Friday Fiction: Fall TV and Complimentary Books by Alex

When people talk about what eras they would ideally live in (the '60s for the counterculture and revolutions, the '70s for the music and drugs, the '20s for the arts scene in Paris, the 1880s for the wigs) I am always the person who plays the feminism/civil rights card; (Yep, I'm that guy!) I pick the present every time. I mean, I wouldn't kick a time machine out of bed or anything but I would not go back to live in a time when I had less rights just so I could chill with some lady-discriminating-against writers no matter how brilliant I think "For sale: baby shoes, never worn" is. Besides, TV is so damn good now. Miss Arrested Development, Breaking Bad, Happy Endings, Parks and Recreation, The Wire, freaking Deadwood just so that I could be an active, willing participant in colonization? Hell no. I'll just stick to fighting the racist, oppressive patriarchy in the present, thank you, taking breaks to watch shows and read books. Sometimes, reading books that compliment those shows perfectly and vice versa:

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Friday Fiction: IFOA Edition by Alex

Ah, fall! Sweaters, long walks through crunchy multi-coloured leaves, pumpkin-flavoured everything (sadly no apple-flavoured stuff this season – t'was a bumper crop year : ((( ), the return of network TV, the stress of finding a (group) Halloween costume (Limp Bizkit backup dancers? The girls from The Craft? The Babysitter's Club? Agents Scully and Reyes? A binder full of women?) before just abandoning every idea to stay in and do nothing like the curmudgeon you're trying desperately to avoid becoming... Oh baby, it's my favourite time of year! It's also that magical time when droves (packs? schools? murders?) of authors descend upon Toronto for the International Festival of Authors. And this IFOA? This one is a doozey (<– I'm a good writer). Here are a few of my favourite authors who will giving interviews and readings at the festival.

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Doris and Mona and the Mysterious Happenings at Sugar Shack Ranch by Alex

Mona: You know, Dorrie, perhaps we took that little prank too far.

Doris: I was just thinking that.

Mona: I just found it infuriating the way they were always referring to one another as "boyish", "pleasantly plump" and "titian-haired".

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