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Old Codes for Modern Woes: The 2012 Old Farmer’s Almanac
Reviewed in this essay: Robert Thomas, 2012 Old Farmer’s Almanac, Thomas Allen, 2011. Listen to the author read this piece: [audio: issue3/vanmeermass.mp3] Every fall in supermarkets across North America The Old Farmer’s Almanac appears at checkout stands, sitting incongruously amid tabloids and recipe magazines. The Almanac’s antiquated woodcut cover is the first indication that this cheaply bound…
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Ellis Avery’s The Last Nude
Reviewed in this essay: The Last Nude by Ellis Avery. Riverhead Books, 2012. If you didn’t already have a crush on Paris, reading The Last Nude may well convert you. If you’re already a Francophile, this is your bread and honey. Or perhaps, more appropriately, your pain aux chocolate. Avery’s novel retraces a familiar period,…
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The Spirited Letters of Joseph Roth
Reviewed in this essay: Joseph Roth: A Life in Letters, translated and edited by Michael Hoffman. W. W. Norton & Company, 2012. Some writers do their most interesting work in correspondence; only with the right private audience does their voice reach its full potential. The letters of Kingsley Amis, for instance, are more hilarious, caustic,…
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America, From the Margins: A Review of Don DeLillo’s The Angel Esmeralda
Reviewed in this essay: The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories, by Don DeLillo. Simon & Schuster, 2011. The latest from American writer Don DeLillo is a sparse but rewarding short story collection, the first of his career. While it may not offer a radical departure from the major preoccupations of such era-defining novels as White Noise…
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e-Reading! An Interdisciplinary Toronto Review of Books Symposium on March 31 at Massey College
Join The Toronto Review of Books at Massey College next Saturday, March 31st for the interdisciplinary symposium on e-Reading we’re hosting in collaboration with the University of Toronto’s program in Book History and Print Culture and the Toronto Centre for the Book. All are welcome to attend what promises to be a fascinating afternoon. The…
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Creating a New Food Paradigm: A Review of Food Sovereignty in Canada
Reviewed in this essay: Food Sovereignty in Canada: Creating Just and Sustainable Food Systems, edited by Hannah Wittman, Annette Aurélie Desmarais, and Nettie Wiebe. Fernwood Publishing, 2011. Food issues abound these days, from northern communities that lack access to affordable food, to foodborne illnesses initiated by poor industrial hygiene practices, to community-driven initiatives connecting rural…
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Toronto’s first “Kula”: a Review of Vanguard of the New Age: The Toronto Theosophical Society, 1891-1945
Reviewed in this essay: Vanguard of the New Age: The Toronto Theosophical Society, 1891-1945, by Gillian McCann. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2012. On 26 March 1891, some of Canada’s early avant-garde artists, labour activists, and feminists sat in the parlour of an esteemed Spadina Avenue home to discuss “The Key to Theosophy on Karma.” Spurred by…
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Highway 401 Revisited: On the Jack Chambers Retrospective at the Art Gallery of Ontario
Reviewed in this essay: Jack Chambers: Light, Spirit, Time, Place and Life. Curated by Dennis Reid, with Sarah Milroy. Until May 13, 2012 at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. http://www.ago.net/jack-chambers-light-spirit-time-place-and-life. I live in Toronto but hometown is still Windsor and though I’ve taken the train many times, flown the ridiculously short distance, and on one ill-advised…
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Tracing the Heat of Others in Nancy Huston’s Infrared
Reviewed in this essay: Infrared, by Nancy Huston. McArthur and Company, 2011. Paris is burning and Rena Greenblat has averted her eyes, and more importantly, her camera. While social unrest heats up the city that she lives and loves in, she refuses to return to Paris to do what she does best—hold up a photographic mirror…
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Whose Streets? The Toronto G20 and the Challenges of Summit Protest: A Review
Reviewed in this essay: Whose Streets?: The Toronto G20 and the Challenges of Summit Protest, eds. Tom Malleson and David Wachsmuth. Between The Lines, 2011. Chris Hedges got into a lot of trouble from the occupy movement recently. I happened to be in Oakland when the whole brouhaha over his controversial Truth Dig piece, “The Cancer…
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A Window Into Baseball’s Golden Age
Reviewed in this essay: The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball from the Men Who Played It, by Lawrence S. Ritter. Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2010. As winter turns to spring, the sports fan’s mind turns to baseball. Arguably, it’s the most literary of all the sports, even if only…
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Tread Carefully: A Review of Laura Boudreau’s Suitable Precautions
reReviewed in this essay: Suitable Precautions, by Laura Boudreau. Biblioasis, 2011. Laura Boudreau’s debut book release, Suitable Precautions, is a masterfully curated collection of short stories. Her style is unpredictable yet always elegantly delivered. She seems to delight in walking the line between the playful and sinister. “The Party” flits deftly between sociability and faux pas, as with “the…