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.
Shannon Emmerson
A Recipe for Bees
Shannon Emmerson reviews Gail Anderson-Dargatz's A Recipe for Bees, a story about the price of our choices and the reasons we make them.
S. K. Page
A History of the Future
"A History of the Future, by David A. Wilson, is a great idea for a book: a history of what people in the past made of the future they would never know." Review by S.K. Page.
Kris Rothstein
Colonialism and Homosexuality
The promise of exotic and sensuous experience has lured many a European man to go abroad, as Robert Aldrich demonstrates in Colonialism and Homosexuality (Routledge), reviewed by Kris Rothstein.
Michael Hayward
Books That Shook the World
Michael Hayward reviews Atlantic Books' series of 'Books That Shook the World' and Alberto Manguel's biography of Homer's the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Michael Hayward
Mnemonic Devices
Michael Hayward reviews Mnemonic: a book of trees by Theresa Kishkan (Goose Lane).
Siobhan Devlin
Lucky Jim
"So today in class we talk about Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis, which I looked forward to because it’s a book with two interesting female characters, for a change." Review by Siobhan Devlin.
Sarah Maitland
Long Pen Under the Library
Sarah Maitland visits Margaret Atwood's book signing at Vancouver's Word on the Street festival.
Last Wedding
A review of Bruce Sweeney's Last Wedding.
Michał Kozłowski
Joseph Howe and the Battle for Freedom of Speech
Michal Kozlowski reviews Joseph Howe and the Battle for Freedom of Speech by John Ralston Saul.
Kris Rothstein
Fake ID
Kris Rothstein reviews Mariko Tamaki’s Fake ID, a collection of short stories about a young woman who moves to Toronto after finishing university in Montreal.
Michael Hayward
Phantom Limb
Michael Hayward reviews Phantom Limb by Theresa Kishkan, a series of essays exploring of the complexity and magic of the natural world.
ARLEEN PARÉ
Paper Trail
A paranoid office-worker relieves the alienation she feels in her job by writing experimental lyric prose.
Patty Osborne
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Patty Osborne reviews Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, a fast-paced and hilarious coming-of-age story about the adopted daughter of a religious fanatic mother.
Michael Hayward
On Hashish
Michael Hayward reviews On Hashish, a collection of Walter Benjamin’s writings on hashish.
Stephen Osborne
On the Edge: A Journey into the Heart of Canada
Stephen Osborne reviews On the Edge: A Journey into the Heart of Canada by Lindalee Tracey.
Mandelbrot
Nanook of the North
Mandelbrot discusses the making of Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North.
Kris Rothstein
Turbo Chicks: Talking Young Feminists
Kris Rothstein reviews Talking Young Feminists, a collection of essays by young feminist women.
Carrie Villeneuve
The Union: The Business Behind Getting High
Carrie Villeneuve reviews The Union: The Business Behind Getting High, a documentary on British Columbia's marijuana industry.
Geist Staff
The Wild is Always There
"Greg Gatenby is the Toronto impresario whose good works on behalf of Literature are legendary. Unhappily, his latest book is not one of them." A review of The Wild is Always There.
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.
"A History of the Future, by David A. Wilson, is a great idea for a book: a history of what people in the past made of the future they would never know." Review by S.K. Page.
Kris Rothstein
Colonialism and Homosexuality
The promise of exotic and sensuous experience has lured many a European man to go abroad, as Robert Aldrich demonstrates in Colonialism and Homosexuality (Routledge), reviewed by Kris Rothstein.
Michael Hayward
Books That Shook the World
Michael Hayward reviews Atlantic Books' series of 'Books That Shook the World' and Alberto Manguel's biography of Homer's the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Michael Hayward
Mnemonic Devices
Michael Hayward reviews Mnemonic: a book of trees by Theresa Kishkan (Goose Lane).
Siobhan Devlin
Lucky Jim
"So today in class we talk about Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis, which I looked forward to because it’s a book with two interesting female characters, for a change." Review by Siobhan Devlin.
Sarah Maitland
Long Pen Under the Library
Sarah Maitland visits Margaret Atwood's book signing at Vancouver's Word on the Street festival.
Last Wedding
A review of Bruce Sweeney's Last Wedding.
Michał Kozłowski
Joseph Howe and the Battle for Freedom of Speech
Michal Kozlowski reviews Joseph Howe and the Battle for Freedom of Speech by John Ralston Saul.
Kris Rothstein
Fake ID
Kris Rothstein reviews Mariko Tamaki’s Fake ID, a collection of short stories about a young woman who moves to Toronto after finishing university in Montreal.
Michael Hayward
Phantom Limb
Michael Hayward reviews Phantom Limb by Theresa Kishkan, a series of essays exploring of the complexity and magic of the natural world.
ARLEEN PARÉ
Paper Trail
A paranoid office-worker relieves the alienation she feels in her job by writing experimental lyric prose.
Patty Osborne
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Patty Osborne reviews Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, a fast-paced and hilarious coming-of-age story about the adopted daughter of a religious fanatic mother.
Michael Hayward
On Hashish
Michael Hayward reviews On Hashish, a collection of Walter Benjamin’s writings on hashish.
Stephen Osborne
On the Edge: A Journey into the Heart of Canada
Stephen Osborne reviews On the Edge: A Journey into the Heart of Canada by Lindalee Tracey.
Mandelbrot
Nanook of the North
Mandelbrot discusses the making of Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North.
Kris Rothstein
Turbo Chicks: Talking Young Feminists
Kris Rothstein reviews Talking Young Feminists, a collection of essays by young feminist women.
Carrie Villeneuve
The Union: The Business Behind Getting High
Carrie Villeneuve reviews The Union: The Business Behind Getting High, a documentary on British Columbia's marijuana industry.
Geist Staff
The Wild is Always There
"Greg Gatenby is the Toronto impresario whose good works on behalf of Literature are legendary. Unhappily, his latest book is not one of them." A review of The Wild is Always There.
Patty Osborne
The Sisters Brothers
A review of The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt, winner of Governor-General's Literary Award, the Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, shortlisted for the Giller and the Man Booker Prize.
Patty Osborne
The Americans Are Coming
Patty Osborne reviews The Americans Are Coming by Herb Curtis, a story set in the flyfishing lodges of the Miramichi region of New Brunswick.
Mandelbrot
Snapshot Poetics
Mandelbrot reviews Snapshot Poetics, Allen Ginsberg's photographic memoir of the Beat era from 1953 to 1964.
Michał Kozłowski
Sidewalk
Michal Kozlowski reviews Sidewalk, an ethnographic study of the lives of magazine and book vendors on Sixth Avenue in New York, written by Mitchell Duneier.
S. K. Page
When Words Deny the World: The Reshaping of Canadian Writing
S.K. Page reviews Stephen Henighan's When Words Deny the World: The Reshaping of Canadian Writing, a penetrating argument for finding new ways of writing and imagining this country and our experience in it.
Michael Hayward
Troia: Mexican Memoirs
Michael Hayward reviews Bonnie Bremser’s gritty memoirs that kick dust in the face of the romanticized Beatnik lifestyle.
Patty Osborne
The Demons of Aquilonia
Patty Osborne reviews The Demons of Aquilonia, a novel by Lina Medaglia.