Author: Dimitri A.C. Ly

Editor in Chief / Movie Critic: When he started this site, Dimitri never thought he'd be writing blurbs about himself in the third person. In his other life, he works as a writer, translator, and editor for various publications in print and online. His motto is, "Have pen, will travel."
Posted in Book Review Verdict: 4.0

Geography III (1977)

The last book Elizabeth Bishop published before her passing in 1979, Geography III features such distinguished poems as “In the Waiting Room”, “The Moose”, and, of course, “One Art”. Rather than praise

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Posted in Book Review Verdict: 4.0

Cape Breton Is the Thought-Control Centre of Canada (1969)

The Cartesian model, the most known and accepted logical system to date, was conceived in a world of order and objectivity. According to Cartesian mathematics

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Posted in Book Review Verdict: 4.5

Dancing Girls (1977)

Reviewing short story collections presents a particular challenge in that each chapter carries its own point of view, characters, and thematic scheme, making it impossible to discuss the book as a cohesive whole. This is especially true

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Posted in Book Review Verdict: 5.0

Heart of Darkness (1902)

The 1997 edition of the Nelson Canadian Dictionary defines irony as an “incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs”. For example

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Posted in Book Review Verdict: 5.0

The Yellow Wallpaper (1892)

Truth is elusive. It’s like a spirit that haunts our accounts but remains intangible. Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses this precise metaphor in her novella The Yellow Wallpaper, which tells

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Posted in Book Review Verdict: 3.5

Wilderness Tips (1991)

Much like the Land of Oz, works of fiction often seem limitless in possibilities. They, after all, each present a universe of their own or rather

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Posted in Book Review Verdict: 5.0

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1793)

William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell stands out for its unorthodox perspectives and its combination of genres such as poetry and prose, religious allegory, and critical essay. Through the voice of the devil

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Posted in Book Review Verdict: 3.0

The Diviners (1974)

What is an artist? What is his or her role in society? According to the 1994 edition of The Merriam-Webster Dictionary, an artist is “one who practices an art”. And what

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Posted in Book Review Verdict: 4.0

Lady Oracle (1976)

Much like The Diviners by Margaret Lawrence, Margaret Atwood’s Lady Oracle depicts the life of a writer trying to find her place in the world. In fact

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Posted in Book Review Verdict: 4.0

Two Solitudes (1945)

As I’ve mentioned twice now in my reviews of Margaret Atwood’s Lady Oracle and Margaret Laurence’s The Diviners, the definition of art and the role of the artist are notions

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