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Books

Thanks for The Help

You couldn't blame Kathryn Stockett for feeling down and depressed a few years ago. After all, the literary world seemed united in slamming the door in her face, as she struggled to find a publisher for a novel she had written called The Help.

Monitor

Fugitive novel transcends its old-fashioned trope

Red Means Run -- By Brad Smith

Living in the shadow of Graham Greene

The Man Within My Head -- By Pico Iyer

Sharp prose illuminates tree-planting memoir

Ionce worked for a year in a lumber mill in Chemainus.

Monitor

Now-obscure artist is well worth another look

The Life and Art of Mildred Valley Thornton -- By Sheryl Salloum

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Monitor

Restoring the good name of adjectives

The Artist of Disappearance -- By Anita Desai

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FROM OUR BLOGS

Michael D. Reid

Pint-sized film buffs an added...

It’s a family affair! Well, that’s one way to describe this year’s festival. Fernanda Rossi’s three-...

Feb 07, 2012 | Times Colonist » Arts

Michael D. Reid

Quotable quotes from VFF opening...

If there’s one thing you can count on at a film festival, it’s the memorable one-liners you’ll hear ...

Feb 05, 2012 | Times Colonist » Arts

spotlight

Vancouver author Charlotte Gill wins B.C.'s national non-fiction book award

Writer’s Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big Timber, and Life with the Tree-Planting Tribe wins $40,000 prize.

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The comic book adventures of nature nerd Matthew Forsythe

Jinchalo, his second comic for local publisher Drawn and Quarterly, begins with a bird wearing a hat, backpack and collared robe, who fends off a pack of wolves with a walking stick-turned-snake

3 hours ago
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Contemporary artist Stan Douglas's photo mural, Abbott &amp

Key moment in Gastown's history

On a hot August night just over four decades ago, the Downtown East-side (DTES) erupted when police descended upon a group of hip-pies.

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spotlight

Julian Barnes is a London-based author of several novels and books of short stories and essays.

How much can you believe?

I’m late to the party on this book, which won the 2011 Man Booker prize. But The Sense of an Ending is so exquisite, so complex, I wanted to make sure readers didn’t miss out on it. It’s one of those mysterious books that leaves you guessing, and wondering how much of what you’ve read you can believe.

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In his latest story collection, Nathan Englander empathizes with a wide range of characters

The eight stories that make up Nathan Englander’s new book, What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, can be read as a collection of running gags. They have the distinction though – as do Englander’s two previous books – of not just being seriously funny, but deadly serious.

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