John Steinbeck

I've been re-reading John Steinbeck recently - Sweet Thursday, Cannery Row, The Long Valley, Tortilla Flat, The Log from the Sea of Cortez.

The last chapter of Travels with Charley broke my heart. The images he presents to us of the first integration of schools in New Orleans - the tiny black girl, the military guards, and the cheerleaders ... oh, the cheerleaders. As I write these words, the tears are spilling over still.


I thought I'd read them all, but then was surprised to discover one I'd not ... The Moon is Down

I've been reading an extraordinary number of novels about war recently ... Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels was the current selection for our book club ... from Poland in WWII to Greece to Toronto. Resistance by Anita Shreve, the Maquis in 1943 move Jews to France and freedom. And another recent re-read, Too Young to Fight. Priscilla Galloway compiled a book of recollections from Canada's best-known writers. The contributors were children and teenagers during WWII

Helene Hanff

I've read all of her books and own most of them. This one is my favorite ... and the movie is wonderful ... Anne Bancroft, Anthony Hopkins, and a very young Judi Dench

Daniel Wallace

Wallace wrote The Big Fish, one of my favorite movies. I found the book in our library and looked for others he had written

Barbara Hodgson

In the exotic world of Morocco, Lydia writes daily in her journal ... later, when she disappears, Chris takes up her diary to record his search for her

A clever murder mystery, an acute study of human nature ... and a dark, sly fairy-tale quest

a local author

Eudora Welty

I love this anecdote about Eudora Welty and the email system ... it's the same one I've been using for many years now

Garbo Laughs

I was so charmed by the first book that I read written by Elizabeth Hay ... A Student of Weather ... that I looked for another. She writes a lot about weather, as who wouldn't, living in Ottawa.

Garbo Laughs is the story of a family whose members are best able to express their love and disappointment through the films of the past.

In Ottawa, Harriet Browning is the center of a small group who call themselves The Friday Night Movie Club: her son, Kenny, obsessed with Sinatra, watches classic movies to forget his troubles at school; her daughter, Jane, on the brink of adolescence, longs for the glamorous life; her neighbor and friend Dinah, a sometime journalist, named for Dinah Shore. Lew, Harriet's realist husband, is left out of this loop, and escapes by way of business trips to South America. The arrival of Harriet's aunt Leah, the trouble-making widow of a Hollywood screenwriter, and her stepson Jack, a lazy, fast-talking writer, leads to shifts in affections and allegiances. Illness brings an end to the movie-watching, in true Hollywood weepy fashion

Harriet's son Kenny keeps a "gangster's outfit" available for watching movies and visiting his mother's friends. He seems to have no friends of his own. His fascination with movies easily matches that of his mother.