Here are 100 books that Aqueduct fans have personally recommended if you like
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I am a historian and a social geographer whose main interest is in examining why some of us are embraced (legally, politically, economically, culturally) by the society we live in while some others are excluded. Probably due to my status as someone who is an immigrant to Canada and also a person with a disability, the topic of belonging and exclusion fascinates me.
This is an exceptionally well-written and meaningful study that has greatly helped me understand how the national subject is conceptualized in Canada. As an immigrant to this country who became a citizen through a challenging and demoralizing process, this book has enabled me to see how some of us are framed as belonging while others are excluded from the Canadian nation. I have also learned how (above and beyond the national mythology surrounding it) multiculturalism has been deployed to boost Canada’s profile as a liberalizing nation while, at the same time, operating as a tool to control ethnic and religious minorities.
Questions of national identity, indigenous rights, citizenship, and migration have acquired unprecedented relevance in this age of globalization. In Exalted Subjects, noted feminist scholar Sunera Thobani examines the meanings and complexities of these questions in a Canadian context. Based in the theoretical traditions of political economy and cultural / post-colonial studies, this book examines how the national subject has been conceptualized in Canada at particular historical junctures, and how state policies and popular practices have exalted certain subjects over others. Foregrounding the concept of 'race' as a critical relation of power, Thobani examines how processes of racialization contribute to sustaining…
I am a historian and a social geographer whose main interest is in examining why some of us are embraced (legally, politically, economically, culturally) by the society we live in while some others are excluded. Probably due to my status as someone who is an immigrant to Canada and also a person with a disability, the topic of belonging and exclusion fascinates me.
Omar Khadr is a personal friend of mine, the gentlest soul I have met since setting foot on Canadian soil. This collection has been essential to my understanding of Canada’s unwillingness to stand up for one of its own citizens. It highlights how belonging in the nation is not necessarily a right all citizens enjoy, and invites a serious reflection on what citizenship means in this country.
In 2002 a fifteen-year-old Canadian citizen was captured in Afghanistan for allegedly killing an American soldier. A badly wounded Omar Khadr was transferred to the US Bagram Air Force base and then Guantanamo Bay detention camp. He would remain there without trial until October 2010, when a military commission admitted evidence considered tainted by Canadian courts. A plea bargain and guilty plea initiated his promised return to Canada a year later. Some Canadians see Khadr as a symbol of terrorism in action. For others he is the victim of a jihadist father and Canadian complicity in the unjust excesses, including…
I am a historian and a social geographer whose main interest is in examining why some of us are embraced (legally, politically, economically, culturally) by the society we live in while some others are excluded. Probably due to my status as someone who is an immigrant to Canada and also a person with a disability, the topic of belonging and exclusion fascinates me.
As a person with a disability, this collection spoke to my direct experience of exclusion in Canadian society. Because every chapter is written by a different scholar in the field of disability studies, this edited collection is able to present a diverse range of perspectives that really resonate with the reader, and provocatively question the concept of ‘normalcy’ that is at the root of the discrimination against those of us who do not fit in.
Rethinking Normalcy introduces the growing field of disability studies to an undergraduate audience in a variety of disciplines and programs based in the social sciences, humanities, and health sciences. The authors articulate the depth and breadth of this newly emerging field of study and provide a vibrant foretaste of the kind of work disability studies scholars and activists do to provocatively question the power of normalcy.
Strongly interdisciplinary, this volume draws upon many different social and cultural approaches to the study of disability, and essentially addresses disability as a social and political issue.
A magisterial history of Indigenous North America that places the power of Native nations at its center, telling their story from the rise of ancient cities more than a thousand years ago to fights for sovereignty that continue today
I am a historian and a social geographer whose main interest is in examining why some of us are embraced (legally, politically, economically, culturally) by the society we live in while some others are excluded. Probably due to my status as someone who is an immigrant to Canada and also a person with a disability, the topic of belonging and exclusion fascinates me.
I was not born in Canada and I only arrived here in my early twenties without being aware of the colonial past or present of my new home. This study has helped me understand that portion of Canadian history and its present repercussions. Equally important, it has highlighted how Indigenous persons have and continue to be dehumanized, excluded and ‘othered’ across the country.
No matter where in Canada they occur, inquiries and inquests into untimely Indigenous deaths in state custody often tell the same story. Repeating details of fatty livers, mental illness, alcoholic belligerence, and a mysterious incapacity to cope with modern life, the legal proceedings declare that there are no villains here, only inevitable casualties of Indigenous life. But what about a sixty-seven-year-old man who dies in a hospital in police custody with a large, visible, purple boot print on his chest? Or a barely conscious, alcoholic older man, dropped off by police in a dark alley on a cold Vancouver night?…
As a lifetime Midwesterner, I've found that, just as the richness and beauty of our beloved "flyover states" can be overlooked by the rest of the country, there is a powerful collection of Midwestern novels that don't get the attention they deserve. I once read a passage by a New York writer that described a character as being from “some non-descript Midwestern town.” The Midwest is only non-descript if you’re too lazy to describe it. I kind of like that I can keep the Midwest like a secret. But I’ll share these novels with you. Best enjoyed on the coast of a freshwater lake or in your favorite worn-out easy chair.
