Book Reviews

(Photo: Carol Leowen) I first read A Complicated Kindness around the time it came out, in 2004, but after rescuing this copy from a grocery store bargain bin I decided it was time for a re-read. Reading a bargain-bin bestseller is part of this book’s story. Miriam Toews was relatively unknown when she wrote A … Continue reading A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews

(Photo: Amy Attas) I don’t know what I was expecting from Toni Morrison, but it wasn’t this. I knew she was a Nobel Prize-winning goddess who guides humanity towards the light, but I’d never read any of her fiction. It was more sensational than I thought it would be – so much violence, trauma, crime … Continue reading God Help the Child by Toni Morrison

(Photo: Amy Attas) Late Nights on Air won the Canadian Giller Prize in 2007, and I finally got around to it. I’ve been circling. I picked up Alone in the Classroom when I couldn’t get my hands on Late Nights, and I didn’t like it. I think my mind goes dead with multi-generational Canadian novels … Continue reading Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay

(Photo: Amy Attas) “Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I: But when the trees bow down their heads, The wind is passing by.” -Christina Rosetti On the surface, this is a restrained book of minimal consequence. A boy in a small prairie town passes through the years from age four to age ten … Continue reading Who Has Seen The Wind by W.O. Mitchell

(Photo: Ash Mar) I didn’t know Sleater-Kinney in the 90’s. I still dig this book. Even chapters revealing how specific albums were made (albums I’ve never heard) were illuminating. Because this book isn’t a celebrity tell-all; it’s a meditation on creativity, on dark confusing youth, on finding validation in other people’s art, on exploring the ways to let … Continue reading Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein

I didn’t expect to read all of this book. I picked it up to get more information about a perfect wave I’d heard the author describe in an interview. But I ended up falling into it so hard that when I moved, I returned my copy to one library, logged into a different library account, placed a … Continue reading Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan

I first heard about Ta-Nehisi Coates on The Longform Podcast, (hour-long interviews of journalists), where he talked about black America and comic books. Then I heard him on Another Round (podcast) talking about the case for reparations. Then I watched him on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman, critiquing Bernie Sanders’ stance that reparations are too … Continue reading Between The World And Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates