The writing has been light of late, it’s a combination of nice weather, dry roads, and an old cruiser that has been giving me only the most basic of concerns - but I’ve also been reading a lot.

It really seems that with so many topics these days, there is no room for an intelligent discussion of facts. Instead, positions are carefully crafted in sound bites, media coaches are hired and spin abounds just in time for the media to arrive with cameras and microphones to suck it all up and broadcast it to the world. The Jesus Family Tomb “controversy” is but the latest example.

I yield to no-one in my admiration for Amazon.ca. But can someone please explain to me what Hugh Grant and Groucho Marx have in common?

Why fuss and bother about Robbie Burns, a mediocre, self-important purveyor of doggerel in dialect, when Scotland’s REAL contribution to world literature goes largely unrecognized? I refer, of course, to the immortal William Topaz McGonagall, widely acknowledged among connaisseurs of the awful to be the worst poet ever to write in (sort of) English.

Spent the day at the Ottawa Antiquarian Book Fair, happily puddling through regimental histories, limited edition accounts of various polar expeditions, and Victorian herbals. Most fascinating, as always, were the pamphlets.

James Bow, Toronto blogger and author, launched his new novel The Unwritten Girl at Books on Beechwood yesterday and balbulican was there with his trusty digital camera to record the event in order to provide an alibi for covert ops held that day for the bunker archives, and blogdom in general.

A special event tomorrow for all Ottawa area readers and bloggers: one of Canada’s outstanding bloggers, James Bow, will be hosting the Ottawa launch of his novel “The Unwritten Girl”, and he’s looking forward to meeting you all! Bloggers have been turning out in droves to his other launch events, so let’s make sure […]

In more than a half century of reading, how is it that I managed never read a single word by F. Scott Fitgerald? Or Henry James, Jane Austen, Theodore Dreiser, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mavis Gallant, Samuel Butler, William James, or Alice Munro? Am I alone in my ignorance, or do you all have secret literary lacunae concealed in your hearts?