Because I love making reading lists almost as much as I love reading the books that I add to them, I have big plans for my MustReadEverything Reading Projects, but then there are dozens of other books that I also want to read. This year so far, I have reread seven
"You think that would have changed things?" "The answer is of course, and for a while, and never." In interview with Eleanor Wachtel, Nick Hornby discusses the "problem of being divided being two worlds" saying that many of us have a version of this in our own lives. This is true
A new Friday fugue, running through this month, considering the ways in which our working lives appear on the pages of novels and short stories. Some of my favourite novels spend a good amount of time considering the good amount of time that we spend in our workplaces. Joshua Ferris'
Sometimes, when I begin reading an Alice Munro story, I am overwhelmed by a sense of "there it is". It's a feeling of immediate and undeniable recognition of familiar elements. Like the beginning of "Nettles", which begins with firmly rooting the reader in a time and place. It is summer.
The reader moves onto the floor with great excitement, turning the initial pages of a debut novel, heartbeat slightly accelerated, hopes and expectations heightened. It is a dance: this movement between reader and story. Alice Simpson's Ballroom takes that connection seriously. HarperCollins, 2014 The very structure of the
