Category Archives: Reviews

Literary Review Of Canada November 2023 Preview

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Literary Review of Canada – November 2023: The latest issue features Who Keeps Killing Canadian History; The Influencers – A dual biography from Charlotte Gray, and more…

The Influencers – A dual biography from Charlotte Gray

David Marks Shribman

Passionate Mothers, Powerful Sons: The Lives of Jennie Jerome Churchill and Sara Delano Roosevelt by Charlotte Gray

They were born the same year. Their families left Paris the same year. Their sons entered institutions that would shape their lives the same year. If Stephen Sondheim had written Passionate Mothers, Powerful Sons instead of Charlotte Gray, he might have employed one of the timeless lines from his Broadway show Company to depict the lives and loves of Jennie Jerome Churchill and Sara Delano Roosevelt: “Parallel lines who meet.”

Fowl Lines – Speaking of speakers

Kyle Wyatt

Anthony Rota stepped down as Canada’s thirty-seventh Speaker of the House of Commons on September 27, for reasons pretty much the entire world knows. Between his unprecedented resignation and the election of Greg Fergus to take up that fancy oak and velvet chair, the electorate was treated to some familiar headlines. “Who Can Bring Back Commons Decency?” the Toronto Star asked on its front page. “Being Speaker Isn’t Easy,” the CBC reminded us. “And It Just Got a Lot Harder.”

World Economic Forum: Top Stories – Oct 14, 2023

World Economic Forum (October 14, 2023) – This week’s top stories of the week include:

0:15 Why engagement in the news is in decline – A massive media survey looked at trust and engagement in the news and found both are in steady decline. Just 48% of people say they are very or extremely interested in the news in 2023 down from 63% in 2017. Trust in the news has fallen 2 percentage points in a year. Now, only 40% say they trust the news most of the time and 36% say they actively avoid the news sometimes or often.

1:53 This robot can help people with disabilities dress – The robot was designed by a team at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). They used a simulation to teach it how to perform its task. The team used an AI-driven approach called ‘reinforcement learning’. The robot was rewarded each time it correctly placed a shirt further along an arm.

3:25 Company captures and stores CO2 with limestone – Heirloom takes crushed limestone and heats it in a kiln powered by renewable energy. The reaction generates two products. These are CO2, which can be permanently stored underground or in materials like concrete and a powder, which is hydrated with water to make calcium hydroxide. When the calcium hydroxide is spread onto trays, it absorbs CO2 from the air to become limestone and the whole process can begin again.

5:24 How to use ChatGPT more safely – ChatGPT is an AI tool that gives detailed, natural language answers to prompts based on a database of 300 billion words drawn from books and articles. The AI learns from its interactions with you, so here are 5 ways to ensure you’re using it safely.

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The World Economic Forum is the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation. The Forum engages the foremost political, business, cultural and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas. We believe that progress happens by bringing together people from all walks of life who have the drive and the influence to make positive change.

Arts & Culture: The New Criterion — Nov 2023

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The New Criterion – November 2023 issue:

The burden of the humanities  by Wilfred M. McClay
A lyrical populist revolt  by Victor Davis Hanson
Blanquette de Bard  by Anthony Daniels
Polymorphous Peretz  by Myron Magnet


New poems  by David Mason & Ian Pople

The New York Times Book Review – October 15, 2023

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THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (October 15, 2023): This week’s issue features  a fabulous historical novel, the Janet Malcolm-like account of an Australian murder trial, a sprightly history of the Oxford English Dictionary, a homage to “The Haunting of Hill House”,  historical fiction, thrillers, crime novels, romance, horror & Gothic fiction, science fiction & fantasy.)

A Fitting — and Frightening — Homage to ‘The Haunting of Hill House’

Apparitions, black hares and time warps festoon the pages of Elizabeth Hand’s “A Haunting on the Hill,” set in the same moldering mansion as Shirley Jackson’s classic horror novel.

The Wife Has Committed Murder but It’s the Husband Who Scares Her Lawyer

In Marie NDiaye’s new novel, “Vengeance Is Mine,” a woman is haunted by a decades-old trauma she feels, but cannot quite remember.

The book cover of “Vengeance Is Mine” is designed like a ripped sheet of paper. The image features a blank surface with a triangular cutout running down from the top. The layer underneath the tear is red and reveals the author’s name and the novel’s title.

By Lovia Gyarkye

VENGEANCE IS MINE, by Marie NDiaye. Translated by Jordan Stump.


The characters in Marie NDiaye’s novels are an unsettling brood. They fret and pace around their homes, tormented by their pasts. Their minds trap and trick them. A daughter can’t shake memories of her mother’s murder; a man gropes for the truth about his imprisonment in a deserted vacation town; a chef pursues culinary perfection at any cost; a woman — reminded of a friend, a schoolteacher or was it her mother? — fatally chases an apparition in green.

Finance Preview: Barron’s Magazine – Oct 16, 2023

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BARRON’S MAGAZINE – October 16, 2023 ISSUE:

Why Apple Wants Its Chips Made in a Desert

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Rising geopolitical tensions are stoking demand for U.S. semiconductor production. What to watch—and how to invest.

Oil Prices Could Spike Above $100 if the Israel-Hamas War Widens

Oil Prices Could Spike Above $100 if the Israel-Hamas War Widens

So far, the fighting has affected oil prices only modestly, in contrast to past wars in the Middle East. That could change, depending on Iran’s role.

