I really enjoyed it. I’m a big fan of Patrick Radden Keefe’s because I find him to be such a thoughtful, smart writer. I highly recommend this one.

A photograph of the North American paperback edition of Joanna Pocock’s memoir Greyhound. The black and white photo in the cover features an old, decrepit motel sign in front of a large bush and what might be a wasteland.

I just started this one, too, albeit the North American edition.

A photograph of the British hardcover edition of Patrick Radden Keefe’s newest book about the brief life and tragic death of Zac Brettler, whose teenage antics turned dead serious when he got mixed up with a bunch of gangland thugs, keen to liberate him from millions of British pounds he didn’t really have. I will always read anything Keefe writes. His brilliant analysis and storytelling are, as usual, wide-ranging yet exacting, as he manages to distill a larger world of shady finance and law enforcement incompetence into a grim consequence for one (highly relatable) family; ultimately, the consequences are bad for society generally, if governments continue to allow avarice & violence, rather than justice and equity, to run riot in our countries.

Not just the tragic story of a teenager mixed up with very bad people, Keefe’s brilliant London Falling explains & exposes the corrupt, often violent world of a burgeoning London-centred oligarchy, police (wilful?) incompetence, & government (collusion?) indifference.💡📚💙

A photograph of the North American hardcover edition of Gisele Pelicot’s memoir A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides. I had the great good fortune to attend an interview she had with Canadian journalist Anna Maria Tremonti, herself a survivor of intimate partner violence, to launch the memoir here in Toronto. Gisele Pelicot’s steadfast refusal to carry the shame for having been raped has resonated worldwide, and I will always be grateful to her for her courageous stance in the face of so much misogyny, fear, and ignorance. Bravo Gisele. Thank you.

The decision Gisele Pelicot made to open up her most private life to the world in order to refuse to carry the shame her rapists tried to force upon her required extraordinary courage, wisdom, & self-respect. She is a beacon of hope & an example of strength & integrity to me & millions of others.💡📚💙

A photograph of today’s page in my 2026 Book Lover’s Year page-a-day calendar (the library in the Nova Scotia Provincial Legislature in Halifax). Shelfies, book recommendations, quotes by authors, quotes from books, quites about books … it’s a nice way to start the day. The calendar sits atop my radio in my bathroom.

I am loving this 2026 page-a-day calendar published by Hachette. It’s called A Book Lover’s Year. Today’s page is a shelfie from the library in the Nova Scotia Provincial Legislature in Halifax. Wonderful. 📚💙

A photograph of my not-long-enough denim clad legs mimicking the long naked legs on the cover photograph of the paperback New York Review of Books edition of Gwendoline Riley’s new novel The Palm House. Also, my planters in the background need cleaning. Anyway, I loved this novel and Riley’s spare, succinct writing. Highly recommended (Clare Clark’s review in the Guardian is worth reading, if you’re uncertain).

The Palm House offers exquisitely written vignettes of ordinary life, its tragedies & disappointments, delivered with poignancy & wonderfully dry humour. The story focuses on Laura & Putnam who, despite being of different generations & experiences, find solace & friendship with one another. 🖋️📚💙

One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night by Christopher Brookmyre had me ugly crying with laughter on a train to Ottawa once. Jenny Lawson does that to me too, the judgement of the general public be damned.

1. The Palm House by Gwendoline Riley
2. Beasts of the Sea by Iida Turpeinen
3. A Hymn to Life by Gisele Pelicot
4. Tata by Valerie Perrin

📚💙

A photograph of the North American NYRB paperback edition of Gwendoline Riley’s new novel The Palm House rested on my denim-clad legs which are attempting to mirror the image of the naked legs on the cover of the book. Mine aren’t quite long enough for an entirely successful mimicry …

A photograph of the North American hardcover edition of Iida Turpeinen’s debut novel, Beasts of the Sea. The cover features a detail of an illustration depicting the shipwreck of one of Danish-Russian explorer Vitus Bering’s ships on the Aleutian Islands in 1741. It was on this expedition that Georg Steller “discovered” the Steller Sea Cow (a drawing of which overlays the painting on the cover) and, in his enthusiasm and the hunger of his shipmates and the explorers (exploiters) that followed, drove the creature to extinction. Not only was the Steller Sea Cow destroyed, but hundreds of other species were driven to extinction by the rapacious greed and acquisitiveness of colonisers and scientists. Turpeinen’s novel acts as an introduction to the causes of this devastation, which continues today. We don’t even really know how much of our world we have lost, all in the name of ego and power and money. Infuriating, informative, and well worth reading.

Finnish author Turpeinen’s prize-winning first novel is a devastating look at humanity’s relentless, greedy push toward “progress” & scientific understanding at the expense of the very wonders of nature we obsessively exploit & examine. The extent of our destruction is staggering. 🖋️📚💙

A photograph of the North American paperback edition of The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann. As infuriating as the misadventures of arrogant imperialist explorers can be, Grann makes the story of Percy Fawcett‘s quest for immortality into a fascinating character study, bringing his grisly, manic tramps through the jungle to often horrifying life. The story is further enriched by all the events happening alongside the decades of Fawcett’s career: technological advancements, rivalries, WWI, changes in attitude toward indigenous cultures and the collection of ancient artefacts. Even more eye-opening is the juxtaposition of a early 20th century rainforest teeming with dangerous life with the present-day bristling, burnt expanses of the same forest cleared to make way for cattle and palm oil farms. Grann‘s conclusion, having gone to the jungle to seek for himself Fawcett’s fate, is poignant, satisfying, and tragic - highly recommended reading.

In The Lost City of Z, Grann deftly spins the story of Victorian explorer Percy Fawcett‘s ultimately doomed search for a fabled Amazonian city. Full of arrogant imperialist adventures, harrowing tests of endurance through impenetrable jungle, SO MANY INSECTS, & the dangers of mad obsession. 💡📚💙

A photograph of the North American hardcover edition of Tana French’s newest novel The Keeper. I will always read anything Tana French writes. I would read her grocery lists. Her novels are full and complex, with interesting, complicated characters who have fascinating interior lives. This has been a great series, but her Dublin Murder Squad series is also terrific. If you’ve never read her, do. I can’t wait to see what she does next.

The 3rd (& last) in Tana French’s Cal Hooper series, The Keeper explores environmental crime, greed, & the secret alliances & rivalries that guide & propel (& sometimes end) life in a small Irish village. As always, the characters she creates are half the fun. Highly recommended, always. ⚡️📚💙

A photograph of the colourful cover of the paperback edition of Scottish author Ian Green’s biopunk thriller Extremophile, published by Head of Zeus. It is eye-wateringly violent (the bad guys are very, very bad); the good guys are almost as bad as the bad guys, but in the best possible way. I enjoyed the characters and the story, and the hope Green creates out of the grit and despair feels like encouragement, which is nice on days when hope seems like an exercise in futility.

Extremophile (an organism that thrives in extreme environments) is a gritty dystopian biopunk novel about a violent, miserable future on a planet that continues to be gutted by billionaires & corporations, but on which the hope for something better still survives & continues to fight back. 🪐📚💙

A photograph of the North American hardcover edition of Sophie Gilbert’s Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves. For an excellent, comprehensive review of the book, please read Dayna Tortorici’s New Yorker review from June 9, 2025: “Toxic: What the Pop Culture of the Two-thousands Did to Millenial Women.” I haven’t yet figured out how to gift the article, so I apologise for that. It’s worth reading, if you are able. This is coming out in paperback very soon (April 28th). I thought it was a fascinating, horrifying catalogue of the ways in which the belittlement, humiliation, and abuse of women has become pervasive in our culture. So much of it is due to the influence of the aesthetics and attitudes of hardcore porn, as Gilbert so effectively points out. The fight for women’s basic rights continues, all over the world; as difficult as it is to look at this period of “manosphere” backlash (at least, I find it difficult … it seems I may have been living under a rock for the last 30 years … ), it’s important to look at it. And Gilbert offers a glimmer of hope, which helps.

