The McConnell Buildings on McGill University’s and Concordia University’s downtown campuses appear inconspicuous, their exteriors giving no sign of what dwells within. This proves true with the one at McGill (did you know there’s a bar in the basement?), but was especially apparent at Concordia’s McConnell Building on Nov. 3[Read More…]
Books
The luck of receiving Voltaire’s archive
Elegant script, frayed edges, the occasional hole, and sketches of the man himself. Letters signed Voltaire, V, or—occasionally—Volt. Université de Sherbrooke professor Peter Lambert-David Southam has gifted McGill a stunning manuscript collection of 290 documents including handwritten letters, correspondences, and fragments of Voltaire’s work. Curated by Ann-Marie Holland in collaboration[Read More…]
‘Roaming’ dives into self-discovery on an enchanting trip to New York
NEW YORK CITY, 2009—Two Asian Canadian best friends, Dani and Zoe, have been planning this trip for ages. They seize the opportunity during their first winter break in university. Dani studies Fine Arts at Concordia; Zoe studies Life Sciences at Queen’s (she wants to study Neuroscience, but that’s just a[Read More…]
What we liked this reading break
With midterm season in full swing, this past fall reading week served as a much-needed reprieve from the academic grind—and the perfect chance to relax with a good book, movie, or album. From stellar British hip hop albums to the Fat Bears gracing your Twitter timelines and everything in between,[Read More…]
The haunting myth of the celebrity novel
The practice of ghostwriting has been around for centuries—even before the official term’s coining. Back when the primary mode of communication was oral storytelling, people used ghostwriting to scribe Bible passages and transfer religious schools of thought onto paper. Today, the most common cultural association with ghostwriting involves celebrity memoirs,[Read More…]
Don Gillmor’s ‘Breaking & Entering’ bears the unbearable mid-life crisis
The body reacts to extreme heat much like a city—its systems so overburdened, its relationships so strangely altered, that it is forced to cope in unlikely ways. In Don Gillmor’s fourth novel, Breaking and Entering, a Toronto heatwave is the crucible under whose pressures the illusions of normal life begin[Read More…]
Roll Out the ‘Rouge’ Carpet: Mona Awad’s Newest Gothic Fairytale is Here
Conversations buzzing, drinks flowing, and books in hand, eager readers livened the Mile End’s beloved bar and venue La Sotterranea on Wednesday, Sept. 12. Here to celebrate the launch of her new novel Rouge, Mona Awad stepped out onto the stage alongside interviewer Heather O’ Neill. Awad’s sparkling, Dorothy-esque red[Read More…]
‘All Things Move’ restores a timeless work of art
Jeannie Marshall lived in Rome for 12 years before setting foot inside the Sistine Chapel. “I could hardly bear the thought of standing amongst a crowd only to look at something that seemed simultaneously too complex to be understood just by looking at it and too worn out from overexposure,”[Read More…]
‘Strange Bewildering Time’ is a time capsule of forgotten history
Forty years ago, author and poet Mark Abley went on a three-month journey that changed his outlook on life. Accompanied by his friend Clare, the two travelled through several countries during the last year of the Hippie trail, at a time when it seemed that travel within Asia was cheap,[Read More…]
“There’s Nothing More Queer than Nature”: A Q&A with Ann-Marie MacDonald
Spoilers ahead for Fayne Award-winning playwright, novelist, actress, and broadcaster Ann-Marie MacDonald has written her “youngest and most joyful” novel to date. Fayne is set in 19th-century Britain and yet entirely modern in feel. The book is a sprawling, ornately detailed, and genre-defying epic that follows the precocious Charlotte Bell[Read More…]
