It's Oscar season! Academy Awards were handed out on Sunday February 28th. Meanwhile, far from the glamour of sunny Hollywood, a lowly librarian has been agonizing over her list of 2015 film books while sleet pelts her windows in chilly Toronto. This year, there were so many contenders for best film book of 2015, that […]
When it comes to reading, I’m in no hurry. I love that new book smell as much as the next guy, but I can wait. The book I’m happily immersed in now was published 164 years ago — I’m sailing aboard the Pequod, keeping company with mad Captain Ahab, on his mission of vengeance to […]
Years ago I resolved to make no more New Year’s Resolutions. They’re impossible to keep, so what’s the point in setting yourself up for failure year after discouraging year? My resolution to make no more resolutions is the only New Year’s resolution I’ve ever kept. Until now. So many people participate in this yearly self-defeating […]
And so it begins. Ceaseless Christmas music in the stores. Aggressively cheerful sales people circle displays like piranhas. On my first Christmas shopping expedition this year, three different sales people in the same store tried to sell me the store card for ten bucks. Me: no…no…NO! The last sales pitch was so irritatingly relentless yet perky that Ebenezer […]
Change is in the air, Torontonians! A new Prime Minister has been sworn in, and Toronto’s current Poet Laureate will soon pass the torch to…wait, hold that drum roll. Before I introduce our new Poet Laureate, take my super fun poet laureate quiz! Who was Toronto’s first poet laureate (from 2001-2004). Clue: He made a […]
Please join us at North York Central Library on Thursday October 15 at 7:00 pm to explore a topic that has fascinated generations – the destruction of the city of Pompeii by volcanic eruption in 79 AD. Paul Denis, Assistant Curator (Greek, Etruscan, Roman & Byzantine) at the Royal Ontario Museum, will take us back almost 2000 […]
Being all thumbs, I admire anyone who can make stuff — any stuff — I hold anyone who has good hand-eye coordination skills in the highest regard. But browsing through some of the knitting books in the library made me wonder about you knitters. Some of you are knitting some pretty weird stuff. Freaky, kinky […]
Is there life beyond earth? Physicist Stephen Hawking believes there is no greater question. Hawking and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner have forged an alliance of brains and bucks to search for extraterrestrial life. Milner is giving $100 million to fund the search for creatures from outer space. The Breakthrough Initiatives project will use powerful radio […]
This image is in the public domainThere are songs that demand we crank up the volume when they come on the radio. There are songs that make you drop whatever you’re doing, songs you give yourself up to completely. Bob Dylan’s Like a rolling stone is one of those songs. You can’t resist singing along, […]
When students ask me for a copy of Harper Lee’s To kill a mockingbird, I like to walk them to the shelf where the author’s one and only book lives. It gives me a chance to say, “Did you know that Harper Lee only published one book in her whole career?” If they look surprised or […]