When I was browsing the library stacks the other day, looking for the next volume in Maya Angelou’s autobiography, I happened upon this: JoAnn McCaig’s Reading In: Alice Munro’s Archives. And isn’t that just how it happens? How stacks of library books get out of hand? But how could I
Early in Lives of Girls and Women, readers learn that Jubilee is "not part of town, but it was not part of the country either”. Del Jordan isn’t exactly sure where she belongs either. Readers of Dance of the Happy Shades will recognize Jubilee; some of its stories take place
This one was recommended by the Children’s Books Panel on CBC’s “The Next Chapter” December 20/2010, which consisted of Michele Landsberg and Ken Setterington chatting with Shelagh Rogers about some of their favourites. I think I could read for a solid year fuelled only by TNC recommendations! Adwoa Badoe’s Between
Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) Bantam, 1971 It’s ironic that what most stands out in the first volume of Maya Angelou’s autobiography is her voice; when she was a girl, she stopped speaking for a time, but, in looking back on the experiences of her
Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891) Penguin, 1978 She's "goodness made interesting". That's what Irving Howe calls Tess, the main character in Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Interesting is one way to put it. Not all of his Victorian readers found it so however. His religious skepticism and his
