Kate

Lard tunderin' b'y, this is a good book.
I'm sure it's obvious I don't quite have the grasp of the Newfie dialect but I sure do love reading it! And I love Canadiana, and I love folk tales, and I love Newfoundland, so this book is great. And it's been nominated for the Governor General's Literary Award 2015 for children's literature, and the Silver Birch Express 2016! READ IT B'YS

I really like Cohen's writing style, even though the narrative was totally disjointed. I don't know that she went “inside a deaf world” so much as provided vignettes of a particular deaf place. They were beautiful vignettes though; I was also very interested in her musings on being a hearing person in Deaf places. Her father had gained respect and acceptance despite being hearing by being a native signer with Deaf parents, while she was both hearing and a non-native signer which put her even further outside the community. Her grappling with even the idea of being an interpreter - that interpreters of every other language except ASL will only translate into their native language because one can only truly grasp all the nuance of meanings of a language if you learned it from birth - really got me thinking about the idea of hearing interpreters who aren't native signers, most of them, acting as an imperfect link between hearing and Deaf worlds. Very interesting.

I was not surprised to learn that the author was an animator before he started writing books because reading this book was like watching a cartoon.
Everyone's facial expression was perfect, and the cat was hilarious. I now love Bird and Squirrel and must have more.

pretty cute, definitely for older kids if you want them to follow what's going on - not that there's really a story in any of these stories. The illustrations are super adorable though, I could see my kid self poring over each page to get all the little details.

I never read books about business, because I'm completely uninterested in business but I found this book interesting because RIM is Canadian, and it's a fun pastime to rag on BlackBerry lately. I do remember a time when BBM was THE THING but for a lot of the time that BB was on top, I didn't even have a cell phone - I've mostly just observed its downfall.

The gist I got about Laziridis from this book is that he, though an impressive engineer, created something that changed that game by accident, and then just continued to make shit that he thought was cool. RIM didn't take the iPhone seriously because Lazaridis didn't think that people would sacrifice battery power and reliable coverage for apps and fully functional web browsers on their phones...he hated typing on touch screens and assumed that everyone else would hate it too. He seemed confused when BB devices didn't sell well or when no one could figure out how to market them. Plus, as they were playing catch-up with Apple and Google, they sacrificed quality in trying to get new things out as fast as possible. RIM probably could have come up with some amazing things if they weren't always trying to out-do everyone else, and were able to manage their company better.

I skimmed a bunch of this book on account of I don't understand business stuff. There was something about lawsuits and the stock market that I didn't quite follow, but it sounded terribly stressful and I'm glad I'm not responsible for billions of dollars and the proper running of a company. I would for sure do something illegal by accident and possibly go to jail.

So I guess you can read this book as a business how-not-to, or you can read it like I did and snicker at terms like “email pager”.

This book is pretty old at this point, there are newer books with newer science in them re: the neuroscience of language and sign language in particular. And there was a lot of blah blah about how what the mother does or doesn't do for their infant can make or break them, as if fathers do not a thing to influence child development. But, I like Sacks' style, and I really liked the third part of the book where he describes being on the Gallaudet campus for the Deaf president protests. A great moment in history.

This book keeps showing up on book prize lists, so I figured there's gotta be something good about it. I knew I was going to like it at least a little, since it's basically an AI story - dogs gain consciousness through divine intervention. It felt like a spin-off of [b:Mort e 22181034 Mort e Robert Repino https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1416178734s/22181034.jpg 41529181] actually, in a non-apocalyptic setting. 15 dogs suddenly find themselves with a new awareness of the world, and I found myself hoping desperately for their happiness. This has come about because of a bet between Apollo and Hermes, who've wagered a year of servitude against the happiness or lack thereof of the dogs at the time of their death (so, yes, dogs die in this book - keep that in mind if you're sensitive about this!). There's some goddish bickering in the background of the story that affects the lives of the dogs in different ways, but really it's about how the dogs deal with knowing. They quickly create a new language among themselves, and some embrace it quickly by creating puns and poetry, while others try to cling to their essential “dogness”, whatever that is, and struggle to reconcile what they see as their fundamental being with a new-found intelligence and knowledge. But they're different...they don't fit in the human world, but not in the dog world either. I can't help but call the gods' wager unfair, as they've created self-aware outcasts and expect to compare their level of unhappiness with humans who were born into a world expecting their self-awareness. How happy can you be to suddenly know the extent to which humans condescend to you? But it's only condescending if you have the knowledge to understand why. Baby talk is condescending to adults but for babies it's perfectly acceptable (and helps them understand language faster). Is it fair to be angry that someone spoke to you in a way you perceive as condescending if it wouldn't have been condescending before you could perceive condescension? And if the someone isn't aware that you can perceive condescension now? That was kind of confusing but the dogs weren't really thinking too much about how humans see regular dogs. They did a lot of reacting, and the nature of their reactions were different from before, and it scared and intrigued them. Anyway, I liked this book. I hope it wins one of the awards it was nominated for.

