Michal Kozlowski reviews Stardust, Bruce Serafin's essay collection: "punchy narrative, little exposition, unburdened by political correctness."
Patty Osborne
Buffalo Gal
Patty Osborne reviews The Perimeter Dog by Julie Vandervoort.
Stephen Osborne
Marginal
Stephen Osborne finds a copy of Francoise Sagan's Those Without Shadows at the bus stop, complete with margin notes that create a new sort of text.
roni-simunovic
Out and About
Roni Simunovic reviews Queer and Trans Artists of Color: Stories of Some of Our Lives by Nia King, a collection of interviews about gender and sexuality, and how to make art, make rent and survive.
Michael Hayward
To the Moomins! (And Beyond)
Michael Hayward reviews Moomin: The Deluxe Anniversary Edition by Tove Jansson, a collection of comic strips that contain "the poetry of our world: sad, joyful, dangerous, enchanting."
JILL MANDRAKE
Here Lies
Jill Mandrake reviews Local Customs by Audrey Thomas, a ghost story and murder mystery set in West Africa.
Patty Osborne
Saint Ralph
Patty Osborne reviews Saint Ralph, the uplifting but untrue story of a boy who sets out to win the 1954 Boston Marathon.
Derek Fairbridge
Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage
Derek Fairbridge reviews a documentary on the Canadian rock band Rush.
ANDREA BENNETT
Rockin' Through Ontario
andrea bennett suggests that Road Rocks Ontario, a poorly proofread guide to our middle province’s geologic wonders, has a five-star rating on Goodreads because "people who like rocks like them a whole lot."
Jill Boettger
Double Lives: Writing and Motherhood
Jill Boettger reviews Double Lives: Writing and Motherhood, a collection of 22 essays by women who are both mothers and writers.
Stephen Osborne
Canadian ten-dollar bill
The dreadful effects of “computer-assisted publishing” can be observed in the new Canadian ten-dollar bill, a specimen of which I had been carrying around for days wondering where I could have picked up such a miserable-looking coupon.
Eve Corbel
Jungle Out There
Eve Corbel reviews Lumberjanes, a "smart, cute-in-a-good-way" comic series that follows the supernatural hijinks of five girls at an extraordinary summer camp.
Daniel Francis
Folly of War
Daniel Francis reviews All Else Is Folly, a "useful antidote" to the patriotic narrative that hails World War I as Canada's "coming of age."
Michael Hayward
Notes on the Cinematographer
Michael Hayward reviews Notes on the Cinematographer, a cryptic compendium of notes and quotes from the French filmmaker Robert Bresson.
Patty Osborne
Without Reservations
Patty Osborne reviews Devil in Deerskins: My Life with Grey Owl, a memoir by Anahareo, and Kuessipan by Naomi Fontaine, two contrasting reflections on the aboriginal experience.
Michael Hayward
To Have or Have Not
Michael Hayward reviews Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids, a collection of essays with a title that speaks for itself.
Patty Osborne
The Underwood
Patty Osborne reviews The Underwood by P.G. Tarr, winner of a 3-Day Novel Contest.
Becky McEachern
The Boreal Gourmet: Adventures in Northern Cooking
Becky McEachern reviews Michele Genest’s The Boreal Gourmet: Adventures in Northern Cooking, featuring a blend of the author's culinarily enlightened upbringing and indigenous northern Canadian ingredients.
Thad McIlroy
Teary-Eyed Testosterone
Thad McIlroy reviews Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words That Move Them.
Stephen Osborne
Shackled
Stephen Osborne discusses the notion that Canadian literature is “shackled to a corpse dragging us down into the future.”
Stephen Osborne
Vacation
Stephen Osborne rejects the "whiny questions of national identity" posed during the "golden age" of Canadian literature in the 1960s and 70s.
Michael Hayward
The Life and Breath of the World
Michael Hayward reviews Cascadia: The Life and Breath of the World, co-edited by Trevor Carolan and Frank Stewart.
Michael Hayward
The Chicagoan
Michael Hayward reviews a new compendium of The Chicagoan, the “Lost Magazine of the Jazz Age.”
Dylan Gyles
Heavy Reading
Dylan Gyles embarks on a quest to read all of literature's most difficult tomes, starting with Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon.
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.