Toews is a Canadian writer, not Midwestern, but I’m from Michigan and we tend to lump Canada in with us whenever possible. My list, my rules. The book takes place in the adorable town of Algren with heroine Knute and her daughter Summer Feelin’ as well as a cast of other quirky lovable small-town characters. Toews has the ability to write sweet and funny small-town stories without pandering to stereotypical character tropes. Whenever I think of this book, I think of the peaceful feeling it gave me one summer, reading on my porch steps or leaned over my grocery cart in line for checkout, whenever I had two free minutes to read. Toews later fiction is quite a bit darker and she does that well too, but I always love to sink into her earlier works when I want something feel-good.
Winner of the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award
“Tonic for the spirit: a charming, deeply moving, unerringly human story, perfectly shaped and beautifully told.” —The Globe and Mail
Life in Winnipeg didn’t go as planned for Knute and her daughter. But living back in Algren with her parents and working for the longtime mayor, Hosea Funk, has its own challenges: Knute finds herself mixed up with Hosea’s attempts to achieve his dream of meeting the Prime Minister—even if that means keeping the town’s population at an even 1,500. Bringing to life small–town Canada and all its larger–than–life characters,…
I’m an author who’s published historical nonfiction, science fiction, and poetry—all genres that are represented in the five books I’ve recommended! I also lived in Winnipeg between 1993 and 2002 and loved being there. It’s a great city with lots of history, a thriving arts community, two beautiful rivers, lots of diverse cultures, and a determination to undo some of the wrongs that have happened there. (Admittedly, Winnipeg also gets to minus 40 in the winter and has a tad too many mosquitoes in the summer!). But it’s also where I met my amazing wife! ☺
I love history—not just historical fiction but actual history books—and this book skillfully weaves together an abundance of intriguing facts and true stories from that city’s history.
Why 1912? Because in that year, Winnipeg was one of the most important cities in North America, largely because it was (and is) located in the very center of the continent, which led to it developing the biggest rail yard in the world.
As we learn from this book, luminaries such as Charlie Chaplin, W.C. Fields, Charles Dickens, Harry Houdini, and many more passed through this thriving city. But that changed in 1914 when the Panama Canal opened, and suddenly, goods were shipped from one ocean to another through that waterway instead of through Winnipeg. In terms of commerce, Winnipeg never fully recovered.
At the beginning of the last century, no city on the continent was growing faster or was more aggressive than Winnipeg. No year in the city's history epitomized this energy more that 1912, when Winnipeg was on the crest of a period of unprecedented prosperity. In just forty years, it had grown from a village on the banks of the Red River to become the third largest city in Canada. In the previous decade alone, its population had tripled to nearly 170,000 and it now dominated the economy and society of western Canada. As Canada's most cosmopolitan and ethnically diverse…
Benghazi: A New History is a look back at the enigmatic 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, its long-tail causes, and devastating (and largely unexamined) consequences for US domestic politics and foreign policy. It contains information not found elsewhere, and is backed up by 40 pages of…
I’ve always been fascinated by our creative urges and ambitions, and by what makes us who we are and why we make the choices we do. While I’m interested in many aspects of human experience and psychology, from the mundane to the murderous, I’m especially drawn to narratives that probe our deeper psyches and look, particularly with a grain of humor, at our efforts to expand our understanding and create great works—or simply to become wiser and more enlightened beings. What is our place in the universe? Why are we here? Who are we? The books I’ve listed explore some of these matters in ways both heartfelt and humorous.
Pastoralis one of my favorite recent discoveries. It’s one of a quincunx of novels linked by exploration of five classic literary genres—in this case the currently unfashionable pastoral. Newly ordained priest Christopher Pennant isn’t greatly pleased that his first parish assignment is to a rural town where sheep are numerous. He assumes he’ll be a suitable shepherd to the humans, people he expects to be simple and straightforward. Of course, they aren’t. They’re not only as complex as people anywhere else, but very unexpected. Father Pennant not only finds he has a self-appointed cello-playing chef as rectory caretaker, but he witnesses three possible miracles. Or are they trickery? I love the depth and gentle humor in the priest’s attempts to understand his parishioners and himself. And nature, too.
