From an introduction to a biography: After he died, I was interviewed a lot, asked about Douglas. I said that I didn’t think that he had ever been a novelist, not really, despite having been an internationally best-selling novelist who had written several books which are, a quarter of a century later, becoming seen as […]
Category: Books
Book a Month Challenge #3: Craft
I thought I’d read about the craft of writing for this month’s challenge. Quotation of the Day for March 19, 2008 “I suspect I have spent just about exactly as much time actually writing as the average person my age has spent watching television, and that, as much as anything, may be the real secret […]
The book
Thursday evening I excavate M’s backpack and pull out two Magic Tree House books which she has chosen to bring home from the school library. Stories! We’ve had week after week after week after week of educational nonfiction books about sea creatures. It’s entirely karmically appropriate given my own childhood reading preferences that I am […]
Book a Month Challenge – Heart
The February challenge was to read and review a book about “heart”. I intended to flake out with a fluffy and enjoyable romance but Telling Tales: Living the Effects of Public Policy (Sheila Neysmith, Kate Bezanson, Anne O’Connell, 2005) came up in my library hold queue and having read it I can’t think of a […]
Don’t Get Too Comfortable
By David Rakoff Don’t Get Too Comfortable is a series of Rakoff’s essays on the simultaneous pleasantness and embarrassing excess of modern American life — as it says on the cover, “the indignities of coach class, the torments of low thread count, the never-ending quest for artisanal olive oil, and other First World problems”. It’s […]
29* things to be happy about
If Mark Morford can come up with 29 things to be happy about, I imagine I can too. Central heating and a non-leaky roof. I’ve spent enough time living in tents that I really grok the utter luxury that is the concept of Inside. Get wet? No problem; you can go inside where it’s warm […]
Book a Month Challenge – Time
(I’m a bit late with this review, but I plead work-related travel.) The January challenge was to read & review a book on the theme of time. I rather randomly chose Madeleine L’Engle’s An Acceptable Time off a shelf of kids’ fiction at the library. I remember enjoying A Wrinkle in Time when I was […]
Book: Rule the Web
by Mark Frauenfelder At TPL At Amazon.ca
Book meme
From Try Harder  1. Hardcover or paperback, and why? Paperback. It’s too hard to hold hardbacks in one hand. Plus, they hurt if you fall asleep and drop them on your nose. 2. If I were to own a book shop I would call it… Probably something cheesy with “nook” in the title. I am […]
Where’s my jetpack?
Wide-eyed children of the eighties watched in astonishment as Michael J. Fox (a.k.a. Marty McFly) shredded pavement on a hovering skateboard in Back to the Future Part II. The hoverboard was just like a skateboard, but with one crucial difference: no wheels. His pink and teal board had “magnetic” pads on the bottom and with […]
Outside
I always end up reading Outside magazine on airplanes. I compulsively buy it in airports. Is it just because airport newsstands have a terrible selection, forcing me to choose between Maxim and Today’s Bride before I finally spy Outside hiding behind a pillar? Maybe. There I am jammed tightly in a tin can with a […]
Animal, vegetable, miracle
Animal, vegetable, miracle: a year of food life by Barbara Kingsolver, with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver. It’s a simple premise for an experiment: what does it look like to spend a year eating food you’ve either produced yourself or sourced locally? The Kingsolver/Hopp family certainly aren’t the only ones who have attempted this […]
Doodles!
Yesterday I bought myself this book, which is 400 pages of doodly goodness: The concept is that there’s a little something on each page and an idea (“draw the people stuck at the bottom of this pit”) to get you started. Brilliant! My sister bought this and its companion volume, Scribbles, for M for Christmas […]
Book #31 – Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
By Mary Roach Surgery practice. The Body Farm. Embalming practice. Crash tests. Transplants. Food. It’s not the most appetizing collection of eventual ends to which one’s body could be put, but then (as Roach points out) none of the alternatives are all that wonderful. This book deserves its good reviews — Roach is curious and […]
Book #30 – Another Wilderness: New Outdoor Writing by Women
By Susan Fox Rogers, ed. Once, on a canoe trip that turned out to be more vigorous than some of the trippers were prepared for, when we finally got to the end of a long portage I was asked something along the lines of “how can anyone keep going like this?” And without thinking I […]
Book #29 – Virtual Clearcut : Or, The Way Things Are in My Hometown
By Brian Fawcett Brian Fawcett co-taught some required course or other that I took in grad school. There was a lot of reading — maybe two books a week — and also weekly writing assignments. Not big stuff, just reflections on various aspects of a particular topic, two or three pages long. I wrote a […]
Book #28: Mirror Mirror
By Gregory Maguire After some reflection, I’m not sold on Maguire’s stuff (Wicked is his biggest success). I don’t mind some darkness in my fairy tales, but do they have to be corrupt and sordid as well? The concept is great — turning fairy tales inside out — but Maguire excels at repellent characters and […]
Book #27: Biscuit Finds a Friend
By Alyssa Satin Capucilli (Author), Pat Schories (Illustrator) D fell asleep on the couch this afternoon. M wanted to make everything all perfect for him, so she went down and very sweetly covered him up with her special quilt, put some books next to him for when he woke up, turned off the light, closed […]
Book #26: MapArt Metropolitan Toronto Pocket Atlas
I’m crazy tired and not up to books with actual words and plots and characters and things, so today I think I’ll stick to pretty pictures. This is a great little map book. Very handy when we have to venture places where there might be dragons — north of Eglinton and whatnot. It’s probably neither […]
Book #25: Good Bones
By Margaret Atwood Short stories — very short, most are only a few pages. Many touch on themes of gender. Some of the best ones showcase Atwood’s needly humour, ranging from a perfect satire of PC fairy tales (There Was Once) to a sendup of gender roles (Making a Man) to a brilliant mashup of […]