Category: Now Reading

Late 2024 Book Reviews

Morning all. You know it’s getting towards XMAS when I start writing about the higher education books I’ve read recently. So, yes, those are Christmas bells ringing you can hear as you open this email and perusing my takes on the stuff I’ve read since Canada Day (I’ve already posted my January-June takes). Hopefully you can find a stocking stuffer or two in here for your own higher education nerd. To start with the non-higher ed stuff. On the fiction

Read More »

The Blight on the Ivy

A few weeks ago, when I was in New Orleans, I was browsing through the higher education section at Beckham’s, a large, uber-musty used book store on Decatur just inside the Quarter, when I found A Blight on the Ivy by Robert and Katherine (Dr & Mrs, according to the inside flap) Gordon. Published in 1962, it is a book about a “crisis” on the modern campus. What kind of crisis, you ask? Well, check out the subtitle: “The flunkouts,

Read More »

Early 2024 Book Reviews

Morning all. You know the drill: twice a year I report on the books I’ve read in the past six months. Today is my summer 2024 edition. Here goes. Let’s start with the non-higher ed stuff, because let’s face it, that’s what you’re all really going to read in the summer. On the fiction side, do read Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, which won the international Booker prize last month. And if you like Francis Spufford (Golden Hill, Light Perpetual and above all, Red Plenty, the

Read More »

The History of the Future

I spent a good chunk of the weekend catching up on reading. On the fiction side, it was Haruki Murakami’s Dance, Dance, Dance, Roberto Bolano’s By Night in Chile, both of which I found good but not great. But I also read a book I picked up from a used book stall in Winnipeg: Future Shock, by Alvin Toffler (his wife Heidi was co-author, but this is deffo not evident from the cover and the marketing). If you’re under 50

Read More »

Books of the Year 2023

Morning, all.  The penultimate blog each year is about books.  This year, the penultimate blog in June was also about books, so you might want to go back here to see what I had to say about the crop I went through in the first half of the year.  In today’s effort, I’ll mostly stick to what I’ve read since mid-June. (But first, if you’re interested in some non-Higher Ed reading recommendations before XMAS: Valley of the Birdtail: an Indian

Read More »