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Bookishness: Week of March 19, 2012
Strike Toronto Public Library workers are on strike as of 5 p.m. last night. I am currently deep in horrifying imaginings of a library-less world. Hoping a resolution is swift, for everyone’s sake. What your favourite author had for lunch The power of the Internet to answer the big questions: Megan Fishmann on life as an author-groupie, then and…
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CanLit Canon Review #5: Mazo de la Roche’s Jalna
In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. No one talks about Mazo de la Roche anymore, but her 16-part series, which chronicled the doings of the Whiteoak family, was popular in its time. So popular, in fact, that a neighbourhood and…
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Toronto, January 2012: a Poem
For JP Here is a curbed and censored winter— its skies are blank as paper. So instead we read the sidewalks sanded bone-white by a wind made fast and loose on northern highways. They draw chalk lines over crabgrass relapsed since November. “Never mind,” they say, “This is no bardsung city of love, just the…
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The World in Microcosm in a Basement Under Toronto Street: On Open Air Books and Maps
In this essay, John Zada visits Open Air Books and Maps, located at 25 Toronto St, Toronto, ON M5C 2R1. For decades a small indie bookstore has been operating, virtually in secret, beneath the corporate hustle of Toronto’s downtown core. Open Air Books and Maps, a quirky and somewhat clandestine establishment is located in a…
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Bookishness: Week of March 12, 2012
Keep calm and watch this video You’ve seen it everywhere: mugs, notebooks, and, of course, posters. Keep Calm and Carry On. But where did it come from? Sure – England, the war, but there’s more – including one of the most charming book shops I’ve ever seen. The story of Keep Calm and Carry On. (And…
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Bookishness: Week of March 5, 2012
A fantastic flying film I’m sure I wasn’t the only one cheering last week’s Academy Award winner for short animated film despite knowing nothing more than its title: The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. Having now watched the film (available on YouTube), I can confirm that the content lives up to any expectations generated…
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TRB Podcast: Diana Taylor on “Taking to the Streets: Mass Mobilization Online and Off”
On January 18th, the Distinguished Lecture Series, sponsored by the TransCanada Institute / School of English and Theatre Studies (University of Guelph), presented Dr. Diana Taylor’s lecture entitled “Taking to the Streets: Mass Mobilization Online and Off.” Listen here:[audio:taylor.mp3] As Taylor asks in the abstract for her talk, “What options for political and economic justice…
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CanLit Canon Review #4: Louis Hémon’s Maria Chapdelaine
In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. Maria Chapdelaine, written by Louis Hémon and translated from French by W. H. Blake, is the book we all should have read in high school instead of Pride and Prejudice. While both novels deal…
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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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Contribute to The Toronto Review of Books!
ISSUE FOUR: Call for Pitches! The Toronto Review of Books is currently looking for a few 800-word pieces, and a few 1500- to 2000-word pieces, as well as a poem or three, for our fourth issue. Essays in our regular issues review print and e-books, old and new, but also anything else that intrigues our…
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Bookishness: Week of February 27, 2012
We all fall down Toronto Public Library has announced its 2012 One Book title: Girls Fall Down. As of this writing there were 187 holds and 1015 copies in TPL’s system. Burbling blurbs Undoubtedly being called upon time and time again to provide thoughtful, nuanced and overwhelmingly positive appraisal of other writers’ books in the form…
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TRB Podcast: Allan Hepburn on Elizabeth Bowen’s Autobiographies
Professor Allan Hepburn, a noted scholar of literary modernism and head of English at McGill, spoke to the University of Toronto’s Department of English on Elizabeth Bowen’s Autobiographies last December. His talk was entitled, “A Young Writer Grown Old: Elizabeth Bowen’s Autobiographies.” Listen here: [audio:hepburn.mp3] Professor Hepburn included the following abstract for his talk: Autobiography…