Mary Walsh: Open Book was a weekly book club series on CBC Television, based on Oprah's Book Club, where friends and employees of Mary Walsh and other celebrities gathered to discuss books and literature.
Michael Donovan was the creator of Open Book.
The show was spoofed on Royal Canadian Air Farce as Open Book with Marg the Princess Warrior, with Roger Abbott impersonating Walsh in her Marg Delahunty persona from This Hour Has 22 Minutes, discussing books with her guests (including Luba Goy's Margaret Atwood). The running gag was Marg's tendency to rant incessantly about each book and then stray off-topic into her political views and declaring her opinion supreme, eventually driving away her guests.
Famous quotes containing the words open and/or book:
“[Panurge] spent everything in a thousand little banquets and joyous feasts open to all comers, particularly jolly companions, young lasses, and delightful wenches, and in clearing his lands, burning the big logs to sell the ashes, taking money in advance, buying dear, selling cheap, and eating his wheat in the blade.”
—François Rabelais (1494–1553)
“I review novels to make money, because it is easier for a sluggard to write an article a fortnight than a book a year, because the writer is soothed by the opiate of action, the crank by posing as a good journalist, and having an airhole. I dislike it. I do it and I am always resolving to give it up.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)