The Bloggomist: Table of Content
Book Review

Many people I know love The Princess Bride with an almost “Maybe I will marry it!” kind of ardor. To be perfectly honest, I still don’t understand the adulation surrounding that film. It’s not that I didn’t want to like it. When everyone else in grade school is giving chase with cries of “You killed my father: prepare to die!”, and British bulldog isn’t happening with the four kids whose parents didn’t take them to see the movie, you sort of wish you shared the love (if only to busy a long lunch recess). →

The Bloggomist: Table of Content
Food review

Some women, when they crave, fantasize about sweets. Hot fudge sundaes, red velvet cupcakes, chocolate-covered anything and everything… but me? I want none of it. My hankerings typically run to the spice. If I can get that heat fried? Nice. Now if you can make it a chicken wing, oh, baby. You just might persuade me to do something I’d not in my right mind. →

The Bloggomist: Table of Content
Book Review
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For many of those in/from the States, this week will likely be marked by feasting, football, fiasco (not necessarily in that order, of course). Allow me to add a little something to your fete…? As I’m loath to be that guest who brings plastic cutlery and a half-thawed peach cobbler to this holiday Table, I offer here my Thanksgiving contribution: The Arrival (Arthur A. Levine Books, 2007) by Shaun Tan.

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The Bloggomist: Table of Content
Book Review

Being fourteen – in my memory, anyhow – is no piece of cake. It’s kind of a no-man’s-land: you’re no longer a grade-school kid, your parents don’t (really) pick your clothes anymore, your secondary sexual characteristics are either out of control or out-of-order, and you’re suddenly held responsible for your music choices and weekend activities →

The Bloggomist: Table of Content
Food Opinion

One spring afternoon about three years ago, I spent a good while driving up and down Hyperion Ave., scowling as much about my inability to locate my destination as I was at my empty, audibly indignant stomach. Both hungry and fed up with the crooked, U-turn unfriendliness of the street, I’d just about abandoned my search when, finally, I spotted Viet Soy Café. →

Interview with Dengue Fever
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This ring a bell?

“Now get your patchouli stink outta my store!”

Nothing? Well. Recall “rings on his fingers”… “awful cooking smells”… unbuttoned shirt and a greasy, salt/peppery ponytail. Light a little incense, maybe fondle some original-press wax. Is it coming back to you now? Are you thinking, “High Fidelity, circa early 2000?” If you are, you’re absolutely right: it’s that “f***ing Ian guy” →

So the column name’s evidently cryptic enough to have attracted your attention.
Now.
How will I keep it?

Do you like books? If yes, continue.
Do you like food? Delicious. Please proceed.
Do you not-so-secretly loathe pretension and artificiality, especially when it comes to said books, said food? Then come right along – and don’t forget your reading/eating shoes ‘cause we’ve got places to
go – !

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Interview with Chris Burden
Conducted by Tiffany Barber
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The close reading most North American students do in English classes comes largely from an interpretive tradition known by lit nerds as New Criticism, a close-reading approach to poetry that posits the text’s (rather than the writer’s) primacy, and examines textual features instead of such externalities as author →