By Sara Hailstone Margaret Atwood shifted the conversation of poetry with her four-line poem “You Fit into Me,” published in 1971. With the entrance of her image of a fisheye and hook into a collective literary consciousness, Atwood set the bar for her poetic compositions. With the recent publication of her collection of poetry Dearly, the world received poetry from Atwood for the first time in over a decade. Expectations were high. There have been mixed reviews. Some reviewers deem that with this recent book of poetry Atwood’s writing has fallen “short of [the] mark”; some take issue with th ..read more

By Sara Hailstone Respected Canadian author, Jane Urquhart wrote her debut novel titled, The Whirlpool, which was published by McClelland and Stewart in 1986. It was the first Canadian novel to be awarded France’s Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger (Best Foreign Book Award), following publications of the novel in various languages and across European countries.   Urquhart established a successful literary career following her debut novel. Her later novel,The Underpainter won the Governor General’s Award for English-language fiction and The Stone Carvers was a finalist for the Giller Prize a ..read more

By Caprice Hogg This book was not what I expected it to be, as I have previously researched the enhanced creativity of individuals who regularly access parts of their right brain. Before reading this book, I did not realize that we all have strong biases towards the right or left in multiple areas of our lives. These biases are exhibited throughout art history, all the way back to cave paintings and Mayan sculptures. The dominant hands are shown, not just in handwriting, but by the tools and objects that are portrayed. Cradled babies in all the Madonna representations show a bias to cradling ..read more

By Sara Hailstone “For reasons which will become clear soon enough, I cannot tell you my name. Nor can I tell you the name of the city in which I live.” Thus is the reader ushered into the perimeters of a novel that will attempt to package an unbelievable story into something palpable, a story made believable through the craft of storytelling amongst the domestic. Our Lady of the Lost and Found, written by Diane Schoemperlen in 2001, is narrated by an unnamed successful writer who finds solace in the comfort of her home and single life. “People often ask me how much of my fiction is autobiogr ..read more

By Carmen Lebar Content warning: drug use, physical violence, death Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton is an environmental thriller that focuses on the dangers of late-stage capitalism. Birnam Wood is a guerrilla non-profit organization that specializes in gardening, and making crops accessible to surrounding communities in New Zealand. In 2017, there’s a landslide in the Korowai Pass that gives the nonprofit’s leader, Mira Bunting, an idea to use that land to garden. When she goes to investigate the area, she meets billionaire Robert Lemoine who promises to give Birnam Wood money to see what can ..read more

By Carmen Lebar Content warning: racism, death, suicide, physical violence, sexism Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko is a generational novel set in Korea and Japan during the 1900s and follows the life of Sunja and her family  over four generations. Sunja is a young girl who works with her family at her home where they lodge fishermen. During this time, she falls in love with a wealthy man and becomes pregnant. When she finds out he’s married, she is convinced by her parents to marry a minister who is staying at their lodge on his way to Japan. Unbeknownst to Sunja, her decision will have consequen ..read more

By Tiffany Miller Erin Khar’s memoir Strung Out: One Last Hit and Other Lies That Nearly Killed Me sucks you in from the very beginning.  Strung Out starts with Erin Khar’s son Atticus asking his mom “if she ever did drugs?”  A loaded question for someone who had been trapped in a cycle of addiction for years. Like any parent, Erin panics to find the words to answer her son’s question. But quickly she finds the courage to tell her son the truth of the perils of her personal drug use.  Not only because he is growing up and will eventually be able to read how his mother publicly ..read more

By Carly Smith The Emotional Brain is a nonfiction book by neuroscientist Dean Burnett that explores the world of human (and sometimes non-human) emotions. With an immense amount of information spanning over 300 pages, the book covers a variety of topics including memories, communication, relationships, and the brain itself. The cover page says: “Lost and Found in the Science of Emotion” which, at first thought, may seem like an oxymoron. Emotion and science are rarely thought of as going hand in hand, but readers learn that science cannot exist without emotion and emotions are a well-studied ..read more

By Meghan Mazzaferro Content warnings: physical abuse, violence, blood, child abuse, domestic abuse, death, confinement, pregnancy, bullying Several months after solving the murder of her former best friend, Alice Ogilvie is happy to stick to investigating older mysteries—like the death of a movie starlet in Levy Castle back in the 1920s. Unfortunately, while snooping around the castle at a school dance, Alice stumbles onto a chilling scene: one of her classmates, Rebecca Kennedy, lying in a pool of her own blood, and another, Helen Park, standing over her with a bloody knife. Castle Cove’s i ..read more

By Tiffany Miller Do you love true crime? Does the process of criminal justice fascinate you? Can you think of no better way to spend a weekend than binge-reading a story that feels like it couldn’t possibly be a true story about small-town America? Have you ever wondered how the University of Minnesota came to own a gorgeous mansion on the Lake Superior lakefront? If you said yes to any of these statements, then Will to Murder is for you! Last summer, I took my second tour of Glensheen Mansion. I was anxious to get there again because I had heard that they restored and opened the third ..read more