When I finally got around to reading Postwar, I was amused to discover that Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks was reading it too. This is the first time I have found myself reading the same book as a character in a novel.
Geist Staff
Friends I Never Knew
Friends I Never Knew by Tanya Lester (gynergy) is an ambitious but less successful first work of fiction. The premise is challenging: a burnt-out feminist organizer, recuperating abroad, pays homage to four women friends and colleagues by trying to w
Patty Osborne
Frontier Spirit: The Brave Women of the Klondike
In Frontier Spirit: The Brave Women of the Klondike by Jennifer Duncan (Anchor Canada), we meet women who escaped the prison of propriety and domesticity by joining the Gold Rush to the Yukon.
Michael Hayward
Frank O’Hara: Selected Poems
This recent collection compiles the very best of the poet's oeuvre.
Jon Burrows
eye-Dentical Twins
When eye-Dentical Twins (eye press) arrived in the office, everyone crowded around. The book is a collection of photographs from the newspaper eye weekly, in which two unlikely celebrities are paired and the resemblance is described in a witty cutlin
Norbert Ruebsaat
Eros the Bittersweet
Ann Carson has written a sensual and thought-provoking book about desire and called it Eros the Bittersweet (Dalkey Archive Press). My friends tell me you can't theorize about desire, and my lovers tell me (when I begin to theorize about desire) that
Stephen Osborne
Enchantment & Other Demons
Gregory Scofield's new book of poems is Native Canadiana (Polestar) and it's very good. So is Lola Lemire Tostevin's latest collection, Cartouches (Talonbooks), which came out last year and which we've been meaning to mention here ever since, along w
Michael Hayward
Divisadero
“Everything is collage,” a character observes in Divisadero (McClelland & Stewart), Michael Ondaatje’s first novel in seven years.
Eve Corbel
Alter Ego Comics
A review of Michel Rabagliati's semi-autobiographical graphic novels, featuring tales of his boyhood in Quebec.
Patty Osborne
Confessions of a Shopaholic
In my reading life I’ve been locked in YA (young adult) land ever since I found myself surrounded by a gaggle of teenage nieces at a family party. I tried the usual icebreakers about school and friends, but the conversation really got going when I as
Mindy Abramowitz
A Philosophical Investigation
Last time I went to the mystery bookstore looking for something hard-boiled, I came out with A Philosophical Investigation (Doubleday) tucked under my arm. I have since returned to seek out author Philip Kerr's previous novels, the Berlin Noir trilog
Stephen Osborne
Secrets of the City
Stephen Osborne discovers that some of the most startling papers in the city archives are the letters and diaries of the first archivist himself.
Alberto Manguel
Reading the Commedia
An appreciation of Dante's "Commedia."
Umar Saeed
Arguments
A young Canadian man visits family in Pakistan to settle a generational feud.
Daniel Francis
Magical Thinking
The canoe as a fetish object, a misreading of Canadian history and a symbol of colonial oppression.
Stephen Henighan
Homage to Nicaragua
Despite hardships and dangerous slums, Nicaragua maintains a sense of hope that draws back to the democratic days of the Sandinistas.
CONNIE KUHNS
Signs of Life
Does a house that has been home to four generations of one family still hold their electricity?
Alberto Manguel
Role Models and Readers
Ruskin's readers have the power to know that there is indeed room for Alice at the Mad Hatter's table.
Patty Osborne
A Little Distillery in Nowgong
A review of A Little Distillery in Nowgong by Ashok Mathur.
Norbert Ruebsaat
Caleb and Opa on Holiday
Opa, you know that sometimes people say things, well, indirectly? They don’t say everything that they mean?
Daniel Francis
The Artist as Coureur de Bois
Tom Thomson, godfather of the Group of Seven, drowned in an Ontario lake under mysterious circumstances, and ever since, his reputation has been the stuff of legend.
Florence Grandview
Lights Out at the Jubilee
At the Jubilee Cinema, the manager carries an imitation pistol in the John Dillinger style.
Alberto Manguel
Imaginary Islands
In order to discharge ourselves of certain problems, why not simply erase from our maps the sites of such nuisance?
Alberto Manguel
Face in the Mirror
What does it mean to "be" yourself? The face reflected in the mirror is unrecognizable.
David Wisdom
UJ3RK5
A Vancouver rock band made up of musicians, photographers and at one time, a prominent sci-fi writer.