Some people shop for clothes or shoes when they travel. I mostly shop for books. They have become the focus of any trip, partly so I can find books I never see at home and partly to enjoy and to celebrate the remaining bricks and mortar book stores. On trips to Asia I pack my […]

By John Irving, 2015 I started reading this book back in December, for the meeting on the 22nd of the book club I think of as the Eating and Drinking Women.  Usually I read every book through at least once before the meeting and often twice.  Last month, though, I got to only page 170 […]

By Rosemary Sullivan, 2015 The subtitle of this book is no exaggeration.  In this winner of the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, Rosemary Sullivan brings together a huge amount of published and archival material, letters and interviews to create a compelling portrait of one of the most complex and tragic figures of the […]

In my long career as a reference and reader’s advisory librarian I had many conversations about books. Wide reading outside of work and a master’s degree in English enhanced these conversations. Over the years books took on new formats and digital sources of information appeared, but books and conversations about books were always central to […]

By Thierry Cruvellier, 2011 In my five trips to Asia, I have found the crowding and the humid heat of the places I have visited hard to bear. Had my younger son not chosen to live and work in Asia, I would probably never have gone there. It was while touring Angor Wat in Cambodia in […]

By Edith Hahn Beer with Susan Dworkin, 1999 I am fascinated by spy stories, and find stories of double agents the most engaging of all.  I am sure I give myself away in trying to pass off even a small white lie, so reading about someone whose whole persona is an elaborate tissue of lies […]

By Christos Tsiolkas, 2008 In a week when I gave away three books while managing to acquire seven more, I got this one at the Value Village on Whyte Avenue.  This seems to be a place where people drop off recent  books when they have finished them. A dark tale set in contemporary Australia, the […]

By Plum Johnson, 2014 This book  was discussed in both my book clubs. The winner of the RBC Taylor Prize in 2014, the memoir could hardly be more timely. Half the people I know have or will soon find themselves cleaning out their elderly or deceased parents’ houses. This book is the story of one woman’s […]