Lorna Sage writes beautifully about Djuna Barnes and her 1937 novel Nightwood in her essay collection, Moments of Truth. She describes how Barnes presents “the Paris of abject carnival, a kind of human menagerie” and then Sage gives just a peek of how it was “written, rewritten and wrenched
Originally I’d planned to split this post into two, as I gradually read through the categories for the Toronto Public Library Reading Challenge (Part One and Two), but with a lot of desk hours lost to illness this year, I’ve combined them. (Notes: Other books read for the challenge
Ipellie, Lindberg, and Saona Short Stories in October, November and December Whether in a dedicated collection or a magazine, short stories captureand create a variety of reading moods. This quarter, I returned to one favourite writer and also explored two new-to-me story writers.
Sarah Cox’s Signs of Life (2024) vividly but succinctly describes many key figures in the conservation community: the two-legged, among them. The way she describes Ken Wu, for instance (executive director of Endangered Ecosystems Alliance): “a mile-a-minute talker”, son of Taiwanese immigrants in Alberta, who saw a photograph at
Joe Sacco’s Journalism (2012) is a longtime resident of my TBR; I was reminded of it because of his Footnotes in Gaza and Palestine. This, however, is a fabulous introduction to his work, divided into six sections: The Hague, The Palestinian Territories, The Caucasus, Iraq, Migration, and India. Most
