TOMORROW NIGHT! CIUT 89.5 FM 10pm - 11pm - Host @valentinoassenza.bsky.social welcomes Ira Wells with his latest book “On Book Banning” @biblioasis.bsky.social - Also on the show Jacob McArthur Mooney @mcarthurmooney.bsky.social talking about his latest novel “The Northern” @ecwpress.bsky.social

I finally had the time to read this and it was really worthwhile. A character focussed coming of age story in the world of low level baseball and baseball cards. Dreams vs reality. It’s always fun to see #ldnont represented in a novel, even for a chapter. #booksky

Today's goodness is sponsored by my wife, who thrifted me this shirt someone made.

Why Writers Quit (or go crazy) Part 3 open.substack.com/pub/zoewhitt...

Today's read is from The Feeling Sonnets by Eugene Ostashevsky

Erev Yom Kippur and the National Day for Truth & Reconciliation share a date this year (Sept 30). The op-eds write themselves...

Today's read is Zeroville by Steve Erickson, which is mostly about the movies but contains the best paragraph about punk music.

from Existing Music, the new Nick Thran.

What a terrible time to have lungs.

The most common refrain in the parenting social media ecosystem is "Schools should start teaching {thing that is already subject to 100+ curriculum hours in most public schools}"

Audiobook Narrator Spotlight: Peter Outerbridge Peter Outerbridge is one of my fave Canadian actors and I'm looking forward to listening to his narration of "The Northern" by @mcarthurmooney.bsky.social a #ReadTheNorth selection from the Toronto Public Library toronto.overdrive.com/media/11965360

Baseball fans: I have three indie-published Canadian books for you to spend time with this summer. #CanLit The Northern by @mcarthurmooney.bsky.social from @ecwpress.bsky.social. ecwpress.com/products/nor...

Spoke to poet @mcarthurmooney.bsky.social about his novel The Northern ( @ecwpress.bsky.social ) for Turning Pages today. Episode is up now: umfm.com/programming/...

Google and Meta search both report that Cape Breton Island has its own time zone 12 minutes ahead of mainland Nova Scotia time because they are both drawing that information from a Beaverton article I wrote in 2024

Happy to have a poem called "Fields & Arenas" up at @bookninja.bsky.social 's famously minimalist New Poetry today. newpoetry.ca/2025/06/09/f...

It is again that time of year when I have to suffer people using the word "graduand."

Happy birthday to The Northern. Would be great to see friends and neighbours at @anotherstoryto.bsky.social tonight for books, beverages, and entertainment from myself, Lex, and @utilityofboredom.bsky.social .

I have events next week! I'll be in Toronto on Monday supporting @mcarthurmooney.bsky.social and Alexis von Konigslow as they launch their novels. Details: festivalofauthors.ca/event/toront...

I am fully 100% onboard with unisex washrooms but I must ask for signage that tells me, when there are multiple options, which door can be relied on to lead to urinals, as I am a busy modern person and I have the capacity and desire to pee standing.

Referring to my kids' school mascot as "Trogdor" and he's looking at me like he's already shopping for rest homes.

I would like us to go back to using "outlandish" to mean "foreign."

Absolutely giggly about getting to appear on this show, as a listener for 10 years now. I'm as much an EW fan as a baseball fan, I think. Thanks Ben for bringing me on!

The earnest young gentlemen arrived today.

When it's Wrap Yourself in the Flag Season, and the donors have been commenting on how many American remounts you've done...

Black Thursday for my fellow Nintendo Dads.

Today's read is Forecast: Pretty Bleak by Chris Bailey, which manages the trick of being generously emotive while every speaker and subject in its poems remains tongue-tied by nature.

Today's read is the unerringly bleak The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe, trans E. Dale Saunders.

Today's book is Wellwater by Karen Solie

Today's book is total by Aisha Sasha John.

Absolutely thought Thomas Pynchon was dead. Not even a second thought on the matter. One hundred percent, iron bar, certainty. As dead as dandruff.

Hoo boy was this ever made for me! Andrew Forbes is Canada's Baseball Spokesperson and the interest in labour history in his newest is so rich and complex. He's such a world builder too, you'll notice how well the book-length motifs work with the episodic essay topics. @utilityofboredom.bsky.social

While I see all your conspiracy theories I regret to inform you that the horrible truth is that an old man with a tariff obsession has been given almost unlimited power in the world's richest country.

A wonderful interview with Guelph CWMFA alum Alexis von Konigslow.

Today's book is Familial Hungers by Christine Wu.

The love of my life discussing her practice and new book at @oncreativewriting.bsky.social. www.oncreativewriting.com/post/alexis-...

In further downstream Trump Effect news, the Juno awards apparently 5Xed last year's ratings.

Appropriate entertainment for Winter 2025's coda.

"Powerlessness is an alibi" feels like it's going to shift around some brain chemistry for me.

Just finished The Northern by Jacob McArthur Mooney, a book about boundaries: the porous borders between countries; between innocence and experience; at the edges of baseball cards. Funny, tender, wise, beautifully written, and highly recommended. @mcarthurmooney.bsky.social @ecwpress.bsky.social

Nosferatu (1922 d. F.W. Murnau) #canpol

Window shopping for new local providers and considering how much I'd enjoy sharing a dentist with Darth Vader and also Gru from Despicable Me.

I'm having what I can only call Recurring Plot Nightmares, where I'm struggling to tell a very busy and convoluted story and I can't get it out. Is this a thing my brain is going to do now that I've written a novel? Like how I have Forgot My Lines nightmares on account of I did theatre as a kid?

Today's book is Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, translated by Sophie Hughes.

Monday update: rediscovered my long-lost chin by going to trim the beard and absentmindedly forgetting to put the clipper guards on first. 🙃

All the #USMNT is missing this weekend a surprise L to Greenland.

Bill Burr's realization that being a MAGA comedian would be personally abhorrent and professionally uninteresting to him has kicked off one of the more interesting journeys of the last decade.

Today's book is You Dreamed of Empires by Alvaro Enrigue, translated by Natasha Wimmer.

I like compound words like "ceasefire" because they're hard to tell lies with, because they front their materials, like brutalist architecture. It's a ceasefire if you've ceased fire. The language isn't meant to hold this much weight, you'll break it like this.