Books shelved under “Non-Fiction”

You know Kara likes stories of heists and swindles, con artists and the like, yes? Oh yes. For some reason this got lost when I moved and only resurfaced recently, so I’m finally getting to read Empire of Deception, all about Chicago swindler Leo Koretz. According to Dean Jobb, Koretz is impressive enough that we should be talking about Koretz schemes instead of Ponzi schemes, and after reading this book, it’s not difficult to…

Although I would have picked this up on my own once I heard about it, I sought out and read White Tears/Brown Scars as a part of an antiracist book club that I joined for the month of June. Comprising mostly educators in Ontario, the book club’s organizer picked this book because our profession is predominantly white women, so white tears are a problem. As a white women, I’m a part of that problem,…

I’ve been intrigued by food science for a while. We have all at one point or another tried some kind of fad, whether it’s a specific diet or overloading on a superfood or something like that, I’m sure. Some of us fall harder than others. The more I tried to research and understand nutrition and food science for myself, the more I realized that a lot of food science is junk science. I wanted to…

It turns out I like Bill Nye’s writing a lot better when he is marshalling arguments in favour of science rather than sharing his life story. Although there is a lot of personal perspective in Unstoppable: Harnessing Science to Change the World, particularly towards the end, this book falls into the former category. Much like its companion Undeniable, this is a polemic. Whereas that book was about evolution, this book is about…

Somehow amidst all the well-deserved hype for The Skin We’re In, I missed hearing about its structure! This is Not Your Typical political memoir in that Desmond Cole has chosen a very deliberate structure: each chapter is a month in 2017 (with a coda for January 2018). He uses an event from each month of that year as a launching point for discussing issues of anti-Black racism and social justice in Canada. In this…

I very much enjoyed Lisa Randall’s Knocking on Heaven’s Door, which provided a layperson like me with a cogent explanation of the Standard Model that underpins modern particle physics. Randall is a physicist with a knack for explaining things both enthusiastically and clearly; she’s a good storyteller who doesn’t get too bogged down in trying to get all the details right for us. So I was intrigued enough to put Dark Matter and the…

Despite not enjoying The Mirror Empire to the point of not finishing it, I was still eager to read this collection of essays by Kameron Hurley. One of the reasons I was so disappointed about The Mirror Empire was that I really wanted to enjoy Hurley’s novels based on what I had seen from her on Twitter, her blog, etc. So I still wanted to try The Geek Feminist Revolution, and I’m glad that…

As the description of this book suggests, many of us have an inaccurate understanding of the history of Black people’s presence in Europe. So I wanted to correct my understanding. It’s important for us to learn the history of the slave trade, of course. But if we reduce Black histories merely to slavery, we are engaging in yet another type of colonial violence. Olivette Otélé aims to highlight the presence of African Europeans throughout history.…

This is one of those books where I don’t remember how it came to be on my to-read list, but I’m glad it did. Fossil Men is a book about science and history—both subjects I adore in my non-fiction reading—in a somewhat niche subject of paleoanthropology. Indeed, I wouldn’t describe this as a “pop science” book, which is usually the type of scientific non-fiction I read. Kermit Pattison, while not himself a scientist, has spent…

As I have previously mentioned, I love reading books about the systems at work in our world that we barely ever think about. Grocery stores are one such system. The supply chain for things like grocery stores has been slightly more in the news lately, given disruptions caused by the pandemic (not to mention a ship blocking the Suez Canal for days). Yet the news can only ever give a cursory explanation of the…

This is an interesting idea for the Object Lessons series from Bloomsbury. Blackface seems like more of an idea or practice than an object, yet semantic quibbles aside, Ayanna Thompson presents a concise and compelling overview of the subject. Blackface discusses the history of the practice, and in particular, Thompson helps us understand how power imbalances between white and Black performers have contributed to the unequal dynamic in which white people often feel ok performing…

Sex good. Pornography bad. With such utterances we begin to draw the lines that marked the “sex wars” of the 1980s, in which feminism schismed over how to approach sexual expression and the pornography industry. For some feminists, porn amplified the potential for violence against women—porn was essentially as bad as rape. For other feminists, the fight against porn was a fight against freedom of sexual expression, freedom to openly and intensely celebrate women’s sexuality.…

If there’s anything I love, it’s discussing futurism and technology! This is the kind of book I could totally see myself learning about from CBC’s Spark (but in this case, I actually found it on NetGalley and received an e-ARC from Elliott & Thompson Limited in exchange for a review). The Future of You is an overview of various technologies that are complicating, problematizing, mutating, and perhaps rescuing our concept of identity as a legal…

Like many Canadians, sometimes it feels like I know more about American politics than our own politics. American politics are louder, flashier, and take up more space in our news. So I’m trying my best to continue to monitor my country’s politics, particularly when it comes to issues of equity. That’s what drew me to Can You Hear Me Now?: I had heard of Celina Caesar-Chavannes and her rocky experience as a Black, female…

In my Grade 11 and 12 English class for adult learners, I always try to do at least a week on media literacy. We talk about bias and stereotypes, particularly as they relate to race, gender, and disability. One of my favourite activities regarding gender stereotypes involves examining ads and asking students to identify stereotypes present in those ads. It always provokes enlightening and interesting conversations from them. The hypersexualization of women as sex objects,…

One of my goals last year was, and for this year remains, to read more works by transgender authors, particularly about trans issues. I have been following Julia Serano on Twitter for a while now, so during my latest shopping expedition I decided to pick up Whipping Girl, which has also been on my radar for a while. Serano is not only a trans woman but also a molecular biologist, providing her with insights…

I became hooked on astronomy in a very big way. It’s just that idea that once you’ve passed the event horizon, then there is no escape from the black hole. So a book about taking a photograph of the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy using a radio telescope assembled out of telescopes from around the Earth? Yes, please. Einstein’s Shadow tries to tell the story of this project, the Event Horizon…

Every year my dad buys me the CBC Massey Lectures book, and last year was no exception! Reading Reset: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society after the events of January 6, in which white supremacist and fascist Americans, incited by their own president, stormed their own Capitol Building, was a trip. As Ronald J. Deibert unpacked the problematic aspects of our reliance upon social media, all I could think about was the role social media…

This is one of the oldest (perhaps the oldest?) physical books I own and have yet to read. Goodreads suggests I’ve had it for nearly a decade. Oops. The truth is, I was never excited to read this. I love reading math books! But I am not particularly enamoured of books that explore one or two “special numbers,” and phi is perhaps my least favourite special number. The blurb from Dan Brown on the…

I have listened to Jenn and Trin’s Friendshipping podcast for a couple of years now. I adore it, mostly for their amusing and endearing banter, but also for their compassionate takes on listener questions about doing friendship—I enjoy their emphasis on this idea that friendship is a verb, because I agree. So when I heard they had turned their podcast into a self-help book, I pre-ordered the hell out of it—and I was also fortunate…