Smartphones deeply intertwined with our personal lives

Consider for a moment the stress of misplacing your iPhone or Android device. Now compare this to 20 years ago, and how you might feel about misplacing a flip phone.

In Needy Media: How Tech Gets Personal professor Stephen Monteiro, who teaches in the department of communications at Concordia University, shows what has changed and why, illustrating how our lives are now intertwined with our personal devices. Losing one of these is much more than losing a flip phone.

Our devices now collect personal data while adjusting to our hour-by-hour activities. Like a suspicious spouse, these devices are needy; they track our activities via GPS, store our experiences through video and photos and even monitor our conversations. Depending on which apps we download, they know our musical likes and dislikes, our sleeping patterns, our calorie intake and when we exercise (or not). They also now recognize our faces and fingerprints. In other words, our personal devices have made us more “bionic” than ever before.

How did we get here? Monteiro provides a history of home computers and personal technologies. This includes hobbyists in the 1970s who purchased computer kits like the Altair 8800. These kits required a lot of effort to assemble, and often failed to work in the end. When they did function, they “computed” by the user flipping toggle switches rather than through a keyboard or mouse.

Feline companion beguiling, insightful

Most of the interaction in German writers J.M. Gutsch and Maxim Leo’s Frankie is between Frankie, a cat, and Richard Gold, who is grieving the death of his wife and is about to hang himself when Frankie turns up injured on his doorstep. They need each other, and become each other’s purpose in life.

As Gold soon discovers, Frankie can talk. Once Gold gets over his shock, they proceed on to many adventures.

Frankie didn’t like any of the names people gave him until old Mrs. Berkowitz adopted him. She was a great fan of Frank Sinatra, so she called the stray Frank. That name met with his approval, and one of the crooner’s well-known songs pretty much describes Frankie’s lifestyle: “I’ve lived a life that’s full/I travelled each and every highway/And more, much more than this/I did it my way.”

When talking with people, Frankie speaks “Humanish,” as opposed to the “Cattish” he uses in dealing with other animals. The advantage of “Cattish” is that it’s a universal language for cats — so, for example, a cat from Germany can talk with a cat from Sweden and no translation is required.

Smith’s quasi-satirical gen Z characters navigate pitfalls of work, sex and alienation

Self Care, Toronto writer Russell Smith’s first novel in 15 years, is bound to make some readers bristle.

In it, the 62-year-old author of How Insensitive and Girl Crazy takes a quasi-satirical look at gen Z, portraying it as an aggrieved generation overdiagnosed with and overmedicated for mental illness, having lots of sex but taking little joy in it.

Of course, it’s a writer’s prerogative to put himself in the shoes of characters who are nothing like himself (though Smith has not historically done so), but when choosing to satirize the complicated lives and unique loneliness of a generation so far removed from his own, he opens himself up to accusations of, at best, a kind of “old man shakes fists at clouds” obliviousness or, at worst, the snide condescension of privilege.

These fears are not entirely misplaced. However, Smith often accurately and anthropologically puts his finger directly on the throbbing purple bruise of modern discontent, disaffection and alienation.

Nail salon owner offers keen observations of human behaviour in Thammavongsa’s debut novel

Souvankhan Thammavongsa won the 2020 Giller Prize and 2021 Trillium Book Award for her debut short-story collection, How to Pronounce Knife, which was preceded by four collections of poetry. Her debut novel, Pick a Colour, has also landed on the shortlist for the 2025 Giller Prize, which will be awarded Nov. 17.

Pick A Colour is a slim novel that takes place over the course of a single day in a single location — a nail and beauty salon in an unnamed city. It is told from the first-person perspective of a single person, Ning, the salon’s owner. Interestingly, though the back cover blurb suggests that Ning is an immigrant, this is never explicitly stated in the novel or in the author’s introduction. We’re not told where Ning was born or where her family is from; she is proficient in both English and another unnamed language.

Every woman who works in the salon has a nametag identifying them as Susan. The clients don’t notice, and when they call and ask to book an appointment with Susan, she’s always available.

