Articles tagged with: Books
For The Love Of Libraries: Reading is Sexy!
Do you know anyone who played library as a child? Store, school and doctor, sure, but library? I used to take a book from my shelf, slip a piece of paper inside with my name, and the date, and read quietly. My library memories started early: day activities at the Fraser-Hickson. I can still make a cup that actually holds water out of a square of paper thanks to them. Another day, we learned about Leonardo Da Vinci, examining his sketches of flying machines in a velvety bus that was a mobile museum. I was in pre-school. I fell in love with creative genius. The library hooked me…
Cheers, Comrade: a Review of Rum Socialism
Rum Socialism is the recently self-published e-book by Kris Romanuik. It chronicles the author’s booze filled misadventures in Cuba while also touching on communist society and politics. Taking the form of a short travel diary, Rum Socialism follows our Canadian protagonist as he stumbles through the kind of vignettes which are typically relayed in the pub after a drink filled man holiday…
Tap into your sexual desires: review of A Billion Wicked Thoughts
Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam make quite a few bold claims in their new book, A Billion Wicked Thoughts. They’re billing it as the world’s largest scientific study on human sexual desire, although perhaps they’re using the term science loosely. In lieu of the admittedly flawed conventional research methods like interviewing subjects or giving them questionnaires to fill out, Ogas and Gaddam wanted to probe deeper into the secret realm of male and female sexual desire to determine what’s being fantasized about when no one’s watching, and what that can tell us about ourselves. As Ogas and Gaddam point out…
Worst Laid Plans: When Bad Sex Happens to Good People
The back cover of this book says it all: “it has been said that the only bad sex is no sex. The contributors to this book respectfully disagree.” Comediennes Alexandra Lydon and Laura Kindred of the famed Upright Citizens Brigade theatre troupe have compiled those tantalizing true-life tales of sexual experiences gone horribly, horribly wrong. From a young woman giving up her backdoor virginity because of a bet to an aborted attempt at the seduction of a midget met on Craigslist, their monologue-style stories illustrate the downside of putting yourself out there. Honestly, while most of the stories were pretty funny, they were disappointingly tame in what I thought would be the be-all, end-all Sexual Hall of Shame. A worthy bus read, even if just for intrigued glances from other horny bus riders.
We’ve artistically undressed you 2010 Arts & Theatrics year in review
What the fuck is up with our Arts & Theatrics section? We’ve given you reviews of half-naked people dancing around various stages via our Burlesque coverage. We’ve attended art and theatre shows that focus on breaking the glass ceiling by portraying women as silicone objects and transvestite grand-mamas?
The whiteness of being green
The environmental movement was essentially initiated by Rachel Carson’s epic book Silent Spring. In it, she exposed how herbicides and pesticides were destroying the environment and our health. She sparked a lot of controversy which eventually lead to the ban of DDT. In 1971, Greenpeace initiated an environmental activism movement that involved the media, using the Quaker philosophy of “bearing witness” in order to make change. The list goes on. It is amazing and inspiring that people have mobilized and dedicated their lives to making the world a better place. The world always needs more of this. If anything is worth doing, it is worth doing well and that includes questioning ourselves. While great changes have been made thanks to the ideals and passions of people who consider themselves environmentalists, one aspect has remained largely unchecked.
Prisoners for Profit
Most people by now have heard of the American military industrial complex. Although it can refer to other countries as well, the phrase was coined famously by Dwight D. Eisenhower in his farewell address speech on January 17, 1961. It was a warning about the unjustified government spending on the military. The warning went largely unnoticed. In 1997 almost forty years later a similar phrase was coined by social activist Angela Davis as she named her book The prison industrial complex.
What’s for dinner? Planetary salvation through economic reform
When the economy is mentioned, the current crisis is likely what comes to most people’s mind. For Professor Peter Brown of the McGill School of Environment, the crisis goes deeper than that. “We’re in a tough time in history,” Brown remarked during a speech for the Food for Thought lecture series at Macdonald campus last Tuesday where he asked the audience “is the situation dismal, or could this be our moment of grace?”
Alanna Mitchell brings you the ocean
What comes to mind when you think about the ocean? Serenity? Marine mammals? Oceanic cycles? For Alanna Mitchell, it’s a feeling of urgency over a major crisis of what covers most of the planet. “The ocean is invisibly ill,” Mitchell, who Reuter’s called the best environmental reporter in the world, said during an interview on September 16th.
Peace out with Books
In good Forget the Box fashion, this week’s environmental column is a book review. I have to admit that it’s a little embarrassing when I don’t really know anything about a huge subject area, like, say, the problems in the Middle East. Guilty as charged. As someone who doesn’t pay that much attention to mainstream media (particularly concerning how this particular issue is framed) and who hasn’t had anyone sit down with her to outline the whodunit of it all, I have always been confused between the goings-on of Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc.
Will tomorrow’s library be a bookstore?
It seems pretty obvious that libraries and books in general are going online, perhaps to stay. While there is still a love of the printed word and probably always will be, two projects are underway to scan, digitize, catalogue and store all books or as many books as possible online with very different approaches.
