Ron Nurwisah, Boy Reporter

Bookninja reported last week that the standalone books section in the Globe is no more.

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From the Globe’s press release:

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Expanding audience reach, the Books section will physically join The Globe’s award-winning Focus section on Saturdays, starting January 10. “We’re growing audience reach with both online and in-paper formats,” said Greenspon. “The Focus section is one of the most high-profile, best-read sections of the paper so the Books content should reach even more readers.”

If you’re a booklover in Canada, it’s a sad thing, of course. The Globe’s book section is the only stand-alone book section in the country and its unique format (and inclusion in the ‘paper of record’) did give reviews in the section a certain cachet.

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Over at Bookninja, there’s a bit of hand-wringing about the ‘death’ of the section, and the decline of literary and critical culture in Canada. The Globe has said that they’re beefing up their online books coverage, which is a step in the right direction. Their current site is a bit anemic and the good books sections (the NYT and the Guardian stand out) have healthy online components. The Times’ weekly books podcast is extremely well done and adds a lot to an already healthy section.

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Most literary people think that books are a rarefied cultural product deserving of special coverage. They’re not. Every medium (film, music, television, art) is figuring out how to best use the internet. In music, it’s pretty clear that blogs and certain sites (Pitchfork, MySpace, et al) set the tone for music coverage online and off-line. The best TV criticism (or at least the stuff that’s being the most read) are on fan-sites and places like TV without pity.

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So, am I sad about the changes at Globe Books? Sure. But the conversation about books is still happening, it’s just gotten harder to find online. It’s on amazon reader reviews, blogs, facebook, maybe even twitter. And while a 140 character window might not be the best place for literary analysis, that doesn’t mean that those in the literary community shouldn’t figure out a way to shift these conversations online.

It might seem kind of obvious, but at the end of the day you go where your readers are.

I’ve changed up one thing on the right-hand side bar. I’ve added a little Google Reader widget. You see, I read a gajillion blogs a day and will try to push interesting stuff to the little widget.

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Now it’s 52 days of waiting. OK. how many days until the coalition fails? Hmmm?

If there’s one thing to take away from this latest round of disappointment from Ottawa, it’s the fact that the recent constitutional wrangling has reinvigorated CBC Senior Parliamentary Editor Don Newman

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Yes, he kind of looks and sounds like a Jim Henson puppet at times. But the last week or so have shown us another side of Newman: flashes of impish glee, moments of sheer tenacity and above all an unflinching competence.

It was clear that he was a bit bored with the election and so it’s good that Don got an early Christmas present in this crisis. Best of all, he gets to go home take a break and resume all of this in January!

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I, for one, will be watching the brooadcaaast.

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No, it’s not Milk, but the cast is pretty damn good!

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From always fabulous Stacey May Fowles and the Shameless blog. Vote for them as Canada’s best feminist blog.

I went to a preview screening of Gus Van Sant’s Milk a few weeks ago (it was a great film, Sean Penn will likely get another Oscar odd, and probably few other people too. I’m looking at you James Franco!).

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Yes, it’s a sad film. But it also gave me that feeling in the back of my head that if this film had come out just a couple of short months ago (say in the weeks before California voted on Proposition 8…) things might have gone a little bit differently.

Keith Olbermann’s moving monologue An American Tail movie about the Prop.8 vote has been zipping around the Internet, the New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg has a brilliant essay in last week’s New Yorker. The first paragraph lays out the Church of Latter Day Saint’s hypocrisy over Prop. 8.

In today’s Slate, Dennis Lim ponders the question that I’ve been asking for weeks, whether Gus Van Sant’s film could’ve swayed the vote.

The passage of Prop 8 transformed Van Sant’s film from a delicate, serious-minded period biopic into something altogether more urgent and emotional: a threnody, a catharsis, a call to action. Its hero, played by an unusually warm and giddy Sean Penn, is not simply a trailblazer who threw open closet doors; he’s a prophet whose words still matter and, what’s more, have gone sadly unheeded. There are moments in the film that now seem to traverse time and space, as if telepathically addressing the struggles of the present day. As the Prop 6 results start to roll in, Harvey tells his followers: “If this thing passes, fight the hell back.”

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Well, California’s progressives are fighting back. The photos of Prop. 8 protests are moving download Tunnel Rats dvd and will hopefully get progressives riled up. I’m also hoping that Gus Van Sant and those surrounding the film realize that they’ve got a chance to make things a bit more fair for those who just want a bit of love.

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Ahhh… it’s that time of year again end-of-year list time! And nothing makes me feel more inadequate as a reader than figuring out what I missed this year.

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The New York Times has a couple of enlightening lists: Michiko Kakutani and Janet Maslin

have their top 10 and here’s their 100 most notable books of the year. The Washington Post also has a lovely round-up here.

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The Times of London has their list, the Guardian, and the Telegraph too. Sadly some of the titles won’t be easy to get a hold of but a good (indie!) bookseller might be able to find a way.

A little closer to home: The Post has their list (including Phil Marchand’s list of best-value books download Betty Boop and the Little King True Romance ). The Globe also has their list of the best 100 books.

Pheww… better get readin’