Monthly Archives: May 2013

Any time. (See also below) This is been my favourite bakery for almost as long as I can remember. Olivier and Penny Lebeau feel like old friends, although I know hundreds of their regulars are on a first-name basis. They … Continue reading →

Spring, 2013 When you suffer the small catastrophe of missing a ferry to Langdale or Nanaimo you’ve got time on your hands. And if it’s lunch or dinner time, the choices are few. Anyone who’s tried the formerly reliable Troll’s recently … Continue reading →

Syjuco, Miguel. Illustrados. Hamish Hamilton Canada. F; 1/11. This is the only book I can remember starting to read a second time. I stopped the second reading when I read some online reviews and realized that my perplexity was shared … Continue reading →

Halperin, Justin. Sh*t My Dad Says. !t Books (Harper Collins) New York. F; 1/11. A friend gave me this, saying it was terribly funny. It’s very short, and yes, it’s in the comedy genre. But it ends up pulling on … Continue reading →

Philips, Wendy. Fishtailing. Coteau, Regina F (poetry); 1/11. I swore out loud when I opened this, having bought it thinking it was a novel, and discovering it to be a narrative poem with big print and a lot of blank … Continue reading →

Casey, Alan. Lakeland: Journeys into the Soul of Canada. Greystone Vancouver. NF; 1/11. I bought this because the author is a Greystone “colleague”, who however is successful, and won the Governor General’s Literary Award. “He’s a beautiful writer” my editor … Continue reading →

Skibsrud, Wendy. The Sentimentalists. Douglas and McIntyre, Vancouver and Toronto. F; 2/11. Once again, I came pretty close to quitting this book halfway through. The problem is a dense, demanding diction. It’s hard to tell whether this is a literary … Continue reading →

Gordon, Emily Fox. Book of Days: Personal Essays. Spiegel & Grau New York 2010. Memoir; 2/11. I learned “personal essay” as the name of this genre, the extended version which is called  memoir. The author (whom I expected for some reason … Continue reading →

Munro, Alice. Too Much Happiness. Penguin Canada Toronto 2009. F; 2/11. Another wonderful collection of short stories from Alice Munro. This time, I seemed to find the dreadful things that always happen to her characters predictable. It wasn’t exactly (PLOT … Continue reading →

May 2013. (See also below)  I’ve been going to this bakery for a long time. I have no idea what first led me into the place, it’s definitely affected with an air of false français, including French music and a … Continue reading →