Recent research has brought a sobering revelation: leisure reading among U.S. adults has dropped nearly 40 per cent over the last two decades. Where once nearly a third of Americans reported reading daily for pleasure, now barely 16 per cent do so. On the surface, this looks like a cultural shift. In truth, it may also be a biological one. The Brain on Fiction Reading matters. When we immerse ourselves in a novel, our brains […]
Catherine Bach is a survivor, something that, after the accident, everyone she meets thinks to make a remark about. How lucky she is. How blessed. She was aboard an Airbus A380-800 that fell from the sky, and she walked away. How can her life be anything but charmed? But Catherine knows that she did not walk away from the accident unscathed, even if the scars she has taken from the crash can’t be seen. Since […]
In 2000, Canadian businessman Avie Bennett engineered a deal to wrest “The Canadian Publisher” McClelland and Stewart, out of the protection of Canadian Heritage and into the arms of a foreign national company in the form of then Random House. Though many Canadians would have thought that would create an outcry, it did not. But journalist Elaine Dewar was paying attention. More: she was there. In her well-reviewed but largely ignored 2017 book, The Handover: […]
I first heard about Field Roast about five years ago when a single Vancouver restaurant was bringing it in for their vegan clientele. At the time, the product wasn’t legal in Canada’s the restaurant would basically mule it over the border, taking great risks that resulted in long lines. A growing vegan market couldn’t wait to get their hands (or mouths) on the stuff. Unlike a lot of vegan meat substitutes now on the market, […]
Passionate readers understand that a wonderful book — one that resonates strongly — can leave a lasting impression. Can, in fact, sometimes change your life. That is the premise, and in fact that glue that binds, of A Girl Walks Into A Book (Seal) by writer and essayist Miranda K. Pennington. The author was a voracious reader at 10 when her father gave her a copy of Jane Eyre. It was not love at first […]
PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author, Kate Christensen, delivers a stirring ands sometimes heartbreaking read in Blue Plate Special (Anchor). Ostensibly a memoir about “the transformative nature of food,” Christensen’s first work of non-fiction is so much more than that. Despite the addition of a decent helping of interesting recipes, Blue Plate Special delves deeply into the psyche of a brilliant and complicated author. Perhaps even more deeply than Christensen initially intended or planned. Christensen deals with her […]
Huffington Post columnist Lesley M.M. Blume’s Let’s Bring Back (Chronicle Books) is an elegant, nostalgic look back at a time that perhaps never was. Based on her column of the same name, Let’s Bring Back is “An Encyclopedia of Forgotten-Yet-Delightful, Chic, Useful, Curious, and Otherwise Commendable Things.” As Blume says in an introduction: An encyclopedia of nostalgia, Let’s Bring Back celebrates hundreds of discarded and forgotten objects, pastimes, curiosities, recipes, words, architectural works, and personas […]
Today in January Magazine’s biography section, editor Linda L. Richards reviews The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women by James Ellroy. Says Richards: The North American reviews I’ve seen of The Hilliker Curse have mostly been astonishingly lukewarm, at best. This has been a head-scratcher because if you actually read the book you see that the writing here is sterling. Prose-wise, the Demon Dog of American Literature has never been in better shape. Mind you, […]
Today in January Magazine’s fiction section, January editor Linda L. Richards reviews the much ballyhooed Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. Says Richards: Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom begins with a deceptively narrow focus. The life of a single family — the Berglunds of St. Paul, Minnsesota — viewed from a distance. The neighborhood they choose. The house they buy and love. The children they grow in the house and how all four Berglunds fit into the neighborhood. When […]
Laura Pritchett’s bio tells us that, when she isn’t writing, “she’s Dumpster-diving to save what other people throw away.” So right away you know that Going Green: Tales from Gleaners, Scavengers and Dumpster Divers (University of Oklahoma Press) is not going to be an Eco Chic view of environmentalism. In the preface, Pritchett explains the concept: Gleaning junk from a beach leads to a discussion of the enormous amount of plastic waste in our oceans. […]
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