Fall on Your Knees, by Ann-Marie MacDonald

I think I first read Fall on Your Knees (Knopf Canada, 1996) in my third year of university, after I’d picked up the book at a used book sale. I must have recognized the title, since I scooped it without much of a thought, and when I returned home discovered that the copy had been [...]

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Mister Pip, by Lloyd Jones

“You cannot pretend to read a book. Your eyes will give you away. So will your breathing. A person entranced by a book simply forgets to breathe. The house can catch alight and a reader deep in a book will not look up until the wallpaper is on fire.” This endearing quotation appears prominently on [...]

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Barney’s Version, by Mordecai Richler

Winner of the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour, The 1998 Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Giller prize, I had some pretty high expectations for Barney’s Version – and I am happy to say they were met, if not exceeded.  With his trademark acerbic wit, Richler has created an intolerant, cantankerous, curmudgeonly old man that is [...]

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