From the age of twenty-eight, Mavis Gallant lived and wrote in Europe, writing about "Canadians, Americans, Australians, Eastern and Western Europeans and their distinctive social and cultural milieux": she was "a citizen of the world". On the edge of beginning a deliberate reading and rereading of her stories, I peeked
Nicola Beauman's A Very Great Profession: The Woman's Novel 1914-39 (1983) Virago, 1984. Persephone No. 78, 2008. I'm certain that I've said this before, but this is one of my favourite kinds of books about books. Nicola Beauman's A Very Great Profession is obviously written out of a passion for
David Treuer's Native American Fiction: A User's Manual Graywolf Press, 2006 I can tell you exactly, what the name of the first book that I read from Graywolf Press: Georgia Savage's The House Tibet (1991). What I recall now, nearly twenty years later, is simply that The House Tibet stood
Jeffrey Eugenides' "Extreme Solitude" The New Yorker - June 7, 2010 issue There has been some chatter about magazine subscriptions lately (at Inklings and Pickle Me This) and that's gotten me feeling even a little more guilty about not keeping up with my "New Yorker" issues (as opposed to the
Elizabeth Waterston's The Magic Island Oxford University Press, 2008 I've been reading this book for months. You could actually say 'years'. Which is pretty funny actually because I bought it immediately upon publication...in 2008. But its format got me hooked in a rather unusual way and in some ways I
