Wonderful book. I feel like there is a bit of a cheat going on with the story of a husband's personal development being interwoven with italicized passages providing a sort of objective, omniscient, generalizing perspective of this single couple's experience, but I really enjoyed it anyway.

Excellent ("non-fiction") novel about an older woman dealing with her singleness, caring for her elderly cat, living in an aging building of concrete and glass, connecting with neighbours, feeding a stranded duck, and translating Ovid in Miami Beach.

One of life's great pleasures: reading in bed on a Sunday night, successfully not thinking about what Monday brings.

Excellent book of essays dealing with feminism, fat shaming, rape jokes, trolls, and much much more.

I took this photo at the bookstore because I was not going to buy the book, but then I bought the book and now I can share this with you. So much reading to be done!

This evening's unwieldy stack of books.

Killing some time in the sunshine.

Leaving today for a week in Florida. I started Zadie Smith's new novel this morning to make sure I wanted to bring it along, and hell yeah I do!

Now that I'm back from Ireland, it's time for a zany Floridian romp of a novel leading up to our trip to Tampa & Punta Gorda next week.

Last meal in Galway, last pages of Siracusa.

I had actual humans for company at dinner tonight, so now I'm just reading in my cozy hotel bed. 📖

Another night in Galway, another drink, another few dozen pages of Siracusa.

Reading alone in the brightest corner of a noisy bar while drinking an excellent Irish lager is very much my idea of a good time.

Tonight's dinner companion in Galway.

Tonight's dinner companion

Awesome bookstore in Galway, Ireland -- Charlie Byrne's Bookshop. Could've spent hours there this evening, but had to cut myself off.

Sunday night reading in bed.

Today I happened to be near my favourite used book store in Canada (my absolute favourite one is in Jacksonville FL), so I came home with a short stack. 📚

Such a fun read! Once I started, it was so hard to put down. More on the book in my newsletter:
http://tinyletter.com/popscratch/

Great little book by a great poet about a handful of Hopper's paintings. No complicated art criticism or theory -- just brief essays about the visual language of the pictures. Strand and Hopper are a perfect pair.

I ❤️the public library.

Very good. No spoilers or whatever, but after a rough patch in the middle, the ending was very satisfying.

Engaging and lovely prose. More sad and serious than I usually like my YA, but an enjoyable read nonetheless.

I usually read hardcovers with their jacket off (unless they're library copies of course), but I'll put it back on to take a photo! This book is strangely absorbing.

Finished this book today after reading it slowly and lovingly for months. I can't imagine a better book on storytelling.

I love me some Hopper, and Mark Strand isn't bad. 😁

Love Barbara Pym so much. I read this one years ago and I can't believe how much of it I remember. (Granted, there's some overlap & similarities with her other books.) Great writing, great characters, brilliant insights into the human condition.

"Curiosity has its pains as well as its pleasures, and the bitterest of its pains must surely be the inability to follow up everything to its conclusion."

Visited a new-to-me bookstore near work today. They had an amazing selection of new & used, but I only had 20 minutes. Looking forward to another trip!

"There is no uplifting way to say this. I have no praise anthems, nor old Negro spirituals. The spirit and the soul are the body and brain, which are destructible -- that is precisely why they are so precious. And the soul did not escape. The spirit did not steal away on gospel wings. The soul was the body that fed the tobacco, and the spirit was the blood that watered the cotton, and these created the first fruits of the American garden."

"In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body -- it is heritage. Enslavement was not merely the antiseptic borrowing of labor -- it is not so easy to get a human being to commit their body against its own elemental interest. And so enslavement must be casual wrath and random manglings, the gashing of heads and brains blown out over the river as the body seeks to escape. It must be rape so regular as to be industrial."

Reading this, finally, after owning the book for years. Feels a bit like an artefact -- it's not scientific literature, not pop science, and not quite a elegant marrying of the two. The stories are fascinating, and I find myself wanting more personal history about the patients.

An honest, clear-eyed memoir of the intricacies of dealing with sudden loss. No sentimental heartstring-tugging here. Aitkenhead pays homage to the life of her partner and works through her grief in the nine months following his death.

Re-reading one of my all-time favourite books on a sunny Saturday.

The best Friday night before a long weekend is a Friday night reading by the setting sun with a drink in hand!

This evening: required reading.

New day, new book. Twenty pages in and my heart is already breaking.

Phew! I confess that once the war ends (spoiler alert?!) I skimmed through some of the bits about the League of Nations, but V. B. ends the book on a strong note -- becoming a published writer and making a difficult but important personal decision. And now I'm excited to see the film!

"In spite of the feminine family tradition and the relentless social pressure which had placed an artificial emphasis on marriage for all the women born, like myself, in the eighteen-nineties, I had always held and still believed it to be irrelevant to the main purpose of life." V. B. would be disappointed in how common this tradition and pressure remain in 2016.

So glad to be done with this finally. That's all.

My go-to book for eating alone in restaurants this week.

Started this book last night, but I'm leaving town for a week, so it's time to switch over to the ebook. So far, it's no Our Tragic Universe (my favourite).

Saturday morning reading. Novels about fan fiction writers are too few and far between. They make me miss my Sailor Moon and Pride & Prejudice fic writing days.

"Timing was everything -- that was more and more obvious the older you got, when you finally understood that the universe wasn't held together in any way that made sense. ... There was no fate. Life was just happenstance and luck, bound together by the desire for order. Elizabeth understood why so many people believed in God -- it was for precisely this reason, so they'd never have to close their eyes and think, What the fuck did I do to my life?"