Gabriel Garcia Marquez, winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literaturehas died. The grandfather of magical realism who authored such breathtaking and mesmerizing works such as One Hundred Years of Solitude, and Love in the Time of Cholera passed away April 17th in Mexico City where he had been living for the past three decades. […]
People are human, and make mistakes. Often we say things we regret (or must soon appear to regret). If your outburst is simply muttered angrily, you might get away with it by relying on the ASSCAN… formula (my favourite variation of which is "Act Surprised, Show Concern, Admit Nothing, Deny Everything, Demand Proof"). However if […]
On this day in 1860 the earliest known sound recording was made by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville. What was first thought to be a girls voice singing Au Claire de la Lune in now believed to be a man's voice possibly even Scott's own. So what's the format? Obviously not CD or tape, not even phonograph or […]
Are you a member of Goodreads? If so how do you feel now that it has been acquired by Amazon? Reaction was mixed. When I found out I was quoted as saying "it kind of takes the fun out of it." Now I have just logged in for the first time since learning of it […]
A lot of people use RSS, but it's profile has largely been eclipsed by snazzier social media technology. The main idea behind RSS was to get updates from your favourite websites all in one place without having to go to each site separately. There are a number of ways to do this from browser add […]
Spike Lee has recently declined to go to Quentin Tarantino's latest film. One of the issues is clearly the frequent and debatably excessive use of a certain racial epithet. Of course none of this actually constitutes anything like censorship. What happened to Canadian author Laurence Hill's Book of Negroes last year is closer to the mark. A group in […]
Allegations of obscenity or immorality are more likely to be applied to content for Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals or Transgendered people. For example, the American Civil Liberties Union has felt the need to initiate a Don't Filter Me campaign against schools that unconstitutionally filter out internet content to students simply because the content is directed to […]
Many writers are delighted when their books are challenged. Margaret Laurence was not one of these. She was deeply shocked when schools in the Peterborough area challenged her novel The Diviners in 1976. Some of her distress may have had to do with the disdain of a number of letter writers in Canadian newspapers at the time, one […]
Freedom to Read Week (Feb 24th-March 2nd) is fast approaching. As everybody knows, there's nothing like noteriety to get people interested. So if you want a good book to read to mark the occasion, now's the time to start placing holds. By "good book" I mean of course one that is naughty enough to motivate […]
There has always been a tension between the idea of poetry as a literary form and an aural one. It clearly has it's roots in the latter, but is often considered as written work. According to Jon Stalworthy "What your eye sees on the page is the composer's verbal score, waiting for your voice to bring […]