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Recommended Reading: On Tomas Tranströmer, Winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize For Literature
None of the American literary heavyweights won it, and neither did an Arab writer, though many thought the prize committee would make a nod to the Arab Spring. Bob Dylan didn’t win it either, even though he somehow had the best odds the night before. Instead, the 2011 Nobel Prize for Literature went to Swedish…
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A TRB Q&A with Richard Gwyn, author of Nation Maker: Sir John A. Macdonald: His Life, Our Times
In the lead-up to the announcement of the winner of the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Nonfiction Prize, The Toronto Review of Books will feature Q&As with each of the five finalists. In 2007, Richard Gwyn published John A: The Man Who Made Us, the first volume in his biography of Canada’s first prime minister, which…
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Bookishness: Week of October 10th, 2011
-Winter Five Ways: The 2011 Massey Lectures begin this week, marking its 50th anniversary. New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik will travel across Canada to deliver this year’s lecture. His talk, entitled “Winter,” will explore five facets of the frosty season: Romantic Winter, Radical Winter, Recuperative Winter, Recreational Winter and Remembering Winter. Gopnik starts in…
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On Iphigenia in Tauris by the Canadian Opera Company
Christoph Gluck’s Iphigenia in Tauris, a tragic opera about the fate of survivors, their guilt, and the question of who will pay for the crimes of the past, is a relentlessly dark and difficult challenge for viewers. The program’s awkward synopsis seems to say it all when it opens with the kind of jovial avuncular…
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The Home Movie History Project, Oct. 15: A Desperately Fun Event
Since nothing compares to very old home movies screened in a marvellous bookshop, the TRB suggests that you might like to attend one of its favourite regular events in Toronto: b.y.o.h.m. (Bring Your Own Home Movies) for HOME MOVIE DAY Saturday October 15 Screening starts 7:00 pm (Home Movie Repair Clinic 6:30 – 8:00) at…
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Your Ideas for the TRB
In her introduction to The Toronto Review of Books, editor Jessica Duffin Wolfe noted, “The conversation about reading is happening in the street. We’ll be there from Toronto, scattering what confetti we can in this international thoroughfare.” She meant it. Two Sundays ago some of the TRB crew set up on a street corner (Queens Park…
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On NYC’s Gregg Pasquarelli of SHoP Architects in Toronto: The Power of (Not) Selling Out
Gregg Pasquarelli, founding principal of the New York-based SHoP Architects, debuted this year’s Bulthaup public lectures at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design last week with a rabble-rousing talk about his firm’s practice. That a lecture by a charismatic, distinguished professional with a slew of competition wins, awards and critically-acclaimed projects…
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Nook Collective: Illustration Office Meeting, Oct. 12
Our friend Julia Breckenreid over at Nook Collective suggests you illustrators and others might like this event: Illustration Office Meeting 156 Augusta Avenue 7pm – Wednesday, October 12th 2011 RSVP to admin@nookcollective.com
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Tapestry at Theatre Passe Muraille: Mangoes, cows, and other operatic arias fresh from the factory-floor
The brown-brick Theatre Passe Muraille is a far cry from the polished maple and clean-glass lines of the Four Seasons Performing Arts Centre. A historic brass plaque at the door informs you as you come in that the theatre just east of Queen and Bathurst streets was once a stable and bakery, and something of…
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Sina Queyras & the Coach House Fall Launch: Books Take to the Dance Floor
Tonight at 8pm, Toronto’s Coach House Press launches its fall titles at The Dance Cave (529 Bloor Street West). Will there be dancing? Rumours abound of song requests and dance cards, but before any kicking up of heels the writers themselves will be taking to the dance floor to read from their new books: Sina…
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Bookishness: Week of October 4th, 2011
-“Imagine: you’re better than James Joyce; you end up like Miles Kington.” So says Guardian columnist Ian Sansom, reflecting on Flann O’Brien’s understated literary legacy. October 5th marks the 100th anniversary of the Irish comic author’s birth — celebrate with a bicycle ride and a re-read of At Swim-Two-Birds. –iBooker: Visitors to Apple’s iBookstore (included…
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JM Coetzee & Paul Auster: Some Words on the Public Reading of Their Correspondence
A woman in the row behind me yawned, but I didn’t quite know how to respond to the Kingston WritersFest reading that Thursday night by JM Coetzee and Paul Auster at the Grand Theatre in Kingston, Ontario. I was star-struck. And beat, having driven to Kingston for the event. The authors eschewed conversation and based…