<3 all the crayons. Especially Esteban, FKA Pea Green Crayon, and the adventures of Neon Red Crayon.

A cute book about how Alice Cogswell inspired Gallaudet and Clerc to bring French sign language to America, told from Alice's perspective. Interesting that this book brings up Alice's fears that God has punished her by making her deaf - it kind of gets waved away by her dad saying that she's one of God's favourites.
I liked the depiction of the manual alphabet on the cover - I'm assuming it's what the French sign langage (LSF) manual alphabet looked like back in Alice's day, because it's slightly different from modern ASL and according to wikipedia, also slightly different from modern LSF.

The art was stunning, I loved it. I also loved Lina and Doon's ambiguously non-white skin colour. The story, though, suffered from being so abbreviated. This should have been a much larger book, and I think the only reason I enjoyed reading it is because I'd already read the original novel. I already knew the prologue about the Builders hiding the box and how it was forgotten over the years, I knew the significance of the Singing, I knew the depth of their ignorance of and dependence on electricity - basically all the stuff that made the City of Ember alive and interesting. None of it came through in the graphic novel, so I urge anyone who only read this to read the original as well.

Pig the Pug is a fibber and a jerk. I don't think he learned a lesson because he still doesn't really care about poor Trevor's feelings. If you ask me, Pig is psychopath. His consequences are just going to make him better at being surreptitious about his evil deeds. Mark my words, Trevor is going to “mysteriously disappear” one day and there will be no evidence indicating foul play but when you look into the supposedly grieving Pig's bulgy eyes all you'll see is satisfaction and darkness.

I was looking for a picture of Trevor's unimpressed face while being punished for Pig's naughtiness but couldn't find one, so here's a different picture because the art in this book cracks me right up.

I'm going to pretend that [b:The Prophet of Yonwood 207034 The Prophet of Yonwood (Book of Ember, #3) Jeanne DuPrau https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320636285s/207034.jpg 969] doesn't exist, and also that the last chapter/epilogue of this book doesn't exist because I thought it was dumb, but otherwise, I liked this book. It follows from the second book, after the people of Ember join the people of Sparks. Doon has the idea to go back to Ember to collect whatever supplies were left there so they can get through the winter and Lina goes with him and they don't tell anyone where they're going because I guess it's kind of their MO. Trouble ensues, bit characters have one or two lines which exemplify their one-dimensional personalities (distrustful leader says “he's probably lying!”, nice leader says “listen to the boy!”), and then everyone is happy and good. Apparently human nature has changed since the apocalypse and the NEW grand cities and civilizations are going to be amazing and wonderful...or maybe I'm just a cynic. What are you gonna do.

The illustrations in this book are gorgeous! Beautiful bright colours, and I loved the concept of Lillian seeing her ghostly ancestors on her walk to the polling center. I also really love that, while the book has an optimistic ending, the afterword mentions that new voter id laws in some states are restricting certain citizens from voting, and that there is more work to be done to secure the same right to vote for all citizens across the country.

Cute! The illustrations killed me. Dad Bird's face : and all the other animal's faces when Little Bird starts BLARKing all over the place are great.The story was nice, nothing amazing. Little Bird learns that words can hurt people and apologizes, Dad Bird learns that his kid will repeat everything that comes out of his mouth.

This book was fascinating. I'm always going to be interested in reading about linguistics, and I like Fox's voice. The history and background of ASL was really interesting, especially the brain studies that were done on ASL signers who had strokes - if you weren't convinced that sign language is real language, those should definitely convince you! If a signer has the “language center” of the brain damaged, they lose the ability to sign but not the ability to pantomime! That's so weird. There's a lot of cool information in this book about the linguistics of sign languages and their formation, and I liked reading about the linguists methods of studying language.

This book is really adorable. I'd definitely recommend it to kiddos who want to read hilarious magical mystery books!

Coming up is a discussion totally off-topic of the book so I'm going to hide it in a spoiler alert and anyone who is fond of talking about language and political correctness can continue on!

As a side note which has nothing whatsoever to do with the story but everything to do with a single word I found in this book - at one point a character says that something's given him a "gyp" which instantly to my eyes was like, whoa, that's not very culturally sensitive! But in context, not used in the way I've ever heard that slur used in Canada, so I was curious and looked it up. Apparently this is a term used in Britain to mean a small ache or pain, and as far as my cursory research went, is not derived from a derogatory term for Roma people like the meaning I'm familiar with is. So, now it's one of those words that I'm not sure what to do with...is it fair to taint what I'm sure was a perfectly good word with something that is a slur? But I'm all for offending the least amount of people in my everyday speech so I'd probably try to remove it from my vocabulary if it were in there already.

