Atwood’s Best to Date
A simply brilliant novel, one of Atwood’s best, and certainly deserving of the Booker. Comfortable with her skill as a writer, Atwood deftly alternates between sections written from different viewpoints and tenses, creating at first what seem to be disparate stories but which, of course, come together in a tense, sometimes humorous, often oppressive, and always insightful tale of relationships, love, betrayal and atonement. Certainly The Blind Assassin should be required reading for any adult….
The Power of Names
Discussion among some of my colleagues arose a little while ago regarding naming practices in fiction. I must admit I was a little appalled at some of their responses. One writer chose to take an ordinary name and spell it backward to give it a funky, other-world sound, thus David would become Divad, or Susan become Nasus. Another writer chose to give places people names, and people place names, so that David became a country,…
Paul Lima at Indigo on Bloor
This coming Saturday, June 20, our own Paul Lima will be appearing at Indigo Books at 2225 Bloor Street, Toronto, Ontario, 1:00 to 4:00 p.m., giving a brief seminar and signing copies of his hugely successful book, How to Write a Non-fiction Book in 60 Days. Paul’s seminar is absolutely free, and full of great insights that can apply not only to non-fiction writing, but fiction as well, as is his book. Well worth your…
Yesterday at Bruce County Museum
While there are those people in PR who would caution against posting negative or less than successful engagements, I’m not that sort, and as a result I would have liked to have reported an enormously successful day at the Bruce County Museum. Unfortunately I can’t. Whenever I do a reading or signing I always send promotional posters and bookmarks to the coordinator at the venue. I did the same thing for the event at Bruce…