Brian Lynch
Brian Lynch edits the Georgia Straight’s books section. He’s been writing about books and authors for 15 years, and has contributed to every part of the paper except Food and Savage Love. He lives in town with his wife, dog, cat, and chronic anxiety about the Vancouver Canucks.
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Expertise is wildly overrated.
The veteran cultural critic marvels at conservatism’s bizarre resilience in the wake of a financial meltdown that put unregulated capitalism on the rocks.
The revered Vancouver author brings his latest book to a Writers Fest event on January 25.
The indie establishment will be celebrating the joys of brick-and-mortar book-buying with an open house starting at 5 p.m. and taking place in all three dimensions.
Here’s our annual roundup of the books that struck us as outstanding this year—not exhaustive, not definitive, but an accurate thumbnail of what grabbed us and didn’t let go.
Is there a more compelling creative pair in film right now than English director Steve McQueen and his leading man of choice, the German-Irish actor Michael Fassbender?
John Hodgman says his new book is about the things 40-year-old men “really think about: the collapse of civilization and the end of human history, and also wine, and also sports.”
With topics ranging from prehistoric tribes to modern-day hockey clubs, these wrapping-ready volumes travel back through time.
Here are a trio of books sure to delight the young readers in your life this holiday season.
Etgar Keret isn’t the only renowned international name at this year’s edition of the festival.
Books about the scaling of Himalayan peaks are inevitably about the frailty of the human frame and the nearness of death. This is doubly true of Davis's mesmerizing new work.
The man behind The Polar Express has teamed up with a group of writers that includes Jon Scieszka and Stephen King.
The acclaimed Chinese Canadian authors have filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit, claiming that elements of Zhang's new book have been copied from their own well-known works.
The three-person jury selected Christie’s debut book for being not only “sensitive and playful” but “beautifully written”.
Few figures in modern crime fiction loom larger than John Rebus, the whisky-slugging, trouble-loving Edinburgh detective whose career spanned 17 best-selling novels by Ian Rankin.
Is there any precedent in the business world for this public outpouring of grief?
Music fans are guaranteed to be polarized by Simon Reynolds’s latest book,
Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past.
The banana-toss is a favourite jibe of racist sports fans around the world.
This map plots out cases in which individuals or groups have tried to get a book pulled from library shelves.
An expanded version of the annual Word on the Street festival kicks into gear this weekend, encompassing almost every aspect of the written word.
Throughout the near-two-hour combination of talk, reading, and Q&A session, the packed house reacted to Moore’s every cue.
Esi Edugyan is on the Giller Prize longlist—and the Booker Prize shortlist.
Black's gritty prison drama promises an exciting new chapter next week.
He's established a reputation as one of the world’s best trials riders by throwing himself at urban landscapes with a staggering mix of creativity, skill, and fearlessness.
The B.C. roster proves beyond a doubt that the writing community in our province has reached a kind of critical mass.
The legendary songwriter and guitarist has a powerful aversion to hindsight, a trait that’s often served him well.
These word-processing colossi continue to thrive even though hardcover sales have plummeted.
As more and more reading is done in digital form, on tablets and e-readers, sites like the Pirate Bay are guaranteed to rock the publishing business.
A lack of grit has been one of the Canucks’ weak spots, but is the pool of available role-players that shallow?
Sparks fly between the Italian academic and the French screenwriter—just not nearly often enough.
Building on its 1989 fatwa against British novelist Salman Rushdie, the Iranian government has worked hard to protect impressionable citizens.
In honour of Marshall McLuhan’s 100th birthday, here’s a vintage clip of the famous Canadian media theorist laying down some of his trailblazing ideas.
Age can bring wisdom. It can also bring moral blindness and an inability to admit personal wrongdoing.
Lord Black of Crossharbour has had enough, sir. He will stand no more.
Los Angeles author Lisa See has long tracked the cultural currents that flow between China and North America, and explored the pressures and hardships of immigration.
The conference will gather acclaimed and cutting-edge poets from across North America for an ambitious four-day event.
A few summer reading suggestions for both adult and young readers.
British journalist Jon Ronson explores the brain’s most notorious defect.
City hall has sent out a call for expressions of interest in the position, which will be open as of October.
There's a strange note of anxious self-scrutiny that’s come up repeatedly in the last few days.
The two-day break between games 5 and 6 of the Stanley Cup final has given certain members of the hockey media enough time to chase down the important news that the Vancouver Canucks are just plain unlikable.
We live in a Canuck universe, where the laws of physics are different from the universe inhabited by normal Stanley Cup finalists.
The D word is getting tossed around a bit too lightly in talk about the Vancouver Canucks over the last couple of days.
To jaded eyes, the reasoning behind her selections seemed to ask the wrong things from the whole art of fiction.
Has Google's digital street simulation changed the way you read about distant places?
This bruising new memoir is one of those books whose setting has a life of its own, as full of erratic energy as any human figure in the pages.
Initial speculation was that the Canucks would be sending centre Ryan Kesler alone, a move that would have reflected the team's strategy so far.
You just know that the Canucks will need a lot more weaponry if they wind up going through to the Western Conference final.
Apparently, the e-reader devices that were last year’s holiday-season It Gift are now on the seriously endangered list, right next to their stodgy old paper-bound counterparts.
A double rye is probably the best way to get in the right frame of mind for a reading from Vancouver author Fraser Nixon’s debut novel.
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