Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs > Recent Status Updates

Dan is such a light and engaging apologist!

Eliot, just back from a summer-long rest cure, roars back with a VENGEANCE.

A book that dares to tell the TRUTH about the modern Catholic Priesthood!

"Of course! It never occurred to me. She's out of Iwelei."
The red light district. In its respectable regularity it gave an impression of sardonic horror, for never can the search for love been so systematised and ordered. Men wandered about.... silent and oppressed. Desire is sad.

Poor naïve, untried Abbe Mouret - the incipient coming of age of his (as yet innocent) kid sister is quickly drawing his soul into a diabolical vortex of wildly conflicting emotions. A masterful, highly accomplished novel of the depths of the human heart!

Eliot's widow compiled these great volumes after his death - an enormous Labour of Love. Covers the time shortly after the poet's conversion, and the writing of his oft-quoted poetic record of that experience, Journey of the Magi (you can read it by Googling it).

The young and ethereal Abbe Mouret might have endured safely to the end of his ministry, had not - after his parishioners' barbed verbal slurs and insults - he become the faithful buddy of the symbolic and literal Black Dog of Depression!

A classic Canadian expose of small-town gossip and myopia fighting indomitably innocent girlish joie de vivre at the turn of the twentieth century! One of our proudest literary gems.

Zola shines in this lesser-known novel! Abbe Mouret's sin is his ascetical spiritual materialism, and it will be his undoing, as it was once mine.

Maugham's characterizations are so acutely and vividly human that every page is sheer pleasure!

No, I am not reading Nabokov’s edition of this 5-star classic. I read that in 1968, and it was delightful in its ironic expose of a playboy; this version is a magnificent new version of Nabokov’s great translation. If you look it up in the Kindle store, you’ll find it leads the list (with no credit given to the marvellous translator): a miraculously hilarious retelling of Rake’s Progress. $2.00 - a deal!

Absolutely PHENOMENAL book! I'm listening to the audiobook narrated by the author.

A marvellous look at the arduous and complex Vatican process of Canonization - specifically that of a saintly American hero of the Korean War. Excellent!

A wonderful book that looks at the great stories behind the masterworks of classical theatrical music - focusing primarily on the operas of Poulenc.

A short book, it contains marvellously profound takes on the Via Crucis by the great Catholic mystics.

WOW. Really looking forward to this one!

Audiobook version!

I’ve slogged and keep ON dutifully slogging thru this kids’ book, but know what? It doesn’t hold a mere CANDLE to the film! And all I REALLY want now is to be out in the fresh air of Mr. Toad’s motorcar once again:
It’s a life of ease on the open road
Rambling where you please on the open road
Here today and there tomorrow
Say goodbye to pain & sorrow
You can beg or steal or borrow
OUT ON THE OPEN ROAD!

Absolutely wonderful! A treasury of post-war Catholic fables for grownups, featuring that endearingly human priest, Don Camillo.

Like black humour? Crave a bit of a full-frontal parody on the so-called propriety of the idle rich? Got a soft spot for outrageously hilarious parodies of the gentrified establishment, specifically the CANADIAN establishment? Do you relish no-holds-barred dismemberments of utterly rank hypocrisy?
If you answered Yes to any of these questions, this one's for YOU.

What if youthful trauma, which screamed at the resistance fighter Calvino or at me, or at many of you, one bright, unassuming long ago day, and convinced us of our own identityless identity as meaningless nonentities, in a radical shift of our being into nothingness - what if THAT were the reason for this puzzling masterpiece of postmodernism???

Sanjana is a teenager from India who has faith that no matter how bad life gets, it always will work out. But her life never does for long!

Sound familiar?

This is a marvellous modern table about coming of age - a time when nothing is as it seems - and about NEVER losing the guiding lights of Faith, Hope and Charity.

"Our study of nature will not improve our conduct; but our study of ourselves might."

“We have gone too far in emphasizing the value and import of the purely rational - of what IQ measures - in human life. For better or worse, intelligence can come to nothing when the emotions hold sway.”

Just finished his extremely trenchant intro: "You can never Fall Upward - until you have first Fallen Down!" A wonderful audiobook narrated by the author.

Absolutely WONDERFUL!

A young girl arrives at the threshold of adulthood, harried by her abusive home environment in India. With the help of her close friend, and of other mysterious though familiar strangers, she weaves her way warily through the modern urban wasteland. Fantastic!

A remarkably compelling first novel by a GR Author in India!