About halfway through the book, I was convinced I had Alzheimer’s. In fact, so much so, that I wanted to stop reading because it was freaking me out, while at the same time, I wanted to keep reading because I wanted to find out what happened next and test myself (at one point a doctor asks Alice to remember a man’s name, his street address and city). I couldn’t remember the names and numbers, even though I was telling myself, REMEMBER THIS.

And I’m totally justified in thinking I might have Alzheimer’s because my grandfather had Alzheimer’s and the book even talked about how it’s genetic. Oh God.

Anyway, I finished the book and emailed my friend, who had told me she’d read the book.

Me: “Why did you tell me to read this? I think I have Alzheimer’s. I’m freaking out.”

She: “Don’t worry. I can’t remember the guy’s name or his address either. PS EVERYONE who reads the book thinks they have Alzheimer’s.”

Which made me feel slightly better. Just to be sure, I went to the Kindle reviews of the book. Yep, everyone thought they had Alzheimer’s. Need I say more? A story that draws you in so much so that you think you are the main character? That the things she forgets, you’re forgetting.  That you’re experiencing the disease and its effects right along with her.

Best book I’ve read this year. And I’m not just saying that because it’s the only book I’ve read so far.

So let’s talk. At first I was a bit skeptical on the premise. A True-Life Novel? Written by Jeannette Walls (whose memoir The Glass Castle I really loved) in her grandmother’s voice?

But  by page 9 I was sold. You can’t make up stuff like the fact that she lived in a dugout. Not a house. A dugout. Because timber was so scarce in the part of Texas where Lily was born, her father made their home by shoveling out what was more or less a big hole on the side of the riverbank, using cedar branches as rafters and covering them over with sod. The dugout had one room, a packed earth floor, a wooden door, a waxed-paper window and a cast iron stove. Lily says

“The best thing about living in the dugout was that it was cool in the summer and not too cold in the winter. The worst thing about it was that from time to time, scorpions, lizareds, snakes, gophers, centipedes, and  moles wormed their way out of our walls and ceiling. Once in the middle of an Easter dinner, a rattler dropped onto the table.”

I guess if that’s where you’re born, you don’t know any different. We didn’t have cable when I was growing up, and I just assumed everyone got up to manually change the channel and crank the dial on the antenna box to make it turn toward Toronto so I could watch Video Hits at 4:30 on Fridays, and toward Buffalo to catch 90210 on Wednesday nights.

It’s  no dugout though. Especially one that gets washed away in a flash flood, leaving Lily and her two siblings and parents homeless.

What do you think so far?

You know what’s not weird? Reading books at home, on the couch, like a normal person.

Which is what I now get to do even more of, thanks to my favourite store ever, who just asked me to become an Indigo Book Club Ambassador.

What it means is that I’m starting an online bookclub, right here on my blog and you can join!

Love to read but don’t have any friends who like the same books as you do?
Live too far away from your friends to get together?
Have seven kids that don’t let you out of the house for bookclub night?

Here’s how it works. Indigo sent me this package…

So cute, right? There are three books, a Petit Maison goat cheese baker and a Volupsa scented candle. And although you won’t be able to indulge in the warm goat cheese dish I’m going to bake and pretty candle I’ll be lighting while I read the book, you can do the same at home. And you can have a glass of wine if you want (I know I will be!) without worrying about driving home from the bookclub!

The first book I’ve chosen from the bunch to read is Half-Broke Horses. It’s the followup to Jeannette Walls’s memoir The Glass Castle. This time, she’s written a true-life novel written about her grandmother’s life, in the first person (as her grandmother).

Want to read with me? Pick up Half-Broke Horses and start reading, then check back here for my updates as I read the book, and discuss with me by leaving comments below along the way!

Hosted by Holt Renfrew & HELLO! Canada, the party took place in Holts Cafe, where — thanks to sponsors Moet & Chandon and Thomas George Estates — the bubbly (and non-bubbly) was flowing, the boyfriend jackets were in full force, and I spotted many, many pairs of shoes I need to add to my fall wardrobe. Here are a few pics from the party:

1. Shinan with his book. (Don’t worry, the actual book isn’t that big — you can fit it in your handbag).

2. All the world’s a stage, at least, Shinan’s sticker head is (love this!). 

3.  A 2D Shinan hangs with the ladies of Holts.

4. The Rights Factory media lawyer Christos Grivas and agent Alisha Sevigny, author Marissa Stapley-Ponikowski, and me.

5. Shinan in action.

Oh, but you wanted to know more about the book? Well here you go:

