Books

Writing non-fiction’s a bitch – a truth not universally acknowledged.

– Will Aitken in This Writing Death

Theatre

Ars Poetica



by Anna Fuerstenberg

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What an interestingly inviting read on this mind muddled morning. Thanks! Coffee, Please?

– comment by Parker

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Abby Paige

BOOKS

Under P for People

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A Complete Encyclopedia of Different Types of People, by Gabe Foreman, Coach House Books

by Abby Paige
20.06.2011

There is a subtle pleasure in pigeon-holing people. If there weren’t, we wouldn’t do it with such gusto. It appeals to our sense of order and perhaps even justice to believe that humanity could be classified by vocation, proclivity, or coolness.

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BOOKS

Getting the Axe

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Methodist Hatchet, Ken Babstock, House of Anansi

by Abby Paige
15.05.2011

According to the Dictionary of Newfoundland English, a bad dancer is said to have “Methodist feet” and a “two-edged (two-faced) axe” is called a Methodist hatchet. Apparently Methodists aren’t altogether popular on The Rock.

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BOOKS

Supersize Me

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All This Could Be Yours, by Joshua Trotter, Biblioasis

by Abby Paige
03.04.2011

But don’t let the dining room staff deter you. It’s what’s going on in the kitchen that will impress.

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BOOKS

Ode on a Dead Thing

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Song of the Taxidermist, by Aurian Haller, Goose Lane Editions

by Abby Paige
06.03.2011

Who is more attuned to the details of his art than the taxidermist? Life is not in the body’s overall fact but its odd postures and subtleties of expression, the animating powers of its inhabitant. Despite its Victorian creepiness, there is something naïve and optimistic about taxidermy: its sincere wish to interrupt inevitable decay, to [...]

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BOOKS

A Splintered Chorus of Truths

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The Obituary, by Gail Scott, Coach House Books

by Abby Paige
10.01.2011

If you have ever attempted to trace your own genealogy, you know it is not a simple matter of careful, cosy research. It is an active struggle against the forgettings, omissions, and concealments of previous generations. No matter how pristine the pedigree, every family has a few skeletons, packed away in cottony half-truths that over [...]

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BOOKS

Intimate Commerce

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The Stream Exposed with All its Stones: Collected Poems, by D.G. Jones, Signal Editions

by Abby Paige
07.11.2010

“What shall we make of Leviathan?” asked D.G. Jones in Butterfly on Rock, his 1970 volume of critical essays. In the book, Jones argued against a “garrisoned,” colonial impulse he saw at the centre of Canadian literature, which favoured the masculine over the feminine, the rational over the natural, the intellect over the body. “The [...]

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BOOKS

Isn’t It Bromantic

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Strange Bedfellows: The Private Lives of Words, by Howard Richler, Ronsdale Press

by Abby Paige
12.09.2010

The Oxford English Dictionary recently revealed the latest list of words newly granted access to its pages, including vuvuzela, staycation, and yes, bromance. It will be a while before your spellchecker recognizes these additions, but the OED’s editors’ periodic recognition of the vernacular, pinched from sources as different as climate science and Jersey Shore, is [...]

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