The Daughter as Detective. A bibliophile tries to understand her father through his favorite Swedish mystery books.

I don’t know why it’s so frustrating that my dad refuses to say or even think about why he likes the things he does, when his preoccupations run so deep and are so consistent.



Design Canada ?

design canada title card

Design Canada is a documentary film celebrating the golden era of Canadian design. View the trailer.

I attended the Montreal screening of the film last week and definitely learned a few things. My design history knowledge skews heavily towards Britain and Europe, so it was pretty awesome to see Canadian efforts in the spotlight. I grew up during the period when much of this work was being scrapped in favour of the new, so I never really appreciated some of the systems that we had in place.

The film is showing around the country over the next month, including several more screenings at Cinema du Parc in Montreal. It will be released digitally in the fall.

Thanks to the film’s director, Greg Durrell, for providing me with the film’s title card for this post.





Lots of Fun With Finnegan’s Wake

Peter O’Brien is currently illustrating the 628 pages of Finnegans Wake by James Joyce. Here’s a page from an article in the Globe and Mail:

Joyce used grist for Finnegans Wake from wherever he found it: the Bible, drinking songs, the morning paper. I likewise use images from various sources. These two trees are side-by-side at the cottage of a friend, and I thought they would be appropriate on a page where Joyce invokes Lucien Lévy-Bruhl and his work in the growing fields of sociology and ethnology.

Visit Peter’s site for more sample pages and links to other articles about the project, Lots of Fun With Finnegan’s Wake. He hopes to be finished by 2022.