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…
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…
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…
January 2021 Reading Roundup
January wasn't a great month, but I did read some good books. Here's a quick roundup.
Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami
What does it mean to be a woman? In the memorable novel Breasts and Eggs, Mieko Kawakami explores the question by looking at two key periods in the life of Tokyo writer Natsuko Natsume.
Best Books I Read in 2020
There’s a quote by Alice Walker that I love: “When I was a child, I read books for entertainment and information; I now think of books as lifeboats.” 2020 was a year when I reached for the lifeboats more often…
The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav
In her preface to The Seat of the Soul, Oprah Winfrey writes: “The Seat of the Soul changed the way I see myself. It changed the way I view the world. It caused a profound shift in the way I…