Part celebrity pinata, part scorching social satire, Boldface Names is a fast-paced romp through the land of the rich, the famous, and the wicked. In the eye of the party storm is Ravi, a vertically challenged gossip columnist (and self-confessed “tribe-traveller”), who snoops and schmoozes and amasses gift bags. But all hell breaks loose in the glittersphere when a mysterious D-list starlet is parachuted into Ravi’s life for safekeeping, setting off a high-stakes game of secrets and lies. Adding to the drama? The skeleton in Ravi’s own closet!Boldface Names stops in at all the hottest tickets–the fashion shows, book shindigs, race-car parties, and champagne launches. Adorning the hi-jinks are Govani’s laser-sharp observations on human behaviour, social milieus, and the machinery of gossip. The wisecracks fly at a Noel Cowardesque pace and the action hums. But be forewarned: no one is safe in Boldface Names.

Sweeping from the beaches of Anguilla to the towers of Dubai, from L.A. to London to the social mines of Toronto, Boldface Names stops in at all the hottest tickets–the fashion shows, book shindigs, race-car parties, and champagne launches. Adorning the hi-jinks are Govani’s laser-sharp observations on human behaviour, social milieus, and the machinery of gossip. The wisecracks fly at a Noel Cowardesque pace and the action hums. But be forewarned: no one is safe in Boldface Names.

Packing books for vacation is more important than shoes. Because while you can figure out which shoes will go with which outfits, which determines whether they’ll make the cut, books are trickier. Because you almost have to start to read the book to ensure it’s going to hold your attention, just so that you don’t bring it only to get 10 pages in and be bored. Then it’s just dead weight in your carry-on. Especially if you bought the hardcover. 

Which means you can’t just pick up a few books at the last minute, because then you won’t have time to do the pre-read.

This week I started my shopping and pre-read.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about Sophie Kinsella’s latest. I love her, but when Twenties Girl came out, I skimmed the first page in the bookstore and wasn’t captivated. But then Natasha, the host of The Buddha Lounge, where I tape a show every few weeks, said that she loved it. And that it was as good as any of Kinsella’s others. And on the last major trip I took I bought Remember Me? in the airport bookshop because I’d run out of books to read, and it’s now one of my favourite books ever. So I took Natasha’s advice and picked up Twenties Girl.

I’m going away for 15 days, and 5 of those will be spent in the middle of nowhere, in the desert. On a safari. Lounging by the pool. I figure I need 2 more books to ensure I don’t run out. I’m thinking one non-fiction and another fiction.

Any suggestions?

In the meantime, my editor wrote the cover copy for the book, so I thought I would share it with you!

A funny, heartfelt story about losing the perfect life—and finding a real one.

When twenty-seven-year-old image consultant Poppy Ross discovers her beloved husband Parker is having an affair, she is dumbfounded. Before she has a chance to confront him, however, he is struck by lightning. When he regains consciousness, he has lost his short-term memory—including
that of the affair. Given this unlikely chance to erase history, Poppy decides to remake herself in the mistress’s image, so that Parker might never be tempted to stray again. Her quest to become the perfect woman has disastrous and hilarious results, however, and just might turn out to be the worst thing possible for her marriage.

Want to read more? Sign up for my Secret Updates newsletter (scroll to the bottom of my home page to sign up), and I”ll send you the first few pages of Love Struck to read before anyone else! You’ll also get entered for a chance to win an ARC of the book, so you can read the whole book months before it’s in bookstores!

When I went through the same process with Stuck in Downward Dog, it was a totally different experience. My editor at the time had left on all the comments from the copyeditor so I could see what she had to say. And she was just doing her job and asking the kind of questions she should ask. But I got so confused that I started cutting characters and changing names. Only to find out that I wasn’t really supposed to do that, and could’ve just rejected all her comments and moved on with my life without having a nervous breakdown.

But I didn’t know better because it was my first time and I just wanted to be a good author. This time, however, my editor screened all the comments and changes, and then sent through a near-clean version, in which all I had to do was accept the better wording in most cases, and be happy that she was so good at her job.

Now, the book is back with my editor, and going to the typesetting phase. The next time I see it, it will be look like the pages of the book, only on regular printer-size paper. I’ll have one more read of it for any last typos, and then the advanced copies will be made!

