I can’t believe it’s December already. I suspect a lot of us are feeling the same way. It feels like it was just (Canadian) Thanksgiving, back in October. As I write this, Silah has curled up in the dog bed under my desk, her feet touching mine. This bed belonged to our oldest dog, Cedar,...

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Lately I’ve been dropping in and out of books, trying to find one that will catch my attention. So I offer you this week a few paragraphs on several books rather than a full review of one book, following my thought process as I dipped into each one. The Grey Wolf – by Louise Penny...

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This week was my mom’s 80th birthday, a huge milestone. It was especially poignant because my dad didn’t make his 80th birthday, and we had been talking about celebrating it with him just before he died. At first my mom didn’t want a party but my sister and I insisted. We sent out the invitations,...

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Autumn is well upon us. The rains have arrived and with them the wind. As late as two weeks ago the leaves were still intact on the ground, looking as if they’d just fallen from the tree. I managed to collect a few then, but the cycle has now turned and most of the leaves...

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I’ve just started using Scrivener, and have a section in my project for my next book that lists the books I want to read and has sections where I can make notes about what I learned from each book and quotes I could pull from. The project is set up in such a way that...

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“A living organism is not so much a substance as a concentration gradient; not so much a thing as a proportional relationship maintained through the doggedness of habit.” This line comes from the preface of Ellen Wayland-Smith’s The Science of Last Things: essays on deep time and the boundaries of the self. I had originally...

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Lately I’ve been working on an essay that is predicated on the premise of my next book: how to enjoy the outdoors with anxiety and bipolar II. The essay has distilled one strand of the book into 2500 words, and I’m thinking about how to expand on that to create a full-length book that follows...

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Two years ago, in 2022, we went to the Rockies for our 20th anniversary. We went back in December of 2022 because we enjoyed our fall trip so much, but it was the coldest December in years at -40°C! We had planned to go back in October of 2023, but due to my illness we...

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I’m working on a new book. The first book is still in the production stages: copyedits, layout, proofreading. I just have to finish the last round of copyedits and then it can move on to the next stage. In the meantime, I’ve been pondering book #2. I have a great topic, a whole pile of...

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Usually I post a book review at the end of the month, but I’ve been reading a few books lately that I waned to share with you, so this is more of a roundup than a single review. I just finished reading North Woods, by Daniel Mason. It follows each generation that occupies a cabin...

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