Adventures in Judaism — When I was in my first year as an undergraduate at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, I took an introductory Canadian history course (which I aced — I got the only A+ I ever received for an overall subject in school in that class). I was speaking in the class’s…

House: Songs and Stories — I once worked for an outfit called the Canadian Institute of Historical Microreproductions (who later changed their name to the less wordy Canadiana.org, before getting absorbed into another institution in 2018 or thereabouts.) One of the things I did, and one of the things that I’m most proud of, is…

Revealing the Hidden Face of Mental Illness — One in three Canadians will suffer from mental illness during their lifetime. One in eight Americans use antidepressants, and a quarter of them have been doing so for more than a decade. By the time Canadians will reach 40 years of age, one in two have — or have had…

The Outsider — Canadian author Sarah Bernstein is being lauded for her recent novel, Study for Obedience, which was originally published in the United Kingdom but has now been published in Canada. This short novel is on the longlist for this year’s Booker Prize (with the shortlist to be announced in September), and…

The Isle of Terror-ible? — Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please? The early reviews have come in for Canadian writer Kelley Armstrong’s new standalone horror novel Hemlock Island, and they haven’t exactly been kind. Trade publisher Kirkus says this book is “a mishmash of mayhem, with wilderness adventure, supernatural phenomena, environmental activism…

Misery Montage? — When an author publishes a book of short stories, it usually comes after their debut as a novelist. It seems rare that an author comes out of the gate with a short story collection. The idea is that novels sell, while short story collections don’t. Thus, a publisher will only…

Men Leave — Jonathan Escoffery’s groundbreaking and trailblazing debut, If I Survive You, is a book that has come with a boatload of hype. It’s not really a novel, because it is a series of eight interlinked short stories. But it’s also not a short story collection, either, as the stories overlap and…

R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A. — I don’t know who originally said it — the following quote has been attributed to everyone, I think, from Elvis Costello to Frank Zappa — but there’s a truism in the idea that “writing about music is a little like dancing about architecture.” It’s an act of futility — an…

A Cult and a Classic — Author Alice Hoffman knows that magic resides in books. She has written about that magic in her latest novel, The Invisible Hour. This is the story of a young girl who finds escape and solace in her local small-town library and within the world of classic novels — even though…