Hot Pepper Latte

About Me

Credit: Ramona Leitao

Hi,

Welcome to my little corner of the internet! After starting a new job in Toronto, I found myself one amongst a sea of people taking the commuter trains day after day. This was the perfect opportunity to catch up on all the reading I’ve been putting off and I started this blog as a way of tracking how many books I read when I managed not to fall asleep. Little did I know I would stumble into the vibrant community of book bloggers, now including bookstagrammers and booktok.

Over the last 10 years, Hot Pepper Latte has grown to be a place where I can geek out about books, share conversations I’ve had with some amazing folks, and celebrate the fantastic literary scene we have up in the North (#canlit).

I hope you enjoy my methodical madness and terrible photography. Follow me on socials for even more reviews.

Happy reading!

Catherine

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A fresh stack of women authors for summer ☀️ As always, I come back to fiction to shake me out of the everyday while also bringing me closer to it. Thanks to the influence of the NYT Best Books of the 21st Century list and the always spot-on opinions of the @queenbooksto staff. Did a little shelf clean out and left something for my neighbours 🤭 I first heard about The Red Palace from the author herself @junehwrites when I saw her funny reels recapping her various historical fiction novels. When I read “a dark romantic mystery about a palace nurse and a royal investigator” I knew it was a must-read! 🔍 #currentlyreading A Court of Silver Flames by Sarah J. Maas. Happy New Year! 🎊 My blog, Hot Pepper Latte, is officially back with a brand new look. With a logo designed by @lenoremakes and a new look to match, you can see it yourself over at hotpepperlatte.com ✨️ Got the best new mug at my office White Elephant game today! Not pictured: matching cozy socks and my current read A Court of Mist and Fury. 🧦🍵 Roaming is the first graphic novel I've read in a while. ✈️ I picked it up at the Toronto Lit Up book launch by @festofauthors last month, but I read this slower than usual. I really wanted to take in the illustrations and think about all the anecdotes that Mariko and Gillian Tamaki shared. Not gonna lie, there were some moments that reminded me of the mess of being in my early twenties. The drama, the impatience, the misunderstandings. The second-hand embarrassment (or is it first-hand...) came often. 🫣 The book follows university students Dani, Zoe, and Fiona across 5 days in NYC. They visit the usual tourists' haunts while trying not to look like tourists and navigating changes in their relationships to each other. At least, Dani and Zoe, childhood friends do. Fiona is kind of an asshole. But as expected from the Tamaki cousins, Roaming is an emotive, beautiful story about friendship and the vagaries of youth. With a wonderful peach and purple rendering of New York, you can't help but be transported to that place and time as well as that phase of life. If you're interested in graphic novels but not such a fan of typical genres of the medium, Roaming is a great place to start. I know it's sparked my interest in reading more graphic novels in the future. I read Split Tooth for a book club recently 🦷🐺 I really enjoyed the imagery and the way Tanya Tagaq alternated between prose and poems. It was a beautiful read with many visceral and, at times, violent images, yet much of it was rooted in nature. Human violence is treated casually and assumed in most cases. "Life murders us every day," she wrote and she meant it. Happy Mid-Autumn Festival! 🥮🌕🐇 Today, I learned that my mooncake says 十五月饼 because August 15 is the lunar calendar date for mid-Autumn, but also the bakery that made it is called October Fifth? 🥴 I dunno, languages are hard...