Wordle is a lovely website that generates beautiful “word clouds” from text that you provide it. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. Here’s a word cloud create from the RSS feed of the Raincoast Blog!
Bloomsbury, the UK publisher of the THE SUSPICIONS OF MR. WHICHER, have posted an interview with award-winning author Kate Summerscale:
A critically acclaimed account of the investigation into the Victorian child murder mystery that inspired Wilkie Collins, THE SUSPICIONS OF MR. WHICHER is short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction 2008, and is published by Raincoast Books in Canada.
Click here our Q & A with Kate Summerscale on the Raincoast Blog
Alex Abella, author of SOLDIERS OF REASON, discusses his new book, the history of the RAND Corporation, and their role in shaping US foreign policy, including the decision to invade Iraq, in this fascinating new video:
Dan Vyleta, author of critically acclaimed cold-war thriller PAVEL & I, is the most recent Author Snapshot over at January Magazine:
Please tell us about Pavel & I.
It’s a broken sort of love story: a boy is looking for a father, a woman finds a man she thinks she can trust, and the narrator is convinced that he’s identified his soul mate, a man he can talk to, get to the bottom of things… Also, there is a monkey, and a frozen midget, and an English Colonel who likes to wear mink.
Thomas Campanella’s critical overview of contemporary Chinese urbanization ‘THE CONCRETE DRAGON: China’s Urban Revolution and What it Means for the World’ has just been reviewed by Re: Place Magazine:
Campanella compares China’s unprecedented growth to America in the 1950s, when suburbia became a desirable place to live and owning a car meant having freedom. What’s fascinating here, though, are the things that are unique to China’s sprawl and development. It seems like everything is built quickly and it’s built to impress. China is preparing for the Olympics and wants the world to take notice in a way that no other country has done in the past.
Although it is interesting to read about the largest shopping mall in the world, or the tallest skyscraper, or the latest incredible amusement park, it is really the human side of this story that is most incredible and is well captured in this book. Campanella talks about the hardship of the average Chinese worker who can’t afford to buy into the new middle or upper class lifestyle and so is often forcibly kicked out of their homes in the name of progress.
In 2006, filmmaker, author, independent curator and all-round creative person Faythe Levine travelled 19,000 miles across North America to document the burgeoning contemporary craft movement.
Embracing emerging artists, crafters, and designers working in traditional and nontraditional media, contemporary craft mashes up historical technique, punk culture, and the D.I.Y. attitude. The participants share ideas and support each other through websites, blogs, boutiques, galleries, and craft fairs. Together they have forged a new economy and lifestyle based on creativity, determination, and networking.
For HANDMADE NATION Faythe Levine and Cortney Heimerl have selected 24 makers and 5 essayists who work within different media and have different methodologies to provide a microcosm of the crafting community. The book features photographs of the makers and their work, as well as discussions of how they got their start and what motivates them.
A documentary film directed by Levine about contemporary craft (also called HANDMADE NATION) is currently in pre-production and will be released in 2009. Here’s a sneak peak:
You can also read Faythe Levine’s blog about the movie here!
Dan Vyleta’s whip-smart, Berlin-noir spy thriller PAVEL & I received a glowing review from Robert Wiersema (BC author of BEFORE I WAKE) in Sunday’s Edmonton Journal:
“Every so often… a Canadian debut novel appears which restores ones faith in the possibility of new writing in this country, a book so striking, so original, and so very fine as to remind readers of what they have long been missing. Pavel & I, the first novel from Edmonton writer Dan Vyleta is such a book… Pavel & I is a masterful work, a truly impressive debut.”
Dan was also interviewed by Richard Helm, the book review editor at The Edmonton Journal, back in April:
Vyleta’s startling debut is an impeccably constructed spy thriller, one of those old-fashioned page-turners that might be devoured at one sitting. Think The Good German meets The Third Man, or perhaps Oliver Twist conjoined with Ian McEwan’s The Innocent.
All of which begs the question: Where did this guy spring from?
Click here for the Edmonton Journal review of PAVEL & I
Click here for the Edmonton Journal interview with Dan Vyleta
(And click here for my Q & A with Dan on the Raincoast blog)
The first of two excerpts from Chris Wood’s incisive new book DRY SPRING: THE COMING WATER CRISIS OF NORTH AMERICA, entitled ‘They Don’t Want Our Water’, is now available from the Tyee website!
