If you have the time, could you change my link on your blogroll to http://www.acommonreader.org please? (i.e. drop the .uk bit of it. ) The old address still forwards to the new one but I’d like to drop it in due course. Many thanks

We won’t even talk nationalities re the Winter Olympics!!

I too liked The Lost Dog. In fact, it was my early choice for last year’s Booker.

And just to teast you a little bit, I’m writing this from Lake Louise where my wife and I are on a mini-holiday for Canadian Thanksgiving. It is “outback”, but not quite like where you are. All the best.

I came to your blog after reading “The Lost Dog”, by Michelle de Kretser and feel its one of my all time favourites.

I live 245 kls from Townsville, in the ‘outback’ in a resurected ex mining town. We call it Greenvale Retirement Paradise. All I have to do is read 2 -3 books a week!!

As a good Canadian, I should have known to explore deeper into the wire story I used for my information — while it referred to Blackburn five times as “American” (okay, it was an Associated Press story), it did make one reference to the fact she has dual citizenship. And I freely admit to not have the medical background that would have made her name known to me.

It was only the next day that a Canadian born and raised physicist, who does his work in the US, won the physics prize and yes Canada did lay claim to him.

My apologies, again. On the other hand, if that kind of mistake is what it takes to get Australian visitors to a Canadian book blog about the first woman doctor in Montreal, I’d say it was at least fortuitous.

Thanks for dropping by and please return. In a half-hearted attempt at my own defence, I did do an essay earlier this year that noted the similarities in Australian and Canadian fiction — check it out here.

Cheers, Kevin