First of all, Pulitzer Prize-winner Barbara Kingsolver’s new novel Demon Copperhead is not about a snake as the title would suggest. It’s a modern interpretation of Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield retold about a drug-addicted teenage boy. His name is a riff on his first name, Damon, and his distinctive red hair. What shocked me most about this amazing book is how different this story is... Read More ..read more

With the abundance of technology available today, how is it possible that no one has managed yet to invent a speaker system for fast-food drive-thru restaurants that can actually transmit understandable dialogue? McDonald’s. Harvey’s. Taco Bell. Tim Horton’s. They’re all the same. Just today, I had to ask the server at Taco Bell to repeat herself three times before I understood that she was asking... Read More ..read more

If you’re a fan of historical fiction and you enjoy reading about World War II, then you will appreciate two books I just finished. The Secret History Of Audrey James by Canadian author Heather Marshall and The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden are coincidently similarly themed. Both novels are about the fallout of Nazis and SS officers seizing and occupying the homes of Jewish deportees.... Read More ..read more

The year 2025 promises to be quite a barn-burner. I won’t go into all the changes and challenges we face in the new year, but instead I would like us to focus on how boomers can fully enjoy the upcoming year in our rapidly diminishing inventory of remaining years. We have been given so many gifts and if we concentrate on the positive, then we... Read More ..read more

In case you haven’t heard, Elon Musk—who incidently is the father of eleven children so far by various women—has set up a special residential compound for his extended family somewhere in Texas. He’s a strong advocate for having more babies to keep growing our population and he is not alone in his thinking. Why all the fuss about shrinking populations? It strikes me as a... Read More ..read more

To be completely honest, I wasn’t sure I would like Jeanne Beker’s new book My Heart On My Sleeve: Stories From a Life Well Worn—but it surprised me and I did. Born in Toronto to Holocaust survivors, Beker loved acting, dancing, and dressing up in the fashions conceived and created with the help of her mother’s sewing skills and displayed an interest in theatrical arts... Read More ..read more

“When a clown moves into the palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus.” Ancient Turkish Proverb Even though I no longer watch the nightly news on television (my cortisol levels can’t take the stress) the news of Trump’s re-election managed to seep through and like many other democracy-loving boomers, I have been worried about the fallout. I usually refrain from political... Read More ..read more

The thing I enjoy the most about Elizabeth Strout’s writing is how her stories sound as if she were sitting in my kitchen passing along some local gossip over a cup of tea. Her particular Maine-sounding colloquialisms are so familiar (even though I’m Canadian and not from Maine) to anyone who grew up in a small town. “Here is what was happening with Olive:” she... Read More ..read more

One of my friends who is younger than I am has already written her obituary. It strikes me as a smart pre-emptive and necessary exercise to prepare for the inevitable. I did it for my mother. My father died during COVID so there was no funeral or obituary. My husband is five years older than me and I’ve found myself occasionally wondering if I should... Read More ..read more

Russia and its people have always fascinated me. The country is vast—the only country in the world larger than Canada—and its people have a complicated history. The Traitor’s Daughter by Roxane Spicer is the true story of one of those people. Spicer is a Canadian writer, journalist, and film-maker who spent more than fifty years trying to uncover her mother’s history, her secrets, and her suffering.... Read More ..read more