David Yoon

Kazim Ali returns to Jenpeg Winnipeg to recall his typical Canadian childhood of full-body, zip-up snowsuits, tobogganing, x-country skiing, and slamming screen doors into multiple homes. He's not sure if he's coming back as a poet, journalist, ethnographer, scholar, or memoirist, or even if he can ultimately answer the underlying question of what does it mean to be from? What is it he thinks of when he thinks of home?

His father worked at Manitoba Hydro, building the hydroelectric dam on the Nelson River that brought his family to this tiny little outpost. But returning decades later he meets the local Pimicikamak community who have had to deal with the devastating ecological impact, and broken promises brought about by the dam. As Kazim is welcomed by the community, he learns about the long history of erasure — indigenous nations reduced to European style names, residential schools to “kill the Indian in the child”, physicians experimenting with Indigenous children, and restrictions on free passage and trade. Kazim begins to understand that his family as immigrants had more access to Canada than Indigenous people. Another interesting exploration of the project that is Canada.

A fantastic collection of interconnected short stories focused on a century and a half of Arab women's voices inspired by the author's own ancestors' deep roots in Montreal. A family tree fashioned backwards from a seed of a story published nearly 20 years ago. From the incredible image of the red glow emanating from a tiny body wrapped in cloth being lowered into the earth, embers burning in the heart's cavity of the first chapter — the stories move through time, each filled with delightful details. There's a pearl necklace peeking above a collar, an incriminating hotel bottle opener, a still warm lemon cake. It's a jewel of a collection and just a lovely debut.

So I've jumped on the bandwagon for this 19th century collection of short stories along with the hordes of other True Detective fans. Passing references to dim Carcosa and the Yellow King had me eager to dissect the text for clues to decipher this Lovecraftian police procedural. The finale came halfway through reading the book and suddenly it felt like all of us “had been studying for a test that never came.” The book isn't relevant to the show.

So we're left with the text. And while I liked the idea of the several of the short stories making reference to a dangerous play “The King in Yellow” which has the power to drive the reader into madness upon reading the second act, it wasn't enough. Each story felt disjointed in the telling. Many slowly built a sense of dread only to have it finish abruptly with some throwaway line. It's Horatio Caine reading Lovecraft.

Can I just say I am here for messy Korean-American female protagonists. In Sea Change, Ro is going through it in this slightly skewed near future world. At 30 she's still mourning the loss of her father — who disappeared 15 years ago researching the Bering Vortex, the most polluted region of the world's ever warming ocean. Her boyfriend has left her — to join a privately funded mission to colonize Mars. And her best friend is moving on with her life, getting married and selling the one consoling constant in Ro's life — a giant mutant octopus that lives in a mall aquarium. When the kids say “it's complicated”, they're not kidding.

Ro is decidedly not dealing with any of it — instead she's hitting bars and driving home drunk, or holing up at home downing gin and Mountain Dew and obsessing over how everyone in her life leaves. She is flailing and failing and generally making a mess of things as she leaves her 20's behind. It's that struggle to keep moving forward despite the losses, to hope for more, and to invite a little grace into her life that I loved. I'll raise a sharktini to that any day.

It's incredibly fascinating how our understanding of tequila has evolved over time. From the mixtos of our youth, served more as a dare and leading to mornings of regret — to the first wave of 100% pure agave tequilas including Patron that broke open the North American market. As the market began to grow exponentially, conglomerates looked to mass production, leading to the industrialization of the spirit. Massive planting of blue Weber agave is creating a monoculture which threatens genetic robustness, leaving entire yields vulnerable to a single blight. Big business is also working to crowd out independent growers and celebrity tequilas are more concerned with turning a fast buck. Even the 100% pure agave tequilas could sneak in a single percentage of flavouring agents without having to change the labeling, leading to aficionados looking for truly additive free tequilas still using traditional methods. Which leads us to folks seeking out mezcal for a truly small batch, terroir infused, artisanal spirit.

