Saturday November 15, 2008
E-VOX POPULI: OUR READERS WRITE
James Elmore, from Winnipeg, writes: Friedrich Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil is surely one of the greatest books ever written. This endlessly challenging book, the masterful prose of which seems imbued with a life force that practically demands the attention of every reader who even tentatively scans its pages, sits defiantly atop the peaks that dot the great philosophical landscape. A towering achievement, it is not likely to ever be forgotten.
Orphans of the New World
A MERCYBy Toni MorrisonKnopf, 169 pages, $27.95Toni Morrison knots language into beautiful and intricate Gordian Knots of complex imagery, and then, in her exquisitely cadenced prose, slices open those same knots to reveal a shining elucidation.
A well-guided tour of time
IN SEARCH OF TIMEJourneys Along a Curious DimensionBy Dan FalkMcClelland and Stewart,329 pages, $32.99When I first heard about Dan Falk's book a few weeks ago, my interest was certainly piqued. Here was a non-fiction book about time, published just six months after mine that, judging from the title, was written from a similar vantage. (The title I almost used for my own book, In the Garden of Time: Unlocking the Secrets of an Elusive Dimension, shows you just how close.) I wondered how he would deal with time travel. Would he write about the end of time? Would he deal with relativity and the enigma of ''now''? When I finally got the review copy, I raced through his book and discovered quickly that yes, he had covered all those topics and more.
The mother of all neuroses
WHEN WE WERE ROMANSBy Matthew KnealeNan A. Talese/Doubleday,224 pages, $27.95Ah, a boy and his mother. Such a potent relationship that can be, particularly with father out of the way. Remember Hamlet's ardent love for the bereaved Gertrude, or Grendel's devotion to his mother. Now, they knew how to put mom first.
Mr. Kurtz's curse
What has brought the latest crisis in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo to international attention is straightforward enough. The conflict there is the cause of untold human suffering: daily killings of civilians, rape, recruitment of child soldiers and hundreds of thousands of people on the run. The UN peacekeeping force in Congo, the largest in the world, has proved incapable of protecting ordinary Congolese from the depredations of the region's political and military leaders.
Who should win the G-G?
NOISE FROM THE LAUNDRYBy Weyman ChanTalonbooks, 95 pages, $15.95THE SENTINELBy A. F. MoritzAnansi, 84 pages, $18.95THE INVISIBILITY EXHIBITBy Sachiko MurakamiTalonbooks, 80 pages, $18.95
PAPERBACKS
BORN WITH A TOOTHBy Joseph Boyden, Cormorant, 243 pages, $20Boyden, winner of this year's Scotiabank Giller Prize,ranges widely - children, professional wrestling, wolves, a native punk band - in this collection of 13 stories.
CRIME BOOKS
BURN OUTBy Marcia Muller, Grand Central, 309 pages, $27.99When it comes to lady detectives, I've always had a preference for Sharon McCone. She predates V. I. Warshawski and Kinsey Millhone, and she's lasted a lot longer. More than two dozen books and nearly 30 years on, Muller has moved McCone from a 1960s idealist to a highly skilled professional, but has never lost sight of the essential nature of the character.
The fatal disappointments of Lucy Maud
LUCY MAUD MONTGOMERYThe Gift of Wings By Mary Henley RubioDoubleday Canada,684 pages, $39.95''Maud had lived much of her life, like her volatile little heroine Anne, between the soaring of the imagination and the ''depths of despair.' '' This sentence from the final chapter of the much-anticipated new biography by veteran scholar Mary Henley Rubio might serve as its motto. The result of several decades of research, Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Gift of Wings soars with the energy of its title, but delves even deeper into the darker side of the author's life.
The good news begins now
WHEN WILL THERE BE GOOD NEWS?By Kate AtkinsonBond Street, 348 pages, $29.95Now there's a title for you. At once ironic and curious and apt. As ironic, curious and apt - almost - as Kate Atkinson's brilliant new novel itself.
Eat your hearts out, Thomsons, Blacks and Mulroneys
IZZYThe Passionate Life and Turbulent Times of Izzy Asper, Canada's Media MogulBy Peter C. NewmanHarperCollins, 388 pages, $34.95Here's a tip for most Canadian multi-billionaires and national politicians who think their lives are so inspiring and worthy of emulation that they actually feel flattered to be invited out for an exploratory conversation with the dean of Canadian political and business biographers, Peter C. Newman. The tip is simply this: Don't do it.
It's all in your head - really, it is
THE KINGDOM OF INFINITE SPACEA Portrait of Your HeadBy Raymond TallisYale University Press,324 pages, $30.95Anyone with an interest in what it is to be human will enjoy reading this book. In the early chapters, Raymond Tallis - British professor of medicine, poet, novelist, philosopher - establishes himself as the Shakespeare of the skull. Though I found myself awash in the flood of anatomical detail that Tallis presented, I went with the flow of his charming prose, amazed that anatomy could be so ... well, so engrossing. For example, The Secreting Head, the subject and title of Chapter 2, would seem (on the face of it) to provide but small grounds for amusement. What charm could there be in saliva, sweat, tears, ear wax, mucus, pus etc.?
Not burned, but crucified
THE FIRE GOSPELBy Michel FaberKnopf, 213 pages, $27Michel Faber's eighth work of fiction is sometimes very funny and sometimes almost weightless. Both qualities surprised me less than I might have liked. The latest instalment in a series of works called The Myths (it includes The Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood's breezy revision of Homer), The Fire Gospel purportedly treats the Prometheus story.
Feminism's first manifesto
Watch out, here comes Mary Wollstonecraft - brilliant, bright-eyed and passionate. She's doing that ''female'' thing that always drives critics up the wall - arguing from the heart not the head - but her ideas are processed through a formidable and original intelligence. The polemic she published in 1792 is rooted in both her own life experience (which included poverty, servitude and a father who was both a lush and a bully) and one of the most dramatic upheavals of European history: the French Revolution. Out of this ferment she moulded the first great feminist manifesto, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
BESTSELLERS
FictionTHIS WEEK/LAST WEEK/WEEKS ON LIST/TITLE/AUTHOR/PUBLISHER/PRICE 1 218The Shack, by William P. Young (Windblown Media, $15.99). 2 16Heart And Soul, by Maeve Binchy (McArthur and Company, $24.95). 3 32A Good Woman, by Danielle Steel (Delacorte, $32). 4 -1Divine Justice, by David Baldacci (Grand Central, $29.99). 5 -1Salvation In Death, by J.D. Robb (Putnam, $28.50). 6 48The Story Of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski (Bond Street, $32.95). 7 62The Gate House, by Nelson DeMille (Grand Central, $30.99). 8 98The Private Patient, by P.D. James (Knopf Canada, $32). 9 54The Brass Verdict, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown, $29.99). 10 85A Most Wanted Man, by John le Carre (Viking Canada, $32).
Big Bear: 'a troublesome fellow'
BIG BEARBy Rudy WiebePenguin Canada, 222 pages, $26There are many ways in which Big Bear, the latest subject of Penguin's tidy little series on Extraordinary Canadians, seems the odd man out. That he's the only Indian chief among the 20 Canadian historical figures is the most obvious. That he's likely the one readers know the least about is another (although Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine might give him a run for his money). The most significant difference, however, is in the byline.
Too listless to finish this headl ...
ACEDIA AND MEA Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's LifeBy Kathleen NorrisRiverhead, 334 pages, $28.50Aldous Huxley, in his essay Accidie, observes acedia as a ''fiend of deadly subtlety'' that could make ''the day ... intolerably long and life desolatingly empty,'' causing a monk to ''sink, sink through disgust and lassitude into the black depths of despair and hopeless unbelief.'' This demon (and Huxley's chirpy essay upon it) inspired Kathleen Norris's 20-year excavation, Acedia and Me: A Marriage, Monks and a Writer's Life.
One form of immortality is hers
'We hear her voice and trace her influence even now among the living.'
