When I tried to describe the weird and wonderful book Accordéon by Kaie Kellough (ARP) to two Québécoise friends, I had to resort to reading a few excerpts because my own words failed me.
Julie Vandervoort
Sewing Cabinet: Short Film
A short film featuring "Sewing Cabinet" by Julie Vandervoort, originally published in Geist 74.
Rob Kovitz
Question Period
Rob Kovitz compiles the pressing questions of the day—"How are they gonna beat ISIS?" And, "On Twitter, who cares?"
CONNIE KUHNS
The Ove Within
For Ove, the central character in the film A Man Called Ove there is nothing ahead but frustration, disappointment and sadness. “It’s just chaos when you’re not here,” he says to his newly departed wife as he lays flowers on her grave.
roni-simunovic
Middle-Aged Soft Rock Band
The first thing John K. Samson said when he and his band stepped onstage at the Commodore Ballroom on February 2 was, “Hi, we’re a middle-aged soft rock band from Winnipeg, Manitoba.”
David Koulack
A Different Sort of Synagogue
David Koulack spends Yom Kippur in a packed gymnasium in Paris among a beehive of activity and a cacophony of sound.
Michael Hayward
Another Way of Saying Goodbye
Those who were close to the late John Berger have spoken of his generosity, praising Berger’s collaborative nature and his ability to establish and sustain creative friendships throughout a long and productive life.
JILL MANDRAKE
Seabrook Adventure
In The Abominable Mr. Seabrook, Joe Ollmann begins with a reflective preamble called “Me and Mr. Seabrook,” part of which reads, “I realized that no one knew about Seabrook’s work—all his books were out of print at the time…”
Stephen Henighan
Write What You Can Imagine
Like most advice given to writers, the injunction to “write what you know” is misleading.
KELSEA O'CONNOR
Graphic Heroism
The One Hundred Nights of Hero by Isabel Greenberg (Doubleday Canada) is a beautifully illustrated graphic novel offering feminist adaptations of folk tales wrapped in an epic-feeling love story.
Thad McIlroy
I'm Sorry
In Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life (Doubleday) the main character Jude says “I’m sorry” over 100 times. And he adds in “I’m so sorry” 30 times.
Eve Corbel
Some Lesser-Known Emoji
Eve Corbel draws emoji you can use when Mercury is in retrograde, when you've eaten too much hot sauce and during other specific times of need.
Michael Hayward
Sarah Lund's Sweater
Michael Hayward reviews the sweater that Sarah Lund wears in every episode of Season 1 of The Killing, a serial crime drama.
KELSEA O'CONNOR
Steampunk Crimefighters
The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage by Sydney Padua asks the question: what would the world be like if mathematician Ada Lovelace and inventor Charles Babbage had succeeded in creating the first Victorian computer?
Angela Wheelock
Something Like Armenian
Angela Wheelock meets a stranger at a bus stop and discusses Rumi, Hafiz and other great poets who were terrible leaders.
JILL MANDRAKE
Scary Stocking Stuffers
Jill Mandrake a new series called Christmas Ghost Stories (Biblioasis), selected and illustrated by Seth.
Patty Osborne
Keep On Truckin'
This fast-paced, quirky, heart warming and hilarious novel captures the fast and loose crossovers of language and culture that make southeast New Brunswick unique.
EVELYN LAU
24 Sussex
Picture Harper lounging among pastel cushions, his stiff grey hair tight as a helmet on his head.
Geist Staff
Path of the Jaguar
This past December longtime Geist columnist Stephen Henighan did a promotional tour of western Canada for his latest novel, Path of the Jaguar.
Michael Hayward
Rain Falls in Norway
Michael Hayward reviews Some Rain Must Fall, part of the six volume memoir by Karl Ove Knausgaard.
Stephen Osborne
The Great Game
The British called it the Great Game. The Russians called it Bolshoya Igra. The playing field was, and still is, Afghanistan.
CONNIE KUHNS
Last Day in Cheyenne
Remembering her father's last days in a hospital in Wyoming, Connie Kuhns struggles with questions of mortality, memory and how to fulfill her father's dying wish.
Patty Osborne
The Other Side of the Mountain
"The Orange Grove is dry and sparse and heartbreaking, much like the unnamed country in which it takes place."
CARY FAGAN
What I Learned in Florida
There were always things to see at the pond—tadpoles, leopard frogs, dragonflies—but that day we saw two boys, with a rifle.
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.
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