For every few famous grandmothers in children’s literature, there’s usually a Great Aunt popping up. They are often forbidding characters, grey-haired, dressed in black, possibly living in mysterious old houses or possessing of fortunes that would mean everything to a small and luckless orphan. They are holders of secrets, likers of silence, and eccentric in […]
Filed under: Uncategorized on March 9th, 2015 | No Comments »
We were lucky enough that the snow had stopped the morning we drove to Lindsay to discover the part of my grandmother’s book collection that had been donated. The Lindsay Public library is a Carnegie library, well-proportioned in pink and white brick, and once inside we made our way downstairs to the book sale room […]
Filed under: Uncategorized on February 1st, 2015 | No Comments »
Last week, I was working away at my desk, and I go the strangest phone call. Phone calls in general are a little strange, since my office and particularly my job are very much email based in terms of communication. When you work with ISBNs, talking isn’t always the most useful way to work on […]
Filed under: Uncategorized on January 31st, 2015 | No Comments »
I thought I’d been very clever and set posts to publish in a queue while I was in the midst of the most busy time of the year at work, but it turns out I am not clever at all and no such thing occurred, so I am going to quietly backpost them. That will […]
Filed under: Uncategorized on November 30th, 2014 | No Comments »
The last few months have been full of muchness. Full of friends getting married and travelling to watch them do that, full of visiting my mother in the slightly more northerly climes of Georgian Bay, full of family birthdays and family Thanksgivings and bridal showers and baby showers and all of the things. I have […]
Filed under: Uncategorized on October 28th, 2013 | No Comments »
The last time this blog saw an epic pause, it was due to highly exciting events like Weddings! and Graduations!. This time, not so much. It’s simply been a busy year, with a lot of my energies pouring in to my offline world, rather than my online presence. Many of those things are steadily happy-making, […]
Filed under: Uncategorized on March 14th, 2013 | No Comments »
When I was a little girl, Easter was a day of particular delight. There was nearly always a new dress to wear to church (once, even, a hat with a pink ribbon, that I would never admit had a completely scratchy elastic that dug into my chin). I’m afraid that was pretty much the extent […]
Filed under: Uncategorized on April 8th, 2012 | No Comments »
February 29 – it’s a day where I always wish I had some sort of tradition, but don’t think of it until it is too late. As a child, I chiefly knew about February 29 because it was the awkward end of those number-of-days-in-the-month poems – “except for February falling one in four has one […]
Filed under: Uncategorized on February 29th, 2012 | 1 Comment »
Another warm, wet New Year’s day. Although “warm” is a relative term – it may not be the January winters I’m used to, but the sky is grey, and the clouds move fast under a nasty wind past my window. The year just past was certainly one of milestones: graduation, marriage, new job. All sorts […]
Filed under: Uncategorized on January 1st, 2012 | No Comments »
It is very strange to be spending a relaxing afternoon at home on Boxing Day. One of the vagaries of working at bookstores all your life is that the shape of the Christmas season is defined by the demands of retail life, which are never more insistent than during December. For years, Christmas has been […]
Filed under: Uncategorized on December 26th, 2011 | No Comments »