One of the most charming elements of the collection of letters between Blanche Howard and Carol Shields is the extreme bookishness of it. While reading A Memoir of Friendship, I was constantly making notes and, in the end, more than half of these were about the books that the two
More than twenty years ago, I read Eleven Canadian Novelists in the public library, sharing one of the big wooden tables, traipsing back and forth from my chair to the stacks, fetching the authors' work as desired. Plume, 1971 I hadn't yet read my first Alice Munro book, but
So it was original content which finally convinced me to plunge into e-reading. And my next project was a variation on that theme. I've subscribed to "The Walrus" since the beginning, so it's more than likely that I've read the pieces gathered in 10 Years of The Walrus Laughs. But
I'd been meaning to try it. E-reading. In theory, I knew it could be sensational. In the '90s audiobooks were often of poor production quality, and those I listened to were most useful as sleeping aids; audiobooks now are consistently quality productions and can be truly outstanding. Things change, right?
Here's what I have learned. Again. I'm sure I've learned this before and, then, forgotten. Just because I change my goals, that doesn't mean that my habits change. In 2012, I was disappointed that I had not read more from the backlists of my MRE (Must-Read-Everything) authors. Disappointed that I