Teddy's tale
A gift from a daughter to a soldier killed at Passchendaele has taken an unlikely journey in the past 90 years, from half-forgotten keepsake to museum piece to narrator in a new children's book - and a symbol of the terrible cost of war
The secret of success* *It's not what you'd expect
Malcolm Gladwell argues that success is less innate ability than birth date and luck
War and Peace
Read it if you want to know why — for good or ill — people will always be willing to fight.
E-VOX POPULI OUR READERS WRITE
Herbert Mackenzie from St. Catharines, Ont., writes: If greatest means pure fun and a desire to spend every waking moment to come to the end of a very long novel, I have to recommend The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett. I had it for months before I started it, but once I read the first few pages, I was hooked. I just bought his World Without End and can't wait to start it.
When the West met modernity
THE VERTIGO YEARSChange and Culture in the West, 1900-1914By Philipp BlomMcClelland and Stewart,480 pages, $36.99Historians have generally stuck to the thesis that the modern world and the 20th century truly began in 1914, with the outbreak of the First World War. That conflict, the Second World War, which followed in 1939, and the tragedy they both wrought, have been regarded as the climax of the deadly mix of religious fervour, extreme nationalism, demagoguery and rapid industrialization.
Portrait of the writer as a subcontinent
PLACE WITHINRediscovering IndiaBy M. G. VassanjiDoubleday Canada 423 pages, $34.95Two-time Giller Prize-winner M. G. Vassanji's A Place Within begins in a slightly unfortunate way, with the suggestion that the book is a ''return to the roots'' narrative, a discovery of the India within him. This genre of travel narrative his been done very nearly to death, with African-Americans discovering Mother Africa, Irish-Americans discovering Mother Ireland, and so on. India in particular has had its share of acute returnees (V. S. Naipaul springs immediately to mind).
Tough Canucks
BRAVE BATTALIONThe Remarkable Saga of the 16th Battalion (Canadian Scottish) in the First World WarBy Mark ZuehlkeWiley, 289 pages, $36.95THE FIGHTING CANADIANSOur Regimental History from New France to Afghanistan
The polls of black folk
Liberals tend to regard African America romantically: They see descendants of slaves and victims of racism, struggling to compel or cajole the United States to live up to its egalitarian ideals, to finally achieve the truly godly (Judeo-Christian) republic that it tells itself it is.
PAPERBACKS
THE HEROIN DIARIESA Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock StarBy Nikki Sixx, Pocket Books, 413 pages, $23.50Sixx, co-founder, bassist and primary songwriter for the 1980s heavy metal band Motley Crue, tells all about his life as a junkie rock star.
RECENT & RECOMMENDED
OTHERWISEBy Farley Mowat, McClelland and Stewart, $32.99Mowat's memoir covers the formative years 1937-1948, the most controversial of his distinguished career.LOVE'S CIVIL WARElizabeth Bowen and Charles Ritchie, Letters and Diaries
Imagine there's no Lennon ... if you can
JOHN LENNONThe LifeBy Philip NormanDoubleday Canada,851 pages, $40In early 1958, he was fully the slouched teen rebel, a marginal student and resident trouble-maker. And yet art teacher June Furlong recalls: ''There was something about him you couldn't help but take notice of. ... I remember thinking ''You, mate ... you'll either end up at the bottom or you're going to the very top.' '' He never lost his rough edge, but fate chose John Lennon for the very top. His brimming talent, rule-busting exuberance and pugnacious drive helped the rock band he led gain heights unseen in popular culture and not scaled since. Biographer Philip Norman dives deep into the Lennon legend in John Lennon: The Life.
CHILDREN'S BOOKS
A BEAR IN WARBy Stephanie Innes and Harry Endrulat, illustrated by Brian Deines, Key Porter, 36 pages, $19.95, ages 5 to 8In this picture book, based on a true story, a small brown bear, Teddy, is the central figure and its voice. Just before the First World War, he was given to 10-year-old Aileen Rogers, and went to live with her to the family farm in East Farnham, Que.
Alone again, unnaturally
THE ENGLISH MAJORBy Jim HarrisonAnansi, 255 pages, $29.95It is sometimes tempting to think that all those traffic jams on U.S. highways are caused by the large number of fictional characters out there in search of themselves. The Joads in their rickety pickup lumbering along in the slow lane; Kerouac's Dean Moriarty in that 1950 Cadillac, hogging the fast lane; Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic father and son blocking the shoulder with their shopping cart - it's a wonder you can get anywhere with all those protagonists hogging the road.
Sad, yes, but also unforgettable
YOUR SAD EYES AND UNFORGETTABLE MOUTHBy Edeet RavelViking Canada, 274 pages, $32Your Sad Eyes and Unforgettable Mouth, Edeet Ravel's first book of adult fiction since her much-praised Tel Aviv Trilogy, is a very fine and moving novel. Perhaps it is strange to speak of pleasure when reviewing a book about the children of Holocaust survivors. Yet Ravel covers this territory in such a nuanced, compassionate, insightful and gently humorous way that this novel, along with the inevitable underlying pain, provides exactly that.
All fierce on the Western Front
SHOCK TROOPS Canadians Fighting the Great War, 1917-1918By Tim CookViking Canada, 728 pages, $40In November, 1918, in the dying days of the First World War, elements of five German divisions were ordered to make a last stand in the French town of Valenciennes. They had been weakened by a series of defeats but still had plenty of fight, and more than enough time to turn Valenciennes into a fortress: A canal to the west was booby- trapped, fields to the south and east were flooded to create a nearly impassable quagmire, and machine-gun nests were planted in dozens of buildings. To assault such a stronghold seemed like madness, but in its last set-piece battle of the war, the Canadian Corps swept through the town and brushed aside all resistance. It was a fitting exclamation point to put on Canada's war effort.
Adventures in growing up
DISTANTLY RELATED TO FREUDBy Ann CharneyCormorant, 314 pages. $21The typical coming-of-age story is one of education, a Bildungsroman; such stories emerged with regularity in Germany after Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (1795). Traditionally, the hero or heroine is young and experiences a crisis - sexual, tragic, familial, romantic - that marks the division between the past and the developing identity.
BESTSELLERS
FictionTHIS WEEK/LAST WEEK/WEEKS ON LIST/TITLE/AUTHOR/PUBLISHER/PRICE 1 15Heart And Soul, by Maeve Binchy (McArthur and Company, $24.95). 2 217The Shack, by William P. Young (Windblown Media, $15.99). 3 -1A Good Woman, by Danielle Steel (Delacorte, $32). 4 47The Story Of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski (Bond Street, $32.95). 5 33The Brass Verdict, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown, $29.99). 6 -1The Gate House, by Nelson DeMille (Grand Central, $30.99). 7 89Doors Open, by Ian Rankin (Orion, $24.95). 8 94A Most Wanted Man, by John le Carre (Viking Canada, $32). 9 67The Private Patient, by P.D. James (Knopf Canada, $32). 10 57Passchendaele, by Paul Gross (HarperCollins Canada, $17.95).
Do the hustle
SHUCKBy Daniel Allen CoxArsenal Pulp, 152 pages, $16.95How do you describe the measured approach of a muscle car? Here's how Montreal writer Daniel Allen Cox does it on the second page of his invigorating first novel: ''A thundercloud crept toward me in the form of a car I recognized for its slow idle and hungry rumble - blue Pontiac with a stubbly leer. ... A twenty attached to a hand waved out the window.''
Ontario writer wins $20,000 kids' lit prize
Christopher Paul Curtis nabs TD Canadian Children's Literature Award for his 2007 novel 'Elijah of Buxton'
Michael Crichton, 66
Best-selling author wrote Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain blended science with theatrical concepts
An artist's broken heart revealed
Yukiko Onley puts her ex-husband Toni Onley's anguished letters on display
'Iron Man' lifts Marvel results
But 2009 financial performance will be ‘modest' due to lower Spider-Man, toy revenue
That oldster black magic
THE WIDOWS OF EASTWICKBy John UpdikeKnopf, 308 pages, $27.95As I began reading John Updike's 22nd novel (and 59th book), The Widows of Eastwick, two images kept haunting me. First was that of the prolific genius, a Mozart or a Henry James, whose art gushes where other people's trickles. Sure, for every Requiem or The Golden Bowl there's a sugary divertimento or a Guy Domville. But the overall oeuvre is secure, and hundreds of years from now, reviewers will resemble a few prickly urchins washed deep down under those great seas of accomplishment.
