Monthly Archives: June 2022

Type Talk: Non-Linear Narratives

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Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

In honour of VPL’s ongoing Reading Challenge and this year’s Summer Reading Club, I bring you Type Talk, a series of blog posts about non-traditional or uncommon storytelling formats, genres or structures, which both challenge our idea of what storytelling is, and will perhaps inspire us to try a new kind of media we might not have before.

Today we’ll feature non-linear narratives, where events are told out of order, depict multiple timelines, or are heavily interspersed with flashbacks or flashforwards, to a point where it is the main vehicle for story delivery, such as in the Indian epic, The Mahābhārata.

(Note: VPL doesn’t have the complete version in English, but you can read a portion of this incredible poem, translated, in The Bhagavadgītā in the Mahābhārata.)

A non-linear narrative may also be a story containing stories within itself, and so there are multiple timelines being depicted, such as in the Arabian Nights, ‘Forrest Gump‘, and ‘Slumdog Millionaire‘. Another term for this is ‘frame narratives’.

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VMC Library Virtual Tour

Nestled within the vibrant community hub, the VMC Library brings our library services, programming, and collection to the fast-growing downtown core. This new 9,000 square foot library provides welcoming spaces for children, families, students, neighbourhood residents and transit commuters. A first for VPL, we will host culinary literacy programming in the state-of-the-art community kitchen within the same building.

VMC Express – an on-the-go convenience VPL Members will also be able to enjoy street-level access to our newest titles and popular bestsellers in the self-service storefront conveniently located on Apple Mill Road – a first of its kind in Vaughan! This 400 square foot quick stop features automated check-in and check-out for fast and simple returns and pickups.

Stop on by and see what Vaughan Public Libraries can do for you. A visit will get you thinking!

Summertime, and the Watching’s Easy

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Summer may have just started, but is anyone else’s brain already in vacation mode? Are we all ready to be sitting on patios in the sunshine, sipping margaritas? If you need a little inspiration, or if you’re unable to head out into the sunshine just yet, now is a good time to dip your toes into summertime vibes with some hot weather movies. Below, I’ve pulled a list together of some of my all-time films for the summer season that you can find in the VPL catalogue (sorry, no Palm Springs or Fire Island just yet). But this list is by no means exhaustive (keeping it to five was a struggle, as you’ll see), so feel free to share your own favourites in the comments! 

Before Sunrise (1995) 

Really, any movie in Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy would be a good choice (take your pick of locale: Vienna, Paris, or Greece), but since Before Sunrise is the first in the series, it’s best to start there. The 1995 film takes place on a single summer day. Jesse (American) and Celine (French) are on separate paths, but those paths cross for a moment on a train. Deciding to make the best of fate, they disembark and spend the rest of the day (and night) wandering the streets of Vienna, deep in conversation. That’s literally the whole plot, so your enjoyment of this kind of movie hinges on how much you love listening to people talk. The acting is so naturalistic that it’s easy to mistake Ethan Hawke’s and Julie Delpy’s performances as improvisations. The Before trilogy holds a special place in cinema history for its sequel rollouts: Before Sunset catches up with Jesse and Celine nine years later, this time in Paris. It’s a treat to see how they’ve matured, and we’re gifted another glimpse into their lives with Before Midnight, which takes place another nine years later, this time in Greece. But Before Sunrise holds a special charm owing to Jesse and Celine’s youth, with all their naïve philosophizing, and the will-they-or-won’t-they pull between them. These are two actors who play beautifully off each other, Delpy with a keenly European romanticism (and prettily messy French girl hair) and Hawke with the depth to match it (he has recently come out with what is, in my opinion, the correct take on the “are superhero movies art” debate—something very in line with Jesse!).  

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