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Showing 161 - 180 of 23538 items
By Darren Greer. 2006
From baseball to Picasso, Oscar Wilde to Tennessee Williams, post-modernism to American foreign policy, these essays are a mix of…
polemic, politics, memoir, travelogue, and literary theory. Greer relates how his mother's obsession with baseball is overshadowed by her distaste for the American invasion of Iraq, and in some travel essays, he recounts being in India during the height of the Pakistan nuclear crisis, his conversations with monks in Cambodia, and his spiritual revelations in Venice. Some strong language. Some descriptions of sex. Some descriptions of violence. c2006.Jean Lumb, a recipient of the Order of Canada, shares the story of her immigration to Canada, her contribution to…
the changing of Canada's immigration laws, and her efforts in saving Chinatown communities across Canada. Grades 5-8. 1997.By Angelina Fast-Vlaar. 2005
Angelina Fast-Vlaar recounts the true story of a camping trip taken through the Australian outback with her husband Peter, that…
produces an untimely encounter with death, and an adventure more amazing than they could ever have dreamed. This amazing account will leave readers spellbound, and constantly moving between deep sorrow and bubbling joy. Angelina's gripping testimony of her personal struggle with loneliness, depression, and intense grief becomes a major tribute to the grace and love of our God. 2005.By Helga Tiscenko. 2000
The author was born in 1929 to parents who were actively involved with the Nazis. She writes of her childhood…
at a time of terrible upheaval in Europe. After the war she learn how distorted her world had been and later emigrated to New Zealand. 2000.By Suad Amiry. 2005
The author writes of her experiences living on the West Bank from the early 80s to the present. The book…
contains a diary she kept during the Israeli invasion of Ramallah in 2002. Daily chores such as buying food and visiting friends become Herculean tasks for anyone living in a state of siege. 2003.By Diana Athill. 2001
For nearly five decades Diana Athill helped shape some of the finest books in modern literature. She edited (and nursed…
and coerced and coaxed) some of the most celebrated writers in the English language. The word 'stet' is an instruction on corrected proofs sent to a printer, meaning 'let the original stand'. This candid memoir writes 'stet' against the pleasures, intrigues and complexities of her life spent among authors and manuscripts. 2001.By Diana Athill. 2009
Diana Athill made her reputation as a writer with the candour of her memoirs. Now aged ninety, and freed from…
any inhibitions that even she may once have had, she reflects frankly on the losses and occasionally the gains that old age brings, and on the wisdom and fortitude required to face death. This is a lively narrative of events, lovers and friendships: the people and experiences that have taught her to regret very little, to resist despondency and to question the beliefs and customs of her own generation. 2009.By Stephen Miller. 2008
Dolly Parton is the most famous person ever to have emerged from the American country music scene with her iconic…
cartoon image. This book includes interviews with family members, musicians and producers who have worked with her over the years. It includes a detailed assessment of her music, as a songwriter and singer over the last forty years. c2008.By Lucia Jang, Susan McClelland. 2014
Born in the seventies in North Korea, Lucia Jang grew up in a typical household - her parents worked in…
the factories, and the family scraped by on government rations of rice and what little food they could grow in their small garden. For the nation, it was the beginning of a chaotic period. The country would face a decade-long famine resulting in more than a million dead. In this bleak landscape Jang dedicates herself to helping her parents and siblings survive. Eventually, she risks everything to flee her home country forever, determined to start a new life. This is her story. c2014.By Anthony Jenkins, Douglas Gibson. 2011
An autobiography that reviews the author’s accomplishments working - and playing - alongside some of Canada’s greatest writers. Relates the…
projects he brainstormed for writer Barry Broadfoot, how he convinced eventual Nobel Prize contender Alice Munro to keep writing short stories, his early morning phone call from a former Prime Minister, and his recollection of yanking a manuscript right out of Alistair MacLeod’s own reluctant hands, which ultimately garnered MacLeod one of the world’s most prestigious prizes for fiction. Provides an inside view of Canadian publishing that is rarely revealed. Some strong language. 2011.By Chris Wyk. 2005
Despite van Wyk's later becoming involved in the anti-apartheid 'struggle', this is not a book about racial politics. Instead, it…
