Is your screen time going up, leaving the your 2025 reading goal at a frustrating standstill? Or do you find yourself struggling to find recommendations for books outside of your favourite niche?
Rewire your brain with these local reads that will diversify your reading, whether it’s by subject or genre. These books tackle uncomfortable or taboo topics like the climate crisis, domestic violence, or a complex relationship with motherhood, or challenge their readers with unique forms and structures. We hope one of these books can help develop your outlook on what the act of reading can yield!
POETRY
i feel that way too by jaz papadopoulos (Nightwood Editions)
A critical response to the #MeToo movement, I Feel That Way Too is an experiment in narrative poetics. It weaves through past and present, drawing together art, philosophy, the Jian Ghomeshi trial and childhood memory to interrogate how media and social power structures sustain patriarchal ideologies. Inspired by the works of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Anne Carson, A.M. O’Malley and Isobel O’Hare, these poems are lyrical and meditative, moving to make sense of the nervous system in battle and in recovery.
Available now!
No Signal No Noise by A Jamali Rad (Talonbooks)
A Jamali Rad’s No Signal No Noise is a playful poetic hybrid, sitting somewhere between philosophical treatise, epic poem, and experimental novel. It is the first installment in The Self-Inscribing Machine series, a speculative history of the binary and its prototypes, that traces concepts of Self and Other as well as the mathematical, cultural, and philosophical foundations of the machines that drive the contradictions of capital.
Available now!
Playlist: A Profligacy of Your Least-Expected Poems by Michael Turner (Anvil Press)
Playlist: a Profligacy of Your Least-Expected Poems documents the life and practice of a writer who grew up in a musical household, and spent his early adult years as a touring musician and his later years programming nightclubs, hotels, galleries, and festivals. Modelled after the American folk music revival songbooks of the 1950s and 60s, Playlist fiddles with a two-part writing system that begins with the songbooks’ contextual introductions and ends with the songs — or in this instance, poems — to which they refer. In Playlist, introductions can act less as supporting words than as discrete stories. At the same time, the poems they are in service of can appear indifferent to story, sentiment, and a writer who, in claiming to contextualize them, can only reduce them further.
Available now!
Drama
Withrow Park by Morris Panych (Talonbooks)
This play by Morris Panych is a surreal, mysterious story was inspired by his time living this real Toronto park.
Three people gaze out their living room window as the days pass. Across the street in Withrow Park, life goes on – or is it a dream?
Then comes a knock at the door. Time has found them, hiding in plain sight. Or possibly it’s just a man in a wrinkled suit. But Janet, Marion, and Arthur must act now or forever be devoured by their own indifference. They can no longer live on the periphery of their own lives. They must invite the young man to dinner.
As the audience peers into its exaggerated interiors, Withrow Park wryly tugs at anxieties around aging, isolation, and the constantly shifting world around us.
Available now!
Memoir and Nonfiction
The Mother: A Graphic Memoir by Rachel Deutsch (Douglas & McIntyre)
“Searching, honest, funny and beautiful, The Mother by Rachel Deutsch charts a relatable journey from desperately-seeking single to the early awe of motherhood, examining along the way the parental relationships that shaped us as well as the trials and triumphs of procreative partnership. I laughed out loud. I cried. I loved loved loved this book, and you will, too.”
–Rachel Yoder, author of Nightbitch
Coming soon! March 25, 2025
Beneath My Scars by Anna Maskerine (Caitlin Press)
After years in an abusive relationship, Anna Maskerine, Executive Director of a multi-service non-profit in BC, has dedicated her life to supporting women who have experienced gender-based violence. Here, she lays bare her experiences and dispels common myths about survivors.
Coming soon! May 9, 2025
Instead: Navigating the Adventures of a Childfree Life by Maria Coffey (RMB | Rocky Mountain Books)
Instead captures Maria Coffey’s adventurous life through her biggest decisions along the way, including the decision not to have children. It’s a vivid travelogue, a love story, and a personal commentary on the risks and rewards of choosing unconventional paths.
Available now!
Dare to Bird: Exploring the Joy and Healing Power of Birds by Melissa Hafting (RMB | Rocky Mountain Books)
Melissa Hafting is an ethical, passionate, and respected birder, photographer, and mentor. Her love for birding has helped shape who she is and has helped with her mental health, along with enabling her to cope with the difficult aspects of grief and loss after the death of her mother and father. Dare to Bird explores the joy that birding and photography has brought to her life and how both have allowed her to foster meaningful connections with young birders from diverse backgrounds, along with the conservation community, eco-travel advocates, rare bird enthusiasts, and ethical wildlife viewing practitioners in order to preserve bird habitats that are constantly under threat.
Available now!
Malcom Is Missing: A True Story of Murder and a Daughter’s Quest for Justice in Mexico by Robert Osborne (RMB | Rocky Mountain Books)
Based on the award-winning CBC documentary, Malcom is Missing tells the story of a single mother of two from small-town Canada who looks for her missing father in Mexico and ends up taking on a complex and challenging justice system.
Coming soon! April 2025
Kids & Teens
Taking Care of Where We Live: Restoring Ecosystems by Merrie-Ellen Wilcox, illustrated by Amanda Key (Orca Book Publishers)
Healthy ecosystems are important to the more than eight million different species that live on Earth, including humans.
But over the centuries humans have damaged and changed the environment that we all depend on for our survival. We cut down forests, dam rivers, build cities and pollute the air, water and soil. That’s where ecological restoration comes in. It aims to reverse the degradation of ecosystems, like grasslands, mountains and forests, on every continent and in every ocean. These are big goals, so everyone will need to step up!
Available now!
Little Sanctuary by Randy Boyagoda (Tradewind Books)
Little Sanctuary is the story of children from the Global South living in a world that is falling apart, wracked by war. They are sent to a school serving as a refuge on a distant island by their affluent parents, where they harbour growing suspicions and grave concerns about the people caring for them. After teenaged Sabel and her siblings witness unexpected violence, they must rally the others rally the others and plot an escape.
Available now!
Creatively Human: Why We Imagine, Make and Innovate by Lois Peterson, illustrated by Madeline Yee (Orca Book Publishers)
Our brains and bodies are built to make and innovate, and that instinct is as old as humanity itself. Starting when we’re babies, we draw, tell stories, invent, dance, perform, make music, among dozens of other creative acts. Did you know that our ancestors were weaving 12,000 years ago and using pigment to make paintings 17,000 years ago? Today, creativity is all around us, in public and private spaces and places all over the world. From graffiti and flash mobs to music class and TV screens, Creatively Human encourages young readers to look at the world with a creative eye. Explore the origins and impact of ideas and inventions, arts and technology, and learn about the developments and advances that change and improve the lives of everyone. It’s time to recognize and celebrate how everyone—including you—contributes to our world in so many creative ways!
Available now!
Our Plastic Problem: A Call for Global Solutions by Megan Durnford (Orca Book Publishers)
“Durnford effectively communicates a sense of urgency. Young eco-activists will also find general guidelines for localized projects, as well as specific instructions for laundering clothing to reduce microfibre shedding, among other immediately applicable advice. Accentuates the positive without minimizing the issue’s scope.” — Kirkus Reviews
Available now!