Continuing yesterday’s talk of remembrance reading, while I reflect on other reading from 2025 and possibilities for reading this year. The first of his books published in his mother tongue (Gikuyu), Weep Not, Child is the second novel by Ngugi Wa Thiong’o (b. 1938), who
Ipellie, Lindberg, and Saona Short Stories in October, November and December Whether in a dedicated collection or a magazine, short stories captureand create a variety of reading moods. This quarter, I returned to one favourite writer and also explored two new-to-me story writers.
From these ten books alone, anyone might conclude that “we” have a lot of antiques and tigers, typewriters and troubled sisters, and that we all wear sandals with socks in Canada. (I am not a fan: if it’s cold enough for socks, it’s too cold for sandals.) Moving from
I can’t tell whether I enjoyed “Airborne” for its own sake—hanging out with these older women who’ve been friends for so long—or because it resonated so strongly for me with the new memoir by her longtime friend, Canadian writer Susan Swan, which I read this summer, Big Girls Don’t
“Cat’s Eye was risky business in a way—wouldn’t I be trashed for writing about little girls, how trivial?” MA wonders aloud in a 1990 interview. “Or wouldn’t I be trashed for saying they weren’t all sugar and spice?” But this risk is compelling, too. “I sometimes get interested in
