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CanLit Canon Review #11: W.O. Mitchell’s Who Has Seen the Wind
In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. Published in 1947, W.O. Mitchell’s Who Has Seen the Wind arrived six years after As For Me and My House, Sinclair Ross’s Prairie-based depression trigger, and it has the same message as its predecessor:…
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An ambitious take on human nature: Edward O. Wilson’s The Social Conquest of Earth
Reviewed in this essay: The Social Conquest of Earth, by Edward O. Wilson. Liveright, 2012. The first scientific controversy to capture the mind of the young Edward O. Wilson was the so-called Lysenko affair. Wilson, 14 at the time, wrote an enthusiastic essay about the Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko, a Stalinist protégé who advocated the now…
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Eerily well read: 5 lit-inspired Halloween costumes
What holiday could be a better match for the bookish among us than one that ushers in bags of candy and a temporary belief that anything, no matter how otherworldly, is possible? Halloween practically cries out for literature themed costumes, but in case you need a little help this year, try some of Chirograph’s suggestions.…
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Total humanity: A review of Mad Hope
Reviewed in this essay: Mad Hope by Heather Birrell. Coach House Books, 2012. Mad Hope, by Toronto writer Heather Birrell, is a collection of 11 short stories that gives the unshakable sense that life, death, love, and grief are being felt and experienced at the highest pitch, all around you. From family relationships, to lovers’…
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TRB Podcast: Lynn Coady and The Antagonist on the Eh List
On May 17, the Toronto Public Library invited Lynn Coady to speak at the Barbara Frum Branch as part of the 2012 eh List Author Series, which highlights Canadian writers. Reading from her novel The Antagonist, Coady raises questions regarding who has the right to tell stories and considers the ethics of writing a life. Listen…
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The Wit and Wisdom of Misha Glouberman
Reviewed in this essay: The Chairs Are Where the People Go by Misha Glouberman and Sheila Heti. Faber and Faber, 2011. You can tell the publishers weren’t quite sure what to do with Misha Glouberman and Sheila Heti’s book The Chairs Are Where the People Go because the explanatory subtitle, “How to Live, Work, and…
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The Fifty Shades Phenomenon is Nothing New
Over two and a half centuries before British TV executive and mother of two, E.L. James, shocked the literary world with the massive success her Fifty Shades trilogy, a fifty-one year old English widower named Samuel Richardson wrote an epistolary novel called Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded. Not only did Richardson’s novel become the biggest literary…
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TRB Podcast: Richard Stursberg’s Tower of Babble
On April 24, Richard Stursberg joined Don Ferguson of the Royal Canadian Air Farce in conversation at the Toronto launch of Stursberg’s new book, presented by This Is Not a Reading Series, D&M Publishers, the Gladstone Hotel, and the Toronto Review of Books. In The Tower of Babble: Sins, Secrets and Successes Inside the CBC, Stursberg…
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TRB Podcast: Deidre Lynch on the Culture of Scrap-books in the Georgian Period
Listen here: [audio: May2012/lynch.mp3] On March 22, Professor Deidre Lynch delivered a lecture as part of the Book History and Print Culture Lecture Series at the University of Toronto. Following is an excerpt from the U of T press release on Dr. Lynch’s talk, titled “Recycled Paper: Readers’ Scrap-books in Late Georgian Literary Culture.” Enjoy!…
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TRB Podcast: Matthew Kirschenbaum on the Literary History of Word Processing
Listen here: [audio:May2012/kirschenbaum.mp3] On March 1, Dr. Matthew Kirschenbaum spoke at the University of Toronto’s iSchool Colloquium. Dr. Kirschenbaum’s lecture, titled “Track Changes: The Literary History of Word Processing” examines the past and continued influence that word processing technology has had on the craft of literary composition. Listen and enjoy! The U of T press…
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A Horrifying Tale of Undying Obsession
If I can credit anyone with breeding an interest in me for flesh-eating zombies, demons, and blood-sucking creatures of the night, it would be R. L. Stine, creator of the kids’ horror book series Goosebumps, a franchise which turns twenty this year. James Parker has a piece in the March edition of The Atlantic in…
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TRB Podcast: Ruth Panofsky on The Literary Legacy of the Macmillan Company of Canada
Listen here: [audio: May2012/panofsky.mp3] On March 19, Ryerson University hosted an interview and launch for Ruth Panofsky’s new book, The Literary Legacy of the Macmillan Company of Canada: Making Books and Mapping Culture, at the Modern Literature and Culture Research Centre. This event featured the author in conversation with Steven W. Beattie (book review editor, Quill and…