17 Sarah Sheard (b. 1953), novelist, author of Almost Japanese
18 Douglas Gibson (b. 1943), McClelland & Stewart publisher
19 Lee Harvey Oswald (1939 - 1963), alleged assassin of John F. Kennedy
Sunday, April 28, 2013
Fetherling's footnotes
Monday, April 01, 2013
The Fun Parts by Sam Lipsyte
There is a very good reason to read a book about unlikeable losers. Books like that can be very, very funny. And Lipsyte is a very funny writer. The one thing he is constantly doing — even when he maybe shouldn’t, at least not so much — is being funny.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
You Will Be To Blame
If I were ever to start a tumblr, it'd be called "Alice Munro Just Killing It."
Monday, January 14, 2013
The new new escapism
"There is a reason for our attraction to these shows other than that they simply entertain us. 'Downton' and today’s other quality television series also promise a welcome escape from a muddled, technology-addled existence."
Also applies to movies, novels, poetry, music, friends, children, bike rides, food, alcohol, sex, masturbation, and sleep.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
J.K. Rowling's Casual Vacancy has much casual brutality
A taste:
The obvious thing for [Rowling] to have done would have been to write a kind of methadone novel for Potter addicts, something that bridged the gap between the world of Hogwarts and our own. No one would’ve begrudged her writing a mystery story, or a work of castle-heavy historical fiction, or even a work of grown-up fantasy (i.e., wizards with sex lives and drinking problems). Instead, she has written a book that plants its flag right in the middle of some very dark territory, where curses abound, but spells are non-existent. Readers looking for a little of that old Potter magic will be shocked by the new novel’s numerous scenes of drug abuse, marital discord, domestic violence, and unbridled despair. It’s the equivalent of Raffi making a late-career swerve into death metal, or Mr. Dressup doing David Mamet.
Monday, June 11, 2012
Welsh and Brooks
Back to the fortress.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Captivity: 118 Days in Iraq and the Struggle for a World Without War by James Loney
Get the whole scoop here.One of the enduring myths of contemporary Western society is that we are a culture desperate to be tested. We are a fatted, decadent, overly complacent bunch (the myth goes), which makes us yearn to be stripped of our comforts (at least for a little while) to see how we hold up under pressure.
Comfort is inauthentic; stress and fear and adrenaline are “reality.” How would you act in an extreme situation? How strongly held are your ideals, and how quickly would you abandon them in order to survive?
The problem is that in reality, a true testing of one’s ideals never yields a clean result. When push becomes shove, and shove becomes kick, ideals splinter and multiply. Every breath becomes a test, and we often only survive to be tested again.