Othello in Yorkshire
ALL THE COLOURS OF DARKNESSBy Peter RobinsonMcClelland and Stewart,352 pages, $29.99At some point in the 1980s, the hardboiled private eye migrated to Britain, acquired a warrant card and an extensive music collection, and mutated into Inspector iPod. The formula has proved a very effective one: The landscape of crime fiction would be a far less interesting place without Ian Rankin's Rebus, John Harvey's Resnick and, of course, Peter Robinson's Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks.
As the sky falls
Although a few recent films indicate society's growing unease with the state of the world (I am Legend and The Happening, with The Road slated for release in 2009), it has always fallen to the novelist to capture and shape the zeitgeist's visions of the end of the world (''as we know it'' - if we're lucky). Indeed, it's tough to think of science fiction existing at all without this evocative theme.
Please, Mr. Martin, a detail, a crumb
HELL OR HIGH WATERMy Life In and Out of PoliticsBy Paul MartinMcClelland and Stewart,494 pages, $37.99It is a rather too-perfect illustration of the no-longer-novel concept of the memoir as politics by other means. Hell or High Water: My Life In and Out of Politics is almost certainly quite the last instalment of the Chretien-Martin wars, that decade-long internal struggle for mastery of the Liberal Party.
PAPERBACKS
THE SUMMER THAT NEVER WASBy Peter Robinson, McClelland and Stewart, 445 pages, $11.99Chief Inspector Alan Banks is recalled from recuperation in Greece when the bones of a childhood friend are dug up 35 years after the summer of his disappearance, and must deal with a long-held guilty secret.
Were the Nazis their own worst enemies?
HITLER'S EMPIREHow the Nazis Ruled EuropeBy Mark MazowerPenguin Press, 726 pages, $44''Any thought of world policy is laughable,'' Hitler once ruminated, ''until we are masters of the continent. ... Once we are the masters in Europe, then we will enjoy the dominant position in the world.''
RECENT & RECOMMENDED
LOVE'S CIVIL WARElizabeth Bowen and Charles Ritchie, Letters and Diaries1941-1973Edited by Victoria Glendinning with Judith Robertson, McClelland and Stewart, $35A passionate affair in wartime London, between a star Canadian diplomat and a distinguished British writer, goes on for three decades.
CRIME BOOKS
THIS NIGHT'S FOUL WORKBy Fred Vargas, translated by Sian Reynolds, Knopf Canada, 409 pages, $29.95I've exhausted my collection of superlatives for Fred Vargas's marvellous and inventive novels, set in Paris and featuring Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg. For this fifth Adamsberg novel to be published in English, I can only say that Vargas continues to amaze me with her wacky characters and mind-expanding plots.
Grandma, we hardly knew you
MARIE-ANNEThe Extraordinary Life of Louis Riel's GrandmotherBy Maggie SigginsMcClelland and Stewart,328 pages, $32.99In an unassuming footnote near the beginning of Marie-Anne: The Extraordinary Life of Louis Riel's Grandmother, Maggie Siggins, acclaimed historiographer, offers an unintentionally telling anecdote: Throughout the western Canadian push of his journey to find the elusive China Sea, Jean Nicollet (1598-1642), ''theatrical'' explorer and fur trader, would typically bound from his canoe, brandish a pair of loaded pistols, and flourish a lushly designed, Asian-inspired capote (cloak) ''made of Chinese material, red with embroidered blue dragons and yellow peonies'' - all in an effort to impress that (strangely elusive) Chinese emperor he'd wholly expected to meet.
The story-master
''What does Grandma have to say about Chekhov?'' Claire asked her brother over the Internet. Their grandmother woke up at 10 every day, played the piano or, if her legs were strong that day, went downstairs for the mail. She behaved with dignity and severity, and was considered the most cultured person in the family.
Farley and the wolves
OTHERWISEBy Farley MowatMcClelland and Stewart,309 pages, $32.99The first time I met Farley Mowat was at his summer home on Cape Breton Island. I was with my father-in-law at the time, an ex-naval firefighter, and Farley welcomed us from the cramped engine room of the Happy Adventure, otherwise known as the Boat Who Wouldn't Float, where he was dismantling her engine and cleaning it with gasoline-soaked rags while smoking a cigarette. My father-in-law took one look and decided to wait out the rest of the visit in his car.
E-VOX POPULI: OUR READERS WRITE
Sandra Goth from Cobble Hill, B.C., writes: Seven Years in Tibet, by Heinrich Harrer, because it covers every aspect of existence: survival, growth, adventure and achievement. Particularly because of the freedom that it afforded the Dalai Lama.
Brass knuckles under
THE BRASS VERDICTBy Michael ConnellyLittle, Brown, 405 pages, $29.99If lawyers are so unpopular, why, from Perry Mason and Judge Judy to Law and Order and This is Wonderland, are they pop-culture heroes?
BESTSELLERS
FictionTHIS WEEK/LAST WEEK/WEEKS ON LIST/TITLE/AUTHOR/PUBLISHER/PRICE 1 14Heart And Soul, by Maeve Binchy (McArthur and Company, $24.95). 2 216The Shack, by William P. Young (Windblown Media, $15.99). 3 32The Brass Verdict, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown, $29.99). 4 46The Story Of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski (Bond Street, $32.95). 5 56Passchendaele, by Paul Gross (HarperCollins Canada, $17.95). 6 66The Private Patient, by P.D. James (Knopf Canada, $32). 7 -1Extreme Measures, by Vince Flynn (Atria, $29.99). 8 98Doors Open, by Ian Rankin (Orion, $24.95). 9 73A Most Wanted Man, by John le Carre (Viking Canada, $32). 10 -1Dark Summer, by Iris Johansen (St. Martin's, $29.95).
How Pierre Berton did it all
BERTONA BiographyBy A. B. McKillopMcClelland and Stewart,681 pages, $37.99At last we see how Pierre Berton did it. The magnitude of the man's multifaceted achievement, that decades-long career as the uncrowned King of Canada, remains astounding: Besides his 50 books, Berton wrote more than 100 feature articles for Maclean's and 1,000 columns for the Toronto Star.
An epic tale of traffic
Amitav Ghosh decided to write about Indian emigrants in the 1830s. But then the Booker nominee found a potent metaphor in the Opium War
Google settles online book battle
Agrees to pay $125-million to create books registry, resolving long fight with publishers
Dear Diary
Most journals are about our own little problems. But Toronto actress Mia Kirshner travelled to four desperate parts of the world to bring back the tales of the most vulnerable people
A man for all reasons
How do we know what we know? What do we know?To that most lucid of Scottish empiricists, David Hume (1711-1776), the answer to the first question was a straightforward, if deceptively simple, ''by experience.'' Everything we know about knowing, Hume would argue, is acquired through experience.
Tiger burns Booker-bright
THE WHITE TIGERBy Aravind AdigaFree Press, 276 pages, $28The White Tiger, this year's Man Booker Award-winning novel by first-time novelist Aravind Adiga, about a poor Indian boy who grows up to find success in the big city, is stirring up considerable controversy. Some Indian readers resent Adiga's portrayal of squalid rural poverty, political corruption and the affluent middle class's exploitation of underprivileged servants. In short, this book amounts to an expose, the glum subject of which is made compulsively readable by the comical, objective, irreverent voice of our hero, Balram Halwai. Still, the novel's tone does little to mollify Adiga's critics, who compare the work to V. S. Naipaul's demeaning An Area of Darkness.
