Farewell to Ad Astra

I had a great time at Ad Astra 2015, but all good things must come to an end. I met some amazing people and find myself with a huge pile of additional reading to do now. Here’s to next year!

This Changes Everything

by Naomi Klein Rare is it for a book to come along and give you something significant to think about, that sticks with you long after you finish reading––if not fundamentally changing your outlook. I suppose saying that This Changes Everything is such a book shouldn’t be overly surprising, given the title. However, such a…
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Good Omens

by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman How lucky am I to read books back-to-back that actually made me laugh out loud, first Our Man in Havana, and now Good Omens. I hate to admit, however, that Greene’s classic wasn’t the story that came to mind while reading this one. No, that title goes to something…
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Our Man in Havana

by Graham Greene Our Man in Havana has the unique distinction of its place in history more-or-less matching up with its subject matter. The story is about Wormold, a vacuum cleaner salesman from Cuba, being recruited by British intelligence to gather information. Not knowing the first thing about espionage, but still wanting to draw a…
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Lord of Light

by Roger Zelazny When reading, you can sometimes smell the pungent odour of a cliffhanger coming a mile away. With Lord of Light, I caught a tinge of this as I progressed without approaching anything that resembled where we were in the introduction. The more I read, the more nervous I grew, probably coming to…
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The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol

It’s very interesting what good writing can evoke in the mind of the reader. (This probably stands out in my mind right now, as I’m preparing to speak on this topic very soon.) While reading the works of Gogol, this does bring about images of the Ukrainian countryside and various powerful emotions, as you may…
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Top Goodreads Reviewer

Apparently, I’m the #19 Canadian book reviewer on Goodreads this week, for some reason. (I think it’s because I went back and edited a number of reviews, but don’t tell anyone…)

Big Fish

by Daniel Wallace Having been reminded of Big Fish when trying to come to an understanding of E. J. Lavoie’s The Gardens of Goshen, I felt compelled to pick this one up and give it another go. It seems somewhat fitting that I can look back on this story and reminisce. You see, my first…
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The Gardens of Goshen

by E. J. Lavoie “Just for a little while, let’s talk, okay? Man to man, father to son. No more stories.” William Bloom said that to his father in Daniel Wallace’s novel, Big Fish. Hard as William tries, even on his father’s deathbed, he can’t cut through his father’s tall tales and jokes to reach…
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