http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs Fearless. Thoughtful. Witty. Canadian. And Opinionated. Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:25:02 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Reif Larsen's The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet is a novel that's easy to talk about but difficult to write about. It’s a natural distinction for a book that’s so beautifully designed and obsessively layed out—what can one say with mere words, after all, when the subject of one’s words ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2009/05/21/qa-reif-larsen/ Last week, I posted the first half of my conversation with New Yorker staff writer David Grann, whose new book The Lost City of Z, about the explorer Percy Fawcett and his mysterious disappearance in the Amazon in 1925, is currently sitting comfortably at number thirteen on the New York ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2009/05/05/a-conversation-with-david-grann-part-ii/ There's a moment relatively early on in David Grann's spectacular new book, The Lost City of Z, where the author is imagining his subject, Percy Fawcett, during Fawcett's early years in Ceylon. Fawcett, who would go on to become the world's most famous explorer and the inspiration for countless fanatical ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2009/04/27/a-conversation-with-david-grann-part-i/ (Detail of photograph by Larry Towell, appearing in our April issue.) When we asked Mark Kingwell to write an essay about leadership related to Obama, we weren't entirely sure what we'd get, but none of us expected the brave, challenging, and completely original piece of writing that resulted. It's not that ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2009/03/17/interview-obama-mark-kingwell/ An interview with Maclean's editor-in-chief Ken Whyte about his new book on William Hearst Of all the non-fiction titles I’ve read this year, few have surprised and delighted me more than Maclean's editor-in-chief and publisher Ken Whyte’s new account of the rise of William Randolph Hearst, The Uncrowned King. While the ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/12/12/in-conversation-ken-whyte-on-journalism/ Taras Grescoe's excellent book Bottomfeeder is now out in paperback, and recently won the prestigious Writers Trust Award for best non-fiction book of the year... Taras Grescoe's excellent book Bottomfeeder is now out in paperback, and recently won the prestigious Writers Trust Award for best non-fiction book of the year. I ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/12/05/qa-taras-grescoe/ As yesterday's informal National Post poll showed, Joseph Boyden is the smart-money choice to win this year's Giller Prize tonight. (Update: Huzzah! I was right.) And for good reason — his new novel, Through Black Spruce, is a methodical study of our relation to the land and each other, marked ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/11/11/qa-joseph-boyden/ To celebrate the publication of Josh Glenn and Mark Kingwell's excellent small book, The Idler's Glossary, I asked Mark to offer glosses on a few of his favourite entries. His response is below. I urge everyone to buy this book; there'll be nothing more curious and delightful published this fall. ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/10/31/the-idlers-glossary/ Giller prize winner David Bergen's new book, The Retreat, is among this fall's very best novels. Instead of commenting on this myself, I'll refer you to Danielle Groen's review of the book from our October/November issue; she says most of what I have to say, and better than I could. I ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/10/24/qa-david-bergen/ There was a time, years ago, when I was working towards a thesis on the little-known but truly brilliant Canadian poet George Johnston. One of the obstacles to doing work on Johnston was that his books were out of print except for the collected poems, which contained some revisions and ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/10/24/in-praise-of-university-book-sales-ii/