Here are 100 books that Breaking Smith's Quarter Horse fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’ve been a writer most of my life, moving from high-school essays to working for newspapers to creating novels. One way or another, I’ve also spent much of that time exploring Canada's back roads and smaller communities. Those places and the people living in them have a pungent reality that I often find missing in the froth of modern urban society. The places and their people are interesting and inspiring, and I always get drawn back to reading and writing about them.
I loved this book because I loved the characters. Richards invested them with dignity even when they were flawed or endlessly frustrated by fate. They can go through life largely unnoticed except by their closest acquaintances and relatives. But they offer hope despite their failures and tragedies.
This was the first novel in Richards’ MiramichiTrilogy. It and the two subsequent novels, plus much of Richards’ later work, create a strong sense of the province of New Brunswick, even when the characters have a universal quality.
David Adams Richards’ Governor General’s Award-winning novel is a powerful tale of resignation and struggle, fierce loyalties and compassion. This book is the first in Richards’ acclaimed Miramichi trilogy. Set in a small mill town in northern New Brunswick, it draws us into the lives of a community of people who live there, including: Joe Walsh, isolated and strong in the face of a drinking problem; his wife, Rita, willing to believe the best about people; and their teenage daughter Adele, whose nature is rebellious and wise, and whose love for her father wars with her desire for independence. Richards’…
I’ve been a writer most of my life, moving from high-school essays to working for newspapers to creating novels. One way or another, I’ve also spent much of that time exploring Canada's back roads and smaller communities. Those places and the people living in them have a pungent reality that I often find missing in the froth of modern urban society. The places and their people are interesting and inspiring, and I always get drawn back to reading and writing about them.
I was very much taken with this novel’s blend of romance, mystery, and exploration of whether you can ever go home again. Raddall doesn’t get much mention and is largely remembered for his other novels when he does. That’s a shame.
This 1956 work stands up very well against more recent works. It features unadorned yet persuasive prose that many modern writers can only wish for. Raddall quite evidently intended it as a loving, almost lyrical, description of rural Nova Scotia. He succeeded.
It was spring in Nova Scotia when Neil Jamieson returned to Oak Falls. Wild and resentful, he had run away fourteen years before. Now, still blustering and belligerent, educated but not subdued, he took a fresh look at the citizens of Oak Falls and particularly at the timber town's decaying sawdust aristocracy.
I’ve been a writer most of my life, moving from high-school essays to working for newspapers to creating novels. One way or another, I’ve also spent much of that time exploring Canada's back roads and smaller communities. Those places and the people living in them have a pungent reality that I often find missing in the froth of modern urban society. The places and their people are interesting and inspiring, and I always get drawn back to reading and writing about them.
A rich mix here: humor, mild suspense, serious themes encompassing Jewishness and the fallout of the Nazis’ mass murder of European Jews, and cautionary themes about obsessions and the dangers of hero worship. The background setting is a Montreal neighborhood Richler grew up in, knew well, and happily depicted.
Some of Richler’s other novels also describe Montreal and some of its people. You could argue that Barney’s Version and Solomon Gursky Was Here are better books overall. I particularly liked this one because it has a youthful verve and adventurous feel.
St. Urbain’s Horseman is a complex, moving, and wonderfully comic evocation of a generation consumed with guilt – guilt at not joining every battle, at not healing every wound. Thirty-seven-year-old Jake Hersh is a film director of modest success, a faithful husband, and a man in disgrace. His alter ego is his cousin Joey, a legend in their childhood neighbourhood in Montreal. Nazi-hunter, adventurer, and hero of the Spanish Civil War, Joey is the avenging horseman of Jake’s impotent dreams. When Jake becomes embroiled in a scandalous trial in London, England, he puts his own unadventurous life on trial as…
I’ve been a writer most of my life, moving from high-school essays to working for newspapers to creating novels. One way or another, I’ve also spent much of that time exploring Canada's back roads and smaller communities. Those places and the people living in them have a pungent reality that I often find missing in the froth of modern urban society. The places and their people are interesting and inspiring, and I always get drawn back to reading and writing about them.
The descriptions of interpreting aerial reconnaissance photos during the Second World War were interesting. But the real hook for me was the compelling portrayal of small-town Saskatchewan life in the 1940s. The heroine—and the book does have a streak of chick lit about it—sounded like the real people I met while working as a reporter in Saskatchewan during the mid-1970s. Her hometown was recognizable, too. I keep hoping some of the spirit of these places and their people will survive well into the 2000s.
A Toronto Star Bestseller!
Rose, a Canadian intelligence officer in Britain in World War II, struggles with conflicting feelings about the war and a superior's attention.
