For the past two months I’ve been reading books that I got for Christmas from a wide variety of loved ones. Another rule I have now is that whenever I am given a book, I try to read it as soon as possible. This is for two reasons: first, the next time I see them, I can be like, ‘Really enjoying that book!’ or ‘That book you gave me sucks!’ Secondly, that way I don’t add to my List of Books on My Bookshelf I’ve Never Read (currently down to 8 books after years of dedicated reading and ignoring other books that might be more interesting).
Best Friends
Anyway, here are the 4 books I got for Christmas in the order I read them:
1) 100 Photos that Changed Canada edited by Mark Reid, The Beaver Magazine, which is actually a magazine about Canadian history. This was given to me by my sister Megan. At first I was like, okay, photos, whatever, but it’s a really good book that makes you think about what makes a photo important and the kind of influence photos have on a country’s history. It was interesting how many photos I had read about, but never seen, like the famous (in Canadian politics) photo of Robert Stanfield fumbling a football. Some photos were beautiful photos, some were important in the history of Canadian photography, some were photos that influenced people’s opinion, and some were emblematic of an historic event. The only thing I wish had been different is that a lot of the photos take up only a small portion of the page they’re on, or have things overlapping them, because they went to too much effort sometimes to give photos a background that gives the feeling that you just happened to find this photo in a chest of drawers or fallen onto some ice or in a jar of jelly beans. It was a cool effect, but sometimes it overwhelmed the photo itself.
Dave's Booklist 