HOME  |  CONTACT US  |
 


Book Reviews in March 1998 Issue

Restoring Old Houses
240 pages $26.95
ISBN: 1550138421
Book Review
A Book of Ruin Maintenance
by Jill Cooper Robinson
I am trying to recall the halcyon days before I wore my house around my neck. Of course the exercise is fatuous, since I have lived here at "Fortress Hollis Street."
Read more...
The City after the Automobile An Architect's Vision
188 pages $29.95
ISBN: 0773729836
Book Review
Cars without Cars
by Ian Allaby
Since ancient times the city builder's sacred duty has been to wrest order from chaos. The architect Moshe Safdie takes up the torch here, to examine North America's most conspicuous urban form, the dispersed megacity.
Read more...
Book Review
Better Off in the Ether
by Nikki Abraham
It is easy to be critical in conversation. We read a book, and if it fails to move us, we dispose of it in a dismissive sentence or two over coffee with a friend, and that is that.
Read more...
Book Review
Laughter from the Attic
by Richard Lubbock
Whether you're an optimist or a pessimist, hilarity can only be a blessing. Pessimists like to jeer at Fate and so make themselves mightier than the gods. Optimists always laugh because Fate has turned out to be toothless, and therefore merits ridicule.
Read more...
Book Review
How Did You Sleep?
This is the winner of the Writer's Union of Canada's annual Short Prose Competition for Developing Writers. And these are the jury's comments:" `How Did You Sleep?' is highly innovative and well-wrought."
Read more...
Noam Chomsky A Life of Dissent
237 pages $32.95
ISBN: 1550222821
Book Review
The Warlike Chomsky
by Randy Allen Harris
Noam Chomsky lies. Or something. He does something to the truth, something unseemly. My admiration for the man is great, so I've been obliged to generate many theories about his fact-manglings over the years. Maybe it's selective memory.
Read more...
In the Wings
280 pages $29.95
ISBN: 0773730419
Book Review
The Wings are the Things, Wherein...
by Anne Steacy
In the prologue of Carole Corbeil's powerful, haunting second novel, the disembodied narrator's voice says, "The best stuff, my mother always said, happens `off-stage'. Remember this: a plot is a rumour set down.
Read more...
The Selected Letters of Margaret Laurence & Adele Wiseman
407 pages $60
ISBN: 0802080901
Book Review
Epistolary Novelists
by Clara Thomas
In the spring of 1982, Margaret Laurence and Adele Wiseman were together at Adele's house in Toronto, looking over the large cache of letters that Margaret had written to Adele since 1947, the year their friendship began.
Read more...
Why I Hate Canadians
220 pages $19.95
ISBN: 1550546007
Book Review
More Hate, Please
by Ian Coutts
Will Ferguson claims he hates Canadians. Can you blame him? Just look at them. Go on, look at them. Look at Pierre Berton with that bow tie and bad comb-over.
Read more...
Traplines
224 pages $15.95
ISBN: 0676970265
Book Review
Trapping Teenagers
by Margaret Calverley
Holden Caulfield opens The Catcher in the Rye by saying: "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like."
Read more...
Book Review
A Shabby Genteel Story
by Patricia Heighington
Isabel Mackenzie, the youngest child of Ontario's "Little Rebel", William Lyon Mackenzie, was to become the mother of Mackenzie King, the dour bachelor who became Canada's prime minister. She was born in New York City in 1843.
Read more...
Blood Traitors The True Saga of Families Torn Apart by the Struggle for Independence in Revolutionary North America
by Marq De Villiers,

