Books

Books I have been reading

2013

• Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile by Taras Grescoe (2012)
• Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner, Lazer Lederhendler (Translator) (2009)
• The Universe Within: From Quantum to Cosmos by Neil Turok (2012)
• Spanish Fly by Will Ferguson (2008)

2012

• The Skule Story by Richard White (2000)
• Up and Down by Terry Fallis (2012)
• The Cult of Statistical Significance: How the Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives by Deirdre N. McCloskey and Steve Ziliak (2008)
• Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré (1974)
• The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis (2010)
• Watchmen by Alan Moore (1995)
• To Forgive Design: Understanding Failure by Henry Petroski (2012)
• Monoceros by Suzette Mayr (2011)
• Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (1969)
• Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer (2012)
• An Engineer’s Alphabet: Gleanings from the Softer Side of a Profession by Henry Petroski (2011)
• The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt (2011)
• The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje (2011)
• Louis Riel by Chester Brown (2003)
• Nonsense Novels by Stephen Leacock (1911)
• Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World by Michael Lewis (2011)
• Canadian Pie by Will Ferguson (2011)
• The Chairs Are Where the People Go: How to Live, Work, and Play in the City by Misha Glouberman and Sheila Heti (2011)

2011

• Obliquity: Why Our Goals Are Best Achieved Indirectly by John Kay (2010)
• Pyongyang A Journey in North Korea by Guy Delisle (2005)
• Apocalypse for Beginners by Nicolas Dickner, Lazer Lederhendler (Translator) (2010)
• Is That a Fish in Your Ear? by David Bellos (2011)
• At Home by Bill Bryson (2010)
• Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton (2011)
• Local Motion: The Art of Civic Engagement in Toronto edited by Christina Palassio, Alana Wilcox, Dave Meslin (2010)
• Urban Nation by Alan Broadbent (2008)
• The Death of Environmentalism by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus
• In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway (1925)
• Happiness by Will Ferguson (2003)
• The Sentimentalists by Johanna Skibsrud (2009)
• When Gadgets Betray Us by Robert Vamosi (2011)
• Marshall McLuhan by Douglas Coupland (2010)
• Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy by Stephen Leacock (1915)
• Red Tory: How Left and Right have broken Britain and how we can fix it by Phillip Blond (2010)
• Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town by Stephen Leacock (1912)
• Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer) by Stan Cox (2010)
• The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind by James Boyle (2010)

2010

• Natural Capitalism by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins (2008)
• Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman (2009)
• The High Road by Terry Fallis (2010)
• Post Office by Charles Burkowski (1971)
• Filthy Lucre: Economics for people who hate capitalism by Joseph Heath (2009)
• I was told there’d be cake : essays by Sloane Crosley (2008)
• Into the Hurricane: Attacking socialism and the CCF by John Boyko (2006)
• From Hope to Higher Ground: 12 Steps to restoring America’s greatness by Mike Huckabee (2007)
• Cyclist’s Manifesto: the case for riding on two wheels instead of four by Robert Hurst (2009)
• How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer (2009)

2009

• Amusing Ourselves to Death: public discourse in the age of show business by Neil Postman (2006)
• Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell (1986)
• Unbuilt Toronto: a history of the city that might have been by Mark Osbaldeston (2008)
• The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham (1951)

• Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bible! by Jonathan Goldstein (2009)
• Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs: a low culture manifesto by Chuck Klosterman (2003)
• The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon (2007)
• HTO: Toronto’s Water from Lake Iroquois to Lost Rivers and Low-flow Toilets by Christina Palassio (2008)
• A Fair Country by John Ralston Saul (2008)
• The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis (2007)
• The Upside of Down: catastrophe, creativity and the renewal of civilization by Thomas Homer-Dixon (2006)
• Proust was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer (2007)
• Between the Bridge and the River by Craig Ferguson (2006)
• Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene (1958)

2008

(There are more I just didn’t keep very good track of them.)

