Summer vacations are the perfect time to get in a little reading. I've read on the plane flying across provinces, in the car on day trips and on a blanket outside catching some sun. In my experience the best books I've read are the ones recommended to me by friends. One of my summer goals was to come up with a weekly feature, so each week for the rest of the summer I will recommend a new book.
After months of unentertaining choices, I got a hold of some good ones. Julie insisted I read Cool Water by Dianne Warren earlier this spring and I finally got around to it in May. It is one of those books with mulitple characters with their own overlapping story lines. The characters are all bound together by the place they live, a small rural Saskatchewan farming town that's been hit by hard times. The theme of the novel concerns the daily occurences, frustrations, and charms of small town living. Each story comes to its own conclusion happy or sad, but the overall effect is bittersweet. I found the characters to be extremely well developed and grounded in reality. My pet peeve is when characters personality changes dramatically at the end of a book, but the characters in Cool Water stay true. Though the setting is rural Canada, this is not just a rural Canadian book, it's a book about people struggling to communicate with one another.
And just because tomorrow is Canada Day, here is a little different version of the national anthem:
WARNING it's a little goofy.
Oh Canada - Classified.
