Blogs.
They were done in by social media, right?
In my own small way I helped hasten the decline. Back in 2011, after years of reluctance, I was encouraged to set up a Facebook account so as to promote A Gentleman of Pleasure, my biography of John Glassco. Did the effort sell a copy or two? Perhaps, though I very much doubt it sold three.
I quit Facebook in January after watching Mark Zuckerberg at Trump's second inauguration. If interested, you can now find me here on Bluesky.
I've been reading blogs for thirty years now. Most of my favourites are no longer, but not necessarily for want of effort. The blog I miss the most is Ron Scheer's Buddies in the Saddle, devoted to the "frontier West in history, myth, film, and popular fiction." Next month marks the tenth anniversary of Ron's death. We never met, but he taught me a great deal through his posts and in the comments he left to my own. Though an American, he wrote a lot about the history, myth, film, and popular fiction of Western Canada.
This is all to say that I've found blogs richer and more fulfilling than any found on a social media platform. So, this year, in appreciation of other bloggers I'll be sharing seasonal roundups of links to reviews of old Canadian books from favourite blogs.
Now in its eighteenth year, Jean-Louis Lessard's Laurentiana, is the very best online source for information on French-language Canadian literature. This winter saw ten titles added to the nine hundred reviewed thus far:
Leaves & Pages has long been a favourite, and not only because of a shared interest in the works of William C. Heine, author of The Last Canadian and The Swordsman [aka The Sea Lord]. The Leaves & Pages review of Anne Cameron's South of an Unnamed Creek always raises a smile.
The Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada - Benjamin Drew
The Luck of Ginger Coffey - Brian Moore
Riders of the Badlands - Thomas P. Kelley
Moving south of the border, The Invisible Event shared a recent discovery of the Screech Owls series. Given the review, I'm feeling confident that there will be more Screech Owls reviews to come.
Mystery*File echoed Leaves & Pages' appreciation of Ross Macdonald:
Paperback Warrior was so brave as to take on the third of New Brunswick boy W.E.D. Ross's thirty-eight Dark Shadows novels. Last autumn, I tackled number nineteen.
Vintage Pop Fictions reviewed Buccaneer Blood, the twelfth title in the sixteen-volume H. Bedford-Jones Library from American publisher Altus Press:
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| Herbert Joseph Moorhouse 24 April 1882, Kincardine Township, Ontario 9 January 1960, Vancouver, BC RIP |
