The Toronto Review of Books

Bookishness: November 19, 2012

By Ange Friesen
November 19, 2012

Quill and Quire visits the Bibliomat
The Monkey’s Paw’s new invention.

Is this even possible?
“Nostalgia cycles have become so short that we even try to inject the present moment with sentimentality, for example, by using certain digital filters to “pre-wash” photos with an aura of historicity. Nostalgia needs time. One cannot accelerate meaningful remembrance.” Christy Wampole on How to Live Without Irony.

With my mind on my MRI and my MRI on my mind

Neural Correlates of Lyrical Improvisation: An fMRI Study of Freestyle Rap.


Take Note

Interactive Exhibition: An Exploration of Note-Taking in Harvard University Collections.

 

Phew
Being (a little bit) neurotic lowers risk of chronic disease, apparently.

Speaking of anxiety

City Hall gets a zip line.

 

 

 

About the author

Ange Friesen

Ange Friesen is among other things a librarian. She blogs about film and fashion at Cahiers du cinemode and about everything else at the new is the true.

View all posts

Read more

Reading Life: Three Toronto Authors on Their Favourite Habits

By Kelli Deeth
R

Rebecca Rosenblum What do you most enjoy reading, and how often do you indulge in the habit? I read something almost every day—it would have to be a bizarre state of emergency that I didn’t absorb at least some text. Short stories and novels are my staples, mixed in with poetry, plays, and graphic novels. I also adore magazines but try to keep them to a minimum because they will overrun me...

Read onRead later

Finding the Enemy: Plaza Requiem, by Martha Batíz

By Lucy Policelli
F

Few happy endings take place in Plaza Requiem, the aptly titled short story collection by Mexican-Canadian author Martha Bátiz, recently published by Exile Editions, but a lucidity exists in Bátiz’s writing that buoys the reader through her most gruesome tales. Bátiz, a Mexican writer now living in Canada, is the author of several books in Spanish, both fiction and non-fiction. She now teaches at...

Read onRead later

Portrait of an Invisible Artist: Transit by Rachel Cusk

By Daniel Aureliano Newman
P

Only one book I read last year rivalled Rachel Cusk’s Transit, the sequel to her 2014 novel Outline. That other book was Outline. Transit won’t thrill everyone: it will enrage those expecting plot, and it may unsettle those expecting a straightforward depiction of family drama and self-discovery. But many will read it with the breathless exhilaration it deserves. Like Outline, Transit is a series...

Read onRead later

The Geography of Desire – A review of Siren by Kateri Lanthier

By Hannah Brown
T

If you wanted to find a daughter abducted by a powerful man, you might need to cover a lot of territory. The earth mother Demeter gave wings to young women singers willing to search, but when they failed to find the man, she left them stuck on the rocks, singing to men who would be seduced. Kateri Lanthier’s second collection of poems, Siren, also covers a lot of territory, and although, like...

Read onRead later
By Ange Friesen November 19, 2012
The Toronto Review of Books
Privacy and Terms