June 2021 Reading Roundup
In my last reading roundup, I was still emerging from winter. Now, it’s been 30+ degrees for weeks, and I can barely remember what a cloud looks like. The storks that had just appeared on the tops of the electricity…
Nightshade by Annalena McAfee
If you need your fictional characters to be likeable, to be the sort of people that you can "root for", then absolutely do NOT read Nightshade by Annalena McAfee. If, on the other hand, you want characters to be interesting,…
The Archipelago of Another Life Readalong, Part 4
Here’s a little life tip for you. If you ever feel that the time is starting to drag and you’d like your life to be busier, try signing up for a blogging event. As soon as the dates roll around,…
Borges Marathon, Part 3: The Widow Ching—Pirate
Before I read Borges, I used to think there was a sharp dividing line between fiction and nonfiction. In my own writing, there’s a huge gap between the serious, diligently factual articles I write for The Wall Street Journal and…
The Archipelago of Another Life Readalong, Part 2
I’m reading The Archipelago of Another Life by Andreï Makine in the company of Emma at Words and Peace and Carol at Cas d’Intérêt. The novel is set in the bewitching wilderness of the Siberian “taiga”, a huge expanse of…
April 2021 Reading Roundup
Spring is here: storks on the electricity poles, calves in the fields, and suddenly a million things to do around the house and garden. Full-time travel around the 50 countries of Europe was, in some ways, less consuming of time…
The Vastness of the Dark by Alistair MacLeod
The Vastness of the Dark seems to be a quite simple tale about a young man escaping from the confines of his family to find freedom, but it becomes something more complex in the last few pages.
February/March 2021 Reading Roundup
I missed my monthly reading roundup in February, so here are two months together. As you’ll see, they were dominated by one huge book: Marcel Proust’s seven-volume, 3,000-page masterpiece. But I managed to squeeze in a few more good books…
The Ants Will Come and Tell Me
As the Empire was falling apart, Britain had a problem: how to keep control of all its former colonies and their resources as they became independent. Acting in good faith was, of course, out of the question. Many of the…