The Satanic Verses at 20
A hijacked jet is blown apart over the English Channel one winter morning. Falling through the sky amid blankets and drinks trolleys, oxygen masks and severed limbs, are two men. One is a Bollywood star, the other an anglophile Indian who earns a living doing voice work on radio and television. Both are Muslims.
PAPERBACKS
UNDIPLOMATIC DIARIES1937-1971By Charles Ritchie, Emblem, 591 pages, $24.99Ritchie's diaries, previously released in three parts, are gathered into one volume, coinciding with the publication of his passionate correspondence with British writer Elizabeth Bowen.
Why Morley Callaghan still matters
A LITERARY LIFEReflections and Reminiscences,1928-1990By Morley CallaghanExile, 453 pages, $34.95THE NEW YORKER STORIESBy Morley CallaghanExile, 136 pages, $19.95
RECENT & RECOMMENDED
TEARS OF THE DESERTA Memoir of Survival in DarfurBy Halima Bashir, HarperCollins, $29.95Bashir, born and raised in war-torn Darfur, became a doctor, was kidnapped, raped and tortured, and fought to enter Britain as a refugee.
Hacking and cracking
MAFIABOYHow I Cracked the Internetand Why It's Still BrokenBy Michael Calcewith Craig SilvermanViking Canada, 276 pages, $34The best, brightest and most entrepreneurial computer hackers undertake a perilous journey. They set out to demonstrate technical prowess, which eventually brings legal problems; ultimately, they try to turn their skill and experience into viable careers, most often in the very sector (computer security) they infiltrated. This is a standard hacker odyssey. The problem is that sirens of chaos, hubris and obsession usually get in the way.
CHILDREN'S BOOKS
LAST NIGHTBy Hyewon Yum, Farrar, Strausand Giroux, 32 pages, $17.50,ages 3 to 5A wordless picture book, this tells the story of one little girl's nighttime adventures. The first page shows her scowling over a plate of food. The following double-page spread shows her first standing in the corner and then her hang-dog climb up the stairs. She goes to bed with her small teddy bear on the pillow beside her.
The ins and (possibly) outs of the war in Iraq
THE FOREVER WARBy Dexter Filkins Random House, 368 pages, $28A PATH OUT OF THE DESERT A Grand Strategy for Americain the Middle EastBy Kenneth M. Pollack
Little Miss Prickly
THE ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOGBy Muriel BarberyTranslated by Alison AndersonEuropa Editions, 325 pages, $16A novel that sells 1.2 million copies in France, 400,000 copies in Italy, that remains on its country's own bestseller list for longer than Dan Brown's books have, that garners the 2007 French Booksellers Award and 2007 Brive-la-Gaillarde Reader's Prize, suggests a phenomenon. The barrage of accolades from Vogue to The Washington Post does overwhelm. The reviewer feels almost duty-bound to like this book, especially since the reviewer is also so very fond of hedgehogs.
Reporter reveals all - but not herself
THE ANGEL OF GROZNYOrphans of a Forgotten WarBy Asne SeierstadTranslated by Nadia ChristensenBasic Books, 352 pages $27.95The Angel of Grozny, the latest book by Norwegian journalist Asne Seierstad, who rose to fame with 2003's The Bookseller of Kabul, is not an easy read.
Sole sister
GOLDENGROVEBy Francine ProseHarperCollins, 275 pages, $26.95Probably the most difficult of all perspectives to occupy or to write from is that of a teenage girl. Mysterious and sullen, charming and subversive by turns, their unpredictable reactions make them the worst of fictional subjects. But Francine Prose is up to the challenge. Nico, the teenager who narrates Goldengrove, is captured utterly, a 13-year-old with a voice as believable as Holden Caulfield's.
A man for all reasons
How do we know what we know? What do we know?To that most lucid of Scottish empiricists, David Hume (1711-1776), the answer to the first question was a straightforward, if deceptively simple, ''by experience.'' Everything we know about knowing, Hume would argue, is acquired through experience.
Birth writes
GREAT EXPECTATIONSTwenty-Four True Stories About ChildbirthEdited by Dede Craneand Lisa MooreAnansi, 314 pages, $21.95The cover belies the bloody, Gothic comedy of childbirth. An infant sleeps serenely, small spidery fingers curved to cheeks, efficiently wrapped in a cone of white blanket like a little amuse gueule - or a Communion wafer - ready to be plucked up and savoured. But inside Great Expectations there is blood aplenty (and copious other fluids, including tears), thundering pain, death and near-death experiences. The final month of pregnancy is Waiting for Godot, then suddenly the curtain rises on Act IV, Scene III of Macbeth.
E-VOX POPULI: OUR READERS WRITE
Charles Heller from Toronto writes: The Anatomy of Melancholy, by Robert Burton, was published in 1621 as a cure for depression. It is a massive survey of human knowledge, culled from all the books that the author, a librarian at Oxford, had read. His topics even include the Frankfurt Book Fair (too big!), the existence of Little Green Men and the latest theories of Galileo. Its style veers from self-consciously pompous to folksy and comic. ... He considers the problems that science may one day solve, ranging from a tantalizing premonition of Darwin in which he refers to the distribution of animals (which Darwin himself said was the key to his theory) to that stumbling-block of religion, the existence of evil.
Foreign affairs
LOVE'S CIVIL WARElizabeth Bowen and CharlesRitchie, Letters and Diaries 1941-1973Edited by Victoria Glendinningwith Judith RobertsonMcClelland and Stewart,489 pages, $35Elizabeth Bowen was a married woman of 41, author of short stories and six novels, when she met Charles Ritchie, then working at the Canadian High Commission in London, in February, 1941. She was sophisticated, successful and lonely. He was a debonair 35-year-old, eager for experience. What began as an intoxicatingly physical affair in wartime London became, for both of them, an intense and passionate lifelong friendship that fuelled their imaginations.
HORROR CLASSICS FOR HALLOWEEN
THE DUNWICH HORRORAnd Other StoriesBy H. P. Lovecraft, Penguin, 201 pages, $10.99In many ways, The Dunwich Horror is the quintessential Lovecraft story, the tale that laid most of the groundwork for his Cthulhu Mythos and established the central role of the Necronomicon, a cursed but much-desired ancient book of magic spells that features in many of his works (and of several other horror writers, as well). This is book No. 1 in Penguin's Red Classics series, reprints of the cream of horror literature.
BESTSELLERS
FictionTHIS WEEK/LAST WEEK/WEEKS ON LIST/TITLE/AUTHOR/PUBLISHER/PRICE 1 13Heart And Soul, by Maeve Binchy (McArthur and Company, $24.95). 2 215The Shack, by William P. Young (Windblown Media, $15.99). 3 -1The Brass Verdict, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown, $29.99). 4 35The Story Of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski (Bond Street, $32.95). 5 55Passchendaele, by Paul Gross (HarperCollins Canada, $17.95). 6 65The Private Patient, by P.D. James (Knopf Canada, $32). 7 82A Most Wanted Man, by John le Carre (Viking Canada, $32). 8 43The Lucky One, by Nicholas Sparks (Grand Central, $27.99). 9 97Doors Open, by Ian Rankin (Orion, $24.95). 10 77The Flying Troutmans, by Miriam Toews (Knopf Canada, $32).
Pain, beautiful pain
MOTHER SUPERIORBy Saleema NawazFreehand Books,296 pages, $23.95Two women share a house in Winnipeg. They also share bathwater. ''Toe to shoulder, shoulder to toe, we prune ourselves in the tub until the bubbles have disappeared.'' One gal is a lesbian, but ''practically a nun.''
In any genre, Enright's a whiz
YESTERDAY'S WEATHERBy Anne EnrightMcClelland and Stewart,306 pages, $27.95Lovers of short stories tend to put up arguments for the form because it feels beleaguered. The arguments often go this way: Short stories, unlike novels, can be consumed in a few hours, or even less, they are full of mood and show a precision of language more akin to poetry than lengthier kinds of prose. They are closely related to memories or daydreams - they flit through, there and gone. But how intensely they are felt. Fast, potent hits.
