“Scanlan doesn’t talk about union-negotiated pension plans or union-sponsored retirement planning workshops. I was fortunate to have both. Our retirees’ handbook provided many of the same pointers and it was free. In addition, an employer-paid retirement expert was always available to assist if the going got complicated. I was lucky. For retirees who didn’t have a union, How to Retire is an excellent guide.” Ron Verzuh reviews How to Retire: Retire Knowing You Can Enjoy Every Day, by Steven Scanlan (Chemainus: self-published, 2025) $17.99 / 9781989681336
“Sarah Boon’s particular scientific interest is glacial hydrology and the modelling of the formation of rivers in the unstable melting phase of glaciers. She has also done some interesting work on forest hydrology, specifically on the impact of clearcutting of snow run-off. The memoir is interspersed with interesting comments and insights into glacier formations and on their importance for understanding the impacts of climate change. The focus is, however, on what it means to be a woman scientist in Canada and on Sarah Boon’s journey through a self-destroying system.” Loÿs Maingon reviews Meltdown: The Making and Breaking of a Field Scientist, by Sarah Boon (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2025) $27.99 / 9781772127911
“Anderson’s love for being in the kitchen and garden is unmistakeably real and infectious. Interspersed with Anderson’s own poetry and sketches, I find the physicality of the book, simply existing in my proximity, to be soothing.” Jessica Poon reviews I Love You: Recipes from the Heart, by Pamela Anderson (New York: Voracious, 2024) $35 / 9780316573481
In “‘story-ish'” poems and others “where answers and hope are scarce,” an intrepid pair of inventive poets wrestle with form as they work to characterize contemporary culture. —Steven Ross Smith reviews Interposition, by Kaie Kellough (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2026) $25.00 / 9780771023729 and Your Lover Stabbed in the Streets, by David Romanda (Okotoks: Frontenac House, 2025) $22.95 / 9781997580027
“First-hand accounts are a wonderful way to experience history. These women were able to answer all sorts of questions that many of the interviewers and magazines from back in the day would never have thought to ask them, allowing Porter the privilege of discovering their stories. Though their stories always were valid, having them recorded as part of the larger narrative is an even more validating experience.” Myshara McMyn reviews Girl Gangs, Zines and Powerslides, by Natalie Porter (Toronto: ECW Press, 2025) $26.95 / 9781770417922
“Sicherman and Breit are writing from mid-life, and the retrospective view they bring is crucial to the book’s structure and its argument. The distance between then and now is what allows them to see clearly enough to name the patriarchy and the misogyny that shaped their experiences in ways they could not have articulated at thirteen or sixteen. The book moves fluidly between past and present, between the girl each woman was and the woman she is now, and this dual temporality gives Bloom its unusual emotional richness.” Selena Mercuri reviews Bloom: Letters on Girlhood, by Claire Sicherman and Nicole Breit (Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2025) $25 / 9781773861692
“Daphne Sleigh has made a good effort in addressing the Indigenous past of the region in this updated version of her book. Her preface not only expresses her delight in seeing her local history book having a new lease, but it also includes, and notes, changes in how Indigenous names are perceived since 1990 when the original book was self-published.” Trevor Marc Hughes reviews The People of the Harrison, by Daphne Sleigh (Harrison Mills: Fraser Heritage Society, 2021) (1st printing 1990) $24.95 / 9780973538519
“If the first part of the book hooked me with these bargain bites, the middle sections settled into a focus on some meatier topics. While remaining agnostic about parenting and pet ownership (he is neither a parent nor a current pet owner), there is a chapter on the costs of each, which provided fascinating reading. Always, he brings in the human element, relating conversations from folks he interviews.” Trish Bowering reviews Cheapskate in Lotusland: The Philosophy and Practice of Living Well on a Small Budget, by Steve Burgess (Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2026) $26.95 / 9781771624633
“Besides launching you on a hobby that needs only a bus pass, a big book for a press, good cardboard, and a few standard household items to start, the guide takes you through the steps from rank amateur to friend-of-the-museum-curator.” Briony Penn reviews Pressed Plants: Making a Herbarium, by Linda P. J. Lipsen, with illustrations by Derek Tan (Victoria: Royal BC Museum Publications, 2023) $19.95 / 9780772680563
