KIRBC: The Blog

Questions you may be pondering:

What exactly is going on here?

The KIRBC blog has two main purposes:

1. To keep participants in the real-life club updated and informed on what’s happened at meetings. We keep a (mostly) up-to-date record of the books that have been recommended here.
2. To act as a place for reviews and literary discussion. Most reviews here are by JK, but you’ll find stuff from our guest stars as well! You’ll notice most of the reviews are pretty positive, ’cause, honestly, that’s how I feel about most books. Sometimes it’s a riveting read, and sometimes it’s just a book that really made me think. That’s not to say I’m not critical, or that I’m not choosy about what I read, but I’m pretty easy to please.

Who can vouch for you shady characters?

Check out articles about Jen Knoch and the KIRBC from more reliable media sources:

Open Book Toronto
Torontoist
CBC
Quill & Quire
National Post (The Afterword)
House of Anansi Blog
BlogTO

Do you review books for publishing houses?

We sure do, though we like to be queried first to make sure the book you’re offering will be a good fit with our interests. E-mail me at j.k.knoch[at]gmail.com and I’ll get back to you shortly. If you’re an author, have your publicist give us a shout.

Who are you people?

Blog Contributors

JK is the founder and President of the Keepin’ it Real Book Club. She’s also the principal blogger here at the digital digs of the KIRBC, where you’ll find her thoughts on most books she reads and on occasional publishing hullaballoo.  At real-life KIRBC meetings, her recommendations tend to be novels that make people cry – thus exposing androids in our midst. She also has retained all her childish enthusiasm for picture books and YA novels.

Although elsewhere defined as KIRBC’s ‘new part-android correspondent,’ Cheese also enjoys novels that make people cry. She also enjoys novels that make people angry, grotesque and inappropriate adult picture books that make people laugh, and whatever publishers will throw at her for free. Although Cheese has a background in / crush on dead languages, the tech life seems to follow her around like MA students follow Nietzsche. She has recently been able to pair this hostile takeover with a longtime love of books, and is exceedingly happy about it.

Tennile is a tree-hugger who also worships literature and, as a result, has some environmentally-fuelled qualms with the publishing industry (a.k.a. the industry from whence her paychecks come. It’s a love/hate relationship). That aside, books (paper or otherwise) are her life and she aspires to, one day, maybe – gasp – write one.

Tennile’s hankerings for books are most satiated by Canadian, Aboriginal, and Post-Colonial literature.

Emily has been addicted to books for as long as she can remember. As a young girl, her weekly fix came in the form of Scholastic, and she would do whatever she could to scrape together the money to buy just one more book. The local library was always a great help, offering her a ready supply of books for little or no money. With no limit to her reading possibilities, Emily fell deeper and deeper into the literary world. After graduating from high school, Emily pulled herself away from books, and began taking courses in science, but unable to resist the temptation for long, by her second year she was back in the world of reading, but now it wasn’t just the minor leagues anymore. No, now Emily was into the hard stuff: literature. Emily was so hooked on books, that after graduating from Western, she went to Queen’s to do her Master’s in English, and there met a group of poeple with a similar problem: they were also addicted to books. Some loved the look of a good book, some loved the smell, some loved the font, some the language, but all were united in their inability to resist a piece of literature. Emily is proud to report that, although she is no longer studying books in the academic sense, she is still 100% addicted, with no hope of recovery in sight. She now works to keep it real by baking and decorating beautiful desserts.She has a cat named Tennyson who shares her love of books (though he mostly sleeps on them).

“I see people gathered for KIRBC,” said Anna, “spread upon the couches as jam spreads upon a piece of toast.”

Anna, once called the “Mary-Ann of our Babysitter’s Club,” has always taken her position as KIRBC’s Poet Laureate and first Secretary very seriously. Having moved back to the rainy shores of Vancouver in June 2007, she now acts as one of KIRBC’s West Coast ambassadors. Her areas of reading speciality include (but are not limited to) children’s lit, teen fiction, sci fi, and recent editions of Lonely Planet Canada. Her website is: http://www.annamoorhouse.com

And Introducing…

Courtney is very excited to have been invited into the world of KIRBC as the official theatrical ambassador where she will be relating her adventures in the land of plays and productions. Courtney completed her B.A. at Queen’s University in Drama and Music and then went on to pursue her M.Mus at The Boston Conservatory in Musical Theatre. She has now returned to her hometown Toronto and continues to enjoy over-saturating herself with productions at the Shaw Festival and Stratford, and can be spotted spending many an hour at the TheatreBooks store drooling over the works of Chekhov, Shakespeare, Shaw, and Canadian playwrights such as Ann-Marie MacDonald and Linda Griffiths (to name just a few). Beyond books, she is looking forward to meetings filled with knitting lessons (apparently there is some catching up to do), baked goods (banana-chocolate-chip-anything) and tea (preferably vanilla, with a few drops of skim milk).