Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

What if Romeo and Juliet lived happily ever after, or Van Helsing decided Dracula wasn’t worth the trouble? In a high-tech twist on Choose Your Own Adventure, “active fiction” imbues readers with precisely that kind of power.

Rain Falls Like Mercy Jack Todd, Touchstone/ Simon & Schuster, 285 pp; $28.99

Canadian artist, Mildred Valley Thornton, in an article for the Regina Leader-Post in 1930, wrote: “too often in art, distance lends enchantment and to say that a picture was European sometimes invested it with a glamour that far exceeded its real value while the genius of our own country was left to languish in obscurity.”

“I am more than halfway through my biological life and about halfway through my creative life,” Jeanette Winterson comments, ever-pensive, in Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? Such a plateau offers Winterson a unique stock-taking opportunity, and her prickly memoir wastes no time in pondering past, future and present.

American novelist Elmore John Leonard has seen his work turned into a lot of train wrecks during his 86 years. Justified is not one of them.

If all you know about Catherine the Great is that she died underneath a horse, your education is woefully lacking. For one thing, the horse story is not only a lie, it’s so devoid of dignity that renowned historian Robert Massie doesn’t even mention it in this comprehensive, largely sympathetic portrait of the 18th-century Russian empress.

Mike Vlessides writes about some of the toughest adventurers in the world. He is the author behind Les Stroud’s bestselling Survivorman books, and most recently penned The Ice Pilots: Flying with the Mavericks of the Great White North. Based on the top-rated TV show of the same name, the book follows renegade Buffalo Airways in Yellowknife as they defy the cold and competition using Second World War-era planes to haul vital supplies to remote outposts across northern Canada. Vlessides speaks about the process of writing about such brave characters, what draws him to stories of adventure, and what he discovered about some of the most famous local pilots in North America.

Polish Nobel Prize winning poet Wislawa Szymborska, once described as the “Mozart of Poetry,” died on Wednesday, after suffering from lung cancer. She was 88.

From time-bending drama to the absurd adventures of Shakespeare’s supporting cast, almost 50 years of work has brought playwright Tom Stoppard popular, critical and even royal acclaim.

Frank Delaney knows a surefire way to capture a person’s attention. In fact, the New York Times bestselling author and former BBC broadcaster claims he can do it with only eight words.

Charles Dickens may have died in 1870, but legions of fans around the world unite next Tuesday and beyond to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of a titan of English fiction.

“Someone else might question why his wife would sit him down and informally evaluate him for Asperger syndrome – in her pajamas no less,” David Finch writes in his unusual memoir. “(But) at no point during that evening in Kristen’s office did I wonder about it.”

What attracts us to literature? The answers are as varied as books and readers themselves are, but at its core, the act of reading is the act of seeking a connection. When that connection occurs, though, it can’t always be logically explained. Just ask Pico Iyer.

Genie-winning Canadian director Denis Villeneuve, most recently acclaimed for his searing drama Incendies, is working on adapting comic artist and journalist Joe Sacco’s Footnotes in Gaza for film.

A new photography exhibition provides a poignant and beautiful retrospective of London’s East End.

Poland’s 1996 Nobel Prize-winning poet Wislawa Szymborska, whose simple words and playful verse plucked threads of irony and empathy out of life, has died. She was 88.

The pick of the author’s vivid descriptions, both lyrical and caustic. People of Chelmsford, beware.

Live, from Vancouver, it’s COMICS: Saturday Night Live, a 24-page history of the long-running show in comic book form.

Timothy Caulfield’s conversations at social gatherings are a lot more animated since he wrote a book that says the health benefits of yoga, long runs and stretching, among other things, are highly overrated. Devotees of said activities are understandably disappointed at his findings, often vigorously de-fending what they’re doing to be healthier.

The Library of Congress and the French Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA), in an unprecedented collaboration, will exchange up to 500 hours of digitized film and television content over the next three years, reflecting how the United States and France have been portrayed in each other’s media.

The Nunavut Literacy Council has published the book Just One Goal, by acclaimed Canadian children’s author Robert Munsch, in the Inuit language.

More than a quarter of a century after Watchmen intrigued readers with tales of less-than-heroic and all-too-human — save for Dr. Manhattan — crime-fighting vigilantes, DC Entertainment is revisiting them in a series of original prequels this summer.

A new exhibition at the Grant Museum of Zoology displays artworks by animals.

A Q debate between Farhad Manjoo, a Slate columnist who hails the advent of e-books as a savior of reading, and Joanne Saul of Type Books, who believes the bookstore is vital to our culture.