Introducing the excerpts, David Beers, the editor of the Tyee, provides the background to the environmental series Chris has written for their website, Rough Weather Ahead, and how Chris came to write DRY SPRING.
The second excerpt, discussing co-operation between the US and Canada over water, will be available tomorrow, but in the meantime, you can read Chris Wood’s most recent article for the Tyee, posted Tuesday, in which he critiques the British Columbia’s Liberal government’s new water strategy.
(AND you can also read a nice new review of DRY SPRING at A’n’E Vibe!)
Adrian Tomine, author/cartoonist of SHORTCOMINGS and SUMMER BLONDE (amongst others), has provided this wonderfully wry artwork for the new issue of The New Yorker!
Alan Berger’s guide to urban wastelands DROSSCAPE has been reviewed by Erick Villagomez for Vancouver’s re:place Magazine:
Drosscape is a very important book - especially given the uncommon and increasingly relevant nature of the subject discussed. It is must-read for anybody seeking to understand the nature of residual space within the contemporary urban landscape and the processes that lead to their creation. After all, only through understanding can we attempt to develop relevant solutions.
Pages Books and Magazines in Toronto has posted my new author Q & A with writer and designer Ellen Lupton, the author, co-author or editor of SKIN: SURFACE, SUBSTANCE + DESIGN; THINKING WITH TYPE; D.I.Y.: DESIGN IT YOURSELF; D.I.Y. KIDS; and most recently GRAPHIC DESIGN: THE NEW BASICS. In the Q & A, Ellen I discuss design, typography, post-modernism, and the movie Helvetica amongst other things:
Anyone who wants to engage with typography should immerse themselves in some typographic history. If you are a designer, poet, writer, indie filmmaker, or underground craftista, it’s good to know where your fonts come from. The movie Helvetica did a fantastic job showing the origins of one particular font; more significantly, the film showed how the meaning of the font has changed from generation to generation.
Click here for the Pages Q & A with Ellen Lupton
Click here for Ellen Lupton’s webpage
Click here for Ellen’s blog Design Your Life
(Photo credit: Jason Knauer)
So you’re going to see the latest movie Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull movie and hope one day to become Dr. Jones. Well, we have the book for you. The Indiana Jones Handbook: The Complete Adventurer’s Guide written by Denise Kiernan and Joseph D’Agnese
Raiders of the Lost Ark! Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom! Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade! These are three of the biggest blockbusters of all time. Now George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford are teaming up for Indiana Jones 4—due in theatres today!!
The Indiana Jones Handbook follows in the grand tradition of The Batman Handbook, The Superman Handbook and The Spider-Man Handbook—but with an all-new four-colour format that highlights some of the greatest moments in the films. Readers will learn everything a modern archaeologist needs to know, including:
- How to ride an elephant
- How to identify booby traps
- How to fend off a gang of swordsmen
- How to blend into foreign cultures
- How to avoid the wrath of God
- And much, much more!
With the paperback edition of THE REPUBLIC OF PIRATES hitting the shelves this week, it seems only fair to tell those people who can’t get enough of eye-patches and peg-legs that author Colin Woodard is writing a blog to supplement his book on the Caribbean pirates.
Colin’s latest research solves one of the nagging mysteries of Blackbeard’s infamous career!
Here’s part two of our Q & A with wine writer Alice Feiring…
What inspired you to become a writer?
Like dancing, writing was what I did. I always wrote. First novel at 7 (all three pages of it.) It is more that after I got my masters degree I had the courage to go for it. I know this will sound absurd but it never occurred to me I could actually be a writer. It seemed way too impossible.
If you could give one piece of advice to aspiring writers (especially wine writers!), what would it be?
Learn how to tell when you should heed advice or ignore it. That’s tricky, but important if you’re ever going to develop a voice for yourself.
Do you have a particular ritual which you adhere to when you’re writing?
I don’t leave the house before I get at least 1000 words down. If that means I have to get up dawn, that’s what has to happen.
How do you relax when you’re not writing?
Hah! That’s funny. Me, relax? Dance class, contra-dancing, other dancing, biking. Reading has actually become a luxury.
What books are you reading at the moment and what made you pick them up?
Roth, My Life as a Man because it’s one that I’ve never read. I also just got Ancient Agriculture which is a translation of a 1500’s Spanish book on farming. I know. Odd mix. I’m also rereading Bukoswski’s Women.
Could you introduce an author you think people should read, and suggest a good book to start with?
