My grandfather did his undergraduate degree at Mt. Allison University in Sackville N.B. After his first year, he was seriously short of cash and thought he could make some easy money selling books door-to-door.
Tag: Books
A Book-Publishing Venture from Dostoevsky
The protagonist, Raskolnikov, is an impoverished ex-student living in St. Petersburg. His chief supporter is fellow student, Razumihin, who earns a few roubles here and there translating European works. It is Razumihin who dreams of setting up his own publishing business.
Graffiti: Books
I love this little piece of graffiti I found near the intersection of Nassau St. & Spadina Ave. in Toronto. As graffiti, it’s not great. File this one under “it’s the thought that counts.”
Suicide Blonde by Darcey Steinke
In yesterday’s post on Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, I asked a question which I never answered: “And can we make anything more of it [the Tropic of Cancer] 75 years after its publication?” That’s a question about Miller’s legacy.
Reading Tropic of Cancer for the first time
The expat Yank living in Paris in the late 20’s and early 30’s. The oblique references to an American wife named Mona who has sent him off to Paris without a care for his sexual proclivities. The plotless meandering. The indiscriminate drinking and fucking. The largely useless attempts to write a novel.
The Light of Day, by Graham Swift
Graham Swift’s The Light of Day opens with all the promise of a standard detective potboiler. We meet an ex-cop private investigator named George Webb and Rita, his trusted assistant.
Making An Elephant, by Graham Swift
After reading Making An Elephant, I’m of the opinion that Graham Swift isn’t really interested in writing; he’s interested in people and writing is the pretext he uses to satisfy that interest.
Sean Stanley wins best foreign book trailer
The Moby Awards are the creature of the MobyLives book blog by the Hoboken-based Melville House Publishing. They celebrate the best (and worst) in a growing book-publishing trend — the book trailer. If movies can have them, then why can’t books?
The Certainty Dream
There’s a traditional view of how a poem relates to the world that has been with us for almost 2,500 years. This view is a reflection of an equally traditional view of how our world is organized. Although we’d like to describe ourselves as up-to-the-minute advanced scientific creatures, this ancient view is still with us in subtle ways.
Becoming Human by Jean Vanier
ean Vanier’s Becoming Human serves as an excellent companion piece to Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not A Gadget which I reviewed earlier this month. You may recall Lanier’s thesis: in creating software that facilitates online interaction, designers often contribute to alienating experiences because they fail to give prior thought to the question of what it means to be human.
Demystification in Roland Barthes Mythologies
While flying across Canada, I read Roland Barthes’ best-known book, Mythologies. As I waited in Toronto at Pearson International Airport, I read the translator’s note, the two prefaces, and his essay on wrestling. Somewhere over Lake Superior, I read about Roman haircuts in movies from the ’50’s.
You Are Not A Gadget, by Jaron Lanier
Technology can be frustrating. ou may remember reading a news item from July, 2009 about a 17-year-old Kindle user named Justin Gawronski who was reading George Orwell’s 1984 for a school assignment when the book disappeared from his device.
Mt. Allison to confer honourary doctorate on Heather Reisman
Mt. Allison University, one of Canada’s premiere undergraduate universities, has found itself at the centre of a controversy for its decision to confer an honourary doctorate on Heather Reisman.
Public Domain epub eBook Collections
As a convenience to my readers, I’ve lumped together some small collections from Gutenberg. Just click on the links to download relatively small zip files.
Critics call on Atwood to boycott Dan David Prize
Margaret Atwood and Amitav Ghosh were joint recipients of the 2010 Dan David Prize which includes a cash purse of $1,000,000.