When Nell comes home just before dinnertime as “First Aid” opens, many readers will recognise her immediately, as I did. I first met married couple Nell and Tig in the linked collection Moral Disorder (2006). I read that collection on the subway, mornings and early evenings; the rhythm of
In November, Naomi and Sarah are hosting a readalong for The Story Girl, so the last time I packed up my bookbag, I stuck in my copy of Elizabeth Waterston’s Magic Island (2008) to read her chapter on L.M. Montgomery’s 1911 novel. Story Girl reads like a collection of
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
Earlier this year, I read Britt Wray’s Generation Dread, which is where I learned about the philosopher Thomas Attig, who tells us: “grief allows us to ‘relearn the world’ by thinking about how the world has changed when something that matters deeply to us is lost, and how that
