10/03/03:

And the Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature is...
Only the world's best writer working in English. That's who. (discuss)

Well, Maybe it just Needs a Make-Over, a New Name like Deathesis or Destructoposit or Anahilatheory ... or ... Something
Is 'the essay' a dead form? (discuss)

Bitch, Bitch, Bitch!
The slow, possible rebirth of the feminist bookstore. On Bitch. (discuss)

And Here Come the Boots...
Madonna gets what's coming to her. (discuss)

Buffy (TVS) and Lawrence (D.H.), Blood Relatives
This may be stretching it. (discuss)

Was Tagore a Bourgeois Poet?
"No," says Buddha. (discuss)

Whereas Bowering Gets a Can of Maple Syrup and a Side of Elk
Andrew Motion, poet/boozehound. (discuss)

10/06/03:

It Seems Some Americans Can Turn Anything into a Violent Rumble
Apparently the real value of the NYT bestseller lists (login: bookninja, password: waaaa) is in the bloodshed. (discuss)

Bellow's Early Novels
And with Bellow, early means Eeeaarrrlllyyyy... Augie March is 50 years old this year. Saul, much older. (discuss)

Indexer, Second Only to Bibliographer in the Race for Last Place with the Opposite Sex
Copy Editor is in at a close third, Pete. (discuss)

Poetry Readings: Putting the Fun Back in ... the Box
Tom Henihan sounds off on what kind of readings should be allowed. (discuss)

File This Under: What Ever Happened To...? 
John O'Hara - Curmudgeon, Writer. (discuss)

When Do You Think He First Titled This Millennium People?
My bet is sometime in the late 90's. (discuss)

Ever Been Plagued with the Question, What are They Reading in Houston Right Now...?
Well, here's to your itch being scratched. (discuss)

Should I Even Post an Article that Begins with "Yeats was a great poet..."?
Probably not. (discuss)

Coetzee on Gordimer
That's not quite what I was trying to say, but... (Hey, does anyone want to start a petition to force the New York Review of Books to change it's name to the "New York Review of American Foreign Policy?") (discuss)

I, For One, Know I'll Be Able to Condense My Life into One Evening When I Read at Skydome... "One Day I Was in Bradford, ON and Then I Left and Got a Life. Some of My Friends Didn't Make It."
Maya Angelou finds it difficult to get it all in. (discuss)

Austere and Effete?
Albert Goldbarth profiled. (Is it just me or does the headline make no sense?) (discuss)

10/07/03:

I Won't Say I Told You So, but ... Woop! Woop! All Hands Prepare to Abandon Ship!
The Walrus editor starts things off in New York on the right ... no wrong ... no left, no ... um ... foot, in mouth ... um ... something. Gimme another drink. There are just certain things you can't buy, and class is one of them. (P.S. I told you so.) (discuss)

Use Me, Baby
Used books are big business. (discuss)

If It's Not Scottish...
The state of independent presses in Scotland. (discuss)

More on Moore's Mores 
My lovely, boorish fat guy. (discuss)

They Really Like Football There...
Those wacky English are at it again. (discuss)

The First Nail in the Coffin of Your Career
This strikes me as the equivalent of Walt Disney releasing a line of inspirational poetry. (discuss)

10/08/03:

A Howl and Whine, I'm After You... Sweet Merciful Crap!
Simon LeBon has a book club. Yes, take a minute to rub your eyes in disbelief ... again ... it's still true. (discuss)

No One Can Tell You What the Rock Is... You Have to See It for Yourself...
Apparently if you take the blue pill you freeze to death on a windswept shore... The red pill tastes like brandy! (discuss)

10,000 New Words? My Jaw Hurts!
Be glad we aren't German or you would have Backtroublegrantingdict- ionarythickness to teach your preschooler. (discuss)

When the Interviewer is as Good as a Soulless Machine and the Poet is Still Kind of Dreamy...
Olena Kalytiak Davis makes the best of a crappy interview. (discuss)

A Beat's-eye View of ... Other Dirty Beats 
Ginsberg is still producing, and more than just methane! (discuss)

The End is Nigh
This article has an oddly truncated feel, and kind of seems out of nowhere, but it does deal with a very important book. Plus, I like the word "nigh" and wanted to use it. (discuss) 

10/09/03:

The Walrus: An Empty Vessel
"46-storey, 7.8-density, steel-girdered, mirror-windowed lack of wit, mirth, imagination and editorial sense." (discuss)

