Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Top 10: Literary Couples
From romantic love to canine-human friendship, we’re celebrating all kinds of love this week with our roundup of Top 10 literary couples.
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Love Week: Notes on Marriage from the Contributors of Love Me True
It’s the day after Valentine’s Day, and we’re ready for some Love Week REAL TALK: namely, a frank discussion about marriage from the contributors of Caitlin Press’ Love Me True: Writers Reflect on the Ins, Outs, Ups & Downs of Marriage. Check out the choice contributor lines editors Fiona Tinwei Lam and Jane Silcott picked for…
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Love in the Time of Reckoning
A few months ago, an older male friend of mine texted unexpectedly with a recommendation, or maybe more accurately, a request: I should make sure to include somewhere in the book I was writing that romance is a lie. I wish someone had told me that years ago, he wrote. The remark wasn’t totally out…
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Love Week: Reality Romance with Suzannah Showler’s Most Dramatic Ever
Love Week continues with an interview with Suzannah Showler, the latest ECW Press pop classics author of Most Dramatic Ever, about the most romantic show ever, The Bachelor. We ask her about her limo exit stylings – among other things – before reading an excerpt from the book.
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Love Week: Love, Home, and Work, and The Videofag Book
Welcome to LOVE WEEK, a celebration of love in all of its forms. We’re kicking off the week with a bittersweet excerpt from Jordan Tannahill and William Ellis’ The Videofag Book, which chronicles the four years of the then-couple’s art space/party venue/home. We also talk to the book’s publisher Book*hug, whose own couple- and house-run business…
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In Review: The Week of February 5th
The month of blah rages on, but there’s nothing blah about this week on the blog.
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First Fiction Friday: Dying Behaviour of Cats
Winner of the 2017 Ken Klonsky Novella Award, Marc Labriola’s debut Dying Behaviour of Cats (Quattro Books) opens on a reclusive man – Theo Galli – about to end his life, when a hurricane hits. After finding himself with a furry (and potentially bitey) roofmate – AKA a stranded leopard who escaped from the zoo –…
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If You Liked x, Read y: Parenting Your Parents Edition
What changed between the publications of Clem and Olivier Martini’s celebrated Bitter Medicine in 2010 and The Unravelling (both Freehand Books) in 2017? Their mother’s health: while she and Olivier managed to help each other’s respective mobility issues and schizophrenia in the past, Catherine Martini’s slip into dementia rocked the family’s precarious stability. Publisher of Freehand Kelsey Attard…
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Solace and affirmation: talking about rape with other women
When I walk into a jewelry store on a sunny spring morning in 2017, I’m curious and then excited. The store is new in my neighbourhood, and to my delight the owner is South African. I begin a conversation about her pieces, pleased to see that she has a workshop in the back where she…
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Chappy Hour: A Salty Raccoon + Cries from the Ark
A wide and wild cast of characters appear in Dan MacIsaac’s new collection, Cries from the Ark (Brick Books). In the poems I’ve selected, you’ll meet a bull moose, a fox, and several bears, including the Wiley Garbage Bear, aka the Trash Panda. In his honour, I’ve paired this chap with The Salty Raccoon, which…
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Where in Canada: Inspector Luc Vanier’s Montreal
While we associate city winters with things like holiday window displays and everyone forgetting how to drive at once, there’s a hidden network of crime and vulnerable people that still moves in the winter – one that’s cracked open for all to see in Peter Kirby’s The Dead of Winter (Linda Leith Publishing). Read on to find…
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In Review: The Week of January 29th
Start your February off right by staying out of the cold and in with our top reads of the week.
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First Fiction Friday: Railroad of Courage
Railroad of Courage (Ronsdale Press) is a gripping fictional story about the Underground Railroad for young readers. In it, a twelve-year-old girl convinces her family to risk it all to find freedom from a plantation in South Carolina.
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Quoted: Randall Maggs’ Night Work
It’s the 10th anniversary of the release of poet Randall Maggs’ Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems (Brick Books). Hockey and non-hockey, poetry and non-poetry fans have fallen for this collection about storied Leafs goalie Terry Sawchuk for the past decade, and we talked to Randall about his own “team effort” that went into the book, the influences…
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Test Kitchen: Food and Family
In her award-nominated food memoir Apron Strings (Goose Lane Editions), journalist Jan Wong serves up witty, thought-provoking observations around the food culture and customs of some of the world’s best food destinations. As epicurious ALU-ers, we were inspired to share some of our own favourite family memories involving food and feasting.
Got any book recommendations?