For Anyone Who Needs A Little Inspo

Hope by Terry Fox, by Barbara Adhiya

About the book: Featuring excerpts from Terry’s very own Marathon of Hope journal, Hope by Terry Fox shares the untold story of a well known hero—the goofy, resilient, and courageous 21-year-old who rallied a nation behind his mission.

In 1976, when Terry Fox was just eighteen years old, he was diagnosed with osteosarcoma and his right leg was amputated just above the knee. It quickly became his mission to help cure cancer so others would not have to endure what he had gone through. He dreamed up a Marathon of Hope—a fundraising run across Canada, from St. John’s, Newfoundland, to Victoria, British Columbia. 5,300 miles.

When he set off on April 12, 1980, Canadians were dubious. But as he continued across the country, enthusiasm grew to a frenzy. Sadly, Terry’s cancer returned, and after 143 days and 3,339 miles, he was forced to stop his Marathon of Hope. He passed away in 1981, but the nation picked up his mission where he left off, and the annual Terry Fox Run has even spread to cities around the world, raising more than $850 million to date—well over Terry’s goal of one dollar for every Canadian.

After conducting over fifty interviews with people throughout Terry’s life—ranging from his siblings, nurses, and coaches to volunteers during the Marathon of Hope—editor Barbara Adhiya discovers how Terry was able to run a marathon a day. Through their stories, passages from Terry’s marathon journal, and over 200 photos and documents, Hope by Terry Fox shows that with enough resilience, determination, humility, and support, ordinary people can do impossible things.

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Dangerous Memory: Coming of Age in the Decade of Greed, by Charlie Angus

About the book: A bold book of rage, hope, and challenge exposing how the political decisions of the 1980s continue to haunt us today.

In Dangerous Memory, renowned politician, author, and musician Charlie Angus undertakes a major rethink of the cultural and political shifts of the 1980s, an era that unleashed an unprecedented looting of the economy, the environment, and the common good that continues to haunt us today.

Expertly weaving his story within the larger narrative of the times, Angus elucidates such key events as the Chernobyl disaster, the Digital Revolution, the AIDS epidemic, the fight against South African apartheid, the rise of neoliberalism, and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

But the 1980s was also a time of resistance, creativity, and hope. In a world that stood on the brink of global nuclear annihilation, millions of people stepped up to save the planet and fight for human rights. As an idealistic eighteen-year-old, Charlie Angus quit school to play in a punk band and work with the homeless. Planting the seeds of change, he now challenges us to take action to confront widespread injustice and systemic inequity to create a better world.

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Standing at the Back Door of Happiness: And How I Unlocked It, by David Roche

About the book: Popular motivational speaker and entertainer David Roche’s latest essay collection explores the beauty found in unusual places with elegant humour and compassion.

David Roche was born with vascular malformation of the face, which he sees as an “incredible gift” that has forced him to look inside for beauty and self-worth. It has also helped him to see the beauty in others, despite their flaws, allowing him to live in a world of beautiful people. With a refreshingly good-natured outlook, Roche muses on disability, activism, religion and family.

Roche tells the personal story of his journey towards finding happiness, which culminated in his receiving the Order of Canada. Germinating in his “seriously Catholic” childhood and teenage years spent studying in a seminary to be a priest, Roche grew up adhering to doctrine, which paved the way for a “fairly seamless transition” into twelve years of devotion to the Democratic Workers Party.

Roche’s life came to a turning point when he realized that, although he had been devoted to changing the world, he didn’t know his own soul. Eventually freed by the dissolution of the Democratic Workers Party, Roche turned towards a more meaningful way of life, embracing acceptance and love.
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For the Family Historian

In Exile: Rupture, Reunion, and My Grandmother’s Secret Life, by Sadiya Ansari

About the book: In a deeply personal investigation, award-winning journalist Sadiya Ansari takes us across three continents and back a century as she seeks the truth behind a family secret. Why did her grandmother Tahira abandon her seven children to follow a man from Karachi to a tiny village in Punjab? And though she eventually left him, Tahira remained estranged from her children for nearly two decades. Who was she in those years when she was no longer a wife or mother? For Sadiya herself, uninterested in marriage and children, the question begets another: What space is available to women who defy cultural expectations?