But  for now, I’m on to the next deadline: Finishing The Time Traveller’s Wife.

Actually, I do know. I thought that the couple was going to be old and the plot plodding and the story hard to get into and hard to follow. I thought it was going to be sci-fi. I really dislike science fiction.

Then, three things happened:

1. I made the decision to take advantage of my break between edits on Love Struck  to read more in an attempt to keep up with my addiction to buying books faster than I can read them, and;

2. I saw the movie poster for The Time Traveller’s Wife and saw that Rachel McAdams is in it. I really love her. And the movie looks so good that I feel I would be so sad if I saw it because then I would definitely not be able to go back and read the book afterward.

3. I opened the book and read the first page. And I was hooked.

I’m now about 1/4 into the book and loving it. Unfortunately, I just received the copyedited version of Love Struck from my editor in my inbox tonight. Which is amazing because it means that my editor, who I love, and the copyeditor, have done such a good job that we’re now ahead of schedule. What it also means is that I now have to read over my novel and  The Time Traveller’s Wife in the next week before the movie comes out. How am I going to do it? If only I could stop time.

Maybe I do believe in science fiction after all…

The other day I was invited to Dove Spa to meet bestselling author Jane Green! So exciting. I loved her. She was so warm, funny and sweet. 

I’d post pictures but my computer is turning people in pictures into marshmallow men. Like Fluff.

I wish we had Fluff in the house. It’s probably a good thing we don’t.

Anyway, there are pictures and more tales from the afternoon over here…

I’ve bolded the titles I’ve read. Then I went back and bolded the titles of all the books whose related movies I’ve seen, because even though the book is always better, let’s face it: I’m never going to read the book after seeing the movie.

The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Affinity by Sarah Waters
The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
The Beach by Alex Garland
The Beach House by Mary Alice Monroe
Beach Music by Pat Conroy
Beginner’s Greek by James Collins
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
Big Sur by Jack Kerouac
Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
The Brothers Karamazov by Feodor Dostyevsky

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns
Compromising Positions by Susan Isaacs
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies
Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosely
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler
Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
Divided Kingdom by Rupert Thomson
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King
Dracula by Bram Stoker
The Drifters by James Michener
Drop City by T. Coraghessan Boyle
Dune by Frank Herbert

East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Empire Falls by Richard Russo
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
The Epicure’s Lament by Kate Christensen
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins
Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Frangipani by Celestine Vaite
Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
The Ginger Man by J.P. Donleavy
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
The Godfather by Mario Puzo
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Santini by Pat Conroy
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Barrows

The Harry Potter series, by J.K. Rowling
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
How Stella Got Her Groove Back by Terry McMillan
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb
The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
Impossible by Nancy Werlin
Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

Jaws by Peter Benchley
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy
Lamb by Christopher Moore
The Last Aloha by Gaellen Quinn
The Last Girls by Lee Smith
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Light Years by James Salter
Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly
Little Children by Tom Perrotta
The Little Friend by Donna Tartt
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
Lush Life by Richard Price

Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian
The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy by Robert Leleux
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Money by Martin Amis
Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
The Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux
Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

The Neon Rain: A Dave Robicheaux Novel by James Lee Burke
Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger
The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
One for the Money by Janet Evanovich
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

Peace, Love and Baby Ducks by Lauren Myracle
Pet Semetary by Stephen King
Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
The Pilot’s Wife by Anita Shreve
Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Possession by A.S. Byatt
Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver

The Queen of the South by Arturo Perez-Reverte
The Quincunx by Charles Palliser

The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Red Dragon by Thomas Harris
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson

Salty by Mark haskell Smith
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher
She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb
The Shining by Stephen King
Shogun by James Clavell
Sick Puppy by Carl Hiaasen
The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin
The Stand by Stephen King
The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever
Straight Man by Richard Russo
Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
Summer of ’42 by Herman Raucher
Summer Sisters by Judy Blume
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carre
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
Triple Zeck: A Nero Wolfe Omnibus by Rex Stout
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer – attempted not finished/saw the movie

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes

Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
Vanity Fair by William Thackeray
A Very Long Engagement by Sebastien Japrisot

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
The Waves by Virginia Woolf
The White Lioness by Henning Mankell
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
The World According to Garp by John Irving
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon

On the list, my Top 5 favourite are:

Bridget Jones’s Diary
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
The Catcher in the Rye
Pride and Prejudice
Little Women

How many have you read? What’s your favourite of all time on this list or not?