Black Canadians, at the end of a recent Giller Power Panel, were asked to recommend lesser-known Black Canadian authors. I‘ve rounded up their suggestions in my most recent video: https://youtu.be/_TLS8M7OQGQ
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Dr. Edith Vane and the Hares of Crawley Hall | 
Black Canadians, at the end of a recent Giller Power Panel, were asked to recommend lesser-known Black Canadian authors. I‘ve rounded up their suggestions in my most recent video: https://youtu.be/_TLS8M7OQGQ
"Leslie wears a knee-length coat, an elaborate, petally ruffle around the neck making her head look like a grumpy stamen."
""Fuck!" she hears. Then, "Fuckity fuck mcfuckintosh, oh fuckinstein van fucklington.""
"Even though the thought of seeing Leslie is like contemplating a dirty toilet she's just about to lick, Edith is ready."
"Leslie's past devotion to Edith had deflated like a lung poked with a pencil, suddenly and irrevocably."
Today in odd similes.
I'm taking a break from Waste Tide, which has quite a lot of plot threads to follow, to read the tagged book, which sounds a little lighter. I'm excited about it!
so-soWhat an odd little book this is. It's a bit horror, a lot bit satire, and a little slice of dystopian life of a current humanities academic. Edith Vane works at U of I and her job is supposed to be safe, what with tenure, but the new dean is evil, her colleague has gone mysteriously missing, and Crawley Hall, her building, seems to have developed sentience and is trying to kill everyone inside it. I admired but didn't always enjoy this novel.
Started reading this #queer #Canadian satire of academia with a touch of supernatural hauntedness on the ferry ride home this afternoon. So far it is definitely confirming my decision to leave academia many years ago. #QueerBooks
Tagged book is one of my rereads in June: it was chosen for one of my book clubs and it was a delight to revisit. The other three rereads were for Jenny's @readingenvy podcast, so you will have to be patient to hear about those, probably later this week.
—My daughter the author, says her father. —I‘ve always had a book inside me. Just haven‘t had the time to write it. Maybe you could drive up next weekend and I could dictate while you type it out?
Books litter part of the hallway, a pile collected against the wall opposite an open office door. A plant flies out of the door, spatters dirt against the wall, peppering the books.
—Fuuuuuuuck, she hears.
Then, —Fuckety fuck McFuckintosh O‘Fuckinstein vanFucklington!
The office belonged to Jack Froese. One of the creative writers.
Edith tried to get a better chair from the faculty lounge and its collection of unused chairs, but the office administrator, Alice Z, caught Edith pushing the chair in transit between the lounge and her office and chided Edith—Edith needed to fill out the appropriate form, and the new chair should be in her office in six to eight months. Thirteen months ago.
Yesterday was @LonesomeReader ‘s 40th birthday. @shawnmooney created a set of booktube tags to celebrate Eric‘s special day and I joined in via my book blog. Happy reading as you enter your fifth decade, Eric!
https://lindypratch.blogspot.com/2018/09/happy-birthday-to-eric-karl-anderson.ht...
#VWF2017 First event that I attended was Modern Satire with Suzette Mayr and Tom Perrotta. I learned that Mayr modelled her Edith Vane character on Eleanor Vance from The Haunting of Hill House.
pickA lesbian Alice in Wonderland-ish spoof on the politics of academia, set in an invented university that could very well be Calgary—if the U of C had malevolent buildings infested with jackrabbits. Dark and funny. #LGBTQ #CanLit
She extracts her red pen from her purse and slowly begins scribbling and ticking her way through the wildly ungrammatical pages, miles of faulty logic, the written-the-midnight-before wool gatherings.
Soon she is a marking powerhouse, she has graded 17 essays in 15 minutes, she is a marking automaton. She should grade papers at 3 in the morning every single day! Her mind vinegar-sharp, a slayer of dangling, squinting and misplaced modifiers.
"The occasional hare has transformed into a full-fledged ghost, completely white except for the ear tips, the dark contour around the eyes. Others more speckled and freckled."
[I see a lot of jackrabbits in my neighbourhood, including the pair above who were in different stages of camouflage when winter suddenly became spring.]
…evil stacks of sloppily graded essays still lumping the surface of her desk even though she scraped through at least 10 of them just before bed. Maybe 8 & a half, but she can't tell because she kept flipping back & forth between papers she'd already marked, worried her grades are too high & the students & the dean & associate dean will think she's a soft touch. & some of the papers she worries she graded too low & the students will come to her 👇
Academia comedy on steroids. A humanities building with corridors/rooms/exits that appear and disappear. Carnivorous jackrabbits on campus. And never enough time: "Edith claws through the chlorinated water in the university's Olympic-sized swimming pool. She squints through her goggles. 7:35 a.m. Soon it will be 8 a.m. and her day basically gone. Wasted!"
Yes please.
