February Reading Concluded — with Annabel Lyon’s The Sweet Girl While I was doing research for a recent novel, I was surprised to learn how many archaeologists began their careers in some artistic speciality. This came back to me as I read Annabel Lyon’s The Sweet Girl. Particularly a conversation I’d had with an archaeologist whose early work was to …
Reading Archive 2012
Recent Reading (sort of): I had elaborate hopes for this page — an up-to-date record of books read, along with pithy comments. But over the last year it’s turned out to be all helmet and no pith (as a great uncle might have said). So many books read during that year (yes, all real books with real pages) and so …
Vancouver Sun
Etruscan history a backdrop for secrets, lies VANCOUVER SUN DECEMBER 15, 2012 THE WHIRLING GIRLBarbara LambertCormorant Books, 380 pages, $22 When Penticton writer Barbara Lambert first went to stay in an old mill house in Italy, she had no idea she would spend the next dozen years almost literally underground. Lambert had just completed a collection of short stories that …
Reading Archive 2011
Recently I was given Desert Queen, a biography of a puzzling and compelling woman. All her life Gertrude Bell opposed the vote for women, yet during her relatively short lifetime (1868-1926) she engaged in more daring adventures — and effected more political change — than perhaps any woman before or since. In this biography, Gertrude Bell — the Newcastle-born daughter …