Non-Fiction November is hosted this year by Kim (Sophisticated Dorkiness), Julie (JulzReads), Sarah (Sarah’s Book Shelves), Katie (Doing Dewey) and Rennie (What’s Nonfiction). It's a month-long celebration of everything nonfiction with a different prompt and a different host each week. Week 3 is hosted by Julie @ JulzReads: Be The Expert/Ask the
Yes, I am that person who has a WWJJD magnet on the fridge: What Would Jane Jacobs Do? So of course, when I learned of Susan Hughes’ new illustrated children’s book about Jacobs, Walking in the City (Illus. Valérie Boivin, 2018), I sought out a copy. The bulk of
Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2008) I thought the footnotes would make it fun (like in a Steven Haywood short story); I was more focussed on the ‘wondrous’ than the warning of brevity. In fact, Oscar’s life emerges from dictatorship and constricted choices, and you
In which there is talk of true stories and stories that fall between the cracks of imagined facts and probabilities. Kyo Maclear's Birds Art Life (2017) Arranged as though composed over a twelve-month period, this would seem to be the perfect book to read slowly, meditatively. To allow the pages
In which I discuss the skinny volumes which accompany me on my travels, while the heavier volumes (like Stephen King's It and an omnibus of Shirley Jackson's short works) remain at home. On a late August afternoon, I'm taking the Queen Street streetcar, in the stretch between Beach and Parliament,
