Michael Ondaatje's The Cat's Table McClelland & Stewart, 2011 You can learn a lot from reading novels. For instance, in reading this one, you could learn the following: How to spell Egypt (Ever Grasping Your Precious Tits); The way to a first-class breakfast on a cruise even if you're not
Guy Vanderhaeghe's A Good Man McClelland & Stewart, 2011 Sebastian Barry has said that a good historical novel is about "retrieving the present moment".* That is true of Guy Vanderhaeghe's A Good Man. From the beautiful but austere cover art of the frontier, to the detailed descriptions of fort and
Marina Endicott's The Little Shadows Random House - Doubleday, 2011 Last Sunday, Marina Endicott appeared with Nicole Lundrigan, Riel Nason and Miriam Toews at a round table, moderated by the (talented) Susan G. Cole, at the 32nd annual International Festival of Authors. Sometimes in a round table session, one author
These are books that periodically make an appearance in my bookbag, the sort of books that don't get read straight through. They're not always cover-to-cover reads for me; if they are, they're read cover-t0-cover over an unusually long period of time. Canadian Poetry: From the Beginnings through the First World
David Bezmozgis' The Free World HarperCollins, 2011 The Krasnansky family is making their way out of Soviet Russia, travelling to Rome. Samuil, the patriarch, is annoyed by the tour guide's suggestion that the history of Western civilization could be plotted along the road that the bus is travelling. "Their history:
