Monthly Archives: February 2024

February 4, 2024 · 1:34 pm

Mystery Books and Authors

What to Read While Awaiting the Next Gamache Book

Last updated April 9, 2024

One of my favorite authors is Louise Penny. For many years, she has been writing approximately one book a year in her Three Pines series featuring Inspector Gamache. I have created a blog posting to track her work and her thoughts which I try to update every month or two. Inevitably, as her fans (many of whom reread the entire series in preparation for her next book) await her next book, they ask for recommendations of other mystery books and authors to read in the meantime. What follows is a compilation, in alphabetical order by author’s last name, of some of those recommendations. I have provided the nationality of the author, a link to a site about them, and the name of the series for which they are known. In some cases, I also indicate where the series was set. I have only included authors when I could verify that they wrote mysteries or crime novels. I will update or add to this posting occasionally as my time and interest permit.

Downtown Montreal, Quebec, Canada, May 2022

I have left off recommendations for authors who write only in other genres such as fantasy, historical fiction, or romance.

For a comprehensive list of mystery writers from around the world, I recommend that you consult the List of Mystery Writers available through Wikipedia.

Other miscellaneous lists of mystery writers and books

Spanish and Hispanic writers or mysteries set in the Spanish-speaking world

French writers of mysteries/romans policiers or mysteries set in the French-speaking world

German writers of mysteries or mysteries set in the German-speaking world

Italian writers of mysteries or mysteries set in the Italian-speaking world

Last updated April 1, 2024

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February 3, 2024 · 3:47 pm

Booker Prize Books

Last updated February 5, 2024

The Booker Prize is the leading literary award in the English speaking world, and has brought recognition, reward and readership to outstanding fiction for over five decades. It is a prize that transforms the winner’s career. The winner receives £50,000 as well as the £2,500 awarded to each of the six shortlisted authors. Both the winner and the shortlisted authors are guaranteed a global readership and can expect a dramatic increase in book sales.

Founded in the UK in 1969, it initially rewarded Commonwealth writers and now spans the globe: it is open to anyone regardless of origin. Each year, the prize is awarded to what is, in the opinion of our judges, the best sustained work of fiction written in English and published in the UK and Ireland. The winning book is a work that not only speaks to our current times, but also one that will endure and join the pantheon of great literature.

The Prize was started by the conglomerate Booker, McConnell Ltd and has a fascinating history. When administration of the prize was transferred to the Booker Prize Foundation in 2002, the title sponsor became the investment company Man Group, which opted to retain “Booker” as part of the official title of the prize. The foundation is an independent registered charity funded by the entire profits of Booker Prize Trading Ltd, of which it is the sole shareholder. The prize money awarded with the Booker Prize was originally £5,000. It doubled in 1978 to £10,000 and was subsequently raised to £50,000 in 2002 under the sponsorship of the Man Group, making it one of the world’s richest literary prizes. Each of the shortlisted authors receives £2,500 and a specially bound edition of their book.

Resources about the Prize

Nominees and winners I have read

I haven’t read many of the books yet but I am setting myself a goal to read more of the Booker Prize nominees and winners in 2024. I will update this list as I complete a book.

  • Amsterdam by Ian McEwan (1998 winner) – completed Feb. 4, 2024. This seemed a very insubstantial book to win this prize, certainly not one of McEwan’s top books. I found it trite and the ending contrived and silly. The writing was beautiful, as always, but the characters were not at all sympathetic and the life observations were few and far between. Looking at the other shortlisted books for that year, perhaps this was the best of the bunch. I wonder if it was awarded in recognition of his body of work, rather than this particular work.
  • Small World by David Lodge (1984 shortlist)

Reading now:

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February 1, 2024 · 3:56 pm

Differences between Canada and the United States: personal observations

I first came to live in Canada in 2006 for my job as the University Librarian at the University of Regina, a position I held until 2009. Even though I had traveled pretty widely and had lived in other countries (Germany and Brazil) for short periods, I came with my own cultural preconceptions. I had read a book by Michael Adams, a Canadian social scientist, that was titled Fire and Ice : the United States, Canada and the Myth of Converging Values. This book, published in 2003, posited that the values of Canadians and Americans were “diverging in important ways. Despite the two countries’ profound economic integration, their many historical, demographic, and geographic similarities, and the ubiquity of American popular culture in Canada, Adams argues that Canadians and Americans increasingly view the world differently. Relying on thousands of social values surveys conducted in Canada since 1983 and in the United States since 1992, Adams described cross-border differences on matters ranging from religion, authority, and the family to entertainment, consumption, and civic life.”

