Literary

Feminism and traditional fashion magazines have a fists-up relationship. But smart mags like Sassy (RIP) and Bust figured out that some feminist-leaning ladies do enjoy reading about clothing beyond “10 ways to hide chubby thighs.” Still, there’s never been a like-minded magazine dedicated completely to fashion, let alone a Canadian one. Based out of Toronto, […]

Sometimes, the more unlikely the raw parts, the better the mash-up (see Nirvana and Rick Astley). But that doesn’t mean there’s going to be a love connection. This is the case of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a literary collision between Jane Austen’s beloved classic and the undead. Elizabeth Bennett and her sisters are trained […]

The Nobody is the latest graphic novel from Toronto-based cartoonist Jeff Lemire, who earned critical praise and awards for his Essex County trilogy. In The Nobody, Lemire re-imagines the classic HG Wells story The Invisible Man by setting it in a tiny Michigan fishing village. The reactions of the locals to their bizarre new resident, […]

Originally coil-bound and self-published by the authors in 2000, this photo-heavy book shows how the growth of electricity’s delivery and usage—the business of the grid—was entangled with public transit for almost 100 years of this city’s history, from 1866 to 1949. The authors offer more of an economic history than a social one. They detail […]

Michael Kupperman’s Tales Designed to Thrizzle comics are some of the most insane, laugh-out-loud hilarious things I have ever read. The New York-based cartoonist was recently praised by Conan O’Brien for having “one of the best comedy brains on the planet” in an Entertainment Weekly list of the talk-show host’s favourite things. Kupperman is not […]

It’s interesting to read previously banned literature and it’s even more satisfying when the material is an outstanding representation of a medium’s potential. Blazing Combat is a new hardcover book that collects the entire short-lived 1960s anti-war comic of the same name. The black-and-white comics were originally published by Warren Publishing in 1965-66, before American […]

The original version, Seul on est, won the 2007 Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry in French. Now English readers get to experience this excellent work with One, thanks to a translation by Jo-Anne Elder. Thibodeau searches for “the exquisite,” a life of awareness where the beauty, good, belonging and love that the world has […]

In his latest, The Sheikh’s Batmobile, Richard Poplak documents his bizarre two-year pilgrimage through the Middle East, where he investigates the fate of Western pop culture when it winds up in the Muslim world. The result is a humorous, astute and vivid account of Poplak’s misadventures. Poplak discovers the spirit of punk through an Indonesian […]

Toronto author and poet Emily Schultz excels at creating intricate, beautifully drawn worlds, encapsulated like snow globes. Her last novel, Joyland, was set in a 1983 arcade—the lives of two teenagers reflected through the videogames they’re obsessed with playing. Heaven is Small takes place at the claustrophobic Heaven Book Company, a Harlequin-style publisher in the […]