Blues Brothers’ raucous romp from comedy clubs to silver screen chronicled in new book

It made little sense when, on April 22, 1978, John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd — two of the most popular comedians on television — ditched the gags that made them famous, gussied themselves up in black suits and ties and sang the blues to fill three minutes of airtime.

Ben Johnson biography uncovers untold story behind steroid scandal

Newly uncovered documentation sparked a crucial question for author Mary Ormsby: Was Ben Johnson denied due process in Seoul?

While researching her new book, "World's Fastest Man: The Incredible Life of Ben Johnson," released on Tuesday by Sutherland House Books, Ormsby unearthed details that led her to consider a new perspective on Johnson's story.

“We could probably tell his story in a way that would correct the historical record and shed new context on his treatment,” she said. “Maybe make us think differently about his particular case and doping in general, and that was kind of the genesis of the book.

“Also asking the question, is it possible to railroad a guilty guy?”

In Conversation: Chimwemwe Undi

Chimwemwe Undi (Imalka Nilmalgoda photo) Chimwemwe Undi is a poet, editor and lawyer. She is the 2023-24 Winnipeg Poet Laureate and in 2022, won the John Hirsch Emerging Writer Award at the Manitoba Book Awards. Her first book, Scientific Marvel, published by Toronto’s House of Anansi Press, will launch April 16 at McNally Robinson Booksellers’ Grant Park location. Charlene Diehl, director of the Winnipeg International Writers Festival, will host the event. Free Press: The jacket copy for Scientific Marvel says that its poems “consider what is left out from the history and ongoing realities of Winnipeg, Manitoba.” Can you unpack […]

George McWhirter sole Canadian shortlisted for Griffin Poetry Prize

TORONTO - Only one Canadian has made the short list for the Griffin Poetry Prize, a prestigious literary award that until recently had a separate purse just for homegrown talent.

Irish-Canadian poet George McWhirter made the list for "Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence," his translation of works by Homero Aridjis, originally written in Spanish.

Should he win June 5, McWhirter would receive 60 per cent of the $130,000 prize, while Aridjis would receive 40 per cent.

Others on the short list include "A Crash Course in Molotov Cocktails," translated by Amelia Glaser of the U.S. and Yuliya Ilchuk of Ukraine, from the original Ukrainian by Halyna Kruk.

Everett’s thrilling new novel offers Jim’s perspective on adventures with Huck Finn

Percival Everett’s James is an astonishing literary novel, wrenching and hilarious by turns, that is difficult to pin down: it is part historical fiction, part satire, part comedy, part slave narrative and fully engaging.

Everett, a distinguished professor of English at the University of Southern California, has written more than 20 books, has won or been a finalist for multiple literary awards, and his 2001 novel Erasure was the inspiration for the recent movie American Fiction.

James is conceived as a retelling of Mark Twain’s classic novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In the acknowledgements for James, Everett credits Twain’s “humor and humanity,” and it is these aspects of Twain’s work that Everett adeptly expands upon.

Huckleberry Finn has frequently attracted controversy and even been banned for its portrayal of the enslaved African-American character, Jim, and the novel’s frequent use of the n-word to describe him. However, on closer read, within the constraints of its time the book champions racial equality. In this spirit, Everett’s James gives the floor to Jim, and we see Huck and Jim’s travels down the Mississippi River through Jim’s keenly observant eyes.

Alaskan vampyr murder mystery a raw, creepy police procedural

The murder of a 15-year-old boy whose throat was ripped out and body drained of blood is so obvious that it hardly seems worth the while to bring police detective Barbara Atkins all the way to the remote town of Deadhart in Alaska — the murderer is vampyr.

Obvious, perhaps, but Atkins is a meticulous cop.

And as Dr. Barbara Atkins, from the Forensic Vampyr Anthropology Department — The Fang Doc — only she can order a cull of the vampyr colony occupying an old mining site deep in the woods in northern Alaska, where nights are long and daylight is short.

C. J. Tudor’sseventh novel, The Gathering, is yet another in almost limitless variations on novels about vampires, but it’s most definitely a police procedural, and a darned good one.

Gwynne Dyer canvasses climate scientists on the path forward in urgent new collection

Hottest year of the last 2,000? 2023. Top 10 hottest years? All since 2012.

While many of the loudest voices yell “axe the tax,” Earth gets hotter and hotter, and people in areas such as Africa’s dry Sahel region and low-lying Bangladesh suffer more and more. We now have more carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere than at any time in the last 20 million years. The pandemic cut our CO2 by only 7 per cent and by the end of 2020, we were back to our normal, troubling emission levels.

Gwynne Dyer’s 2008 book Climate Wars warned of the foreseeable disasters associated with global warming. Sixteen years later, with governments making precious little progress in reducing greenhouse gases (GHGs), Intervention Earth takes a new tack as Dyer interviews over 100 scientists about possible interventions — not solutions, just interventions.

Dyer ponders both a “stabilized Earth” scenario and a “hothouse Earth,” the latter probably involving a huge die-back of humans. One of his interviewees reminds us that climate models all underpredicted the speed of glacial melting. And it’s worth remembering that the meltwater from our own Lake Agassiz raised global sea levels by 1-2 metres.

Vulnerable women at core of rapid-fire stories

There aren’t a lot of contented people in Danila Botha’s new short-story collection, Things That Cause Inappropriate Happiness. There are, instead, a lot of young women who agonize about their bodies, their artistry, their ambitions, their disappointments and their relationships.

Each one of these characters does so in the course of just a few short pages, making most of the 32 stories in this collection compelling, highly readable and frequently relatable, albeit somewhat redundant.

Botha has published two previous short-story collections as well as the novel Too Much on the Inside, which was recently optioned as a film. Most of the stories in this newest collection were previously published in literary journals, and the title story was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2023.

Originally from South Africa, Botha has lived in Israel, Nova Scotia and now Toronto, and many of her stories are impacted by or set in those realities.

Books on artificial intelligence, space law shortlisted for Donner Prize

TORONTO – Books on artificial intelligence, space law and wrongful convictions are among the works shortlisted for the $60,000 Donner Prize, which recognizes the best public policy book by a Canadian. Benjamin Alarie is a finalist for “The Legal Singularity: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Law Radically Better,” which jurors call “important and timely.” Also in the running are Michael Byers and Aaron Boley for “Who Owns Outer Space? International Law, Astrophysics, and the Sustainable Development of Space,” which jurors say provides a road map for Canadian lawmakers. University of Toronto law professor Kent Roach appears at a Senate national […]

Posthumous memoir by Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny to be published Oct. 22

NEW YORK (AP) — A memoir Alexei Navalny began working on in 2020 will be published this fall. “Patriot,” which publisher Alfred A. Knopf is calling the late Russian opposition leader’s “final letter to the world,” will come out Oct. 22. Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, said in a statement released Thursday by the publisher, “This book is a testament not only to Alexei’s life, but to his unwavering commitment to the fight against dictatorship—a fight he gave everything for, including his life. Through its pages, readers will come to know the man I loved deeply—a man of profound integrity and […]