Part of the appeal of MARM for me is a sense of having reserved the month. When I heard about Old Babes in the Wood, I thought, November! And that, simultaneously, seems to create an opportunity for other reading, in the remaining eleven months. (Next year, I think I
It’s a tough industry when a magazine as amazing as Freeman’s can’t make it. I said the same thing about Tin House, The Believer, and Bookforum too—the latter have resumed publication recently—and I don’t subscribe to them all myself. In the recent Lithub piece, “On the Ending of a
This year, I’ve been reading backlisted titles I’ve missed along the way. These are mostly well-known titles by established writers, which is why they’re still occupying library space; of these ten, only the two from small presses (named) might be difficult to find overseas. They also lean towards international
What is it about the Australian Text Classics list that’s so appealing? The North York branch of the Toronto Public Library has quite a few of them, including Elizabeth Harrower’s The Long Prospect (1958) which I’m happy to read for Brona’s Books Australian Reading Month. What I enjoyed about
As usual, Kaggsy and Simon have chosen a year rich with reading possibilities. As not-exactly-unusual, I have done better at gathering possibilities than of reading them. Initially I planned to expand my reading of James Baldwin, but the interlibrary-loan copy wasn’t speedy (sometimes it’s a week, sometimes weeks—depending how