There were plans for an official welcome. It was to take place the following Sunday. But those who came to the rectory on Father Pennant's second day were the ones who could not resist seeing him sooner. Here was the man to whom they would confess the darkest things. It was important to feel him out. Mrs Young, for instance, after she had seen him eat a piece of her macaroni pie, quietly asked what he thought of adultery. Andre Alexis brings a modern sensibility and a new liveliness to an age-old genre, the pastoral. For his very first parish,…
I’m an English nonfiction writer who is, I suppose, best-known for Members Only, my biography of the London strip club owner, theatre impresario, property magnate, and porn baron Paul Raymond, which was adapted into a big-budget movie called The Look of Love. Like many of my books, Members Only strayed into true crime, a genre that has, for all sorts of reasons, been attractive to me as a writer. Probably the most important of those is that it provides the opportunity to tell inherently dramatic stories and to convey a vivid picture of the past, thanks to the wealth of documentation associated with major crimes.
Now that’s a question that can be answered in a few sentences. Here’s goes…
This is among the finest examples of the true-crime genre. It’s an enthralling, pacey, and ingeniously structured account of the murders committed on both sides of the Atlantic by Dr. Neill Cream, a Scottish-born Canadian whose medical career served as camouflage for his psychopathic misogyny.
Macabre though the subject matter is, Jobb never wallows in that side of things, preferring to use the story as a vehicle for his vivid and insightful portrait of late nineteenth-century society.
The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream takes readers to the late nineteenth century as Scotland Yard follows the trail of a cold-blooded serial killer who was as brazen as the notorious Jack the Ripper and who would finally be brought to justice by detectives employing a new science called forensics.
"When a doctor does go wrong, he is the first of criminals," Sherlock Holmes observed during one of his most baffling investigations. "He has nerve and he has knowledge." In the span of fifteen years, Dr. Thomas Neill Cream poisoned at least ten women in the United States, Britain,…
I was born and raised as both an anglophone Canadian and a diaspora Jew. After living in Montreal, Jerusalem, and New York for a total of about 15 years, I returned to my hometown of Toronto and took up the position of the J. Richard Shiff Chair for the Study of Canadian Jewry at York University, where I work as a professor of history. I teach undergraduate students, graduate students, fellow academics, community leaders, and the wide public about all sorts of dimensions of this very religiously diverse, culturally diverse, socio-economically diverse, and politically diverse community of 400,000+ souls, with its 260+-year-old history.
I love this book’s choc-a-block presentation of actual archival fragments from Jewish life in the British colonies that would eventually become Canada.
I also like that the book’s husband-wife, antiquarian, author team aimed to fuse together two objectives in one book: on the one hand, to paint a relatable picture of what Jewish life looked like during this period when Upper Canada was still being formed, and on the other hand, to account for the step-by-step process of Jews gaining civil rights in the new world.
When I teach Canadian Jewish history, I not only read this book with my students but also bring them into the archives that contain Godfrey’s trove of archival fragments of early Jewish Canadiana, which they collected before and while writing the book.
Mapping the history of Canadian Jews from the arrival of the first settlers before 1750 through to the 1860s, Search Out the Land introduces a new set of colourful players on Canada's stage. Ezekiel Solomons, John Franks, Jacob Franks, Chapman Abraham, Rachel Myers, Moses David, Samuel Hart, Elizabeth Lyons, and a host of others now take their appropriate place in Canadian history. Focusing on the significant role played by Jews in British North America in the fight for civil and political rights, the authors compare the development of Canadians' rights with that in other British jurisdictions of the time and…
It didn’t begin with Donald Trump. When the Republican Party lost five straight presidential elections during the 1930s and 1940s, three things happened: (1) Republicans came to believe that presidential elections are rigged; (2) Conspiracy theories arose and were believed; and (3) The presidency was elevated to cult-like status.
I wholeheartedly believe that embracing your geeky side is an important part of life and self-discovery. When romance novels incorporate nerdiness, it gives characters (and therefore readers) the ability to understand themselves and what they want on another level, and to gain the courage to pursue what they want. I know that my own forays into TTRPGs, LARPing, Ren Faires, and other such interests have helped shape me as a person. I’m more confident and embodied because I embrace my inner geek, and I want that for my characters and my readers, too. That’s why I want to read and write as many of these stories as possible!
This rom-com is as lighthearted and fun as it gets, but it maintains the nerdy bent we’re all here for. I love LARPing, and this book paints it in the most exciting light! I loved how Daisy used her alter ego, Lade Alenthaea, on her journey to growth, and how this story kept the agency around her personal growth firmly in Daisy’s own hands.
She's no damsel in distress, and he's certainly not wearing shining armour. But one knight can change everything...
Daisy Hastings has always thought she was born in the wrong era. So when she bags a summer job at the Tower of London helping to run their Knight school, it feels like a step in the right direction.
Theodore 'Teddy' Fairfax is a loose cannon. A disgraced distant relative of the royal family, he's tall, dark and now (begrudgingly) helping with the Tower of London's summer programme - and there's nowhere he'd like to be less.
