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DAISY audio (Direct to player), DAISY audio (Zip)
Social issues, Journals and memoirs, Canadian authors (Non-fiction)
Human-narrated audio
We think, maybe, that homelessness is some kind of stable state, like being housed except without housing. Without really considering…
it, most people do imagine that people who are homeless live in, if not one place, at least in one condition, that their days are in some way predictable. But homelessness is, more than anything else, a life of constant displacement. The housing crisis plaguing major urban centres has sent countless people into the streets. In spring 2022, some of them found their way to the yard beside the Anglican church in Toronto's Kensington Market, where Maggie Helwig is the priest. They pitched tents, formed an encampment, and settled in. Known as an outspoken social justice activist, Helwig has spent the last three years getting to know the residents and fighting tooth and nail to allow them to stay, battling various authorities that want to clear the yard and keep the results of the housing crisis out of sight and out of mind. Encampment tells the story of Helwig's life-long activism as preparation for her fight to keep her churchyard open to people needing a home. More importantly, it introduces us to the Artist, to Jeff, and to Robin: their lives, their challenges, their humanity. It confronts our society's callousness in allowing so many to go unhoused and demands, by bringing their stories to the fore, that we begin to respond with compassion and grace
DAISY audio (Direct to player), DAISY audio (Zip)
Arts and entertainment, Computers and internet, Social issues, Canadian authors (Non-fiction)
Human-narrated audio
Enshittification: it's not just you—the internet sucks now. Here's why, and here's how we can disenshittify it. This program is…
read by the author. We're living through the Enshittocene, the Great Enshittening, a time in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into giant piles of shit. It's frustrating. Demoralizing. Even terrifying. Enshittification identifies the problem and proposes a solution. When Cory Doctorow coined the term enshittification , he was not just finding a funner way to say "things are getting worse." He was making a specific diagnosis about the state of the digital world and how it is affecting all of our lives (and not for the better). The once-glorious internet was colonized by platforms that made all-but-magical promises to their users—and, at least initially, seemed to deliver on them. But once users were locked in, the platforms turned on them to make their business customers happy. Then the platforms turned to abusing their business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. In the end, the platforms die. Doctorow's argument clearly resonated. Once named, it became obvious that enshittification is everywhere, so much so that the American Dialect Society named it its 2023 Word of the Year, and was cited as an inspiration for the 2025 season of Black Mirror. Here, now, in Enshittification the audiobook, Doctorow moves the conversation beyond the overwhelming sense of our inevitably enshittified fate. He shows us the specific decisions that led us here, who made them, and—most important—how they can be undone
Braille (Contracted), Electronic braille (Contracted), DAISY Audio (Direct to Player), DAISY Audio (Zip), DAISY text (Direct to player), DAISY text (Zip), Word (Zip), ePub (Zip)
Arts and entertainment, Humour, Actors biography, Fine arts biography, Canadian authors (Non-fiction)
Synthetic audio, Automated braille
From the bestselling author of Kids in the Hall: One Dumb Guy, the definitive biography of John Candy—a heartwarming portrait…
of one of comedy's most beloved and enduring stars. From his humble beginnings in sketch comedy with the Toronto branch of Second City, to his rise to fame in SCTV and Hollywood film classics like Planes, Trains and Automobiles, The Great Outdoors, and Uncle Buck, John Candy captivated audiences with his self-deprecating humour, emotional warmth, and gift for improvisation. Now, for the first time since Candy's tragic death, bestselling biographer Paul Myers tells the full story of the man behind the laughs. Drawing on extensive research and exclusive interviews with many of Candy's closest friends and colleagues, including Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase, Tom Hanks, Ron Howard, Steve Martin, Catherine O'Hara, Martin Short, and many more, John Candy: A Life in Comedy celebrates the comedian's unparalleled talent, infectious charm, and generosity of spirit. Through ups and downs, successes and failures, and struggles with anxiety and self-doubt, Candy faced the world with a big smile and a warm demeanour that earned him the love and adoration of fans around the world
DAISY audio (Direct to player), DAISY audio (Zip)
Women biography, Literature biography, Journals and memoirs, Canadian authors (Non-fiction)
Human-narrated audio
How does one of the greatest storytellers of our time write her own life? The long-awaited memoir from one of…
our most lauded and influential cultural figures."Every writer is at least two beings: the one who lives, and the one who writes. Though everything written must have passed through their minds, or mind, they are not the same."Raised by ruggedly independent, scientifically minded parents—entomologist father, dietician mother—Atwood spent most of each year in the wild forest of northern Quebec. This childhood was unfettered and nomadic, sometimes isolated (on her eighth birthday: "It sounds forlorn. It was forlorn. It gets more forlorn."), but also thrilling and beautiful.From this unconventional start, Atwood unfolds the story of her life, linking seminal moments to the books that have shaped our literary landscape, from the cruel year that spawned Cat’s Eye to the Orwellian 1980s of East Berlin where she wrote The Handmaid’s Tale. In pages bursting with bohemian gatherings, her magical life with the wildly charismatic writer Graeme Gibson and major political turning points, we meet poets, bears, Hollywood actors and larger-than-life characters straight from the pages of an Atwood novel.As we travel with her along the course of her life, more and more is revealed about her writing, the connections between real life and art—and the workings of one of our greatest imaginations.