This business decision defines Ning: she is practical and unsentimental, able to turn other peoples’ misconceptions and stereotypes into a benefit. She can also be autocratic: her staff must look the same, and when one employee arrives with her hair two inches longer than everyone else’s, Ning grabs scissors and cuts it.

IRA informant cover-up at the core of Herron’s latest Slow Horses thriller

Jackson Lamb and his band of misfits and failed spies are back in the decrepit Slough House in London, where they have been dumped by Britain’s espionage service, MI5, for blotting their copybooks and in the hope they will become so bored they’ll leave the service of their own accord.

Fat chance! The Slow Horses, as they are called, are yet again drawn into nefarious espionage missions, ancient and new, in British author Mick Herron’s ninth Slow Horses novel, a series that spawned the popular Apple TV adaption of the same name.

Clown Town has the rejects discovering a horrendous coverup during The Troubles in Northern Ireland in which the spy service — Regent’s Park, or just the Park — paid an IRA informant codenamed Pitchfork and turned a blind eye as he raped and killed for his own purposes. If it becomes public, the Park will be under political and public scrutiny it does not want and the Service’s first desk, Diana Taverner, will do anything to prevent that happening.

The opening of the book describes Pitchfork’s go-to method of dispatching his enemies — crushing their heads under the wheel of a Land Rover — and if making that public won’t cause a political firestorm, nothing will.

Pinker ruminates on common knowledge, human interaction and more in brain-busting new tome

Devoted readers of the estimable Montreal-born psychologist Steven Pinker know he can get carried away with his own brilliance.

In his 12 previous pop-science books — among them such bestsellers as The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works and Enlightenment Now — he has been known to test the patience of his followers with both the complexity and wordiness of his arguments.

His new effort, an often brain-busting disquisition on how so-called common knowledge greases the wheels of human interaction, is no exception.

Here is an unfortunate sentence from page 72 of When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows... in which he is talking about the logical problems with holding firm beliefs:

Renewal of widespread human-rights commitment key

Alex Neve’s Universal: Renewing Human Rights in a Fractured World is a passionate call for a reinvigorated commitment to universal human rights. An Ottawa-based international human rights lawyer, Neve served as the secretary general of Amnesty International for nearly two decades.

Published by House of Anansi Press, Universal book accompanies his role as the 2025 Massey lecturer. This includes visits across Canada, including a recent stop at Winnipeg’s Canadian Museum for Human Rights on Nov. 4.

Neve’s through-line is the need to renew our dedication to a robustly universal framework of human rights, one that “applies to everyone, everywhere, always, regardless of who we are, and without exception.” In Universal he argues this is especially pressing in a difficult present where the promises of human right seem far removed, one “riddled with hate, inequality, and disinformation, weighted down with deepening economic injustice, and ravaged by war and genocide.”

Universal makes this case in lively prose supported by Neve’s wide knowledge base. Drawing on four decades of international and local human rights work, Neve offers analysis enlivened by story, memory and example: of his time meeting with Mohammed Salim, a Rohingya refugee who spoke of human rights as a “lifeboat;” the moving events organized by Gitxsan activist Cindy Blackstock and the First Nations Caring Society; or speaking at the Palestinian solidarity encampment at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont.

Icelandic literary legend Stefánsson making afternoon book club visit

The Free Press Book Club and McNally Robinson Booksellers are thrilled to welcome prolific Icelandic author Jón Kalman Stefánsson to the next virtual meeting on Tuesday, Nov. 25 for a very special noontime meeting, where he’ll read from and discuss his critically acclaimed novel Heaven and Hell.

First published in Icelandic in 2007 and then in English in the early 2010s (with translation by Philip Roughton), Heaven and Hell was picked up by Windsor, Ont. publishing house Biblioasis and re-released in February 2025. The book is the first instalment of what has been dubbed The Trilogy About The Boy; the second book, The Sorrow of Angels, was published on Nov. 4 by Biblioasis, and the third book, The Heart of Man, will be re-released on June 16, 2026.

