Content Warning: Swears ahead! Please don't read this post if you don't like swearing! As we've observed elsewhere, swearing in book titles is all the rage these days; and what's true for self-help books goes double for cookbooks. Is Gordon Ramsay to blame? Or Anthony Bourdain? Or those spatula-flipping foulmouthed vegans from Thug Kitchen? In […]
***Content Warning: Foul Language*** If you object to the current prevalence of swearing in our culture, please read no further; this will only tick you off. "Mature". Right. If you're still reading, it's safe to assume you're okay with salty talk, correct? So: what the frilly heck is up with all the swears […]
To paraphrase a misquote from F. Scott Fitzgerald, the famous are different from you and me. Or from me, at least, in the sense that they're way more productive: Tom Hanks. Photo: U.S. Department of State Multiple Oscar-winner Tom Hanks recently published a book of short stories (all involving vintage typewriters, no less!) that is […]
So maybe you're like me and you're chugging through these last few days of hectic pre-holiday, working and shopping and cooking and decorating and waiting for that golden moment when you can finally sink back into a popcorn-scented, overly springy lounger and tranquilize yourself into a light, restorative coma with Star Wars: Rogue One. Maybe you have a longish […]
In Arrival, the new science-fiction mindbender from director Denis Villeneuve, Amy Adams plays Dr. Louise Banks, a linguist tasked with communicating with the world's first alien visitors — mysterious beings who materialize all over the world in hovering black obelisks. As global hysteria escalates, Dr. Banks scrambles to decode the visitors' messages, and discovers a truth: if learning a […]
“The best thing for being sad […] is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil […]
Photo by Sean Michael Ragan How does gardening cause car accidents? Well. According to Czech scientist Jaroslav Flegr (and a growing minority of his colleagues), exposure to cat droppings — for example, in garden dirt — may lead to infection by toxoplasma gondii protozoa, which nestle in the brain and leak dopamine, causing their hosts to become distractible […]
Have you heard of the Big Library Read program? Several times a year, Overdrive (the library eBook app) makes a title available to every patron at every library system in the world, with no holds and no waiting. You can read the book, and then discuss it with other readers from around the world on […]
Reviewed in media outlets this week: The Globe and Mail The Break, by Katherena Vermette eBook Based on a True Story, by Norm MacDonald eBook Barbarian Lost, by Alexandre Trudeau eBook Nostalgia, by M. G. Vassanji eBook Downhill Chance, by Donna Morrissey eBook Maclean’s The Killer Whale Who Changed the World, by Mark Leiren-Young eBook […]
I just heard the news that my favourite website, Atlas Obscura, is now available in book (and eBook) form! In case you're not familiar with it, Atlas Obscura is, true to its name, a sort of crowd-sourced encyclopedia of the world's strange and out-of-the-way places; it also compiles articles on little-known historical events, obscure but […]