I often wonder about the virulent misogyny I am seeing & experiencing more & more often. Gilbert’s examination of cultural misogyny is eye-opening: I had no idea violent hardcore porn was so insidiously central to so much of North American pop culture. Gilbert makes it horrifyingly obvious. 💡📚💙

Anti-Intellectualism Has a Hidden Target Though it’s increasingly not so hidden anymore

Take, for instance, fields long dominated by women —gender studies & the humanities & social sciences, the disciplines most frequently written off as ‘useless’, or of ‘no value to society’. Unsurprisingly,these are now among the most aggressively targeted.
thenoosphere.substack.com/p/anti-intel...

A photograph of the advance reading copy of Valerie Perrin’s new novel Tata, sitting next to my coffee and my mittens (will Spring ever come?) on the lunch room table at work. Perrin is one of my favourite authors, and her latest release (coming to a Canadian independent bookseller near you on July 3rd) might just be my favourite (Fresh Water for Flowers is wonderful too). Her characters are always intriguing and full of life, and her stories full of compassion and a deep love of people and living and the small moments that build a life. Highly recommended.

I loved this giant novel. The plot is delightfully winding & digressive, thrilling in spots, & the characters feel like real, complex people. Agnes learns that her deceased aunt seems to have just died again, & she needs to identify the body. Family secrets are exposed, loves are lost & found. 🖋️📚💙

A photograph of the North American hardcover edition of Sarah Crossan’s new young adult novel Where the Heart Should Be. I didn’t plan it this way, but it was an appropriate story for St. Patrick’s Day. Although the verse format seems to scare people off (at least it does in my shop), it’s beautifully readable: the silences, the punctuation, the section titles allow the reader to bring their own experience and imagination into the story, while also gaining an understanding of what it must have been like to live through such horrors. I’ve rarely read something so seemingly spare and simple that carries so much information and feeling; and she doesn’t sugar-coat the devastation and cruelty of the Great Famine. The characters are complex and well-rounded, and the story propels the reader forward. Highly recommended.

Sarah Crossan manages, in her recently published young adult novel to explain the reasons behind the mid-19th century Irish famine, show what it was like to live through it, & give the reader a charming love story. All at the same time. And she does it in (non-rhyming) verse, for heaven’s sake. 🖋️📚💙🍀

A photograph of the cover of the North American paperback edition of Stolen by Ann-Helen Laestadius (translated by Rachel Willson-Broyles). In the upper right-hand corner of the cover is one of those annoying blue “stickers” informing us that the book has been made into a major Netflix film. Good for Laestadius, but I find those stickers thoroughly obnoxious. Anyway, my aesthetic pet (petty) peeves aside, it’s a very good, well-plotted novel which tells a number of important stories about an indigenous people (and their reindeer!) about whom I knew next to nothing. There are some trigger warnings: cruelty to animals, suicide. Still, it’s very much worth reading.

Stolen is a compelling, thriller-type novel about the discrimination & oppression faced by the Sami people in rural Sweden. Like our indigenous peoples in Canada, the Sami face a myriad of challenges: racism, violence, cultural genocide, encroaching climate change, & a disappearing way of life. 🖋️📚💙

A photograph of the North American edition of the rediscovered and freshly translated (Philip Boehm) novel Berlin Shuffle by Jewish-German author Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz. The novel was originally published in Norway in 1937 when Boschwitz was just 22 years old. He and his mother had fled Germany in 1935 after his uncle was murdered in the street for having opposed the Nazi’s anti-semitic Nuremberg laws. The two of them ended up in Britain in 1939 and, once the war began, were interned at a camp on the Isle of Man as enemy aliens. They were then shipped off to Australia in 1940 and interned in New South Wales. He was finally freed and allowed to return to the UK in 1942, but the troop ship he was on was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine. He was 27 years old.

