Magnificent Octopus

That was the first chapter. The second chapter is next. It is loosely related to the first, but this isn't some perfectly sequential mas...

little scratch  by  Rebecca Watson  was a brilliant surprise, an unexpected one-sitting read.  instead I think          about art galleries ...

There certainly is what doctors call a "migraine personality," and that personality tends to be ambitious, inward, intolerant of e...

She walked through the market stands with her new stride, at once lazy and confident, loose and firm, looking at everything and knowing she...

In a man, not liking women is a pose. In a woman, not liking men is a pathology. Sounds a little like Atwood's, "Men are afraid tha...

The ways of the heart cannot be explained. It does what it wants. This morning I woke up and allowed myself a moment of wistfulness, I watch...

Little Eyes , by Samanta Schweblin, was a real treat for me this week,  inspiring the kind of just-one-more-page feeling that kept me up pas...

First published in 1932,  The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma , by Tadeusz Dołęga-Mostowicz, is well known in Poland, commonly believed to have be...

 Yesterday, on the 212th day of German lessons, we went back into lockdown.  We knew it was coming. I felt it coming. I haven't been sle...

Madam Józefina Przełęska had woken up on the wrong side of the bed that morning. By ten o'clock, this fact had become a universally ackn...

It has begun. The second wave of the pandemic. I keep thinking of it as a sociological phenomenon rather than a biological one, like fifth-w...

Sometimes I felt that my mind was a soft cloud of air around me, taking in whatever flew in, spinning around, and delivering it out into the...

(Too good to be true. It's not true. It stung me in the heart.)  A----o The trouble with you, dear, is that your name is so damn Shakesp...

Cory Doctorow emailed me yesterday, following up on a note I'd sent him in 2014 about his novel Little Brother . It's about his new ...

I went to a psychiatrist once. I was doing something that had become a pattern in my life, and I thought, Well, I should go talk to a psychi...

Traveling to another province has a postapocalyptic vibe. You see everyone wearing masks and you wonder what happened here. And then you rea...

We're packing up my mother's house to move her to Montreal. I'm finding joy scattered throughout her basement.  My father's ...

"Songs do not change the world," declares Jasper. "People do. People pass laws, riot, hear God and act accordingly. People in...

About this time last summer, my espresso machine clogged up. After several failed attempts to clean it, I gave up the double espresso filter...

The dirt floor was warm and damp. The space inside the pigsty glowed brightly, then crumbled into little pieces, like a mosaic. Swallows g...