Growing up, reading was a solitary activity. Even when I was lucky enough to live near someone else who had a similar connection to books and stories, we never did that together: we played. We might swap books, under the best of circumstances, but we never had our own
Even if you’re not often reading about the climate crisis, I’ve got one for you: Jane Goodall’s The Book of Hope (2021). It not only includes many reasons to remain hopeful—Amazing Human Intellect, Resilience of Nature, Power of Young People, and the Indomitable Human Spirit—but truly inspires readers. Its
When regularly relying on the library in Toronto, with dozens of bookmarks holding my place in borrowed stacks, the idea of writing about my library usage seemed impossible. Now living a few hours north, where funding for libraries is limited, my visitor’s card gets relatively little use. In the
Those of you who are reading here now, but not reading Alistair MacLeod’s short stories, will probably only be interested in the first couple of paragraphs after this introduction. Feel free to skip past the section that I've titled The Underneath, written with those who know the story-or other
Naomi warned me this weekend: I knew immediately which one it was, the one with the dog’s body, broken and dragging itself home after it’s been shot. Since then, I’ve been thinking about how to write about this story without reading it again. And, so, I have started with
