Here’s a dirty little secret. I hate cooking. Don’t even get me started on baking. I like the idea of both just fine – it’s the actual doing of same where I unspool like a cheap suit. Recipes baffle me. They’re full of numbers and measurements and sequences of events that my head hurts just looking at them. And they always (ALWAYS!) leave out some crucial tidbit, no doubt assuming the cook in question has a fundamental grasp of food preparation. I stare dumbly at the list of ingred...

Has this world truly gone mad? Veteran journalist and CBC commentator Rex Murphy thinks so. Even the cartoon version of him that adorns the cover of his new book, Canada and Other Matters of Opinion, looks grim. I don’t know too many authors who can translate that kind of glower power through caricature; cartoon Murphy even regards the title of his own book with certain suspicion. If there’s anything crazy about Canada – a collection of Murphy’s recent columns and commen...

My brother-in-law Ben is a quiet genius. He has a strong moral compass and a gentle soul. Ben is deep yet calm, he is wise and thoughtful, with a sense of timing and humour that can be brutally funny. I believe that Ben is one of the top booksellers in North America. He listens and finds out what people like to read, and what they are interested in, before suggesting an author. He’s a great resource for those wanting to dig further into a subject or author. It’s important for Ben to kn...

I don’t recall why I studied Hegel in university – my major was English, not philosophy – but it led me to Karl Marx’s posthumous Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and Marx’s oft-misquoted proverb that “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” As I understood it, Marx meant that when bad things happen to good people – say locusts and slavery back in the day, or more modern plagues, like the economic meltdown, endless wars and the mother of all troubles, 9/11 – peop...

I was in my second year of university when I overheard my anthropology professor telling a few students after class that if you weren’t an atheist before university, chances are you would become one by the time you graduated. They laughed as they were supposed to and so did I, even though we knew “better” than to believe we needed religion. At the time, I was imagining what it would be like to tell my good Catholic mother over dinner what we discussed after class that day.  I didn’t ...

It occurred to me recently, shockingly, that by the time he grows up, my son might not have ready access to a real newspaper, even a proper book. One of my few constant and profound pleasures over the last 30 years, besides inhaling fiction, has been the morning broadsheet. Feeling the rustle of newsprint, sopping up information and news makes me feel whole somehow — and equipped. It might have something to do with how I grew up. Rather than reporting on our school days, the topic of most...

The relationship between author and critic may be strained at times, but Stratford, Ont.-based novelist Terry Griggs ups the stakes dramatically in her latest book, Thought You Were Dead. Once, I received hate mail for a mixed review from a writer who seemed possessed by delusions of grandeur. But that’s nothing compared to Griggs’s unconventional and ribald whodunit, where the price of an unwelcome critique is rather gruesome head injury. Fitting for a book whose storyline focuse...

It’s hardly surprising that in this accelerated age, hyper-consumption rules. Material wealth, status, and toys have become the classic markers of success. The current recession notwithstanding, it remains that whoever owns the most stuff wins. As an adult, I have owned and rented homes. Owning is better. You have something to show for the outflow of money and (home-owning) neighbours are nicer to you. In his book,

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What do hockey players, the Beatles, and Bill Gates have in common? According to New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell, author of two of the most influential books of the past decade, The Tipping Point

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I was raised on Canadian stories told well by Canadian writers. These books, along with many others, comprise what critics have, for as long as I can remember, dubbed “CanLit.” Books like Dance of the Happy Shades, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, and The Edible Woman are still imprinted on the part of my brain permanently parked at adolescence as powerfully as Sunday evening dread during the school year. But arriving at the 21st century, I’m starting to think ...