Eduardo Galeano’s Soccer in Sun and Shadow (Verso) collects his ruminations on the history and future of soccer, and consists of vignettes describing famous players, unlikely goals and every World Cup final since 1930.
Stephen Osborne
Snow Walker
Snow Walker, the film made from Farley Mowat’s book of stories, contains much cornball scripting, some wretched dialogue and a ponderous, bellowing soundtrack that equals the worst excesses of Cecil B DeMille’s Bible epics.
Stephen Osborne
The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake 1577-1580
The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake 1577-1580, by Samuel Bawlf, completes the story of European adventure in the north of North America in the sixteenth century.
Jill Boettger
Field Guide to Stains: How to Identify and Remove Virtually Every Stain Known to Man
Did you know that you are more likely to encounter Worcestershire sauce stains in winter and that correction fluid stains are most common in April?
Stephen Osborne
Marie Tyrell
“I knew that I would dream that night of the city in flames, the brown-brick towers falling, caving in on themselves (in slow motion, great clouds of burning dust), proud lights flickering out, psssfft, all the messages going dark one by one."
Sam Macklin
Complete Peanuts
Each book in the ongoing Complete Peanuts series (Fantagraphics) is beautifully designed by the Canadian cartoonist Seth, and features two years of thoughtfully reproduced daily and Sunday newspaper cartoon strips.
Derek Fairbridge
Da Capo Best Music Writing
The fourth volume in the Da Capo Best Music Writing pulls together some of the finest music writing published in 2003. It is rife with typos, but the articles are compulsively readable and they cover “rock, pop, jazz, country and more."
Jill Boettger
A Date With Destiny: Night of a Thousand Boyfriends
Just five pages into A Date With Destiny: Night of a Thousand Boyfriends by Miranda Clarke, I can’t decide whether to go to a hotel with an importer/exporter named Chaz, or ditch Chaz and go dancing at Club Neptune with a woman named Danni.
Derek Fairbridge
A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album
Ashley Kahn’s book A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane’s Signature Album, a lovingly detailed account of the creation of John Coltrane’s classic album of the same name, is a cause for celebration.
Sam Macklin
Asterix the Gaul
Asterix the Gaul (Orion), a comic book classic recently reprinted, tramples over all sorts of contemporary niceties.
Eve Corbel
Bannock, Beans & Black Tea
Bannock, Beans & Black Tea by the writer/comix artist Seth, is a small, beautiful, disturbing and touching book in which Seth has compiled, edited and illustrated his father’s stories of growing up poor—really poor—in St. Charles, P.E.I.
ARLEEN PARÉ
Between the Door Posts
Between the Door Posts, by Isa Milman (Ekstasis Editions), begins with this quote from Kafka: “How can one take delight in the world unless one flees to it for refuge?”
Patty Osborne
Frenetic, Instructive, Bossy
Patty Osborne reviews four new books from Mansfield Press.
Mandelbrot
Arctic Roots
Mandelbrot reviews Vanishing Point, a documentary by Stephen A. Smith and Julia Szucs.
roni-simunovic
Girls in Gangs
Roni Simunovic reviews Ashley Little's BC Book Prize-winning novel, Anatomy of a Girl Gang, which follows the story of five teenage girls growing up in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
Stephen Osborne
The Parabolist
Stephen Osborne reviews The Parabolist by Nicholas Ruddock (Doubleday).
Daniel Francis
When Canadian Literature Moved to New York
What makes [Palmer] Cox so interesting, at least to Nick Mount in his new study When Canadian Literature Moved to New York (University of Toronto Press), is that he was part of a literary expatriation of Canadian writers to the United States. At the
Dylan Gyles
Not Quite Home
Dylan Gyles reviews They Never Told Me and Other Stories by Austin Clarke.
Patty Osborne
Punks and Beats
Patty Osborne reviews Razorcake and Tom Tom Magazine, two offbeat punk music publications.
Stephen Osborne
A Bridge in Pangnirtung
Stephen Osborne attends a gallery opening for Elisapee Ishulutaq, an 89-year-old Inuit artist who has been making prints in Pangnirtung, Nunavut for 40 years.
Stephen Osborne
Finding Paradise
Mandelbrot reviews Maps of Paradise by Alessandro Scafi, a history of humanity's attempts to locate utopia.
Stephen Osborne
Fresh Hell
Stephen Osborne reviews Mary Jo Bang's translation of Dante's Inferno.
Michael Hayward
Poetry of Place
Michael Hayward reviews What Poets Are Like by Gary Soto.
Kevin Barefoot
Granta
When Bill Buford took over Granta magazine in 1979 it was a burned-out case, bankrupt and generally unread. Seven issues later he cut a deal with Penguin that gave the magazine access to a worldwide distribution network and a stable of big-name autho
The postcard presents a series of absences—the nameless photographer,
the unknown writer and recipient; it is constituted by what is unknown
Gabrielle Marceau
Fact
Main Character
I always longed to be the falling woman—impelled by unruly passion, driven by beauty and desire, turned into stone, drowned in flowers.
Mia + Eric
Future Perfect
New bylaws for civic spaces.
JUDY LEBLANC
Walking in the Wound
It is racism, not race, that is a risk factor for dying of COVID-19.
SADIQA DE MEIJER
Do No Harm
Doing time is not a blank, suspended existence.
Kristen den Hartog
The Insulin Soldiers
It was as though a magic potion had brought him back to life.
Steven Heighton
Everything Turns Away
Going unnoticed must be the root sorrow for the broken.
DANIEL CANTY
The Sum of Lost Steps
On the curve of the contagion and on the measure of Montreality.
