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Three Generations of Magic Between E. Nesbit, C.S. Lewis, and Lev Grossman
As I read E. Nesbit’s The Story of the Amulet, a tale of children’s magical adventures, a feeling of familiarity came over me. This 1906 book seemed to anticipate C. S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew, published almost exactly half a century later (1955) but, unlike the rest of the Narnia series, set back in the…
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The Wit and Wisdom of Misha Glouberman
Reviewed in this essay: The Chairs Are Where the People Go by Misha Glouberman and Sheila Heti. Faber and Faber, 2011. You can tell the publishers weren’t quite sure what to do with Misha Glouberman and Sheila Heti’s book The Chairs Are Where the People Go because the explanatory subtitle, “How to Live, Work, and…
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TRB Podcast: Robert Darnton and the Digital Public Library of America
Listen here: [audio:darnton.mp3] It’s always a pleasure when a favourite author turns out to be as charismatic and compelling in person as they are in print. That was my experience recently going to see Robert Darnton, University Librarian at Harvard, deliver the Grafstein Lecture in Communications at the University of Toronto law school. I first…
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Mask Panic: Past and Present
Listen to the author read this essay: [audio:issue4/reid.mp3] On January 7, 1514, the Parlement of Normandy, the royal court of appeal for that prosperous French province on the Channel coast, issued a decree banning the wearing and owning of masks. “It is prohibited for all persons […] to wear or purchase any false visage, mask,…
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The Homophone Hordes
Is your interest peaked by the free reign given to a rampaging hoard of homophones? Do you pour over newspapers looking for them? In the past decade or so, I’ve noticed misplaced homophones creep ever more readily into newspapers and magazines. Given two words that are spelled differently but sound alike, professional writers are using…