Binging and hookups and dead-end jobs
Sociologist sees problems in way young men shirk responsibility
Young men in wasteland, sociologist argues
Binge drinking, fleeting sexual relationships and hazing their peers on campus replaces preparation for manhood, says author Michael Kimmel.
He coached Frost on how to get Nixon
American author, playwright and scholar enjoys his moment as the man who helped convict Nixon in the court of public opinion
E-VOX POPULI: OUR READERS WRITE
Mark Harding from Toronto writes: I have no doubt about the worthiness of the list, but it does show our inclination to equate ''greatness'' with seriousness. I suggest a great writer - witty, ironic and profound - in Chuang Tzu (399-295 BC). He shows that you can cut to the core of the human search for self-realization and still have a twinkle in your eye. His philosophy is practical, down-to-earth, and full of the Zen comic spirit that is so lacking in other religions. No writer better punctures the pompous or exalts the humble.
Eat your frozen heart out, Texas
Try this visual exercise. Put a map of Alaska over a map of the South 48, same scale. The map of Alaska overlaps both the Canadian and Mexican borders and the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. You could drop the state of Texas (268,601 square miles) down inside the state of Alaska (656,425 square miles) and never find it.
Fascinating theatrical life plumbs the shallows
IN SPITE OF MYSELFBy Christopher PlummerKnopf, 648 pages, $37If William Hutt was the Canadian Gielgud, Redgrave and Scofield rolled into one package of immense versatility, power, humanity and vulnerability, Christopher Plummer has always been our Olivier: a thorough theatre animal, flamboyantly exhibitionistic, delighting in milking poetry and capable of the most mesmerizing effects (especially dazzling vocal speed) - the very features Plummer notes in the late titan of the English stage.
PAPERBACKS
THE TOP 100 CANADIAN ALBUMSBy Bob Mersereau, Goose Lane, 214 pages, $24.95This selection includes anecdotes and background about the 100 albums picked, and full-colour reproductions of the album art.
CRIME BOOKS
RITUALBy Mo Hayder, HarperCollins,410 pages, $22.95Ritual marks the return of Detective Inspector Jack Caffery, investigator in Mo Hayder's first two novels, Birdman and The Treatment. Hayder, one of Britain's most talented authors, moves to another level in this spellbinder. With characters so complex, so fascinating that they could populate a dozen novels, she sends readers into a demimonde of ritual magic, desperation, guilt and death, all exquisitely composed.
You charm the husk right off of the corn, Maeve
HEART AND SOUL By Maeve BinchyMcArthur and Company,452 pages, $24.95May I share a secret? Every once in a while, I grow weary of being a man, and I don't even know why. I have little to complain about. There's the fishing, the duck hunting, the late-night poker games, the meat smoker my wife bought me for my birthday. There's the adoration of my daughters, and the satisfaction of knowing that my chainsaw is in excellent working order.
Mistress of murder
THE PRIVATE PATIENTBy P. D. JamesKnopf Canada, 395 pages, $32How does one resist a novel that begins with the following sentence?:''On November the 21st, the day of her forty-seventh birthday, and three weeks and two days before she was murdered, Rhoda Gradwyn went to Harley Street to keep a first appointment with her plastic surgeon, and there in a consulting room designed, so it appeared, to inspire confidence and allay apprehensions, made the decision which would lead inexorably to her death.''
An artful dodger
ERRATIC NORTHA Vietnam Draft Resister's Life in the Canadian BushBy Mark FrutkinDundurn, 237 pages, $24.95Ottawa novelist Mark Frutkin has long been interested in history's turning points, moments in time when a person's life and that of a nation intersect. His first book, The Growing Dawn (1984), included four works of ''documentary fiction'' about the life of Guglielmo Marconi, each consisting of short, poetic prose pieces that dazzled the reader well before creative non-fiction became mainstream. Atmospheres Apollinaire highlighted France's belle epoque (1900 to 1914) and featured Picasso and Apollinaire as principle characters caught in the flash of history leading up to the First World War.
Outspoken silence
The 1950s were deeply disturbing times. Our fathers, traumatized yet intoxicated by their victorious wartime power, had turned upon our Earth, unleashing the same chemical and nuclear weapons they had deployed a few short years earlier on their fellow human beings. So unhinged were the times that serious proposals were advanced by Russian scientists to use nuclear weapons to destroy the Arctic ice cap and so ameliorate the climate of the world. Canada entertained its own mad schemes. On Feb. 10, 1959, Time magazine reported that the Richfield Oil Corp. planned to explode a series of two-kiloton nuclear weapons below the Alberta tar sands, creating cavities that would fill with liquefied tar. They claimed that 300 billion barrels of crude oil would be created, and the experts assured everyone that there would be no hazard from radioactivity.
More than a survivor, a heroine
TEARS OF THE DESERTA Memoir of Survival in DarfurBy Halima Bashirwith Damien LewisHarperCollins, 367 pages, $29.95Stories of Janjaweed attacks on villages in Darfur, of rapes and massacres and children thrown into burning houses, have become painfully familiar in recent years. But seldom have these stories been written by Darfurians, and never, until now, by a woman. Halima Bashir brings to her memoir not just her own horrific tale, but her experience of trying to treat the victims of a war which, for all the endless international condemnation surrounding it, continues apparently unchecked. Tears of the Desert is a brave and haunting book.
Let me tell you 'bout the birds ...
THE WISDOM OF BIRDSAn Illustrated History of OrnithologyBy Tim BirkheadGreyStone, 433 pages, $42.95Nobody loves birds like the British, perhaps because of the scarcity of mammals on the island, or the sheer number of species that can occur there. Whatever lies beneath their passion, it is a long-standing one: The British Ornithologists' Union is older than our nation, at 150 years, while the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds is only a few years younger. The British even have a slang word for pursuing a rare bird species: ''twitching.''
BESTSELLERS
FictionTHIS WEEK/LAST WEEK/WEEKS ON LIST/TITLE/AUTHOR/PUBLISHER/PRICE 1 12Heart And Soul, by Maeve Binchy (McArthur and Company, $24.95). 2 314The Shack, by William P. Young (Windblown Media, $15.99). 3 24The Story Of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski (Bond Street, $32.95). 4 42The Lucky One, by Nicholas Sparks (Grand Central, $27.99). 5 74Passchendaele, by Paul Gross (HarperCollins Canada, $17.95). 6 54The Private Patient, by P.D. James (Knopf Canada, $32). 7 96The Flying Troutmans, by Miriam Toews (Knopf Canada, $32). 8 -1A Most Wanted Man, by John le Carre (Viking Canada, $32). 9 66Doors Open, by Ian Rankin (Orion, $24.95). 10 -1The Pirate King, by R.A. Salvatore (Wizards Of The Coast, $33).
... and the bees
FRUITLESS FALLThe Collapse of theHoneybee and the ComingAgricultural CrisisBy Rowan JacobsenBloomsbury, 288 pages, $25 BEES Nature's Little WondersBy Candace SavageGreyStone, 128 pages, $28
Three days in Prague
IN THE GARDEN OF MENBy John Kupferschmidt3-Day Books, 44 pages, $14.95Thirty-one years ago, a handful of writers gathered in a Vancouver pub and dared one another to go home and write a novel in one weekend. Taken in hand by Arsenal Pulp Press, this was the first Three-Day Novel Contest, a gruelling Labour Day weekend affair now with its own publishing house, and survived annually by hundreds of sleep-deprived writers from around the globe.
Gadget-savvy but socially inept? Tech may be altering your mind
Gary Small, co-author of iBrain, on how technology is altering the physical makeup of our brains and changing the way we interact with one another
No. 1 escort tells (almost) all
Four years ago she was New York's highest-paid escort. Now she's a typical twentysomething Montrealer. Natalie McLennan dishes on her new book, the upside of sex for money and Ashley Dupré, the woman who brought down Eliot Spitzer
Adiga wins Man Booker prize for 'The White Tiger'
Mumbai author gains acclaim for first novel despite criticism within India
On divorce and dysfunction: Hollywood edition
Who can pen a more salacious story of familial friction: Alec Baldwin or Lynne Spears?
