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Feature-Length Books: Ariel Levy and Joan Didion
Without being about writing, two books out this spring from Random House, Ariel Levy’s The Rules Do Not Apply and Joan Didion’s South and West, put its processes on display. Each chases a feature-length magazine article that feels somewhat missing-in-action in the prose: Levy’s expands a perfect essay, Didion’s, a publication of notes, imagines an…
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Reading in Electronic Times: Andrew Piper’s “Book Was There” Was Here
People who write about the future of reading often like to disavow shallow binaries, like print versus digital, for example. Yet it is the searing awareness of that very binary, that paper books are very different from screens, that gets people into the predicament of writing books about the meaning and value of books in…
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Fresh Blood and New Words at The Toronto Review of Books
I’m thrilled to announce that The Toronto Review of Books is opening a fresh call for submissions and contributors to mark the arrival of two new staff members. Novelist Damian Tarnopolsky is joining us as Managing Editor, and CanLit scholar Katherine McLeod comes on board as Poetry and Community Editor. Damian is the author of the novel Goya’s Dog,…
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On Wanting The Goldfinch: Donna Tartt’s Book of Cravings
Shortly after finishing Donna Tartt’s masterpiece, I stepped into a bookstore eager to buy another book but immediately spotted The Goldfinch on a table. All sorts of novels lay around it, but I thought, petulantly—No! Only The Goldfinch! The book had made me hungry to keep reading, but I wasn’t ready to leave its story…
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Buy Tasting Menu at The Paper Hound
Good news! The TRB’s Tasting Menu has landed at The Paper Hound, Vancouver’s most charming new indie bookshop. TRB collaborator and Vancouver expat Katherine McLeod sent us this picture to prove it. Vancouver readers! You know where to go and what to do. Toronto folk: why not pick up your copy at the…
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Tasting Menu, the Party: You’re Invited
[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][symple_background background_color=”#fff” text_color=”#000″ background_style=”parallax” center_content=”true” padding_top=”40px” padding_bottom=”40px” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” background_image=”11858″] TASTING MENU LAUNCH PARTY NOVEMBER 27 8PM AT POETRY [/symple_background][/vc_column][/vc_row] On November 27th, join The Toronto Review of Books team of authors, editors, and readers to toast the health and long life of our very own first print anthology, Tasting Menu: Choice Selections from the…
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Update on The Toronto Review of Books
Dear Readers, I met a TV writer last week who told me she’d heard that The Toronto Review of Books had just hired a bunch of people. While she was misinformed (I’m hoping she gets her gossip from some extremely accurate fortuneteller), given everything we’ve got in the works, I’m not surprised by her intuition…
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Two Unmissable Tuesday Book Launches: TRB’s Kelli Deeth and Dana Golan from Breaking the Silence
The Toronto Review of Books team is thrilled to point out that tomorrow night (Oct. 15) our senior editor Kelli Deeth launches her new collection of short fiction, The Other Side of Youth (Arsenal Pulp Press). The “Fall Fiction Feast” event at the Supermarket (268 Augusta Ave.) also features new releases from Dana Mills, Matthew Heiti…
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Congrats, Alice! Nation Chuffed by Nobel Win
Hearing the news about Alice Munro’s Nobel win this morning sent many Canadians to their shelves. Munro is an author to read in the morning and the evening, whose work repays frequent visits and recitations years later, and whose voice returns when you least expect it, yes, like a friend from your youth: “So one…
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New Heights of Fandom: Sheila Heti in Conversation with Tavi Gevinson, Oct. 26
American teen superstar and public intellectual Tavi Gevinson is coming to Toronto again to launch the second yearbook of Rookie, her online magazine for girls. Writing for The Toronto Review of Books about last year’s Rookie Yearbook One (also from the Canadian press Drawn & Quarterly), Ryerson English Professor Laura Fisher said that the book synthesizes images, words, and…
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National Embarrassment/Bore Sparks Some Great Literary Criticism
Yesterday we learned from David Gilmour that being in conversation with “a young woman” means one doesn’t need to take one’s words seriously—but then Gilmour also taught us that literary “seriousness” is just for straight white dudes. Education’s great, eh? I can hear Jane Austen guffawing into a carefully hemmed sleeve in the sky. A…
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TRB’s First Print Anthology: On Sale at Word on the Street 2013
We’ve been cooking a book all summer and we’re salivating to announce that our first print anthology, The Toronto Review of Books Tasting Menu: Choice Selections from the First Two Years, is tumbling off the press this week. This Friday, September 20, marks the TRB’s second anniversary. We’re celebrating with this feast of a book…