Through her inquiry, Sadiya discovers what her daadi's life was like during that separation and she confronts difficult historical truths: the pervasiveness of child marriage, how Partition made refugees of millions of families like hers, and how the national freedoms achieved in 1947 did not extend to women’s lives. She sees the threads of this history woven through each generation after, and finds an unexpected sense of belonging in a culture that, at first blush, shuns women for wanting lives of their own.

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300 Mason Jars: Preserving History, by Joanne Thomson

About the book: A charming art book exploring universal themes of family through 300 watercolour paintings of objects "preserved" in Mason jars.

The fragmented history of one family’s hope, challenge, failure, and persistence is beautifully depicted in this book of watercolour images by artist Joanne Thomson. Combining still-life painting with visual storytelling, Thomson presents everyday artifacts—from flowers to fruits, tools to toys, and photographs to farm equipment—and places them in, on, beside, or behind a glass jar.

Carefully gathered from the artist’s family members and the natural environments where they lived, the simple objects in this collection represent the depth and complexity of daily life. Arranged thematically, the pieces explore traditional gender roles, the issue of food security in times of scarcity, renewal and hope presented by the bounty of nature, treasures passed down through generations, and the looming presence of family secrets. Beautiful to look at and infinitely fascinating to ponder over, 300 Mason Jars is a stunning addition to any art lover’s library.

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All Our Ordinary Stories: A Multigenerational Family Odyssey, by Teresa Wong

About the book: From the author of Dear Scarlet comes a graphic memoir about the obstacles one daughter faces as she attempts to connect with her immigrant parents.

Beginning with her mother's stroke in 2014, Teresa Wong takes us on a moving journey through time and place to locate the beginnings of the disconnection she feels from her parents. Through a series of stories—some epic, like her mother and father's daring escapes from communes during China's Cultural Revolution, and some banal, like her quitting Chinese school to watch Saturday morning cartoons—Wong carefully examines the cultural, historical, language, and personality barriers to intimacy in her family, seeking answers to the questions "Where did I come from?" and "Where are we going?" At the same time, she discovers how storytelling can bridge distances and help make sense of a life.

A book for children of immigrants trying to honour their parents' pasts while also making a different kind of future for themselves, All Our Ordinary Stories is poignant in its understated yet nuanced depictions of complicated family dynamics. Wong's memoir is a heartfelt exploration of identity and inheritance, as well as a testament to the transformative power of stories both told and untold.

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Fit for Foodies

Mitji-Let's Eat! Mi'kmaq Recipes from Sikniktuk, by Margaret Augustine & Dr Lauren Beck, by Patricia Bourque

About the book: An intergenerational source of wisdom and knowledge, Mitji combines a cultural history of Mi'kmaw cuisine with a practical cookbook.

The welcome call of "Mitji" can be heard by Mi'kmaw children, hungry workers, family, and friends when dinner is ready. This book, too, is an invitation to celebrate and practice Mi'kmaq foodways: the recipes passed down from one generation to the next; the way traditional foods and medicines are gathered, hunted, and cooked; and the lived experience of ancestors and Elders about how to nourish the spirit and body through Mi'kmaw culture and knowledge.

Mitji—Let's Eat! Mi'kmaq Recipes from Sikniktuk offers over 30 traditional and popular Mi'kmaq recipes, arranged seasonally—like Fish Cakes and Eel Stew in spring; Blueberry "Poor Man's Cake" and Stuffed Salmon in summer; Swiss Steak with Moose Meat and Apple Pie in fall; and Molasses Cake and Wiusey Petaqn in winter.

Each recipe is contextualized with its origins, contributor information, food stories, and detailed preparation instructions, and throughout the book are short essays on Mi'kmaw cuisine, drawing a picture of how Mi'kmaq foodways were influenced by colonization, on the one hand, and how food became and remains a significant vehicle of resistance, on the other. Whether a novice or well-seasoned cook, Mitji is a feast for the reader: a bountiful introduction to, and celebration of, Mi'kmaw cuisine.

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Good Food, Healthy Planet: Your Kitchen Companion to Simple, Practical, Sustainable Cooking, by Puneeta Chhitwal-Varma

About the book: A refreshing, relaxed guide to the occasionally overwhelming yet absolutely necessary work of cooking for ourselves and saving the planet, one dish at a time.