Chantal Martineau tells the whole story in an engaging, in depth way that makes this essential reading for the tequila fan.

I'm a sucker for any novel written by a poet. The dense amalgamation of poetry given room to breathe across chapters. And even as the narrator muses “a fiction of carefully crafted language with flowing sentences and paragraphs always makes me suspicious” I found the language hypnotizing.

A queer poet, uncertain or maybe ambivalent about his current relationship, and learning of the death of a former lover, escapes to India. It is the country of his parents and he recounts the sun of Varkala, the loneliness of Bengaluru, and the doom of Hyderabad. It's a queer, brown, Eat, Pray, Love — a travelogue filled with wry details of the many people he encounters that nonetheless reveals that “few are the people that live close, and listen hard.”

Slow going at the start. It's a 19th century pastoral, set in Canada circa 1903, with a plodding focus on detail. Told in the third person, our protagonist is an essentially nameless woman escaping from the brothers of the husband she's just killed. Despite this, I begin to wonder why I should care. She doesn't seem capable of carrying the plot on her own.

It's not until she comes into focus in relation to those she meets does the story start to pick up. The second half almost warrants a fourth star. I enjoyed the growing cast of characters including the mountain hermit, the pugilist preacher, the monstrous Italian moonshiner and the dwarf shopkeeper. The nameless “widow” slowly comes into focus as Mary Boulton - present during the worst landslide of North American history when 90 millions tons of limestone slid down Turtle Mountain in 100 seconds killing nearly 100 people. I wish I could give it a 3 and a half.

A graphic memoir, done in simple ink drawings, telling a series of quick vignettes of the author's life growing up during Iran's revolution in 1979 through to her return as a wife in 1998. It's personal, filtered through her young eyes, and avoids being didactic.

Marjane is the daughter of progressive Marxist parents, who dreams of being a martyr, the grand daughter of a man who was tortured in prison. As a child she, along with the neighbourhood kids, armed with nails in their fists, look to punish a young boy whose father is part of the secret police. Through these stories we catch a glimpse of a country in turmoil and still so different than what we may have been exposed to in Western media growing up.

It's funny, with an eye to the tiny personal detail that illuminates the world around her. With aspects that feel universal and familiar to this western born kid, veering into uncovering a Middle Eastern reality that's rarely seen.

The Curfew is a quick read, I finished it in a single sitting.
Jesse Ball is a poet. His work of prose is filled with empty spaces and Ball manages to evoke a great deal of feeling with sparse lines. The puppet show is beautifully realized and satisfyingly resolved. Maybe it's the brevity of the work, the concentration of so much in such a thin volume, but I find that I can't help but keep thinking about the story. It would make a great book club read as it invites so much in the interpretation.

It's a dusty western narrated in lavish, melancholy tones by Eli Sisters, the younger of the awkwardly named Sisters Brothers. I couldn't help but be reminded of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from Tom Stoppard's play and film - Eli a huskier Gary Oldman as shot by the Coen brothers. He's an odd sort of cowboy assassin, craving the quiet life of a shopkeeper, rendered sentimental over his one-eyed and flagging horse, delighted by the discovery of teeth-brushing and obsessing over his weight, asking for boiled vegetables at the saloon. And yet he's the same guy that finds his boot heel grinding into the shattered skull of a dead prospector.

It ventures close to the surreal with odd little tangents that will have me revisiting this story again in the near future to catch all the little pieces hidden inside.

I've never read any Neil Gaiman. I've even failed to crack the spine on a single Sandman. How dare I call myself a comic reader - my secret shame. Long past due to fix this oversight, I started in with American Gods. (10th Anniversary edition)

It's oblique in it's writing. It doesn't draw too much attention to itself and so it seems that the narrative happens in the periphery. Misdirection. I know already that I will be reading this again. If it wasn't for the fact it would ruin it for first time readers I could almost wish for an annotated, and illustrated version ala The Da Vinci Code. The etymology of Wednesday and the histories of the Egyptian gods rendered on the page.

