Rescued from the scrapheap
THE LIFE & ART OF FRANK MOLNAR, JACK HARDMAN, LEROY JENSEN
By Eve Lazarus, Claudia Cornwall, Wendy Newbold Patterson
Mother Tongue Publishing
146 pp., $34.95
Review by Brian Brennan
Frank Molnar, Jack Hardman, and LeRoy Jensen were three dedicated and unfashionably tradition-based Vancouver artists of the 1960s who today are largely forgotten. Because they operated outside the confines of the [...]
Part II: On being disappeared by The National Post
By Frank Moher
In our last episode, I said I’d tell you what I found out about why my review of What the Furies Bring disappeared from The National Post website a day after being put up. My little investigation provides a tonic insight into what happens when journalists find themselves on the receiving end of [...]
On being disappeared by The National Post
By Frank Moher
I knew when I submitted my last book review to The National Post that it might not be published. What I didn’t expect was that the Post would publish it, and then unpublish it.
The review was of a book of essays, What the Furies Bring, by Canadian poet Kenneth Sherman. Doesn’t sound like [...]
The Write Huff
By Rachel Krueger
An infinite number of bloggers on an infinite number of netbooks blathering for a handful of years have produced an entirely new face for marketing. Whereas widely-spread opinions could once only be held by those with credentials, now anyone with dial-up can wax judgmental about any old thing. And it’s driving some people [...]
Death on the homefront
THE DAY THE FALLS STOOD STILL
By Cathy Marie Buchanan
Harper Collins
307 pages, $22.99
Review by Frank Moher
Halfway through The Day the Falls Stood Still, a first novel by Toronto author Cathy Marie Buchanan, I thought it might be a worthy companion to Timothy Findley’s World War I novel, The Wars — a sort of distaff variation on [...]
Mmm. Bacon.
FISHING FOR BACON
By Michael Davie
NeWest Press
234 pages, $22.95
Review by Frank Moher
Coming-of-age novels are a lot like podcasts: there are too many of them, everyone thinks they can make one, and not everyone is right. They’re also like Twitter messages, predicated as they are on the assumption that just because an experience is universal — bad [...]
The Terrifying Tale of Textbook Tammy
By Eric Pettifor
I was chatting with a friend about the high cost of textbooks, and he recalled a young woman of his acquaintance from his university days who made some extra cash by selling photocopies of textbooks. I didn’t ask how she did this. Did she hang around on campus wearing a big [...]
What would Jesus do (if he were on a website and it had ads)?
By Eric Pettifor
J.D. Frazer’s book Money for Content and Your Clicks for Free is more interesting for the insight it provides into the business side of the online comic strip User Friendly than as a putative how-to book. (Frazer has written User Friendly under the pen name Illiad since 1997.) As a how-to book, its [...]
Go wild
By Rachel Krueger
An interview with my Current-Self re: Where the Wild Things Are (the film), conducted by my Previous-Self (who had not yet seen it).
Previous-Self: I am nervous about this movie. I carry my generation’s obligatory love of the book, and the trailer looks terrible. Speak to my nervousness!
Current-Self: Calm [...]
Atwood at her dystopic best
YEAR OF THE FLOOD
By Margaret Atwood
McClelland & Stewart
448 pp., $32.99
Review by Rachel Krueger
Margaret Atwood is at her haranguing best when she’s whipping up appalling futures for us all. She’s had several career missteps when her agenda has written cheques that her skills can’t cash, but The Year of the Flood recovers her dormant core [...]