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Canada Reads 2013: Debate Day 3
And we’re down to the last pair! After the third day of Canada Reads 2013, only Two Solitudes and February remain in contention for the big prize. Indian Horse, an audience darling and the early favourite to win, was voted out today, leaving Jay Baruchel and Trent McLellan to duke it out tomorrow in this…
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Touching from a distance: On Sam Pink’s Rontel
Reviewed in this essay: Rontel, by Sam Pink, Electric Literature, 2013. One of the old canards people trot out when waxing (prematurely) on the creeping death of the publishing industry is that there’s just no way to sell books anymore, not when brick and mortar stores are on the wane and even the once future-proof…
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Letter to Toronto from San Francisco: OMG Brandon Sanderson
Yesterday we got a very interesting letter from an old friend in San Francisco urging all us Northern readers to go to the Toronto repeat of an event they just had in town: a book-launch appearance by Brandon Sanderson, second author of the now-complete The Wheel of Time series. Sanderson will be at the Lillian…
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Canada Reads 2013: Debate Day 2
On Day 2 of the Canada Reads debates, Jane Urquart’s Away was banished to the dustbin of unsuccessful entrants, Indian Horse maintained its dominance in the public polls, and February began to look like the panelists’ favourite book. After a relatively staid first day of debates yesterday, the contest heated up today as panelists were…
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Canada Reads 2013: Debate Day 1
The stakes were high. It was only the first day of the Canada Reads 2013 debates but by the end of the first round, one of the five contending books would be eliminated by a panel vote. Between the presence of an Olympic wrestler, and Ron MacLean having shown up wearing Hell’s Angel-grade motorcycle boots, there…
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Bookishness: Week of February 11, 2013
Trans(it)media “When I started standing on subway platforms and watching people looking at the screens, I realized that the people who watch the screens are mostly commuters who take the same path to work every day and see those screens everyday in a ritualized way,” said Switzer. “An interesting way to reach out to those…
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TRB Podcast: Dr. Pamela Palmater speaks about Indigenous rights and Idle No More
Listen here: [audio:2013.02/Palmater.mp3] Lawyer, Ryerson professor and member of the Mi’kmaq community Dr. Pamela Palmater has been one of the key organizers of the Idle No More movement in Toronto. On Jan. 17, 2013 she spoke to a packed room at the University of Toronto’s Hart House. Presenting material from her book Beyond Blood: Rethinking Indigenous Identity, she…
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Livestock for some, ownership debates for all: A review of Who Owns the Stock? Collective and Multiple Property Rights in Animals
Reviewed in this essay: Who Owns the Stock? Collective and Multiple Property Rights in Animals, Khazanov, Anatoly and Günther Schlee, eds., Berghahn Books, 2012. This volume suggests that, in the face of the rapid diffusion of the notion of private property across the globe, there remain three main domains of objects subject to more complicated…
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Al Purdy, cabin porn, and Dachshund UN: Bookishness, Feb. 4, 2013
“What will become of all of you? What will you do with no good movies?” Richard Kramer writes about Pauline Kael. Book to film “I find that a lot of my best character stuff and ideas come unwittingly from novels… [Y]ou get to learn how to make good backstories in your own head, without needing…
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Staging history: A review of Susan Steudel’s poetry collection, New Theatre
Reviewed in this essay: New Theatre by Susan Steudel, Coach House Press, 2012. A high school teacher once passed an antique book of fairy tales around our creative writing class, asking us to make new poems by blacking out and decorating the printed words. Susan Steudel’s debut book of poetry, New Theatre, reminds me of…
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Post-apocalyptic collaboration: A review of Margaret Atwood and Naomi Alderman’s The Happy Zombie Sunrise Home
Reviewed in this essay: The Happy Zombie Sunrise Home, by Margaret Atwood and Naomi Alderman, Wattpad, 2013. “I dabble in modernity,” Margaret Atwood joked to George Stroumboulopoulos when pressed to explain her recent foray into online self-publishing on Wattpad. Wattpad is a YouTube for digital scribblings, a free online database where writers can instantly upload and…
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Hobo-inspired art, cartoons of the past, and the world’s prettiest libraries: Bookishness Jan. 28, 2013
Art in the time of the Hobo Code Inspired by the artwork left on train boxcars by rail riders of years past, Troy Lovegates, AKA Other, has been creating art in public spaces for over two decades. On Feb. 7, Other’s work will be on display at the AGO as part of the gallery’s First…