Shut Up, Canice

I’ve always had an affection for books about folks who leave civilization and venture into the wild — chalk it up to a sanitized upbringing in the suburbs, littered with a structured week full of extracurriculars of gymnastics, piano, Chinese lessons and playdates. The only field for us kids to run in was a soon-to-be…

Last year for Christmas, my good friend Jon gave me a copy of Alain de Botton’s The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. When I unwrapped it, I chuckled: I hadn’t been at my first full-time job for long, so it seemed fitting that a book should welcome me into the first years of 30 or…

Henrietta Lacks was a black woman from Baltimore who died of an aggressive cervical cancer in the 1950s. During her treatment at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins (a free hospital for blacks) and after her death, her malignant cells were taken by hospital researchers without her or her family’s consent. Researchers (not just there but everywhere) were…

Part of the reason I started this project was to read more from the authors I already know and love — Gabriel Garcia Marquez is one of my favourites, and I intend on reading everything that’s been translated from its original Spanish before the year is out. No better place to start than with one…