(image: Title page of the I Ching, c. 1100 AD/CE – http://catalog.digitalarchives.tw/item/00/08/73/99.html, Public Domain) As I mentioned previously in my post about the Old Chinese language, the earliest examples of written Chinese come from oracle bones, pieces of ox scapula or turtle shell that were used in divination rituals and began to include written language…
First of all, as a fellow basement-apartment-dweller I have to say, “…on the cushion that already has a tear in it from when I tried to kill a house centipede with a butcher knife” (p. 46) is the most relatable sentence I’ve ever read. I laughed out loud for a full minute. It’s hard for…
Hello and welcome to my blog! Today I’ll be sharing my thoughts about the 5 books that will battle it out for the Canada Reads 2025 title next week (March 17-20). If you’re not familiar with Canada Reads, it’s an annual competition on CBC (Canada’s public broadcaster) where 5 Canadian celebrities each pick a Canadian…
Hello! Thanks for visiting my blog. In this post, I’ll be talking about my most anticipated upcoming book releases, specifically those due to be published between March and August 2025. Back in January, I talked about the upcoming releases Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones, The Paris Express…
Chrystia Freeland is a controversial figure here in Canada. Since her election to federal parliament in 2015, she has served as our minister of international trade, then our minister of foreign affairs, then until very recently our deputy prime minister and minister of finance, the first time a woman has held the latter position. A…
Hello and welcome to my February reading wrap-up! Not including my study of the Rig Veda and the Upanishads, I completed a total of 12 books in February. Surprisingly, I managed to get my hands on 3 new releases and wrote full reviews for them, which I will link to below along with my abbreviated thoughts. I’ve…
The Upanishads are a collection of sacred Sanskrit texts that were written over the course of a few centuries. Which texts were written in which centuries is a hotly debated question, but according to Valerie J. Roebuck, the translator and editor of the Penguin edition pictured above, the “consensus view” is that “the principal Upanishads were…
Goodreads blurb: From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in the heart of an Empire which doesn’t consider you fully human. My review: Sudan. Afghanistan. New York. Iraq. Syria. Nigeria. Ukraine. Gaza. Israel. In the first quarter of this century, countless civilians have died, caught…
Goodreads description: When Elise and her boyfriend, Tom, set off for Minnesota, all she knows about harvesting sugar beets (Beta vulgaris) is that her paycheck will cover a few months’ rent on their Brooklyn apartment. She’ll try anything to escape the incessant debt collection calls—and chronic anxieties about her body and her relationship. But as…
The Rig Veda is the oldest surviving text originally written in Vedic Sanskrit, the earliest known version of Sanskrit that was preserved orally until the invention of writing. These hymns probably originated around 1500-1000 BC/BCE, and they have been organized into 10 books, or mandalas, that amount to thousands of pages of hard-to-interpret text. I obviously…