2009
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If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things
Jon McGregor
This is one of those novels that is hard to describe without the word “poignant,” as McGregor describes in fine detail the happenings on one block in a British city on one day that something tragic occurs with the block’s residents as witnesses. The build-up to this one event is a selective peering into of the neighbors’ secret...more
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Carried Away
Alice Munro
After the semi-disappointment in Dance of the Happy Shades, I picked up this collection and worked my way through it over autumn in between other books. I’d probably read half of these seventeen favorites in their original collections, so reading this was a combination of fi...more
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Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut
I read Breakfast of Champions back in high school or early college but for some reason never branched out further. It’s hard to remember my exact reaction, but I’m guessing it was a...more
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The Best 10 Minutes of Your Life
Zoe Whittall
Thanksgiving in Dundas
more
Hitching the Hamilton highway
styrofoam hot chocolate
from a steeltown diner
waiting, the most precise
measurement of patience -
Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age
Kenzaburo Oe
It seems most of Oe’s works are at least semi-autobiographical; supposedly all his works feature a character based on his son Hikari who is developmentally disabled. This book is about a similar boy whose name is also Hikari, but goes by the nickname Eeyore, and a similar father...more
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Sad Little Breathing Machine
Matthea Harvey
For whatever reason, this collection didn’t strike me as much as Modern Life did. But there were poems I liked.
The Crowds Cheered as Gloom Galloped Away
Everyone was happier. But where did the sadness go? People wanted to know. They didn’t want
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The Westing Game
Ellen Raskin
I never read this when I was younger, but I kind of wish I had. It’s a complicated mystery based around the occupants of an apartment building who discover they’ve all been named heirs to a $2 million estate, except they need to compete against each other (in pairs dictated by the bizarre will) on a strange riddle in order to win...more
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The Sweet Life in Paris
David Lebovitz
Only recently did I get with the program and start reading David Lebovitz’s blog — I’ve tried to make up for lost time by making his butterscotch pudding several times in the last few weeks. I assumed this book...more
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The Woman in the Dunes
Kobe Abé
An entomologist seeks out a remote seaside village for an insect expedition and as night falls seeks shelter from the villagers. They offer him shelter with a widow who lives in a house inside a deep sand pit and he wakes up in the morning to discover they have removed the ladder, trapping him. In time he discovers that a few villagers...more
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Dance of the Happy Shades
Alice Munro
I was partway through this collection of short fiction when I had to check to see if this was Munro’s first collection of stories (which it is). So often her stories seem to leave no stone to untouched, and, even though it’s not as long as a novel, you still have the sense that the narrative is entirely complete at the...more