I have been a fan of Sarah Addison Allen since her first novel, Garden Spells, was published in 2007. Her books often feature lonely or lost souls, characters out of step with the world they inhabit. Her characters display talents or gifts that seem out of sync with those worlds, until they determine the way in which long held secrets will be shared and possibilities achieved, usually with a touch of magic and a dash of comfort. Other Birds does not disappoint.

Maggie O’Farrell returns to historical fiction with The Marriage Portrait, a novel inspired by a poem, inspired by a portrait of a young Italian noblewoman, Lucrezia de Medici, who at 15 was forced by her parents to marry the much older Alfonso II d’Este. While I have not yet read all of Maggie O’Farrell’s books, I have enjoyed those I have read. I regularly refer people to her most recent, Hamnet & Judith, so am eager to start this interval in the world of Renaissance Italy.

Anticipating a trip to Edinburgh, I was pleased to receive a copy of Stevenson’s book. First published in 1878 as a series of essays, later collected as a guidebook, a memoir, and a collection of picturesque notes as it is subtitled. This 2021 edition is a slender hard cover with a delightful cover illustration that will enchant the armchair traveller and the curious alike. I enjoyed opening the book to whichever brief essay took my fancy and appreciate that Stevenson’s writing seems to have aged well. He pulls no punches about the city, nor its weather. It’s debatable whether his opinions would pass muster with the current tourism folks.

The particular philosophical question behind this book in McCall Smith’s Sunday Philosophy Club series caught my attention - is the heart truly the seat of the soul? I’ve not read any previous volumes in the series but probably will now that I’ve dipped a toe in. It was easy to catch on to the regulars in the series, and a pleasant read for a sunny afternoon on the verandah.

After some thin reading years as a teenager, McEwan was one of my first loves when I got back into books as an adult. His novel Saturday is an all time favourite. A fellow McEwan (and Saturday) enthusiast on staff has told me that Lessons is up there with his best.

Hsu writes for the New Yorker and his criticism always has a passage or two that goes beyond the subject at hand and says something bigger about life and art. Stay True is a memoir of Hsu’s teens and early twenties and I’m excited to find out more about the experiences that shaped him.

I’ve never been a huge Chris Bosh fan, but I like to read a basketball book once in a while and I’m especially interested, perhaps morbidly so, when a career is cut short as Bosh’s was. To paraphrase Steve Nash musing about his impending retirement “It’s like there’s this dark presence.” How did Bosh deal with that “dark presence” when it came for him early and unexpectedly?

It’s Joan Didion, “Dids” as I like to call her, so we know right away that this will be better than most other books that have ever sat on my nightstand (which, like a good Haligonian, I found on the side of the road). What drew me most to this one was the title. Not, “Where I Am From” … too generic! Didion wants to talk about  “Where I Was From,” that was contains so much potential sorrow, or even malice? I don’t know, but I need to find out!

I ordered this book after I realized how long I've been referencing this Trilling quote I read in an article years ago: "our suspicion of gaiety in art perhaps signifies an inadequate seriousness in ourselves".  

Talbot’s exposé of Allan Dulles’s underhanded influence on global politics as the longest-running director of the CIA is as compelling as a good (horror) novel. 

I fell in love with Shirley Jackson through Ruth Franklin’s 2016 biography A Rather Haunted Life, and have missed her company ever since. I expect these letters to be as warm, witty and heartbreaking as she was.

Andy Miller, one of the hosts of the podcast Backlisted, is a bookseller and writer with impeccable taste. I'm about five pages in and have already laughed out loud many times.

Bookmark in Support of

Wild Threads Literary Festival

Thank you Peter Mansbridge for two wonderful events in Halifax and Charlottetown last month. During his visit to Charlottetown for the Wild Threads Literary Festival, Peter stopped into the store to record an interview with CBC Compass. (photo of Mo Duffy Cobb, Peter Mansbridge, and Lori Cheverie)

On Browsing and Independent Bookshops

From On Browsing by Jason Guriel published by Canadian independent publisher, Biblioasis.

On the time-honored intellectual and cultural activity known as browsing…

“Browsing is the opposite of ‘search’. Search is precise, browsing is imprecise. When you search, you find what you were looking for; when you browse, you find what you were not looking for. Search corrects your knowledge, browsing corrects your ignorance. Search narrows, browsing enlarges.” - Leon Wieseltier

On independent bookshops… “a business, sure, but a labour of love, as well. We are still waiting for the algorithms to learn how to love.” - Jason Guriel

Herring is a hapless lobster fisher lost in an unexceptional life, bored of thinking the same old thoughts. One December day, following a hunch, he cuts a hole in the living room floor and installs a hoist, altering the course of everything in his life. 

Prince Edward Islanders are famous for hosting family and friends in the kitchen. Canada's Food Island invites you to celebrate the Island's farm-to-table cooking and meet the farmers, fishers and artisans who make those delicious dishes possible. Canada's Food Island combines nearly 100 inspired seasonal recipes with homegrown stories and beautiful photographs to capture the essence of the island's unique food culture - a blend of people, place and locally sourced fresh natural ingredients. You'll learn how mussels and oysters are sustainably raised and harvested, why Island beef is so flavourful and what makes wild blueberries so special. Whether you've spent time on Prince Edward Island or not, you'll want to visit these pages again and again to experience a taste of the Island in the comfort of your own kitchen.

Royalties from sales of the book will go to PEI Food Banks with the mission to increase food security for Islanders by supporting Food Banks and the individuals who are in need of their support.

The author of Alder Music, Gary Saunders returns with an evocative, lyrical, and immersive collection of personal essays on our relationship with nature and with each other.

In nine sections, Earthkeeping ruminates on the necessity of love and earthkeeping, on forage fish and robinsongs, and on the stewardship of our ecological landscape. Offering an antidote to the world’s anxiety about climate change, plastic pollution, and biodiversity loss, Saunders writes with a deep connection to the natural world and his signature humane zest for life. Lovingly illustrated with Saunders’s own drawings, the result is a joyful, personal, and deeply attentive stroll through an enchanted land of blue and green.

The whole world is waiting to see if Shubenacadie Sam's shadow means six more weeks of winter or whether spring is on its way. The day before Groundhog Day though is Groundhog Night, and as Sam discovers, other animals have shadows, too.

Come with us on this moonlit journey of discovery as Shubenacadie Wildlife Park's most famous resident meets moose, fox and an owl and many of the other animals and birds that share the park.

Shubenacadie Sam is not alone.

Shubenacadie Sam is one of the most famous groundhogs in North America. Every year on February 2 at sunrise, Sam leaves the specially built house and checks to see if he sees a shadow. The whole country waits for the result.