Prescient in its day, Boschwitz’s rediscovered & newly translated 1937 novel about beggars, veterans, & prostitutes hustling to survive in Weimar Berlin continues to be relevant: desperate citizens with nothing left to lose will cling to any hope they can find, even a cruel & destructive one. 🖋️📚💙

A photograph of the hardcover North American edition of Alex von Tunzelmann’s delightful book about the rise and fall of 12 statues of so-called Great Men (a kind of who’s-who of genocidal/colonial lunatics). Very satisfying to read: a smart, funny questioning of the value of erecting these things in the first place, and the necessity of pulling them down. She also offers up suggestions for more democratic and meaningful ways of commemorating people and events (and what sort of people and events might be more deserving commemoration).

In the stories of 12 “Great Man” statues, from erection to destruction, Von Tunzelmann gives us an entertaining & well-researched argument for putting an end to this misguided, even silly custom of commemoration. Highly recommended. 💡📚💙

The covers of three books. Left to right: Gandolfini: Jim, Tony, and the life of a legend, about the late Sopranos actor. The cover shows Gandolfini looking shy, peering offscreen with one unobstructed eye and another that peeks out between the fingers of his right hand. CENTER: The cover of Cinema Her Way, a coffee table book by Marya E. Gates about female directors. On the cover is actress Michelle Rodriguez as the boxer heroine of Karyn Kusama's sports drama Girlfight, about a woman boxer. RIGHT David Hockney's painting collection The Arrival of Spring in Normandy, showing a painting of a verdant field. In the background of the field is green grass. in the upper foreground are the branches of a tree sprouting white, cottony buds.

A screenshot of the pre-orders section at mzs.press. Three screenshots of books that have not yet been released. I Am The Night, Daniel Dockery's book about Batman the Brave and the Bold, has a silhouette of Batman stretching from the top to the bottom of the cover, with the title of the book and a nighttime Gotham skyline circumscribed by the borders of the Batman silhouette. CENTER The cover of The Ring Cycle, Matt Zoller Seitz and Odie Henderson's book on the Rocky and Creed films. The cover is white except for a pair of black boxing gloves floating there RIGHT The cover of Documentary Now!, the 600-page, 7-pound coffee table book celebrating the aforementioned IFC Channel series parodying classic documentaries.

Screenshot of three books carried at mzs.press arts bookstore: LEFT: Cover of Lead Sister, a biography of Karen Carpenter, featuring a closeup of Carpenter playing and singing with The Carpenters. CENTER: The cover of Anthony Hopkins' We Did OK, Kid, a memoir of his life and career. On the cover is Hopkins in closeup as he looks presently, narrowed blue eyes looking directly at the spectator. RIGHT: Cover of Louis Armstrong In His Own Words, a collection of the bandleader's correspondence. The cover image is a photograph of a probably fortysomething Armstrong seated at the wooden desk in his office where he often wrote letters.

Screenshot of the covers of 3 books carried at mzs.press Arts Bookstore. LEFT: The cover of Gotham City Cocktails, a book of mixed drink recipes inspired by Batman. Art deco-style flowing border lines flow around and around the interior of the dust jacket. At the center are drawings of two tall cocktail glasses and between them, a shot glass and a tumbler with a sword-pierced cherry in it. CENTER: The cover of Downton Abbey Afternoon Tea Cookbook. Green cover, white writing and graphics. The central image is a teapot with stem lines coming out of it, and at the pot's base, a teacup and saucer and a separate plate of biscuits. RIGHT: Bob's Burgers "The Re-Recipe Box," a set of recipe cards inspired by the joke hamburger names featured on the small board at the front of Bob's joint. Red sides with small graphics, cover image of the restaurant.

Greetings, new friends! You may know me as an author, a prolific Bluesky poster and 4th place finisher on So You Call That Dancing? But you might not know that my partner Judith (@mzpress) and I have an online arts bookstore that's growing every day. Full inventory here: mzs.press/EVERYTHING-W...

