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I read this collection of 12 short stories because I wanted to read another Canadian author. It made me fall in love with Vanderhaeghe’s language and I will definitely give one of his novels a try.

This minute by minute description of what would happen in a fictional nuclear escalation combined with deeply researched facts of the nuclear war machinery left me puzzled and utterly terrified. The thing is: We hear this "nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought" proverb and we know these bombs cause massive devastation but we do not have a picture in mind how unescapable the spiral of events would truly be once set in motion and how utterly horrific the result would look. Just realizing that each of the 14 nuclear armed submarines of the united states carries more than 20 times the explosive force of all bombs used in world war II (INCLUDING the two nuclear bombs in Japan!) should make it crystal clear how bizarre the system is we created.

It is somewhat lengthy and repetitive. It was cold, people were hungry, water and ice, ... But, it's fascinating to read the story in Shackleton's own words and it's intense at times. I would not have minded some more compression and one has to ignore the fact that some of the events were actually his fault. Still a good read though.

Ok, I enjoy reading Louise Penny's prose and that was no different this time. This fact accounts for the 2 stars because everything else in this book annoyed me a great deal. The murder mystery is just too much and not very logical, lot's of clues and events feel very forced and unlogical and I hate how some of Penny's characters behave in a way that would simply never happen. I really wanted to love this book but I can't. Still a semi-fun read though. It helped pass the time.

I heard about this book in a podcast interview and didn‘t expect much. What an amazing book! It was truly wonderful to explore some of Toronto‘s most iconic stories and through them deepen my understanding about this place.