The world financial crisis of 2008 has an almost unlimited number of commentators. Honestly, pretty much anyone who was breathing and older than a teenager in 2008 has an opinion on the subject. You might think Dambisa Moyo’s How The West Was Lost would be one of the most technical of the analyses, coming from an Oxford-trained economist. But instead.
Dry paper Nothing beats a book in autumn Missing Persons by Rob McLennan (Mercury Press) Autumn is a season that more than any other seems devoted to reading. The crispness of leaves reminds you of the firm dryness of paper, the smell of a book lingers sometimes in your memory like that of firewood. Fortunately,…
Updating the classics The undisputed master of science fiction, Ursula Le Guin, visits the Cap Ursula Le Guin’s latest work, Lavinia, isn’t a simple revision of Virgil’s Aeneid, an iteration of the story that corrects a perceived wrong “like what [Margaret] Atwood does with Penelope. She… feels that Penelope doesn’t get a fair chance, nor…
A long journey back Wayson Choy returns to the Ottawa Writers Festival It’s an ironic curiosity that the events that inspired Wayson Choy’s latest memoir, Not Yet, were initially caused by his troubles breathing, given the double meaning of the word “inspire.” In 2001, asthma and a heart condition conspired to almost kill Choy, in…
A terrifying future of Climate Wars Gwynne Dyer’s latest book takes a ruthless look at our coming world Reading Gwynne Dyer’s Climate Wars made me think of religious experience. As a boy I was terrified to my core at the realization of Hell: a world of unending, merciless suffering caused by my own actions in…
Ottawa International Writers Festival’s growing rep lands it a prize catch The simple and powerful idea that fuels good writing is that language is more than the uncomplicated vehicle by which information is delivered. Words act in concordance with each other to actually shape meaning, to give it structure. Words are formative things. They don’t…