Open a book this minute and start reading. Don’t move until you’ve reached page fifty. Until you’ve buried your thoughts in print. Cover yourself with words. Wash yourself away. Dissolve. Carol Shields Republic of Love

Tamara Levine’s But Hope is Longer (2012)

When Tamara Levine was diagnosed with breast cancer, she began sending e-mail letters to about fifty family members, friends and colleagues, to keep everybody in the loop.

Second Story Press, 2012

Almost immediately, these letters took on a great significance in her Healing Journey, offering a kind of ‘therapy’ (Greek for healing), “helping to [...]

Gerry Fostaty’s As You Were (2011)

It’s the summer of 1974, twenty-five kilometres north of Quebec City, and eighteen-year-old Gerry Fostaty is on a cadet training assignment.

Goose Lane Editions, 2011

A cadet training assignment on a Canadian Forces base?

I know nothing of this world, beyond what I’ve gleaned from “Private Benjamin”, “An Officer and a Gentleman” and a [...]

Georgia Nicols’ You and Your Future (2011)

When I was twelve,  I got a boxed kit which allowed me to draw my own astrology chart.

House of Anansi, 2011

More than ten years later, I finally wrapped my head around the mathematical charts in the back of the book.

In the meantime, I admired the colourful diagrams, the wet-erase maps of [...]

Another kind of storytelling: Born Liars

You haven’t heard from him much lately, I know. But once upon a time (well, this theme is all about storytelling, right?), Mr BIP was a strong presence in these lands. Some of you might remember when he won a cheerleading award for Dewey’s Read-a-Thon, though lately he’s been reading more than cheering.

Nonetheless, he [...]

Sara Maitland’s Gossip from the Forest (2012)

Sometimes, you sense the match between you and a particular book immediately.

Granta Books, 2012 (via House of Anansi)

That’s what happened with me and Sara Maitland’s book.

I still remember the pang of realization in discovering that it had not yet been published: the long wait for The Perfect Book.

It was worth [...]

The Book of Barely Imagined Beings: A 21st Century Bestiary

At the back of the fourth floor of the library were the oversized books and, among them, I once discovered an assortment of medieval bestiaries.

Granta Books, 2012 (via House of Anansi)

Sometimes I spent the entire day at the campus  library on Sundays, and I would allow myself to browse and wander when I needed [...]

Susannah Cahalan’s Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness (2012)

Susannah Cahalan knows how to tell a story. She started as a “copy kid” at the New York Post, sorting mail and making coffee, and when readers meet her on the page, she is a  full-time writer there.

Yet, the three story pitches she has just volleyed to her boss have flopped. She wasn’t surprised; she was [...]

Donna B. Pincus’ Growing Up Brave (2012)

Little Brown & Company, 2012

Growing Up Brave begins with the author arriving to deliver a talk a couple of years ago, shocked that the modest attendance she had expected was a crowd of 700 people in a high school auditorium.

The audience was comprised of parents, caregivers, guidance counselors, school nurses, pediatricians, psychologists and [...]

Pill-Popping Preschoolers: No Epidemic Required

A remarkable rise in children’s emotional and behavioural problems?

2011; W.W. Norton & Company, 2012

A striking upsurge in the diagnoses of ADHD, childhood depression and bipolar disorder, autism?

A significant increase in the number of children taking psychiatric medications?

It’s a mental health epidemic.

Or, not.

What happens when you view children’s symptoms as [...]

And so she is: Writing the Revolution

When Gloria Steinem said that there ”is no one I respect more in the trenches—or on the page”, she was speaking of Michele Landsberg.

Second Story Press, 2011

Between 1978 and 2005, she wrote more than 3,000 columns for “The Toronto Star”, fired by the injustices that she observed around her.

Some of these were collected [...]