Since 1997 I have reviewed new books for a local newspaper. Unless otherwise indicated, that is where all of these reviews first appeared. Canadian authors are highlighted in red.

The First Five Years: Reviews, 1997-2001
The Second Five Years: Reviews, 2002-2006


Anathem by Neal Stephenson
Asylum
by André Alexis (at the Toronto Star)
Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen
Axis by Robert Charles Wilson
Bang Crunch
by Neil Smith
Black Man by Richard Morgan (at the Toronto Star)
Blackstrap Hawco by Kenneth J. Harvey (at the Toronto Star)
Bookweird by Paul Glennon
Brother Dumb by Sky Gilbert
Beautiful Children by Charles Bock
The Commons by Matthew Hughes
Coureurs de Bois by Bruce MacDonald
Dragonflies by Grant Buday (at the Toronto Star)
Duma Key by Stephen King (at the Toronto Star)
The End of the Alphabet by C. S. Richardson
Eva's Threepenny Theatre by Andrew Steinmetz
Evidence by Ian Colford (at the Toronto Star)
Exit Ghost by Philip Roth
Filaria by Brent Hayward
The Flush of Victory by Ray Smith (at the Toronto Star)
The Frankenstein Murders by Kathlyn Bradshaw
Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino
Hall of Best Knowledge by Ray Fenwick
Hitting the Charts by Leon Rooke
Horror Story by Robert Boyczuk
How the Dead Dream by Lydia Millet
Just After Sunset by Stephen King
The Killing Circle by Andrew Pyper
The Lost Highway by David Adams Richards (at the Toronto Star)
Man in the Dark by Paul Auster
Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
The Mole Chronicles by Andy Brown
The Murder Stone by Louise Penny
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
Only Revolutions by Mark Z. Danielewski
Planet Reese by Cordelia Strube
Poe's Children Ed. by Peter Straub
Real World by Natsuo Kirino
Remainder by Tom McCarthy
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Shining at the Bottom of the Sea by Stephen Marche
Stunt
by Claudia Dey
This Will All End in Tears by Joe Ollman
Thought You Were Dead by Terry Griggs
Tokyo Year Zero by David Peace
A Week of This by Nathan Whitlock
Zero Gravity by Sharon English

Black River by Kenneth Sherman
Jailbreaks: 99 Canadian Sonnets Ed. by Zachariah Wells
What if red ran out by Katia Grubisic

 

Second Opinions
brief reviews of award-winning books

The Gathering by Anne Enright
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale

 

Against Thought: Writing Iraq
The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby
Age of Betrayal by Jack Beatty
The Age of Confession by Neil Bissoondath
Angel of Vengeance by Ana Siljak
The Architecture of Happiness
by Alain de Botton
The A-Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers by Harold Schechter and David Everitt 
Bambi vs. Godzilla
by David Mamet
Black Mass by John Gray
Blood River by Tim Butcher
The Bush Tragedy by Jacob Weisberg
Canadian Literature in English by W. J. Keith (at the Toronto Star)
Censored 2009 Ed. by Peter Phillips and Andrew Roth
Cheever: A Life by Blake Bailey
Columbine by Dave Cullen
The Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen
The Dark Side by Jane Mayer
Dead Certain by Robert Draper
Death in the Haymarket by James Green
Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee
The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers by Michael Newton
The Enemy at Home by Dinesh D'Souza
The Ethical Imagination by Margaret Somerville
A Fair Country by John Ralston Saul
The Fall of the House of Bush by Craig Unger
The Great Derangement by Matt Taibbi
"Have You Seen . . . ?" by David Thomson
Hitler's Empire by Mark Mazower
How Fiction Works by James Wood
The Indian Mutiny by Julian Spilsbury
Invaders from the North by John Bell
It's Not News, It's Fark by Drew Curtis
The Lily Pond by Mike Barnes
Literary Celebrity in Canada by Lorraine York
Lost in Cyburbia by James Harkin
The Man Who Sold the World by William Kleinknecht
Marx's Das Kapital by Francis Wheen
The Mess They Made by Gwynne Dyer
Novels in Three Lines by Felix Fénéon
On the Wealth of Nations by P. J. O'Rourke
Other People's Money by Neil Forsyth with Elliot Castro
Plato's Republic by Simon Blackburn
Poe
by Peter Ackroyd
The Qur'an
by Bruce Lawrence
A Report on the Afterlife of Culture by Stephen Henighan
The Schreiber Theory by David Kipen
Selected Essays by
Clark Blaise
Shakespeare Revealed by René Weis
A Short Course in Intellectual Self-Defense by Norman Baillargeon
Shut Up He Explained by John Metcalf (at the Toronto Star)
Tar Sands by Andrew Nikiforuk
Tear Down This Myth by Will Bunch
The Three of Us by Julia Blackburn
True Crime: An American Anthology Ed. by Harold Schechter
The Truth About Canada by Mel Hurtig
Visual Shock by Michael Kammen
Web of Deceit by Barry Lando
What Is America? by Ronald Wright
Who Killed Jackie Bates? by Bill Waiser
Why Your World Is About to Get a  Whole Lot Smaller by Jeff Rubin
Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore
Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide by Glenn Kay