Books We Got For Christmas 2017

We have always been spoiled brats, so why should that change just because we are in our mid-twenties?? These are all the books we got for Christmas this year!

I still haven't watched the Angelina Jolie Netflix adaptation of this memoir yet, but it has already been nominated for best foreign film at the Golden Globes. After talking to my friend Andre at a party I decided I needed to read Ung's book first. I am looking forward to learning about Cambodia and what they had to go through. I am also prepared to sob my eyes out. Thanks for the recommendation Andre!

I love a long-ass, non-fiction title (the subtitle is "A Science Writer's Odyssey into an Illness Science doesn't Understand"). I also love memoirs about health issues. Rehmeyer's story is all about her trying to live with chronic fatigue syndrome, something doctors don't know a lot about. I can't wait to read all about this disease we have all claimed to suffer from. I wanted to wait for this to come out in paperback but I'm not sure if it is on track to. When I went searching for this at Indigo the guy working assumed I meant When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi.. Sorry, but some of us are interested in a wider range of medical memoirs.

I DID NOT KNOW THIS WAS A REAL BOOK. I actually found out at movie club when we were on our month of "films about films" and we watched Adaptation by Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze. I had watched this movie many times and loved the passages from what I thought was a fictional book.. At the meeting I said, "God I wish this was a real book," and everyone was like, "uuuh it is!" I may have to prioritize this to the top of my Christmas reading list.

I am ready to become a full-fledged basketball fan by moving into my first ever athlete biography. I normally hate biographies as I prefer to read memoirs or autobiographies, but Lebron has yet to write one. I can't not read this book. The Cavaliers winning the 2016 NBA Finals (and the Warriors blowing a 3-1 lead) was easily the best experience I have had in the last decade. I am so grateful for Lebron and will actually fight anyone who tells me they don't like him. Meg and I am also going to see him play in Toronto against the Raptors in January (THANKS HUMAN FOR THE ULTIMATE GIFT) and maybe I ask him to sign it????

I mean ... I like to jump right into the deep end.. I have to read this biography... I am adamant that Lebron is the GOAT, but I am willing to read up on Jordan so that I can have a more informed decision. After reading one of the all-time best long reads my friend Eric Elliot sent me on Jordan I knew I would need to read something more in-depth about him. This is not the man we thought we knew from Space Jam...

This was a gift from Ben. It makes me so happy because 1) he knows I am obsessed with Everest thanks to Katie and 2) he struggled to find a book I haven't read about Everest. I should note that my bookshelf is organized by author or theme ... so he spent quite a while looking through it to confirm I don't have this book. He also consulted his dad and his dad's friend about it. They said that anyone who is fascinated by Everest needs to read this book.

I wanted this on Meg's recommendation, or I guess technically on the recommendation of Greta Gerwig. Meg sent me Greta's reaction to the book and I figured if she loved it that much I need to check it out.

This was another book Ben bought me for Chistmas. I love any non-fiction title with a few adjectives thrown in (subtitle is "A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed"). I have honestly been looking at this book for a few years now, always thinking I should pick it up. So that's why it was such a nice surprise that Ben bought it for me. He had no idea I was intrigued by it, but I guess he has figured out my taste in books pretty quickly.

This was 50% off on Black Friday at Indigo and I had just spent the week in southwest Nova Scotia for work talking about podcasts and audiobooks. A woman I met there named Trudy told me she just finished this audiobook. After telling me it's about a woman who was the first female diver during the war I decided to add it to my Christmas list. Egan also won the Putlizer for A Visit From the Goon Squad, so she must be a great writer. 

And last but not least, another memoir! I heard about this book from a long-form article about people who accidentally kill someone, and how they are very few resources for them to help cope. So for instance if a kid comes out of nowhere on their bike and you hit them with your car, you aren't a bad person, but people are uncomfortable with it. Anyways, I guess this is like the ONLY memoir about someone who has had to go through something like that. You can read the article here!

You may have seen this book as one of my recommendations for books that would make good Christmas gifts, but to be honest, I knew this book was coming for a long time and really had no interest in reading it until her and Chris Pratt recently announced their divorce. I mean, Pratt wrote the foreward, who wouldn't want to read this type of celebrity outpour of love for an ex-wife??? Otherwise, I don't necessarily love Faris. As I write this, I've already finished it, so expect a review in the new year. It was, as you may have expected, a VERY easy read.

Another suggestion from my recommendations for books that would make good Christmas gifts!! What can I say, my family reads my blog, how cute are we? Winter Street, Winter Stroll, Winter Storms and most recently published, Winter Solstice, are a series Hilderbrand has slowly been releasing. I think it's complete now and I'm totally ready for a good binge of one of my favourite fiction authors, how lucky was I to get all 4 books from my parents at once???

My sister loves to gift me this type of book and luckily picked up on the not so subtle clue I wanted it in my review of Murder in Plain English earlier this year. This book is about two researchers who conduct a 3 year study and 200+ prison interviews with men serving life sentences for killing their female partners. HOW INTERESTING. I can't wait to read this book and bore everyone with facts for the next ~year until I become a self-proclaimed expert on something else.

I'm admittedly late to the Kelly Oxford game but I've been following her twitter feed long enough now that I felt I would enjoy her books. Oxford is Canadian and became famous for her sarcastic and pointed twitter account... she's since done some film writing and such. I don't really have much more to say on this one...

I just wrote about this new book in my author spotlight on Shreve. She's one of my favourite fiction author and this is her brand new novel that my aunt was kind enough to buy for me. It's about wildfires that take over a community and a group of husbands who join on as volunteer firefighters. My favourite plotline to anything is a wife who doesn't know the fate of her husband so I'm excited to read this.

I have a rotton dog, that's all there is to this. My boyfriend got this for me as though OUR dog is MY problem, but thankfully, he's brought it on vacation with us to read for himself.

So if you read this blog at all you likely know I already own, read, and loved this book. My full review is here. However, my boyfriend's mom definitely doesn't read this blog (which is honestly likely a good thing), saw an article on Huebert in our local paper and how he wrote this book. Knowing that I went to Western and suspecting I'd be interested in this, she went to the book store and picked it out all on her own, and included the newspaper article in it. How sweet is she???? She was also right on the money for this being something I'd love.