Media Hits: ON BROWSING, CASE STUDY, THIS TIME THAT PLACE, CHRISTMAS GHOST STORIES, and more!
IN THE NEWS!
Jason Guriel’s On Browsing (Oct 4, 2022) was featured on TVO’s The Agenda. Steve Paikin interviewed Guriel about browsing, physical media, and mall nostalgia. The episode aired on Dec 6, 2022. You can watch the whole interview here.
Jason Guriel published an original piece about holiday shopping as a companion to On Browsing at The Atlantic. In “The Tactile Joy of IRL Gift Buying,” Guriel writes, “Browsing isn’t just better for carbon levels; it’s better for the soul.” Find the whole essay here.
Jason Guriel’s On Browsing has been featured in an article at the Toronto Star. The article was posted online on Dec 3, 2022. You can find the whole piece here.
In a piece titled “Tinder fatigue, the endless Netflix scroll, and the real reason online life is exhausting,” Andy Lamey writes,
“The trend in dating apps illustrates a central insight of poet and critic Jason Guriel in his book On Browsing: constraint can be generative. On Browsing recounts Guriel’s experiences shopping for physical copies of books or movies or albums, and asks, much as the developers of Soon do in the case of dating, why such experiences often compare favourably to seeking out a similar item online.”
Order your copy of On Browsing here!
This Time, That Place by Clark Blaise (Oct 18, 2022) has been reviewed in the McGill Tribune! The review was published online on December 7, 2022. Read the full review here.
Adrienne Roy writes,
“[Blaise’s] readers don’t feel as though they’re merely a fly on the wall: They’re sitting in the back of a stolen car in the middle of the night, inheriting a new identity as they watch a past life fade in the rearview.”
This Time, That Place was featured at CBC Books’ ‘The Best Canadian Fiction of 2022,’ published on December 6, 2022. You can find the whole list here.
They write,
“This Time, That Place demonstrates why Blaise is one of Canada’s greatest short story writers.”
Grab your copy of This Time, That Place here!
Ordinary Wonder Tales by Emily Urquhart (Nov 1, 2022) was reviewed in the McGill Tribune! The review was published online on December 7, 2022. Read the review here.
Ella Buckingham writes,
“In Urquhart’s collection, she dispels the notion that fairy tales are irrelevant in this fast-paced, modern environment, and recreates the magic of childhood in day-to-day life.”
Ordinary Wonder Tales has been reviewed in the Winnipeg Free Press! The review was published online on December 3, 2022. Read the full review here.
Reviewer Ariel Gordon writes,
“This book brings to mind Robin Wall Kimmerer’s work … Ordinary Wonder Tales is a quietly charming book about all the ordinary tragedies in a life. Urquhart’s essays help us understand the stories we tell ourselves, while also being satisfying as stories themselves.
Ordinary Wonder Tales was also reviewed by Andrew Hood for Bookshelf! The review was published online on December 4, 2022. Read the full review here.
Hood writes,
“Through both personal experience, the experiences of others, and scholarship, Urquhart reveals the wondrous to be ordinary and the ordinary to be wondrous … you won’t be able to put the book down. Unless, of course, you have to.”
Emily Urquhart, author of Ordinary Wonder Tales, was interviewed in Kitchener CityNews! The interview was published online on December 2, 2022. Read the full article here.
In the interview, Urquhart states,
“I like to say that I’m a journalist on the folklore beat. We often see journalism as fact and folklore as fiction but I think if you look at fairy tales … what gets passed on within these stories, there’s truth within them.”
Get your copy of Ordinary Wonder Tales here!
SETH’S CHRISTMAS GHOST STORIES
Seth’s Christmas Ghost Stories (November 1, 2022) were reviewed on the Total Christmas Podcast! The episode was published online on December 3, 2022. Listen to the review, beginning at 1:24:15 here.
