In the Booker-nominated Sea of Poppies (Viking), the first novel in

a projected trilogy by Amitav Ghosh, a ship full of grizzled sea-dogs, crim-inals, and stowaways sails through the Indian Ocean to fight China in the Opium Wars * In this epic and con-tagious novel by the late Swede Stieg Larsson, a fallen

journalist tries to crack a decades-old mur-der case with the help of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Viking) * Montreal Gazette columnist and all-around mensch Bill Brownstein wanders la belle

ville in search of mouthwa-tering tastes, polyglot sounds and beguiling sights in Mon-treal 24: Twenty-four Hours in the Life of a City (Vehicule) * Professional layabouts Joshua Glenn and Mark Kingwell com-pile The Idler’s Glossary (Biblio-asis), a dictionary for do-noth-

ings so lazy they may never get around to look-ing up “goldbricker” and “oscitant” * In Fire and Fury (Doubleday), Randall Hansen recounts the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II, an eye-opening and too-often-ignored chapter of military history * Archaeologist by day, consum-mate wordsmith by night, poet Jeramy Dodds digs

up history’s scraps (“Linneaus was the first European / to successfully cultivate bananas”) and mints new meta-phors in Crabwise to the Hounds (Coach-house) * The sworn enemy of eco-plunder-ers, New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman’s new book is a clarion call to save a Hot, Flat and Crowded planet

(Farrar, Straus and Giroux) * Prominent intellectual John Ralston Saul has come up with three radical truths about Can-ada. The first: Canada is not a country settled by Europeans,

but A Fair Coun-try (Viking) shaped by the

egalitarianism of its Aborigi-nal roots. Read his book for the other two.

* In his short story The Scream (McLelland & Stewart), Rohin-ton Mistry brings to life the colour-ful and moving monologue of an angry old man in Bombay. With illustrations by Tony Urquhart, this beautifully-produced 48-page gem is a sure-fire collector’s item—and would make a great gift for a loved one * Montreal novelist Ann Charney tells the

story of Ellen, a young woman navigat-ing the perimeter of adolescence who dis-covers that her family, newly transplanted from the Old Country, might be Distantly Related to Freud (Cormorant) * Author An-drew Steinmetz insists Eva’s Threepenny The-atre (Gaspereau) is a novel, but you’ll be

amazed how Steinmetz has created a fictional memoir in the voice of his true-life great-aunt—the first woman to perform in Brecht’s most famous play * In the latest installment of the Ex-traordinary Canadians series—“the most am-bitious set of biographies ever to be published in this country,” according to its publisher, Penguin—An-

drew Cohen zeroes in on the illustrious life and career of Lester B. Pearson, who pulled stretchers and stuffed sausages before win-

ning the Nobel Peace Prize and, oh yes, becoming Prime Minister.�

[ ?́FEATURED BOOK @̈ \[£t•\

Thomas L. Friedman and Ann Charney

20 | | No. 30

∑

IN the late 1990s, a way-ward MoNtreal teeNager

with the oNliNe NickNaMe Mafiaboy (VikiNg) wrecked haVoc oN the iNterNet, shuttiNg dowN the websites of yahoo, cNN aNd ebay. Nearly a decade later, Michael Calce (his real NaMe), with the help of star jourNalist craig silVerMaN, explaiNs how he paralyzed the iNterNet aNd why it’s still VulNerable.C

Screw the pooch (and sell the pups): Early 20th century American

slang for “slack off,” though with a suggestion of vile entrepreneurialism.”

From The Idler’s Glossary

M a i s o n n e u v e ’ s g u i d e t o t h e s e a s o n ’ s b e s t b o o k s . B y Paloma Fr Iedman .T H E B O O K R O O M

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