For me, the jacket is a piece of menswear history that I can actually put on, and a link to the tragicomic tale of an underachiever with a famous name.
Michał Kozłowski
Poets on Film
The Western Front, Canada’s longest running artist-run centre, recently hosted a public screening of two dozen or so films from their archive of readings by poets from the 1970s, 80s and 90s.
Daniel Francis
Umpire of the St. Lawrence
Donald Creighton was a bigot and a curmudgeon, a cranky Tory with a chip on his shoulder. He was also the country’s leading historian, who changed the way that Canadians told their own story.
Alberto Manguel
Pistol Shots at a Concert
The novelist can often better define reality than the historian.
Patty Osborne
The Mere Future
Meet the new bosses of a futuristic New York. Same as the old boss?
JEROME STUEART
Road Trip
A collection of Jerome Stueart's Greyhound sketches, including one Vitruvian bus driver.
Eve Corbel
The 99: Bus Without Pity
How did the 99 B-Line bus route come to be the locus of the most heartless transit rides in Greater Vancouver?
Katie Addleman
Greyhound
The driver said, “Are you fit to travel, sir?” and the crack smoker said, “Are any of us fit to travel?"
Rebekah Chotem
Room for the Real
Rebekah Chotem reviews the film adaptation of Room by Emma Donoghue.
Michael Hayward
Coastal Memories
Michael Hayward reviews Everything Rustles by Jane Silcott and Born Out of This by Christine Lowther.
Stephen Osborne
National Poetry Daze
CBC Radio celebrated National Poetry Day by reading a poem written in 1916 by Bliss Carman, which raises the question: are there no living poets who cut the mustard?
George A. Walker
La Vie en Rose
Pierre Trudeau among the stars—a series of woodblock prints by George Walker.
Lily Gontard
Fathers and Daughters
Lily Gontard reviews A Rock Fell on the Moon by Alicia Priest and The Stone Thrower by Jael Ealey Richardson.
Stephen Henighan
Phony War
"We know that life-altering and possibly cataclysmic change is coming, and we continue to live as we have always done."
Michael Hayward
Dream-Life of Cities
"If cities can be said to be alive, how many of them dream of growing up to become Paris?" Michael Hayward reviews How Paris Became Paris by Joan DeJean.
EVE JOSEPH
Death Matters
It is not uncommon for there to be periods of agitation shortly before death. People often try to rise from their beds as if they have to get somewhere.
Rob Kovitz
What Kinds of Questions
So much of how life feels lies in the phrasing.
Norbert Ruebsaat
Ice & Fire
Over Christmas I read my friend Stephen Osborne’s book Ice & Fire (Arsenal Pulp Press), which is also a Geist Book, and felt I was reading a handshake: familiar and new.
Stephen Osborne
Insurgency
Stephen Osborne discusses the past, present and future of literary magazines in Canada.
Kris Rothstein
All Folked Up
Kris Rothstein recounts her experience at the Pickathon, a music festival in Portland, Oregon.
Luke MacLean
Je M'Appelle Raphael
Possum-style or straight up dirty.
Patty Osborne
Spectrums
Patty Osborne reviews Do You Think This Is Strange? by Aaron Cully Drake, a look into the mind of an autistic teenage boy.
ANNMARIE MACKINNON
Einsteinium Ist Nicht Geil
AnnMarie MacKinnon reviews Einsteinium (Es), an element discovered by a non-Einstein Albert.
Michał Kozłowski
Centre of the Universe
Michal Kozlowski reports on the state of publishing: s'mores, Titantic metaphors, Celtic jigs, steak canapés and mechanical bull riding.
Phrase books are tools of cultural globalization—but they are also among its casualties.
Stephen Henighan
Collateral Damage
When building a nation, cultural riches can be lost.
Stephen Henighan
Transatlantic Fictions
Coming to harbour in a new world.
Alberto Manguel
Arms and Letters
Science and the arts fulfil their functions to help us survive through the imagination.
Stephen Henighan
Reheated Races
Dividing and conquering local populations confines them to manageable administrative units.
CHERYL THOMPSON
Dismantling the Myth of the Hero
In a world dominated by heroes, difference is not tolerated.
Alberto Manguel
Achilles and the Lusitan Tortoise
“Have patience” and “Tomorrow” are two inseparable locutions in the Portuguese tongue.
Stephen Henighan
All in the Same CANO
For a brief period the band CANO gave shape to the dream of a bilingual Canadian culture.
Stephen Henighan
Residential Roots
"The hemispheric context reveals the roots of the residential school system...Destroying Indigenous cultures was a positivist policy from Patagonia to Dawson City."
LISA BIRD-WILSON
Occupation Anxiety
Lisa Bird-Wilson on UNDRIP, reconciliation, and the anxiety felt by Indigenous people in Canada.
Stephen Henighan
Not Reading
What we do when we absorb words from a screen—and we haven’t yet evolved a verb for it—is not reading.
Alberto Manguel
Library as Wishful Thinking
Libraries are not only essential in educating the soul, but in forming the identity of a society.
Stephen Henighan
Lethal Evolutions
Our society is formed on the assumption of a healthy immune system.
Stephen Henighan
Confidence Woman
The woman who called herself Tatiana Aarons gave me an address that led to a vacant lot.
Alberto Manguel
Léon Bloy and His Monogamous Reader
Dogged dedication grants a reader vicarious immortality.
