Category: Books

Book Review – The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

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The Buried Giant is the seventh and latest novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, published on March 3, 2015, and it is the author’s first novel in a decade.  It follows Axl and Beatrice, an old Briton couple living in Britain after the Romans have “long since departed.” In this world falling into ruin nobody seems able to remember much of the distant, or even recent, past. The couple embark upon a journey together to find their long lost son, whom they scarcely remember. Their travels through this misty and forgetful world threatens their love for each other as it brings them closer to their veiled past.Read More »

Favourites: Far-Seer by Robert J. Sawyer

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The first time I picked up Far-Seer by Robert J. Sawyer it was in a library in my middle school. I had never heard of the book or the author before, but I was drawn to the cover, which unashamedly displayed the image of an evolved tyrannosaur wearing a sash and using astrological instruments. I’ve always been drawn to reptiles — and by extension dinosaurs and dragons — so I was immediately interested. Growing up, I always wanted a story focused on a reptilian character; even series like Redwall, which featured nonhuman characters, were all mammals.Read More »

Book Review – Primitive Mythology by Joseph Campbell

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Primitive Mythology is the first volume of The Masks of God, a four volume work by Joseph Campbell. Campbell is well known for his other works in the field of mythology The Hero with a Thousand Faces and the PBS series The Power of Myth. He was the creator of the concept of the monomyth (one myth) — a word he borrowed from James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake — which essentially refers to a theory that all mythic stories are variations of a single great narrative, which is made evident by themes, tropes, and other elements common among numerous great myths around the world, regardless of place and time. While The Hero with a Thousand Faces — which I understand to be his most renowned written work — approaches this idea from the perspective of psychology, The Masks of God approaches it more through anthropology and history.Read More »

Book Review – Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk

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Invisible Monsters is a 1999 transgressive fiction novel by Chuck Palahniuk, and was his third novel published. The novel follows an unnamed, disfigured woman who also serves as the narrator. She travels across the United States and parts of Canada with Brandy Alexander, her glamorous transgender companion, who bestows upon her many aliases as they rip off wealthy open-houses for prescription drugs to sell.Read More »

Reading Epics: The Odyssey by Homer

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Very recently I finished reading Homer’s The Odyssey in its entirety for the first time. This is particularly significant for me because while minored in classical studies in university and learned a lot about the story of The Odyssey, I never actually read the entire text. I’ve made it a personal mission to read epics like these, having started with The Iliad, which I finished reading at the end of 2013.Read More »

Book Review – Ablutions by Patrick DeWitt

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This past week I finished reading Ablutions, the first novel by Patrick DeWitt — published in 2009 — who is better known now for his award-winning novel The Sisters Brothers. Structurally, the novel is a collection of notes, anecdotes, and recollections of the nameless protagonist’s experience working as a bartender in a seedy Hollywood bar. The story explores many of the bar’s vagrant, down-and-out regulars and employees, as well as the protagonist’s own spiraling life centred on an excess of Irish whiskey and popping pills.Read More »

Book Review – Why I Hate Canadians by Will Ferguson

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Why I Hate Canadians

This past week I finished reading Why I Hate Canadians by Will Ferguson, a collection of essays and anecdotes published in 1997 about the author’s experiences as a Canadian, as well as Canadian culture and history more generally. As the title suggests, Ferguson takes a sarcastic and humorous approach, challenging a lot of the points we use to define ourselves as Canadians, often referencing history, contemporary culture, and politics. The print I read was the 10th anniversary edition, with a foreword from the author. It being nearly 20 years since the books original release, the foreword helped to but the book in context.Read More »

Book Review – Sarah Court by Craig Davidson

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This past week I finished reading my first novel of the year; Sarah Court by Craig Davidson. Published in 2010, the book is Davidson’s third novel — excluding those written under a pseudonym. The novel takes place in and around Niagara Falls, Ontario, following five families who all lived on the same block together — Sarah Court. Though not a collection of short stories, it is not a straightforward narrative either. The novel touches upon each family in sequence, never returning to each chapter’s narrator upon completion.Read More »

Finishing Wizard & Glass

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My final book for 2014 was supposed to be Wizard & Glass, the fourth book in Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series. Despite my best efforts, however, I was unable to finish it before the New Year. Nevertheless, it definitely would have fallen on my list of favourite books for 2014, so I thought I’d talk a little about my feelings on the novel.

This will not entirely be a review. While I will be critiquing it and discussing what takes place in it, it does not sit well with me to give a full review on the fourth installment of a series without having discussed any of the previous entries (this was also the reason I didn’t review A Dance with Dragons).Read More »