by Aziz Ansari Modern Romance, as a concept, seems like something I could really get behind. I mean, a comedian tackling a subject such as the culture of discovering love in the modern age on his own would lead me to think that the strength of the book would rest solely on the author’s ability…
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by Ronald Wright A Short History of Progress consists of Ronald Wright’s Massey Lecture series on the dangers of the very modern ideal of progress and runaway growth. The idea is that we may be on a course to our own downfall, and learning from the errors of the past is the key to saving…
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by Paul Kalanithi When I spent this past holiday season down in Florida, I decided I should bring some light reading to help me pass the time. (My family was kind enough to respect my need to bask in the sunlight in peace for sizeable chunks, and I greatly thank them for it.) In hindsight,…
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by Robert Taylor The Devil’s Pulpit is a collection of sermons delivered by reverend Robert Taylor outlining the parallels between the Bible and the Zodiac, with the suggestion that Christianity is only thinly-disguised paganism, and that worshipping God and Jesus is effectively worshipping the sun. Written and read in the mid-19th century, it was because…
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by Charlotte Gray I’m really having trouble with this one. I mean, it’s not even that it’s difficult for me to express my feelings toward it––it’s really good––but it’s just that I’m having a hard time talking about it, bringing any useful commentary into the review. Usually, with any of my reviews destined for The…
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by Sherman Alexie The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a story about Junior, a young Native American living on the Spokane Indian reservation. Learning at a young age how limiting life on the rez is, how the dreams of everyone around him are systematically crushed, he transfers to high school in Rearden,…
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by Andy Weir Well, here we are again. Usually I dislike trying to review a book that I don’t particularly care for, but this is an exception. Had it been hard to really hit on what my problem with The Martian was, I’d probably make vague points until something started to make at least a…
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by Walt Whitman Leaves of Grass is another poetry collection for which, like Ezra Pound’s Cathay, I can easily appreciate its importance to the history of Western literature. Wanting to create modern poetry for the New World, Whitman eschewed antique forms and themes, minimizing focus on structured rhymes, instead expressing more of the mundane and…
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by Sergei Lebedev I don’t think I can stress enough the importance of actually getting to the heart of your story in your synopsis. If that little summary on the back of your book sets people up for the wrong expectations, it can really affect the amount of enjoyment readers glean from your story. The…
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by Charles Bukowski At the time of writing this, I just finished getting through a stack of poetry in preparation for an author panel event I was tasked at moderating, and, aside from perhaps Ezra Pound’s Cathay, this was likely my favourite collection. The trouble is I’m having some difficulty getting at the why of…
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