JONNY APPLESEED

Joshua Whitehead. JONNY APPLESEED. Arsenal, 2018

This boy. This man. This guy. This writer can write. A book about loneliness, smeared with lipstick and semen. 

HOW THE DEAD SPEAK

Val McDermid. HOW THE DEAD SPEAK: A TONY HILL AND CAROL JORDAN NOVEL. Atlantic, 2019.

I had never heard of this writer, this award-winning Scottish writer of dozens of crime novels and others, until a friend loaned me two titles the very week that I got hooked on a new Knowledge Network drama TRACES, set in Dundee and attributed to Val McDermid. Synchronicity.

In this story, her crime-fighting team are post disaster. Psychologist/profiler Tony Hill is in jail for murder. Former DCI Jordon has retired to avoid being fired and is battling PTSD. Tony is writing a book and trying to make prison life and the world in general better by working from the inside. Carol is approached to do two investigations "off the grid". One involves Tony's hated mother, Vanessa. The other involves a group of professionals working on "wrongful conviction" cases. Their old CSI-like teammates are struggling to adapt to a backwards new leader during a historic graves case which shifts into a serial murder chase.

I was especially interested in the prison scenes and the info about PTSD. 

Looking forward to reading the second title. 

FIVE LITTLE INDIANS

 Michelle Good. FIVE LITTLE INDIANS. Harper, 2020.

The latest University of Manitoba Book Club selection. FIVE LITTLE INDIANS follows former students of a Mission School on an island off the west coast of British Columbia. Kenny. Lucy. Maisie. Clara. Howie. Also Lily, a child who died of TB, Kendra, Kenny and Lucy's daughter, and Mariah, a medicine woman. And the boys' mothers. And the Sister in charge of the school. Very touching accounts of the anger and lack of preparation for life experienced by the children who leave the school. The intergenerational trauma. The racial discrimination and systemic abuse of human rights. The stark jump over twenty years to include the opportunities for recourse offered by the Residential Schools Settlement program was a bit jarring. Some details, especially reference to parole board decision-making, seemed wrong. Also, the kidnapping in Vancouver of a six-year old boy from Red Pheasant, SK, seems so wrong that it is hard to believe it happened. I guess that goes for the whole mess of attempted assimilation. And for the beliefs which supported colonization from 1500 to the present day.

THE ART OF HAPPINESS: A HANDBOOK FOR LIVING

His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler. M.D. THE ART OF HAPPINESS: A HANDBOOK FOR LIVING. Riverhead/Penguin, 1998.

Interesting interviews and explanations about how the Dalai Lama sees the world. He seems to believe that humans are basically good and that everyone seeks happiness. He believes that we can train ourselves to increase our own happiness. His basic approach is cognitive, which also appeals to me. The contrast with psychotherapy is also interesting. Glimpses into different worlds, and different ways of seeing the world.

FANTASTIC FOSSILS

 Christine Petersen. FANTASTIC FOSSILS: ROCK ON! A LOOK AT GEOLOGY. ABDO, 2010.

Children's book about fossils--what they are, how they are made, and why they are important. 

BETTY

 David A. Robertson. BETTY: THE HELEN BETTY OSBORNE STORY. Portage and Main Press. 

Graphic novel retelling the day Helen Betty Osborne was murdered in The Pas, Manitoba, in the early 1970s. 

When We Were Alone

 David A. Robertson. WHEN WE WERE ALONE. Illustrations by Julie Flett. 

Children's book, explaining, grandmother to child, why children in residential schools were forced to look, dress, and behave in certain ways, and how the children resisted "when they were alone".