This summer, my mom and I went to Toronto for a weekend. We saw the Newsies musical (which was awesome!) on Friday. We decided to spend Saturday exploring some of the little bookstores that Toronto offers - and there are a lot! I thought I would share our adventure, in case anyone else is looking for some bookish fun in the Toronto area.

The owner of this bookstore was so nice! At this point in the trip, I had hardly any Canadian cash left. I only bought one book, which didn't cost enough for the minimum credit card amount. So he sold it to me for only $5 because that was all the cash I had left!

My mom is a big mystery reader, so we definitely had to stop here. They have a great mix of new and used mysteries.

If you aren't looking for it, you're likely to walk right past this one. There's no sign (that I could see, at any rate). But there's no denying it's a bookstore as soon as you peek in the front door. Books everywhere!

Nicely organized in the front, literally stacks of boxes of books in the back. Not enough storage or display space for all of the great books they had!

The caliber of books at this one was rather outside of our price range. But that's okay, because we went for the biblio-mat! Just two dollars (Canadian, but the owner will happily change your American dollars for Canadian if you had completely run out like we had) - and you get a completely random book! How fun is that!

Behind the tree is Dencan Books, which was closed for a week because the owner was on vacation. But The Book Exchange next door was open, and the owner kindly suggested another bookstore just down the street (actually, there are a whole lot of them in the neighborhood called The Junction, but we were running out of time. You could probably spend a whole day just in that area alone).

This was our last stop for the day. They sell CDs, DVDs, and vinyl records, along with a wide variety of books.

And after a day spent perusing various bookstores, I had of course amassed quite a pile of finds. Here's what I came home with:​

I would happily visit any of these bookstores again, the next time I'm in Toronto. And even better, this is only a small fraction of the bookstores you can find there. There's lots more to explore!

I am on to (and almost done with) my second nonfiction read of the month - The Hidden White House by Robert Klara. I love learning totally useless things as I read (such as, Harry Truman owned 489 neckties and brought the bowtie back into style). Facts like this are one of the reasons I love nonfiction.

This week's topic is:​
Book Pairing: Match a fiction book with a nonfiction book that you would recommend.

Someday, Someday, Maybe by Lauren Graham & My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff

Both books take place in New York City in the '90s. Both feature heroines who are trying to start a career, find friends, and just plain figure out life. And both are wonderfully good reads!

I honestly don't watch a lot of movies. So this list could probably be really long. I'm going to limit it to movies that I'd actually like to see someday and/or books I've read (because that is required before seeing the movie).

Well, we had an extremely unusual week of 70+ degree weather. In November, of all things! But I'll take weather like that anytime I can get it. Besides, knowing Michigan, it'll probably be snowing by Thanksgiving!

The Zucchini Warriors by Gordon Korman (Fun middle grade fiction)
Xanadu: Marco Polo and Europe's Discovery of the East by John Man (This book couldn't seem to decide if it wanted to be a travelogue or straight history, but I learned a lot anyway!)

The Hidden White House: Harry Truman and the Reconstruction of America's Most Famous Residence by Robert Klara (Did you know that Truman owned 489 neckties? You do now!)
The Importance of Being Earnest and Four Other Plays by Oscar Wilde (I'm halfway through A Woman of No Importance, and thoroughly enjoying it!)

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender (Our book club book for November)

Mary Roach is surely a writer with no fear. If she investigates a topic, she goes all the way, even experiencing weightlessness during a parabolic jet flight (something which would have certainly made me sick). If she writes about it, then she wants to experience it as best as she can.

Although, experiences are not the only way she shows no fear. She asks questions. Questions that would make the answerer uncomfortable. Questions that certainly cannot be described as tactful. Questions that would never even have crossed the mind of most people. 

It is this quality of fearlessness that makes Mary Roach’s books the wonders that they are. Packing for Mars investigates all sorts of aspects of space travel, everything from donning a space suit to why you may want to avoid going to the bathroom for the duration of your stay in space. I learned things about life in space that I never wanted to know (but found strangely fascinating, nevertheless).

Reading one of Mary Roach’s books is like having a cup of coffee with that girl in school who was never afraid to say what she was thinking. Packing for Mars was informative (perhaps a little too much so) and hilarious. Anyone interested in astronauts or life in space should read this book. Actually, anyone who is interested in laughing out loud at completely random facts should read this book. And isn’t that all of us?

Find it on: Goodreads  |  Amazon  |  Better World Books

I've never participated in a Nonfiction November before. I don't think I read tons of nonfiction, but I do read some throughout the year. I prefer it sprinkled amongst the fiction to give my brain a break. But when I looked at the books I still need to read to finish my 2015 reading challenges, I realized I'm going to be doing quite a bit of nonfiction reading in November. So I might as well do it with everybody else!

Here's my stack:​

My favorite nonfiction read of the year is definitely Walk the Lines: The London Underground, Overground by Mark Mason. I am an Anglophile, I love walking around foreign cities, and I love random trivia. This book contained all of those things in spades. It was awesome!

As you can probably tell, travel narratives are my favorite type of nonfiction to read. I can never get enough of that. But I also love nonfiction books about books. And European history, especially the U.K., France, and Italy.

The community is the best part of book blogging. So I'm hoping to find some new blogs and bloggers to connect with, as well as some amazing book recommendations!

I don't purposely search out debut authors, but I have run across a few in my reading that haven't published a second book yet. Some of them won't take long to do so, I'm sure. Others have had me waiting impatiently for years! Here are the authors whose next books I am ready and waiting to read.

Happy belated Halloween (and Reformation Day) to everybody! We had a total of 7 trick-or-treaters at our house, so lots of leftover candy for us! (That's kind of the way we plan it. . .​)

America the Beautiful: Rediscovering What Made This Nation Great by Ben Carson (He has some really great ideas! I like this guy!)
The Turquoise Ledge: A Memoir by Leslie Marmon Silko (As our weather gets colder and windier, it was nice to escape into the Sonoran Desert for awhile.)

The Zucchini Warriors by Gordon Korman (This was a fun find for help finish up my A-Z challenge.)
The Importance of Being Earnest and Four Other Plays by Oscar Wilde (I finished Lady Windermere's Fan over the weekend, which I enjoyed just as much as The Importance of Being Earnest. Two plays down, three more to go!)

Xanadu: Marco Polo and Europe's Discovery of the East by John Man (Last book for my A-Z challenge. I actually found one that starts with an X!)