In Review: The Week of December 2nd

On the Blog

ALU Season’s Readings rolled on this week with 10 more giftable book picks for different kinds of lit lovers on your holiday gift list, including:Eats Christmas! (books for the gourmand): Rock Recipes Cookies (Breakwater Books) & Farm to Table (Blue Moon Publishers)Howlidays (books for the animal obsessed): The Accidental Veterinarian (ECW Press) & This Has Nothing to Do with You (Freehand Books)North Polaroid (books for the art aficionados): 111 West Coast Literary Portraits (Mother Tongue Publishing) & Place Into Being (At Bay Press)Hallah-at-ya (books for teens and YA devotees): The Company of Crows (Linda Leith Publishing) & Secrets in the Shadows (Ronsdale Press)Santa Claws (books for the supernatural enthusiast): Different Beasts (Goose Lane Editions) & Has the World Ended Yet? (Wolsak and Wynn Publishers)

Around the Web

~ The Apostrophe Protection Society is giving up its 18-year-long fight to protect the apostrophe from misuse because “ignorance and laziness have won.”~ German researchers, however, are not giving up on their mission to compile the most comprehensive Latin dictionary ever, since the 1890s.~ Because of course this exists, a linguist speculates on what Baby Yoda’s first words might be. 

via GIPHY

What Else We’re Reading

Staffer Laura Rock Gaughan is reading Adam Sol’s How a Poem Moves (ECW Press, 2019)

“In How a Poem Moves, Adam Sol proves to be a lively and generous companion for readers who want to like poetry but fear they are ‘doing it wrong.’ Each of the 35 contemporary poems presented is accompanied by a short conversational essay that breaks it down: imagery, tone, musicality, form, meaning, technique, tradition. Sol compares himself to an enthusiastic park ranger who shows visitors how to spot goldfinches in the wild. Others might liken him to a master mechanic reverse-engineering a sophisticated motor to discover what makes it run. I loved reading the poets in this book, and I loved experiencing how their poems move [me].”