I don’t like Mondays. I hate waking up to find out things went to shit over the weekend. So much wasted potential. Every week you hope, but every week it’s the same garbage. A strange new world out there every day, it seems, but especially on Mondays. Photos from Toronto this weekend show thousands of people crowding our old haunt of Trinity-Bellwoods park, and today the same scene is all over CNN with Americans flooding vacation hot spots as the country tries reopen (cue 2nd wave death train!) I don’t know why, but I was surprised about Toronto in a way I wasn’t about the USA. I often forget that Toronto is Canada’s most American city (yes, even over Calgary). I mean, they not only voted in a crackhead mayor, they then voted in his drug-dealer older brother as premier of the province. The real Toronto, for me, is no longer the city itself, but the people I glommed onto as a friend group within it. It’s not the place I remember anymore. It’s become a caricature of its own inferiority complex/wannabe hopeful about America. Sigh.
- Ellis Awards handed out, including to Michael Christie;
- Comics going mobile for the future;
- Instagram model/feminist is working on a book of essays;
- Essential services creative writing group;
- English landmarks that inspired Tolkien’s Middle Earth locations;
- I have read every Tolkien book out there, including the dictionaries, encyclopedia’s, the atlas (have read The Silmarillion three times), as well as having tried a raft of anti-depressants over the years, and I still had a hard time with this quiz (h/t LitHub): Tolkien name or an antidepressant?;
- Asian Heritage Month book suggestions from CBC;
- It’s time to talk about Isaac Asimov’s problematic history;
- Philip Roth fairs better on a deep dive into his private life;
- …and to round out the 3old white guys: let’s look at Larkin’s love life;
- Can’t get to the galleries? That’s what those coffee table books are for;
- Dalkey Lit Award shortlists;
Bookninja 