February by Canadian writer Lisa Moore has been long listed for the Man Booker Prize for 2010.

I told you it was good… it’s one of my favourites so far this year. Read my review I wrote in March.

From The Globe and Mail…

“A book worth reading is worth buying.”  – John Ruskin

This is a really powerful book. My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey by Jill Bolte Taylor (published by Penguin Books) is an amazing story. Jill Taylor wakes one morning in 1996 and discovers that she’s having a stroke. She’s 37 years old and is a Harvard trained brain scientist. Within hours she couldn’t walk, talk, read, write or remember any of her life. This is her story. The amazing part is that she fully recovers (but it takes many painful years), and she says the stroke was a blessing and a revelation to her. Not many people would think this, but she tells how she discovered feelings of well-being that she never experienced before. There is a very interesting chapter called “Finding Your Deep Inner Peace”… it well worth studying. She underwent brain surgery, and had to relearn everything. I can’t begin to tell you the obstacles this woman faced… talk about courage and determination! This is also a great book to read if you know someone who has had a stroke. She lists 40 things she needed the most after she had the stroke that everyone should pay attention to, such as “come close, speak slowly, and enunciate clearly”. The book isn’t large (under 200 pages) and it certainly is well worth reading.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie: A Flavia de Luce Mystery by Alan Bradley (published by Random House) is a multiple award winner (4 awards including the Debut Dagger Award for first time writers). It’s a “cute” story about Flavia de Luce, an 11 year old who has a penchant for chemistry, is constantly at battle with her 2 sisters (Daphne and Ophelia aka Feely) who don’t understand her constant need to “experiment”,  and how she discovers a man lying in the garden of her home and hears him utter his last word… “Vale”… before he dies. There’s also the incident of the dead bird on the doorstep with a stamp pinned to it’s body that needs to be explained. And the heated conversation that Flavia overheard between her father and some man she couldn’t identify late the night before she comes upon this dying man. All clues or connections? Of course what else could a budding chemist do but try to solve his murder. Bradley has set his book in 1950’s Britain, it’s quaint, bang-on as far as setting and characters go (the cook is called Mrs. Mullet – how funny is that) and it’s a “jolly good read”. Flavia seems constantly to be on her trusty bike, Gladys, heading hither, thither and yon (just thought I’d continue the British feel here) to search out clues as to why this man, who no one recognizes, took his last breath in their cucumber patch at the back of their decaying English mansion called Buckshaw. Bradley has included just enough chemistry bits to make the book interesting, and Flavia is back in book 2, The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag, which we’re tempted by an excerpt from at the end of this book. I’m sure you’ll want to read it just as soon as you’ve finished book 1. It’s a great read for summer, either on holiday or lying on the sofa with the air conditioning on to escape the heat.