We started our site, TheSharkGuys.Com, to follow on from our first book, a humorous collection of drinking-related feats of grandeur called The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death and Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery (Penguin Global 2007 – We urge everyone to check that one out. If it’s not the greatest drinking book [...]

© 2004-2011 Rebecca Bollwitt – Miss604.com. If you are not reading this via official Miss604 channels, this content is being reproduced without permission. Bargains await if you’re looking for books, CDs, and DVDs, which will all be on sale for 50 cents to $2 at the Friends of the North Vancouver District Public Library (“NVDPL”) [...]

I love books and have passed that love down to my children.  There is nothing better than snuggling up with a good book and settling in for long read. Scholastic has come out with some great new books, perfect for snuggling up with your kids before be…

"The book that follows is not a history in the normal sense, but, as the subtitle explains, the history of a controversy. The controversy in question is the one which has raged for many years around the question: What ended…

This past year I used my blog to keep track of the books I read. I had a healthy competition with my friend Mark Nenadov, although my list only included real books, while his also had e-books and audio books … Continue reading →

Catch 22, by Joseph Heller, reviewed by Matt OwenRed PepperJanuary 2012Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, called Catch 22 ‘the only war novel I’ve ever read that makes any sense’. Readers of a certain sensibility – of which the record…

By Katerina SvickovaLeft Eye On Books January 8th, 2012In light of the popular movements of today and the debate on democracy they triggered, we don’t even know if traditional party politics will be the most adequate vehicle to address the challenges…

A revamp of the Telegram‘s book page in 1971 didn’t please everyone.

There once was a time when newspaper book editors could relax on a tower of bestsellers, comforted by the knowledge that their section received full blessing from the bean counters.Read: Vintage Toronto Ads: Hobnobbing with Authors

By David HuttonThe Star PhoenixJanuary 13, 2012Saskatchewan’s economic momentum will dissipate if the provincial government doesn’t install stronger public policies geared toward social problems, a number of University of Saskatchewan professo…

Flickr: The Dictionarium – In contemporary usage, a place for those obsessive types who collect or take pictures of dictionaries of all shapes, sizes, types and linguistic predilections. Not something I have thought to do. But, I do actually have a photo of my dictionary. I took the photo because I had a pressed flower [...]

Charles S. Prebish, who you may recall from my review of his memoir “An American Buddhist Life: Memoirs of a Modern Dharma Pioneer” (from Sumeru Press) and author of more than twenty books has released a new ebook. Titled “Looking West: A Primer for American Buddhism” this is a basic introduction to Buddhism in America [...]

With news last week that three bookstores—The Book Mark, Glad Day, and Dragon Lady Comics—are to be sold or closed, we look back at some beloved bookshops from Toronto’s past.

Last week, after hearing about a trio of local bookstores facing closure or sale, we looked at some of Toronto’s past purveyors of literature. As we wrote then, it feels as if Toronto is experiencing a cycle of closures similar to the late 1990s. Back then, blame initially fell upon big box stores like Chapters [...]

Call me an anarchist, but I think everyone should get an equal voice. And that’s one of the first things that endeared me to Whose Streets?
I love that editors Tom Malleson and David Washsmuth made the democratic and risky decision to include a broad s…

At some point near the end of last semester I checked out Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton from the SFU library. As a graduate student I had access to term loans from the library so I took th…

Numbers provided today show an increase in both circulation and visits.

Though details are still coming in, the Toronto Public Library already knows it’s surpassed one threshhold: 2011 will go down as its busiest year on record, as measured both by how often we’re going to the library and how much we’re making use of its resources. According to information provided to Torontoist today, circulation is [...]

Hey all!
Just a quick reminder that the Babble Book Club has its final discussion of selection Haruki Murakami’s The Wind Up Bird Chronicle on Sunday, Jan. 15 at 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. EST (10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. PST) in the babble forum!read more

Random House of Canada has become the sole owner of McClelland & Stewart.

I recently finished reading Michael Ondaatje’s excellent The Cat’s Table. It tells the story of a boy’s journey (ostensibly, but not actually, Ondaatje himself–he’s a notorious liar in such things) by ocean liner from Colombo, Ceylon (known today as Sri Lanka) to London, England. I quite enjoyed the novel–much more than Anil’s Ghost and Divisadero, [...]

Verso BooksOrder HERE.The first book to explore the Occupy movement in depth, with reportage and analysis.In the fall of 2011, a small protest camp in downtown Manhattan exploded into a global uprising, sparked in part by the violent overreactions of…