Magnificent Octopus

(and it's driving me crazy !) My cell phone. Which I hardly ever use. Last seen on the shelf by the front door sometime during the Chris...

As I've begun to weed , inevitably covers are drawn back, pages are turned, and snippets are read. While this is mostly an act of instin...

The Taming of the Shoe "To thine own self be shoe."

I'm not sure who the madman is, and I'm still thinking about what it means to dream of Turing machines. A Madman Dreams of Turing Ma...

I've decided to weed my books. There's just not enough room. There is various shelving around the house, for the kid's books, fo...

Head -y A few weekends ago I went to the hospital. I thought my brain was going to explode. I get migraines quite regularly, and I've le...

The European Commission's "Group of Intellectuals for Intercultural Dialogue," chaired by Amin Maalouf, one of my favourite wr...

I had it in my mind for some time to post a discussion topic on a Doctor Who forum (a couple of which I follow). Finally I muster the courag...

Something to think about for the rest of the year... The Edge Annual Question — 2008 : When thinking changes your mind, that's philosoph...

Some months ago, amid casual small-talk at the office, a coworker piped up, "Hey, does anyone want my copy of Oliver Twist ? I just can...

I don't know why I like this story so much: The emperor said: "O Amar! You speak verily, and your words are to our liking! The gate...

I missed Claire Berlinski's review of Pamuk's Other Colors when it first appeared in The Globe and Mail , which is just as well se...

A challenge to sink my teeth into: Chunkster Challenge 2008 . I wasn't able to meet my own self-designed standards last year , but I bet...

Happy Birthday, Ivonna! (With regrets that we didn't manage to see it together this year.)

Weeks ago, I dipped into Orhan Pamuk's Other Colors: Essays and a Story , as I said I would . I start in the middle and find myself driv...

Let us not forget its glorious subtitle: Lord of the Auspicious Planetary Conjunction (which has to be the very best subtitle ever!). From ...

Best read of the year, hands down the oh-my-gawd-this-book-is-so-devastatingly-inside-my-head book: The Gold Bug Variations , by Richard P...

Discuss: What we expect from poets is that they avenge evil somehow. — From "A Note on Poetic Justice," in Other Colors: Essays an...

Doris Lessing meets Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: It's a way of unprivileging our own position as readers, reminding us, as Ms. Lessing do...

(Whittling my way through the stack .) The Wasp Factory , by Iain Banks. Hmm. Didn't like it much. It's not exactly "Rubbish!...