I feel like I’m taking my very life in my hands writing a review of this book, fraught as the topic is with judgement, opinions and our certainty that our own viewpoint is the correct one (if you want to see what I’m talking about, check out the comments on reviews of this book
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THE SUNDAY REVIEW | WICKED AND WEIRD – RICH TERFRY
Rich Terfry is a Canadian public figure – I use that term because I can’t think of a better one for a man who has been an (almost pro) baseball player, a hip hop artist and a CBC radio presenter – and is now an author. He is better known by many as “Buck 65,”
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THE SUNDAY REVIEW | WE SHOULD ALL BE FEMINISTS – CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE
In this personal, eloquently-argued essay — adapted from her much-admired TEDx talk of the same name — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, award-winning author of Americanah, offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century, one rooted in inclusion and awareness. Drawing extensively on her own experiences and her deep understanding of the often
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BOOK REVIEW | CRIME SEEN – KATE LINES
A criminal profiler, trained at Quantico, former Chief Superintendent of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) Kate Lines recounts her remarkable story using pivotal cases she worked on in the course of her career. How does a farm girl from Ennismore enter a male-dominated field and become a top criminal profiler and groundbreaking leader? For
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THE SUNDAY REVIEW | ZEITOUN – DAVE EGGERS
The true story of one family, caught between America’s two biggest policy disasters: the war on terror and the response to Hurricane Katrina. Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun run a house-painting business in New Orleans. In August of 2005, as Hurricane Katrina approaches, Kathy evacuates with their four young children, leaving Zeitoun to watch over
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THE SUNDAY REVIEW | JUST KIDS – PATTI SMITH
It was the summer Coltrane died, the summer of love and riots, and the summer when a chance encounter in Brooklyn led two young people on a path of art, devotion, and initiation. Patti Smith would evolve as a poet and performer, and Robert Mapplethorpe would direct his highly provocative style toward photography. Bound
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THE SUNDAY REVIEW | EX LIBRIS – ANNE FADIMAN
Anne Fadiman is–by her own admission–the sort of person who learned about sex from her father’s copy of Fanny Hill, whose husband buys her 19 pounds of dusty books for her birthday, and who once found herself poring over her roommate’s 1974 Toyota Corolla manual because it was the only written material in the
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THE SUNDAY REVIEW | NEWJACK – TED CONOVER
Acclaimed journalist Ted Conover sets a new standard for bold, in-depth reporting in this first-hand account of life inside the penal system. When Conover’s request to shadow a recruit at the New York State Corrections Officer Academy was denied, he decided to apply for a job as a prison officer. So begins his odyssey at
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THE SUNDAY REVIEW | MY SALINGER YEAR – JOANNA RAKOFF
Poignant, keenly observed, and irresistibly funny: a memoir about literary New York in the late nineties, a pre-digital world on the cusp of vanishing, where a young woman finds herself entangled with one of the last great figures of the century. At twenty-three, after leaving graduate school to pursue her dreams of becoming a poet,
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THE SUNDAY REVIEW | 84, CHARING CROSS ROAD & THE DUCHESS OF BLOOMSBURY STREET – HELENE HANFF
“If you happen to pass by 84 Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me! I owe it so much. In 1949 Helene Hanff, ‘a poor writer with an antiquarian taste in books,’ wrote to Marks & Co. Booksellers of 84 Charing Cross Rd, in search of rare editions she was unable to find in
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THE SUNDAY REVIEW | Q’S LEGACY – HELENE HANFF
Here is the remarkable story of how Helene Hanff came to write 84, Charing Cross Road, and of all the things its success has brought her. Hanff recalls her serendipitous discovery of a volume of lectures by a Cambridge don, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. She devoured Q’s book, and, wanting to read all the books
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THE SUNDAY REVIEW | THE OPPOSITE OF LONELINESS – MARINA KEEGAN
Marina Keegan’s star was on the rise when she graduated magna cum laude from Yale in May 2012. She had a play that was to be produced at the New York International Fringe Festival and a job waiting for her at the New Yorker. Tragically, five days after graduation, Marina died in a car
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BOOK REVIEW | BOSSYPANTS – TINA FEY
Tina Fey is one funny lady. But more than that, she’s an incredibly smart one. It’s not easy to be as humorous, self-deprecating, inspirational and charismatic as this lady. (Trust me; I’ve tried.) So I was intrigued at the prospect of learning more about the lady behind the laughs. Though I’ve never been
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BOOK REVIEW | TRAVELS – MICHAEL CRICHTON
You might not think so to see his books gracing the illustrious wire racks of grocery stores and newsagents, but Michael Crichton is an amazingly talented writer. I will argue this point with anyone who dares contradict me. He had me cowering under my blanket as a teenager when I was reading Jurassic Park
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BOOK REVIEW | SEXUALLY, I’M MORE OF A SWITZERLAND: MORE PERSONAL ADS FROM THE LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS – DAVID ROSE
I must admit, this book’s title is what grabbed my attention. And how could it not? Turns out, the inside of the book is just as interesting. We all (or at least most of us) know what it’s like to be single and wonder if we’re ever going to find someone we can be
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BOOK REVIEW | THE WAYFINDERS: WHY ANCIENT WISDOM MATTERS IN THE MODERN WORLD – WADE DAVIS
“…[R]emember the central revelation of anthropology: the idea that the social world in which we live does not exist in some absolute sense, but rather is simply one model of reality, the consequence of one set of intellectual and spiritual choices that our particular cultural lineage made, however successfully, many generations ago.” A friend
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BOOK REVIEW | INCONTINENT ON THE CONTINENT: MY MOTHER, HER WALKER, AND OUR GRAND TOUR OF ITALY – JANE CHRISTMAS
I love reading travel memoirs. As a student I can’t afford to gallivant, fancy-free about the world experiencing new cultures and gathering exciting and amusing anecdotes. So I like to read the stories of those who do. Some of my favourite books involve travels in France and Italy – for some reason the cultures
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BOOK REVIEW | CITY OF GLASS – DOUGLAS COUPLAND
Douglas Coupland has an unparalleled knack for seeing the familiar world around him with the eyes of a stranger. He is able to pick out parts of what we, in our common part of the world, see as “normal” and make them fascinating. In 1994 he made an entire book out of his observations