Meh. I agree with everything the other commenters have said. This really doesn't feel like it belongs in the City of Ember series. It's a fine book on its own, and if I wasn't waiting the whole time to find out about the Builders, I probably would have liked it more...but any explanation of the Builders and how/why they build Ember underground was smooshed into a few pages at the end of the book and had nothing to do with everything else that happened. It was disappointing. I'm optimistic about the 4th book though.

This book is about a kid who can't play the ukulele and his jerk dad who just goes around making people's things disappear with his wand. They get kicked out of the support group for racial stereotypes they call a town, then vanquish a monster, and then are accepted back: “Bring your darn ukelele. We don't care anymore.” You'll notice they spell ukulele wrong in this book.

I really love reading books that are set in Toronto. There's something really familiar and cozy about recognizing place names and picturing them in your head while you read. While I didn't totally connect with all of the characters in this book, Brand's prose is so lyrical and beautiful to read. The vignettes of lives were nice - perfect for me because I don't think I'd want to read something more in depth about each character, but these snapshots were great. A fast read.

Pretty amusing! The first Deadpool thing I've actually read. It hasn't deterred me from reading more.

I'm still thinking about this book so for now I'll just leave this rambling paragraph as my review:

This book had much too much heaviness for me to read it as if it were any other book. It drags along with it the history of To Kill a Mockingbird; the incredibly large presence that book has in our society and the ways we are taught to interpret it; the incredible length of time between TKAM and Go Set a Watchman, and what that implies about the circumstances of its publication; the fact that it's basically a draft, and that it's being published and marketed as a novel proper; and the real-life heaviness of life being black in the 30s, when TKAM is set, the civil rights movement in the 50s and 60s when TKAM was published and GSAW is set, and the #BlackLivesMatter movement today, when GSAW was published, and how novels like TKAM shape the way we perceive civil rights in our society then and now, and that our reaction as a society to GSAW says so much about the way we see racism and racist people and/or people who commit racist actions or say racist things.

I just finished this book for the second time, the first being when I read it in grade 10 for school. I keep forgetting that I did read it for school, mainly because my grade 10 English teacher was no good so I don't have any school-related things to relate it to.

I loved it then, and was worried that I wouldn't love it anymore, but I do. The prose is so lovely and evocative...even if nothing happened, it would be a joy to read. Atticus Finch goes on my “literary crushes” list. I was just as moved by the story as an adult as I was as a teen. This book is a classic for a good reason.

It's about the futility of expecting justice from an unjust society, and the slowness of social change. It's supposed to make you feel sick. But, I did remove a star from my original rating, because of how little has changed. Tom Robinson was a black man accused of a crime he didn't commit, and was killed by the authorities while in custody. Sound familiar? But Tom is barely in the story at all. This is a book about white people talking about black people. What a shame that this racist county can't acquit a black man. What a miscarriage of justice. But that's just how it is. It's about a white man challenging a white colonial system and failing, and the “bad” white people celebrate the status quo and the “good” white people cry tears of rage and the black community is not heard from while Tom Robinson is killed and nothing changes. So some white kids grow a bit and learn about the world, and we don't really hear anything at all about what the black community is going through except that some of them brought Atticus some food for actually doing his damn job instead of putting his feet up and accepting conviction as a foregone conclusion.

I really like short short stories. There are tons of stories in this thin little book, some of them are only a paragraph long. It's great, because when they're bad, they've over, and when they're good, it's so great to read something so concise that can still be beautiful. That is more beautiful for being so short, even.
It's difficult to do though...and a lot of these stories fall flat, but a few are lovely so it was worth it for me to read through the rest.

Today a bearded stranger gave me this book for free on the subway. As it turns out, he's the author, though you wouldn't know it from the author's picture at the back of the book, because that guy has no hair. I don't think he knew that I'm a librarian when he gave me the book but nothing's impossible, I guess!

This book is a kind of bonkers collection of stories that include conversations, riddles, and paint chips. And there's a dinosaur! And what I guess is what Marilyn Monroe would look like as a zombie. I love the art style, and the facial expressions, and the dialogue made me chuckle a bit. Plus it was free and my phone'd just died so it was pretty much the best timing to get a free thing to read from a stranger! Thanks, Stephen Burger.

I loved the art in this book, it really added to the reading experience for me. I love modernized fairy tales, and while this one still had a historical setting (The Thirty Years War - 1618-1648), the contemporary writing style and illustrations gave it a more modern feel. The story was sad - the main character was basically an everyman but I still grew to like him and wanted him to be happy.