Madness, Betrayal and the Lash ~ Stephen R. Bown
Captain George Vancouver doesn’t seem to have been a very likeable guy (see the title) but Stephen R. Bown’s account of Vancouver’s life and his critical voyage proves his importance to Canadian and British history. Bown portrays a fascinating period on North America’s Pacific Coast; he does a wonderful job of explaining the conflicts that ensued between Native, English and Spanish interests and how Vancouver was in the centre of it all. I remember Canadian history being as dull as dishwater but it’s brought to life in this book.

Bayou of Pigs ~ Stewart Bell
This is the story of a small country that I had never heard of (Dominica, not to be mistaken with the island of Dominica). The early 1980s was a time of political upheaval throughout the Caribbean and allowed a shady American mercenary and a prominent Canadian white supremacist to plot the overthrow of Dominica and to install a puppet regime that would allow them to begin exploit the island as they saw fit. What’s even more incredible is that they allied themselves with extreme Rastafarians influenced by the Black Power movement! Stewart Bell has discovered a fascinating little known piece of history and spun it into an intriguing book that is well worth reading.

The World Without Us ~ Alan Weisman<br> What would happen to the earth if humans suddenly ceased to exist? It’s an intriguing premise and Alan Weisman does an excellent job exploring it. Talking to engineers, biologists and other experts, Weisman fascinates us with speculation as to the fate of plant life, animals and buildings. He even finds unique places such as the de-militarized zones of Cypress and Korea with no human habitation to get a real example of what happens when humans disappear.

Tunnels ~ Roderick Gordon & Brian Williams
Will Burrows is a loner with a fascination for digging tunnels that he shares with his historian father. It’s an innocent enough hobby until he stumbles upon a hidden underworld society (picture The Secret World of Og with none of the levity and a lot more terror). The authors have written a compelling thriller for kids that works just as well as a subterranean thriller for adults.

The Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming ~ Lemony Snicket
Lemony Snicket has created a true modern Holiday classic. I use the term “Holiday” not for the sake of being PC but for the fact that it’s a Hanukah book masquerading as a Christmas one (look at the subtitle). Illustrator Lisa Brown brings our beloved latke to life as he runs through a wintry village confronting those who can not comprehend his faith or Hanukah. This book begs to be read aloud, it’s filled with wit and humour for adults and children and works for both Christmas and Hanukah.

Holidays on Ice ~ David Sedaris
This has always been one of my favourite Sedaris titles and certainly one of the funniest Christmas books ever written. It has now been updated and turned into an even better book with the addition of six new stories, one of which (Six to Eight Black Men) is even better than any of the original stories and worth the price of the book alone.

Stuff White People Like ~ Christian Lander
This book is hilarious until you realize how painfully accurate it is. A random flip through it had me chuckling at all those other silly “whiteys” and how brilliantly Christian Lander mocks them, but then came the fateful page that hit too close to home followed by many more. Whether you’re a white person not afraid to laugh at yourself or just white-curious, this book is worth a read.

Crooked Little Vein ~ Warren Ellis
If Hunter S. Thompson and Chuck Palahniuk had teamed up to write a mystery novel they might have created something similar to this brilliant piece of fiction. Our narrator is your typical down and out private investigator with the world’s worst luck, and that’s before a heroin addicted US Secretary of State shows up at his office. Next thing he knows, our hero is off on a cross country odyssey in search of a secret backup constitution. Warren Ellis has created a witty, depraved and highly entertaining little novel.

Shantaram ~ Gregory David Roberts
This is one of the most compelling and entertaining novels I’ve read in some time, the size is daunting but Shantaram had me entranced within the first few pages. The author has created an epic fictionalized page turner out of his own life; after escaping prison in Australia he flees to Bombay and quickly falls in love with the chaos of the city and its inhabitants. This is a novel of the slums and the criminal underworld with a little bit of Bollywood and the Afghan Soviet war thrown in.

Riding Toward Everywhere ~ William T. Vollman
Have you ever dreamed of living a hobo lifestyle and hopping trains? Well me neither, but I really enjoyed reading about William T. Vollmann doing it. Writing with a peculiar, eccentric charm, Vollmann gives a glimpse of a dying lifestyle.

