Important Shipping Notice: Due to the ongoing Canada Post strike, delivery times may be longer than usual. Where possible, we’ll use alternative shipping methods to help get your order to you sooner. We appreciate your patience and understanding as your order makes its way to you.

A note to US-based customers: All Lit Up is pausing print orders to the USA until further notice. Read more

Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

  • In Review: The Week of May 14th

    In Review: The Week of May 14th

    This week we learned the word “crossip,” rolled some short story dice, imagined what superheroes would read, and more.

  • First Fiction Friday: The Vetala

    First Fiction Friday: The Vetala

    In Phillip Ernest’s Sanskrit vampire novel The Vetala (Linda Leith Publishing), myth and reality square off when a Sanskrit scholar finds herself face-to-face with the undead depicted in the obscure text she’s translating.

  • Short Story Month: Crow Jazz by Linda Rogers

    Short Story Month: Crow Jazz by Linda Rogers

    We sit down with the effortlessly hilarious and impressively prolific Linda Rogers, whose latest, Crow Jazz (Mother Tongue Publishing), is her 29th book but first short story collection. We talk about short stories as letters, never abandoning your work (even if it just becomes work for one’s self), and read some of the story “Darling Boy”…

  • Chappy Hour: Blue Moon Cosmo + Ten-Headed Alien

    Chappy Hour: Blue Moon Cosmo + Ten-Headed Alien

    Pair David James Brock’s Ten-Headed Alien (Wolsak and Wynn), a sci-fi, prog-rock, political mash-up, with our out-of-this-world cocktail for a celestial treat.

  • Do-Lit-Yourself: Short Story Prompt Dice

    Do-Lit-Yourself: Short Story Prompt Dice

    Want to get in on the Short Story Month action, but feeling some writer’s block? Build our set of prompt dice (writer’s blocks?) and get to writing a short story of your own.

  • What Would the Avengers Read: A Superhero Book List

    What Would the Avengers Read: A Superhero Book List

    With this past weekend’s Toronto Comics and Arts Festival and the recent release of the Avengers: Infinity War, we got to thinking: what graphic novels would superheroes read? 

  • In Review: The Week of May 7

    In Review: The Week of May 7

    Our week consisted of Mother’s Day book-picking, Short Story Month interviewing, book-to-film casting, and plenty more!

  • Character Study: The Figgs

    Character Study: The Figgs

    Casting the movie version of Ali Bryan’s latest novel The Figgs (Freehand Books) began with a Twitter exchange: our pals at 49th Shelf said that the book “begs to be made into a movie.” Beg no more! With the help of Freehand publisher Kelsey Attard, we finished what Twitter started and cast up the dysfunctional, wonderful Figgs family.

  • Short Story Month: Downward This Dog by Sanjay Talreja

    Short Story Month: Downward This Dog by Sanjay Talreja

    The characters in Sanjay Talreja’s short story collection Downward This Dog (Mawenzi House) might be described as “yearners”: immigrants across Toronto and parts of India that yearn for protection, freedom, wealth, success, and more. We talk to Sanjay about his love for the short story form and the authors who inspire him in our interview, and read…

  • Under the Cover: Imprint

    Under the Cover: Imprint

    Claire Sicherman grew up reading Anne Frank and watching Schindler’s List, unaware of the impact of the Holocaust on her own family. In Imprint: A Memoir of Trauma in the Third Person (Caitlin Press), with a combination of history and personal revelation, she explores the intergenerational transmission of trauma and genetic imprinting. 

  • Read This, then That: Academia as a Horrorscape

    Read This, then That: Academia as a Horrorscape

    For University students fresh out of end-of-year exam season, we’re sure that the spectrum of banal-to-acute academia-related horror detailed in novels Black Star and Dr. Edith Vane and the Hares of Crawley Hall is a little too close for comfort right now. However, these novels are not to be missed: we undergo our own academic exercise of…

  • Mother’s Day: Staff Picks

    Mother’s Day: Staff Picks

    Mother’s Day is coming up this weekend and we’re gifting our moms books we know they’ll love. From teacher-moms to cottage-bound moms to busy moms, we’ve selected the perfect books for the lit-loving women in our lives.

  • In Review: The Week of April 30

    In Review: The Week of April 30

    This week was an awardsapalooza with shortlist announcements of the 2018 Amazon First Novel Award, the League of Canadian Poets Awards, the 2018 Golden Crown Literary Awards, and the 2018 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize. We also toasted to NPM, read some short fiction for Short Story Month, and admired some visual poetry. 

  • First Fiction Friday: Army of the Brave and Accidental

    First Fiction Friday: Army of the Brave and Accidental

    After a big launch at Toronto’s Another Story Bookshop last night, we’re celebrating the debut novel from essayist, editor, and critic Alex Boyd, Army of the Brave and Accidental (Nightwood Editions). Learn how this book stacks Toronto against other world cities, uses mythology to link together a plot, and why it might be Boyd’s only novel.

  • Short Story Month: Things Don’t Break by Richard Rosenbaum

    Short Story Month: Things Don’t Break by Richard Rosenbaum

    In his debut collection Things Don’t Break (Tightrope Books) Richard Rosenbaum takes readers on a short-story ride with tales about robots, videogames, and evil chickens. We chatted with Richard to get the scoop on short fiction as a form and the associated “dopamine-burst reward response” that comes from completing a story, his favourite writers, and…

Got any book recommendations?

Get In Touch