National Network for Equitable Library Service

In the game of bocce, no matter how intensely you study the world's surface, there is always a chance an unseen pebble will knock your ball in an unexpected direction. In these essays, poet, antiquarian bookseller, and celebrated travel writer Marius Kociejowski chronicles serendipitous encounters with authors, manuscripts, and eccentrics, in which 'the curious workings of fate' and 'art's unbidden swerve' intervene to shift the course of fortune.

In Join the Revolution, Comrade, Charles Foran brings to the essay form the same restlessness and originality that mark his novels and non-fiction. Foran visits places in Vietnam that have been 'colonized' by western war films, talks to Shanghai residents about their colossal city and commiserates with the people of Bali about the effects of terrorist bombs on their island. In Beijing he looks up old friends he had known back in 1989 during the days before and after the June 4th massacre. "Join the revolution, Comrade," a friend had loved to say, quoting a line from a Bertolucci film.

The essays and reportage in 'How to Breathe Underwater' offer a panoramic overview of this age of radical change from the online gambling boom in the Caribbean to Cyberjaya, the Malaysian government's attempt to build its own Silicon Valley; from video game design to digital-age tabloid journalism to the artistry of The Simpsons; and from the fate of the Great Barrier Reef to Cuba's economic limbo after the fall of the Soviet empire.

In the tradition of E.M. Forster, John Gardner, and James Wood, Douglas Glover has produced a book on writing at once erudite, anecdotal, instructive, and amusing. Attack of the Copula Spiders represents the accumulated wisdom of a remarkable literary career: novelist, short story writer, essayist, teacher and mentor, Glover has for decades been asking the vital questions. How does the way we read influence the way we write? What do craft books fail to teach aspiring writers about theme, about plot and subplot, about constructing point of view?

Still Ain't Satisfied - Canadian women certainly aren't! And this collection of twenty-seven articles on the major women's issues of the decade shows why feminists have only begun to fight. Women are still paid less than their male counterparts, rape and wife battering remain brutal social problems and inadequate daycare still threatens women's right to work. These and many other injustices that undermine more than fifty percent of Canada's population are thoughtfully explored in this timely and provocative book.

Hamilton Spectator columnist Paul Benedetti’s essays paint a wonderfully funny portrait of family life today. Paul Benedetti has a good job, a great family, and successful neighbours — but that doesn’t stop him from using it all as grist for a series of funny, real, and touching essays about a world he can’t quite navigate. Benedetti misses his son, who is travelling in Europe, misplaces his groceries, and forgets to pick up his daughter at school. He endures a colonoscopy and vainly attempts to lower his Body Mass Index — all with mixed results.

A collection of essays on the war in Iraq; including pieces by Jean Chrétien and John Howard, the prime ministers during the war. When it was declared in 2003, the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was intensely controversial. While a few of America's partners, like Australia, joined in the war, many, including Canada, refused to take part. However the war in Iraq was viewed at the time, though, it is clear that that war and the war in Afghanistan have had a profound and lasting impact on international relations.

Afghanistan is a long way from both Canada and Australia, but from 2001, fate conspired to bring the three countries together. Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, Australia and Canada joined the U.S. and other Western allies in attacking al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan. Operation Enduring Freedom began on October 4, 2001, but this was only the beginning of a much longer engagement in Afghanistan for both Canada and Australia, with a legacy much more ambiguous than the initial campaign had promised.

Voyageur Classics is a series of new versions of Canadian classics, with added material and special introductions. In this bundle we find two classic works of the art of the Canadian essay. Charles G.D. Roberts was a distinguished writer of his time who published more than forty volumes of poetry, romance fiction, and nature writing – making him one of the most popular writers of his time.

Alice Munro, recipient of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature, is undoubtedly among Canada’s greatest living writers. In this unique, intriguing collection, Brenda Pfaus gives fresh insights into some of Munro’s most enduring works: Lives of Girls and Women (1971), Who Do You Think You Are? (1978), Dance of the Happy Shades (1968), Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You (1974), and The Moons of Jupiter (1982). This collection of essays reaches from the early years of Munro’s career through her prime as a writer, when she penned her most influential works.