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Roger Ebert, book body parts, and art speak: Bookishness for Apr. 8, 2013
A speculatively ruptured transversal Your guide to International Art English. The Toronto Public Library and the Case of the Missing Money “In classic murder mysteries, the detective looks for motive, method and opportunity. Councillors have the opportunity and the method to cut back on the library but what could possibly be their motive?” Asking “Why does…
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A guide to the Toronto Public Library’s Keep Toronto Reading Festival
The Toronto Public Library is hosting events about Fahrenheit 451 all through April as part of its eighth annual Keep Toronto Reading Festival. The festival is all about celebrating the joy of reading. Whether you’d be encountering Fahrenheit 451 for the first time or rediscovering it, Ray Bradbury’s classic is still current and very much…
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Join Us for the summer! The TRB is now accepting interns
We’re looking for a few stellar folks to join The Toronto Review of Books team over the summer. TRB internships typically consist of 75 hours divided between creative work (including writing, design, or audio production) and magazine administration, completed largely on your own schedule over a period of three to five months. Interns are volunteers,…
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Creating an alt-girl utopia: Tavi Gevinson’s Rookie Yearbook One
Reviewed in this essay: Rookie Yearbook One, ed. Tavi Gevinson, Drawn & Quarterly, 2012. At 16 years old, Tavi Gevinson is already an accomplished writer, editor, and pop culture icon. She quickly became a darling of the fashion industry at the age of 11, when she launched her fashion blog “Style Rookie.” In September 2011 she…
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The philosophical thriller: A review of Simon Heath’s Doppelganger
Reviewed in this essay: Doppelganger, by Simon Heath. Self-published, 2012. Doppelganger will be of special interest to Toronto readers. Although our city is never expressly mentioned named as the setting, locals will recognize several distinctive details. Unmistakeable King Street office blocks, Rosedale doctor’s offices, packed Tim Horton’s and Timothy’s coffee shops, summertime escapes to the…
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Dinosaur kids, Hemingway’s geography, and the Book Madness bracket: Bookishness for Mar. 25, 2013
A clean, well-lighted place Write like Hemingway, at least geographically. “I go to waterpolo and come back to 4 messages from a Cabinet Minister.” James Moore talks with librarians on Twitter. In other librarians vs. the man news http://youtu.be/KfwNQS_h6Qc Oxford students push for the reinstatement of “sacked” librarian after the University takes issue with the above…
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Jerzy’s many masks: A review of “Oral Pleasure:Kosinski as Storyteller”
Reviewed in this essay: Oral Pleasure: Kosinski as Storyteller. Edited by Kiki Kosinski. Grove Press, 2012. Years ago, when my reading tastes were largely defined by whatever contained the most explicit sex, I devoured the novels of Jerzy Kosinski. I had other sources—Henry Miller, Philip Roth, and Martin Amis—but there was something especially creepy and seductive…
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Violence in our bedrooms and kitchens: A review of Julie Bruck’s Monkey Ranch
Reviewed in this essay: Monkey Ranch by Julie Bruck, Brick Books, 2012 Julie Bruck’s poems have the transparency of fingerprints on glass. The achievement of Monkey Ranch, her Governor General Award-winning collection, is not obvious. Her third book, it contains poems about rituals and family life–a son at a window, a lover sleeping through the noise of…
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Eudora Welty, Veronica Mars, and ghostwriting Sweet Valley High: Bookishness for Mar. 18, 2013
Ghostwriting “Imagine, superimposed on the gray-and-grainy screen of a floundering, slightly depressed twenty-something, the shimmery outlines of an idealized adolescent world. All drawn—I just had to color it in. I could pick any colors, as long as they were pastel!” On ghostwriting Sweet Valley High. “At least I want to see a ‘Veronica Mars’ movie…
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CanLit Canon Review #13: Farley Mowat’s People of the Deer
In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. People of the Deer, Farley Mowat’s first book, was published in 1952. At the time, the story was already old, but the way in which Mowat told it was new. It’s the story of white…
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Vendors in the hot sun: Selling books in Nairobi’s shadow economy
The lookout point in Nairobi’s smart Upperhill district provides an admirable city vista where glistening new buildings pop against faded infrastructure—all evidence of Kenya’s stuttering but undeniable emergence from poverty. But from the bustling boulevard where Joe carefully lays out his books every morning, the view is much different. As a second-hand book seller, he is a…
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36 exposures, Seinfeld vs. Girls, and the underground library: Bookishness for Mar. 11, 2013
1500 volts 36 Exposures “[To] stop. To pause. To Wait. To not know the outcome of a shutter press.” “The whole thing just seems SO self-indulgent.” If people talked about Seinfeld the way they talk about Girls. Bringing the library underground I admire the creativity that went into this as yet imaginary ad campaign for…