Our protagonist Shadow has just been released after serving 3 years for aggravated assault, only to mourn the death of his wife. A car crash that killed her and her secret lover - Shadow's best friend. There's no reason for him to say no to the strange old man that fortuitously offers him a job. It's a vague sort of employment that eventually finds him in the company of gods old and new, a shadowy Agency and the spectre of his dead wife.

The old gods, immigrated from countries overseas, find America less than hospitable. They are tired and scrapping by in taxis, working in funeral homes, running cons and slowly going crazy. Supplanted by the shiny new gods of credit cards, internet and cable TV there seems to be an impending clash on the horizon.

The novel defies easy categorization, winning awards for science fiction, fantasy and horror. An American road trip, written by a Brit. An incredible novel from a comic book writer.

I've been craving another running book which led me to Once a Runner. Held in high esteem by the running community it's certainly geared to the serious runner. It's all inside baseball from the first chapter with the codified language of the runner. On the whole it reads like so many self help books where the message is wrapped up in some propulsive, action. I'm thinking the Celestine Prophecy with it's pulpy train wreck of a story.

But buried within was the small nugget of truth to running. I'm too early in my running career to truly appreciate the grueling rigors of the distance runner. I will never run a sub 4 minute mile, compete at Olympic levels or escape to some wooded hideaway to seriously train but I can still be gripped by his recounting of a mile race and pushing past the pain and fear.

Is it too much to ask to have a great novel set in the cubicle farms I'm so familiar with? Maybe it's just too difficult to mine that otherwise dreary setting. Most seem immediately dated and overplayed like Aeron chairs and Segways. Maybe in a hundred years time they'll seem more relevant in a Dickensonian way.

Ferris doesn't exactly start strong with the use of the first person plural which loops in on itself at the end. It's distancing and jarring but maybe that's the point. I've read reviews that damn the whole story as obviously the product of a writer's workshop. It's just too clever by half. The middle section really clicked for me but then I'm just falling for the metaphor and enjoying at how it hints at a greater subtext.

See, now I'm talking like some writer workshop douche offering up my sincere meaning criticisms. OK read, still waiting for the great office novel.

Christine Lucas wakes up every morning with no memory of the last 20 years and has to reconstruct her life from scratch. Aided by her journal she begins to put the pieces of her life together only to find that nothing is as it seems.

I can't help but think how different the story would have been in our present world of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and ubiquitous online identity.

It takes no time to understand the premise and nitpickers can decry the plot holes and narrative missteps but the joy is in trying to unravel how the author will opt to resolve the story. Doubt is cast on everyone, including the protagonist herself. Great pace throughout and lots of fun besides.

And here we have the epic nod to Bill Watterson with the single issue called Sparrow. Rodriguez is pitch perfect in his drawing and Joe Hill even gets in on the action having Bode adopt more of the effusive language typical of Calvin. I love that the comic medium allows for this leeway and tangential diversion. Even better is that this seemingly random diversion is still brought back around in the final volume. Hill and Rodriguez are hitting their stride and showing a high degree of confidence in what they're doing here. There's a lot of moving pieces across the board in preparation for the climax and the volume ends with a violent bang. One hell of a cliff-hanger.

I think Io9.com put it best when they called it the summer's best movie - in book form. Daniel H. Wilson thanks Dreamworks in the Acknowledgements and IMDB already has Steven Spielberg attached to the project. You can't help but cast the protagonists in your mind and it reads like a script. Therein lies my biggest complaint. Daniel H. Wilson writes in the first person as each chapter jets you around the world from protagonist to protagonist. Unfortunately the 12 year old speaks in the same writerly tones as the construction grunt or the aged Japanese tinkerer.