In this simple-to-follow guide for today’s households, food writer and climate activist Puneeta Chhitwal-Varma provides everything you need to prepare good-for-us, good-for-the-planet food. Beginning with a primer on “the big why” of eating with emissions and land-use in mind, and a comprehensive guide to stocking kitchen essentials and making the most of your pantry, Puneeta outlines the accessible, achievable framework she calls “Eating with Benefits.”

The book’s 75+ recipes are climate-conscious, mostly meat-free, low-waste, and, of course, delicious! In chapters on versatile staples, mornings, dips and condiments, toasties and snacks, small plates, mains, and sweets, you’ll find workhorse recipes designed to maximize diversity in your diet and minimize waste, as well as back-to-basics techniques like sprouting lentils, making yogurt and cooking just about any kind of dried bean you can imagine.

Learn to make Puneeta’s No Fruit Left Behind Compote, Good Mood Dressing, Sun-fermented Vegetables, Deeply Green Shakshuka, Keema Aloo Shepherd’s Pie, and many more, cooking from what you have, in-season where you live. Good Food, Healthy Planet takes a refreshing, relaxed approach to the occasionally overwhelming yet absolutely necessary work of cooking for ourselves and saving the planet, one dish at a time.

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Hearty: On Cooking, Eating, and Growing Food for Pleasure and Subsistence, by andrea bennett

About the book: Thoughtful, wide-ranging essays exploring food as a source of pleasure, practical creativity, and sustenance.

Food is the primary way andrea bennett connects with the world. They worked in the restaurant industry for a decade, and though they don’t eat much meat and can’t eat gluten, they take as much pleasure in food as Jeffrey Steingarten, Anthony Bourdain, or Guy Fieri. When they want to show someone they care, they cook them a meal.

Hearty follows bennett’s passion and curiosity into kitchens, gardens, fields, and factories, offering a compassionate and compelling perspective on food from seed to table. Combining journalism, cultural commentary, and personal reflection, Hearty dives deep into specific foods, such as chutney, carrots, and ice cream, but also explores appetite and desire in food media, the art of substitution, seed saving, and the triumphs and trials of being a home gardener, how the food system works (and doesn’t), and complex societal narratives around health and pleasure. Nuanced and non-prescriptive, Hearty is a feast that invites all food lovers to the table.

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Nice for Nature Lovers

Senescence: A Year In the Bow Valley of the Canadian Rockies, by Amal Alhomsi

About the book: A refreshingly new literary voice celebrating natural beauty, mountain landscapes, and what it means to be truly alive and connected to nature.

Senescence—defined as the gradual process of aging—takes readers on a captivating journey through the rhythmic beauty of nature. Syrian writer Amal Alhomsi's personal account of a year in Alberta's Bow Valley creates a rich tapestry of reflections. In summer, he skillfully parallels the leaf miner's toil with the work of eschatologists. Fall explores the intricate connections among texts, land, and bodies. Winter introduces muskrats and marmots, while spring unfolds the metamorphosis of moths and reflections on love. Amid the contrasts of fire and flood, Alhomsi paints a vivid portrait of life's essence. Those who dive into this evocative narrative will forge a connection with nature and the universal themes of human experience.

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Fungal: Foraging in the Urban Forest, by Ariel Gordon

About the book: Fungal is a wide-ranging collection from Ariel Gordon where she explores her fascination with all mushrooms, not just those you can eat. In these engaging essays she takes the reader through ditches and puddles in search of morels, through the hallways of a mushroom factory, down city sidewalks and beside riverbanks as she considers all things found and fungal. Along the way there are entertaining stories of the perils of mushroom identification, including mailed mushrooms that have liquefied, or terrifying thoughts of Canadian geese being fed hallucinogenic mushrooms, as well as a thoughtful analysis of the ways mushrooms knit our ecosystems together and the ways we knit our lives and communities together. Smart, funny and poetic, Gordon moves seamlessly from the natural world to the personal in these essays, examining the interconnectedness of all things and delighting in the rich variety of the world around her.

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Manomin: Caring for Ecosystems and Each Other, edited by Brittany Luby, Margaret Lehman, Andrea Bradford, Samantha Mehltretter & Jane Mariotti

About the book: Reclaiming crops and culture on Turtle Island.