Even though I had some understanding of the different values of my country of birth and Canada, I was still largely clueless about how that played out in daily life. I did so many things wrong in my job because of my own cultural assumptions, alienating many of the people who worked in the library because of what I assumed was possible or normal. Canadian academia, like much of Canadian life, looks very similar to American academia and daily life, but is revealed to be significantly different with some deeper investigation.

View from my office at the University of Regina, 2008

On my last trip to represent the university at a professional meeting, before I was leaving Canada to take a new job back in the United States (with my proverbial tail between my legs), I happened to be seated on the plane next to a social scientist with whom I struck up a conversation. He was originally from France, then became a permanent resident of Canada. He told me about his own challenges when he first started working in Canada when he was labelled at his job as “not a team player,” an assessment that shocked him and was deeply contrary to his own view of himself. He told me how that led him to dig into the cultural differences behind that assessment. When I met him in 2009, he was working as a consultant going to different companies and other organizations to help them appreciate cultural differences and learn to work together more effectively. As I told him briefly what had happened to me at work, he relayed to me in greater detail what he thought had probably happened. He talked to me about the fundamental differences between Canadians and Americans deriving from their history and how that means they perceive the same situation very differently. He also told me about an ice-breaker he used at many of his consultations to illustrate this concept. He would break the group he was working with up into smaller groups seated at different tables. He had them play a card game and told them what the basic rules of the game were. He also had a sheet of paper at each table with some more information about the rules of the game which everyone had to read through before he took the written instructions away and play began. After playing a hand of the game, he would have the winner of the hand at each table get up and move to the next table. Unbeknownst to all of them, the written instructions at each table had been just slightly different. They were similar enough that no one could tell in one hand that the new people were playing by slightly different rules. By the time they had played three or four hands, the card game had devolved into total chaos, with a lot of confusion and misunderstandings about why people were playing so stupidly. This card game helped to illustrate that what we all consider “normal” and “correct” is really just learned behavior. I consoled myself with this and tried to take the best from my experience to guide me in my next professional endeavors.

Me (second from left) at a Canadian Association of Research Libraries Meeting, 2008

From 2009 to 2020, I lived and worked in the United States, traveling to Canada for about two weeks every Christmas and spending many weeks here every summer, as well as some time each spring and fall. I came back to Canada permanently in November 2020, married to my long-term Canadian boyfriend, and retired from my job in March of 2021. In spite of my long-term contact with and residence in Canada, some differences between my country of birth and my adopted country still surprised me. Through some social media groups focused on Americans living in Canada, I have learned that everyone’s experiences are different, based on where they are living, what their life circumstances are, and what their expectations are.

Below are some of my observations of the differences between Canada and the United States. Some of these observations are shared by other Americans living here and others may be uniquely my own.

Differences between Canada and the United States

Summer sunset on Katepwa Lake, Saskatchewan
Public park, Montreal, May 2022
  • Taxes are higher in Canada for some income levels than in the United States. Americans living in Canada must file and pay taxes in both countries, although tax treaties provide some credit on Canada’s taxes for taxes already paid to the U.S. Treasury,

United States federal tax brackets for 2023

Tax RateSingleMarried filing jointlyMarried filing separatelyHead of household
10%$11,000 or less$22,000 or less$11,000 or less$15,700 or less
12%$11,001 to $44,725$22,001 to $89,450$11,001 to $44,725$15,701 to $59,850
22%$44,726 to 95,375$89,451 to $190,750$44,726 to $95,375$59,851 to $95,350
24%$95,376 to $182,100$190,751 to $364,200$95,376 to $182,100$95,351 to $182,100
32%$182,101 to $231,250$364,201 to $462,500$182,101 to $231,250$182,101 to $231,250
35%$231,251 to $578,125$462,501 to $693,750$231,251 to $346,875$231,251 to $578,100
37%Over $578,125Over $693,750Over $346,875Over $578,100

Canada’s federal tax brackets for 2023

Tax RateTax BracketsTaxable Income
15%on the first $53,359$53,359
20.5%on the next $53,358$53,359 up to $106,717
26%on the next $58,713$106,717 up to $165,430
29%on the next $70,245$165,430 up to $235,675
33%on the portion over $235,675$235,675 and up
Grocery store in Montreal

As more examples come to mind, I may add to our modify this list.

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