Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Forget-Me-Not: A Sudden Sun
“We are great preservers of both history and legend in Newfoundland and Labrador” = truer words ne’er spoken, and we’re thrilled to have one such fantastic preservation for today’s Forget-Me-Not. The historical novel A Sudden Sun by Trudy Morgan-Cole (Breakwater Books) follows a mother and daughter in Newfoundland first immediately after 1892’s Great Fire, then at…
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Forget-Me-Not: Great Fortune Dream
Gold wasn’t the only thing rushing Chinese citizens into Canada in 1858. In the aftermath of the Opium Wars, Chinese people fled to British Columbia to escape political unrest and poverty in their homeland. Great Fortune Dream: The Struggles and Triumphs of Chinese Settlers in Canada, 1858 – 1966by Ding Guo & David Chuenyan Lai (Caitlin…
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Forget-Me-Not: The Seven Oaks Reader
The 1816 Battle of Seven Oaks proved a clash of all things going on in pre-Confederation Canada – namely Indigenous land-rights versus settler claims and corporate greed (in the form of the Hudson’s Bay Company versus the Northwest Company) – and would set the groundwork for the Métis quest for self-determination. Myrna Kostash has compiled…
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This Week in Lit Events: January 9-15th
This Week in Lit Events is back for 2017! We’ve only got one event this week…but we’re easing ourselves into it, you know?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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Forget-Me-Not: If This Is Freedom
Our first Forget-Me-Not takes us into the lives of Birchtowners in Gloria Ann Wesley’s If This Is Freedom (Roseway Publishing), a novel about Loyalist settlers in Nova Scotia. We get a glimpse of their struggles for gainful employment through the story of a young woman in a ruthless situation who takes a misstep with powerful consequences.
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Forget-Me-Not: Bringing Canadian History’s Footnotes to the Fore
To celebrate Canada150, All Lit Up is kicking off our great nation’s upcoming birthday in literary style. Over the next three weeks, we’re turning the page on the most celebrated historical moments and highlighting the footnotes for a change. Take a trip down literary lane with us as we share books on aspects of Canadian…
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In Review: The Week of January 3rd
After a holiday hiatus, In Review is back to give you the Coles Notes on literary happenings around the web and in our own backyard. Scroll on for our bookish news and recommendations.
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First Fiction Fridays: The Money Shot
Award-winning writer and debut novelist Glenn Deir lends his 30 years of broadcasting experience to satirical fiction The Money Shot (Breakwater Books), a story of an arrogant and morally dubious broadcaster who might finally be getting what’s coming to him.
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Chappy Hour: The Bruléed Gimlet + Lady Crawford
In her second collection of poetry, Lady Crawford (Palimpsest Press), Julie Cameron Gray discusses women in high-society marriages, and the heartbreaking ramifications of a life spent in parties. Our mixologist Tan mixes the “burn” of marital loneliness with a bruléed citrus gin drink, and pairs it with “The Legend of Zelda,” a poem mixing the woes…
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2017 New Year’s Resolutions
Last year we resolved to expand our reading of new literary voices and while we’ll continue that this year, we’re making more reading resolutions in 2017. Find out below what each member of team ALU is resolving this year, and which books we missed in 2016 that we’re putting straight on top of our 2017…
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Cover Collage: Mellow Yellow
If the post-holiday funk has hit you hard, and the days are filled with fifty shades of blah, our scientific opinion is to throw some bright yellow shade at it starting with these beautiful book covers.
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Unwrap ALU Day Ten: True Literary Lovers
Phew! Nine days and 18 hyper-specific book recommendations later, #unwrapALU is ready to end its final day with two more dynamite picks. This time we’re going to the islands: first to a book mecca in Mont-Saint-Michel with Rhonda Mullins’s English translation of The Island of Books by Dominique Fortier (Coach House Books), then to mountains-galore in…
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Unwrap ALU Day Nine: Settling Down
You’ve been following along all this time, so the day nine edition of #unwrapALU is all about deserving to kick your feet up after a life well-lived. One such life-liver is a circumnavigator who decides to cease circumnavigating, and befriends a fox while living in the woods in David Doucette’s A Hard Old Love Amongst…
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Unwrap ALU Day Eight: Artists Wanted
Today’s #unwrapALU recommendations get real deep with the historical and cultural struggles in Newfoundland and Labrador in Craig Francis Power’s The.Hope. (Pedlar Press) to constructed self-identity and the thin line between art and life in Tom Smart’s Palookaville: Seth and the Art of Graphic Autobiography (Porcupine’s Quill).
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Unwrap ALU Day Seven: British Invasion
Today’s #unwrapALU picks are Canadian takes on merrye olde Englande: the stagehands of London’s New Albion theatre (and all of their drama-related drama) in Dwayne Brenna’s New Albion (Coteau Books), and the Austen-worthy regency novel Mary Green, by Melanie Kerr (Stonehouse Publishing).
Got any book recommendations?