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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)
1,528 books
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28 friends
2,684 books
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46 friends
47 books
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3 friends
9 books
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1 friend
178 books
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13 friends
2,114 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
...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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Image Decay
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The Carbon Eaters
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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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spurious
Today I deleted a review that was dated several days ago in my "My Books" section. I did not write it and have no idea how it showed up among my record of books read and reviewed. Nor did I read it. My wife had. She said the review sounded like my writing, although she had been surprised by it since she had not noticed me reading anything by Turgenev.
The author of the book was clearly listed as Tu Read more of this blog post »
The author of the book was clearly listed as Tu Read more of this blog post »
Mark’s Recent Updates
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Mark Lisac
rated a book
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| A century-old British "puzzle" mystery with many of the classic elements of the age: an almost impenetrable case of disappearance at a country estate; romantic entanglements; a disparate cast of characters, most of them suspicious; attention to train ...more | |
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Mark Lisac
and
40 other people
liked
K.J. Charles's review
of
The Wintringham Mystery: Cicely Disappears:
"Mostly highly entertaining Golden Age read, with a very sprightly concept: hero is a posh young man who burns through his capital in high living and ends up taking a job as a footman. This is handled with great brio and fun. The heroine has a proper "
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"Written in 1927, this contains several commonplaces of Golden Age mystery novels: a country manor house party, a seance gone wrong, a locked-room mystery, and a bit of romance. The main characters are Stephen Munro and his former girlfriend, Pauline "
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"I love Golden Age detective novels specially locked room mysteries, but I love the genius Agatha Christie mysteries even more, so I tend to compare every mystery book I read with those of the Queen of Crime’s. I know I shouldn’t and it’s not fair… bu"
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Mark Lisac
rated a book
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| Spectacular. Most of the poems here feel like they present something mainly visible but somehow just out of reach, suggesting that rereading a few times may bring a fuller understanding. The perceptions and language go a long way toward making me a f ...more | |
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Mark Lisac
rated a book
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| I read this late in university days more than 50 years ago and was so impressed that I kept it on my bookshelves ever since. A reread now left me still impressed and usually agreeing with the assertions and explanations, but thinking the book really ...more | |
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Mark Lisac
rated a book liked it
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| *Knocked down a notch to 3 stars after a reread five years further on. The narrator calls a lot of Victorian fiction "maudlin rubbish." It was surprising, then, to see Richards almost outdoing Dickens in emotional manipulation and resorts to coincide ...more | |
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Mark Lisac
rated a book liked it
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*Initially rounded up to 4 stars to acknowledge the writing. About two months later, realized I'd forgotten most of the book, which is always a bad sign. Changed to 3 stars. Pretty much right up there with Richard Ford and William Maxwell in the abili ...more |
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Mark Lisac
rated a book it was amazing
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| Echoes here of Joseph Conrad and a number of other writers, including a sly reference to the movie The African Queen. But the story is told in its own supple prose style. It glows with strangeness and commitment. Memories of European colonialism and ...more | |
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Mark Lisac
rated a book really liked it
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| Could go as high as 4.5 stars, despite not being sure about the ending. Thoroughly entertaining, with a few hefty thoughts thrown in; pure Saskatchewan (as far as I remember the province from a few years of living there long ago); characters who are ...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