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CanLit: Genre Fiction
One of my favourite young(ish) contemporary authors, Gary Shteyngart, recently caused a wave of consternation when he suggested that Canadian authors, for the most part, are loath to take risks because they want to qualify for grant funding. The customary hand-wringing ensued. Shteyngart has some legitimacy on this topic, having read more Canadian novels thancontinue reading
December 31: “Eta vsyo”, DDT
So, it’s the last day of the month and time to take a look back at this semi-successful Song of the Day project. Posts: 24 Days of month: 31 The idea was to create my own writing exercise, giving myself something fixed to write about — songs — so that I would get in thecontinue reading
December 27: “You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby”, Kirsty MacColl (The Smiths)
It’s almost the end of this month-long Song of the Day project and I’ve fallen sorely behind. At the beginning of the month, looking ahead to Christmas vacation at the end, I thought that the last two weeks of the month would be when I could really spend some time crafting posts, thinking about songscontinue reading
December 26: “Adventures in Solitude”, New Pornographers
You know those album tracks — remember album tracks? — that you don’t think you like and don’t pay any attention to, and then you hear them on their own and suddenly realize you actually like them? This is one of those. I love the New Pornographers, but Challengers has never been my favourite ofcontinue reading
December 24: “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, Judy Garland (Martin/Blane)
We’ll have to muddle through sometime. Makes me cry, every time I see it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g4lY8Y3eoo
December 23: “I’m a Cuckoo”, Belle and Sebastian
A song with a chorus that references Tokyo and a video full of running. If it were a Venn diagram the overlapping part would be miniscule (and the rest of it would be filled with Haruki Murakami’s wonderful book, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running). Great things about this song: the hornscontinue reading
December 21/22: “99 Luftballons”, Nena
So Khodorkovsky is released in John LeCarre cloak and dagger fashion, the same way Solzhenitsyn was released in the 1970s, with reports that he is going to Germany to join his sick mother. Except, someone calls his mother, who is still in Russia. Confusion reigns, at least on Twitter, where I see this exchange: Englishcontinue reading
December 20: “Vacation”, The Go-Gos
Off until 2014!
December 19: “Rodina”, DDT
I’m reading a book called Moscow, December 25, 1991: The Last Day of the Soviet Union, detailing the astonishingly ad hoc transfer of power, nuclear suitcase included, from Gorbachev to Yeltsin. Eight years after that shambolic, historic event, on December 31, 1999, I was home sick with the Sydney A flu watching Yeltsin transfer powercontinue reading