A photograph of the North American hardcover edition of Elisa Shua Dusapin’s new novel The Old Fire. It sits between a radio and a watering can in my kitchen. I have been thinking about it since I finished it: yet another book about family dysfunction and alienation toward which I seem to be gravitating these days. It’s a quiet book, not much of a plot, thoughtful, engaging, poignant.

French-Korean author Dusapin packs so much into this slim, deftly-translated novel: how to live with family you love but don’t like; coming to terms with childhood memories that might not be accurate; filling silences; going home again; finding your voice at the possible expense of others. 🖋️📚💙

A photograph of the North American hardcover edition of Mark Haddon’s memoir, Leaving Home. The book is illustrated throughout with Haddon’s remarkable art, family photographs, and nostalgia-inducing diagrams and reproductions of magazine articles and other meaningful objects.

Mark Haddon’s memoir left me heartbroken-but-laughing, aghast with recognition but grateful that my childhood wasn’t THAT bad, & deeply envious of the author’s awesome multi-disciplinary talent. His artwork is as clever, compassionate, & sometimes as wryly funny as his writing.💡📚💙

I’m about halfway through Mark Haddon’s latest, Leaving Home. I just finished Sarah Perry’s beautiful Death of an Ordinary Man. The memoirs describe complicated & familiar parent-child relationships & elder care situations, both (so far) are achingly honest & compassionate.

A photograph of the British paperback edition of Sarah Perry’s memoir about her father-in-law David’s death, Death of an Ordinary Man. As a Canadian, it was interesting to see the resemblances between the NHS and our own health care system, how both seem to be suffocating under an increasingly unmanageable and bewildering bureaucracy. In spite of this, the people caring for David are highly competent, kind, and helpful. It’s a beautiful book, highly recommended, and a good reminder that it’s later than you think.

As the caregiver for my elderly parents, Sarah Perry’s memoir about her father-in-law’s rapid decline & death after an unexpected cancer diagnosis felt familiar & reassuring. With striking candour & compassion, she reveals the extraordinary that exists within the ordinary, for all of us.💡📚💙

I kept worrying that the story would veer into “schtick,” but it never did. I really enjoyed her writing, and had so much fun reading it. If you get a copy, do let me know how you liked it. 😊

A photograph of the North American edition of Madeline Cash‘s debut novel Lost Lambs. In the lower left-hand corner of the ivory-coloured cover, under the title and author name written in a child-like font as though with a crayon, is a drawing of the head and shoulders of a young girl wearing red, reacting to a gnat flying near her head.

Cash’s debut novel Lost Lambs is absolutely (absurdly) infested with hilarious family dysfunction, teenage angst, midlife crises, & characters who are not (or, sometimes, who really, really are) what they seem. And gnats. A funny, light read that felt like a good antidote for current events. 🖋️📚💙

A photograph of the North American hardcover edition of science and environmental journalist Laura Poppick’s new book Strata: Stories From Deep Time. What I took from reading this very accessible and interesting book can best be summarised by Poppick herself: “It’s this visceral tangibility of deep time that grounds me most when I feel pummeled by the instability of the present. So much and so little has changed since the Mesozoic lake lapped in the wind of that hothouse world.” (p. 225).

Poppick’s very readable book about the history of the Earth, learned from studying strata formations, is a nice reprieve from the current timeline, although this branch of geology also serves to teach us about the importance of larger earth systems, & warn us that we disrupt them at our peril. 💡📚💙

A photograph of the 2014 Kiepenheuer & Witsch paperback German language edition of Erich Maria Remarque’s Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front). A brilliant work in its own right, it’s also a fitting follow-up to Roth’s change-of-empire novel, The Radetzky March, in which the horror of modern warfare is created out of the arrogance and folly of a morally decaying empire.

There’s nothing new to say about an anti-war classic like All Quiet on the Western Front. Banned & burned by the Nazis in 1933, it remains vital, enraging, tragic, &, sadly, relevant; a generation of hopeful & promising youth lost to the hubris & ignorance of old men. 🖋️📚💙📚🇩🇪