Host Jack Ford says about the Christmas Ghost Stories,
“What I love about these books is that they’re really a proper blast from the past … If you know someone who likes their spooky stories, then they’d make a perfect Christmas gift. They look lovely, the artwork is fantastic, and they’re just a great read … I highly recommend them.”
Seth’s Christmas Ghost Stories were also reviewed in Modern Daily Knitting! The review was posted on December 3, 2022. Check it out here.
Reviewer DG Strong writes,
“There’s a wide range [of stories]—some are genuinely spooky, some (when held to today’s horror movie standards) are borderline campy, but I’ve yet to read one that wasn’t genuinely entertaining.”
Seth’s Christmas Ghost Stories were reviewed in The Charlatan! The review was published online on December 1, 2022. Check out the full review here.
Reviewer Justin Ball writes,
“[Seth’s] illustrations are bold yet simple, and the use of shadows brings a lifelike quality to the playful cartoon style. Seth visually guides readers through each scene and adds thrill to every tale … Those looking to introduce a weird yet interesting tradition with spooky historical ties should consider reading Christmas ghost stories to haunt the holiday season.”
Pick up all three 2022 Christmas Ghost Stories here!
Check out the rest of the series here!
Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet (November 1, 2022) has been featured in the New York Times as part of “11 New Books We Recommend This Week.” The list was published online on December 1, 2022. You can read the full article here.
Case Study has been featured by Lit Hub as one of “November’s Best Reviewed Books.” The article was published online on November 30, 2022. You can read the full list here.
Pick up your copy of Case Study here!
The Power of Story: On Truth, the Trickster, and New Fictions for a New Era by Harold R. Johnson (October 11, 2022) has been reviewed in Quill & Quire by Robert J. Wiersema. The article was published online on December 1, 2022. You can read the full review here.
Wiersema writes,
“The Power of Story is a profoundly hopeful book, rooted in the malleability of stories we have taken for granted (the justice system and the government, to name but two), and the power of humans building out from their lifestories to effect those changes.”
Grab your copy of The Power of Story here!
The Miramichi Reader, All Lit Up Blog, and the National Observer have reviewed Best Canadian Poetry 2023!
In the Miramichi Reader, Michael Greenstein writes,
“Hats off to Barton for editing this collection that has so much variety and serves as a forum and format for reconciliation; hats off to Biblioasis for publishing Best Canadian Poetry 2023.”
The review was published on Nov 26, 2022. Read the whole review here.
At All Lit Up, bookseller Matthew Stepanic writes,
“With heavy hitters such as Billy-Ray Belcourt, Bertrand Bickersteth, Jake Byrne, Penn Kemp, and Jan Zwicky, this collection will surprise and delight readers with a diverse range of what’s possible in the form, and will help guide them to discover books and poets they’ll want to read more from.”
The recommendation was published Nov 29, 2022. You can read Stepanic’s whole list here.
And at the National Observer, Matteo Cimellaro writes of the collection’s launch,
“As attendees sat cramped between oak bookshelves, […] readers were challenged with distinct poems of varying language, scenes, stories and identities. The reading—and the anthology—appreciates the overlaps and differences of each poet’s specificity.”
The article was published Nov 25, 2022. You can read the whole article here.
Grab your copy of Best Canadian Poetry 2023 here!
Check out the full Best Canadian 2023 set here!
The Affirmations by Luke Hathaway (April 5, 2022) has been featured as part of The Coast’s “12 local books that topped our reading lists in 2022.” The article was published online on December 6, 2022. You can read the complete list here.
Morgan Mullin writes:
“The Affirmations by Luke Hathaway Halifax-based poet Luke Hathaway had a lot to live up to with his newest release, since his last one—was on The New York Times’ radar as one of 2018’s best books. This time around, Hathaway delivers the story of ‘the love that rewired his being’ through lyrical poems that lean into the possibilities presented by small-f faith and transformation.”
Grab your copy of The Affirmations here!
