When I think about novellas I’ve enjoyed this year, I recall Poulomi Sanyal’s Colour Me Confounded (2017) and Kerry Trautman’s Irregulars (2023), their settings soaked with the ambiance of their main characters’ workplaces, whether a boardroom or a diner. And I think about Helen deWitt’s The English Understand Wool
“Impatient Griselda” is just seven pages long and there are a couple of full readings on YouTube (about a dozen minutes). If you want to hear it in Atwood’s own voice, she reads it as part of this performance presented by Theater of War Productions and Toronto International Festival
The other day I wrote about the pair of Heinemann Classics I’ve read this year. Maybe you’ve seen their quintessential orange and black and white covers. They look a little like the vintage Penguins some people collect. But mostly I’ve been reading contemporary African writers. Sometimes, after Bill made
A little time has passed since I took this photograph but, already, there are more leaves off the trees and on the ground. It’s been rather warm, but early in September, two nights fell to “frost warning” temperatures, and that’s had an impact. The chipmunks don’t have time to
Sometimes summer is a slow reading time for me, but this year? The opposite! The stacks were swelling in May and June, and every flat surface was cluttered with books begun-but-unfinished, and I didn’t have a chance to think about what else I might do…so, I read.