Rose Jolliffe is an idealistic young woman living on a farm with her family in Saskatchewan. After Canada declares war against Germany in World War II, she joins the British Women's Auxiliary Air Force as an aerial photographic interpreter. Working with intelligence officers at RAF Medmenham in England, Rose spies on the enemy from the sky, watching the war unfold through her magnifying glass.
When her commanding officer, Gideon Fowler, sets his sights on…
I have been fascinated by the subject of Bigfoot ever since I was a child when my father drove through West Virginia and told me to search the woods for the elusive creature. From that point forward I wanted to spend as much time in the forest as I could. Over the years I have developed a fondness for the wild, the trees, and nature. For the past ten years, I’ve traveled around the country searching for Bigfoot in Washington, New Mexico, Colorado, Montana, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. The searches may have been hit or miss, but more importantly, I was able to experience the wonders and beauty of the wild forest.
John Zada’s writing style is equal to Jon Krakauer and David Grann, in his ability to pull the reader into the narrative of the story with the precision of his words. In the Valleys of the Noble Beyond: In Search of the Sasquatch, Zada does an excellent job of providing historical context related to Bigfoot lore without retelling all of the classic stories. But what captured my heart the most, was the stunning imagery of the British Columbia coast and Great Bear Rainforest that Zada captured with his words.
Set in a wild and immaculate landscape threatened by industry and environmental degradation, a compassionate and gripping exploration of one of the world's most baffling mysteries-the existence of the Sasquatch
On the central and north coast of British Columbia, the Great Bear Rainforest is the largest intact temperate rainforest in the world, containing more organic matter than any other terrestrial ecosystem on the planet. The area plays host to a wide range of species, from thousand-year-old western cedars to humpback whales to iconic white Spirit bears.
According to local residents, another giant is said to live in these woods. For…
As a young person I loved to read history novels, but each book had to be about either British monarchs or American generals. Then I watched the movie Bye Bye Blues, a Canadian prairie story by Anne Wheeler, and realized for the first time that the story was about me, about us. It was such a heady feeling that I decided to study Western Canadian history at university. Three weeks after I got my M.A. from the University of Victoria I was offered the chance to write about Vancouver Island coal miners and the rest, as they say, is quite literally history.
A mule-drawn wagon train moves precariously along a narrow road carved out of a steep rock wall—this book lives up to the promise of its cover. The book jacket blurb entices lovers of history like me: “British Columbia is regularly described in superlatives both positive and negative—the most spectacular scenery, the strangest political campaigns, the mildest winters, the most rain, the most aggressive resource developers, the biggest peace and environmental movements, the closest Canadian ties to Japan and China, and the richest native culture.” The author, Jean Barman, is one of my mentors and an inspiration to everyone who is interested in British Columbia history.
British Columbia is regularly described in superlatives both positive and negative - most spectacular scenery, strangest politics, greatest environmental sensitivity, richest Aboriginal cultures, most aggressive resource exploitation, closest ties to Asia. Jean Barman's The West beyond the West presents the history of the province in all its diversity and apparent contradictions. This critically acclaimed work is the premiere book on British Columbian history, with a narrative beginning at the point of contact between Native peoples and Europeans and continuing into the twenty-first century. Barman tells the story by focusing not only on the history made by leaders in government but…
As a young person I loved to read history novels, but each book had to be about either British monarchs or American generals. Then I watched the movie Bye Bye Blues, a Canadian prairie story by Anne Wheeler, and realized for the first time that the story was about me, about us. It was such a heady feeling that I decided to study Western Canadian history at university. Three weeks after I got my M.A. from the University of Victoria I was offered the chance to write about Vancouver Island coal miners and the rest, as they say, is quite literally history.
The late Terry Reksten, a researcher par excellence, spent much of her career writing about Robert Dunsmuir, a former indentured coal miner who became the richest man in British Columbia, and his descendants. Terry devoted most of this book to the building of Craigdarroch Castle and to the way Dunsmuir’s children and grandchildren spent his fortune, but it complements the coal mining books I have written that tell the stories of the men who dug the coal that built that fortune.
The Dunsmuir Saga brings to life three generations of the legendary Dunsmuir family of Vancouver Island.
Robert Dunsmuir -- canny, acquisitive and imaginative -- became the richest man in British Columbia; his sons struggled to consolidate the family fortune; his grandchildren spent it. Award-winning author Terry Reksten brings the members of the Dunsmuir family and their colourful saga to life with her lively writing, vivid anecdotes and careful research. A selection of 50 historical photographs depicts the Dunsmuirs and their grand style of life.
Having been a teacher for many years, I have had the great fortune to be surrounded by young people most of my adult life. As a result, I’ve been witness to countless moments reflecting the struggles of teenagers facing various challenges in their lives. Without question, one of the most painful is having to grapple with loss, and regardless whether it involves a friend, a family member, a home, an opportunity, or any number of other misfortunes, the act of facing and rising above that loss is often character-defining. I will always be grateful to my many students whose candour and courage have both inspired me and informed my own writing.
