-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
Canada Reads
Ready, Set, Read! Canadians have until February 6-9, 2012, to work their way through five riveting true-to-life tales that begin with the sound of a pleading political prisoner in a Tehran jail, transform into a revolutionary shout of protest against Pinochet’s rule in Chile, crescendo into the scream of a thousand hockey fans, simmer down to…
-
Why Not? Fifteen Reasons to Live by Ray Robertson
Reviewed in this essay: Why Not? Fifteen Reason to Live by Ray Robertson. Biblioasis, 2011. It is November in Toronto. I could use fifteen or so reasons to live right now. Ray Robertson implies a big answer with his new title. Having just completed a draft of a novel and experiencing an OCD-induced depression, Robertson…
-
The Future of Religion in a Secular Age
If you’ve read the news recently, you’ll know that modern times are tough times for people of faith. With the politicization of fundamentalist religion worldwide and the rising popularity of trenchant critiques penned by the New Atheists – not to mention plain old apathy – where’s a person with a penchant for the numinous supposed…
-
A Book is a Book
The other day at work I had an impassioned conversation with a customer over what characterizes a book – that is to say, a solid, tangible, paperbound object – versus an e-book, that increasingly popular digital commodity that is poised to take over the world of literature, if it has not already done so. One…
-
“Creeping into the house”: Talking about Writing at The International Festival of Authors
Most events at Toronto’s International Festival of Authors feature authors reading from their finished novels, their glossy dust jackets sprinkled with glowing reviews, as though these works effortlessly materialized through sheer brilliance. In contrast, on Sunday October 23rd, the “Writer’s Craft” panel met at the Festival’s stage on Queens Quay West to discuss honestly the writer’s…
-
TRB Podcast: The Beginnings of Poetry, Virginia Jackson at the University of Toronto
On Friday, October 21, the UC Irvine Chair of Rhetoric and Communication Professor Virginia Jackson spoke at the University of Toronto on “The Beginnings of Poetry.” As the organizers of this fascinating talk said, Professor Jackson is one of the most exciting and innovative people writing about poetry in any field today. Prof. Jackson is…