Category Archives: Uncategorized

January 2022 We are in this strange town due to a series of Covid-related and other travel screwups through which a full family celebration of my birthday on a beach in El Salvador gradually wizened into a short trip of … Continue reading →

El Akkad, Omar. What Strange Paradise. McClelland and Stewart, Toronto, 2021. F;2/22. This won the prestigious Canadian Giller prize for 2021 and I read it after The Listeners, one of the other shortlisted ones and was surprised, because of apparently … Continue reading →

James, Henry. The Golden Bowl. Scribner, New York (Methuen, London) 1904. F; 12/21. O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive! – Walter Scott, Marmion (1808) Henry James was one of the nicest old ladies … Continue reading →

January 2022 I think this is the first restaurant in Sechelt I’ve found with what I’d call serious-quality food. It’s a cozy little place in the abbreviated strip mall approached via the Highway just south of Claytons supermarket. A very … Continue reading →

December 2021 This relatively unassuming place has been on Burrard Street just uphill on the downtown side of the bridge for less than a year, braving the murderous consequences of the pandemic which have closed a lot of places with … Continue reading →

Harden, K Paige. The Genetic Lottery. Princeton, 2021, Princeton NJ. NF; 10/21. I think this book is popular because (and one of the reasons I liked it is) it hands both the right and the left a bit of a … Continue reading →

Obreht, Tea. The Tiger’s Wife. Random House, New York, 2011. F; 9/21. Not long ago I was on a walk with my seven-year-old granddaughter and her dad, and she favoured me with one of those moments where you later wish … Continue reading →

October 2021 I’m a long way from being an outdoorsy huntin shootin kinda guy, but one way to spend time with my sons in their 30s is to travel to remote locations and try to keep up with them as … Continue reading →

Timimi, Sami. Insane Medicine. Independent publication 2021. NF; 9/21. This is a surprisingly radical but for me wise and helpful look at modern psychiatry. Dr. Timimi is a UK child psychiatrist who will definitely be seen by the psychiatry and … Continue reading →

Kafka, Franz. The Castle. Translation from German by Mark Harman, Schocken, New York, 1998. Original publication as Das Schloss, 1926. F; 7/21. The first time I read any Kafka was in a university European Literature in Translation course as an … Continue reading →