Set at the turn of the 20th century, Heaven and Hell follows an unnamed narrator, “the boy,” in an Icelandic fishing camp; he befriends Bárður, a young fisherman with a similar love of books. Wintry weather leads to a fatal mistake for Bárður, leaving the boy, already devastated at having lost his family years back, grappling with grief.

The boy is determined to return Bárður’s copy of Milton’s Paradise Lost to the man who had loaned it to him, and then kill himself. But those he meets in his voyage to the man’s village challenge his plans, and what plays out on the subsequent pages is a breathtaking emotional shift.

New in paper

Cher: The Memoir, Part One

By Cher (Dey Street, $27)

The trailblazing singer chronicles her childhood, meeting, marrying and performing with Sonny Bono and the complicated bnature of their relationship.

Pax: War and Peace in Rome’s Golden Age

New in paper

| This Earthly Globe: A Venetian Geographer and the Quest to Map the World

By Andrea di Robilant (Vintage, $26)

The history of the sprawling Navigationi et Viaggi (Journeys and Navigations), edited by Giovambattista Ramusio and published in 1550 in Venice, is explored.

Tudor dynasty’s dramatic end explored in well-researched, revealing account

For more than four centuries, historians accepted William Camden’s account that Elizabeth I named James VI of Scotland as her heir from her deathbed. Camden’s biography Annales, published in 1615, became the official version of a smooth and rightful succession.

But recent technological advances have revealed that Camden’s manuscript was heavily edited, with some sections glued so firmly they couldn’t be peeled back without causing damage. Using modern illumination techniques, researchers have uncovered significant alterations, suggesting the transition was far more precarious than previously believed.

Tudor historian and scholar Tracy Borman’s The Stolen Crown: Treachery, Deceit, and the Death of the Tudor Dynasty is a compelling and accessible dive into the final days of the Tudor dynasty and the fraught transition to the Stuart reign. With clarity and finesse, Borman unpacks centuries of dynastic rivalry, political intrigue and royal ambition, offering readers a vivid portrait of Elizabeth I’s reign and the shadowy succession that followed.

Elizabeth I was the daughter of Henry Tudor (also known as Henry VIII) and Ann Boleyn, and reigned from 1558 to 1603; she had no children. James VI, Elizabeth I’s cousin, was the child of Mary Queen of Scots and Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. He reigned as king of Scotland from 1567, and also as king of England and Ireland from 1603 until 1625, during which time he was known as James I.

Crowe’s candid, captivating memoir filled with snapshots of rock stars, Hollywood and more

If you want to do well in your chosen field, there is no substitute for talent and sweat.

But as California writer and filmmaker Cameron Crowe’s genial memoir illustrates, it helps to be born into the right place and time.

Crowe, now 68, has had a solid career as a writer and director of many movies, from Fast Times at Ridgemont High to Jerry McGuire.

But he is best remembered by boomer music lovers for his teenaged writing stint at Rolling Stone magazine, the fictionalized subject of his 2000 movie Almost Famous.

Lady-in-waiting navigates tumultuous Tudors

Historical fiction queen Philippa Gregory returns to the court of King Henry VIII in her latest novel.

The prolific British author’s background includes 16 novels set in medieval England during the reigns of the Plantagenet and Tudor monarchs.

Among those titles is the 2001 novel that earned her international fame, The Other Boleyn Girl, which tells the story of Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s ill-fated second queen, from the perspective of Mary, Anne’s sister and Henry’s former mistress.

Boleyn Traitor returns to that setting and is narrated by Lady Jane Rochford, the woman married to George Boleyn, Queen Anne’s brother.

Fox recalls juggling lead roles in TV, film

Michael J. Fox’s unbelievable achievement ranks right up there with putting Humpty Dumpty together again. But the actor and activist is no fairy tale character.

In his memoir Future Boy, his fifth book, Fox recounts rehearsing and taping episodes of the TV sensation Family Ties in 1985.

Enter the time-travel adventure film Back to the Future, destined to become a blockbuster phenomenon.

Producer Steven Spielberg was trying to make Back to the Future, and was near the end of six weeks of filming when his team realized Eric Stoltz, the leading man playing Marty, had to be replaced.