It’s that time of the year when I take a closer look at 2020’s reading plans and shuffle some of the reading that I was sure I’d have finished by now into the coming year instead. Nothing seems impossible yet, because I still think of December as an incredibly
In my recent reading, it’s been as much about how the story is told as it’s been about the story itself. This certainly isn’t a new idea—these examples span three decades—but sometimes the phenomenon is more prevalent in my stacks. Maybe you’ve read some of these, or maybe
In the generation before my own, Newfoundland became a province in the nation currently called Canada. It’s about 3,000 km away from me, but it feels like a world apart. For me, as a reader, Michael Crummey’s The Innocents (2019) makes it seem both farther away and closer. Historical
This year I added another writer to my MRE list. In truth, he was one of the writers whose stories provoked that kind of MustReadEverything commitment early on, but I didn’t have a word for it yet. Authors who told the kind of stories that I wanted on my
In which there is talk of the slim stories which have travelled with me within the city. While bulkier volumes stayed home. Like Robertson Davies' Murther and Walking Spirits (1991). And Nazanine Hozar's Aria (2019). These are awkward travelling companions: thick and heavy But some of the skinnies in