Uplift Rx: Call Doc Woody
The author of the self-help book The Source wants to empower people to make a change in their lives
Get your motor running
ZEN AND NOWOn the Trail of Robert Pirsigand the Art of Motorcycle MaintenanceBy Mark RichardsonKnopf Canada, 274 pages, $29.95''As I ride to the west, the noise in the engine seems to settle into a rhythmic thrum, and the wind ripples the grass in the fields alongside the road. The tops of the blades are waving to and fro, and it's easy to imagine the valves in the engine rising and falling with them, in sync with nature,'' Mark Richardson writes in Zen and Now.
Cowboys, Indians and Boers
THE GREAT KAROOBy Fred StensonDoubleday, 480 pages, $32.95Maybe it's because we never had a successful revolution in Canada. We never dramatically cut ties with the British Empire, so this particular literary tradition remains unbroken all the way back to its origins in the Waverley novels of Walter Scott. Or maybe the flowering of recent decades has happened in reaction to the suppression of history in our schools and universities, and to the corollary assertion, chanted like a mantra by those with a vested interest, that the Really Important Novels are set in cities and address contemporary issues, as if such issues could be understood independent of history.
Identity, therefore I am
THE SOUL OF ALL GREAT DESIGNSBy Neil BissoondathCormorant, 223 pages, $29The graffiti in a woman's washroom at the university where I work reads, ''ID, therefore I am.'' That riff on Descartes's famous ''I think, therefore I am'' haunts me like a jingle, because it catches something - however quirky - of the multiple-identity world we've come to inhabit.
The sound of whale music
THOUSAND MILE SONGWhale Music in a Sea of SoundBy David RothenbergBasic Books, 287 pages, $29.50If you are at musically inclined and interested in whales and whale song, this is the book for you. David Rothenberg, who wrote the well-received Why Birds Sing, has done an immense amount of research and travel to try to understand the far more mysterious world of cetacean singing (and clicking and sonar navigation). He has not been entirely successful, through no fault of his own, simply because it is much harder to study whale music than bird song.
SYMPOSIUM: WAYNE GRADY ON JOHN METCALF
AT ISSUERecent issues of literary journals The New Quarterly and CNQ (Canadian Notes and Queries) offered short stories by 20 writers left out of The Penguin Book of Canadian Short Stories, edited by Jane Urquhart. Both magazines titled their issues The Salon des Refuses, holding the view that the Penguin anthology presented a distorted view. In a Sept. 13 essay for Books, John Metcalf supported that view. Now, Wayne Grady, who edited the first Penguin anthology, comes to the defence of a new and inclusive definition of what constitutes a short story. Metcalf, meanwhile, holds his ground.
PAPERBACKS
THE FROZEN THAMESBy Helen Humphreys, Emblem, 181 pages, $17.99This gorgeous little book features 40 stories, each set in one of the times in history that the Thames River has frozen solid, all splendidly illustrated.
You say you want an evolution?
THE ORIGIN OF SPECIESBy Nino RicciDoubleday Canada,496 pages, $34.95When I was 15, an 18-year-old female friend, who, as I did, dated ''older guys,'' said, ''a 15-year-old girl and a 20-year-old guy are the same age. Men and women aren't the same age until about 26.''
RECENT & RECOMMENDED
RED DOG, RED DOGBy Patrick Lane, McClelland and Stewart, $32.99The ghost of a dead child conducts readers on a tour of the seriously dysfunctional Stark family in the Okanagan Valley of the 1950s.
One line to PEI
THE CATCHBy Louisa McCormackKey Porter, 331 pages, $27.95Confession: I was the one who, in this newspaper, previously called Louisa McCormack's first novel, Six Weeks to Toxic, ''witty, concise, controlled.'' This is the blurb that adorns the smart cover of her second novel, The Catch. Seeing my words singing the praises of McCormack's last book works to remind me that, even though I'm not sure The Catch holds up as well as Six Weeks To Toxic, I still do think this writer is witty, concise and controlled. McCormack's flair, style and machine-gun wit are abundant throughout.
CHILDREN'S BOOKS
OLOYOUBy Teresa Cardenas, illustrated by Margarita Sada, translated by Elisa Amado, Groundwood, 32 pages, $18.95, ages 4 to 7A bilingual book (Spanish and English), Oloyou is the creation of Cardenas, a Cuban santera, or priestess, her retelling of a Yoruba myth. Santeria is a religion that flourishes in Cuba, one that combines the Yoruba beliefs, brought to the New World by African slaves, with the stories and traditions that arose in subsequent generations of those former Africans in the Caribbean. Above all, Santeria offers explanations, often wonderfully fanciful, for events and denizens of the natural world. Margarita Sada's lovely oils for this book do nothing to lower the quotient of ''fanciful,'' and everything to make it visually attractive.
The perils of Julie
MY STORYBy Julie CouillardTranslated Michael GilsonMcClelland and Stewart,319 pages, $29.99Femme fatale? Hell hath no fury like Julie Couillard's scorn for former lover Maxime Bernier. It burns through the 319 pages of My Story: ''He ruined my life.'' This is her revenge. She depicts him as weak (''You really have no balls at all''), lazy, vain, superficial, two-faced; a compulsive skirt-chaser who badmouths Stephen Harper and his own constituents in the Beauce. She even has Canada's minister of foreign affairs predicting Quebec's separation as inevitable: ''It doesn't frighten me at all, that's where we're headed. And I have no problem with that, I'm ready. I'm expecting it.''
Death takes a holiday, and falls in love
DEATH WITH INTERRUPTIONSBy Jose SaramagoTranslated by Margaret Jull CostaHarcourt, 238 pages, $26.95 In Blindness, the famed novel by Portuguese writer Jose Saramago that helped earn the author his well-deserved Nobel and spawned the current cinematic release, we follow a small group of characters through the ruins of a catastrophically altered city where an epidemic of blindness is robbing everyone of their sight. The world of Blindness is rich with allegorical parallels that could be political, could be religious, could be almost anything. Saramago has a penchant for describing the movement of crowds: Where North American fiction is often insistently individual, he often prefers to use a kind of national collective as a protagonist.
She changed Jamaica for the better
HORSES IN HER HAIRA Granddaughter's StoryBy Rachel ManleyKey Porter, 341 pages, $29.95For most writers, a trilogy of memoirs focusing on different members of their own immediate families might seem excessive. But Rachel Manley - whose grandfather, Norman, is considered to be the father of Jamaican independence; whose father, Michael, was the country's most controversial prime minister, and whose grandmother, Edna, was largely responsible for Jamaica's artistic and cultural awakening - has extensive and important ground to cover.
A devil of a book
Goethe's Faust is a monster. Colossal in artistic and intellectual scope, the play is very long, more than 12,000 lines. A complete performance can take about 21 hours. That's nearly a day sitting in an uncomfortable theatre seat.
Portrait of the artist as ... well, everybody
I AM MY FAMILYPhotographic Memoriesand FictionsBy Rafael GoldchainPrinceton Architectural Press,168 pages, $42.30Our past can be as unknowable as our future. For every family with rich stories passed from generation to generation, another sifts through fragmented memories. For every home with a gallery of framed family photos, there stands another with bare walls.
E-VOX POPULI: OUR READERS WRITE
Richard Orlando, from Montreal, writes: I submit Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. It combines the philosophies of Buddha, Epictetus and American transcendentalism with revolutionary free verse, biblical cadences and richly worded catalogues of man-made and natural wonders. It is a celebratory burst of optimism that is an oh-so-welcome antidote to the general run of modern sackcloth-and-ashes poetry.
