Last book of the second trilogy: less of a ripping yarn than the first trilogy, and the wildly fractal inventiveness is toned down. Still enjoyable, but more in a filling-in-the-lore way, and a nice conclusion to Lyra’s story.
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Nobody needs me to review this book,
cf. many award wins. But I think it’s worth talking about: Solie’s influence is all over Canadian poetry. Lyric verse at odds with contemporary life, with sides of small towns and runaway capitalism.
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Certainly one of my favourite recent collections. Shocking with its imagery. Erudite, but colloquial and visceral. The treatment of desire and otherness, while queer and rural on the page, is much bigger and more universal in the reading. Just wonderful.
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So much to learn from Heaney. Not that everyone should write about rural life in Ireland, but he gave people license to write what’s real to them. So much of today’s poetry - environmental poetry, confessional poetry, etc - owes itself to Heaney.
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The best children’s fantasy series you’ve never heard of. The story of Assistant Pig Keeper Taran and his friends spans 5 wonderful books, which are exciting, funny, touching, and ultimately epic.
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A D&D-inspired novel, about an adventurer who decides to hang up her great sword to start a coffee shop. Very readable, if it discordantly contemporary at times. Good characters, just enough peril, a quaint and subtle romantic subplot. Little violence or dungeon crawling.
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Yesterday I posted a piece that posited a sameness in Canadian poetry. Cointerpoint: Sue Goyette’s Ocean. Perhaps my favourite book of Canadian poetry, Ocean is like nothing else, a poetic
novel-cum-history of nature’s agency and our relationship with it.
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Cover of the George Saunders novel Lincoln in the Bardo.
I’m halfway through a (second) listen of Lincoln in the Bardo on audiobook. Calling this an audiobook feels inaccurate: it’s something more like a radio play, with an amazing cast. (Nick Offerman is particularly excellent.)
The original book is a great read as well.
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