Manomin, more commonly known by its English misnomer “wild rice,” is the only cereal grain native to Turtle Island (North America). Long central to Indigenous societies and diets, this complex carbohydrate is seen by the Anishinaabeg as a gift from Creator, a “spirit berry” that has allowed the Nation to flourish for generations. Manomin: Caring for Ecosystems and Each Other offers a community-engaged analysis of the under-studied grain, weaving together the voices of scholars, chefs, harvesters, engineers, poets, and artists to share the plant’s many lessons about the living relationships between all forms of creation.

Grounded in Indigenous methodologies and rendered in full colour, Manomin reveals and examines our interconnectedness through a variety of disciplines—history, food studies, ethnobotany, ecology—and forms of expression, including recipes, stories, and photos. A powerful contribution to conversations on Indigenous food security and food sovereignty, the collection explores historic uses of Manomin, contemporary challenges to Indigenous aquaculture, and future possibilities for restoring the sacred crop as a staple.
In our time of ecological crisis, Manomin teaches us how to live well in the world, sustaining our relations with each other, our food, and our waterways.

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Reading on the Water

Beneath the Surface of Things: New and Selected Essays, by Wade Davis

About the book: The essays in this collection came about during the unhurried months when one who had traveled incessantly was obliged to stay still, even as events flared on all sides in a world that never stops moving. Wade Davis brings his unique cultural perspective to such varied topics as the demonization of coca, the sacred plant of the Inca; the Great War and the birth of modernity; the British conquest of Everest; the endless conflict in the Middle East; reaching beyond climate fear and trepidation; on the meaning of the sacred. His essay, “The Unraveling of America,” first published in Rolling Stone, attracted five million readers and generated 362 million social media impressions. Media interest in the story was sustained over many weeks, with interview requests coming in from 23 countries.

The anthropological lens, as Davis demonstrates, reveals what lies beneath the surface of things, allowing us to see, and to seek, the wisdom of the middle way, a perspective of promise and hope that all of the essays in this collection aspire to convey.

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The Lives of Lake Ontario: An Environmental History, by Daniel Macfarlane

About the book: Lake Ontario has profoundly influenced the historical evolution of North America. For centuries it has enabled and enriched the societies that crowded its edges, from fertile agricultural landscapes to energy production systems to sprawling cities.

In The Lives of Lake Ontario Daniel Macfarlane details the lake’s relationship with the Indigenous nations, settler cultures, and modern countries that have occupied its shores. He examines the myriad ways Canada and the United States have used and abused this resource: through dams and canals, drinking water and sewage, trash and pollution, fish and foreign species, industry and manufacturing, urbanization and infrastructure, population growth and biodiversity loss. Serving as both bridge and buffer between the two countries, Lake Ontario came to host Canada’s largest megalopolis. Yet its transborder exploitation exacted a tremendous ecological cost, leading people to abandon the lake. Innovative regulations in the later twentieth century, such as the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreements, have partially improved Lake Ontario’s health.

Despite signs that communities are reengaging with Lake Ontario, it remains the most degraded of the Great Lakes, with new and old problems alike exacerbated by climate change. The Lives of Lake Ontario demonstrates that this lake is both remarkably resilient and uniquely vulnerable.

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Relative to Wind: On Sailing, Craft, and Community, by Phoebe Wang

About the book: In Relative to Wind, Phoebe Wang delivers a poetic rendering of her decade-long journey of learning to sail and a deep dive into what it means to be a newcomer to an old tradition. From working along­side crewmates in tempestuous conditions to becoming an avid racer and organizer to drafting a wistful love letter to a Wayfarer dinghy-while examining the loose tether between- sailing and a creative life-Wang delivers a book for sailors and would-be sailors that is thoughtful and surprising at every tack.

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Hot for History Buffs

Treaties, Lies & Promises: How the Métis and First Nations Shaped Canada, by Tom Brodbeck

About the book: An engaging, informative and essential account of how the Red River Resistance and the making of the numbered treaties are intrinsically linked. Through evocative details, journalist Tom Brodbeck brings to life pivotal events such as an armed insurrection; outdoor meetings held -29 C weather; a three-person delegation of negotiators from a remote community in Rupert's Land going toe-to-toe with Canada's most powerful politicians and First Nations chiefs negotiating their place in Canada under a dark cloud of presumed white, European superiority.