Sickness unto debt
PAYBACKDebt and the Shadow Sideof WealthBy Margaret AtwoodAnansi, 240 pages, $18.95Rest easy: Payback, the published version of Margaret Atwood's 2008 Massey lectures, is neither a treatise on economic principles nor an instant book about the unfolding market crisis. Instead, it is concerned with ''debt as a human construct,'' and how ''this construct mirrors and magnifies both voracious human desire and ferocious human fear.'' Debt, then, as an ''imaginative construct'' as well - a logical point of entry for a novelist and poet.
IN BRIEF: TRAVEL
Photo taken at Noel Coward's Jamaican house, Blue Harbour, with Coward (on the steps) and friends. From the book Passionate Pilgrimages: From Chopin to Coward (Welcome Rain Publishers, 124 pages, $19.95), written by Elizabeth Sharland. The Tasmanian-born Canadian Sharland was bitten early by the bugs of theatre and music, and this anecdote-laden travel diary describes her journeys to, and impressions of, the homes and places associated with her favourites: Chateau de Nohant, the country home of George Sand, who nursed her tubercular lover Chopin there; Cole Porter's Paris home and the evocative Ritz Hotel piano bar; the haunts of Paul and Jane Bowles in Tangier, Morocco; and, especially, the expansive world of Noel Coward, in London, New York and Jamaica.
Le Carré and the 'espiocracy'
A MOST WANTED MANBy John le Carre Viking Canada, 340 pages, $32If novels, as Margaret Atwood once wrote, keep the moral imagination alive, then John le Carre's new novel, A Most Wanted Man, brilliantly performs the function of the novel, and does so as compellingly as the work which first made his name, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.
BESTSELLERS
FictionTHIS WEEK/LAST WEEK/WEEKS ON LIST/TITLE/AUTHOR/PUBLISHER/PRICE 1 -1Heart And Soul, by Maeve Binchy (Orion, $24.95). 2 13The Story Of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski (Bond Street, $32.95). 3 213The Shack, by William P. Young (Windblown Media, $15.99). 4 -1The Lucky One, by Nicholas Sparks (Grand Central, $27.99). 5 33The Private Patient, by P.D. James (Knopf Canada, $32). 6 45Doors Open, by Ian Rankin (Orion, $24.95). 7 53Passchendaele, by Paul Gross (HarperCollins Canada, $17.95). 8 -1All The Colours Of Darkness, by Peter Robinson (McClelland and Stewart, $29.99). 9 65The Flying Troutmans, by Miriam Toews (Knopf Canada, $32). 10 -1One Fifth Avenue, by Candace Bushnell (Hyperion, $27.95).
Spoiler alert: Comic books are alive and kicking
Marvel's print revenues have been growing in double digits for the past three years
This time, Irvine Welsh winced
The man famous for scenes of tapeworms and toilet dives had to take lengthy breaks while writing his disturbing new novel, Crime
40 laid off as execs arrested
Entellium bosses grossly overstated revenue to attract private investment in a fraud uncovered when worker found cooked books
Giller short list unveiled
Joseph Boyden, Rawi Hage, Anthony De Sa, Marina Endicott and Mary Swan in running for 2008 prize
'Psychic geographies' haunt novelist Tristan Hughes' work
Were it not for a back-breaking, drunken fall off a Welsh castle wall, Hughes may never have penned his first novel
E-VOX POPULI: OUR READERS WRITE
Yves Farges from Vancouver writes: Rene Descartes's book Discourse on the Method. From the father of philosophy, light pierces the curtains of ignorance as Descartes establishes that pivotal bedrock of self-awareness, ''cogito ergo sum,'' a.k.a. ''I think, therefore I am.'' In his mathematical treatises, Descartes laid the foundation from which calculus would later emerge, but clearly Discourse on the Method is one of those basic books that deserves a (high) spot on your list.
Roth waxes indignant at history's hold
INDIGNATIONBy Philip RothViking Canada, 233 pages, $30Philip Roth's long and distinguished career has been crowned with so many prizes, honours and medals that he is now, arguably, the reigning dean of American letters. Now comes Indignation, his 29th book, a novel set in 1951 at the height of the Korean War. Narrated by Marcus Messner, a Jewish adolescent who has transferred from his hometown college in Newark, N.J., to
When madness rules your life
''Are you out of your mind?'' We've all said it, to people who aren't. We don't ask those we truly suspect: When we encounter them in the street or on the bus, we give them wide berth or quietly change seats. But what if they are our own loved ones?
Extreme adventure, Arctic style
RACE TO THE POLAR SEAThe Heroic Adventures and Romantic Obsessions of Elisha Kent KaneBy Ken McGooganHarperCollins, 365 pages, $34.95The mid-19th century was the heyday of Arctic literature. Before the TV talk-show circuit, returning explorers had to shrug off the effects of a host of hideous vitamin deficiencies and spend long hours by gas- and candle-light turning their journals and rough notes (and those of their subordinates) into epic tales of struggle, discovery and suffering. The rewards were fame and lucrative speaking tours of North America.
PAPERBACKS
THE ARCHITECTS ARE HEREBy Michael Winter, Penguin Canada, 372 pages, $19Winter brings back his popular recurring character, Gabriel English, for an exuberant, funny and wild road trip to his hometown of Corner Brook, Newfoundland.
CRIME BOOKS
THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOOBy Stieg Larsson, translated by Reg Keeland, Viking Canada, 465 pages, $32Yet again, Scandinavia produces a brilliant, gifted author. Swede Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is a dazzling debut with marvellous characters and a wonderful story built around the most difficult of all plots, the locked room, although here, it's remote island. This novel, a runaway bestseller in Europe, will thrill North American readers as well.
He is what he is, generally
SOLDIERS MADE MELOOK GOODA Life in the Shadow of WarBy Lewis MacKenzieDouglas and McIntyre,294 pages, $32.95This personal reflection on life lessons learned and leadership skills by one of Canada's most famous generals could best be summed up by Popeye the Sailor Man's trademark quip: ''I yam what I yam.''
A howl of a novel
RED DOG, RED DOGBy Patrick LaneMcClelland and Stewart, 332 pages, $32.99''It didn't take him long to bury me.'' The speaker here is Alice, a dead child whose ghostly perspective haunts Red Dog, Red Dog, and particularly her father and gravedigger, Elmer Stark. From the very first line, the reader is told the past weighs heavily upon the present, and few are asked to shoulder a burden more crippling than the Stark family.
Looking for the light
By Joan ThomasGoose Lane, 388 pages, $22.95Lily Piper's family is waiting to be spirited away. Not to another part of the Canadian prairie. Not even overseas, back to her father's English birthplace. But snatched up to heaven, transported without warning into God's bosom.
Sally go 'round the sun
HURRY DOWN SUNSHINEBy Michael Greenberg HarperCollins, 233 pages, $29.95''On July 5, 1996, my daughter was struck mad.'' The first sentence of Michael Greenberg's Hurry Down Sunshine smacks you right in the face. There is no pretty prelude, no idyllic scenes of the life that is about to be torn apart by his daughter Sally's illness. You're immediately in the story and watching a family in crisis.
Read my ... er, book: It's the oil, stupid
HOT, FLAT, AND CROWDEDWhy We Need a Green Revolution - and How It Can Renew AmericaBy Thomas FriedmanFarrar, Straus and Giroux,438 pages, $30.95In 2001, the U.S. military had a hell of a problem resupplying its diesel-run military bases in Iraq's Anbar Province with fuel. Low-carbon insurgents strategically, and repeatedly, attacked the high-carbon truck convoys with roadside bombs, and the body-bag count became obscene.
Drawing from life
The best books are often hard to classify. Lynda Barry's autobiographical, instructional and inspirational graphic novel What It Is (Drawn and Quarterly, 210 pages, $24.95) is one of these, because it's both an intensely personal memoir of Barry's creative life and a writing guide. Oh, and it's a DIY creative activity kit too. So where to shelve it? The newly minted graphica section? Art? Psychology? Activity books? Memoir? Although the most autobiographical of Barry's books, What It Is is also a creative text presented in a very original way, so it most naturally belongs next to Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way.
