The Trouble with Brunch

By (author): Shawn Micallef

One of The Globe and Mail’s Globe 100: Best Books of 2014

Every weekend, in cities around the world, bleary-eyed diners wait in line to be served overpriced, increasingly outré food by hungover waitstaff. For some, the ritual we call brunch is a beloved pastime; for others, a bedeviling waste of time. But what does its popularity say about shifting attitudes towards social status and leisure? In some ways, brunch andother forms of conspicuous consumption have blinded us to ever-more-precarious employment conditions. For award-winning writer and urbanist Shawn Micallef, brunch is a way to look more closely at the nature of work itself and a catalyst for solidarity among the so-called creative class.

Drawing on theories from Thorstein Veblen to Richard Florida, Micallef traces his own journey from the rust belt to a cosmopolitan city where the evolving middle class he joined was obliviousto its own instability and insularity.

The Trouble with Brunch is a provocative analysis of foodie obsession and status anxiety, but it’s also a call to reset our class consciousness. The real trouble with brunch isn’t so much bad service and outsized portions of bacon, it’s that brunch could be so much more. 

‘At the crux of it, Micallef’s issue with brunch is a lack of self-awareness, and his book is essentially a call to arms to consider the implications of one’s actions, even for something as innocuous as meeting friends for eggs and mimosas.’

– Bookslut

Praise for Shawn Micallef:

‘As Toronto grows into a more mature, more compelling city, a new group of non-academic, street-smart urbanists has emerged to appreciate it – with-it young writers, architects and men and women about town who love big cities and see things in Toronto that most of usmiss. Shawn Micallef is one of the sharpest of this sharp-eyed breed.’

– Globe and Mail

‘A smart and intimate guide to the city that makes you feel like an insider from start to finish.’

– Douglas Coupland [on Stroll]

AUTHOR

Shawn Micallef

Shawn Micallef is the author of Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto and the co?-editor of Spacing magazine. He teaches at the University of Toronto and the Ontario College of Art and Design and was a 2011-?12 Journalism Fellow at Massey College. He writes about cities, culture, architecture, art and politics.


Awards

There are no awards found for this book.
Excerpts & Samples ×
There are no other resources for this book.

Reader Reviews

Details

Dimensions:

112 Pages
7.5in * 4.5in * .3in
210gr

Published:

July 29, 2014

Publisher:

Coach House Books

ISBN:

9781552452851

Book Subjects:

SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / General

Language:

eng

No author posts found.

Related Blog Posts

There are no posts with this book.

Other books by Shawn Micallef

Stroll

By (author): Shawn Micallef

Illustrated by: Marlena Zuber