Edward O'Connor – Writer, editor, part-time birder
What I’m Reading Further Notes on The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James: The Opening Idyll Of all the ways to begin a novel, one of the most dependable is with an epigram. Perhaps the most famous example is the first sentence from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: “It is a truth universally acknowledged … Read more
What I’m Reading There is a strangely melancholy scene early in this novel, when the heroine, a young American named Isabel Archer, is staying at an English country estate. Late one afternoon, she hears music coming from the drawing-room; someone is playing Beethoven on the piano. Isabel enters the room and sees that the player … Read more
I hate driving. With all my heart and soul, I hate to get behind the wheel and press my foot on the gas. But that didn’t stop me from renting a car on the last day of July and driving two hours north of Toronto to the Carden Alvar Provincial Park. I wanted to see … Read more
Always a wizard of the unexpected, Lord Buckley introduced his meditation on the Supermarket by riffing on one of his great heroes. “This is Lincoln’s Day,” he says. “Tomorrow should be Lincoln’s Day, and the next day should be Lincoln’s Day, and we should have Lincolnville and Lincoln Park and Lincoln Lincoln, and it should … Read more
A few weeks ago, I spent an hour at the Black-crowned Night Heron colony on the Leslie Street Spit, watching the birds build their nests. The males were in their mating finery, which means bright plumage—cream-colored below, grey and slate-blue above—and two long, thin plumes that stick out of the head and arch over the … Read more