When presented with a neat set of categories, characters, or individuals that seem to parcel the world into four, it’s difficult not to want to place oneself in one: my element is Earth, I’m melancholic, I’d get Sorted into Hufflepuff, I’m Bea Arthur, I’m Miranda, I’m Ben Grimm, I’m Agravain,…
It’s taken me a while to pick out the thing I miss most about Girl Guides, and that is the opportunity to try new things every week.
As some of you may know, I recently returned from a month-long research trip to Europe. What you may not know is that I decided to travel as light as possible. In practical terms, this means the unthinkable: no books*! For someone who used to travel with no fewer than…
Here is something a writer like me — who plunges headlong into exciting made-up situations but hates thinking of all the ramifications — hears a lot from her critique partners: I didn’t get it. “I didn’t get it” is a frustrating critique, not because it isn’t useful but because, well,…
Or, Micro-Reviews, non-fiction edition. Whenever I go home for the holidays, there are invariably three things waiting for me in my room: the mail that has gathered in the interim, all the Globe and Mail Saturday cryptic crosswords accumulated in my absence (carefully torn out and folded by my father),…
Yes, as promised, a review of the musical sequel to The Phantom of the Opera, Love Never Dies, which sees former star soprano Christine Daae travelling with her husband and child to Coney Island, NYC, to stage a comeback at a mysterious sideshow called Phantasma. (gasp! Could it be….?) But,…
(Thanks to all who’ve expressed their sympathies! Your kind wishes mean a lot to me.) A while back, I wrote this blog entry about a certain love-triangle pattern often encountered in fiction, and I talked a bit about why I’m frustrated by the place it leaves for the women ostensibly…
No post this week — some family stuff going on. Have a good one, and see you all next Sunday.
The older I get, the less I find myself impressed by comedic movies and plays. Maybe I’m prematurely an old fogey, but everything seems… derivative. Tired. Worn out. I notice that I turn more and more to the game-changers, the household-name originals like classic Looney Toons, Monty Python, and Terry…