In the spirit of "Form my own opinions about things", I decided to read Stephanie Meyer's Twilight recently. Is it as terrible as everyone says?

The path that led me here began at Fan-expo this year, with meeting vampire expert (and former MuchMoreMusic Listed commentator) Liisa Ladouceur. She had written a book about vampires in Western pop ( Read more... )

I've been asking other people for opinions on The Luminaries for a while, because it's a big book, and I don't really like reading big books. I find them exhausting. While after grad school, I developed a policy of "Life's too short, just drop a book if you're bored midway", I still find I have a bit of the old stubbornness inside me that doesn't ( Read more... )

• Attend all four tennis Grand Slam tournaments. (Already done one!)
• Go on an African safari.
• Swim in an infinity pool.
• See Kylie Minogue in concert. (This doesn't necessarily have to involve travel, but I don't know if she'll ever come back to North America...)

To most people my age, sensory deprivation tanks are just a gag from the "Make Room for Lisa" episode of The Simpsons. It's actually more commonly called "floating", and despite its new age reputation, I found it to be a legitimate option in my quest to find stress relief. As background, lately, I've found life in the city to be perhaps more stress ( Read more... )

Vincent Lam first came to my attention, as he did to many other people, through his award-winning Bloodletting and Other Miraculous Cures, an anthology of loosely connected stories. The Headmaster's Wager draws on his Vietnamese-Chinese roots, talking about the Vietnam War.

I have to compare this book against Nanjing Requiem, since it's also a ( Read more... )

If my New Year's resolution was to read more, I'm pretty terrible at it. (Luckily, I don't do resolutions.) I've barely read anything in 2015.

I did read a non-fiction book called Self-Promotion for Introverts that was recommended by my boyfriend. It was all right as far as self-help books go, but I don't really think it had a secret formula for ( Read more... )

Sometimes you do things that break your normal pattern, and it seems like you're starting a new trend. And sometimes, you realize your new trend lasted for two iterations, and you've already gone back to your normal pattern ( Read more... )

I first encountered the writing of John Updike in my OAC writer's craft course, when we had to analyze his short story, "A & P", during a midterm exam. No one understood it correctly. I remember because our teacher had such high esteem for all of us during the first part of the semester, and then she seemed so disappointed when she handed them all ( Read more... )

After I finished reading The Diviners, I picked up The Way the Crow Flies by Ann-Marie Macdonald from the library. I had previously read and loved Fall on Your Knees, and I hadn't read any big, sprawling fiction in a while. However, I struggled with Crow; it just wasn't going anywhere. It sets up the characters and lays the groundwork for the ( Read more... )

I put reviews in quotation marks because I'm not really reviewing books; I can't evaluate a whole reading experience. I'll only make comments that come to mind about a recently-read book that may not even be evaluative in nature at all!

Waiting for the Barbarians by JM Coetzee was a book I've wanted to read for a long time. One of my literary ( Read more... )