Still it's a compelling read and only the end lacks the theatric oomph I was hoping for, finishing with a whimper instead of a bang. Still you can't help but see each action packed set piece laid out in cinematic form and drool at the prospect of this being turned into a movie. This could be a unique case where the movie will surpass the source material.

First off I need to say I read the edition, while most common, is an English translation of the French translation that the author himself considered “poor” from the original Polish it was written in. The fact this exists is cuckoo and I'm sad I didn't know better to look for the 2011 Bill Johnston Polish to English translation.

I'm sure I've gotten the gist of it anyways. Lem hated traditional science fiction dismissing it as superficial. It's a similar complaint my wife has of Star Trek, dismissing it as adults dressed in pyjamas pretending they're in space. Hurtful.

Lem takes our anthropomorphized galactic view of bipedal creatures with eyes and mouth at recognizable positions where our only impediment to communication is learning the language and throws that out the window. Instead we get a sentient ocean with the power of “seeing into the deepest recesses of human minds and then bringing their dreams to life.” Communication in the form of near perfect human replicas pulled from the minds of the scientists sent to observe the planet. It's a baby God playing at creation, stumbling toward understanding. The ocean is poking at these planetary interlopers with tools that are in sharp contrast to the scientists resorting to blunt instruments, bombarding the ocean with x-rays modulated by human brain waves. We're cavemen in the face of this new lifeform and our century of human research is confined to leather bound volumes that speak more of superstition and creative interpretations than real scientific progress and understanding.

This massive disparity creates a pervasive sense of potential menace and uncertainty that begins to fray at the scientist's minds. They know enough to be a danger to themselves, which feels ever relevant.

So yeah, I grok the ideas explored here, but found the reading experience a bit plodding and felt like I could have gotten the same gist with a well sharpened short story.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children starts off as a creative writing exercise for author Ransom Riggs who constructs a story around his collection of gothic found photographs. The first book in a proposed trilogy (natch) it has to do some heavy lifting to set the stage but it still proves engrossing. It's only once we get past the requisite “before” of the emo teen who hates his life and idolizes his grandfather and his fantastical stories and into the “after” of Miss Peregrine's world does the book begin to really move.

It's a likeable YA romp. I just don't know how I feel about a budding romance between Jacob and Emma, considering she was madly in love with Jacob's grandfather before him.

Erin Morgenstern's debut novel the Night Circus won the literary lottery warranting a huge marketing push, 7 figure advance and snatched up movie rights. Did I mention she's 33 and this book got it's start during NaNoWriMo? Damn, if that's not reason enough to start sharpening your pencils now.

All of this however is not to say it isn't an utterly fantastic book. Forget the comparisons to Potter, this is the rightful heir to the fantastic Time Traveller's Wife. Which is to say it's a captivating story of tempest tossed love.

What I absolutely loved however was her willingness to talk with the music blog largehearted boy to offer up her personal music playlist to accompany the book.

Do yourself a favor and read the opening with her suggestion of Moby's “A Seated Night”. It sets the tone for the book beautifully. A stunning read that speaks to Morgenstern's past life as a graphic artist.

Jenny Diski endeavours to circumnavigate the United States ...by train. She's not really intent on doing anything more than watch the scenery whip past and smoke. She finds a special place in the smoking car with it's cracked linoleum floor, institutional gray walls and hard plastic chairs. There, along with the outcast, nicotine hungry pariahs she can unrepentantly smoke in peace.

People seem to have other ideas and their lives and attendant stories reach out to her. Diski does a fair bit of literary people watching, enjoying that strange bit of alchemy that renders strangers immediately familiar when you're travelling. Otherwise unremarkable fellow travellers are rendered with warmth and each come with their own unique stories to tell.

While it did win the 2003 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award there's precious little consideration given to the passing American landscape. This is more a snapshot of the distinctly American lives that join Diski on her journey.

