I started reading The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen on the plane on the way to Viet Nam and read a couple of the stories in the book while we were traveling. I put it aside when we got back and didn’t do any reading… Read More
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All posts tagged “books”
18 Books
Goodreads tells me I read 18 books in 2017. Here they are in no particular order: Eating Vietnam by Graham Holliday – just finished reading this one. A culinary adventure on the streets of Hanoi and Saigon. Delightful. Recommended for foodies out there. The Bird… Read More
The Vegetarian by Han Kang (translated by Deborah Smith)
The Vegetarian is a highly unusual, psychologically complex and thoughtful novel which explores themes around identity, family, mental illness and questions about how we choose to live in this world. It’s set in Korea and written in Korean and translated to English. This book… Read More
The Dying Detective
The Dying Detective was written in Swedish and published in 2010. It was translated into English in 2016. This page-turner is quality Nordic crime writing with some underlying character-driven humour. The protagonist is an out-of-shape retired ace-detective who suffers a stroke just before devouring a… Read More
What Painting Is
I’ve just read a fascinating, eccentric, sometimes frustrating, and very passionate book called What Painting Is by James Elkins. Mr. Elkins is an art critic and historian based at the Art Institute of Chicago. The sub-title of What Painting Is is: How to Think about… Read More
Deep Run Roots by Vivian Howard
There have always been cookbooks around our home. My mom had quite a collection of them. In fact, I even had an uncle, Harold Knapik, who wrote one. Back in 1971, Harold, who was an excellent amateur French style chef, came out with Haute Cuisine… Read More
Raven Black by Ann Cleeves
Recently we watched the first two seasons of the British television mysteries Shetland, set on the Shetland Islands. I thought the show was very good, although I found I had to be very attentive because I wasn’t used to the accents, and as well, the… Read More
Marrow Island by Alexis M. Smith
I came across Marrow Island on somebody’s list of best books of 2016. I read a brief description of the book and was drawn to the unusual premise. Imagine an earthquake in the Pacific Northwest destroys an oil refinery on a remote island, causing really… Read More
Yiddish for Pirates
I’ve read one final book for 2016. I know, because I looked at my Goodreads list of books I read this year, that it happens to be my 12th for the year. This latest book is Yiddish for Pirates by Gary Barwin – one of… Read More
The Parcel by Anosh Irani
I came to read this book through an unlikely coincidence. I was walking to a restaurant to meet up with some folks I worked with before my retirement from the workaday world. I was a little early, and along my walk came across a “fiercely… Read More
