Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Chappy Hour: Red Wine Hot Chocolate + Belly Full of Rocks
Q. What does a chilly Friday in make? A. An evening in, with this Red Wine Hot Chocolate cocktail and Tyler B. Perry’s poetry collection A Belly Full of Rocks (Oolichan Books), a reimagining of popular fairy tales that may be dark, but far from Grimm.
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Black Voices: Kaie Kellough
As his novel Accordéon (ARP Books) deals with a group of disaffected Quebecers in the wake of a monopolistic Ministry of Culture, so too does Kaie Kellough identify with “characters written into the margins, characters whose voices are suppressed, characters who are stereotyped and otherwise minimized.” He answers our Black History Month authors’ questionnaire, below.
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If You Liked x, Read y: Flaubert to Smart to Delvaux
For those looking for a Valentine’s revenge, look no further than Martine Delvaux’s prose-poem/novel The Last Bullet is for You (translated for Linda Leith Publishing by David Homel), the contemporary reckoning of all of its influences: Gustave Flaubert’s classic modern novel Madame Bovary and, “like Madame Bovary blasted by lightning,” Elizabeth Smart’s By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept.
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Beautiful Books: Scree
Publisher Talonbooks has set on a course of releasing three collections of celebrated Canadian poets’ early works, in beautiful editions, no less. The second such collection, Scree, brings together the earlier and hard-to-find works of former Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate Fred Wah, and designer Leslie Smith sets them masterfully amid pictograms and facsimiles of some of Wah’s…
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This Week in Lit Events: February 6-12th
This week in eastern Canada lit events: reading series in Toronto and Montreal, and an evening of readings and music in St. John’s.Are you hosting an event featuring an author whose titles are available on All Lit Up? Send the event details, including author, book, date, time, and address to hello@alllitup.ca to be included in our listings.
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In Review: The Week of January 30th
We found a lot of reasons to cry this week: over Emily Saso’s brilliant essay about her writing and her relationship with her father, over a certain dog-themed novel that made it onto the 2017 CBC Canada Reads docket, and over the deplorable condition of the current President’s library. Grab some kleenex and read on.
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First Fiction Friday: The Making of St. Jerome
Inspired by a true story, playwright Marie Beath Badian’s The Making of St. Jerome (Playwrights Canada Press) goes deep into the aftermath of a teenager’s untimely death and the media’s role on such tragedies. This is a story of injustice, survivor’s guilt, and a brotherly relationship that asks tough, but poignant questions.
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Poetry in Motion: Totem Poles and Railroads
With four poetry collection under her belt, Janet Rogers gives us a fifth, Totem Poles and Railroads (ARP Books), a well-versed reflection on the relationship between Indigenous nations and corporate Canada. Janet offers intimate, thought-provoking poems we can really get on board with. Learn more about this collection, and listen to Janet read “Where Are…
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Character Study: Waiting for the Cyclone
Leesa Dean’s Waiting for the Cyclone (Brindle & Glass) takes you on a ride through thirteen stories featuring strong female leads who deviate from the status quo. One of the collection’s edgier stories is “Tiebreaker” in which we find Valery, a fearless hitchhiker in the passenger seat of a stranger’s car. See who would play some…
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In the name of my father: My dad didn’t like my novel, but not for the reasons I’d projected.
The room was free. It was my first book launch for my first book, so free was important. The room smelled like pee and the floors were sticky. The taps in the bathroom didn’t respond to a wave; they were the manual kind that spread E. coli, Ebola, plague. You get what you pay for.…
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This Week in Lit Events: January 30th-February 5th
Lots this week, including another leg of the Ask & Answer tour and a book launch for a collection of Indigenous spec fiction (!).Are you hosting an event featuring an author whose titles are available on All Lit Up? Send the event details, including author, book, date, time, and address to hello@alllitup.ca to be included in our…
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In Review: The Week of January 23rd
We collectively felt the weight of winter lift off us this week, as the sun shone longer and brighter and people pumped their fists yelling “we made it over the hump!” Okay that last part probably didn’t happen, but that’s what it felt like. This week also brought the end of #aluneverforget and the rise…
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Forget-Me-Not: Endangered Hydrocarbons
The 21st century is marked by our relationship to and dependence on oil. Lesley Battler’s Endangered Hydrocarbons (BookThug) is fuelled by just that as it extracts from texts generated by an oil company, and splices together with language found in video games and magazines to bring us a capitalist critique. Publisher Jay MillAr has the…
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Forget-Me-Not: Great Expectations
In a short few years before a sea of blue met every home Toronto Blue Jays game, you couldn’t pay most people to head to the ballpark. What changed? Sportswriters Shi Davidi and John Lott nail the tipping point for the Toronto Blue Jays – their 2013 season – in ECW Press book Great Expectations: The…
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Forget-Me-Not: The Land We Are
An inclusive collection of essays and art, The Land We Are (Arbeiter Ring Publishing) covers a lot of ground as it digs into the current era of reconciliation in Canada to better twig its roots and ends. The book gathers artists and academics to give us a better sense of Indigenous-settler relations and sparks questions…
Got any book recommendations?