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


8 x 10 by Michael Turner
Anathem by Neal Stephenson
Asylum
by André Alexis
Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen
Automatic World by Struan Sinclair
Axis by Robert Charles Wilson
Bang Crunch
by Neil Smith
Black Man by Richard Morgan
Blackstrap Hawco by Kenneth J. Harvey
Boldface Names by Shinan Govani
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
Dance With Snakes by Horacio Castellanos Moya
The Death of Bunny Munro by Nick Cave
Dragonflies by Grant Buday
Duma Key by Stephen King
The End of the Alphabet by C. S. Richardson
Eva's Threepenny Theatre by Andrew Steinmetz
Evidence by Ian Colford
Exit Ghost by Philip Roth
Fall by Colin McAdam
February by Lisa Moore
Filaria by Brent Hayward
Fishing for Bacon by Michael Davie
The Flush of Victory by Ray Smith
The Frankenstein Murders by Kathlyn Bradshaw
Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino
Hall of Best Knowledge by Ray Fenwick
Heaven Is Small by Emily Schultz
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
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
Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk
Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 by Tim Hamilton
Real World by Natsuo Kirino
Remainder by Tom McCarthy
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Shining at the Bottom of the Sea by Stephen Marche
Stripmalling by Jon Paul Fiorentino
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
The Essential Don Coles Ed. by Robyn Sarah
The Essential George Johnston Ed. by Robyn Sarah
The Essential P. K. Page Ed. by Arlene Lampert and Théa Gray
Jailbreaks: 99 Canadian Sonnets Ed. by Zachariah Wells
Pure Product by Jason Guriel
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
Ayn Rand and the World She Made by Anne C. Heller
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
Carbon Shift Ed by Thomas Homer-Dixon
Censored 2009 Ed. by Peter Phillips and Andrew Roth
Cheap by Ellen Ruppel Shell
Cheever: A Life by Blake Bailey
Columbine by Dave Cullen
The Crimes of Paris by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler
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
The Devil's Gentleman by Harold Schechter
Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee
Empire of Illusion by Chris Hedges
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
Lost in the Meritocracy by Walter Kirn
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
The Sheikh's Batmobile by
Richard Poplak
A Short Course in Intellectual Self-Defense by Norman Baillargeon
Shut Up He Explained by John Metcalf
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
Vanished Smile by R. A. Scotti
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
You Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier
Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore
Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide by Glenn Kay