• Homage to Barcelona by Colm Tóibín (2002)
• The Ecology of Commerce by Paul Hawkins (1993)
• GreenTOpia: Towards a Sustainable Toronto edited by Alana Wilcox and Jonny Dovercourt (2007)
• Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow (2003)

2007

• The New City: How the Crisis in Canada’s Urban Centres is Reshaping the Nation by John Lorinc (2006)
• The City of Words by Alberto Manguel (2007)
• Microserfs by Douglas Coupland (1995)
• The State of the Arts: Living With Culture in Toronto edited by Alana Wilcox (2006)
• Eastern Standard Tribe by Cory Doctrow (2004)
• The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (1926)

2006

• Collapse by Jared Diamond (2005)
• How to Save the World in Your Spare Time by Elizabeth May (2006)
• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)
• Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby (1992)
• Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town by Cory Doctorow (2005)
• The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford (2005)
• The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman (2005)
• In Praise of Slow by Carl Honore (2004)
• uTOpia: Towards a New Toronto edited by Jason McBride & Alana Wilcox (2005)
• Union Station by Joe Fiorito (2006)
• The Tale of a City: Re-Engineering the Urban Environment by Tony O’Donohue (2005)

• A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson (1998)
• The Cult of Efficiency by Janice Gross Stein (2001)
• Paper or Plastic by Daniel Imhoff (2005)
• The Polite Revolution by John Ibbitson (2005)
• The Rights Revolution by Michael Ignatieff (2000)
• Hitching Rides with Buddha by Will Ferguson (1998)
• The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell (2000)
• Small Things Considered by Henry Petroski (2003)

2005

• A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright (2004)
• Accidental City by Robert Fulford (1996)
• Neither Here Nor There by Bill Bryson (1993)
• What’s the Matter with Kansas? by Thomas Frank (2004)
• How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization by Franklin Foer (2004)
• The Efficient Society by Joseph Heath (2002)
• Freakonomics by Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner (2005)
• The Rebel Sell by Joseph Heath & Andrew Potter (2004)
• Spin by Robert Wilson (2005)
• Spoken Here by Mark Abley (2003)
• Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt (1994)
• Mindscan by Robert J. Sawyer (2005)
• Before the Flood by Alan R. Wilson (2003)
• Why I Hate Canadians by Will Ferguson (1997)
• How to be a Canadian by Will and Ian Ferguson (2001)
• Plan B by Lester Brown (2003)
• Kim by Rudyard Kipling (1901)
• The Chosen by Chaim Potok (1967)
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey (1962)
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon (2003)
• Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw by Will Ferguson (2004)

2004

• The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger (1951)
• A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson (2003)
• Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss (2003)
• Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury (1953)
• Jennifer Government by Max Barry (2003)
• The Scientist, the Madman, the Thief and their Lightbulb by Keith Tutt (2003)
• WE by Eugene Zamiatin (1924)
• A History of Latin America by George Pendle (1969)
• Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King (1993)
• In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson (2001)
• Anil’s Ghost by Michael Ondaatje (2000)
• Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (1958)
• Life of Pi by Yann Martel (2001)

2003

• Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897)
• In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje (1987)

Other time

• Banker to the Poor: micro-lending and the battle against world poverty by Muhammad Yunus (1999)
• Davita’s Harp by Chaim Potok (1985)
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939)
• The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth (1971)
• 1984 by George Orwell (1949)
• The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less by Barry Schwartz (2004)
• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1955)
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck (1952)
• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (1937)
• The Stranger by Albert Camus (1942)
• The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien (1954)
• The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien (1954)
• The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien (1955)
• The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (1937)
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl (1962)
• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (1993)
• The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (1915)
• All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (1929)
• The Cider House Rules by John Irving (1994)
• A Room With a View by E.M. Forster (1908)
• Cannery Row by John Steinbeck (1945)
• Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg (1987)
• Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell (1933)
• The Art of War by Sun Tzu (1910)
• The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler (1959)