In his clear and easy-to-read prose, Tom describes the impact of these events on the development of Canada. In the span of just a few years, they laid the groundwork for the settlement of Western Canada, a period heavily influenced by Indigenous people: the Metis (French and English-speaking) and First Nations (including Anishinaabe and Swampy Cree). Together, they negotiated both the Manitoba Act and the first of the numbered treaties but the book reveals the challenges Indigenous people faced when confronting the colonial mindset of a federal government eager to populate the west, but less interested in preserving the dignity and long-term welfare of its original inhabitants.

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The Roosting Box: Rebuilding the Body after the First World War, by Kristen den Hartog

About the book: “A hospital ... is like a roosting box: a communal space that provides ideal but temporary shelter for [the] vulnerable.”

In the aftermath of the First World War, a cash register factory in the west end of Toronto was renovated to treat wounded soldiers returning from war. From 1919 to the 1940s, thousands of soldiers passed through its doors. Some spent the remainder of their lives there.

The Roosting Box is an exquisitely written history of the early years of the Christie Street Hospital and how war reshaped Canadian society. What sets it apart from other volumes is the detail about the ordinary people at the heart of the book: veterans learning to live with their injuries and a world irrevocably changed; nurses caring for patients while coming to terms with their own wartime trauma; and doctors pioneering research in prosthetics and plastic surgery or, in the case of Frederick Banting, in a treatment for diabetes.

Naming chapters after parts of the body, den Hartog chronicles injuries and treatments, and through the voices of men and women, the struggles and accomplishments of the patients and staff. The cast of characters is diverse—Black, female, Indigenous, and people with all sorts of physical and mental challenges—and their experiences, gleaned from diaries, letters, service records, genealogical research, and interviews with descendants, are surprising and illuminating.

An unusual mix of history and story, The Roosting Box offers deeply personal perspectives on healing in the aftermath of war.

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Fashioning the Beatles: The Looks that Shook the World, by Deirdre Kelly

About the book: John, Paul, George, and Ringo were more than great musicians: they were the quintessential fashion icons of one of the most exciting and memorable fashion eras of all time. From their starts in black leather through Sgt. Pepper to Nehru collars and psychedelia, the Beatles used clothing to express their individual and group identities and, especially, to grow their following.

They did it without benefit of stylists or consultants, making their own rules and changing their looks as many as five times a year to keep a few steps ahead of the crowd in the tumultuous, fashion-obsessed sixties. More than fifty years after their break-up, their style continues to animate the collections of some of the world’s leading designers, including Thom Browne, John Varvatos, Anna Sui, Tom Ford, Gucci’s Alessandro Michele and, yes, Stella McCartney. Fashioning the Beatles, the first in-depth look at their sartorial legacy, demonstrates that their inimitable style was not an incidental by-product of their fame but an integral part of their act and a key to their globe-spanning success.

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For Askers of the Big Questions

Signs of Life: Field Notes from the Frontlines of Extinction, by Sarah Cox

About the book: What’s to be done when only three spotted owls are left in Canada’s wild? When wolves eat endangered caribou, cormorants kill rare trees, and housing developments threaten a tiny frog?

Environmental journalist Sarah Cox has witnessed what happens when we drive species to the brink of extinction. In Signs of Life, she tags along with the Canadian military, Indigenous guardians, biologists, conservationists, and ordinary people who are racing to save hundreds of species before it’s too late.

Travelling across the country, Cox visits the Toronto Zoo, home of Canada’s only wildlife biobank, where scientists conserve living cells from endangered species in the event of future loss; tours Canada’s military bases, home to some of Canada’s last preserved ecosystems; and travels to Indigenous communities where land stewards are striving to restore the delicate ecological balance that has sustained people for millennia.
Through the eyes and work of individuals who are bringing species back from the precipice, Cox delivers both an urgent message and a fresh perspective on how we can protect biodiversity and begin to turn things around.

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Rethinking Free Speech, by Peter Ives

About the book: Clashes over free speech rights and wrongs haunt public debates about the state of democracy, freedom and the future. While freedom of speech is recognized as foundational to democratic society, its meaning is persistently misunderstood and distorted. Prominent commentators have built massive platforms around claims that their right to free speech is being undermined. Critics of free speech correctly see these claims as a veil for misogyny, white-supremacy, colonialism and transphobia, concluding it is a political weapon to conserve entrenched power arrangements. But is this all there is to say?

