I have a morning routine I try to keep to. Sometimes I’m too pressed to do much more than turn off the alarm, sigh and get up. But if I can, I wake up before dawn and wash my face, make a cup of tea, meditate for a while as the tea cools, do Wordle, […]
I love writing. Love it when people read my books. Hate doing a lot of the things you have to do to connect the books to readers. I’m not shy, and since I worked as a journalist for years, I have no problem at all doing interviews. In fact, I loved doing a podcast a […]
Sheila Murray’s brilliant book, Finding Edward, was nominated for the 2022 Governor General’s Award for Fiction. She subsequently won the 30th Annual Hamilton Literary Award, and the CBC named it one of the best works of Canadian fiction last year. This is Murray’s first novel, although that’s hard to imagine when reading it. As well as […]
It happened to me for the first time mid-morning today. I was headed west on the subway to a dental appointment, sitting near one of the doors. The car was almost empty, only four of us, and I was the only one wearing a mask. A couple of stops along, one of the others got […]
When I was a kid, my parents sometimes listened to talk radio. People phoning a blowhard host and venting. Him venting. It was always a he, and so were most of his callers. I hated it, especially when we were driving somewhere with the windows closed and the radio blasting. Now, with social media, it’s infinitely […]
I’ve been thinking about the word “plangent” lately, a word with mourning tolling inside it like a bell. The weather has been perfect lately in Toronto, one breezy summer day following another, the sky a high light blue, the air warm and dry. But it’s mid-August and our short Canadian summer will end before long. […]
Last fall, I began researching a new novel with the Russia writer Anton Chekhov as a character, oblivious to what was about to happen in Ukraine. That means I spent the past few months reading Russian history, biographies and literary criticism while reading and re-reading the literature, this at a time when Vladimir Putin’s army […]
Something I’ve noticed: people apologize for getting sick with COVID-19. Or maybe they laugh nervously when they say their daughter brought it home from university, their embarrassment combined with anger and impatience at her carelessness, at least if she doesn’t get very sick, or someone else in the family doesn’t get very sick. When people […]
Blizzard today in Toronto with a Stay Home advisory. Continuing Omicron surge with Work From Home advice. That howl you heard across the city at 7 a.m. was parents learning that Toronto has closed its schools again for snow-related reasons on what was supposed to be the first day back to in-person learning. Around here, […]
Happy New Year. For my mother-in-law, it’s a new century, since Mary turned 100 on December 22. And as she’ll tell you, it’s the second pandemic that she’s connected to, since her parents met during the last one in 1918. In fact, because of it. Mary’s father, Cecil, was a U.S. serviceman who landed in […]
Well, this is nice. Time Squared was named one of the Books of the Year by the 49th Shelf website. Check out their recommendations here. Lots of great books on the list, both fiction and non-fiction. Plus, they’re running a giveaway!
It’s strange the way these two pandemic years have done something to time. People talk about how 2019 feels as if it was five years ago. I catch myself being unable to estimate how long ago something happened. Was it three or four years ago we met in that bar? But maybe there’s something else […]