480 pages $29 TC
ISBN: 0002554240
Book Review
Loyalist Docudrama
by Dennis Duffy
Hamlet tells Horatio that there may well be more things in the world than are dreamt of in your philosophy. The English philosopher Gilbert Ryle once pointed out, however, that...
Read more...
Nicholodeon A Book of Lowerglyphs
96 pages $16.95
ISBN: 1552450236
Book Review
The Spirit of Nichol Lives On
by Paul Dutton
There are two good reasons for celebrating Darren Wershler-Henry's very classy first book. First, there is the welcome appearance of this young Toronto poet's work of the last few years in bound and shelvable form.
Read more...
Lard Cake
96 pages $12
ISBN: 1550222732
Book Review
A Couch Potato Poet
by Carmine Starnino
With some exceptions (which I'll talk about later), David McGimpsey's poetry debut, Lard Cake, is mostly a collection of slick, self-conscious parodies of TV clichés and pop-culture myths.
Read more...
Apparatus
88 pages $12.99
ISBN: 0771057636
Book Review
Taking Flight
by Richard Greene
Don McKay is a poet of considerable gifts, which are, in general, badly deployed. His poetry has a rhapsodic quality, a rush and tumble, that lends itself to reading aloud, but not always to closer inspection.
Read more...
Sursum Corda! The Colected Letters of Malcolm Lowry, Vol. II 1947-57
1022 pages $60
ISBN: 0802041183
Book Review
Lowry's Last Decade
by Ted Whittaker
When reading these fiercely vivacious, death-by-heartbreak letters, remember a comment about their author by one of his long-suffering friends: "Just one look at the old bastard makes me happy for a week."
Read more...
The Genealogy of Values The Aesthetic Economy of Nietzsche & Proust
204 pages $31.45
ISBN: 0847680622
Book Review
Walues Inwestigated
by Gerald Owen
Once upon a time, "values" were not in people's mouths as they are now. So little known were they, that when first imported to North America around the turn of the century, Harvard professors spoke of them as "walues", imitating the English pronunciation.
Read more...
Connected Intelligence The Arrival of the Web Society
256 pages $22.95
ISBN: 1895897874
Book Review
Oh Brave New Net!
by Mark Wegierski
Derrick de Kerckhove, professor in the Department of French and director of the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto, worked closely with Marshall McLuhan throughout the seventies.
Read more...
Poets, Princes, & Private Citizens Literary Alternatives to Postmodern Politics
310 pages $23.95
ISBN: 0847682005
Book Review
Writers as Teachers
by Judith Adam
Poets, playwrights, and novelists were traditionally held to be genuine teachers. The contributors to this volume of essays try to revive that understanding.
Read more...
On Your Mark Getting Better Grades without Working Harder or Being Smarter
152 pages $16.95
ISBN: 0771574657
Book Review
Universities & the Higher Flattery
by Michael Clarke
Probably the last thing the world needs is another tedious book on the idea of the university. Certainly it's the last thing that the world's students need.
Read more...
Whatever Happened to High School History? Burying the Political Memory of Youth: Ontario 1945-1995
278 pages $19.95
ISBN: 155028486X
Book Review
Shouting with the Faintest
by John Muggeridge
During Eatanswill election rallies, Mr. Pickwick adopted a policy of shouting with the loudest. Accuse him of cowardice if you like, but under the circumstances, how else was he to prevent his famous bald head from getting bloodied?
Read more...
Book Review
Poems with Photographs
by George Johnston
Tamarack & Clearcut declares itself, in its proportions and beautiful cover, to be a book intended for display, which it will no doubt achieve on many coffee tables.
Read more...
Lying about the Wolf Essays in Culture & Education
327 pages $55
ISBN: 0773515356
Book Review
Thanks?
by William Mathie
I read David Solway's book of essays and addresses, and pondered this review, as I began to grade the year's first essay assignments in my second-year university course.
Read more...
Book Review
The Serious Buffoon
by John Pepall
John Crosbie is the Mulroney cabinet minister held in the highest regard by the general public and by journalists. He is the only one, except for Kim Campbell and Erik Nielsen (who resigned as early as 1986), to have published memoirs.
Read more...
Interviews
A Shapeshifter - Eva Tihanyi speaks with Lynn Crosbie
by Eva Tihanyi
Lynn Crosbie, born in Montreal in 1963, holds a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto (her dissertation was on the American poet Anne Sexton). She is a teacher, editor, poet, cultural journalist, and now, with the publication of Paul's Case (Insomniac).
Read more...
Scribes & Scoundrels
by George Galt,