Brad Cran
Fact
Potluck Café
It took me a million miles to get here and half the time I was doing it in high heels.
Carellin Brooks
Ripple Effect
I am the only woman in the water. The rest of the swimmers are men or boys. One of them bobs his head near me, a surprising vision in green goggles, like an undocumented sea creature. I imagine us having sex, briefly, him rocking over me like a wave.
MARCELLO DI CINTIO
The Great Wall of Montreal
The chain-link fence along boulevard de l’Acadie— two metres high, with “appropriate hedge”—separates one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in Montreal from one of the poorest.
Michał Kozłowski
New World Publisher
Randy Fred thought that life after residential school would be drinking, watching TV and dying. Instead, he became the "greatest blind Indian publisher in the world."
BRAD YUNG
Lessons I’m Going To Teach My Kids Too Late
"I want to buy a house. And build a secret room in it. And not tell the kids about it."
Paul Tough
City Still Breathing: Listening to the Weakerthans
I wasn’t certain whether I was in Winnipeg because of the Weakerthans, or whether I cared about the Weakerthans because I care about Winnipeg.
Stephen Osborne
This Postcard Life
Spiritual landscapes and unknowable people captured on film, used to convey a message.
Hilary M. V. Leathem
To Coronavirus, C: An Anthropological Abecedary
After Paul Muldoon and Raymond Williams.
Bill MacDonald
The Ghost of James Cawdor
A seance to contact a dead miner at Port Arthur, Ontario, in 1923—conducted by Conan Doyle himself.
Ann Diamond
The Second Life of Kiril Kadiiski
He has been called the greatest Bulgarian poet of his generation. Can one literary scandal bury his whole career?
Caroline Adderson
Lives of the House
A basement shrine in her 1920s home inspires Caroline Adderson to discover the past lives of her house and its inhabitants.
Ivan Coyote
Shouldn’t I Feel Pretty?
Somewhere in the sweat and ache and muscle I carved a new shape for myself that made more sense.
David L. Chapman
Postcolonial Bodies
Mastery of the self
CONNIE KUHNS
There is a Wind that Never Dies
"If you are still alive, you must have had the experience of surrendering."
Sarah Leavitt
Small Dogs
Emily’s mother had unusually large eyes that bulged slightly and often turned red, and she stared at people in restaurants and stores. Sometimes Emily’s mother commented on these people’s conversations, or laughed at their jokes, as if she were part
Ola Szczecinska
Symbiosis in Warsaw
Ola Szczecinska returns to Warsaw to visit her grandmother, and to keep from losing her memories.
Stephen Osborne reviews Imaging the Arctic, a collection of papers and photographs presented at a conference titled "Imaging the Arctic: The Native Photograph."
Daniel Francis
Indians at Work
"From opposite ends of the country come two important books about Indians: one old and one new. The old is a reissue of Rolf Knight's Indians at Work." Review by Daniel Francis.
Michał Kozłowski
Indigenous Beasts
"Nathan Sellyn’s debut fiction collection, Indigenous Beasts, may alienate readers who are not interested in tales of men and boys learning to deal with their egos and the world around them." Review by Michal Kozlowski.
Carra Noelle Simpson
The Deserter’s Tale: The Story of an Ordinary Soldier Who Walked Away from the War in Iraq
Carra Noelle Simpson reviews The Deserters Tale by Joshua Key, an "honest, accessible, first-hand experience of the war in Iraq that is missing in mainstream media."
Patty Osborne
The Demons of Aquilonia
Patty Osborne reviews The Demons of Aquilonia, a novel by Lina Medaglia.
Michael Hayward
Troia: Mexican Memoirs
Michael Hayward reviews Bonnie Bremser’s gritty memoirs that kick dust in the face of the romanticized Beatnik lifestyle.
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.
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.
Mandelbrot
Snapshot Poetics
Mandelbrot reviews Snapshot Poetics, Allen Ginsberg's photographic memoir of the Beat era from 1953 to 1964.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Kris Rothstein
Turbo Chicks: Talking Young Feminists
Kris Rothstein reviews Talking Young Feminists, a collection of essays by young feminist women.
Mandelbrot
Nanook of the North
Mandelbrot discusses the making of Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North.
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.
Michael Hayward
On Hashish
Michael Hayward reviews On Hashish, a collection of Walter Benjamin’s writings on hashish.
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.
ARLEEN PARÉ
Paper Trail
A paranoid office-worker relieves the alienation she feels in her job by writing experimental lyric prose.
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.
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.
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.
Last Wedding
A review of Bruce Sweeney's Last Wedding.
Sarah Maitland
Long Pen Under the Library
Sarah Maitland visits Margaret Atwood's book signing at Vancouver's Word on the Street festival.
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.
CHERYL THOMPSON
Dismantling the Myth of the Hero
In a world dominated by heroes, difference is not tolerated.
Stephen Henighan
Reheated Races
Dividing and conquering local populations confines them to manageable administrative units.
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.
LISA BIRD-WILSON
Occupation Anxiety
Lisa Bird-Wilson on UNDRIP, reconciliation, and the anxiety felt by Indigenous people in Canada.
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."
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
Plague
What we can—and can’t—learn from the plague
Alberto Manguel
Léon Bloy and His Monogamous Reader
Dogged dedication grants a reader vicarious immortality.
Stephen Henighan
Confidence Woman
The woman who called herself Tatiana Aarons gave me an address that led to a vacant lot.
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
A Fairy Tale for Our Time
What can the Brothers Grimm teach us about the state of our economic system? Everything.
Alberto Manguel
Art and Blasphemy
Faith seems to shiver when confronted by art.
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.
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