Nico’s mother vanished when she was four, and a chance discovery begins a search to uncover the truth of her disappearance. Reading it, I couldn’t believe this was the author’s first novel. Nico’s “voice” is amazingly real, continually pulling me along to the bittersweet conclusion, where she discovers what really happened to her mother. There was never a misstep in this book—everything worked perfectly, including the relationship between Nico and her dad, which was one of the most moving father-daughter relationships I’ve ever encountered in a YA novel. Her interweaving of Kurt Cobain’s life and music into the story of a girl searching for her mother was brilliant, and the writing is sublime. I lost track of the times when I read an image and thought, “Yes, this is exactly what that’s like!”, followed by “I so wish I’d written that.” Save Me, Kurt Cobain is a must-read.
What if you discovered that Kurt Cobain was not only alive, but might be your real father? This nuanced and bittersweet YA debut will keep you guessing until the end.
“Utterly gorgeous. Mesmerizing. Hypnotic. I love this book.” —Jennifer Niven, New York Times bestselling author of All the Bright Places
Nico Cavan has been adrift since her mother vanished when she was four—maternal abandonment isn’t exactly something you can just get over. Staying invisible at school is how she copes—that and listening to alt music and summoning spirits on the Ouija board with her best friend and coconspirator in sarcasm,…
I’ve always been fascinated by Chinese culture. My great uncle owned an import-export shop in 1920s Montreal and many of the things in his shop decorated my family home. An aunt who worked in Toronto’s Chinatown took me to see a Chinese opera performance and this began my journey to understand Chinese thought and culture first with an MA in Chinese poetry and then with a Ph.D. in East Asian Studies. After I learned that Sun Yatsen had visited Manitoba, where I had moved for work, my attention turned to Chinese nationalism. More than 15 years later, my research and work on KMT culture continues.
Lisa Mar’s rich archival study provides a window into the important role of power brokers in Chinese Canadian political life and culture up until the end of the Second World War. My own book also tells the stories of Chinese Canadian power brokers who were active in political organizations and lobbied for the repeal of the Chinese Immigration Act. Unlike the power brokers of Mars’s study, the men in my study were active and influential beyond Vancouver’s Chinatown and in prairie rural Canada.
Brokering Belonging traces several generations of Chinese "brokers, " ethnic leaders who acted as intermediaries between the Chinese and Anglo worlds of Canada. At the time, most Chinese could not vote and many were illegal immigrants, so brokers played informal but necessary roles as representatives to the larger society. Brokers' work reveals the changing boundaries between Chinese and Anglo worlds, and how tensions among Chinese shaped them.
By reinserting Chinese back into mainstream politics, Brokering Belonging alters common understandings of how legally "alien" groups' helped create modern immigrant nations. Over several generations, brokers deeply embedded Chinese immigrants in the larger…
I am an anthropological archaeologist specializing in the Indigenous cultures of the Northeastern United States. My research intersects archaeology, anthropology, history, and Native American and Indigenous Studies to explore settler colonialism, landscape and memory, and Indigenous survivance. I’ve always been interested in cities, maybe because I’m city-born and raised and have spent my academic career at an Ivy League university in Providence. I read these books because I’m fascinated by place-based stories of Indigenous survivance in cities and elsewhere that challenge omissions and misconceptions about their colonial experiences in the popular historical imagination. I hope you enjoy these books as much as I have!
This memoir by Thomas Muller, a product of intergeneration trauma from Canada’s Indian residential schools, a broken home, serial father figures, and alcohol and sexual abuse, is filled with pain, heartbreak, and self-effacing humor.
Growing up, he navigated between Winnipeg and towns in British Columbia and the Pukatawagan Cree Nation’s homeland of his great-grandparents in northern Manitoba. Written with unflinching honesty and a survivor’s instinct, the memoir traces the depths of his frustration and despair and his healing and spirituality, fatherhood, and newly found purpose as a leader at the forefront of the environmental justice movement.
As I turned every page, I found myself rooting for him and his right to the city.
*FINALIST FOR 2022 CANADA READS* *SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 J.W. DAFOE BOOK PRIZE* *SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 MANITOBA BOOK AWARDS’ MCNALLY ROBINSON BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD*
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
A gritty and inspiring memoir from renowned Cree environmental activist Clayton Thomas-Muller, who escaped the world of drugs and gang life to take up the warrior’s fight against the assault on Indigenous peoples’ lands—and eventually the warrior’s spirituality.
There have been many Clayton Thomas-Mullers: The child who played with toy planes as an escape from domestic and sexual abuse, enduring the intergenerational trauma of Canada's residential school system; the angry youngster…
