By Anne Sebba, 2016 After my post of November 2020, it seemed to me the rewards of writing about books were not commensurate with the effort, and I felt I was finished with blogging. Just getting through the day in fairly good cheer has used up a lot of my energy throughout the pandemic, as […]

Seized by a desire to go somewhere and not at all sure it wouldn’t have been better to stay home, in late June and early July my husband and I made a road trip to Winnipeg. There were only four cases of Covid-19 in Manitoba at that time, so the locals were probably in more […]

I am sitting down to this blog after more than fourteen months of other things. This has been a year of dog walking, gardening, writing poetry, singing in a choir, two book clubs, and visiting with family and friends. Although those still in the labour force may think of retirement as an endless vacation, I […]

I began blogging about books with high hopes. Over time I have realized how much work it is to read a book, and then write something at least halfway intelligent about it. I am grateful to everyone who has read what I’ve written and possibly offered comments, but this has not turned out to be […]

By Marian Keyes, 2017 I remember my forties as my most difficult decade. It was made difficult by my younger son’s collision with the education system, my feelings that I should have done something more or at least different with my life, and the fluctuating hormones of the perimenopause. These combined stressors contributed to a […]

By Jenny Erpenbeck, 2017 A translation from the German, this is the story of a man named Richard, a professor emeritus of classical Greek literature. Until his retirement and the death of his wife a few years earlier, he lived what he thought was a good life in the former East Germany. Access to his […]

Edited by Richard J. Hebda, Sheila Greer and Alexander P. Mackie, 2017. In 1999 hunters looking for sheep found human remains on a glacier in British Columbia, in a region so remote and with such extremes of weather that it is accessible at best for two or three weeks a year. The bones and soft […]

In library and information science, bibliotherapy is the matching of reader and text to provide comfort, insight, or catharsis. It is about reading as a means to healing of the soul and the psyche. In the past month I have been especially in need of the comfort and insight provided by reading and perhaps especially […]

By Susan Faludi, 2016 As a human being I believe in every person’s right to choose whatever identity feels most comfortable, as long as it is not hateful to anyone else. As a daughter I would have been utterly confused and traumatized by having either my mother or my father choose to transition to the […]