This Year’s Book List

I got some GREAT books for Christmas and my Birthday this month. I’m eager to read every one of them! I couldn’t have picked out better books myself. Now I just have to make some time to read ’em! 😀

Oak Island Gold by William Crooker
Treasure hunters have been tunneling into Oak Island off the coast of Nova Scotia since 1795, yet no one has found the fabulous treasure that legend says is buried there. It all began when a young explorer found a clearing on the island that appeared to have been worked. Throw in local rumors of pirates and buried treasure, and the digging started. The original excavators did leave many clues which convinced treasure seekers that something was buried on Oak Island, but every time the digging reached a certain depth, the hole filled with sea water. Crooker, an engineer and surveyor, presents both a thorough historical review of the various digs and a look at all the theories about the treasure. Based on his research, he maintains that it was looted by the British from Havana in 1762 and put on the island for safekeeping. Prospectors are still digging, but until the “treasure” is found, the mystery remains.

The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate by Gary Chapman
Unhappiness in marriage often has a simple root cause: we speak different love languages, believes Dr. Gary Chapman. While working as a marriage counselor for more than 30 years, he identified five love languages: Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch. In a friendly, often humorous style, he unpacks each one. Some husbands or wives may crave focused attention; another needs regular praise. Gifts are highly important to one spouse, while another sees fixing a leaky faucet, ironing a shirt, or cooking a meal as filling their “love tank.” Some partners might find physical touch makes them feel valued: holding hands, giving back rubs, and sexual contact. Chapman illustrates each love language with real-life examples from his counseling practice.
I’ve seen this book a few times, but never had a chance to read it. Julie gave it to me and now I’ll have to find out if Jeff and I are speaking the same love language.

Twenty-First Century Irvings by Harvey Sawler
Famed Canadian industrialist K. C. Irving has always been considered the most important figure of the Irving family business empirean empire of such dominance in its region that only Americas Morgans or Rockefellers merit a valid comparison. K. C. was indeed the pivot man in a relentless relay of work now spanning more than fourteen decades. Twenty-first Century Irvings leads us through the three generations left in K. C.s wake, a dozen or more individuals following the Irving tradition ofhard work, family loyalty, and an awe-inspiring attention to detail. These contemporary Irvings are trying to do all this while attempting to cast a kinder, gentler Irving image, which those close to the family claim has always been a part of the Irvings rural New Brunswick makeup. Twenty-first Century Irvings explores the modern family business, the powerful players behind its continuing success, and the myths that are spread about the wealthy empire. Author Harvey Sawler exposes the truths behind those myths, and predicts the transformation of the family, like the Rockefellers and the Morgans, from industrialists to philanthropists. A business story, a family story, and a Maritime story, this is a book for anyone interested in or affected by the Irving empire.

Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay
The eagerly anticipated novel from the bestselling author of A Student of Weather and Garbo Laughs. Harry Boyd, a hard-bitten refugee from failure in Toronto television, has returned to a small radio station in the Canadian North. There, in Yellowknife, in the summer of 1975, he falls in love with a voice on air, though the real woman, Dido Paris, is both a surprise and even more than he imagined. Dido and Harry are part of the cast of eccentric, utterly loveable characters, all transplants from elsewhere, who form an unlikely group at the station. Their loves and longings, their rivalries and entanglements, the stories of their pasts and what brought each of them to the North, form the centre. One summer, on a canoe trip four of them make into the Arctic wilderness (following in the steps of the legendary Englishman John Hornby, who, along with his small party, starved to death in the barrens in 1927), they find the balance of love shifting, much as the balance of power in the North is being changed by the proposed Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline, which threatens to displace Native people from their land. Elizabeth Hay has been compared to Annie Proulx, Alice Hoffman, and Isabel Allende, yet she is uniquely herself. With unforgettable characters, vividly evoked settings, in this new novel, Hay brings to bear her skewering intelligence into the frailties of the human heart and her ability to tell a spellbinding story. Written in gorgeous prose, laced with dark humour, Late Nights on Air is Hay’s most seductive and accomplished novel yet, and is already garnering interest abroad. On the shortest night of the year, a golden evening without end, Dido climbed the wooden steps to Pilot’s Monument on top of the great Rock that formed the heart of old Yellowknife. In the Netherlands the light was long and gradual too, but more meadowy, more watery, or else hazier, depending on where you were. . . . Here, it was subarctic desert, virtually unpopulated, and the light was uniformly clear. On the road below, a small man in a black beret was bending over his tripod just as her father used to bend over his tape recorder. Her father’s voice had become the wallpaper inside her skull, he’d made a home for himself there as improvised and unexpected as these little houses on the side of the Rock — houses with histories of instability, of changing from gambling den to barber shop to sheet metal shop to private home, and of being moved from one part of town to another since they had no foundations.

The Acadians: In Search of a Homeland by James Laxer
An evocative and beautifully written history of some of Canada’s earliest settlers, and their search for a definitive home. In 1604, a small group of migrants fled political turmoil and famine in France to start a new colony on Canada’s east coast. Their roughly demarcated territory included what are now Canada’s Maritime provinces, land that was fought over by the British and French empires until the Acadians were finally expelled in 1755. Their diaspora persists to this day. The Acadians is the definitive history of a little-known part of the North American past, and the quintessential story of a people in search of their identity. In the absence of a state, what defines an Acadian is elusive and while today’s Acadian community centred in New Brunswick is more confident than ever, it is entering a contentious debate about its future. James Laxer’s compelling book brilliantly explores one of Canada’s oldest and most distinct cultural groups, and shows how their complex, often tragic history reflects the larger problems facing Canada and the world today.

We Keep a Light by Evelyn M. Richardson
I just finished a book about the lighthouses of Nova Scotia. It was a real fascinating read – all the stories about the lifestyles of lighthouse keepers and their families. The book mentioned this book by Mrs. Richardson many times. With her husband, and 3 children, they kept the light burning on Bon Portage Island. She wrote this book (that won a Governor General’s Award) and went on to write many more books.