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Bookishness: October 29, 2012
All of the books “Saddling another person with a book he did not ask for has always seemed to me like a huge psychological imposition, like forcing someone to eat a chicken biryani without so much as inquiring whether they like cilantro.” Joe Queenan’s 6,128 favourite books. (image via flickr user zen) Poems for Pussy…
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Bookishness: October 22, 2012
The Toronto Reference Library has binders full of women too Catalogued and everything. Another thing they’ve got? Study carrels for exhibitionists. Scribbles In recent Internet meanderings I came across this little app and subsequently lost hours making little drawings that looked suspiciously like art. 10 best films of the 90s Alas, no Clueless. It’s the best films…
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Bookishness: September 17, 2012
Two dots The New Yorker was temporarily banned from Facebook due to Female Nipple Bulges (FNB). Jay is for Just beautiful typographic birdhouses. Meet with the Writer in Residence at TPL Toronto Public Library will be accepting submissions from literary fiction writers until September 29 for meetings with Writer in Residence Farzana Doctor. Hindsight “Not interested in…
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Bookishness: Week of August 20, 2012
It was a terrible and overwrought sentence This year’s Bulwer-Lytton winner. The Pussy Riot reading list The literature that inspires Pussy Riot. I don’t believe in guilty pleasures, I only believe in pleasures Ira Glass (coming to Toronto in October) on books and reading and movies and more. “I didn’t actually finish the book.” An interview…
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Bookishness: Week of August 13, 2012
!! I once decided to entirely abandon use of the exclamation mark. This lasted until I got an office job and realized that my refusal to use the offending punctuation would likely lead my colleagues thinking me humourless if not plain mean, and they would never invite me for expensive lattes in the afternoons. I…
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Bookishness: Week of August 6, 2012
“Wonderful things happen when your brain is empty.” Maira Kalman on the difference between thinking and feeling. A little too much imagining for non-fiction Author of the (until now) best-selling Imagination: How Creativity Works Jonah Lehrer has admitted to inventing quotes in the book. The publisher has pulled the title, and is issuing refunds. Poets in…
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Bookishness: Week of July 16, 2012
Delightful A book fountain in Budapest. Poems like lace Actually, lace poems. 3608 keys Speaking as a former piano student and also as someone who has moved houses four times in the past five years, I can tell you that keyboards, even those with 88 weighted keys, are not pianos. For all those who, like…
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Bookishness: Week of July 9, 2012
Walt Whitmonster Reading Whitman into Frankenstein and Dracula. B is for Biblioclasm A-Z of Unusual Words is a collection of prints that “represent a collection of strange, unusual and lost words.” (Our favourite.) Summer nights are for stargazing This Summer Constellation Map will help you to distinguish Hercules from Ophiuchus (I am completely ignoring the fact that…
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Bookishness: Week of June 11, 2012
The 2012 Luminato Festival hosts its author series this week, and last night’s talk with Annie Proulx augers well for the rest. Our picks: author Nicole Krauss on Monday night at 7 p.m. at the Bell Lightbox Lapham’s Quarterly eponymous founding editor Lewis Lapham on Thursday the 14th at 7 p.m; Linden MacIntyre, Ayad…
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Bookishness: Week of June 4, 2012
OWS v. NYC Occupy Wall Street has filed a lawsuit against New York City for the destruction of books and equipment from the People’s Library seized during an overnight raid last November. Short bursts of story The New Yorker recently published a short story by Jennifer Egan in a series of tweets over the course of ten nights. Of…
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Bookishness: Week of May 21, 2012
“The Daniel Day-Lewis of the method prank” On How to Sharpen Pencils: A Practical and Theoretical Treatise on the Artisanal Craft of Pencil Sharpening, for Writers, Artists, Contractors, Flange Turners, Anglesmiths, and Civil Servants, with Illustrations Showing Current Practice “Balkan-Klezmer-Gypsy-Punk-Super-Party-Band” plays exclusive Air Canada show This made me smile so hard. Yay, for sure. Expand your vocabulary (beyond…
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Bookishness: Week of May 14, 2012
Where the wild things assemble A perfect combination of one of the highs and one of the lows of the last week in pop culture. On the promise of an unread book “When I read it, I will be completely absorbed by it. It will be all I think about. It will affect my daily life in…