Hanging out in the city with Torontoist's Summer Reads. LitTO continues this week with a few summer reading picks. These are literally reading choices for the season, as we haven’t read them yet, but plan to take them to the cottage. Films and Poems by John Barlow, LyricalMyrical. John Barlow’s poems have a habit of looking at this crazy world, not agreeing with it, and finding their own peace and happiness. He has a......

Heather O’Neill’s debut novel Lullabies for Little Criminals has been garnering rave reviews since it’s release this past October. Cementing her reputation as one of Canada's break-out authors of 2006, O'Neill's book has been included in the 2007 Canada Reads competition, held by CBC Radio, having been nominated by John Samson of The Weakerthans. The book is one of five finalists. To celebrate her nomination, HarperCollins is throwing a party tomorrow night (December 7) at......

This is first installment of a new Torontoist column - Torontoist Reads - that will feature reviews of new books by Toronto authors and interviews with the authors themselves. This week, Torontoist is pleased to feature Consolation, by poet, playwright, and novelist, Michael Redhill. Redhill is the author of the novel Martin Sloane, the short story collection Fidelity, as well as several collections of poetry and the plays Goodness and Building Jerusalem.......

If authors Thomas King and Joseph Boyden ever teamed up as Can-Lit superheroes this could be their secret identities. King is one of Canada's best novelists with works like Green Grass, Running Water and Truth and Brightwater, not to mention the recently back on CBC Dead Dog Cafe. His latest book is A Short History of Indians in Canada. There's also his sidekick Joseph Boyden (left). We think that his debut novel Three Day Road......

The Toronto blogosphere is abuzz with the Star's "What If" special issue that ran this Sunday. The special issue was a number of think pieces on how the city could be drastically improved. Christopher Hume wants to see the Hearn turned into Toronto's Tate, something that Reading Toronto latches on to. Christopher Hutsul (or Christopher the Younger, as we like to call him) argues for ways the city can nurture its creative communities, including decriminalizing......

Welcome to our new revived self-indulgent weekly feature, Torontoist Reads, where we will blab on and on about whatever book we happen to be enjoying at the moment and it will probably have almost nothing to do with Toronto, except that you can often spot us reading on the TTC, especially at this time of year. Our inaugural title is Mary Roach's Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, a romp through the history of scientific theories......

Was there ever a more perfect Canada Reads match than Rufus Wainwright and Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers? No. Sadly, a breaking bulletin from CBC headquarters informs us that Rufus has bailed, due to a 'scheduling conflict,' leaving jazzy Molly Johnson to defend the title. Can she do it? According to the release: "It's a good match, given that I almost named my band, Infidels, Beautiful Losers!" We're rooting for you Molly. Of course, Rufus had......