You Know, I Miss Stuff Like This is Because as a "Newspaper," eye is So Terribly Unreliable and Trashy that I Usually Skip Everything but Sasha's Column...
That said, more on Leah. By Sasha. (discuss)

45% of Americans Think the Media is Too Liberal...
And the other 67% just think them willfully stupid. (discuss) 

Captain's Blog...
The Internet, your mainline to success as a writer, and your window to getting canned! (discuss)

A Brief History of the Soft Skull (nb: not about hangovers)
Once upon a time there was a crooked book cooker... (discuss)

Now You Can Read Along with the World's Hippies!
Forget bathing! Now is the time to read! (discuss)

Compared to Some of the Other Poetry I've Stumbled Across on the Web, This is Pretty Damn Good...!
George Boring is so dreamy... (discuss)

10/10/03:

Preying on the Weak and Infirm
What's going on??? There's trouble a-brewing in Banff, where we store our artists and ski bunnies in hot tubs and cryogenic beer fridges. And this time it doesn't involve Susan Musgrave or Stephen Reid...! (thanks to tipster and regular reader M. Bryson) (discuss)

More Action Figures
Nancy Pearl rules the libraries of Seattle (login: bookninja, password: waaaa) (discuss)

Colour Me Badd Must Be Rolling in Their Mass Grave
"Sex up" makes the Oxford. Damn you Tony Blair. (discuss)

Chewing the Blubber, Frothing at the Gold-plated Tusks
Eye magazine's last four or five readers all apparently felt it necessary to defend five million dollar magazine The Walrus. (The funniest part is when the doily-fodder-LRC publisher writes in to complain that his mag got unfairly stepped on in the fracas - but he comes off like that one kid in the playground who's always going on about how his mother says he's the handsomest guy in school...) (discuss) 

One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight! Sclemeel! Schlemazel! Hasenfeffer Incorporated.
Lorine Niedecker, old Milwaukee poet. (discuss)

Expat Lawson Wins Amazon/BiC Award
Funny comment not available. (discuss)

How to Make Billy Collins Your Enemy in One Simple Step ... 
Best him at his own game. Poetry. (discuss)

Do You Have a Highly-Literate Tween, or Tween-in-Waiting?
The you gotta see this page, Bookworm. (discuss)

10/14/03:

Interview with the Vampire Guy Who Wrote that Book, You Know, the One with the Magician and the Scorpion Tattoo... Or Something Like That...
Neil Gaiman nears the end of his patience. (discuss)

Juicy Bit On ConMan Booker Contestant
DBC Pierre reveals a somewhat chequered past. Well, not somewhat so much as totally chessboard. (discuss)

I Had an Idea for an Anthology of Embarrassing Reading Moments (Drop Me a Line and I Might Tell You What Happened to Me in New York - You Will Never Be Nervous about Your Own Readings Again) but These Guys Got There First
Margaret Atwood's most embarrassing moments. Warning: bodily functions involved. (Ding! Ding! I can hear you clicking from here.) (discuss)

Yes, Yes, My Precious, but the Gold, Man, Where's the Gold?!
Alchemical studies. No, seriously. (discuss)

Nary a Week Should Go By Without a Story on Swinburne...
And his creepy obsession with Sade. (discuss)

How Poems Work, Reloaded
I can just see it - Don Coles and P.K. Page poems caught in a Matrix-style "bullet-time" sequence. (p.s. They're behind already. How long do you give this one? Thanks to tipster Janine) (discuss)

10/17/03:

Mostly They Like the Bits with Killing
US Army goes from spear shaking to Shakespeare. (discuss)

Dear George Bowering: "Invest in a thesaurus you Canadian bastard, you monster, you fraud!"
Poets Against the War gets one last crack at publicity even as this guy grinds it into po-chuck. (discuss)

Does Sylvia's Life Overshadow Her Poems?
My opinion is a contentious one (login: bookninja, password: waaaaa), so I won't give it. (How's that for passive aggression?) (discuss)

I Don't Get It... (or, Write that Funky Lyric White Boy)
If everyone is so def, how do they hear the poetry jam? Or is this about preserves? (discuss) 

Maybe I'm Just Too Old to Know What's "Def" or "Stoopid" or "Bad" Anymore. For Instance, Michael Jackson: is He Still Bad?
No, I am DEFINITELY too old. (discuss)

