An Award Fit for a King

The King’s Speech is probably the Oscar film that is most hyped to win some big accolades. People are saying that Colin
Firth is a shoe-in for Best Actor, and the film is the favourite to take Best Picture. Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter may or may not walk away with Best Supporting Actor/Actress wins, [...]

Silk Stockings and Murder in Canada

It’s Murder Week at Dundurn, and in addition to writing posts here on Defining Canada, we’ve also been running giveaways over on our twitter feed (we’re @dundurnpress, if you want to play along). Marta’s question for yesterday was, “who was the victim in Toronto’s infamous Silk Stocking Murder?”.
I’ll be honest — I had no [...]

A Deadly Book Trailer

I know you’ve all rushed out to grab your copy of The Deadly Conch already. But in case it somehow slipped your mind I figured I’d post Mahtab’s book trailer here. To, you know, remind you.

If you’re new here (it’s okay, we love every fan of Canadian books here at Dundurn!), The Deadly Conch [...]

Electric Car is Definitely a Lemon

Phil Edmonston, author of the Lemon-Aid series, has been helping Canadians choose which car to buy (and warning us about the cars not to buy, too!) for over 30 years. His new and used car and truck guides are consistent bestsellers.
So when he tells us he knows something about the new GM Volt Electric Car, [...]

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
Like many Canadian children, I memorized this poem for assemblies on November 11th every year. Even now, it makes me choke up a little. What a sad, sad piece — “We are the Dead” still makes me shiver. I hope never to break faith with [...]

Lacrosse: It’s Actually Pretty Cool

I’m about to make a stunning revelation: I don’t like sports (shocking, right? A book nerd doesn’t like sports?). Not at all. I didn’t even watch the Olympic gold medal hockey game. But I did watch the trailer for Arctic Thunder when we posted it, and… well, I was a bit surprised by how [...]

The Humanclature of Books

I’ve been pondering about how people interact with one another and the interesting pattern of how we interact with books.  The two distinct interactions actually have a lot in common.
I’m not saying that how one person interacts with people is precisely how he or she would interact with a books, but it’s a fascinating way of [...]