Shelf Life: August 2013
Brief snippets of opinion and a too-long list. This month’s themes? Sex and writing, apparently.
ecw press
Shelf Life: April 2013
April was Poetry Month, and I did get in some poetry, but also quiet a few graphic novels. 42. The Metaphysician in the Dark, by Charles Simic (University of Michigan Press, 2003) 43. Far to Go, by Alison Pick (House of Anansi, 2010) 44. In Reliquary, by Daryl Hine (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2013) 45. Are …
Literary bars, hedgehogs, horses, dolphins, and William Shatner
Congratulations to Tamas Dobozy who won the Writers’ Trust prize for fiction for Siege 13, and to Alex Pugsley, who won the Journey Prize for “Crisis on Earth X,” published in The Dalhousie Review. Chad Pelley has more on the winners on Salty Ink, and Lynn Coady offer’s a juror’s perspective on Open Book Ontario. …
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Shelf Life: May 2012
A varied month. 50. Twenty-Seventh City, by Jonathan Franzen (Picador , 1988, 2001) To backtrack, I really liked The Corrections, and thought The Discomfort Zone was pretty good, but I felt like I kept waiting for Twenty-Seventh City to make sense. At its most bare, it’s the story of a conspiracy by a group of people …
Shelf Life: April 2012
April seemed to be a month for poetry and reading books for Broken Pencil reviews. 36. Attack of the Copula Spiders, by Douglas Glover (Biblioasis, 2012) The subtitle proclaims this a collection of essays about writing, and while the first two may be construed as such, the remaining essays are primarily concerned with reading. It’s …
Shelf Life: February 2012
This month I tackled most of the Canada Reads short list in reverse order of elimination. Though I still haven’t yet read Something Fierce. 14. Kenk, by Richard Poplak (Pop Sandbox, 2010) The graphic biography of Toronto’s Igor Kenk, told through grainy punk-style photocopied stills excerpted from filmed interviews. Poplak reveals a surprisingly sympathetic portrait …