James King's Étienne's Alphabet Cormorant Books, 2010 Stephen Chambers has been charged with the task of presenting Étienne Morneau's memoir. (I Googled him, but he is fictional; I fell for it book, spine, and thinker.) Morneau, himself, before he died, had tried for six months to write a conventional autobiography, but he
Rabindranath Maharaj's The Amazing Absorbing Boy Knopf, 2010 "Useless! Completely kissmeass useless nowhereian." That's how Uncle Boysie describes Samuel's father. "Your father was a big inventor in Trinidad, you know...[b]ut the only thing he invent was a scheme to get out of the island." But talk of his father's neemakararam
Farzana Doctor's Stealing Nasreen Inanna Publications, 2007 This debut novel opens with an introduction to Shaffiq, a member of the cleaning staff, working the night shift, pulling a photograph torn in two from the garbage can he is emptying. He is fascinated by "clues and curiosities", shares them with his
Margaret Goodfellow and Phil Goodfellow's A Guidebook to Contemporary Architecture in Toronto Douglas&McIntyre, 2010 It's perfectly pocket-sized and so it should be. It's just the book that you want to pop in there when the sun is shining and you want to go exploring. Lest you worry that this
Toronto: An Illustrated History of Its First 12,000 Years Ed. Ronald F. Williamson James Lorimer & Company (2008) Yes, that's right: 12,000 years. So the city that you recognize from tramping the pavement these days doesn't even get going until 2/3 of the way into the book. Which makes this
