Jane Christmas is a Canadian writer whose subjects are right up my alley. I recommend them all, if the titles/subtitles appeal to you. I have seen some pretty critical reviews of her books, and can see their points, but a writer can’t be all things to all people. Personally, I look forward to her next book. Here…
I picked this up at the library because it was on a featured shelf, and is a recently published novel by a renown author. Of course I knew of Joyce Carol Oates – she has written 40 novels – but I had only a vague memory of thinking highly of something she’d written. To start…
I’m reading Lone Voyager by Maureen Jenkins. She was an Englishwoman who decided that she had had enough and was going to make changes in her life. Having raised her sons to adulthood and tolerated her husband with difficulty for years, at the age of 50 she took a fancy to sailing, So she left…
As I was saying when the first draft of this post was so rudely and prematurely published, I am learning to use my wonderful technology… Sub-titled “A poet’s journey,” Walking Home appealed to me as a walker with a bit of interest in England’s long distance paths. As it was written in prose, I was willing…
I haven’t been posting much recently, due to spending a lot of time helping my mother, who is not well. I’ve been sorting and cleaning at her place and happened upon a little novel by Evelyn Waugh that caught my eye. This book is roughly the same age as I am, but it is in…
This book describes the young (30ish?)author’s experience doing 3 pilgrimages: El Camino in Spain (Catholic), 88 temples on the Japanese island of Shikoku (Buddhist) and a Rosh Hashanah pilgrimage of Hasids in Ukraine (Jewish) Lewis-Kraus writes extremely well and has a bizarre sense of humour that I enjoyed. However, he went a little overboard at times…
From the local library, as usual. This book, subtitled “Life, death, and hope in a Mumbai undercity” is nonfiction but it reads much like a novel. That is a complement, although I had to go internet surfing to satisfy myself that I could trust the author, Katherine Boo. I recommend it. It was unusual and compelling. For…
The Old Patagonian Express, published in 1979, describes Paul Theroux’s trip, mainly by train, from Boston to the southern part of South America, so he could write a book about it. He was already an experienced traveller and writer of fiction and nonfiction, and spoke Spanish quite well. The book is not your typical travel…
Seeing Clarely 