One of the things that happens to you when you’re a book blogger is that authors and publicists email you about books they’d like you to read and review. And sometimes those emails are insane. One time, early on in my book blogging saga, I received a poorly-written query from an author, let us call [...]
Posts from ‘June, 2009’
Review: My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, by Amos Tutuola
This is a book that you’re either going to love or loathe, because it is absolutely crazy. C-R-A-Z-Y. Crazy. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts was written by Amos Tutuola, a 20th-century Nigerian author. Tutuola was very briefly educated under the British system (Nigeria then being a colony) but led a largely unremarkable life [...]
Read More Canada
It has recently come to my attention that lots of people don’t seem to know what’s being written and read in Canada these days. “Canadian Literature?,” they cry, “You mean that awful stuff we had to read in class?” I do not mean that awful stuff, dear readers. I mean the stuff that you’re not [...]
Home and Native Land
Here’s a confession: I get kind of ridiculously excited when books mention and/or are set in Canada. Not the CanLit type of books set in Canada — where everything is ostentatiously Canadian, the kind of books that teachers like to thrust at you with crazy eyes, proclaiming that yes, we do have a literary culture [...]
She Reads Books, BA (Hons)
Guess what I did today? Yup, I graduated. …. and pretended to be a Dementor. …. and danced in a doorway. …. and was happy & very accomplished. You?
Review: The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I, by M. T. Anderson
This book is exquisite. Seriously: the prose is so good that I want to roll around in it. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation (Volume I: The Pox Party) is exquisitely written, and tells the story of one Octavian Gitney, a boy slave raised by a New England philosophical society just [...]
The Ethics of Royalties
Those of you who have been following this blog for a while will know, beyond doubt, that I am a huge fan of purchasing, acquiring, and reading used books. The first post that I wrote to really make it big in terms of comments and social media talked about why I love second-hand books. And [...]
Review: Summer Sisters, by Judy Blume
This is not your childhood’s Judy Blume. Summer Sisters begins with a phone call, as someone named Vix (Vix?) finds out that someone named Caitlin is going to marry someone named Bru (Bru?). Then Vix runs to the bathroom to puke, and then BAM! It’s flashback time. It keeps being flashback time for about the [...]