You ought to read “Paper Radio”
Damian Rogers is a Toronto-based poet who was born and raised in the suburbs of Detroit. I’m normally not much of a poetry reader, but I recently got my hands on a copy of Paper Radio, the collection Rogers published in 2009, and I’m rather glad I did. Paper Radio is a collection of short […]
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You ought to read “The Bird Factory”
Earlier this year, I took a creative writing course at the School of Continuing Studies at U of T. It was a great experience, and a lot of the credit for that should go to the instructor, Toronto author David Layton. Although he’s the son of poet Irving Layton – and no relation to Jack […]
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You ought to read “Bomb the Suburbs”
This one is a bit of an underground classic. It’s a collection of stories, essays and cultural critiques by Billy Wimsatt, an author, activist and future political organizer from Chicago. You can preview it if you like, courtesy of Google Books. First published in 1994, the book and its subsequent promotional tour generated a cult […]
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You ought to read “It Gets Better”
By now, I’m sure you’ve heard about the It Gets Better Project, the LGBT-oriented anti-bullying campaign launched by progressive sex columnist Dan Savage and his husband Terry Miller. But have you read the book? I’m reading it at the moment, and although I’m not gay and I’m certainly no teenager, I have to admit that […]
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You Ought to Read “The Running Man”
It wouldn’t have been a weekend out in cottage country without an old novel, and this time around I decided to go with The Running Man. It’s one of the more notable books that Stephen King wrote as Richard Bachman, and it’s one of his better ventures into science fiction and social commentary. You may […]
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You ought to read “Beyond the Echo Chamber”
Progressive media veterans Jessica Clark and Tracy Van Slyke teamed up to chart the massive growth of progressive media outlets and networks in the United States between the 2004 election and the 2008 election. The result is Beyond the Echo Chamber, an engrossing and inspiring book. Using a wide range of case studies, and highlighting […]
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You ought to read “How to Cure a Fanatic”
I hadn’t heard of Israeli novelist, journalist and peace activist Amos Oz until I spotted a copy of How to Cure a Fanatic on the shelf at my local bookstore. In this brief but wryly compelling collection of short pieces, Oz confronts the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in terms that are basic but not superficial, and he […]
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You ought to read “I Am the Market”
As long as I’m writing about decent music on a weekly basis, I figure I ought to do the same for good books. Let’s kick it off today with I Am the Market, a book by Italian journalist Luca Rastello that I recently read and thoroughly enjoyed. Subtitled “How to Smuggle Cocaine by the Ton […]
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