The Niagara-on-the-Lake Public Library board and staff are interested in exploring the special place books, reading, storytelling and libraries hold in the hearts of our community members. The power of the written and spoken word, the enchantment of libraries and childhood memories of time spent with books, creates a profound tapestry of emotions and experiences. This questionnaire prompts introspection and reflection, offering a unique lens through which to examine the bond between readers and their connection to books, storytelling and libraries. Watch this space for interviews with an array of interesting community members.
I met with Niagara resident and Mystery Book Club founder Suzanne Hebert to talk about her love of libraries and reading. She grew up in Montreal and moved to Niagara-on-the-Lake in 2001 after an international career. She joined Newcomers, found great reading friends, and began a Mystery Fiction Book Club. The club has lasted for more than 20 years, with several original members still attending! A lifelong reader and library enthusiast, she has kept a list of all the books she has read for many years.
Q. How did Niagara-on-the-Lake become your home?
I retired in 2000 and I moved here in 2001 from Montreal, basically for the weather! I liked it here immediately. It’s probably the longest I’ve ever lived anywhere.
Q. What are your early memories of reading and what were your favourite books as a young person?
I grew up in Outremont in Montreal. As far as I remember I’ve always been a reader. I must have been maybe eight years old and for Christmas, my parents gave me a series of books — six or seven — by Alexandre Dumas. I just fell in love with the books right then and there. Dumas is still my favourite author. I can’t even say which ones are my favourites.
School wasn’t very conducive to reading. I kept asking my parents to change my school because I didn’t think I was learning anything. Eventually, the nuns put me behind a column, which was good because I could read all day! They knew I wasn’t listening to anything they were talking about, although I did like learning Latin.
I don’t remember going to any particular library in Montreal. I do remember at the time in Quebec was a lot of censorship — books you weren’t supposed to read. But my parents bought me books. They both encouraged me to read beyond books for my age. Growing up I also had a really good friend who would read the same books as me. Then we would talk on the phone about the books we read. We had our own book club.
Q. How did you maintain your love of reading as an adult?
I ended up doing a Masters in political science. I’ve lived in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Hong Kong. My job involved a lot of travel. Every two months I would be away for two or three weeks. It was difficult to be a reader then — nowadays you can put books on your phone or your tablet, but back then I couldn’t really put all the books I wanted to read into my suitcase. I’ve been reading mysteries for a long time. I just love the genre.
Q. How does your Mystery Fiction Book Club work?
We like to keep our group to 10 people, because that is the number of people our houses can handle. We don’t choose particular books for our club. We choose an author instead. It makes it easier for our members to get the books we want to talk about from the library.
Sometimes people in the group read the same book but not always. I find it really interesting to have us read different books. I might find one by an author and not like the book and someone else will have read another of the author’s books and really liked it. So I say, okay, maybe I’ll try the book they read. Often it turns out that I like something they read.
At our meetings we talk about the author. We talk about the style and a little about the story but not the plot of course. In our club we don’t go into too much detail about the books we read because we haven’t all read the same book. If someone recommends a particular book that I haven’t read before, I might try it! We socialize too. Mystery book clubs are not that serious.
For most of us, our favourite authors are from the Nordic countries. Those authors write “dark”. They seem to write a lot of good mysteries. There are tons to choose from. Unlike some book clubs, the people in our club really do read the books.
In our club, everybody suggests authors for us to read from their own research. If you think about it, we’ve been going on for more than 22 years with more than 12 authors per year. That’s more than 260 books!
We thought we were running out of authors but we started searching and came up with a huge list. We found a really interesting British mystery author of Indian origin, Abir Mukerjee, for example. I read three of his books. There aren’t a lot of Canadian mystery writers we have read, though there are some. Louise Penny of course. She’s not my favourite, although other people in our group really like her work.
Right now I’m reading one called One Step Behind, by Henning Mankell. I thought I read all his books and I discovered that I hadn’t read this one. I’m reading it on my own, not for the club.
Q. Why do you like this author?
I like his descriptions — you feel you’re there. His detectives are interesting too. His main character is a poor soul, rather unhappy. Maybe it’s because he comes from Scandinavia, where it’s dark all the time in the winter. They’re people with problems. Mankell takes you right there — to Scandinavia. I’ve never been there in person, but his books take me there.
Q. How else do you find books to read?
Every morning I get an email from BookBub. They send you a list of six or seven books. You can download them for about a dollar or make a note to look up the book somewhere else. You can choose the types of books they recommend.
There’s another author named Ian Hamilton who I really like. A lot of his books take place in Asia, although the heroine in his stories is a woman in Toronto. I met him when he did an author talk at the Niagara-on-the-Lake library. We email each other from time to time. It turns out he knows Asia quite well from his earlier work in the grocery industry. And I know Asia well too from my work. I really liked it when the library used to host different authors. I think it stopped because of COVID but I wish it would start up again. Those sessions were so well-attended and people really liked meeting the authors.
Q. Do you read outside of the mystery genre?
I also belong to another regular book club. We usually choose fiction. Our club year starts in September; everybody chooses one book. One book I suggested was Women Talking by Miriam Toews. I haven’t actually bought a physical book in years. I had a giant bookshelf but now I just keep a few books. Most of them you don’t re-read. I do keep my The Three Musketeers! One thing I find is that books in French are more expensive than English ones and I’m not sure why. I still read French books but I don’t read a lot of them.
Most of the time I buy e-books or get my books out of our library. I like the Niagara region-wide inter-library service where they can get a book from another branch. The network is absolutely wonderful. It gives us much greater access than we’d normally have in a small town.