June 21, 2014

Acknowledgements Page

It’s true what they say: an individual doesn’t write a novel, a bus of noisy, farty, tired yuppies does. And on that bus were Justin Seely, Noleg Goat, Christopher Frederick Portsmouth, Jeh Johnson, and Anisa Ibrahim, all of them constant distractions; it’s amazing I got any work done at all. This book owes absolutely nothing to any of you. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the spiteful staff at the national library: Sandra Leon, Maureen Samuleh, Ban Ki Moon (no relation), and James Kee, you are all terrible librarians. You made the thirty-five minutes of research I undertook a real drab experience. I sincerely hope your pensions don’t pay out. To all the staff at Hatchet Job Press, what can I say? Each and every one of you has major, deep-seated psychological, physiological, and digestive problems. To my editor, Rebecca Samuel, your unkeen eye and penchant for adjectives has made this a terrible book and me a worse writer. To my pot dealer, Richard Bruno, I know you’ve been shorting me on those half-ounces. To my amphetamine dealer, Emma Joy, thanks for all the late-night lessons in continental philosophy that I neither asked to hear nor understood. To my […]
June 30, 2013

Books, Free Books

It’s graduation and moving season here in the Annex, which means people are culling their book collections. And, for those of us who cannot walk past even a soggy cardboard box if it contains the promise of a single book in it, this is a both a blessing and a curse (if it wasn’t for this strange compunction, how—for example—would I ever have come across Growing up Degrassi?). This late spring/early summer cornucopia means terrific finds, but also swelling bookshelves (of course, we could do our own slimming of the hordes, but who are we kidding?) A few weeks ago the greatest find thus far occurred in the foyer of the building I live in. In a stack of maybe thirty books, which I spent a good fifteen minutes carefully going through, I took upstairs, in a rush of sheepish, bookish joy:
February 21, 2013

What’s On My Night Table

Hello. As part of the Institute For Things to do With Books’ mandate to participate in things that have to do with books, here is my annual list of books that have piled up on my bedside table. Some of these books have been read through, some (the short story anthologies, certain poetry books) have been dipped into, others have got lost in the shuffle and are as of yet unread. As always, come spring, I’ll reshelve, and start the process all over again. Feel free to contribute your own night table geographies in the comments section. Books are listed from the top of the pile to the bottom Pile A: Happy New Year! And Other Stories by Sholom Aleichem (Translated by Curt Leviant) The Circle Game by Margaret Atwood (Poetry) So Much to Say: Dave Matthews Band 20 Years on the Road by Nikki Van Noy (perhaps the worst book I have ever read) The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol, Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (thank you BMV!) 50 Short Science Fiction Tales, Edited by Isaac Asimov and Groff Conklin An Oak Hunch by Phil Hall (Poetry) Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson (BMV again!) February by […]
September 11, 2012

Blurb’s Blurb

A Blurb For All Seasons After a perhaps-longer-than-intended hiatus, the Institute is back! And to celebrate our return, we’re thrilled to announce the much-anticipated release of Blurbs, our book-length collection of some of the most famous, most controversial, and most down-right brilliant blurbs throughout English literature! Apropos of the theme, here is, in all its blurby splendour, the blurb for Blurbs: As long as there’s been books, there’s been blurbs,* and now, for the first time, in this incredibly awe-tastic collection, these blurbs are available at your fingertips. Included in this raunchy, so-good-it’s-shocking-it’s-not-illegal-or-at-least-frowned-upon book are all the blurbs you’ve loved and cherished. Blurbs from your childhood, blurbs over which you’ve had your first love, blurbs that have grabbed you by the lapels and not let go. All your favourite blurb writers are represented: Stew Mac, Julie Plantain, the husband and wife duo of Lester and Tracy Groovy, and, of course, on the eve of his five thousandth blurb, the one and only, the inimitable Brew-ha-ha Barry. Blurbs is arranged into easy to use categories, such as: Poorly Written; Factually Inaccurate; So Hyperbolic it Hurts; and Downright Silly, with the subsection How Did This Ever Get Past the Publisher’s Desk?. So […]
April 25, 2012

Bookstores (On the Hunt)

Dispatch From The Institute For Things To Do With Books’ Field Agent For some months now I have been on the search. Not for buried treasure, not for the elixir of life, not for untapped reserves of energy, no, but for something that at times is all three: a book. It has been a slow journey. The book is The Rape of Europa, by Lynn H. Nicholas, and it is the comprehensive story of what happened to Europe’s art during the Second World War. I became aware of The Rape of Europa when I came across mention of it in an article I was reading: the book was cited for its description of the evacuation of the Louvre moments before the invasion of Paris by the Nazis. Imagine it: trucks loaded down with the treasures of France, convoying west out of the city in the pitch black, their headlights off to avoid detection, “The Raft of the Medusa,” that gigantic painting of people dying at sea, catching in the power lines. My attention was snagged, my cognitive faculties on fireworks mode: I needed this book. So I did what I always do: I went to my neighbourhood’s used and independent […]
March 15, 2012

Things to Do With Books #444: The Joy of Books

Resting an open book on your forehead. Resting an open book on your chest. Cracking in a new spine. Finishing a book you loved and minutes later starting a new one; finishing a book you loved and not reading anything for two weeks. Keeping a candy-cane coloured string on your wrist in case of bookmark-emergencies. Wondering over each dogeared page, each splatter of coffee, each scribbled inscription, name and date. Trying to unobtrusively catch the title of what the person across from you on the subway is reading (and, each time you do so, remembering that one time you held up your own book so a curious fellow passenger could get a clearer view of the title, and they responded with a look of the deepest offense, as if by acknowledging the fact that people are interested in what other people are reading you were maliciously breaking some sacred taboo). Reading a book of poetry in one sitting. Reading a single poem over and over again in multiple sittings. Memorizing a sentence and leaving it on the voice-mail of every single member of your book club. Hearing the name of a book in a grocery store and picturing its exact […]
December 16, 2011

Things To Do With Books #27

For this month’s entry we have a simple, yet fun exercise that can really spice up your book reading with minimal effort on your part. We here at The Institute For Things To Do With Books call it the self-induced deja vu. Here’s how it goes. Next time you find yourself in a book store – which, if you are anything like us, happens with frightening regularity, and often when least expected – go out into the fiction stacks and find a book that meets the following criteria: you have not read it; you have no immediate intentions to read it (which includes having it already on your shelf at home, having a hold on it at the library, or having dropped obvious hints around friends and family members as your birthday/gift-giving holidays approach); and, finally, you can see yourself reading said book somewhere down the line, say in two, three, or five years. Once you have found a book that satisfies these guidelines, open the book to a random page, somewhere after page 50 but not much farther than page 200. Now read a full paragraph from this page. There. That’s everything needed on your end. Close the book […]