Spin ~ Robert Charles Wilson
I like the idea of science fiction but rarely read it as I usually find it to be overly technical or wildly over the top. Spin is an intriguing story with good cross-over appeal to readers who would normally never touch the genre (even my wife loved it and her idea of sci-fi is The Time Traveler’s Wife). The book revolves around three closely connected people and their pivotal role in a world that is suddenly encircled by a global shield by an unknown entity. The story always feels plausible, and the relationship between the main characters is as interesting as the science fiction element of the book.

The First Man-Made Man ~ Pagan Kennedy
I picked this up based on the fact that Laura Dillon was the first woman to become a man (her name changed to Michael), a fact pretty interesting in its own right. Though the sex change and the obvious difficulties facing a transgendered person in the 1950s are the crux of the story, it’s really just the tip of the iceberg. Michael also met and fell in love with one of the first men to become a woman and then fled to the Tibetan border region of India to become a Buddhist monk. This is one of the best and most unique biographies I’ve ever had the pleasure to read.

Uncommon Carriers ~ John McPhee
For all those of us that have stared in rapt fascination as a big rig drives by or dream of being an engineer on a freight train (I can’t be the only one) comes this riveting account of trains, planes and really big trucks and the people who drive them. This is a riveting look at professions most of us know nothing about, the chapter on UPS and their distribution centre is surprisingly informative and explains just what happens to your laptop when you send it back for servicing.

Jesus Land ~ Julia Scheeres
There’s no point lying about it, parts of this memoir are agonizing to get through, it’s the kind of the book that needs to be put down now and then to take a deep breath but at the same time you can’t wait to pick up again. Being a teenager is never easy but Julia and her adopted black brother David have to suffer through 1980’s rural Indiana a time and place plagued with racism. If that’s not bad enough they also have to endure abusive and distant parents and I haven’t even gotten to the worse part of the book yet… All that said, this is a brilliant memoir, the author has a compelling style that makes you want to race through the book in spite of the unpleasant subject matter.

Gates of Fire ~ Steven Pressfield
True, it does have a cheesy cover, but this is one of the best historical novels I have ever read. The book is set around the battle of Thermopylae in Northern Greece, fought between a massive Persian army and a tiny force of Spartans. Told through the eyes of a Spartan society as fascinating as the battle itself.

Lullaby ~ Chuck Palahniuk
Take a very disturbed reporter, introduce him to a haunted house real estate agent, then throw in her witch receptionist and her con artist boyfriend. Then put them all on a quest to eradicate a deadly lullaby. Part thriller with a little bit of love story and all weird, this book is amazing!

The Queen and I ~ Sue Townsend
When a Republican party is elected in the UK, the Queen and the rest of the monarchy find themselves on the dole and living in a low cost housing estate. What follows is a hilarious read as fun as any of the Adrian Mole novels.

Santa’s Twin ~ Dean Koontz
I was more than a little surprised when this was first published, it’s not every day that a well known horror writer does a children’s Christmas book! I consider myself somewhat of an expert on Christmas literature and I think that this book is up there with Dylan Thomas. Written entirely in rhyming couplets, Koontz spins a darkly funny story of Santa’s evil twin. This book begs to be read aloud.

afterlands ~ Steven Heighton
Steven Heighton describes this book as an Arctic adventure set mostly in Mexico. It’s a hard one to review or classify, but it’s an awesome read! Heighton begins with a set of real individuals as characters – 19 people stranded on an ice floe in the Arctic for several months in the winter of 1872 – then deftly fictionalizes their stories into a moving, dramatic adventure. We are narrated to by Tyson, the supposed hero of the ordeal, and Kruger, the supposed villain. What is revealed through Heighton’s sensitive retelling of their story is that such definitive dividing lines are not easily drawn. After leaving the ice, we follow Kruger through war-ravaged Cormac McCarthy-esque Mexico to an emotional ending.

The Littlest Hitler ~ Ryan Boudinot
Don’t let the fact that it’s a short collection deter you, this is one of the funniest and most original book I’ve read in a long time. Fans of Dave Eggers, Chuck Palahniuk or Kurt Vonnegut will love the quirky and pleasantly deranged writing style Boudinot brings to his stories.

