Tag: Book Review

By Tamara Cottle

At first glance, Crazy Town: The Rob Ford Story is posed to incite two extremely divergent reactions from potential readers. For Toronto citizens entrenched as Ford Nation, the book will be dismissed as yet another attempt at mudslinging from a headline-hungry opportunist willing to do anything to make a name for herself. For the rest… Continue reading Book review: Crazy Town: The Rob Ford Story

By Justine Wright

Calgary author Kim McCullough’s debut novel, Clearwater is a good read for teens and young adults, mostly because it resembles a season of Degrassi. The novel follows Claire Sullivan and Jeff Carson, two teenagers living in a troubled small town in northern Manitoba. They struggle with abuse, drugs, drinking, suicide, relationships et cetera. There’s rarely… Continue reading Book review: Kim McCullough’s Clearwater

By Tamara Cottle

With the recent Senate scandal blowing up and revealing a sea of political corruption, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s integrity has come under attack. Calgary-based author Chris Turner intensifies this assault on the Conservatives and Harper in his latest book, The War on Science: Muzzled Scientists and Wilful Blindness in Stephen Harper’s Canada. Turner is no… Continue reading Book review: The War on Science

By Athena G. Csuti

What if Humbert Humbert in Lolita or Patrick Bateman from American Psycho was a woman? That is the question that Alissa Nutting addresses in her deeply unsettling debut novel Tampa. The story is told from the perspective of 26-year-old Celeste Price, a gorgeous junior high teacher who seems to have it all: a stable career,… Continue reading Book review: Tampa by Alissa Nutting

By Gurman Sahota

This year, following the theme of environmental sustainability, the common reading program chose No Impact Man by Colin Beavan. The book a pleasant story about a small family — two working writers, their two-year-old daughter and the family dog — as they embark on a year of living with no environmental impact. The book reminds… Continue reading Common Reading Program book review

By Justine Wright

This book is going to hook you and leave you hanging. Written by award-winning Canadian author Lisa Moore, Caught follows David Slaney, a young man who escapes from a Canadian prison in the late ‘70s. Once free, Slaney hitchhikes across Canada to get back to his best friend and partner in crime for one last… Continue reading Book Review:
 Caught by Lisa Moore

By Sean Sullivan

In his most famous book, The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown brought the renaissance artist back into fashion. However, with his last two books, Brown has trailed behind, playing catch up with existing cultural obsessions. In his latest novel, Inferno, Brown returns again to modern culture’s fascination with all things Italian.
 American pop culture has… Continue reading Book Review: Inferno doesn’t quite go down in flames


By Sean Sullivan

The Douglas Notebooks does not achieve what it sets out to do.
 The book, written by Québécois author Christine Eddie, attempts to create a modern-day fable but embraces a very loose definition of the genre. A fable is typically a tale involving animal characters, a heavy emphasis on nature and an ending with a moral.… Continue reading Book review: The Douglas Notebooks

By Tamara Cottle

Calgarian Andrew Nikiforuk’s latest book is a departure from his typical environmentalist critique of the fossil fuel industry. The Energy of Slaves examines our energy consumption from a moral perspective, equating our relationship with petroleum to that of a master and slave. 
 The book is presented as a thorough dissection of the historical context… Continue reading Book review: The Energy of Slaves

By Sarah Dorchak

Born and raised Calgarian Deborah Willis was recently named the University of Calgary’s writer-in-residence. At only 30 years old, Willis is one of the younger writers to be selected. While only having one published book, a collection of short stories titled Vanishing and Other Stories, she has written for The Walrus, Grain, Prism International and… Continue reading Book review: Vanishing and Other Stories