Comix News
Alex Ross gets his day in the sun, and deservedly so. (discuss)

Big, Bad Books
A bad idea leads to a life of big denial (this article is on Washington Post.com which, outrageously, wants you to fill out some personal info before you get to the article. I usually don't link to them because of this, but this is funny, and you can always lie. I, for instance, am a 103 year old woman living in US zip code 20171.) (discuss)

And After This, Protestants and Catholics Are Going to Stage a 200,000 Person Group Hug in Antrim
Indian writers to visit Pakistan. (discuss)

10/18/03:

In Case You'd Forgotten About Yann Martel...
There's now Life of Pi the movie! (Spoiler alert! The tiger to be voiced by either Sterling Holloway or Paul Winchell...) (discuss)

Arr, Matey! Get Your Flea-Ridden Arse Down to the Hold and Make Sure them Chests o' Books is Secure!
Africa apparently suffering from book piracy plague. (discuss)

Judging From What I Think I Read in the Papers, I'm Clearly Insane
Fidel Castro reviews Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Yup, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. (discuss)

Get Your Borges On
Here's your chance to buy an original Borges manuscript, cheap! I'm holding out for his reading glasses. Get it? (discuss)

Bush's Tentacle-man (aka, Ambassador) in Germany Snubs Sontag at Awards Ceremony
Susan strikes back in her speech, ruminating on the difference between America and Europe. (discuss)

Oppen Your Eyes, George, and Take a Gander at that Forest...
Forrest Gander on George Oppen. (I'm sorry. I really am.) (discuss)

Read Comics in Public!
On my first date ever, I asked the young woman if she liked reading comics. And so my romantic life began. (discuss)

It's Not Quite Like Reading Esquire in Public
Eye Weekly defends comics against the latest attack by Salon. (discuss)

What Ever Happened To...?
John Clare. (discuss)

10/20/03:

Philip Marchand Needs a Good Man!
Hey! There's plenty of testosterone around here, Phil. Come write for us! (discuss)

I Love This Story
I remember reading about this years ago and hoping one would come to me. I'm glad I found out what happened. (discuss)

Favourite Books
I love it that a civilized country can get riled about this kind of stuff. In Canada we just fight about hockey players (see Andrew Pyper story from August...) (discuss)

Olena! Olena? Where for Art Thou?
Our readers' favorite poet returns in a Washington Post profile (remember, lie when they quiz you to access the page.) (discuss)

Speaking of Alaskan Poets
Ken Waldman might be the nicest guy I've ever met. He's the Alaskan fiddling poet -- no, he's actually good! -- and his CD is the only one my son will listen to while playing. I put it on and the kid's face breaks into a smile. That's a good, honest review. (discuss)

Deja Vu...?
Have we linked to this before? Or just read it everywhere? (discuss)

Steel This Book
Danielle Steel (login: bookninja, password: waaaa) and her "art" gallery. (discuss)

Scottish Literature
Ah, the Vancouver Sun... Always in competition with it's Toronto counterpart for Most Close-minded Paper Ever. (discuss)

10/21/03:

Governor General Award Shortlists Announced
Articles in The Star, The Globe, and even... (discuss)

Phil...? Let me Speak to Sybil. I Want to Talk to Sybil....
Marchand and Marchand ruminate on the fall book festival season. (discuss)

Shakespeare's Popular?
NEA in hot water for funding Shakespeare initiative (login: bookninja, password: waaaa). (discuss)

The Wonderful World of Short Writers
And I don't mean Peggy. (discuss)

A Time of Transition for Publishing?
The winds of change blow cold. (discuss)

Seattle Bookfest in Trouble
Attendance and rainfall both down. (discuss)

A Post-Structuralist Look at Structuralist Structuralism and the Structures that Structure Structure
Academia exposed! (discuss)

Equal Access to Books!
British report shows books for disable nearly unavailable. (discuss)

Um.... Hello? This is GOOD, right!?
Stephen King breaks the news. (discuss)

Wakka Wakka, Have I Got a Book for You! Hey!
The Reduced Shakespeare Company. (discuss)

10/22/03:

Fight the Power! 911's a Joke!
Crosbie and Fawcett profiled as writers whose adversarial relationship with the state sets them apart. (discuss)

