Happy reads for COVID-19 times: Books to get you through this summer
Recommendations that are—sometimes unexpectedly—hopeful, to add to your reading list during what will surely be another strange few months
Brian Bethune
Brian Bethune writes about ideas, books and the book trade, and religion, but what really interests him is why people believe what they believe.
The artist who eclipsed Picasso
A new biography looks at how Andy Warhol changed art forever
A new Canadian pandemic novel is astonishingly prescient
Saleema Nawaz’s much-researched book, ’Songs for the End of the World’ is haunting, morally nuanced and oddly hopeful
Why pet people are the animal lovers that wildlife needs
Author Peter Christie urges pet owners to extend their love to increasingly vulnerable non-domestic creatures
The unsustainability of modern life and how COVID-19 may be exposing cracks in our society
’I think the coronavirus is putting into sharp focus the vulnerabilities in the way that modern society is organized,’ says Tara Henley, author of ’Lean Out: A Meditation on the Madness of Modern Life’
Books to spark or allay our fears in the time of the coronavirus pandemic
Stories of how plagues affect us have existed since the Bible. Here are 10 notable works of pestilence lit.
A vibrant biography of explorer Radisson wins final RBC Taylor prize
Mark Bourrie’s chronicling of Pierre-Esprit Radisson includes cannibalism, a Caribbean shipwreck and the creation of the Hudson’s Bay Company
Families betrayed by their own genes
Two books explore the DNA mutations that made two families highly susceptible to diseases like cancer and schizophrenia
The myth of memory decline and how to rejuvenate your brain
We really are wiser after 70, insists leading neurologist Daniel Levitin
Humans don’t like to see animals suffer. But we’ve never stopped the suffering.
Cruelty to animals became an issue in the late 19th century. The solution was to banish them from sight.