Secrets of the names on the JCR walls

Charles Levi is giving a talk this evening, as part of UC History Week,  about the history of the UC Lit: “Politicians, Lawyers, Defrocked Priests and That Guy Who Shot His Leg Off: Secrets of the names on the JCR walls.”

If you’d like to read more, we have Charles Levi’s book about the UC Lit at Laidlaw Library: Comings and goings : university students in Canadian society, 1854-1973, as well as his PhD dissertation, Where the famous people were? : the origins, activities and future careers of student leaders at University College, Toronto, 1854-1973.

And if you’re interested in the history of UC and U of T, you might also want to read A not unsightly building : University College and its history, as well as the book by last night’s speaker: Martin Friedland’s The University of Toronto : a history (we have both at Laidlaw).

Coventry

If you’re looking for a book to mark Remembrance Day, I recommend Coventry, by Helen Humphreys.  It’s a fairly short novel about two women in the British city of Coventry and what happens to them and their loved ones during both World Wars.

Much of it takes place on the night in 1940 when Coventry sustained its worst bombing.  It gave me some sense of what it was like for civilians to live through such an attack.

That Face

A new British play, That Face, is on at the Berkeley Street Theatre until Nov. 21.  The playwright, Polly Stenham, was only twenty when the play premiered in London in 2007. Here’s an interesting Globe and Mail interview with the playwright.

If you’d like to read the play, we have it at Laidlaw Library.

Lit City

In honour of Lit City (which “celebrates writers who find inspiration in Toronto and use the city as a setting in their work”), I’m reading Dionne Brand’s powerful novel What we all long for.  It touches on so many Toronto places and so many sides of life in Toronto.

Baxter and MacLeod

This Tuesday evening, May 5, artist Iain Baxter and writer Alastair MacLeod (author of the wonderful novel No Great Mischief) will be appearing at the U of T Art Centre, in a discussion facilitated by Nino Ricci (whose novel The Origin of Species won this year’s Governor General’s award).

True Patriot Love

Michael Ignatieff’s new book, True Patriot Love: Four Generations in Search of Canada (from which he’ll be reading at Convocation Hall on May 8), is about his mother’s side of the family, including his great-grandfather George Monro Grant (author of Ocean to Ocean) and his uncle George Grant (author of Lament for a Nation, which Ignatieff criticizes in his new book).  We have all these books at Laidlaw Library — not to mention Ignatieff’s earlier book about his father’s side of the family, The Russian Album.

The Uses and Abuses of Reviewing

Linda Hutcheon will be giving this year’s Alexander Lectures, beginning March 23. Her intriguing title is “The Uses and Abuses of Reviewing.” Professor Hutcheon is the author of A Theory of Adaptation (among many other books).

Canada Reads victory for Lawrence Hill

Yesterday Lawrence Hill’s novel The Book of Negroes won CBC’s Canada Reads competition. I’m glad since I’m in the middle of reading it (it’s riveting).  The only other of this year’s contenders that I’ve read is The Fat Woman Next Door Is Pregnant, which I loved. (The other books, which were knocked out of contention over the course of the week, were Fruit, Mercy Among the Children, and The Outlander.)

Emotions in turmoil

Next week, March 10-12, Ruth Leys (from Johns Hopkins University) will give a series of lectures at University College, on “Emotions in Turmoil: Genealogy and Critique.”

In honour of these lectures, Laidlaw Library has acquired two books by Ruth Leys:

• From guilt to shame : Auschwitz and after
• Trauma : a genealogy

Attempts on Her Life

The University College drama program is currently putting on Attempts on Her Life, by British playwright Martin Crimp, at the Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse:

• info about the production
• the published play (in a book of four Crimp plays, recently purchased by Laidlaw Library)