Kelsea O'Connor reviews 101 Two-Letter Words, an illustrated Scrabble guide by Stephen Merritt with running themes of sloths, songwriting and vampire dogs.
Alberto Manguel
Not Finishing
"A library is never finished, only abandoned." Alberto Manguel on incompletion, voluntary interruption and the pleasure of the day before.
JANE RULE
Obsession
"Asked to write a character sketch, I wrote three pages on Ann’s hands. The paper was returned with every line crossed out and a question mark at the end."
Jan Feduck
Hurricane Diary
Jan Feduck faces Frenchish food, vomit and guys from Ontario when her ferry from the Magdalen Islands is caught in a hurricane.
JILL MANDRAKE
Still Stupefying
Jill Mandrake is blown away by South of Elfrida by Holley Rubinsky, a journey into "the land of guilt and sorrow."
roni-simunovic
Second Chances
Roni Simunovic reviews Seconds by Brian Lee O'Malley, a graphic novel about getting second chances whether you deserve them or not.
Stephen Osborne
Harrowing
"This is not a documentary; it is, however, an overpowering aesthetic and emotional experience, a true happening"—Stephen Osborne reviews Susan Sontag's film Promised Lands.
Jesmine Cham
Technology Creeps On
Jesmine Cham talks scaremongering, tinfoil hats and invasive technology in this review of Technocreep by Thomas P. Keenan.
Stephen Henighan
Iberian Duet
The assumption of mutual comprehensibility between speakers of Spanish and Portuguese creates a culture of mutual ignorance.
Dylan Gyles
Philosophy and Chloroform
Dylan Gyles reviews Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever? by Dave Eggers, the story of a disillusioned young man grappling with life, the universe and metaphysical truths.
Michael Hayward
All My Troubles Seemed So Far Away
Michael Hayward reviews Stefan Zweig's The World of Yesterday, a "a window into the vanished world of the Austro-Hungarian Empire."
Eve Corbel
Seized
Eve Corbel reviews Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington, in which two girls are taken from their family by Western Australia government officials in 1931.
Michael Hayward
Smoke and Mirrors
Michael Hayward reviews American Smoke by Iain Sinclair, an account of the author's road trip across North America in search of traces of the Beat Generation.
roni-simunovic
Based Loosely
Roni Simunovic reviews Based on a True Story by Elizabeth Renzetti, the bizarrely fascinating tale of a washed-up soap star's struggles with unemployment and substance abuse.
Lily Gontard
Wild Woman
Lily Gontard reviews Cheryl Strayed's Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, a memoir about crisis, redemption and hiking.
Dylan Gyles
Floating
“Don’t try to make anything happen,” the calm voice said. Dylan Gyles visits a sensory deprivation float tank.
roni-simunovic
Bird Metal
Roni Simunovic investigates Hatebeak, a death metal band with an African Grey parrot vocalist.
KELSEA O'CONNOR
Strange Things Come From The Woods
Kelsea O'Connor reviews Through the Woods by Emily Carroll, a collection of comics full of "ghosts, parasites, dead brothers, mysterious strangers and murderous husbands."
Stephen Osborne
The Saddest Place on Earth
“I walked into the garage, and found a teenage boy in a tank top and shorts." Kathryn Mockler's poems eschew meaningless metaphors for direct language.
Michael Hayward
Talking Ducks
Michael Hayward reviews The Old Castle’s Secret by Carl Barks.
Alberto Manguel
A Novel for All Times
Alberto Manguel's column from Geist 93 about how the most important Turkish novelist of modern times took over fifty years to reach English-speaking audiences.
Jian Ghomeshi
The Ghomeshi Files
A short list of Jian Ghomeshi's short lists from 1982.
Daniel Francis
We Are Not a Nation of Amnesiacs
"Canadians have long been convinced that we do not know much, or care much, about our own history, but a new study suggests that this truism is not true."
Michael Hayward
Behind Closed Doors
Michael Hayward reviews My Struggle Book 1: A Death in the Family by Karl Ove Knausgård.
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.
Jill Mandrake reviews George Bowering's Caprice, "a poetic eulogy for a shrinking literary landscape."
Helen Godolphin
Cruddy
Helen Godolphin reviews Lynda Barry's Cruddy, a novel deep within its own whacked-out world.
Patty Osborne
Eating Apples: Knowing Women's Lives
Patty Osborne reviews Eating Apples, an addictive collection of personal essays that gives glimpses into the lives of women.
Norbert Ruebsaat
Errata
Norbert Ruebsaat reviews George Bowering's Errata (1988).
Robert Everett-Green
Epileptic
Robert Everett-Green reviews David B.'s graphic memoir Epileptic, a recount of the long search by David B.’s parents for a cure for his older brother’s seizures.
Jennesia Pedri
A Second Piece of Pi
Jennesia Pedri answers: why would one want to reread a novel that devotes 211 of its 354 pages to the 227 days that followed a shipwreck?
Blaine Kyllo
All Families are Psychotic
Blaine Kyllo calls All Families are Psychotic by Douglas Coupland "a piece of sculpture: intricate, finely balanced, and threatening to tip should anyone get too close."
