Exploring a coffee shop near Riverdale Park last week, I started a conversation with a young woman reading at the communal table in the back, while I waited for Mr. BIP who was waiting for the coffees (he was enjoying the view across the park and greeting the four-legged companions
Nathacha Appanah's The Last Brother Translator Geoffrey Strachan (French) Graywolf Press, 2011 A Graywolf Press publication, a contender for The Tournament of Books, with a gorgeous and haunting cover image: all excellent reasons for picking up a copy of The Last Brother without reading a single word. And then you meet
Arnold Bennett, Riceyman Steps Grosset & Dunlap (1923) My experience with Arnold Bennett's fiction can be easily summed up: The Old Wives' Tale (1908). But what I lack in experience, I make up for in enthusiasm: I loved that novel. I was expecting it to be old-fashioned, dreary and a
Agatha Christie's Murder on the Links (1923) Harper, 2001 If you've been following along, you'll know that I have a fancy-schmancy spreadsheet listing Agatha Christie novels with only a single tick-mark in it. After years of thinking about it, I finally read my first Agatha Christie mystery earlier this year,