Stephen Henighan
Plague
What we can—and can’t—learn from the plague
Stephen Henighan
A Pen Too Far
On March 5, 2006, a group of people gathered in a small Ontario city in the expectation of having books signed by an author who was not present.
George Fetherling
The Daily Apocalypse
The newspaper wars aren’t what they used to be.
Stephen Henighan
Taíno Tales
A package-deal paradise reputation curtails gringo knowledge of Dominican life.
Alberto Manguel
Art and Blasphemy
Faith seems to shiver when confronted by art.
Alberto Manguel
A Fairy Tale for Our Time
What can the Brothers Grimm teach us about the state of our economic system? Everything.
Alberto Manguel
Literature & Morality
Must artists declare their moral integrity?
Stephen Henighan
Flight Shame
Without air travel, family networks might have dissolved long ago.
Alberto Manguel
The Defeat of Sherlock Holmes
There’s something not quite right about the grid on which the game is played.
The Echoing Years: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry and Translation from Canada and Ireland
Leah Rae reviews The Echoing Years: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry and Translation from Canada and Ireland: "Finally, a comprehensive collection of fair-to-middlin’ verse for the multilingual."
Michael Hayward
From A to X
Michael Hayward reviews John Berger’s From A to X, a tale of anger, displacement and resistance.
Michael Hayward
Saudade
Michael Hayward reviews Anik See’s Saudade, a collection of essays to plunge you deep into the meanings of travel and place.
Michael Hayward
Edward Lear in Albania
Michael Hayward reviews Edward Lear in Albania, an account of the author's travels through the Balkans beginning in 1848.
Eve Corbel
Ebb and Flow
Eve Corbel reviews The Sea Lady by Margaret Drabble, a novel that takes place on land but is all about the sea.
Thad McIlroy
Failed Experiments in the Future of Publishing
Thad McIlroy reviews The Reaper by Steven Dunne.
Lily Gontard
Outliers: The Story of Success
Malcolm Gladwell uses statistical analyses to prove that location and timing are everything in Outliers: The Story of Success, reviewed by Lily Gontard.
Michael Hayward
Notes from Walnut Tree Farm
A peek inside Roger Deakin’s living, breathing farmhouse in the waning years of his life in Notes from Walnut Tree Farm, reviewed by Michael Hayward.
Thad McIlroy
Slumdog Millionaire
Thad McIlroy reviews Slumdog Millionaire, a 2009 film by Danny Boyle.
Carrie Villeneuve
When You Leave Town
Carrie Villeneuve reviews a new album from an East Vancouver band that appeals to music fans of all ages.
Michał Kozłowski
The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara & Lenin Play Chess
“Adopt a reading pseudonym” is but one piece of advice offered in The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara & Lenin Play Chess by Andrei Codrescu, reviewed by Michal Kozlowski.
Michael Hayward
The Discovery of France
Michael Hayward reviews Graham Robb's The Discovery of France, a scholarly but entertaining history of France’s emergence in the modern era.
Leah Rae
The Chicken, the Fish and the King Crab
This edge-of-your-seat film follows a Spanish chef on his quest to win the prestigious cooking competition, the Bocuse D’Or. Review by Leah Rae.
Michael Hayward
The Complete Manual of Things That Might Kill You: A Guide to Self-Diagnosis for Hypochondriacs
Even the healthiest reader can uncover the fatal illness within thanks to The Complete Manual of Things That Might Kill You: A Guide to Self-Diagnosis for Hypochondriacs, reviewed by Michael Hayward.
Stephen Osborne
Kahn & Engelmann
Stephen Osborne reviews Kahn & Engelmann, a German novel by Hans Eichner hailed as a masterpiece in Europe.
Jennesia Pedri
Scumbags Behaving Badly
Jennesia Pedri reviews Gonzalo Riedel's wonderfully disastrous short story collection, Behaving This Way Is All I Have Left.
Thad McIlroy
The Celebrated Crad
Thad McIlroy reads Kilodney Does Shakespeare and Other Stories by Lorette Luzajic, the only book that discusses Crad Kilodney’s life and writing.
Michał Kozłowski
Sarajevo Marlboro
Michal Kozlowski reviews Sarajevo Marlboro by Miljenko Jergovic, twenty-nine (very) short stories set in Sarajevo during the Bosnian war of the early 1990s.
Daniel Zomparelli
Rocksalt: An Anthology of Contemporary B.C. Poetry
Daniel Zomparelli reviews Rocksalt: An Anthology of Contemporary B.C. Poetry edited by Mona Fertig and Harold Rhenisch (Mother Tongue).
Todd Coyne
Black is Back
Todd Coyne reviews Black: The History of a Color by Michel Pastoureau, a book that "charts a European social history of the most symbolic and evocative colour on earth."
Michael Hayward
Beat Generation
Michael Hayward reviews Beat Generation by Jack Kerouac, a three-act play he wrote but never produced.
Patty Osborne
Banana Rose
Patty Osborne reviews Banana Rose by Natalie Goldberg.
Michael Hayward
Across the Territories
Michael Hayward reviews Across the Territories by Kenneth White, a book of White's worldwide travels.
Mindy Abramowitz
Action Girl Comics
"I am by no means a connoisseur of comics, and usually confine my reading to one or two titles. Now Action Girl Comics makes it three." Review by Mindy Abramowitz.
Dan Post
A Sound Like Water Dripping
Dan Post reviews A Sound Like Water Dripping by Soren Bondrup-Nielsen, the story of the author's attempts to be the first Ontarian to locate the elusive boreal owl.