When Men Murder Women by Rebecca and Russell Dobash

So, this is a textbook. A full blown, academic textbook that my sweet sister special ordered for me last year because I wanted to read it after reading about the study by Rebecca and Russell Dobash in Murder in Plain English. I didn't know it was a textbook, and honestly, it was too textbook-y for me to enjoy the way I wanted to. I expected it to be more like Murder In Plain English in that it's based on fact but it's still told to the everyday reader like a story... When Men Murder Women is written for sociologists, criminologists, and academics who understand statistics in a way that I did for about ~5 seconds while doing my MA but have since retained nothing. I did read it, however. I was still interested in the content and I really wanted to learn about the study they did. Since I would never recommend any of you read it, I will try to talk generally about the research and try to avoid it sounding like a thesis or literature review.

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Boy Erased by Garrard Conley

I was really excited to read this book when I heard that Joel Edgerton was doing the movie and it was starring Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe. Stories about gay conversion camps are terrifying to me and I was interested in reading a first-person perspective on this. Earlier in the year Ben and I drove to Halifax to see four movies and one of them was The Miseducation of Cameron Post (a similar storyline but starring Chloe Grace Moretz), and as of right now the reviews for MCP are much better than Boy Erased. Oh well, the book was still worth discovering.

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Our 10 Favourite Young Adult Books

We've both been big readers for like, ever, and clearly big 'series' girls, with eerily similar tastes before we even knew each other. Reminiscing about the plot lines and characters that shaped our young adult years is a favourite past time for us, so we thought we'd share our 10 favourite YA books with you guys today. Our lifelong lack of interest in athletics definitely stems from us having our noses in a book 95% of our young adult lives.

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Lifesaving for Beginners by Anne Edelstein

To be honest I'd never heard of this book before, but the team over at TLC Book Tours knew our love of memoirs and flagged it as something we'd maybe be interested in reviewing. I read the synopsis briefly and learned that it's a woman's account of living with grief after her mother drowns suddenly - sign me up for this type of content every time. I'm incredibly happy that I gave this book a chance (sometimes I can be stuck up about trying new authors). This really feels like the book Anne Edelstein was born to write. She is a born writer who has been hiding out as a literary agent.

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Dark Summit by Nick Heil

I am obsessed with like three things: Joan Didion, athletes who dope, and Mt. Everest. And Lebron. So four things. I know a few people who are obsessed/fascinated with the highest mountain on Earth, many who have read John Krakauer's first-person account of the 1996 tragedy that killed eight.

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In Conclusion, Don't Worry About It by Lauren Graham

This review will be very short as the book itself is ridiculously short. I read it in two, twenty-minute bath sessions. I didn't entirely know it was more of a 'Hallmark' book before adding it to my wish list but I did know it was an expanded version of the commencement speech she gave at her high school (Langley High) in 2017, so I sort of expected it to be shorter and a tad cheesy. I almost decided it wasn't really the type of book we'd normally review on this blog, but thought I'd better in case any of you were half expecting more of a novel like I was.

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Brown & Dickson's Fall Reading List

We thought you may be tired of hearing from us Megs, so we invited bookselling couple Jason Dickson and Vanessa Brown (of London, Ontario's lovely antiquarian bookstore Brown & Dickson) to provide you with some wildly different recommendations on their fall reading list. I know we're off to spend the weekend hunting a few of these down ourselves now...

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Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

I have always found it more difficult to write reviews for fiction books than non-fiction, and Elizabeth Strout's Oliver Kitteridge is no exception. I did enjoy reading this book but have been slow to review it, so here goes my best effort:

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The Children Act by Ian McEwan

Let me preface this entire review by saying this was my favourite read of the year so far. It is so, so, so good. If you'll remember, I ordered this on a whim after researching the story for our post on last year's TIFF adaptations. I'd read McEwan's On Chesil Beach and didn't love it (although I do think I was too young for the content and now desperately want to go back), but figured I would give this a try because I loved the premise. If you follow the blog regularly you know I've been feeling pretty 'meh' about the last few books I've read and this was the perfect piece of fiction I needed to get me excited about reading again. I loved the story but I also surprisingly loved McEwan's detailed and sophisticated writing style. For those of you who aren't huge readers, the movie adaptation is soon to hit theatres so it's your lucky day.

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Our 2018 TIFF Experience

Collectively this is our fourth year going to TIFF as a threesome. It is the vacation we look forward to all year so we thought we would do a similar post to last year's where we give a breakdown of each movie we saw and our thoughts on TIFF 2018 in general! Basically we spend a whole weekend sitting in lines, watching movies, and eating food... who needs Italy? TIFF runs right through until the 16th so there's still plenty of time if you want to check it out.

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Book Adaptations at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival

This is one of our favourite posts to write because we use these books to start padding our Christmas lists. We've compiled all the books that are being adapted at the Toronto International Film Festival which starts today and runs until September 16th. If you've read our past posts, TIFF is a festival we hate to love, but we always go opening weekend with Meagan's mom and it's a highlight of our year. If any of these are interesting to you, some tickets may still be available. If you can't get tickets (which is not uncommon with their awful system) you can always go stand on the street while the movies open and just stalk celebs.

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The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer

I am pretty sure I bought this book while I was reading David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. Nothing like a +1,000-paged book to make you want to buy another one apparently. I remember going to the bookstore and having absolutely no idea what I was in for size wise. They only had one copy in store and I was shocked by how massive it was. I was also thrilled that the forward was written by Dave Eggers, and even more happy that JOAN DIDION (love of my life) was on the cover singing Mailer's praises. There was a lot of initial excitement, but it didn't last long once I started reading.

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