Originally intended to simply focus on book reviews, over time, KaliDesautelsReads has morphed into its own entity.
I write about issues that are near to my heart, be they political, feminist, motherhood, mental health, or, as the title holds, books.
A thirty-something Canadian woman in my mid-thirties, I have been “super married” to my high school sweetheart since 2006, and together we have two crazy, clever, kind, hilarious, wonderful kids.
My first book – How Not To Blog: Finding Myself, One Post at a Time is available on Amazon (in eBook formats for you clever tech readers, and paperback for those of us who love that new book smell!)
I have tried a podcast – it’s still on Apple and Google Podcasts – but writing is where my heart is.
My life changed dramatically when my husband was diagnosed with Stage 3 cancer in 2018, and I am now a writer for a leading Canadian Cancer Non-Profit.
I am lucky enough to have a family that loves me and pushes me to be my best, even if it is outside of my cushiony comfort zone. I have a village of friends that nourish me, mentally, and spiritually.
Welcome to my thoughts. Sit down. Stay a while. Enjoy a cup of coffee!
Sometimes spending time together looks like this – me reading and him playing video games. I do not enjoy video games and he doesn’t enjoy reading, but we enjoy spending the evening together. So tonight while he played insurgency, I curled up next to him with Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan.
You don’t have to be doing the same thing to be spending time together, we have learned over our 24 years as a couple. Sometimes it’s enough to just be on the same couch happily doing things you each enjoy.
First of all, I loved, loved, LOVED this book. It has been on my shelf for years and was a book club selection at work, so I pulled it out and downloaded the audiobook and read it over the last two days.
A memoir of growing up with an Indigenous mother and an American father in Toronto, Wente explores his family history, discusses his life and advocacy work, and shines a light on the lie of reconciliation in Canada. “You’ll notice that when colonial politicians espouse this version of reconciliation there’s a crucial word they almost always leave out: truth” says Wente, as he explains Canada’s inertia on the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This book is both engaging as a memoir – over Wente’s multi-decade love affair with movies, and his role as the pre-eminent Indigenous film critic in Canada to his role as the Director of the Indigenous Screen Office – and an intimate history of the trauma of residential schools in Canada. Wente discusses the fact that his family’s home reservation of Serpent River has had a boil water advisory off and on for 15 years, in a country with some of the cleanest drinking water in the world, pointing out the ongoing maltreatment of First Nations persons in Canada.
I highly recommend this book if you have not read it. I think it is important for Canadians and non-Canadians to understand the experience of indigenous peoples and that of Jesse Wente in particular. At under 200 pages, it is worth the read.
“OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • From the New York Times-bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret The Covenant of Water is the long-awaited new novel by Abraham Verghese, the author of the major word-of-mouth bestseller Cutting for Stone, which has sold over 1.5 million copies in the United States alone and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for over two years. Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl—and future matriarch, known as Big Ammachi—will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants. A shimmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the difficulties undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. It is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.”
I am soooooo excited about this book! Rachel Cargle is a woman that I admire deeply for her activism, her philanthropy, and her intelligence. I cannot wait to dive in.
Happy Mother’s Day, mom. I love and appreciate you so much. Thank you for being a great mom and a great memere to the kids. I hope you had a special day.
The beautiful summer weather has hit where I am and so what could be a better choice than a fun rom com about summer vacations?
The story follows Poppy and Alex who are opposites in every way, but the best of friends. Every year the 2 friends spend a week together on their Summer Trip, regardless of other relationships, jobs, school, etc., until they suddenly stopped speaking after the last Summer Trip 2 years ago.
Desperate to rekindle her friendship with him, Poppy convinces Alex to come on one more Summer Trip, to pretend that whatever happened between them did not happen and things could be just as they were before.
In typical rom com fiction style, things do not go as planned and problems arise constantly, leading them squarely to the one big truth of their relationship.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and if you are looking for an easy, summer beach read, Emily Henry’s book is for you.
Kali J Desautels 