Rethinking Free Speech will change the way you think about the politics of speech and its relationship to the future of freedom and democracy in the age of social media. Political theorist Peter Ives offers a new way of thinking about the essential and increasingly contentious debates around the politics of speech. Drawing on political philosophy, including the classic arguments of JS Mill, and everyday examples, Ives takes the reader on a journey through the hotspots of today’s raging speech wars. In its bold and careful insights on the combative politics of language, Rethinking Free Speech provides a map for critically grasping these battles as they erupt in university classrooms, debates around the meaning of antisemitism, the “cancelling” of racist comedians and the proliferation of hate speech on social media. This is an original and essential guide to the perils and possibilities of communication for democracy and justice.

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Can Robots Love God and Be Saved? A Journalist Reports on Faith, by John Longhurst

About the book: A collection of two decades of columns from the Winnipeg Free Press about all kinds of religious faith. John Longhurst's journalistic reflections provoke thought and questions about faith, inviting readers to think beyond their own religions, theologies, and denominations. Why do people believe what they do? What might we learn from each other's acts of faith?

John Longhurst is the recipient of the 2021 Lieutenant-Governor's Award for the Advancement of Inter-religious Understanding in Manitoba. He has served as the director of communications for several international relief and development organizations, and continues to write for the Winnipeg Free Press and many other publications.

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For Anyone Looking to Get Back to Basics

Escape to Clayoquot Sound: Finding Home in a Wild Place, by John Dowd & Bea Dowd

About the book: A couple’s affectionate retrospective of their decade spent living off the grid, in a coastal paradise for paddlers, whale watchers, and naturalists.

Twenty years ago, two empty-nesters with a love of the outdoors stumbled upon a vacant beach house on a small island in Clayoquot Sound, part of an off-grid, ten-acre stretch nestled within a provincial park reserve. Escape to Clayoquot Sound is an extended love letter to this place, chronicling the decade John and Bea Dowd spent as year-round caretakers of the property.

Told with humour and heart in alternating voices, and lavishly illustrated throughout with stunning natural photography, this book a story of joyful solitude, of living in harmony with wildlife and respecting the forces of nature. It is about the fleeting definition of home and family, and about creating community in the wilderness. Above all, it is a tribute to an achingly beautiful, fragile place.

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Shepherd’s Sight: A Farming Life, by Barbara McLean

About the book: For 50 years, Barbara McLean has tended a flock of Border Leicester sheep on her small Ontario farm. Shepherd’s Sight shares the crises, pleasures, and challenges of farm life through the seasons. Now in her 70s, McLean faces a new problem: how much longer she can continue with the physically taxing work that is her central source of meaning and satisfaction.

Through her unsentimental gaze, we witness the highs and heartbreaks of delivering and rearing lambs, the shearing and spinning of wool, the wildlife in the woods (and occasionally in the house), and the garden produce moving from seed to harvest to table. Even after half a century on this land, McLean is still making fresh observations, and she shares them in evocative, elegant prose. As she moves through the calendar year, she also reflects on years past, offering a long view on climate, stewardship, and agriculture.

With its lyrical description and absorbing storytelling, Shepherd’s Sight offers an unforgettable glimpse of a life lived on the land.

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Going to Seed: Essays on Idleness, Nature, and Sustainable Work, by Kate Neville

About the book: An abandoned place, a disheveled person, a shabby or deteriorating state: we describe such ruin colloquially as “going to seed.” But gardeners will protest: going to seed as idle? No, plants are sending out compressed packets filled with the energy needed to sow new life. A pause from flowering gives a chance for the seeds to form. In a time of urgent environmental change, of pressing social injustice, and of ever-advancing technologies and global connections, we often respond with acceleration—a speeding up and scaling up of our strategies to counter the damage and destruction around us. But what if we take the seeds as a starting point: what might we learn about work, sustainability, and relationships on this beleaguered planet if we slowed down, stepped back, and held off?

