Reviews

The Last Asylum: A Memoir of Madness in Our Times

In The Last Asylum, Barbara Taylor, a Canadian historian living in England, offers a searing account of her own journey through mental illness – or “madness,” as she frequently calls it. The book combines history ... Read More »

September 29, 2014 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Adult Onset

By Ann-Marie MacDonald

Adult Onset is the third novel by Ann-Marie MacDonald, who is also a playwright, actor, and broadcaster. The first two books, Fall on Your Knees and The Way the Crow Flies, involved the sexual abuse ... Read More »

September 25, 2014 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Broken Hours

By Jacqueline Baker

Posthumously revered for such short stories as “At the Mountains of Madness” and “The Call of Cthulhu,” Howard Phillips Lovecraft eked out a poor existence on a dwindling inheritance, ultimately succumbing to cancer in his ... Read More »

September 22, 2014 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

★ This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate

By Naomi Klein

Naomi Klein is angry. The author of No Logo and The Shock Doctrine, and a self-confessed former climate change skeptic, comes out swinging in a book that takes direct aim at corporations, governments, and – ... Read More »

September 17, 2014 | Filed under: Science, Technology & Environment

Consumed

By David Cronenberg

Do you think a new esthetic can develop? Cancer beauty? ... Will non-cancerous women be begging their cosmetic surgeons to give them false nodes implants?” Imbued with notions of body modification this unsettling, could Consumed ... Read More »

September 15, 2014 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

★ Stone Mattress

By Margaret Atwood

Before opening Margaret Atwood’s new collection, ponder the subtitle. Tales, not stories, are what is on offer. As Atwood explains in the acknowledgements, short stories often work “within the boundaries of social realism” whereas “tale” ... Read More »

September 11, 2014 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

★ You’re Not Dead until You’re Forgotten

By John Dunning with Bill Brownstein

The best filmmaker memoirs are the ones that feel like movies themselves, whether it’s the epic, melodramatic sweep of Roman by Polanski or the wry, anti-establishment farce of Luis Buñuel’s My Last Sigh. To these ... Read More »

September 8, 2014 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

★ The Scarborough

By Michael Lista

Right from the devastating cover image, Michael Lista’s second collection is rife with craft and cultural implication. A VCR tape masks a grinning skull with a sickly smile that evokes Shakespeare’s Mercutio: “Ask for me ... Read More »

September 5, 2014 | Filed under: Poetry

Paddlenorth: Adventure, Resilience, and Renewal in the Arctic Wild

By Jennifer Kingsely

Jennifer Kingsley is a wilderness guide, naturalist, and conservationist. She has a degree in biology and has published articles in magazines, journals, and newspapers. Paddlenorth, Kingsley’s first book, chronicles her 54-day canoeing expedition on the ... Read More »

September 5, 2014 | Filed under: Sports, Health & Self-help

Changing the Game: A History of the NHL Expansion

By Stephen Laroche

Long before the Florida Panthers and the Anaheim Ducks, there were the Montreal Maroons and the Detroit Cougars. The original expansion era of the National Hockey League began in the 1920s, when today’s bedrock teams ... Read More »