It's a surreal novel as we follow Vikar who sports a the tattoo of Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift on his shaven head. The book is a bonanza for old moviephiles, it's so entrenched in the Hollywood of the early 70's. I barely managed to eke out the references to Taxi Driver and Blade Runner.

But all these references are signifiers. That individual scenes play to a larger theme. And the book still managed to pull me through this fever dream of a story that somehow evokes the idea of film before tentpole summer blockbusters and special effects eye candy. I don't know what I just read, but despite my ignorance it managed to stick with me.

It starts off like some modern day corporate thriller that sees our pharmacologist protagonist Marian Singh sent to the Amazon at the behest of her corporate masters. Vogel Pharmaceutical needs someone to rein in and report back about rogue scientist Annik Swenson and ferret out the mystery of their first emissary's death. From there it's all Heart of Darkness. Sycophants, anaconda wrestling, cannibals, psychedelic fungi, addictive tree bark, fertile octogenarians, a mute native boy and lots of lost luggage - worst road trip ever. It's a far meatier story than I would have expected.

It would make a heck of a movie with its murderers' row of juicy characters that could happily chew the scenery for its duration. In the midst of a mythomania epidemic, one Boyd Halverson decides to rob a bank. From there it's a mopey road trip across the continent with his willing hostage Angie Bing, a Pentecostal motormouthed former bank teller who is at once ardently enamoured with Boyd while leaving hints for her unhinged, narcissistic fiancé Randy Zapf. There's the husband and wife owners of the bank, hesitant to report the robbery lest it reveal how much they've been stealing from it all along. The CFO in name only, goon to Boyd's ex-wife's husband, sent to find and grievously hurt Boyd. A couple ex-cons, a possibly schizophrenic Finnish lap-dancer, a corrupt cop, an upstanding dispatcher and her best friend all converging on that same Boyd Halverson and the $81,000 he managed to run off with.

I just couldn't see the point of it all - other than to illustrate the absolute shit-show, lying-ass, oblivious monkey show that seems to be Trump-era America. It's not quite incisive enough to hold as a book but could make for an appropriately over the top lampoon on screen. Neither the tragic motivation or the intriguing idea of a cross-species contagious lying epidemic deliver on their initial promise to really shore up the rest of the shenanigans on display here. It would have been better off to just really lean into the absurdity.

The other gay modern day, literary humorist named David. Rakoff must hate that. There must be days when he just thinks “Fuck it, call me Lourdes from now on” just so he can avoid the inevitable comparisons. So to hurry that along - Fraud is the Discovery show pitched as “Let's send David Sedaris out on location and hear his unique take on the great wide world.”

With Rakoff's passing I thought it appropriate to revisit this Canadian expat. I've given him short shrift in the past, he the second fiddle to the other nebbish, homosexual New Yorker named David. (Turns out it was that same David Sedaris that helped propel Rakoff's early career.)

Don't Get Too Comfortable is a collection of essays. It becomes clear that you can take the Canadian out of Canada but you can't get the Canada out of the Canadian. Rakoff seems to be the outsider looking in. Starting with his experience becoming an American he mines his fascination with the first world, outsized experience of the “typical American” ...or at least the American other countries might sniff at. (As a Canadian I should apologize for any slight that might be implied by that statement)

Maybe it's all shooting fish but Rakoff can still skewer with scathing precision.

“How better then to show a nobility of spirit than by broadcasting your capacity to discern the gustatory equivalent of a hummingbird's cough as it beats its wings near a blossom that grows by a glassy pond on the other side of a distant mountain? No surer proof that one is meant for better things than an easily bruised delicacy. Such a perfectly tuned instrument can quickly suss out the cheap and nasty. So, the bitterness at the back of the throat; the polite refusal of the glass of whiskey marred by those (shudder) domestic ice cubes; the physical and psychic insult that are sheets of anything short of isotopic density. What is the thread count, Kenneth? We have become an army of multiply chemically sensitive, high-maintenance princesses trying to make our way through a world full of irksome peas.”