That’s a hard one. Rosamond Lehmann, The Echoing Grove. Love those British Ladies. Then it comes down to favorite books from favorite authors, and those I read once a year: Letting Go and Sabbath’s Theater from Philip Roth. Shadows on the Hudson, I.B Singer and Hudson River Bracketed by Edith Wharton.
Will you be writing anything about Canadian wines any time soon?
I would love to. Just waiting for that assignment to roll in. I keep on hearing about the ones that don’t make it Stateside and am incredibly eager to discover them.
Thanks Alice!
THE BATTLE FOR WINE AND LOVE is available now.
The blurb to Alice Feiring’s wonderful new book, THE BATTLE FOR WINE AND LOVE, will tell you that she “is a James Beard Foundation Award-winning journalist whose blog, In Vino Veritas, was named one of the seven best by Food & Wine.”
The blurb also mentions that she was a wine and travel columnist for Time, and that she now writes for the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and Gourmet, among many others.
All of which I believe is absolutely true. She is a wonderful writer.
However, the blurb doesn’t mention that Feiring is witty, irreverent, provocative and very, very passionate about her wine.
She was also gracious enough to supply her cheeky Canadian publicist (who shall remain nameless) with an impromptu wine recommendation for an unexpected dinner party last night. And who wouldn’t be charmed by that?
In THE BATTLE FOR WINE AND LOVE, Alice reveals just what goes in to an average bottle of wine (sawdust and oak chips anyone?) to score points with influential wine critics such as Robert Parker, and takes readers on a journey to find the self-confessed ‘Last of the Mohicans’: rebel winemakers who are making old-fashioned wines with new individuality and flair.
Alice lives in Manhattan, and we chatted over email.
What was the inspiration for THE BATTLE OF WINE AND LOVE?
I was so frustrated that getting a good glass of wine was so difficult. I was really frustrated that wines I loved were getting “modernized.” I felt like---there is another nail in that coffin. But the moment of inspiration was when I was coming back from Spain with Skinny, (chapter four) I was telling her how upset I was about Spanish wines at the tasting portion of Madrid Fusion and she said, that was it. I had to write this book. After she fell asleep listening to opera, I spent the next hour or two crying over another kind of lost love. When I landed at JFK I knit the two themes together.
What exactly is ‘Parkerization’?
(And if you could also explain the wonderful term “spoofulated” that would be great!)
I’m viewing Parkerization as the reduction of wines to suit one ‘mass’ palate. It is different than spoofulated. Quite. Spoof wines are tricked up with chemistry and process to look like the real thing, but it’s not.
How are the kinds of wine that Robert Parker rates highly different from the kinds of wine you prefer?
Of course there’s so overlap. For example, he and I both like Chave and Clape from the N. Rhone and Domaine Romanee Conti from Burgundy. But the wines that seem to get his highest accolades are massive with an overemphasis on fruit and wood.
What is it exactly that you look for in wine?
Kind of like love, when you see it you know it? But I do look for a sense of life and expression as well as good winemaking! Excellent wine comes in all weights as well as price points.
You often talk of a ‘sense of place’. Why is this important to wine?
Without it wine would be another beverage, a soft drink, something you could flick a switch and come out of a faucet. The place gives the wine the difference; the technology gives wine a sameness.
Why are terms like ‘natural’, ‘traditional’, ‘authentic’ so difficult with regard to wine production?
Because they are meaningless. There are no definitions. But I’m not sure there should be. There should be all sorts of wines, but one thing that I know, wines made as was made before technology should be taught as an alternative and not feared.
What’s the problem with using new technology in the wine-making process? Isn’t it introducing more consistency and reducing the risk of wine becoming vinegar?
If you view consistency as an ideal, there is nothing the matter with it. If you view wine as being a different being every year, and the best the winemaker can do, it is a problem. Every year I look forward to the winemakers I adore to see what they did. There is excitement. With controlling technology that is diminished.
Do you think there needs to be more transparency in the wine industry?
And yes, less marketing and more information, please!
Should wine makers include lists of ingredients and additives on their labels like food?
I recently got some samples from Oregon, Cooper Mountain that had ingredients, organic Grapes and So2. Because so few wineries can actually say that, I think it’s a great idea.
Researching the book, did you visit any vineyards or detect any trends that make you optimistic about the future?
Absolutely! There are plenty of them out there. True, mostly in France where there is a strong back to natural movement, but it is actually starting grassroots on this side of the Atlantic as well.
Read Part Two Tomorrow!
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