In the introduction to her Selected Stories, Mary Lavin wrote in 1981 of the process she used to choose the stories to be included. One from each of her eleven short story collections, she explains. Hoping that "readers would not be presented with a bookful of stories with which they
So, first, there is the matter of 2012. That which came before. My spreadsheet lists 240 books, my GoodReads shelf 247 (it's an imperfect, yet perfectly bookish world) and I've updated the pages of Books Discussed and added a list of favourite titles. My reading year ended in a burst
Beginning with an arrival and ending with a departure, readers might think "Amundsen" a more conventionally told tale. Random House, 2012 (Thinking about the last story, "To Reach Japan", which began with a departure and ended with an arrival, I mean.) And, yet, both this arrival and departure
The reader is introduced to Colin's brother, Ross, when he's wearing both hats, cutting the lawn in front of the school, one of the hats being a floppy pink strawhat that his mother wore in the garden. He is viewed through the window, Colin and his work-mates on one side
Last year, on six weekends, I posed about being Buried in ReLit Print, sampling the novels, short stories and poetry (which is adventurous for me) on the longlists. The longlists for the 2012 ReLit Awards were announced last Tuesday and I began making my reading plans that morning. Several of
