to give recommendations for summer reading from books I’ve read over the past year. You can re…

Louise Penny In her latest newsletter, best-selling Canadian author Louise Penny talks about why audiobooks are so popular. She thinks it’s because they remind us of the magic we experienced …

When Seth Meyers interviewed Ann Patchett about her latest book, Whistler, on his late-night show, he gave her a bit of a hard time for having a horse on the cover since only about five pages of th…

My latest newspaper column is about a decision by the Hanover School Division to address creating a policy that would monitor and regulate activism in schools. They will try to define the what kind…

My most recent newspaper column celebrates the fact that this year marks a 40th anniversary for me. I’ve been writing my column, Viewpoint, for the regional paper, The Carillon, for four deca…

Life was incredibly harsh in the 1500s, especially if you were a woman! That would be my first observation after finishing the book Isola by Allegra Goodman. I had downloaded this novel onto my e-r…

Just a warning that you might not want to read M.L Stedman’s latest book, A Far Flung Life. There is a troubling moral dilemma at its heart that may haunt you long after you finish reading th…

I literally wept, several times, while reading Elizabeth Strout’s latest novel The Things We Never Say. I finished it just before my husband and I set out on a long bike ride and he got worri…

I had no idea what a remittance man was till I read a book written by the father of a friend of mine. The story was inspired by the life of Fredrick Ross’s grandfather who was a remittance ma…

On Tuesday, I had the privilege of being a guest on a CJNU radio show to discuss the Friends of the Winnipeg Public Library’s work and our annual major fundraiser this weekend. I have served …

My most recent newspaper column was about safety in libraries. This has become a growing problem in libraries across the country. My column was prompted by an article in The Carillon about an incre…

Yesterday Dave and I went golfing and another man, who we learned later had been a social worker, joined us for the round, since the course was quite busy. By the time we had finished our nine hole…

The Artemis Space Crew- from left: NASA Astronauts Christina Koch, Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman, Canadian Space Agency Astronaut Jeremy Hansen-photographer Josh Valcarcel- photo from Wikipedia The t…

Painting by Les Brandt In each of the five short stories in Dora Dueck’s latest book Like A River Divides the Earth the main characters are dealing with something in their past that has not b…

We hear plenty of bad news about the state of our health care system here in Manitoba. So I decided to write my latest newspaper column about some of the good things that have been happening here i…

Highclere Castle -photo from Wikipedia Do you recognize this home? It’s Highclere Castle which was the main location for the shooting of the movies and television series Downton Abbey. It is …

My friend Marguerite recommended the book, Finding Flora by Elinor Florence and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The title is apt because the protagonist, Flora, a young Scottish woman who has just immigra…

I just finished reading Theo of Golden, a self-published novel by lawyer and songwriter Allen Levi that’s been riding high on the bestseller lists for quite some time now. It’s the stor…

Yesterday morning, my husband drove me to my volunteer job at Canadian Mennonite University, and we decided to have coffee in their Folio Cafe together before I went to work. I noticed someone had …

What happens when a usually normal, calm person SNAPS and loses their temper in a very public and embarrassing way? The three main protagonists in Susin Nielsen’s book SNAP are about to find …

Kathy Stinson, has just published her 20th picture book for children, and it’s a beauty called Levi’s Gift. My six year-old granddaughter takes violin lessons, and I’ve bought it …

I’ve heard from so many readers that they enjoyed The Correspondent after I reviewed it here on my blog. The same friend, Simone, who recommended I read The Correspondent, also thought I&#821…

I like to read a steady stream of new books written for young people since that’s the audience I target with my own novels. My latest read, How To Save a Library by Colleen Nelson, is set rig…

On Sunday, we went to see our granddaughter’s Christmas program at the church our children attend, and they put on a little drama about how a snowstorm changes the way a family experiences Ch…

Deborah Froese is a seasoned Winnipeg editor. Dozens of authors, including me, have trusted her to help them hone and refine their precious manuscripts and have been so glad they did. Now she has c…

I recently finished reading two very interesting novels, one right after the other, whose storylines revolved around lost children. The first was a Pulitzer Prize winner called The Snow Child by Eo…

My copy of Ezra Jack Keats’ A Snowy Day is 50 years old. It is considered one of the 65 essential pieces of children’s literature. The Atlantic recently ran a story about what they beli…

I love being the librarian at my church In 2016, I had the idea of opening a Little Free Library at Bethel Mennonite Church. When I took on the position of church librarian in 2014, my first task w…

We may think that as people age, their lives get lonelier and less rich and meaningful, but just the opposite happens to Sybil, a retired law clerk, in an absorbing new book I read called The Corre…

Karen Krossing, who was the instructor in a picture book writing course I took in the spring, introduces Paul Coccia, who taught us about green worlds. At the Packaging Your Imagination conference …

Today is I Read Canadian Day, when Canadian authors are celebrated, especially those who write books for young people. What is really exciting is a noted trend that books written to appeal to the y…

Jean Pendziwol, winner of the 2024 Governor General’s Award for Children’s Literature, speaking yesterday I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to e…

As a tall man sat down at the same table where I was having lunch, at the Packaging Your Imagination conference for Canadian children’s authors and illustrators in Toronto on Saturday, I whis…

Winnipeg’s poet Laureate Jennifer Still has a really cool project on the go. She is inviting everyone in the city to help write a poem about the place we all call home. She’s made these…

Did you know that today is the beginning of Friends of the Library Week? There are 642 public library systems in Canada, and many of them have Friends of the Library groups who support libraries in…

At a recent workshop I led on writing memoir, I introduced the thirty participants to a form called a rambling autobiography. I wrote a little sample about my own life to get them started. I was bo…

A friend recommended Jonathan Evison’s latest novel, The Heart of Winter. It provides a history of the 70-year marriage of Abe and Ruth Winter who meet in college in 1953. People have often r…

On my visit to Montreal in September I went to a book store called Drawn and Quarterly which had been recommended by my Winnipeg friend Laura, who is a frequent visitor to the Quebec city. What a u…

The Guardian newspaper did a review of a new book by David Hurn called On Reading. It features photos of folks reading in different places and spaces around the world. It inspired me to look throug…

I just finished reading Manitoba author David Bergen’s latest book, Feasting and Rejoicing, and oh my, his descriptions of food are mouth-watering and his step-by-step detailed account of mur…

I read The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters on my Kindle in airports and on planes and in hotel rooms during our recent trip to Quebec. One of my very favourite books to read to children is Robert Mc…