Going to Seed explores questions of idleness, considering the labour both of humans and of the myriad other inhabitants of the world. Drawing on science, literature, poetry, and personal observation, these winding and sometimes playful essays pay attention to the exertions and activities of the other-than-human lives that are usually excluded from our built and settled spaces, asking whose work and what kinds of work might be needed for a more just future for all.

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Homing: A Quest to Care for Myself and the Earth, by Alice Irene Whittaker

About the book: A memoir about abandoning an exhausting commuter lifestyle to move to a cabin in the woods, embracing imperfection while cultivating a life of care for self and nature.

Alice Irene Whittaker was addicted to productivity, perfectionism, and discipline. She was used to rushing between multiple jobs, her demanding ballet training, and volunteering for social justice causes, making sure that every single moment of her day was accounted for. But then she finds herself as a new mother, commuting four hours a day into the city and exhausted by the state of the world and paralyzed by climate guilt and anxiety. Something has got to give. Overnight, Alice Irene and her husband decide to retreat to a cabin in the woods, in search of a new kind of life.
Surrounded by creek, meadow, and forest, Alice Irene begins a new lifelong journey of repairing her fractured relationship with both herself and the natural world. Dismantling a history of anorexia, obsessiveness, and workaholism, she decides to stop taking and start caretaking. She asks herself, "How can I take care of the Earth if I don't know how to take care of myself?"

Her quest takes her to meet a renowned economist-rancher in Colorado, to stand at the side of a runway at a sustainable fashion show in Portland, and to witness firsthand rewilding of wolves in Yellowstone. She interviews and learns from dozens of people who are building homes, growing food, making clothes, raising families, and living their lives in regenerative ways.

Braiding together her personal journey with the stories of others who are tending to the Earth, Alice Irene Whittaker has crafted a lyrical, relatable memoir about regeneration and moving from a life of despair to a life of care. Searching for the spaces between the sorrow of wildfires and the beauty of wildflowers, Homing is about returning home to our bodies, geographies, communities, and place, all as a part of nature.

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For Your Favourite Feminist

All In Her Head: How Gender Bias Harms Women's Mental Health, by Misty Pratt

About the book: This provocative, deeply personal book explores how women experience mental health care differently than men—and lays out how the system must change for women to flourish.

Why are so many women feeling anxious, stressed out, and depressed, and why are they not getting the help they need? Over the past decade, mood disorders have skyrocketed among women, who are twice as likely to be diagnosed as men. Yet in a healthcare system steeped in gender bias, women’s complaints are often dismissed, their normal emotions are pathologized, and treatments routinely fail to address the root causes of their distress. Women living at the crossroads of racial, economic, and other identities face additional barriers. How can we pinpoint what’s wrong with women’s mental health, and what needs to change?

Today, a rising movement of women is demanding better when it comes to mental health treatment. Armed with the latest science, insight from those who have been through the therapeutic system, and enough humor to lighten the load, All in Her Head provides women with hope and courage to reframe and reclaim their mental health.

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We Oughta Know: How Céline, Shania, Alanis, and Sarah Ruled the ’90s and Changed Music, by Andrea Warner

About the book: In this of-the-moment essay collection, celebrated music journalist Andrea Warner explores the ways in which Céline Dion, Shania Twain, Alanis Morissette, and Sarah McLachlan became bonafide global superstars while revolutionizing ’90s music. In an era when male-fronted musical acts dominated radio and were given serious critical consideration, these four women were reduced, mocked, and disparaged by the media and became pop culture jokes, even as their albums were topping the charts and demolishing sales records.

With empathy, humor, and reflections on her own teenaged perceptions of Céline, Shania, Alanis, and Sarah, Andrea offers us a revised and expanded edition of her 2015 book, providing a new perspective on the legacies of the four Canadian women who dominated the ’90s airwaves and influenced an entire generation of current day popstars with their voices, fashion, and advocacy. As the world is now reconsidering the treatment and reputations of key women in ’90s entertainment, We Oughta Know is definitively entering the chat.

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Crafting a Better World: Inspiration and DIY Projects for Craftivists, by Diana Weymar

About the book: From the climate crisis, to racism, to gun violence, to attacks on LGBTQ+ rights, the list of issues facing this country goes on and on, and it’s only natural to feel anxious about the state of our union. Even if you vote, march, volunteer, and donate, feelings of hopelessness (and helplessness) still creep in.

