a collection of short literary or philosophical extracts
Not all ideas fit neatly into the pages of a book. When I see, hear or read something that moves me—a news story, a snippet of conversation, a musical phrase, a storyline or cityscape—I capture the thoughts it provokes by jotting them down. From art and sports—whether Wimbledon or the World Cup—to politics, love and war, all topics have the potential to spark my imagination.
Leonard Q. Ross wrote a series of short stories about Hyman Kaplan. Kaplan was a mid-thirty-year-old Eastern European, an emigrant to New York after the Second World War. During the day, Kaplan...
Yay! The FIFA World Cup is coming! The FIFA World Cup is coming! Yet I still remember Qatar 2022 and one specific soccer game: the semi-final France v Morocco on Dec. 14. Morocco were the upstarts...
In one way or another, we’re all snobbish. My snobbery revolves around intelligence. Of all my clients, the one I admire most in that category is Garry. Garry understands concepts in a flash. He has...
My father died on 1 April 2012. Being an Ismaili Muslim, the community took charge of the entire ceremony at no cost. Discovering that my wife was Filipina, they kindly gave her a "cheat sheet" to...
As a veteran accountant, devoted to a lifetime of combatting errant tax returns, my sincere advice to you is NEVER spend Christmas in South Beach (SoBe to the initiated), Miami, Florida. It was all...
In an era when war was romanticized, Wilfred Owen, an Englishman and First World War soldier, became the greatest of poets by denouncing that lie. Owen described the horror he witnessed: “If in some...
Here in Canada, the Land of Oz, we are told that our law-enforcement squads will not pursue a vehicle if doing so could endanger the life of the driver or that of the wider community. Its number...
Each evening at 8 p.m., I deposit my mobile phone in the freezer and retire to bed. For the next hour, I read at least one chapter from each of five books. How do I choose them? Something that...
On 8 December 2025, Lai Chee-ying, also known as Jimmy Lai, spent his seventy-eighth birthday in solitary confinement, a guest of the People’s Republic of China. At the age of twelve, Lai entered...
Sir Anthony Hopkins, an actor from Port Talbot, Wales—a town boasting a population of just 31,550—has been honoured with two Academy Awards, four BAFTAs, two Primetime Emmy Awards, a Laurence...
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Emil Rem, an eccentric accountant becomes a writer of eccentric characters, in exotic locales—each chapter taking us on a trip into his fascinating twisted world. Born to a close knit, middle class Muslim East Indian family in Dar-es-Salam, Africa in the 50’s, he is then moved to Maidenhead England at the age of five. The next twenty years are spent shuttling between England and East Africa, wearing a St. Christopher’s cross one minute and attending church, to wearing a green armband and attending Muslim religious classes in Africa the next. Moving to Canada, marrying a woman from the Philippines and having two boys only adds further texture to his stories.
