Archives for category: Reviews

2021 Holiday Gift Guide

 

Books! They’re easy to wrap. Their batteries will never die on you. They provide many, many hours of entertainment for an exceedingly reasonable price. And they’ve become a go-to purchase throughout the pandemic.

Listen to my 2021 Holiday Gift Guide, as shared with CBC Day 6.

Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty by Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe

Klondikers: Dawson City’s Stanley Cup Challenge and How a Nation Fell in Love with Hockey by Tim Falconer

The Day the World Stops Shopping by J.B. MacKinnon

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead

Time Is a Flower by Julie Morstad

2021 Winter Preview - Globe

 

36 of the best new novels, novellas and nonfiction to carry you through until spring.

Read the full story here

2020 Holiday Gift GuideBooks make great gifts. Beautiful to look at and to hold, hours of entertainment, and (bonus!) so easy to wrap!

My annual Holiday Gift Guide for Day 6 this year includes two Canadian novels with big heart and some much-needed-in-2020 chuckles, a hopeful big-idea nonfiction book that argues for our inherent human kindness, mouthwatering Northern Thai food for home cooks, and a brilliant story for littles about how the world keeps turning and each of us is important.

Here’s the audio >> listen

FICTION

Like Rum-Drunk Angels by Tyler Enfield (Goose Lane)

Indians on Vacation by Thomas King (HarperCollins)

NONFICTION

Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman (Little, Brown)

FOOD

Kiin by Nuit Regular (Penguin)

KIDS

You Matter by Christian Robinson (Atheneum)

 

 

Shuggie Bain

 

Scottish-American author Douglas Stuart published his debut novel, Shuggie Bain, in February 2020.

It’s now on the shortlists for both the Booker Prize – the UK’s most prestigious literary award – which will announce its winner on November 19, and the National book Award – one of the USA’s most prestigious literary awards – which will announce its winner on November 18.

Stuart’s publisher rushed out a paperback edition for the occasion (available now).

But should you read it?

Listen here to my review for CBC Day 6, in which I talk about the novel’s political context (1980s Glasgow), the beauty in the darkness of a relationship between young Shuggie Bain and his alcoholic mother, Agnes, and a novel that, with its Glaswegian dialect throughout, entices you to read with your ears as well as your eyes.

 

 

2020 Fall Preview - Globe

 

After a spring of cancellations and postponements, this year’s literary fall bounty is bigger than ever.

Plan a reading marathon with 68 suggestions >> read it here

Memoirs and Misinformation by Jim Carrey

 

“Should I Read It?” review for Memoirs and Misinformation: A Novel by Jim Carrey and Dana Vachon. 

Listen to the review HERE

Jim Carrey wrote a novel – with novelist Dana Vachon. It’s “a novel” but it’s called “Memoirs and Misinformation.” The book cover carries a Jim Carrey quote: “None of this is real and all of it is true.” The protagonist is a Hollywood star named Jim Carrey who shares a biography with the real Jim Carrey. It’s a novel that has a foot in the memoir camp then.

It’s a story about apocalypse (mid-2020 timely), Hollywood excess (always timely), and fear of the end of relevance (always timely to people of a certain stature above a certain age, perhaps). It is certain to be a bestseller.

But should YOU read it?

My review for Day 6 on CBC Radio >> listen here

Day 6 Summer Reads 2020

 

An eagerly awaited (by me definitely, and also by many others) new novel by the The Outlander author Gil Adamson, a domestic page-turner of from Katrina Onstad, stunning debut fiction from poet Souvankham Thammavongsa, and a debut from American Gabriel Bump, centred around a fictional race riot in Chicago.

All four of my summer reads recommendations this year landed at the exact right time: books to provide escape and reflection in a year unlike any other.

 

 

2020 Holiday Gift Guide CBC

Another year, another holiday gift guide. It wasn’t my intention to choose books whose covers were so matchy-matchy, but it’s a nice bonus if you want to splurge and buy them all together!

Listen to the audio here >> LISTEN

My top picks for 2019 are:

The Innocents by Michael Crummey – my favourite Canadian novel of the year

Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry – my favourite non-Canadian novel of the year

Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow – already a Pulitzer Prize winner and major buzz book, this book about the journalist’s pursuit of the Harvey Weinstein story reads like a le Carré novel

Agnes, Murderess by Sara Leavitt – an awesome Canadian historical graphic novel with a queer subplot and gothic vibe, this will appeal to teens and adults

Just Because by Mac Barnett illus. Isabelle Arsenault and King Mouse by Cary Fagan illus. Dena Seiferling – two picture books for little kids that tell two very different stories, both about kindness, patience, and the magic of imagination.

 

 

On Sept. 10, Margaret Atwood released The Testaments, a sequel to her 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale. Thanks to the global attention surrounding Atwood, the book, and the TV show of The Handmaid’s Tale, it’s safe to say this is one of the biggest books of the year, with the publisher enforcing ferocious non-disclosure agreements on prize juries, booksellers and advance juries (though that didn’t quite work out as planned).

Should you read it?

My review for CBC Radio One’s Day 6 is here

 

Nickel Boys

Colson Whitehead’s follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning The Underground Railroad is one of the big-buzz releases of the summer.

Whitehead is on the cover of TIME, heralded as “America’s Storyteller,” and The Nickel Boys tells another dark chapter in American history.

Should you read it? Listen to my review here.