But even though my main job is to sell discount books here at shop-books.ca I do read many of the books So, here in no particular order, are the books I am trying to get through this month: Eifelheim by Michael The Colossus of Maroussi by Henry Miller Miller's travel book about his trip to Greece just before World War 2 broke out, is a gale of words, almost stream of consciousness, storm of a book.

So as a sort of dark humour, funny only to myself type thing, I started reading Albert Camus' The Plague. Oran, a large port on the Algerian coast, becomes afflicted by the plague in French colonial times and the novel is a story of a community like any other, suddenly impotent in the face of a destructive force to which it must not submit. Now, of course it can also be read as a country suffering under occupation in World War 2 or the human race rebelling against an absurd universe, but I like to think he had smaller, more personal themes in mind...or at least these other themes came through despite his grander visions. And passages like this one somewhat confirm that for me: “And he knew, also, what the old man was thinking as his tears flowed, and he, Rieux, thought it too: that a loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one's work, and of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart.” So, let's think of the small, personal things.

and many of us can’t travel at all, I thought I’d put together a personal list of the top 7 travel books in. 2: The Happy Isles of Oceania by Paul Theroux I could have picked almost any of Theroux’s travel books Instead of being a guide to what to do when we get somewhere, this book tries to explain why we really On the Road by Jack Kerouac – The book that launched a lot of thumbs. A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle – This book launched a sub-genre of travel memoirs.

Happy holidays to everyone and thank you for your time and patronage. Let's all keep a little ......... on for each other.

At the start of the final section of James Baldwin's first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, is an epigraph for the 14-year-old protagonist that foreshadows the long, difficult journey that will lead him from his bitter childhood into whatever he makes of his life: ''Then I buckled up my shoes,/And I started.' Have we finally buckled up our shoes and started?

We are often self absorbed; it appears to be both a human failing and survival mechanism. It seems to me that now during this time of social distancing (or time of weirdness as I will repeatedly call it), we might be able to learn a few things from a group of people who have been socially distanced or isolated most of their lives. Thus I began to read Donna William's autobiography Nobody Nowhere. And true to to my instincts, in the 'author's note' she writes: "If you sense distance, you're not mistaken; it's real. welcome to my world." I know folks are reaching out in other ways but I urge folks to think about the perennially socially distanced folks amongst us...

Columbus by Nikos Kazantzakis In a previous post I gathered together my top travel books to read and while those books are specifically about travelling and the misadventures one can get into, I thought Holy War by Karen Armstrong An unlikely line from a book called Holy War (which is about the crusades

bookstores whenever you are travelling and need a little quiet time, thumbing through a new or used books Church, Leakey's is Scotland's largest secondhand bookshop, complete with an open log fire and tons of books Libreria Acqa Alta, Venice, Italy One of the coolest bookstores in the world, most books are stacked And proving that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the Honesty Bookshop has lots of books for one

Although Al Purdy was writing about one ill person and a sense of helplessness, the lesson I choose to take from this part of the larger poem is universal and particularly fits today: we have a responsibility to care for each other, be present and aware of pain and suffering, and not let go of issues that affect our most vulnerable fellow humans.

Dad's can get a lot of grief, most of it well-earned to which I can attest! But today is a good day! Lots of love to all the dad's out there!

remove clutter and partly to share wonderful ideas and themes and settings and characters from the books