A few weeks ago, I was on vacation in Cuba, the very country Ernest Hemingway fell in love with. He started going there in 1932 because he loved fishing. He first lived in the Ambos Mundos Hotel in Habana Vieja from 1932 to 1939. He later bought La Finca Vigia, a house located close to La Habana in San Francisco de Paula where he lived until the Cuban revolution in 1960. In…
Eleanor Catton
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The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton, winner of the 2013 Man Booker Prize and the 2013 Governor General’s Literary Awards, drew my attention because I usually enjoy historical fiction, and I have always been fascinated by the gold rush and how people would risk everything they have in the odd chance of striking it rich. The book starts when 12 men meet on 27 January 1866 in the smoking room of a hotel to…
William Burroughs
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Did you know that William Burroughs…
… shot his wife in the head while playing a drunken game of William Tell at a party? She died instantly. He never went to prison for the crime, as it happened in Mexico, and he bribed his way out of the country. The author was also a drug addict and a drug dealer. He was constantly in trouble with the law in the US, so he moved a lot…
Quotation
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Stephen King Quotation
“Some people say that I must be a horrible person, but that’s not true. I have the heart of a young boy – in a jar on my desk!” – Stephen King.
Fiction
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Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
The books I have gone through lately have dealt with serious stuff, so I needed something lighter to read for the holidays. Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy by Helen Fielding came out a few months ago, and I thought it would be a good time to go through the whole series again. For those of you who have been hiding under a rock for the last 20 years and haven’t…
Alice Munro
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Alice Munro’s Nobel Lecture
Last week, the Nobel Prize website released a video of an interview with Alice Munro, winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature. Being 82 years old, she was too frail to make the trip to Stockholm to accept the prize, but this video was a great way to learn more about this amazing Canadian writer. For those of you who are not familiar with her work, Alice Munro writes…
Fiction
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MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood
I arrived an hour early at Southminster United Church in Ottawa on Tuesday 24 September 2013. Already there was a line for the event One on One with Margaret Atwood. Before getting to my seat, I was given 4 buttons: “Margaret Atwood MaddAddam: See the Future, Seek the Truth”. This was the first time I was handed a gift at a literary event. I thought this was a great souvenir,…
Fiction
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My Black Friday Purchases…
Because I am book obsessed, my Black Friday purchases weren’t clothes or shoes or jewelry… but books, books and more books! Look at these beautiful works of art! Notice the colorful covers and spines! I think they will look right at home on my shelves! Did I mention they were 75% off? Here is a list of my acquisitions: Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood Eleanor Rigby by Douglas Coupland The Virgin…
Fiction
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Knots & Crosses by Ian Rankin
Ian Rankin was in Ottawa on Saturday 30 November 2013 to talk about his new book, Saints of the Shadow Bible. Earlier that day, he was having a drink in a pub when he started chatting with one of the customers there. The guy noticed that he was Scottish, and asked Rankin what he was doing for a living. When the author told him, the guy said he was actually…
Mark Twain
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Mark Twain Quotation
“Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.” – Mark Twain