Books shelved under “Non-Fiction”

Did I ever think I would read a nonfiction book about maple syrup? No. Yet when the opportunity arose thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Random House, in exchange for a review, I jumped. I love maple syrup as much as the next sweettoothed Canadian! Peter Kuitenbrouwer brings a uniquely suited perspective to chronicle the history and economics of the industry with writing that feels as comprehensive as it is warm.

Kuitenbrouwer’s history is smartly organized,…

Just because you’re an expert doesn’t mean you can write a popular political science book…. That, unfortunately, is the lesson I take away from So You Want to Own Greenland?: Lessons from the Vikings to Trump. Elizabeth Buchanan is nominally an expert in polar geopolitics. However, her book about the contentious history of Greenland’s settlement and sovereignty is anything but interesting. I received an eARC from NetGalley and publisher Melville House in exchange for…

Scaachi Koul is a writer I’ve long admired for her craft. I enjoyed her political commentary when she was on the Canadaland Commons podcast back in the day, and I’ve enjoyed her Buzzfeed articles and other online writing. I’ve taught her essays in English class. Although I didn’t read her first book, I was excited to pick up Sucker Punch. So it’s with a heavy heart I have to admit … I didn’t love…

First drawn to Waste Wars: The Wild Afterlife of Your Trash by an excerpt of the first few chapters, I was excited to see my library already had a copy. Alexander Clapp has literally journeyed around the world to investigate where trash from the US, Canada, Europe, etc., goes (hint: both exactly where and nowhere that you would expect). In so doing, he unravels a decades-spanning story of globalization and neocolonialism that is both depressing…

I was intrigued by the description of Sam Kean’s latest book. I love learning about history in various new ways! So I was pleased to receive an eARC of Dinner with King Tut from NetGalley and publisher Little, Brown and Company. Indeed, one cannot fault Kean for his scrupulous commitment to embodying experiential archaeology—this book reads like a Discovery channel series, back when Discovey channel was good.

Kean is upfront and warns us that the…

I won’t mince words: The Knowing is essential reading for all non-Indigenous Canadians, and it should be required reading for teachers like myself. Tanya Talaga has written a history that is at times painful, at times healing, yet always powerful and true. After her impressive work in Seven Fallen Feathers and All Our Relations, her latest takes a far more personal approach to the story of Canada, reminding us that residential schools are not…

Like most kids, I went through a dinosaur phase, though perhaps somewhat less obsessively than some. I always have trouble picking favourites, so I can’t tell you I had a favourite dinosaur. What fascinated me, like so many I suspect, was their extinction. The idea that entire species can disappear—wow. The Shortest History of the Dinosaurs is Riley Black’s attempt to chronicle how these incredible animals evolved, how they lived for hundreds of millions of…

Every so often I need to dip into philosophy, mix in some math, and sprinkle on some science. Give me that interdisciplinary trip, please and thank you! Proof: The Uncertain Science of Certainty, by Adam Kucharski, seemed like just what Dr. Kara ordered for herself. Indeed, it’s illuminating enough, though it has a few flaws that prevented me from enjoying it more. I received an eARC from NetGalley and publisher Basic Books in exchange…

Hate to DNF an eARC (from NetGalley and publisher University of Chicago Press), but I just cannot with Battle of the Big Bang. It’s written like a fever dream of a science book, and on every page I was left asking, who is this book for?

Niayesh Afshordi is a cosmologist; Phil Halper is a science comms YouTuber. Together, they’ve teamed up to write a tour of cosmology. They trace the various theories of…

Nuclear war is … bad. That’s a premise on which most of us can agree. However, for the past eighty years, nuclear war has been possible and—at various times, including this past week as I write this review (looking at you, India and Pakistan)—more or less likely. In Six Minutes to Winter, Mark Lynas catalogues the potential scope and consequences of nuclear war—including the dreaded but much-misunderstood nuclear winter—and then makes a passionate plea…

The Tetris movie was an unexpected delight when I had three months free of Apple TV+. I had never heard of it before, and I was so skeptical going into it—yet it was a surprisingly solid movie. Part biopic, part historical drama, it somehow managed to sensationalize and lionize the bringing of Tetris from Russia to other markets. So when I heard Henk Rogers had decided to tell the story in his own words, of…

Oh boy, I don’t know if this was the best time or worst time to read The Age of Insecurity. It was certainly A Time. Written just prior to Donald Trump’s second term as President of the United States, Astra Taylor’s Massey Lectures for 2023 nevertheless capture the zeitgeist of the 2020s with uncomfortable clarity and, dare I say, prescience. This book is not a salve for our age, alas, but it might be…

Space is so cool, and I love reading books that explain how we learn the stuff we know about space. That’s exactly what Dr. Lisa Kaltenegger delivers in Alien Earths. This is the story of how we look for exoplanets—worlds orbiting stars other than our own Sun—and specifically, how we might determine whether those exoplanets can support life similar life on Earth. Along the way we learn, as Kaltenegger did, so much more about…

Most of you probably know already: Star Trek is my first science-fiction love. Before Stargate, before Buffy, before even Supergirl, I grew up in the nineties watching the bright primary colours of TOS on a 13-inch CRT TV. I eschewed for a long time the muted, overly polished sequel series—the simplicity of the 1960s original made more sense to my kid brain. Yet I eventually succumbed (DS9 is my favourite, though TNG…

This was a tougher read than I expected. I was about to write “not being a sports girlie myself” but stopped because I do play sports now—but I only got into that last summer, and it’s recreational, co-ed, and very inclusive. Anyway, I wasn’t expecting Fair Play to hit me as hard as it did considering it’s about transgender issues. Katie Barnes covers the debates around the inclusion of trans people in sports with sensitivity…

I picked this up on a whim at my local indie bookshop. It’s a trim and cute little volume, definitely pocket-sized (and yes, many of my dresses have pockets). Beyond the Gender Binary is an essay about exactly that: what does it mean to be nonbinary? Furthermore, how can our society itself move beyond the idea of binary gender? Alok Vaid-Menon relates some anecdotes from their own life while passionately breaking down the myths, stereotypes,…

Ursula K. Le Guin is the GOAT. I think the only one who rivals her in my esteem of science fiction and fantasy authors is Octavia Butler. I say this not to claim to be an expert on either author or even that I like their work beyond any other SFF author … but those two gals just … have something. So naturally, when I heard that The Language of the Night had been…

This was a birthday gift for a friend who is a fierce feminist. She lent me Men Explain Things to Me so many years ago, and when I was pondering what book to buy her for her birthday, Rebecca Solnit came to mind. I was delighted to discover Solnit had penned a memoir. My friend is in between my age and Solnit’s, and so I am curious to hear her thoughts on Solnit’s reflections of…

A few years ago, probably during lockdown, I watched the excellent Netflix documentary Black Holes: The Edge of All We Know about the Event Horizon Telescope and the effort to photograph the supermassive black hole at the centre of galaxy M87. Black holes have always captivated me ever since, as a wee lass, science and science fiction came on my radar. How could they not? So even though Marcus Chown is a new-to-me science writer,…

Some books are plodding and predictable (even if they are ultimately rewarding). Others are byzantine and meandering (even if they are ultimately rewarding). The Message is a secret, third type: it is a careful bundle of missives about the struggle for liberation. Writing about events and stories across space and time, Ta-Nehisi Coates unifies these long essays under the guise of talking to his workshop students about writing. The title belies its simplicity by taking…