Books & Lit
Vancouver magazines
Vancouver magazines were all the rage last week during the Main Street Magazine Tour. The night, the tour, was a celebration of the Vancouver magazine scene -- from the literary to the cultural, and beyond. And the term celebration is not used capriciously. For there was definitely a certain festivity to the event : those in attendance were proud of the past, and excited about the future. Books & Lit
The Comic Shops vs. Vancouver
It was the Comic Shop in Vancouver where my father bought his comics from before I was born. It was the Comic Shop that I would work my first job in as a teenager. It was the iconic yellow and red empire in the heart of Kits sitting at 2089 W 4th and now it's about to diminish. Books & Lit
'Carjacked' Raises Questions About Our Society's Car-Based Culture
This Thursday, Vancouver-based nonprofit Better Environmentally Sound Transportation is presenting the Canadian book launch for Carjacked, a book which takes a decidedly wide angle view at the culture of the automobile at what appears to be its peak in North America.From a Canadian perspective, Vancouver certainly seems to be on the leading edge of the move away from the automobile, at least under the current city council. The problem -- and this is part of the central thesis of Carjacked -- is that the shift isn't happening quickly enough. Our entire culture has been obsessed with the automobile for a very long time, and any change is going to take time -- even in Vancouver.
Books & Lit
Radical Comic Artist Seth Tobocman At Spartacus Books Sunday
Hopefully a few positives will come out of the gong show that went down in Toronto last week, and yes, I'm referring to the G8 / G20 summits, and not something that happened at the blogTO office (our sister site's staff may or may not have a habit of starting 'Happy Hour' way too early...). Books & Lit
The Case of Vancouver's Disappearing Independent Bookstores
Something's rotten in the state of Vancouver, and it's not Denmark. It's the fact that our independent bookstores are dropping like flies this year -- one by one falling into bankruptcy oblivion, their once-loved books haphazardly auctioned off like aging cattle. The most recent casualty? Biz Books on Cordova St, to be closed in August. Books & Lit
Fire and Fury in 'The Allied Bombing of Germany' Reading By Randall Hansen
Randall Hansen conducted a reading from his latest publication Fire and Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany, 1942-1945 at the main branch of the Vancouver Public Library this past Wednesday, and I was there.
