This book was recommended by three friends. The first read it as part of a book club at their work. The second is the partner of the first. The third is a friend of the first and second. Like so many I’ve read this year, this is a sci-fi book and not typically in my... Continue Reading →
On Tyranny, by Timothy Snyder. Pub 2017. Graphic edition, with illustrations by Nora Krug. Pub 2021.
This book has popped up on reading lists and various sites over the past few years. I expected it to be a weighty slog (turns out, it’s quite short), but the graphic edition makes for an easier, if just as sobering, read. Snyder is a professor of history and human sciences. Krug is an award-winning... Continue Reading →
The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. Pub 1990. 20th anniversary edition, 2011
I chose this book after recently completing Burning Chrome by Gibson. The premise of this intrigued me, and I wanted another sci-fi book for my other book club project. The titular difference engine is a reference to an early computing machine created by Charles Babbage. He subsequently merged the difference engine with the Jacquard machine... Continue Reading →
Burning Chrome, by William Gibson. Pub 1986
I first read this book in the early 90s, a gift from a friend. I enjoyed it very much, but never returned to it as sci-fi is not my favourite genre. However, I've read a few good sci-fi books lately and enjoyed them, so I returned to this one to see if it stood the... Continue Reading →
Trespassing, by Usma Aslam Khan. Pub 2003
I’ve had this book on my shelves for a long time. I bought it after reading Fallen by David Maine (and a few of his other books), and reading in the author notes that his wife was also an author. For whatever reason, I never got around to reading this one until now. Trespassing is... Continue Reading →
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and Other Jazz Age Stories, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Pub 2009
Last year, I listened to an episode of Backlisted (a favourite podcast) about American fiction, where one of the panelists recommended the story, “The Diamond as Big as The Ritz”. I was interested enough that I sought out a collection of 19 Fitzgerald stories that included this story, and was surprised to find that he’d... Continue Reading →
Fire Weather, by John Vaillant. Pub 2023
This was an impulse purchase when visiting a friend with whom I'm working on a nascent book review podcast project. In that "club" we have to read the same book, and then have a discussion about it over Zoom, with the recording (with some editing) becoming a podcast episode. So far, we've only made two,... Continue Reading →
Beneath the Surface of Things, by Wade Davis. Pub 2024
This was an impulse purchase at the local bookshop. By rights, I should have waited for a birthday or Christmas list (and for paperback), but impulses rarely give way to such sober second thinking. I was keen to read more of Wade Davis’ writing after enjoying The Wayfinders last year, as well as his public... Continue Reading →
Table for Two, by Amor Towles. Pub 2024
When I learned in April that Towles had a new book out, so soon (within a year) of his previous (The Lincoln Highway), I was just a little excited. And so, I invoked one of the exceptions to my book-buying prohibition (a new book by a favourite author) and bought it almost immediately. Then I... Continue Reading →
Pop’s Banjo
Annual #tellastory day and Pop’s birthday, and so another pop tale. I wrote a few years ago about the emergence of the banjo for Pop, and more recently I had a chance to look back at old photo albums so I was able to narrow down its arrival in my life. This photo is from Christmas 1970,... Continue Reading →
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