"What Advice Would You Give to Inspiring Young Writers?"
Someone once asked me that, no word of a lie. I said, "If you're inspiring you don't need my advice." Interviewing poets can be a dangerously boring thing. (discuss)

Z, if You Freakin Win the Griffin, I'll Personally Strangle You
Somebody get a shovel and put this guy out of his misery. (discuss)

T.S. Eliot Prize Shortlist
Includes up-and-comers like Billy Collins. (discuss)

Tower of Books Stolen!
When visiting pilgrims go bad. (discuss)

The Russians Invade Frankfurt!
Blah blah blah book festival blah blah blah literature blah blah blah witty punchline. (discuss)

10/23/03:

And It's Back to Gatenby in the Corner
Well, let's correct that - it's on to Geoffrey Taylor on the blue line. (discuss)

Closing the Book on this Chapter in Publishing is a Binding Decision that Covers All the Bases with ... Jackets ... and ... Um...
Ok, I'm done. And so is Book magazine (login: bookninja, password: waaaa). (discuss)

Yes, The Rumours Are True
Thomas Pynchon will be appearing on The Simpsons. If you can't wait for the episode, why not read The Crying of Lot 49 online. Or read scandalous details about his personal life, as revealed in letters to his agent. Bet you never knew he was named named "Exotic Dancers Man of the Year in 1957". (discuss)

Is Coetzee the Voice of Africa? Africans Don't Think So
An interesting article on political writing in Africa - many of the points could well be applied to us. (discuss)

What Are You Waiting For?
National Novel Writing Month is almost here! (When the hell is National Novel Finishing Month?) (discuss)

What's With All the Endowments for Lit Journals?
First Poetry Magazine, now the Paris Review... when's someone going to pay the ninjas? (discuss)

And Then There's the Kids Book by Rex Murphy, How'd I Get So Ugly?
Celebrities and their book writing hobbies. (discuss)

10/27/03:

The Hatchet Man
Pro kneecapper Peck profiled in the Times (login: bookninja, password: waaaa) (discuss)

Where Are All the Baby Roaches?
Zadie Smith asks what we've all been to afraid to: where are Kafka's heirs? (discuss)

Zagajewski Takes Neustadt
Nice! I love them Pole poets. (discuss)

If You Can Survive Bankruptcy, Patriarchal Interference, the Delegitimation of Feminism,  AND a Firebombing, You Get a Party Too
Toronto Women's Bookstore celebrates its cronehood. (discuss)

Are Canadians Any Better?
Reading in translation (login: bookninja, password: waaaa) ain't what it used to be? (discuss)

"Shrink and Crawl"
Can men write female characters authentically? Vice versa? (Methinks there is a diction problem here -- the author of this article used "authentically" when she perhaps meant "convincingly." Small point?) (discuss)

The Flood
Bringhurst on the literary flood. (note: not 'ick-lits, those are a different kind of literary disaster...) (discuss)

God Bless the Queen
Philip Marchand says Atwood is the best Canadian writer because of her use of narrative. He admits there are other good writers, like Gallant and Munro, but they write short stories, and we all know those aren't as important as novels. (discuss)

You Mean You Can Actually Make Money Writing?
Caroline Adderson discusses the perils of a writer's life in the Globe and Mail. So why not move to America, where you can actually make a living? (discuss)

I'll Believe It When I See It
A profile of the "book review" magazine, The Believer. (discuss)

My People Take Their Unpronounceable Poets Damn Serious
Yes, there's some Welsh in with the Scot and Irish. It's like a Celtic cocktail. (discuss)

10/28/03:

The Pecking Order
Dale Peck complains about gay stereotypes, having no allies, and the state of literature today, while also managing to call our  beloved compatriot Bookslut (we poach off her all the time) "ditch-dirty stupid." All in one long interview. (discuss)

The Scoop on Upcoming Celebrity Children's Books
You could just go on and on with these, couldn't you? (discuss)

Is Quentin Tarantino the new James Joyce?
Flak mag compares Kill Bill to Joyce's Ulysses. Of course! Who doesn't see the connection? (discuss)

Joe Sacco Says He's Not a Graphic Novelist
He's a comic artist, dammit. (discuss)

Tell It to Yann Martel and All the Other Millionaires
Yeah, the Booker doesn't really mean that much. (discuss)

Hispanic Publishing
Arte Publico Press profiled. (discuss)

