top5s online

August was humour month for our genre book club. I was already a few chapters in (yeah ok, so I sort of cheated!) to a hilarious autobiography, which pretty much influenced the picking of this month's genre. And thank goodness, because it was a great book! I guess it's not traditional humour (as far as the genre goes) but it make me smile and laugh constantly so it counts. August 2014: Humour Nobody Cries at BINGO By Dawn Dumont 2011 298 pages The author (a trained lawyer and actress/comedian) presents each chapter as a short vignette about her childhood growing up on a reserve in Saskatchewan. The stories flow chronologically and revolve around her family, friends and the mundane, yet exciting, details about their daily lives. Dumont's language is simple, yet she deftly portrays reserve life to those who aren't familiar with it (and I suspect to those who are). And it was hilarious, in a completely dry, sarcastic and self deprecating way. Dumont turns all those little ...

It's taken me a long time to write this post because mostly I couldn't think of how to fill out my top 5 for the Edmonton Folk Fest 2014 . This was not a stellar year on the hill for music for me. I've previously acknowledged that I've pigeon holed myself so much musically that I enjoy less and less these days. And this year, I'm a bit burnt out and didn't really want to deal with the early mornings and the lines. I was only going to go for one day to see Michael Franti, but ended up being talked into getting a weekend pass. And it was a good thing I went for the whole festival. View of the city is always stunning from the hill. Here's my Folk Fest 2014 top 5: 1. My Tarp Family - Even though the music was not awesome for me this year, my tarp family sure was. This is the second (or third, we can't remember) year I've hung out at the top of the hill with my (relatively new) usual music crew. And over the years I've really come to love spending tim...