Cast of Shadows ~ Kevin Guilfoile
Kevin Guilfoile takes a fascinating premise and turns it into one of the most clever page- turners I have ever had the pleasure of reading. Davis Moore is a fertility doctor with the ability to clone a child for parents who can’t conceive naturally. When his own daughter is brutally raped and murdered, he clones the murderer and places the child with clients who think they are getting their own cloned child. This is the best thriller you’ve never heard of.

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid ~ Bill Bryson
This book is funny, and I’m not talking about a few mild chuckles every few pages, this book is laugh so hard on the bus that everybody thinks you’re crazy funny. Bill Bryson has taken an overdone genre (what’s with all the memoirs these days anyway?) and created a fabulous look at childhood in 1950’s Middle America. I’m probably one of the few people in the world who has visited the tourism website of the city of Des Moines, Iowa but that’s how good a writer Bryson is. I found myself desperately wanting to visit a time and place that sadly now only exists in the confines of this excellent volume.

The Traveler ~ John Twelve Hawkes
Though the plot of The Traveler has much in common with The Matrix (& Star Wars, for that matter), it’s also incredibly entertaining & the author’s reasons for writing are unique. He’s concerned about people’s loss of personal privacy and its impact on our lives. That said, this is not a serious book, it’s a tightly paced thriller about ‘Travelers’, people who have a unique gift that allows them to travel to other dimensions and the sword packing heroic fighters that defend them. I loved every word.

The Tiger Claw ~ Shauna Singh Baldwin
Noor Inayat Khan is a complex woman; of American and Muslim Indian origins she was raised in France and finds herself in England when the Germans seize France. Wanting to find her now interred Jewish lover, she volunteers to go to France as a spy for the British. The story plays out against the seldom told struggle for Indian independence and the role Churchill and Britain had it its famine.

Neither Here Nor There ~ Bill Bryson
Just read the quotes on the back of this book to get sold on this one! Bill Bryson writes with a slightly skeptical yet outrageously funny point of view. Each chapter of the book covers a different part of Europe and Bryson covers all the bases!

The Kite Runner ~ Khaled Hosseini
Hosseini has written a riveting novel about the childhood of two boys in 1970s Afghanistan and one man’s return there during the Taliban rule. This book has all the tender moments of a coming of age novel with all the horror and heartache of a sweeping epic.

The Cripple and His Talismans ~ Anosh Irani
The plot is simple enough: a wealthy decadent slacker loses his arm and sets out across Bombay to find it. The writing is excellent and filled with lots of dark and biting humour. Excellent stuff! It succeeds at being bizarre and inspirational at the same time.

Miss Wyoming ~ Douglas Coupland
I really enjoyed this book, which surprised me because I'm not always the greatest fan of Coupland's books. There is something really appealing in this love story of a B-movie producer and a has-been small time sitcom actress. The plot line is hilariously and originally unbelievable and I mean that as a good thing.

Salt ~ Mark Kurlansky
Finally the great salt epic we’ve all been waiting for! Kidding aside, I loved this book and flew through it in fascination. From the ancient Chinese making of soy sauce to Gandhi’s salt march, Kurlansky never ceases to entertain where others could have certainly bored. Even the technical descriptions of salt making were a joy to read.

The Hot Kid ~ Elmore Leonard
This book was meant for summer reading and Elmore Leonard has really outdone himself. The 1930s of this novel aren’t full of impoverished farmers or ruined stockbrokers, instead we get evil bank robbers and an Oklahoma Marshall who shoots to kill and never misses. Literature it ain’t, but The Hot Kid may just be the best escapist novel I’ve ever read.

Jennifer Government ~ Max Barry
The quote on the front is a little misleading, if anything this book is a much lighter and humourous (not to mention fictionalized) version of Naomi Klein’s No Logo. In the future, corporations rule all and your last name is the name of the company you work for. A bit of a message with a lot of laughs thrown in.

I, Fatty ~ Jerry Stahl
Jerry Stahl has written an intriguing fictional memoir of one of the world’s first movie stars. When Fatty Arbuckle started acting in pictures, it was out of desperation – no respected actor did movies. Almost overnight he became rich and famous. Soon after came one of Hollywood’s biggest scandals…