There’s a brilliant lyric in Truth Hurts, the Lizzo song: Yeah, I got boy problems, that’s the human in meBling bling, then I solve ’em, that’s the goddess in me Luckily, it’s been playing on the radio here lately, and this lyric makes me think of a book I’ve recently read, Madeline Miller’s (also) brilliant…
Are you watching season 3 of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt? Every time Amy Sedaris is on the screen, portraying ditzy, fairweather friend socialite Mimi Kanasis, I laugh. Here she is, in action: Mimi is, without a doubt, my favourite part of the show. And it reminds me, this weekend I also saw a review of David…
The Wonder in question is a fasting girl, Anna O’Donnell, in 1850s Ireland, and a British nurse, Lib, sent to investigate. But then the wonders are also science, religion, friendship and love – the novel touches on all these themes. The Wonder is well worth your time.
I hadn’t heard of Lindy West before I saw reviews for her book, Shrill, starting to pop up. I’ve read a few popular funny feminist books/memoirs (ahem, ahem), so I didn’t jump on this one. In fact, it took months and months for me to pick it up, but I’m glad I did. Despite having…
Yesterday, I read a story by Junot Diaz in the New Yorker – the line: “The half-life of love is forever” caught me. Beautiful, right? It made me think about how grief lingers, what it’s like to lose your lover, or someone else. How years later, it’s still with you. The story was also published in…
I recently finished reading Eula Biss’ award-winning On Immunity: An Inoculation. A confession: at one point, I bought only expensive dairy products at Whole Foods because I was skeptical of our local dairy industry. I thought, if I paid more for my yoghurt, the cows would be treated better. I also thought: “It can’t be good for me,…
I’d seen 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl in a profile of “upcoming Canadian reads“. I’d been given a couple of book gift cards for Christmas, so I ordered it in advance. The reviews on the back cover said it was: “Full of sharp insight and sly humor”, “hilarious and cutting”. The back…
When Q and I started dating, I mentioned that as a child, I owned a sweatshirt that said: “So Many Books, So Little Time”. He bought me one for Christmas. If I had my druthers, I would be reading books most of the time. There are so many books I want to read, they’re piled…
It took me ages to finish reading Thinking Fast and Slow. I must have stopped to reflect about 50 times. The book is about judgment and decision-making, and was written by a psychologist. While I was already familiar with many of the theories – Daniel Kahneman has been working since the early 1970s – it…