What did he know? Plenty
In 1580, Michel de Montaigne published in Bordeaux a book made unique by its title, Essais - literally ''attempts'' - and a literary genre was born. Over 20 years, Montaigne would rewrite and republish it several times, up until his death. The Essays resemble a patchwork of personal reflections that nonetheless all tend toward a single goal: to live better in the present and to prepare for death. These considerations, or essays, offer a point of departure for the modern reader's own assessments. In brief, one does not read Montaigne, one practises Montaigne.
Binges, blackouts and, oddly, business
THE NIGHT OF THE GUNA Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life: His OwnBy David CarrSimon and Schuster,385 pages, $29.99''There are no second acts in American lives,'' F. Scott Fitzgerald famously declared. Maybe, but The Night of the Gun reveals that David Carr has shifted some scenery as the hero of his own drama.
BESTSELLERS
FictionTHIS WEEK/LAST WEEK/WEEKS ON LIST/TITLE/AUTHOR/PUBLISHER/PRICE 1 32The Story Of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski (Bond Street, $32.95). 2 112The Shack, by William P. Young (Windblown Media, $15.99). 3 42The Private Patient, by P.D. James (Knopf Canada, $32). 4 24Doors Open, by Ian Rankin (Orion, $24.95). 5 72Passchendaele, by Paul Gross (HarperCollins Canada, $17.95). 6 54The Flying Troutmans, by Miriam Toews (Knopf Canada, $32). 7 65Devil Bones, by Kathy Reichs (Scribner, $29.99). 8 -1The Tsarina's Daughter, by Carolly Erickson (St. Martin's, $17.95). 9 83The Other Queen, by Philippa Gregory (HarperCollins, $29.95). 10 107The Gargoyle, by Andrew Davidson (Random House Canada, $32.95).
Just say 'no, never, none for me'
THE DAY GEORGE BUSH STOPPED DRINKINGWhy Abstinence Matters to the Religious RightBy Jessica WarnerMcClelland and Stewart,230 pages, $29.99Stop - in the name of love. That is more or less what George W. Bush did. He may not technically have been a slave to beer, bourbon and BandB, but he sure was familiar with the power they had over him. The morning after his 40th-birthday binge at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs, the future president, almost certainly heeding the pleas of his wife, called it quits. He vowed never to drink again.
Couillard says firm hired her for Tory contacts
She writes that she struck deal with real-estate company when it learned of her acquaintance with Public Works official Bernard Côté
Romance gets a market correction
Relationships are taking a hit amid the stress of economic turmoil. Goodbye dinner and a movie. Hello Scrabble night. Siri Agrell reports
The science of a long marriage
In the long run, marriage is a state of being that suits, even enhances, human biology
Toronto's Gil Adamson wins $7,500 book prize
Toronto author nabs Canada First Novel Award for her 2007 novel The Outlander
Couillard just looking for glory, Bernier says
Former foreign affairs minister responds to book claims by raising doubts about the credibility of ex-girlfriend
A road map for selling soap on the information highway
IBM and Unilever are two companies among the pioneers immersing themselves in new media, looking for business applications
This award night comes with a twist
Books in Canada, the magazine behind a $7,500 prize to be presented tonight, has ceased publication. Will Amazon.ca continue with the award?
Toronto Star publisher Pike steps down
Torstar Corp. names Donald Babick interim president of Star Media
The Social Contract
Rousseau's effect on his own age was seismic, and the tremors have never subsided.
If they could live with the animals ...
WE BOUGHT A ZOOThe Amazing True Story of a Young Family, a Broken Down Zoo, and the 200 Wild Animals That Change Their Lives ForeverBy Benjamin MeeDoubleday Canada,
E-VOX POPULI: OUR READERS SPEAK
Alex Anderson from Kanata, Ont., writes: The Three Musketeers is one of the all-time greatest romances. Humour, tragedy, love and death all tied up with political intrigue and lots of swordplay as a youth comes of age. Fantastic stuff.
Original - and aboriginal
A FAIR COUNTRYTelling Truths About Canada,By John Ralston Saul Viking Canada, 338 pages, $34A plain but telling litmus test of the impact of a new book is whether you find yourself acting by it. Already, having read A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada, John Ralston Saul's argument for Canada as an aboriginal-minded society, I find myself talking more easily about the colonial encumbrance and the influence of first nations on our national consciousness. A Fair Country may be wishful thinking; it plays conjurer's tricks with history and, quite deliberately, creates new founding myths. But it is also a brilliant and timely argument about Canada's complex nature and our country's best future course.
It happened once. Could it happen again?
The Great Depression haunts us still. During every financial crisis since that time, one of the first questions on people's minds has been: Could it happen again?Well, could it? Reading economist John Kenneth Galbraith's The Great Crash, 1929 (Houghton Mifflin, 1954) is certainly a rather unsettling experience in light of recent events.
Rankin pulls a caper
DOORS OPENBy Ian RankinOrion, 260 pages, $24.95Ian Rankin's series of novels featuring Detective Inspector John Rebus reached No. 17 in 2007. Exit Music crackles with Rebus's dark, cheeky wit as it lucidly tells its long and tangled tale. No sign of burnout there.
Brokeheart mountain
FINE JUST THE WAY IT ISBy Annie ProulxScribner, 221 pages, $29.99In the hands of most writers of the place (Gretel Ehrlich, James Galvin, Geoffrey O'Gara), Wyoming's chief romance lies in its space, its wind, its quick reach back to Old West days. But Annie Proulx has always been impatient with this romance and, in her latest collection of short stories, she dispenses with it (space, wind and the good old days are ruthless killers) just as determinedly as she did in her revolutionary Close Range and the two collections that followed, Bad Dirt and That Old Ace in the Hole.
Pioneers of Canadian women's art
INDEPENDENT SPIRITEarly Canadian Women ArtistsBy A. K. PrakashFirefly, 410 pages, $75You don't have to be Sarah Palin or Hillary Clinton - or Belinda Stronach or Julie Couillard, for that matter - to understand the political aspects of being female. Similar biases have affected women's recognition in the art world for decades. And the situation's still far from equal: Last year, only 20 per cent of major New York museum solo shows featured women artists. And here, north of the 49th, research shows that female artists still make about half as much money as their male counterparts.
PAPERBACKS
BEAVERBROOKA Shattered LegacyBy Jacques Poitras, Goose Lane, 317 pages, $19.95As the legal battle over the disposition of Lord Beaverbrook's art collection continues between his descendants and the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Poitras's award-winning book examines the history of the family and the dispute.
Toronto the black
MOREBy Austin ClarkeThomas Allen, 356 pages, $29.95When he took the Giller, Commonwealth and Trillium prizes with his 2002 novel, The Polished Hoe, Austin Clarke assumed a place in the Canadian and international literary stratosphere that many who had long enjoyed his earlier works felt he had earned decades earlier. It took 40 years for early predictions of his future literary stature to come true - perhaps because it took the reading public that long to understand, or to want to hear, the force of his social critiques. Canadian book buyers of the late 1960s and early '70s were not quick to reward Clarke's vivid evocations of the experience of Caribbean Canadians in a racist, WASP Toronto.
RECENT & RECOMMENDED
GOOD TO A FAULTBy Marina Endicott, Freehand, $25.95Fortysomething Clara Purdy takes in a homeless family after crashing her car into theirs on a Saskatoon street.SKIN ROOM
We like Mike
LESTER B. PEARSONBy Andrew CohenPenguin Canada,206 pages, $26During the 1965-66 television season, when our CBC-TV series This Hour Has Seven Days was at its peak, I went over to the Park Plaza Hotel on Bloor Street, in Toronto, to try to persuade the prime minister to come to the studio for one of our famous Hot Seat encounters, where we had established a tradition of really tough, two-interviewer, hard-edged challenges to establishment figures (and discovered to our surprise that a few of them seemed to relish the experience and indicated their willingness to do more).
CHILDREN'S BOOKS
TIME IS WHENBy Beth Gleick, illustrated by Marthe Jocelyn, Tundra, 32 pages, $17.99, ages 3 to 6 What is