“Growing up as the youngest child in a Ukrainian-Canadian, dysfunctional family in Calgary, who berated her for being overweight and forced her into being the caretaker of her mentally-ill, neglectful mother, Burrell kept up a façade of being ‘normal’ to her peers.” Cathalynn Labonté-Smith reviews the memoir Why Are You So – , by Cathy Burrell (Victoria: FriesenPress, 2024) $20.49 / 9781038321763
Exceptional debut novel portrays the horrors of the Lord’s Resistance Army insurgency in Uganda, particularly as experienced by schoolgirls abducted and indoctrinated for service to the cause.—Brett Josef Grubisic reviews We, the Kindling, by Otoniya Okot Bitek (Toronto: Alchemy by Knopf Canada, 2026) $22.00 / 9781039009301
“Hiking, in her eyes, is not just about covering distance—it is about immersion, presence, and connection. It is about stepping outside daily life and into a world that moves at a different rhythm shaped by glaciers, rivers, and the slow unfurling of alpine blooms.” Amy Tucker reviews Mountain Footsteps: Hikes in the East Kootenay of Southeastern British Columbia (4th ed.), by Janice Strong (Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2025) $35 / 9781771607414
“The fact, indeed, that Bovey writes with a refreshingly personal sense of appreciation, points towards one of the salient features of this curated exhibition—namely, the fact that just as artists may have “visual voices,” Bovey herself has a distinctive voice. Part of that, of course, is implicit in the selections she makes, but part, too, is explicit in her personal comments.” Theo Dombrowski reviews Western Voices in Canadian Art, by Patricia Bovey (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2023) $49.95 / 9780887550478
With plots of vaporous evil released from bottle captivity and a murderer seemingly on the loose, these terrific books make good on their promise of suitably ‘Boo!-level’ frights and mildly unsettling thrills. —Alison Acheson reviews The Bottle Witch of Brimley, by Linda DeMeulemeester (illustrated by Meaghan Carter) (Victoria: Orca Book Publishers, 2026) $14.95 / 9781459843523 and Do Not Go Out At Night, by François Gravel and Martine Latulippe (translated by David Warriner) (Victoria: Orca Book Publishers, 2026) $12.95 / 9781459843028
“It’s almost as if unpaid work is not, in fact, actually work. As long as parenting is purely done out of love for children, volunteering a matter of altruism, and writing an endearing hobby that few people ever succeed in, no matter how laborious or tiring, it may not qualify as work—at least, not by a bank determining whether to give you a loan, or by fellow partygoers wondering where to place you in a hierarchy.” Jessica Poon reviews Is This an Illness or an Accident? by Daniela Elza (Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2025) $24 / 9781773861630
Part pop music meditation, part memoir, a poetry-and-prose hybrid offers “an authentic glimpse into Michael Turner’s roots and perspective through a lens that only Turner can provide.” With that said, some of the author’s techniques and choices raise questions for our reviewer. —Joe Enns reviews Playlist: A Profligacy of Your Least-Expected Poems, by Michael Turner (Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2024) $20.00 / 9781772142280
“These stories of resistance need to be shared to help understand the breadth of depravity of fascism and its impact that can evolve under unchecked hate and power. Rather than “fascism” being an abstract word or slogan, it becomes visceral when told as a story using sequential art.” David Lester writes an essay telling of how, “as the creeping noose of modern-day fascism encircles us, I found myself drawing a story from 80 years ago.” Partisans: A Graphic History of Anti-Fascist Resistance, by Raymond Tyler & Paul Buhle (eds.) (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2025) $34.95 / 9781771136525
“Liz Hammond-Kaarremaa begins with a conversation about her discovery and research into the one empirical example of an ancient practice, the raising of almost but not quite domestic animals who lived in isolation to protect them from inbreeding and physical damage, animals bred to provide the weft in essential weavings.” Linda Rogers reviews The Teachings of Mutton: A Coast Salish Woolly Dog, by Liz Hammond-Kaarremaa et al (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2025) $36.95 / 9781998526024
With “roots in the tradition of West Coast poetry that sprang up in the 1970s,” a photo-illustrated volume of poems sings the wondrous nuances of nature while also reflecting on the poet’s own history. —Harold Rhenisch reviews Hawking the Surf, by Diana Hayes (Vancouver: Silver Bow Publishing, 2025) $23.95 / 9781774033890
“A Perfect Day for a Walk by the Water is an excellent example of the mix of observation, reflection, interpretation, and rich language that brings Bill’s books onto the bestseller list time after time.” Marianne Scott reviews A Perfect Day for a Walk by the Water: Exploring Vancouver’s Shores, by Bill Arnott (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2025) $24.95 / 9781834050201
