Reading Archives - Page 9 of 42

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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…

Reading

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…

Reading

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…

Reading

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.

Reading

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…

Reading

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…

Reading

Borges Marathon, Part 2: The Improbable Impostor Tom Castro

I love the writing of Jorge Luis Borges. Back in the early days of this blog, I was so deeply affected by reading his collection of ‘fictions’ that I broke my optimistic vow of reviewing every book I read. It…

Reading

The Reality of Anti-Fascism

Reading The US Antifascism Reader lately gave some useful context on this much-maligned but essential movement. It's a collection of essays and speeches by historical figures from W.E.B. Du Bois to Franklin Roosevelt, Aimé Césaire to Barbara Ehrenreich, in which…

Reading

January 2021 Reading Roundup

January wasn't a great month, but I did read some good books. Here's a quick roundup.

Andrew Blackman

Andrew Blackman

Andrew Blackman

Reading

Borges Marathon, Part 3: The Widow Ching—Pirate

The Archipelago of Another Life Readalong, Part 2

April 2021 Reading Roundup

The Vastness of the Dark by Alistair MacLeod

February/March 2021 Reading Roundup

The Ants Will Come and Tell Me

Borges Marathon, Part 2: The Improbable Impostor Tom Castro

The Reality of Anti-Fascism

January 2021 Reading Roundup