Monthly Archives: April 2013

O’Flynn, Catherine. What Was Lost. Anchor Canada. F;4/11. Entertaining and absorbing; I read it in two days. It doesn’t resound with the holistic depth and breadth of great literature, but she has fun with an impressive range of repertoire. The … Continue reading →

Dillard, Annie. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. HarperPerennial 1998 (original 1974). Memoir/personal essay; 5/11. Another surprising book. I picked it off the award-winner’s shelf at Chapters thinking it was fiction and was mildly disappointed it wasn’t. It was heavy going at … Continue reading →

Conroy, Pat. South of Broad. Dial Press Paperback 2010 (original Random House 2009). F; 05/11 Okay, this grew on me. But in the end I was most impressed with a plot twist and so couldn’t credit the metaphoric literary stuff … Continue reading →

Franzen, Jonathan. Freedom. HarperCollins Toronto 2010. F; 02/11. I heard about this when somebody recommended the interviews with authors which George Plimpton had published, and so learned about the Paris Review, picked up the latest number, and read the interview with … Continue reading →

Goldacre, Ben. Bad Science. Fourth Estate (Collins) 2008. NF;06/11. Dr. Goldacre has a blog as well as a column in a British newspaper, and that was my introduction to his refreshingly tart brand of health science critical review elitism. He’s … Continue reading →

Frankfurt, Harry. On Bullshit. Princeton, Princeton NJ 2005. NF; 06/11. How surprised I was when this funny little smaller-than-CD-package-sized book arrived from Amazon, looking like a jokey junior version of a Princeton or Oxford academic tome. 61 pages. Took me … Continue reading →

Ignatius, David. Bloodmoney. Norton. New York 2011. F; 6/11. I started reading this getting ready to leave for New York and Toronto, as a break from Book of Memories, about which more herein. As you would expect with a spy … Continue reading →

Beattie, Ann. Park City. Harper Perennial, Toronto 1998. F;07/11. I got through about 24 of these 36 short stories, published at various times but nearly all set (reverse-nostalgically for me) in a New England arts academic scene in the 1970s. … Continue reading →

Nadas, Peter. A Book of Memories. Picador (paper) New York. First published 1986, English translation 1997. F;08/11 What a giant rambling 700-page mess of a thing this is. In the early going I decided not to finish it a dozen … Continue reading →

Franzen, Jonathan. Strong Motion. Picador, 1992. F; 9/11. I had been so delighted with his Freedom that I expected this to fall way short, and although it did fall short, it wasn’t by much. The central metaphor is earthquakes, and … Continue reading →