I’m a happy camper… I discovered, quite by surprise, that author Ross Pennie who wrote Tainted (which I REALLY enjoyed) has a new book out called Tampered. He’s  a doctor at the Brantford General Hospital and a Professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, and his books are medical mysteries. They are quite unique… and really, really good.

Secret Daughter: A Novel by Shilpi Somaya Gowda (published by HarperCollins) has been on the best seller list for ages. It is one of those surprise hits.  It’s the story of 2 families, one in India, one in the USA, brought together by the adoption of an Indian baby girl named Asha by an American family in California. Growing up entirely American (but with an adopted father who was born in India), Asha eventually travels to Mumbai on a fellowship from Brown University as a journalist to do an article on children in the slums. This gives her a wonderful opportunity to connect with her Indian relatives, her father’s side of her adopted family, whom she’s never met. And of course, while there, she decides to try and find her birth parents. As Asha ages her American mother, Somer, has trouble dealing with the fact that she’s the only one in the family who has no connection to India and this eventually leads to a falling out of sorts between mother and daughter. And her birth mother, Kavita, has trouble dealing with the fact that she handed over her daughter to the adoption agency when she was 3 days old, and knows nothing about her since that heart-wrenching day. Is she still there, has she been adopted, is she even still alive? The book is full of emotion and feelings (“the emotional terrain of motherhood” as the back cover says), the trials of being an adoptive parent, and the loss of having to literally give away a baby. Gowda is a reat writer and her book is well worth reading.

I’m going to bite the bullet and give it a try. I’ve accepted the challenge. Hubby has a Kobo. (In The Globe & Mail they said that buyers of e-readers are mostly men over 40 – well – DUH!! it’s a gadget.) The only thing I have to do is find a book that I think will be appealing and hold my interest because I’m entering into this endeavour with more than a little scepticism – I am a ”feel-the-paper-in-the-book” kind of person. But I’m going to give it a try. Who knows!!

Congratulations to ERIC PIERNI of Toronto. He will be receiving a copy of The Extraordinary Garden by Francois Gravel in the mail shortly. It is my all time favourite book and I hope he enjoys it as much as I do.

The 5 runners-up will each receive a $10 Starbucks coffee card compliments of CanPub Information Technologies Inc. (www.CanPub.com).

I’ve really had fun doing this, wish I could have sent everyone a book, and am already thinking of what to do next year. Keep reading and sharing your picks with others and let me know what you think of my recommendations. Thanks guys!!

An esteemed bunch of wordy people who are language experts has decided that Google is the word of the decade. Yea Google!! (It’s funny that these so-called experts weren’t able to find a word to represent the nameless decade.) Anyway, Google beat out 9/11, blog, text, war on terror, and Wi-Fi. Google received twice as many votes as blog, and both words completely outdid all the other nominees.

Tweet was the word of 2009.