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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 (40)
1,498 books
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19 friends
2,644 books
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46 friends
45 books
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3 friends
6 books
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1 friend
169 books
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13 friends
2,108 books
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124 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
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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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Image Decay
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Lois Hole Speaks: Words that Matter (University of Alberta Centennial Series)
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published
2004
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The Carbon Eaters
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The Carbon Eaters
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The Carbon Eaters
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The Carbon Eaters
Another novel released by me now, titled The Carbon Eaters. I think it's the novel that Alberta deserves—a pitch that can be taken any way a a reader wants.
It's essentially satire, with definite characters and an element of magic realism or sci-fi.
It's also another foray into self-publishing, although this time through Friesen Press.
Why spend money to bring a book out to a public that may largely Read more of this blog post »
It's essentially satire, with definite characters and an element of magic realism or sci-fi.
It's also another foray into self-publishing, although this time through Friesen Press.
Why spend money to bring a book out to a public that may largely Read more of this blog post »
Mark’s Recent Updates
"There was nothing wrong with the writing. And that is the only positive comment I can say. It's everything I hate about Oxbridge, but idolised even while it's being criticised. The characters are vapid, and the whole thing feels self-indulgent and ye"
Read more of this review »
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"First time in 15 years that a novel makes it to the FT best business book of the year longlist.
Unfortunately it is a cringey best-sellerish novel. If you haven’t had experience working at mckinsey or struggling through funding rounds with startup fo" Read more of this review » |
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Mark Lisac
rated a book liked it
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| Sucked in again by inexplicably positive reviews. The sentences and paragraphs are well above average, so I'm rating this at a generous 3 stars. The overall novel is at least 150 pages too long. Descriptions of the two main characters through what th ...more | |
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"Another book where I go, ‘What on earth is all the fuss about?!’ It’s reasonably interesting but way too long, has cardboard characters and a ridiculous plot. "
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Mark Lisac
rated a book liked it
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| Sucked in again by inexplicably positive reviews. The sentences and paragraphs are well above average, so I'm rating this at a generous 3 stars. The overall novel is at least 150 pages too long. Descriptions of the two main characters through what th ...more | |
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Mark Lisac
is now following
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Mark Lisac
is now following Simon Linacre's reviews
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"3.8⭐️
Sayaka Murata's protagonists always have obstacles in the way of achieving happiness/love/fulfillment/fitting-in/ or whatever. In "Convenience Store Woman" the character's autistic and in "Earthings" she's plain bats--t crazy. In "Vanishing World" Read more of this review » |
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Mark Lisac
rated a book liked it
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| * On another reread about four years after the review below I as struck mostly by how much each of the characters is in pain and reduced the rating to 3 stars. Somewhat less impressed by the writing this time, too: ambition not matched by execution. ...more | |
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Mark Lisac
rated a book really liked it
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| It's full of generalizations presented almost as impressions rather than page after page of empirical detail. Rosenberg distilled reams of German academic writing, mostly from the first half of the 20th century, and put the sources into footnotes. Th ...more | |
“… 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