Continuing on the young-adult fiction theme, it’s been about six months since I blathered about my absolute favourite part of my job: teen book club. Our monthly gathering is still…
In June of this year, Slate ran a now-infamous piece called “Against YA,” in which Ruth Graham argued that adults shouldn’t read young-adult fiction, and should be embarrassed if they…
Last year, I wrote about an excellent, unusual youth novel called There Is No Dog, by Meg Rosoff. I recently read the author’s 2004 debut novel, How I Live Now,…
Unlike most people I know, I have little or no interest in my family’s genealogy. I know the general outlines of my family background – where some of my forebears…
Indian Horse, by Richard Wagamese, is a hauntingly beautiful novel about an Ojibway boy’s journey into manhood. It was the Readers’ Choice winner of the 2013 Canada Reads, CBC Radio’s…
My grandmother had always referred to the universe as the Great Mystery. “What does it mean?” I asked her once. “It means all things.” “I don’t understand.” She took my…
Do you ever borrow ebooks from your public library? Do you have any idea how your library adds ebooks to its collection, or at what cost? The number of library…
I recently read The Given Day, Dennis Lehane’s novel about 1919 Boston, especially the Boston police strike, and the widescale rioting that followed. The book is an engaging hybrid of…
Nadine Gordimer was a great writer, and a steadfast voice for justice. Gordimer, a white South African, was a member of the African National Congress when the organization itself was…
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong child, her American doctors, and the collision of two cultures by Anne Fadiman contains dozens of passages that I’d like…
Dark Age Ahead, by the late Jane Jacobs, contains some important insights about the state of North American society. For me, however, the book is more notable for what it…
I’m reading Dark Age Ahead, Jane Jacobs’ 2004 strong caution to North American society. I’ll blog about the book in general at a later date, but wanted to share some…
Ruth Graham, writing in Slate, says, “You should feel embarrassed when what you’re reading was written for children.” How sad. If anyone should feel embarrassed, it’s Graham. She apparently writes…
I’m sure many of you have read The Book Thief, Markus Zusak’s youth novel about a German girl and her (non-biological) family during World War II. If you haven’t yet…
John Homans’ What’s a Dog For? The Surprising History, Science, Philosophy, and Politics of Man’s Best Friend is my kind of dog book. I don’t care for memoirs of heartwarming…
You won’t catch me implying that Stephen Harper and his corrupt, anti-democratic, anti-human government is moderate. But there’s always room to move even further to the right, and that space…
I thought readers’ advisory was the best part of my job, but that was before I began running our library’s teen book club. Once a month, I spend an evening…
If you enjoy youth novels of the realistic (non-fantasy) variety, Eleanor & Park, by Rainbow Rowell, is just about as good as it gets. Who else might enjoy Eleanor &…
Cover of 1943 Random Houseedition with woodcut illustrations Emily Brontë published Wuthering Heights in 1847, under a pseudonym. Brontë died the following year, at age 30. It was the only…
It’s so hard to talk when you want to kill yourself. That’s the first line of Ned Vizzini’s excellent 2006 youth novel, It’s Kind of a Funny Story. By the…
