Magnificent Octopus

A friend brought to my attention this wonderful "essay" by Rivka Galchen in the New Yorker, The Only Thing I Envy Men . I write ...

It's one of my favourite times of year again: The Blue Metropolis Literary Festival is just a couple weeks away, April 11–17, heralding...

Boredom drove him to read the folder of hotel information from cover to cover, the fire escape plans on the back of the door, a copy of York...

I'd been copyediting for a few years when I landed a dream job, at a very hip ad agency. Designers and copywriters were clamoring to wor...

Here's a book that I wouldn't ordinarily read, that I had no desire to read, that I had no intention of reading. Not my kind of book...

"I'm dead, but I'm fine." Dead inside, she means. Or maybe just dead to some people in particular. I found The Lost Daug...

Sometimes I get strange thoughts, sometimes I think Chernobyl saved me, forced me to think. My soul expanded. Voices from Chernobyl: The Ora...

The Traitor Baru Cormorant , by Seth Dickinson, is the story of an accountant. Baru's guard found a fulling mill by a nearby stream. Th...

A note I made on my phone, February 9, 2014, 10:17 PM: "She looked short and uncertain, like an accordion in pajamas." It'...

"If you don't play, you lose. There was a Ukrainian woman at the market selling big red apples. 'Come get your apples! Chernoby...

This is my Lost Property Cupboard theory of the afterlife — when we die we are taken to a great Lost Property Cupboard where all the things ...

All the men and women are merely players. But the world's not a stage; it's a gameboard. At his command were seven other men, of wh...

I was cooking halva, the special kind that's made of flour and butter after someone dies. My tears were falling into the pot, disappeari...

Kate Atkinson's debut novel from 1995, Behind the Scenes at the Museum , has footnotes. Not the erratic footnotes of 1996's Infinite...

My daughter came home ranting about her English exam earlier this week. Grade 7. Given that she's in the French system, even though she...

It's a short flight, but I'm hoping to finish reading my book. Helena asks me about the flying turtles on the cover. My edition of T...

Reading Eternal Enemies , a collection of poems by Adam Zagajewski.

In all domestic arguments — as in all fistfights and armed conflicts, for that matter — there comes a moment when both, or one, of the parti...

Sweet Tooth is my favourite of Ian McEwan's novels that I've read to date. (For the record, I hated Solar , loved Saturday , though...

In the Kitchen by Monica Ali was not what I expected. I expected something about a kitchen that confirmed everything I'd ever learned a...