Category Archives: Book

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Read: The Savage Landscape by Cal Fly ★★★★ 📚

Travelogue & wide ranging exploration of the idea of wilderness. Indigenous people, conservation, history, fiction & religion. The author digs through idea & puts herself in the picture, questioning her own ideas & coming up against lots of contradictions. Lots to think about. Curious & surprising details.

Travelogue & wide ranging exploration of the idea of wilderness. Indigenous people, conservation, history, fiction & religion. The author digs through idea & puts herself in the picture, questioning her own ideas & coming up against lots of contradictions. Lots to think about. Curious & surprising details.

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Read: The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich ★★★★ 📚

IN SOME PLACES, lambsquarters is considered the Prince of Greens, one of the most nutritious greens ever analyzed; it was one of the earliest agricultural crops of the Americas. It also resembles amaranth, but the brothers rarely spoke of that. The rough-cut men were preparing to eradicate one of the most nutritious plants on earth in favor of growing he sugar beet, perhaps the least nutritious plant on earth. Evolution thought this was hilarious.

A very mixed up novel, romance, farming, ecology, a series of bank robberies, local gossip & lots more. Often hilarious, enjoyable & thought provoking.

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Read: An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro ★★★★★ 📚

But as for the likes of us, Ono, our contribution was always marginal. No one cares now what the likes of you and me once did. They look at us and see only two old men with their sticks.’ He smiled at me, then went on feeding the fish. ‘We’re the only ones who care now. The likes of you and me, Ono, when we look back over our lives and see they were flawed, we’re the only ones who care now.’

Hazy recall, guilt, regret, memory, aging. The book itself floats, a little sadly, with some troubling feelings. Super.

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Read: Clown Town by Mick Heron ★★★★ 📚

Familiar world & characters with some interesting developments. A nice surprise at the end. I am surprised at how the series continues to be enjoyable & pleased the author has not needed to make things increasingly dramatic.

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Read: Same as it ever was by Claire Lombardo ★★★ 📚

but the strangest thing I remember about having young children is how interminably the time moves, just these days upon days upon days, and every single one of them feels a million years long, but then suddenly months have gone by, enough time for a new baby to be born or one of the kids to start kindergarten, or college for God’s sake

Took me a long a time to get into this one. The central character irritated at first. She did grow on me as I got further.

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Read: The Names by Florence Knapp ★★★★ 📚

She wonders again if she is doing this right. Any of it, all of it. If it's even the right thing for Gordon himself to be carrying on this tradition. Maybe consenting to live in the shadow of his father and his father's father is only perpetuating the likeness, increasing the weight of it for him. Perhaps calling their child something different would be a liberation. Not at first, but later.

Names change character & experience. Three versions of the same characters lives. The sliding doors moment comes when the name of a wee boy is chosen.

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Read: Reconstruction by Mick Heron ★★★ 📚

he was Civil Service; they could take his life, but they'd never take his annual leave

Slough House adjacent novel. After a confusing start, where there seemed to be too many characters, it settled down to an exciting read where absolutely no one was what they first seemed.

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Read: Sheila Armstrong by Falling Animals ★★★★ 📚

Celia turned five last month while he was on a container ship from Liverpool to Halifax. They were passing an island off the coast of Newfoundland and Manoy clung to the port railings, scrabbling for a few bars of reception to make a call from the satellite phone, even though the sea-ice was wrist thick and the containers looked like frosted teeth on a blue-white jaw. After hearing her voice, he came down below with a wind-red nose, but a smile so wide the top of his head could have snapped off.

A set of loosely joined stories connected to a coastal town on the west cost of Ireland. Told at a gentle pace that kept me wrapped in each tale. I was slightly disturbed by the way episodes trailed off, but it intrigued & made the atmosphere linger.

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Read: Sanshirō by Natsume Sōseki ★★★★ 📚

Why? Well, look at it this way. Your head is alive, but if you seal it up inside dead classes, you're lost. Take it outside and get the wind into it. Riding the streetcar is not the only way to get satisfaction, of course, but it's the first step, and the easiest.

At the turn into the 20th century country boy Sanshirō goes to university in Tokyo. Mixes with crowd interested in the west, literature, art & science. Very much out of his depth as he drifts through lectures & relationships.