Below you’ll find the latest newsletter from Northwest Passages. Closing down our beloved site after 14 years is hard, but necessary for us. There are lots of good books for sale at our site right now, so make sure to check it out. NWP moves on Greetings from Northwest Passages. I know that it [...]
Obama and Spidey
Barack Obama will be appearing in an upcoming issue of Spider-Man, on sale on January 14th. Today’s Guardian has a preview: The five-page story takes place in Washington DC on inauguration day, when one of Spidey’s oldest enemies, the Chameleon, attempts to stop Obama’s swearing-in ceremony. Fortunately, Peter Parker is covering the event as a [...]
Canada Reads 2009
Here are the titles for Canada Reads 2009 and the celebrity panelists who will be lobbying for their book to win Canada Reads. The Outlander, by Gil Adamson. Panelist: Nicholas Campbell Fruit, by Brian Francis. Panelist: Jen Sookfong Lee Mercy Among the Children, by David Adams Richards. Panelist: Sarah Slean (Paul’s favourite!) The Fat Woman [...]
The Canadian Experience: A Northwest Passages editorial
In 1995, my best friend Rob Stocks and I co-founded Northwest Passages, the only bookstore in the world to specialize exclusively in Canadian fiction, poetry, drama, and literary criticism. Since then, Rob’s partner Sarah Bagshaw has taken over all the day-to-day operations of the store, while Rob and I stay involved on many fronts. One [...]
Jacques Poulin comes to the USA…
One of my favourite writers in the world is Jacques Poulin. I teach his works here frequently and he is an important part of the online course here I teach every summer on three Canadian writers: Michael Ondaatje, Margaret Atwood, and Jacques Poulin. For that reason, I was excited to see that Archipelago Books, a [...]
On the Road en français
My colleague Greg Bottoms and his class on travel narratives are currently reading On the Road, published 50 years ago this month. Despite the fact that it’s a key intertext in one of my favourite novels, Jacques Poulin’s Volkswagen Blues, On the Road is a book I’ve still never gotten around to reading. Perhaps this [...]
Some good advice for the first day of school….
Michael Leddy has some great words of wisdom today for students about how to read: My advice: slow down. Here’s what the poet Ezra Pound says about reading literature: “no reader ever read anything the first time he saw it.” Or consider this exchange between Oprah Winfrey and the novelist Toni Morrison: “Do people tell [...]
The future of the book….
Wow, so much to say about this topic with the prospect of Espresso Book Machines, higher quality e-book readers, and new models of publishing headed our way. Unfortunately, pending deadlines leave me no time to say it! (how’s that for a cop out?) In the meantime (and please don’t hold your breath — I would [...]
Canadian literature in the news
A few things I’ve been meaning to blog about over the last few days as I settle back into work after a week off. I was saddened a few days back to hear of the death of Margaret Avison, one of Canada’s great poets of the 20th century, I think. You can find a few [...]
More on the Espresso Book Machine
From an article in today’s NY Times: Mr. Neller’s firm is pitching the book machine, which may eventually sell for $20,000 or more, principally toward the nation’s 16,000 public libraries and 25,000 bookstores. A 300-page book costs about $3 to produce with the machine. A bookstore or library could then sell it to customers or [...]