The book box sits outside our place on lower 27th Street in Long Branch Ontario. It’s the house with the canoe garden and the giant mosaic owl. Ya can’t miss it. The book box is now featuring an excellent selection of titles…

Check out Deadwood by Pete Dexter. This book predates the television series by some time. The book deals with some of the same events as the tv show, but it’s really Charlie Utter’s story. It’s an excellent book – I rated it 4 stars on Goodreads.

Let’s see what else is in the shelves. Oh look, there’s Iron and Silk by Mark Salzman. I gave this one a full 5 stars on Goodreads. It’s about a young American who travels to China to teach English – and learn martial arts. This is a charming and delightful memoir of Mr. Salzman’s adventures in China.

100 Years of Solitude is on the shelves but I imagine it will stay there because everyone has read this one (right?). In this book Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote one of my all-time favourite first lines: Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

I read General Ludd by John Metcalf back in the early 80s when I was in university. I think Canadian readers of my generation in particular will get a kick out of this book. It was published back in 1980. It’s the story of a poet who has a gig as a writer in residence at a Canadian liberal arts college. I found it both biting and hilariously funny.

Barry Hannah’s Yonder Stands your Orphan is there. The title comes from the Weird Bob song….yonder stands your orphan with his gun, crying like a fire in the sun, look out the saints are comin’ through, and it’s all over now, Baby Blue. I think I read this one based on a recommendation from my friend Candy Minx. Hannah was called ‘the Big Daddy of Southern letters’, and this is an excellent novel.

And there is more….

Drop by the book box. Take a book or drop a book or both. There’s even a bulletin board – leave a note if you like, or tack up a photo or a drawing or whatever you like.