The Library Wal-Mart
Hal Niedzviecki weighs in on the importance of libraries. (discuss)

Postmodernism is Dead
Long live critical realism. (discuss)

Indians Learn from the Teachings of Guru Ross
Stu, it's about time your cult-like following branched out. (discuss)

Cowboy Poetry
Did you ever see that episode of The Simpsons where Dustin Hoffman played the Cowboy poet substitute teacher...? (trivia time -  for the pink piece of pie: how was Hoffman billed in the credits?) (discuss)

10/29/03:

Canada Supreme Court Rules Byline Strikes Acceptable
I still work for CanWest, so, uh, no comment. (discuss)

When My Last Book Appeared on the NYT Best Seller List, it was with a Dagger, an Asterisk, a Pound Sign, an Exclamation, and an Apostrophe. Essentially, it was Hagar the Horrible Swearing
Isn't it ironic to think that Moore could be bought any way other than in "bulk?" (discuss)

"Bleak Chic"
Does Sylvia fetishize suicide? (discuss)

Come on Baby Light My ... Uh ... Flame
New kids on the indy block, Flame Books. (discuss)

...And Out Back There's the Lesser Known Statue of Him Taking a Leak Against the Kitchen Entrance...
A frozen daiquiri? Some tough guy. He probably would have drank Molson Dry too. (discuss)

Isn't It Easier to Get a Job and Just Buy the Book?
People are finding ways to get free books (login: bookninja, password: waaaa) using Amazon's new search system. (discuss)

Speaking Of New Ways to Use Amazon
Six degrees of intellectualism! (discuss)

The Long Suffering is Over
Beryl Graves dead at 88. (discuss)

Bored At Work?
Of course you are. You're here, aren't you? Why not read Canterbury Tales online. (discuss)

Oh. My. God. Ailsa? Can You Say "Xmas?"
It's here! It's here! So saucy! So smart! I can feel my brain unshrivelling! (Remember to lie if a screen comes up and asks you about yourself. Your motivation: you're a grizzled Viet Nam vet who lives on social assistance, eats only plain brown rice, and occasionally yells "Kelsey Gramer!" for no reason.) (discuss)

10/30/03:

Battle Royale
The Globe's poorly copyedited summation of the state of, for lack of an intelligent word, "snark" in North America. (discuss)

The Sylvia Defense
Arguing on behalf of Plath. (discuss)

In Case You're Counting, That's a Million Per
Does anyone have a razor I can borrow? I'm taking a bath. (Apparently, she's named the left one Simon and the up one Schuster.) (discuss)

Um, Isn't the Very Concept of "Forest-Friendly Books" Logically Akin to, say, Water-Friendly Deserts?
Rowling and 13 other authors who don't matter enough to be named give the rainforest a huggle. (discuss)

Feng Shui for Your Bookcase
The key to caring for your books lies in resisting the urge to glue the pages together and encase them in cement. (discuss)

And, Unfortunately, All We Get is His Mother's Voice Too...
This article starts out with Pat Conroy, but it gets better, I swear. (discuss)

Beer and Stamps and Books, Oh My!
Point of purchase marketing FINALLY does something for good society instead of just making me fat on Clodhoppers. (discuss)

The Path to Success as a Poet
In India they do things differently. (discuss)

"Kealoha Makes Poetry Cool"
Whereas I make it kind of warm, like the gummy bear that's been in my pocket since just after lunch. (discuss)

10/31/03:

Happy Halloween
Brains for Zombies! (discuss)

Drop and Give Me 14... Lines!
Just the other day I was talking to Stuart Ross about poetry boot camps, and then I read this. (discuss)

It's Funny, Because in Please There is a Character Named Pete Who is a Drug-addled, Semi-literate, Peg-legged Gardener with a Dark Coronation Street Fetish (Or at Least There Was in the Copy I Bought... G)
Writing yourself into your work. (discuss)

The First Time a Sun Paper has Convinced Me of Anything
I'll buy and read this now, whereas I might not have before. What a strange and wonderful power journalism has when used for good... (discuss)

Your Chance to Collaborate With a Writer in Half the Literary World's "What Ever Happened To" File
But it's a neat idea. (discuss)

Yes, but the $1.38 Questions is: Does It Get You Drunk?
The Finnish language. (discuss)

It Would Be Like Me Trying to Write Outside the Trailer Park that is Bradford, ON
The problem of writing other cultures. (discuss)