Crafting a Better World is a new kind of call to action: a guidebook for combatting fatigue and frustration with the handmade. Whether that’s sewing a welcome blanket for new immigrants, or making a batch of “vulva chocolates” to raise money at a bake sale for abortion access, this book will teach you how to transform your anxiety into action.

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Books for Journeys of the Mind

Reservations: The Pleasures and Perils of Travel, by Steve Burgess

About the book: A personal investigation into the real price of our holidays.

Travel was once a marker of sophistication. Now the tourist is just as likely to be viewed as one locust in an annihilating swarm. Tourists face tough questions: When does economic opportunity become exploitation? How do we justify the use of climate-changing jet fuel? And can we be sure our tourist dollars aren’t propping up corrupt and brutal regimes?

Now, as the world returns to travel, Steve Burgess asks: Is satisfying our own wanderlust worth the trouble it causes everyone else? Or is the tourist guilty of the charges—from voyeurism to desecration—levelled against them by everyone from environmentalists to exhausted locals to superior-feeling fellow tourists who have traded in the tour bus for “authentic experiences”?

In this smart and sharply funny interrogation of our right to roam, Burgess looks into the traveller’s soul, sharing the stories of some of his most personally-significant travels, from Rome to Tana Toraja, and looking to studies and experts around the world for insight into why we travel and how we could do it better. And throughout, he tells the story of a month in Japan—his first trip outside North America—and the whirlwind cross-cultural romance that brought him there, and took him on a journey around the country in search of wonder and maybe even love.

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Off the Tracks: A Meditation on Train Journeys in a Time of No Travel, by Pamela Mulloy

About the book: Train travel is having a renaissance. Grand old routes that had been canceled, or were moldering in neglect, have been refurbished as destinations in themselves. The Rocky Mountaineer, the Orient Express, and the Trans-Siberian Railroad run again in all their glory.

Pamela Mulloy has always loved train travel. Whether returning to the Maritimes every year with her daughter on the Ocean, or taking her family across Europe to Poland, trains have been a linchpin of her life. As COVID locked us down, Mulloy began an imaginary journey that recalled the trips she has taken, as well as those of others. Whether it was Mary Wollstonecraft traveling alone to Sweden in the late 1700s, or the incident that had Charles Dickens forever fearful of trains, or the famous actress Sarah Bernhardt trapped in her carriage in a midwestern blizzard in the 1890s, or Sir John A. Macdonald’s wife daring to cross the Rockies tied to the cowcatcher at the front of the train, the stories explore the odd mix of adventure and contemplation that travel permits.

Thoughtful, observant, and fun, Off the Tracks is the perfect blend of research and personal experience that, like a good train ride, will whisk you into another world.

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Trips That Went South: From Point A to Beware, by Jules Torti

About the book: Prepare for a high-octane joy ride—all sorts of rides actually. There are hot air balloons, camels and a very different version of the Northern Lights as seen in Amsterdam. Jules Torti recounts her ambitious, naive and hairy experiences of volunteering in the soggy Costa Rica jungle as well as working with the Jane Goodall Institute in Uganda and at a chimpanzee sanctuary in the Congo.

If you’ve wondered how trips can go sideways, Torti vulnerably shares her misadventure archives from Ecuador, Colombia, Thailand, Newfoundland, Belize, Iceland and China. The author revisits daunting days on Croatia’s harrowing Camino Krk, an evacuation in Iceland’s Vatnajökull National Park, a jungle helicopter rescue and an unusual twist on ping-pong in Bangkok. She may be grounded by her parents after sharing some of these never-told-before accounts.

Her travels over the last three decades have continually convinced several friends and family of places they NEVER want to go. Luckily she married a woman who was game for destinations that are on the no-fly list of most. Chasing birds, buses and dreams from an early age, Trips That Went South is a mash-up of travel wish lists, intestinal parasites, Camino pilgrimages, international volunteer gigs, desert breakdowns, gangplanks, tourist rip-offs, chimpanzees and beer foam premonitions. Along the meandering way, Torti digests a questionable menu of guinea pig, crocodile pizza, goat testicles, camel stew, piranha and fermented shark. Let’s not forget pad Thai in Alexandra, Egypt, with a Christmas carol soundtrack in September! The search for her next strange pizza, primate, penthouse or pint is infinite.