is a delightful account of one boy's special relationship with the relatives, friends and neighbours - often decidedly quirky - who made up his community, and of the important coping role laughter and humour played during the years he spent in bleak, dusty townships. In the book, the author creates a remarkable record of life in the Coloured community, at once both informative and vastly entertaining. 2005.By David J Skal. 2016
Bram Stoker, despite having a name nearly as famous as his legendary undead Count, has remained a puzzling enigma. Skal…
exhumes the inner world and strange genius of the writer who conjured an undying cultural icon. Stoker was inexplicably paralyzed as a boy, and his story unfolds against a backdrop of Victorian medical mysteries and horrors: cholera and famine fever, childhood opium abuse, frantic bloodletting, mesmeric quack cures, and the gnawing obsession with "bad blood" that informs every page of Dracula. Stoker's ambiguous sexuality is explored through his lifelong acquaintance and romantic rival, Oscar Wilde. The psychosexual dimensions of Stoker's passionate youthful correspondence with Walt Whitman, his punishing work ethic, and his slavish adoration of the actor Sir Henry Irving are examined in splendidly gothic detail. 2016.By Julia Alvarez. 1998
Alvarez, the author of "How the Garcia girls lost their accents" and other works, reminisces about her childhood in the…
Dominican Republic and her family's escape to New York City. Also describes how she became an author and how to experience the writing life. 1998.By Karolyn Smardz Frost. 2017
Fifteen-year-old slave Cecelia Reynolds made her dangerous bid for freedom from the United States, across the Niagara River and into…
Canada. Escape meant that she would never see her mother or brother again. She would be cut off from the young mistress with whom she grew up, but who also owned her. Cecelia found a new life in Toronto’s vibrant African American expatriate community. Her rescuer became her husband, a courageous conductor on the Underground Railroad helping other freedom-seekers reach Canada. Widowed, she braved the Fugitive Slave Law to cross back into the United States, where she again found love, and followed her William into the battlefields of the Civil War. Finally, with a wounded husband and young children in tow, she returned to the Kentucky she had known as a child. But her home had changed: hooded Night Riders roamed the countryside with torches and nooses at the ready. When William disappeared, Cecelia relied on the support and affection of her former mistress - the Southern belle who had owned her as a child. Winner of the 2018 Speaker's Book Award. 2017.By Carmen Aguirre. 2011
Covering the decade from 1979 to 1989, Aguirre takes the reader inside war-ridden Peru, dictatorship-run Bolivia, post-Malvinas Argentina and Pinochet's…
Chile. She captures her constant struggle to reconcile her commitment to the resistance movement with the desires of her youth and her budding sexuality. Winner of Canada Reads 2012. Some descriptions of sex, explicit descriptions of violence. 2011.By Lorna Crozier. 2009
Poet Crozier vividly depicts her hometown of Swift Current, with its one main street, two high schools, and three beer…
parlours - where her father spent most of his evenings. She writes unflinchingly about the grief and shame caused by poverty and alcoholism, while at the heart of the book is her fierce love for her mother, Peggy. The narratives of daily life - sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking - are interspersed with prose poems. Some strong language. 2009.By Heather Summerhayes Cariou. 2006
At the age of four, Cariou's sister Pam was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis, a terminal disease of the lungs and…
pancreas marked by severe coughing and malnutrition; unable to pronounce her condition, young Pam dubs it instead "Sixtyfive Roses." Written to fulfill a deathbed promise Cariou made to write "our" story, and a promise to her mother to tell the truth, the result is an honest and gritty description of a family dealing with chronic illness. Canada Reads 2012. 2006.By Karen Lavut. 1999
Karen Lavut recounts her friendship with painter Christiane Pflug who killed herself at Easter, 1972. She celebrates the joy and…
memories left by her lost friend, and laments the fact that she chose to leave life so early on. 1999.By Dallas Williams. 1997
By Chris Czajkowski. 2003
The uplifting and often humourous story of one woman's life in the raw wilderness. The author describes her experiences as…
she builds a cabin in the wilderness and relates the complications of the "simple life" - how she breaks trails by snowshoe, encounters grizzly bears, builds a stone oven and learns to bake bread - and spotted dick. 2003.