Norbert Ruebsaat
Autobiography of a Tattoo
Norbert Ruesbaat's Christmas book was Stan Persky’s Autobiography of a Tattoo. He read it twice, and then went back and read many parts a third time.
Patty Osborne
Prisoner of Tehran: A Memoir
Patty Osborne reviews Prisoner of Tehran: A Memoir by Marina Nemat.
Norbert Ruebsaat
Private Confessions
Norbert Ruebsaat reviews Ingmar Bergman's Private Confessions and the screening at which he saw it.
Kris Rothstein
Grand Centaur Station: Unruly Living with the New Nomads of Central Asia
Nomadic culture is at the core of Larry Frolick’s Grand Centaur Station: Unruly Living with the New Nomads of Central Asia.
How to Be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking
When Geist requested a copy of How to Be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking by the new English kitchen queen Nigella Lawson (Knopf Canada) “for review purposes,” the distributor wrote back to say “fat chance.”
Patty Osborne
I'll Be Right Back
Writing on the Rock, which takes place on Denman Island, B.C., in early August, is now my favourite writers’ festival.
ARLEEN PARÉ
Invisible Lines
In Astrid van der Pol’s poetry collection, Invisible Lines (BuschekBooks), the past is the most hopeful, whereas each new future enters some form of sadness.
Lily Gontard
The Cripple and His Talismans
The protagonist of The Cripple and His Talismans by Anosh Irani (Raincoast) is a self-centred, self-absorbed, wealthy-but-have-chosen-to-live-among-the-crippled-and-poor-in-Bombay man.
Norbert Ruebsaat
The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power
The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power and in the film it is based on, turns notions about corporate responsibility and accountability into oxymorons.
Kris Rothstein
The Nervous Tourist
Bob Gaulke’s description of his travels in Salvador (a region of Brazil), in The Nervous Tourist, evokes the age of imperialism. This modest chapbook contains insightful, engaging and funny writing about the eye-opening experience of travel.
Stephen Osborne
Weave
Lisa Pasold’s poetry collection, Weave, reads as a memoir of the twentieth century in a world bounded by Prague and Peru and the Russian front and the shores of Lake Ontario.
Kevin Barefoot
Soccer in Sun and Shadow
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.
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.
Despite hardships and dangerous slums, Nicaragua maintains a sense of hope that draws back to the democratic days of the Sandinistas.
Daniel Francis
Magical Thinking
The canoe as a fetish object, a misreading of Canadian history and a symbol of colonial oppression.
Umar Saeed
Arguments
A young Canadian man visits family in Pakistan to settle a generational feud.
CONNIE KUHNS
Signs of Life
Does a house that has been home to four generations of one family still hold their electricity?
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.
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?
Patty Osborne
A Little Distillery in Nowgong
A review of A Little Distillery in Nowgong by Ashok Mathur.
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.
Alberto Manguel
Imaginary Islands
In order to discharge ourselves of certain problems, why not simply erase from our maps the sites of such nuisance?
Florence Grandview
Lights Out at the Jubilee
At the Jubilee Cinema, the manager carries an imitation pistol in the John Dillinger style.
David Wisdom
UJ3RK5
A Vancouver rock band made up of musicians, photographers and at one time, a prominent sci-fi writer.
Alberto Manguel
Face in the Mirror
What does it mean to "be" yourself? The face reflected in the mirror is unrecognizable.
Stephen Henighan
The Market and the Mall
In the farmer’s market, a quintessentially Canadian setting, much of Canada is not visible.
Daniel Francis
Sex, Drugs, Rock ’n’ Roll and the National Identity
In this essay, Daniel Francis discusses how Gerda Munsinger—a woman with ties to the criminal underworld—shaped Canadian politics in the 1960s.
Alberto Manguel
Cri de Coeur
Compared to today's vile heros, Ned Kelly-the Australian outlaw who wrote the angry, articulate Jerilderie letter in 1879-seems as innocent as an ogre-slaughtering hero of fairy tales.
Alberto Manguel
The Other Side of the Ice
Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner is a film about community and the north.
EVELYN LAU
Love Song to America
Reflections on John Updike's death.
Alberto Manguel
Geist’s Literary Precursors
The Geist map has a venerable ancestor that goes back four centuries and halfway around the world.
Michelle Fost
Long Distance
Shared family memories of burnt baked goods.
Sheila Heti
American Soul
Slot machines sing their astral music. The tape recorder turns off. “Do you talk to friends about sex?” he asks.
Annabel Lyon
Irony-Free Reality TV
There may be more to reality TV than meets the eye.
Edith Iglauer
Mad About Harry
A new pet kitten becomes part of the family.
Jill Boettger
City Under Water
The Calgary floods left behind a stew of knee-deep mud, and waterlogged piles of couches, fridges, books, toys, artworks, chairs, carpet, drywall...
Stephen Osborne
The Coincidence Problem
That dreamlike quality causes rational minds to dismiss the moment as “only a coincidence.”