Insurance Stocks Have Been Hammered. 6 Picks for the Rebound.

Insurance Stocks Have Been Hammered. 6 Picks for the Rebound.

Insurers have been hit by a one-two punch of natural disasters and lackluster financial markets. But there’s a silver lining: the profits and surpluses that come with rising premiums.

Don’t Make This Common Medicare Open Enrollment Mistake

Don't Make This Common Medicare Open Enrollment Mistake

Enrolling in the wrong plan can cost you hundreds of dollars a year.

Where We Would Invest $100,000 Right Now

Where We Would Invest $100,000 Right Now

Walmart, Moderna, Tesla, and IBM are among our favorite ideas for the current market.

Analysis: How Powerful Is Hamas? (The Economist)

The Economist (October 13, 2023) – On October 7th Hamas fighters launched a surprise attack on Israel and slaughtered more than 1,300 people, mostly civilians. What is Hamas and how powerful is it?

Video timeline: 00:00 – What is Hamas? 00:55 – Hamas’s control of Gaza 01:18 – Growth of Hamas military capacity 01:32 – The latest attack on Israel

Space: NASA’s $1 Billion Metal Asteroid Mission

Wall Street Journal (October 13, 2023) – NASA launched a spacecraft on Friday to study the Psyche asteroid, which is believed to be made out of metal.

Video timeline: 0:00 NASA’s mission 0:46 The psyche asteroid 1:45 Why metal matters 3:04 What we can learn from the mission

The rocky inner planets of our solar system are thought to have mostly metallic cores. WSJ breaks down why this mission matters and what it could tell us about Earth’s origins.

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

The Week In Art Podcast (October 13, 2023): The Frieze art fair has turned 20 this week, and is only growing in its ambitions, having acquired the Armory Show fair in New York and Expo Chicago.

So what should we make of Frieze’s continuing expansion and what’s the mood at Frieze London and Frieze Masters this year? We talk to Tim Schneider, The Art Newspaper’s acting art market editor, who is over from New York for the fairs. In Reykjavik in Iceland, the artist-run Sequences Biennial opens on Friday. A former curator of the event is Hildigunnur Birgisdóttir, who will represent Iceland at the Venice Biennale in 2024. Tom Seymour went to the Icelandic capital to talk to her about Venice, Sequences and the Icelandic scene.

And this episode’s Work of the Week is Open Window, Collioure (1905) by Henri Matisse. The painting is a highlight of the exhibition Vertigo of Colour: Matisse, Derain, and the Origins of Fauvism at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. We speak to Dita Amory, co-curator of the show, about this landmark painting in Matisse’s career.

Frieze London and Frieze Masters, Regent’s Park, London, until 15 October.

The Sequences Biennial, entitled Can’t See, begins on 13 October and continues until 22 October 2023.

Vertigo of Color: Matisse, Derain, and the Origins of Fauvism, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 13 October-21 January 2024; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 25 February-27 May 2024.

The New York Times Magazine – Oct 15, 2023

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THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (October 15, 2023):

My Delirious Trip to the Heart of Swiftiedom

All the photographs in this article are black-and-white. Taylor Swift onstage facing away from the camera.

Taylor Swift’s greatest gift is for telling her own story — better than any journalist could. But Taffy Brodesser-Akner gives it a shot anyway.

By Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Section 301, in the second-to-highest tier of Levi’s Stadium, floats 105 feet above Santa Clara, Calif. It comprises 251 seats — a mere hamlet in the vast 64,000-seat general kingdom of the place, but it was our hamlet, and on the last Saturday in July, we took up each one of those seats and watched, our collective breath held, as Taylor Swift emerged from a bevy of billowing pastel parachutes and rose up on a platform to perform the 47th show of her Eras Tour. A few songs in, she announced, laughing, that her father told her that Santa Clara had named her its honorary mayor during her two-night stay there and that the entire town had been renamed Swiftie Clara. 

How Jesmyn Ward Is Reimagining Southern Literature

Jesmyn Ward

The novelist is competing with giants like William Faulkner, while mapping territory all her own.

By Imani Perry

Jesmyn Ward gestured with her eyes and a tilt of her face, hands on the wheel. “This crazy colored house right here? That’s my grandmother’s house. That’s the house I grew up in. And her sister lives there” — she pointed — “and then that little blue house? That’s my great-grandparents’ house.” She was driving me around DeLisle, Miss., her hometown and the inspiration for Bois Sauvage, the fictional setting of her first three novels. It is Deep South-in-August hot outside, and the air-conditioning was a relief. “My mom’s side of the family was all clustered around this road.”

Research Preview: Science Magazine – Oct 13, 2023

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Science Magazine – October 13, 2023: The new issue features the genetic organization of the human brain; Diversity of primate brain cells unraveled; A single-cell genomic atlas for maturation of the human cerebellum during early childhood, and more…

A family portrait of human brain cells

A cell census provides information on the source of human brain specialization

The brain is composed of multiple regions associated with distinct functions, which have become further specialized in the human lineage. To define how this specialization is implemented, how it arises during development, and how it has emerged over the course of human evolution, a detailed understanding of the cells that make up the human brain is required. 

The ecology of whales in a changing climate

Some whale populations are exhibiting unexpected cycles of boom and bust