Designed to mimic my Lorna Sage reading project of six women writers each year (here in 2024 and here in 2025), I chose Julia Alvarez, Alexis Wright, Annie Ernaux, Olga Tokarczuk, Gish Jen, and Leslie Marmon Silko for 2026. At first, I thought I would read a few books
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
Many people think of following the news as a responsibility, but this contrasting idea gave me pause, expressed in Voices of Resistance: Diaries of Genocide (2025). Because priorities shift, during wartime, when your daily life is what other people are consuming as news—on their phones while waiting in line
Rachel (Life of a Female Bibliophile) and I have been reading books set in our respective “hometowns” for a long time, but this project is about making time to read a book set directly on the other side of the border in the other person’s hometown, at a
You might remember that I have resolved to choose some books differently this year. Not only library duedates and review deadlines: I have been trying to look out my window as often as I look down at my book. And, so, I reread Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s
