Join us every Friday in July and August and learn about the Decoda staff’s summer reading. Today Maureen Kehler, Decoda’s Program Manager, is sharing her summer reading plans.

Maps are amazing! They take you to places you haven’t been before to discover new treasures and new adventures, if just in your imagination. These are places that live in your head and reality at the same time — places you can return to — a lot like books. Truly, magical!

“Nothing else matters about a map unless you know its purpose, what it’s trying to tell you. And how do you know its purpose? By figuring out its secrets.” – The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd

The Cartographers is a mystery, a thriller, a magical story about a particular road map and the people who figured out its secret. The premise and the plot were compelling, but it was the interesting characters and their relationships to maps and each other that kept me engaged. It was one of those books that I wished that I hadn’t finished so quickly, and it makes me sad that I can’t ever read it for the first time again. I can’t tell you anything more or I’ll ruin the journey for you but here are a few quotes from the book to get you reading.

“Maps were love letters written to times and places their makers had explored. They did not control the territory – they told its stories.”

“What is the purpose of a map? To bring people together.”

Some other gems that I recommend:

A Match Made for Murder by Iona Whishaw. This is Book 7 in the Lane Winslow Mystery Series. It’s best to start with the first book and read them in order. Most of the mysteries take place in Nelson BC and surrounding area, post World War II. I can’t wait to read the next one!

The Feast by Margaret Kennedy was originally published in 1949. It takes place post World War II in Cornwall. The novel starts with Reverend Samuel Bott telling his friend about the funeral sermon he is writing. “Not even an ordinary funeral,” he complained. “Not a funeral at all, really. We can’t bury the deceased. They’re buried already. Under a cliff…” The novel is about the characters in a seaside hotel and why some were buried in the collapse of the cliff and why some lived to tell the story. This was a Tina Chau pick. She’s never been wrong about a good read.

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro – winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. This is next on my list. Also, a Tina Chau pick.

Hope there’s still time for you to go adventuring this summer, whether that’s following a map to a choice destination or picking up a new book.