Reviews

Self-directed Rrsps: Straight Talk on Making Them Pay off for You

FINANCIAL PLANNING BOOKS have become a fixture of the fall market heralding the tax preparation season to come. The offerings include books of self-promoting advice published by or for mutual fund vendors; better ones merge ... Read More »

October 30, 2003 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs

Vietnam: A Kick Start Guide for Business Travellers

By Guy & Victoria Brooks

For years, Thailand ruled as the primary destination in Southeast Asia. That’s probably still true, but while her popularity is still high, increasing numbers of travelers are looking to the surrounding destinations in the region, ... Read More »

October 30, 2003 | Filed under: Reference

★ The Haunted Hillbilly

By Derek McCormack

At 124 generously spaced pages, The Haunted Hillbilly – Derek McCormack’s first novel – demonstrates with style and sardonic wit that it’s not about the length, it’s all in how you use it. McCormack, the ... Read More »

October 29, 2003 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

A Game to Play on the Tracks

By Lorna Jackson

Twice in this vivid, pyrotechnic novel, women walk into knitting shops that are heaped and hung like Aladdin’s cave with skeins – brightly dyed, flecked, handspun, synthetic. Proprietresses pull patterns from drawers, dispense yarns and ... Read More »

October 29, 2003 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Character Parts: Who’s Really Who in Canlit

By Brian Busby

The sour scent of wasted opportunity clings to the pages of Character Parts. The book proceeds from a tremendously appealing premise: an exposé of the real-life role models for various Canadian authors’ fictional creations. But ... Read More »

October 16, 2003 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays

Lost in Mongolia: Rafting the World’s Last Unchallenged River

By Colin Angus

Colin Angus is, at the age of 32, a seasoned explorer and author with a habit of traversing some of the world’s most dangerous waterways. Angus’s second book, Lost in Mongolia, charts a hazardous 5,500-kilometre ... Read More »

October 16, 2003 | Filed under: Reference

Searching for Michael Jackson’s Nose, and Other Preoccupations of Our Celebrity-mad Culture

By Scott Feschuk

Scott Feschuk can best be described as a Canadian enthusiast of American television. He has been amusing readers of the National Post with his wry column devoted to pop culture musings. Searching for Michael Jackson’s ... Read More »

October 16, 2003 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays

Sitting Practice

By Caroline Adderson

The opening scene of Caroline Adderson’s Sitting Practice – with a bridegroom striding joyously through a field of assembling wedding guests as the wedding meats are laid on the fire – is pure 21st-century West ... Read More »

October 16, 2003 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Epic Wanderer: David Thompson and the Mapping of the Canadian West

By D’Arcy Jenish

Popular biographers often work hard to find a new and exciting perspective on their subject, an activity that sometimes moves the focus of the book from the subject to the author. Fortunately, in Epic Wanderer, ... Read More »

October 16, 2003 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, History

Charlie Johnson in the Flames

By Michael Ignatieff

To be a foreign correspondent is to lead a double life. The work, which tends to take place in war-torn locales amidst violence and mayhem, demands an unnatural level of detachment and dispassion about human ... Read More »