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 [...]
Posts under ‘Reading List’
Pimp my High School Library
I chanced to reconnect, the other day, with the excellent head librarian from my high school days. She’s still there, but she’s retiring at the end of this year — and looking forward to it very much, I might add. During the conversation, it chanced to come up that she still has a fair amount [...]
Best Books of 2008
Now that 2008 is officially over, it’s time to pick the best books of the year! Golly gum golly, it was quite the year of reading for me. Here follow my picks for the best books I read last year (not necessarily published last year), month-by-month. A note on the many, many links embedded here: [...]
Lest We Forget
Veterans: thank you. This morning I had the honour of participating in my university’s Remembrance Day ceremony — my choir sang an arrangement of In Flanders Fields and also led the congregation in a few hymns and the national anthems. I’ve participated this way as long as I’ve been in the choir. We get a [...]
Those October Books
Which October books? Those ones. Over there. Them what I did got read. The Screwtape Letters, by C. S. Lewis. This is a longstanding personal favourite, because it is both splendidly written and extremely useful. The Screwtape Letters is a collection of letters “from a senior to a junior devil”, pertaining largely to matters of [...]
September Books
Na na na na Na na na na na Na na na na Na na na na September Books! *Halting State, by Charles Stross. The plot of this book was a wee tad confusing, but the writing was fascinating. There are three main characters. They all speak in Scottish dialect. And it’s narrated in the [...]
August Book Round-Up
I find these monthly book summaries simultaneously stimulating and dreadful. Stimulating because I like to see how many books I’ve read, and to look at how the month was shaped as a whole, at least as far as literature is concerned. I find them dreadful because the task falls to me of not only remembering [...]
July Books
Books! In July! I read ‘em! It was, in fact, a particularly excellent month in terms of my reading, especially as regards things I’d never read before (marked, as always, with an asterisk). Here are the goods: *V for Vendetta, by Alan Moore. My brothers had been bothering me to read this for a good [...]