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February 16, 2018On reading politically, or why the good old days are a flat out lie
It’s a funny time in the world of words. Every morning, when I log into Twitter, people are debating freedom of expression and the politics of how we read. Some of this is just nonsense, really just ...
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September 12, 2018How to Finish Your Damn Book - For Beginners!
I often joke that writing a novel is like running a marathon---only no one bothers to tell you what the route is. When the gun goes off, you’re just supposed to head off in whatever direction you think ...
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August 31, 2024Jennifer Maruno Sends a Young Witch and Her Rodent Sidekick on an Adventure in Broom for Two
Prolific children's author Jennifer Maruno may be familiar to readers of Open Book. In fact, as recently as last week, another title written by Maruno was featured on the site.This time we're sharing ...
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September 13, 2019The Unbearable Lightness of Being Between Writing Projects
Lately, I’ve felt a bit unmoored. For the last 6 years, I’ve organized my spare time around working on my novel. I’ve either been working on it or worrying about not having time to work on it, or ...
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May 24, 2017Happy Birthday, Marian Engel!
Today is the eighty-fourth birthday of Marian Engel, or it would be, had the novelist not died of cancer in 1985. Now, instead of a person, she is a name, survived like all people by her family and friends, ...
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September 20, 2016
New Fall 2016 Children's and YA Books! Part 1
I’m delighted to be starting off my kid lit blog this season with a fun chat with five authors of exciting hot-off-the-press children’s books, including a picture book, a chapter book, a middle grade ...
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January 30, 2019My Reading Year: What I Learned from Reading 275 Books in 365 Days
The other day I told a friend that I'd read 275 books in 2018 and he responded by laughing and declaring emphatically, "That's a reading year!"I think that's an excellent way to describe my past year. ...
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December 27, 2017Reading Books While Desperately Avoiding Loneliness
There was a tree surrounded by countless of its kind, but also all alone, as the only one alive. Its nearby kin debarked and digested, steamed into slop, robbed of their resin and lignin, cleaned, screened, ...
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May 22, 2022
The Reasons I Write
I can think of many reasons why I should not write. The pay is terrible. The hours, though flexible, are insufferably long (i.e., even when I stop doing writing, I am thinking about writing). It can be ...
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March 28, 2022CBC Canada Reads Day One Recap: 2022 is Anyone's Game
CBC's Canada Reads kicked off this morning at 11:00am ET, with each of the five panelists proving themselves eloquent champions for their chosen novels. Host Ali Hassan followed the format of previous ...
