-
The Baltimore House in Hamilton: A Culinary Experience Courtesy of Edgar Allan Poe
If you’ve ever been seduced by the Gothic works of Edgar Allan Poe, then The Baltimore House is the place for you. Tucked around the corner from Jackson Square it functions as a café by day and a lounge/bar by night. The café room boasts ample natural light, and old church pews act as benches…
-
A World Sans Salvation: Oren Moverman’s Rampart
Reviewed in this essay: Rampart, directed by Oren Moverman, written by Moverman and James Ellroy. Starring Woody Harrelson, Sigourney Weaver, Ben Foster, Anne Heche, Cynthia Nixon, Steve Buschemi, and Ned Beatty. Running Time: 108 minutes. Now playing at the Carleton Cinema. There are two ways to think about director Oren Moverman’s film Rampart: it is…
-
Bookishness: Week of April 23, 2012
SlushPile Hell Ever wondered what’s going through the mind of the literary agent-not-to-be as she reads your work? You probably don’t want to know. Listen carefully and you can hear handcuffs clicking in the background Erin Balser and Becky Toyne on Fresh Air discussing 50 Shades of Grey. Bonus: includes Canadian smut recommendations. How to edit…
-
The Oscillating Universe: A Review of Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell’s “Godhead: The Brain’s Big Bang”
Reviewed in this essay: Godhead: The Brain’s Big Bang, by Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell. HG Publishing, 2011. For some time, scientists have been marshaling their knowledge and resources in an effort to answer some of the biggest questions about the universe. With each grandiose experiment, however, science seems to be little closer to solving…
-
On Rob Benvie’s Maintenance
Reviewed in this essay: Maintenance by Rob Benvie. Coach House Books, 2011. Rob Benvie, author of The Safety of War, offers in his second novel, Maintenance, an important investigation into the relationship between place and despair. Benvie’s characters bleakly exist in suburbia — Mississauga — at the turn of the millennium and while they want…
-
The Sublime Object of Ideology: Understanding Undefeated
Reviewed in this essay: Undefeated, directed by Daniel Lindsay and TJ Martin. Starring Bill Courtney, O.C. Brown, Montrail “Money” Brown. Running Time: 113 minutes. Early on in Undefeated we witness Bill Courtney – the head coach of the Manassas High School football team – address his players. Courtney, a white local businessman who coaches a predominantly…
-
TRB Issue Three Now Live!
It’s here. TRB’s Issue Three woke up in Toronto early this morning and decided to stay, bringing flamboyant style and irresistible appeal to a city already awash in charms. To take appropriate notice of this new arrival, join us tonight, April 17, at Poetry in Kensington Market, 224 Augusta Ave, 8pm on. Why not read TRB Issue…
-
Bookishness: Week of April 16, 2012
MZD seeking future cat lady Literature and online dating collide. The case of the missing words A blind author wrote 26 pages with a pen that was out of ink, leaving her with nothing but blank pages. Well, a little more than blank pages. The woman and her family took the sheets of paper to…
-
Toronto Public Library’s Jamaica 50 Series
The Toronto of Review of Books brings you podcasts, interviews and book reviews following the Jamaica 50 series. More than 230,000 people of Jamaican heritage live in Canada; almost 160,000 in the GTA. In celebration of that community’s long history, and of Jamaica’s independence, the Toronto Public Library and the group Jamaica 50 are holding…
-
CanLit Canon Review #6: Harold Innis’s The Fur Trade in Canada
In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. Harold Innis’s The Fur Trade in Canada, published in 1930, is an indispensable record of the fur trade and early European-Aboriginal relations, but it is also a brutal and exhausting test of endurance. You…
-
Taking Turns: A Review of Margaret Atwood’s I’m Starved for You
Reviewed in this essay: I’m Starved for You, by Margaret Atwood. Byliner, 2012. Margaret Atwood’s latest dystopia trades The Handmaid’s Tale’s theocratic republic and Oryx and Crake’s bioengineered wasteland for more familiar locales. Set in the gated community of Consilience, a think tank-generated portmanteau of “cons” and “resilience,” the mordantly funny I’m Starved for You (an…
-
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,…