I read the two books — Master and Commander, and The Far Side of the World — while we were on our honeymoon. (I’d taken the first one over with me and couldn’t find books 2-9 in the series in any of the bookstores we checked.) Excellent books, rather too full of rich detail to […]
Book City is a very dangerous store, which cleverly and prominently displays books like Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power where innocent browsers like me will see them. I couldn’t resist. Niall Ferguson is apparently the new prodigy in the British historican field, and Empire […]
Long awaited by, well, practically the whole planet, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix came out a couple of weeks ago and Anne and I picked up a copy. While she read through it I re-read book 4 of the series. By the time she was finished I was picking the book up […]
With the new Harry Potter book out, it’s time to clear up a few others that have been sitting partially read on the bedside table for a while. First up is Working Class Zero by Toronto author Rob Payne, which I picked up at Book City a few weeks ago. It’s a light book about […]
Moab Is My Washpot, by Stephen Fry. An autobiography of his first 30 years, Moab is at times annoyingly self-indulgent and otherwise brilliant. In case the reader had any doubts, Fry convincingly demonstrates the qualities of a well-educated man of words, with a heavy dose of self-destruction and pathos, but enough self-awareness to take the […]
I finished Ode to a Banker, Lindsay Davis’ newest Didius Falco (roman detective) novel. It was a step up from her other recent efforts, with a solid narrative, good characters, and entertaining detail of the roman banking and publishing systems. A quick, light read. 3 out of 5.
Before coming out to Calgary I wrapped up reading Bee Season by Myla Goldberg, which I picked up in the bookstore in Jackson. I really liked it, although I thought the family portrayed was more than normally disfunctional. The book had a whistful humour, well in keeping with the subject matter, and a great ending. […]