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Mark’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Mark’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
Mark Lisac’s Followers (38)
2,670 books
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46 friends
47 books
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3 friends
182 books
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13 friends
1,628 books
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126 friends
Mark Lisac
Goodreads Author
Born
in Hamilton, ON, Canada
Website
Twitter
Genre
Influences
Tries not to imitate other writers. Admires too many to list. Besides
...more
Member Since
September 2008
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Mark Lisac
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Where the Bodies Lie
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Red Hill Creek
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published
2021
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2 editions
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Alberta Politics Uncovered: Taking Back Our Province
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published
2004
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Dream Home
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The Klein Revolution
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published
1995
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Lois Hole Speaks: Words that Matter (University of Alberta Centennial Series)
by
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published
2004
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2 editions
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Image Decay
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The Red Car
Something reminded me today of the 1954 Don Stanford novel titled The Red Car. I read it probably when I was somewhere between 10 and 13 years old. As happened with other boys of that era — you can see the evidence in reviews on Goodreads and Amazon — it influenced my life forever. The book tells the story of a 16-year-old who restores a somewhat wrecked 1948 MG TC. He has help from a foreign-trai
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Mark’s Recent Updates
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Mark Lisac
rated a book it was amazing
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| A Catholic priest who's become a right-wing literary figure in Chile reviews his life as he lays dying and can't tell whether he's done the moral things or not. But he feels uneasy. The story line sounds simple. The telling is a marvel of stream of t ...more | |
"Is Bolano's narrator priest simply swept along by the course of events? Or is he spineless and adept only at ingratiating himself with those in power? Can it perhaps be both? And how much better would we ourselves be? These are the questions I found "
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Mark Lisac
and
398 other people
liked
s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all]'s review
of
By Night in Chile:
"Sordel, Sordello, which Sordello?
‘Literature is like phosphorus,’ wrote Roland Barthes, ‘it shines with its maximum brilliance at the moment when it attempts to die.’ This view of literature existing at the precipice of the posthumous comes alive thr" Read more of this review » |
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Mark Lisac
rated a book really liked it
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| A conflicted 4-star rating based mainly on the distinctive authorial voice that deploys a style not seen in other mystery/police stories I'm aware of. It's less a mystery than a morality tale bent to accommodate some social\political commentary and F ...more | |
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"In Raymond Chandler's famous "Farewell My Lovely" Philip Marlowe is searching for Velma Valento; Chandler's phrase - "You could see a long way, but not as far as Velma has gone" - serves as one of the epigraphs in the Nicolas Freeling's book. "Not As"
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Mark Lisac
rated a book it was ok
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| Fast-paced (except toward the end), ambitious, and finally collapsing under the weight of the ambition and the artistic flourishes (e.g., a number of phrases sounded like lines from old recorded blues). Started out at 4 stars. Descended to 3 as it ve ...more | |
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Mark Lisac
rated a book it was amazing
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| A sour, digressive tale told by an irascible crank with an occasional philosophical bent. Some commenters have noted a similarity to Dostoyevsky; that's the only comparison that comes to mind. It's basically about coming to terms with, and in the wor ...more | |
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Mark Lisac
rated a book it was ok
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| Nah. Has a few things to say about conscious and unconscious racism, with tangential comments about imperialism. But it's about so many other things as well: mother-daughter relationships; poisonous jealousy; perceived failings of men; academic life ...more | |
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Mark Lisac
rated a book it was amazing
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| Have had this around for a few decades (not the original printing) and picked it up to reread The Sign of Four and A Scandal in Bohemia. The characters are magnetic. Doyle somehow landed on exactly the right keys. The Bohemia story felt remarkably sh ...more | |
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Mark Lisac
is now following
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“… and poured libations out to the everlasting gods who never die — to Athena first of all, the daughter of Zeus with flashing sea-grey eyes — and the ship went plunging all night long and through the dawn" (R. Fagles translation)”
― The Odyssey
― The Odyssey
“His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed like a flower and the incarnation was complete.”
― The Great Gatsby
― The Great Gatsby
“If there is a moral in this book, it is not my fault. If there is social relevance, it crept in without alerting me, in which case I would have hit it with a stick." (from preface to a later edition of the novel)”
― Breaking Smith's Quarter Horse
― Breaking Smith's Quarter Horse
“It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.”
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“In a way, people like her, those who wield a pen, can be dangerous. At once a suspicion of fakery springs to mind – that such a Person is not him or herself, but an eye that’s constantly watching, and whatever it sees it changes into sentences: in the process it strips reality of its most essential quality – its inexpressibility.”
― Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
― Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
