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CanLit Canon Review #1: Susanna Moodie’s Roughing it in the Bush
In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that have shaped this country. Susanna Moodie’s Roughing it in the Bush is a memoir, written as an attempt to enlighten her people back home in the motherland to the terrible weather and accommodations in British North America.…
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William Lyon Mackenzie King: A Grey Mass Hung Over a Chunk of Canadian History
Reviewed in this essay: King: William Lyon Mackenzie King: A Life Guided by the Hand of Destiny by Allan Levine. D&M Publishers Inc., 2011. William Lyon Mackenzie King exists only dimly in our collective consciousness, as a kind of great grey mass hung over a rather substantial chunk of political history. Refreshingly, Allan Levine’s new…
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“Sally Forth, Comrades!”: Jesus Chrysler Drives Full Force into Toronto’s Progressive Theatre Scene
Reviewed in this essay: Jesus Chrysler, at Theatre Pass Muraille, 16 Ryerson Ave., Toronto. Runs until Dec. 11th, 2011. “Sally forth, comrades!” – with these three words you are likely to be ushered into Theatre Pass Muraille’s intimate backspace by a friendly-faced, trouser-clad woman named Jim. You’ll shuffle to your seat while she bickers with…
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Bookishness: Week of December 5, 2011
On the couch Rather than plumbing the depths of your subconscious, look, perhaps, to your bookshelves. Bibliotherapy offers a literary cure for what ails; after an in-depth conversation about a patient’s reading life, the bibliotherapist prescribes a reading list meant to address the patient’s “area of curiosity or concern.” Bibliotherapy is offered through Alain de Botton’s London-based School of…
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TRB Podcast: Issue One Author Podcasts Now Up!
Thanks to our marvelous podcast producer Allegra Young, we’ve posted recordings of our authors reading their first-issue pieces! If you like, listen here, on the Issue One article pages themselves (linked below), or subscribe to our podcast in iTunes. Review Essays: Anna Karenina, her Android, the Aliens and the Train By Tim Ormond [audio:firstissue/ormond.mp3] …
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Life and Beauties of Fanny Fern: Unearthing a forgotten literary feud of the 1850s
Life and Beauties of Fanny Fern. Anonymous. New York: H. Long and Brother, 1855. Condition: Cover very worn, pages water-stained. Inside front cover bears a small sticker reading “B. Dawson, Bookseller & Stationer, Montreal”. Acquired: Sometime in the mid-1980s, from a thrift shop in Ottawa, for maybe $0.75 A little poking around on the Internet…
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The Ghosts of Europe: Q & A with Anna Porter
As part of its Eh List Author Series, The Barbara Frum Library welcomed acclaimed author Anna Porter on November 17 to discuss her latest book, The Ghosts of Europe (Douglas & McIntyre, 2010). Marking twenty years since Central Europe wrenched itself free of its various Communist dictatorships, The Ghosts of Europe is a sobering glimpse…
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Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows
Reviewed in this essay: The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing To Our Brains by Nicholas Carr. W.W. Norton & Company, 2011. Google. Huffington. Sports scores. Twitter. Text. Blog, blog, blog. Twitt—PHONE CALL!—Email. Facebook. Twitter . . . Does this read like the score of activities that occupy just two minutes of your day? In his Pulitzer-nominated book, The Shallows: What…
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Rothko on a Canadian Stage: a Review of Red
Reviewed in this essay: Red, at the Bluma Appel Theatre at the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts, 27 Front Street East, Toronto. Runs until Dec. 17. Canadian Stage’s audience has been the topic of many news stories since Matthew Joceyln took over as Artistic Director two years ago. Jocelyn, a Canadian director who has…
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Bookishness: Week of November 28, 2011
No sleep please, we’re novelists We’ve entered the final days of National Novel Writing Month. Particpants have until Wednesday night at 11:59:59 to finish the mandated 50,000 words that will mark their works as novels according to the people at NaNoWriMo. Anyone needing inspiration for these final laps might want to try Written? Kitten! (via Huff Post Books), or, for…
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Recommended Reading: “Occupy” Two Months On
As you well know by now, the Occupy protests have been going on for two months now, gaining considerable media attention across the world and significantly altering the public conversation about life in the post-financial-crisis West. As you probably also know by now, over the last week, protesters in many cities — most notably New…
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Reviewing the Critic: The Ever-increasing Canon of Kamal Al-Solaylee’s Theatre Criticism
Discussed in this essay: Tonight at the Tarragon: A Critic’s Anthology, edited by Kamal Al-Solaylee. Playwrights Canada Press, 2011. The book features work by prominent Canadian playwrights such as Michael Healey, Kristen Thomson and Jason Sherman, and launches, in fact, tonight at the Tarragon Theatre rehearsal hall, 30 Bridgman Avenue at 5:30 p.m. A funny…