It all started with a zesty little book about getting old.

Respected journalist, Geist contributor and maker of olive sandwiches.

Who knew my dad's old pen was a famous Parker 51 Vacumatic?

Her story powers along; eventually she will arrive at the start, returning to the losses set down in the preface, losses so terrible we won’t mind if she chickens out.

Helen Garner’s novel "The Spare Room" opens in Melbourne as the protagonist and narrator, a middle-aged woman also named Helen (hmm), prepares for the visit of Nicola, her dear friend.

Mary Schendlinger sees The Babushkas of Chernobyl, Inaate/se and A Good American at the DOXA Festival.

Mary Schendlinger on Natalia Ginzburg's narrative of her family during the rise of Hitler and Mussolini.

Mary Schendlinger reviews SayWha?!, a monthly evening of “readings of deliciously rotten writing”.

Immigration questions 9 and 10: How do you like where you’re living now? Are you happy here?

If you read one book on the Information Age, make sure it's Bill McKibben's The Age of Missing Information (Penguin/Plume), which is a real page-turner of a long essay about What's Wrong with the Idea of Information. The device is neat: McKibben watc

Mary Schendlinger reviews M Train by Patti Smith and My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem.

Mary Schendlinger on Vox.com's podcast Today Explained.

When a group of people who have been silent begin to speak up, one of the first literary forms to emerge is the memoir. So it is with the twenty-two women whose stories are gathered in Nobodys Mother: Life Without Kids, edited by Lynne Van Luven (Her

Once a piece of writing has been accepted for publication, and the writer and the editor have worked out the size, shape and tone of the piece, how confidently does the Geist copy editor go in with her red pen and fine-tune it? Assuming that she cann

Mary Schendlinger on "How the Girl Guides Won the War" by Janie Hampton.

Aboard a stuck SkyTrain, reading Samuel Pepys's account of the Great Fire of London.

Mary Schendlinger challenges a review of a biography of Blanche Knopf, the underrecognized co-founder of Alfred A. Knopf Inc.

A review of a winter holiday show presented by The Vancouver Rainbow Concert Band, the first and only LGBTQ band in Canada.

Mary Schendlinger reviews The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, the riveting tale of “a Hmong child, her American doctors and the collision of two cultures.”

Nomi Nickel, the heroine of A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews (Knopf), is a bad girl. How can she help it?

Mary Schendlinger on Fay Weldon's 48th or 53rd book, After the Peace.

The Senior Editor of Geist learns to "Wear Knee Socks with Everything" from an exceptional blog turned print book by Tavi Gevinson.

Senior Editor Mary Schendlinger remembers her friend and Geist contributor Saeko Usukawa.