220 pages $18.95 TP
ISBN: 155022333X
First Novels
First Novels - Mags, Dogs, Blues, & Calumny
by Eva Tihanyi
Sure to raise the hackles of Toronto's close-knit magazine world is George Galt's highly entertaining roman-à-clef Scribes & Scoundrels (ECW Press, 251 pages, $18.95 paper), the story of Max Vellen, an editor at Berger's
Read more...
The Hidden Life of Humans
by Erika Ritter,

288 pages $19.95 TP
ISBN: 1550139029
First Novels
First Novels - Mags, Dogs, Blues, & Calumny
by Eva Tihanyi
The same can be said for Erika Ritter's The Hidden Life of Humans (Key Porter, 376 pages, $19.95 paper), a comic novel that is disappointing, considering the background of the author. Ritter, as a playwright, essayist, columnist, and broadcaster
Read more...
Some of Skippy's Blues A Novel
by Margie Taylor,

pages $21.99 PT
ISBN: 1552070042
First Novels
First Novels - Mags, Dogs, Blues, & Calumny
by Eva Tihanyi
Speaking of wanting out: Margie Taylor, a former Calgary radio host, quit her job at the CBC after two decades in order to complete her novel, Some of Skippy's Blues (Robert Davies Multimedia Publishing, 284 pages, $21.99 paper). The book is set
Read more...
The Blood Libel
by Allan Levine,

263 pages $19.95 TP
ISBN: 0969780451
First Novels
First Novels - Mags, Dogs, Blues, & Calumny
by Eva Tihanyi
In The Blood Libel (Great Plains Fiction, 265 pages, $19.95 paper), Allan Levine delivers something far more substantial than a murder mystery. The Winnipeg teacher, journalist, and author of three non-fiction books puts his Ph.D. in history to
Read more...
SCTV Behind the Scenes
by Dave Thomas,

256 pages $29.99 TC
ISBN: 0771085664
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews
by Keith Garebian
SCTV was created by self-admitted "children of television", steeped in North American pop culture. Its original cast members, some of whom were alumni of McMaster University, did some of their purest work at the beginning of their
Read more...
Fighting for Canada
by Diane Francis,

224 pages $29.95 PT
ISBN: 1550137964
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews
by Derek Lundy
Canadians may be too complacent or stupid to know it, but there's a war on. It's episodic-we're in a lull until the next unity referendum-and there aren't any anglo guerrillas ambushing patrols of the Quebec army from Montreal island rooftops, or
Read more...
Monogamy
by Adam Phillips,

pages $23.5 TC
ISBN: 0679442642
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews
by Robin Roger
At 216 words, this review is longer than many of the aphorisms coined by Adam Phillips in Monogamy (Pantheon, 144 pages, $17 paper), his collection of thoughts on the coupled condition. Aphorists are intellectual stripteasers-they should be called
Read more...
Conversations with & about Beckett
by Mel Gussow,

192 pages $29.95 TC
ISBN: 0802115934
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews
by K G
Mel Gussow's Conversations with & about Beckett (Grove Press, 192 pages, $29.95 cloth) is a concise collection that projects some of Samuel Beckett's personality and genius. Not intended to counter Beckett's numerous detractors or to provoke
Read more...
Douglas Fetherling
Douglas Fetherling - The Long Way of a Dissenter
by Douglas Fetherling
Few details survive about Daniel Defoe's participation in what, for him and the others involved, was probably the single most influential event in their lives: the Battle of Sedgemoor on July 16th, 1685, when the ragtag anti-Catholic for
Read more...
First Novel Award
First Novel Award Shortlist
"Wynveen's use of The Golden Bough is one of the most interesting aspects of Angel Falls.. It is his notable accomplishment that he succeeds not only in holding the reader right to the end of Ben's tragic story
Read more...
footer

Home First Novel Award Past Winners Subscription Back Issues Timescroll Advertizing Rates
Amazon.ca/Books in Canada Bestsellers List Books in Issue Books in Department About Us