Latest news with #IsaRiverAlive?
The Hindu
15 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
Save rivers, pleads Robert Macfarlane
In his latest book, Wild Fictions, Amitav Ghosh writes about the role of a novelist as opposed to that of a historian. 'The historian's past has a sweep that the novelist's doesn't. The difference is between observing the flow of a river from the shore and from within the waters: the direction of the current is the same in both cases, but a swimmer, or a fish, has at every moment a million different choices and options.' The point that Ghosh, reflecting on his own work as a novelist is making, is that of immersion. Novelists have to respond to what characters feel, touch and fall into, unlike historians who may discuss wider trends. Natural spirits Robert Macfarlane's Is a River Alive? is not a novel, yet he dips into the waters, novelist-style, of the characters that pepper the pages, mycologists, musicians, activists, grieving friends, hermits, and rivers. The book takes us in close proximity to three rivers, and the perils they face – the mist-shrouded Rio Los Cedros in Ecuador, the deadened Adyar in Chennai, and the turbulent Mutehekau Shipu in Canada. What Macfarlane attempts is more than a simple personification of rivers. By visiting each river, navigating them, and staying by them, he attempts a character sketch which is at once bewildering and animated. To save a river, one might expect a tabling of their ecosystem services, their PH values, their gallons of water, irrevocable proof. Yet the book offers something different: it suggests that rivers are too much of the 'other' to be neatly tabulated. Macfarlane makes the political choice of rebelling against human-made boxes, painting a complex picture that is beyond simple objectivity. It suggests older ways of knowing rivers. Ecologists might call this 'ecological character,' a word that exists in India's Wetland rules (2017). The author suggests an animacy of the river beyond human-centring: this isn't anthropocentric, it is enlarging the meaning of life, he argues. In 2017, the High Court of Uttarakhand delivered a landmark judgment, emphasising the 'physical and spiritual sustenance' of the rivers Ganga and Yamuna, making them legal persons. This was later stayed by the Supreme Court. Life at Ennore creek The book takes us close to the people who think in this manner and defend rivers. The mist-laden Los Cedros is threatened by gold mining, yet this is a reserve that was protected by law in a landmark judgment that upheld the Rights of Nature and protected the reserve from mining. We meet Giulina Furci, who finds fungi new to science in the shadow of the river. The Adyar river and Ennore creek are polluted beyond belief, yet the author finds life struggling through while walking with environmentalist Yuvan Aves. The eddying Mutehekau Shipu is threatened by a dam, yet we see why the river means so much (a legal person with a right to live as per Innu declarations) even as the human party gets bitten by blackflies. This book is entirely show, not tell. There are no sermons on why you must protect nature, only monographs on what, or who, the rivers mean. In the tradition of Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass, the book offers a view of the world where the person and the river, or the person and nature, are seen in relation to each other. 'To be is to be related,' as Aves says in the book. New ways of seeing The author offers a vocabulary for this new way of seeing the world, a world-building, so to speak, in which rivers write time and features: he cites the Maori phrase—'Who are your waters' (mine, for example, would be the Yamuna), he writes on the Los Cedros: 'River and cloud can't be separated—each authors the other.' When a river spiral throws him upstream, he suggests he is going back in time. In a dream, he sees 'grief-cutter ants,' a play on leaf-cutter ants. Macfarlane thus moors his identity around rivers, the riverbed and the catchment—'everyone lives in a watershed.' Each character we meet is carrying grief: the death of a parent, the death of a sister, the death of a friend, the death of landscapes. It is the river that heals them, gives them purpose, buoys sinking spirits. Returning to Wild Fictions, one more parallel rings true. Ghosh writes: 'High modernity taught us that the earth was inert and existed to be exploited by human beings for their own purposes… We are slowly beginning to understand that in order to hear the earth, we must first learn to love it.' Love, grief, and hope flow through this book. Let the author lead you downstream, let the river toss you and nourish you, and then you can answer the title's question for yourself. The reviewer is a conservation biologist and author of Wild and Wilful - Tales of 15 Iconic Indian species.
The Hindu
02-08-2025
- General
- The Hindu
Is a River Alive? Unpacking the Politics of the Rights of Nature Movement
Published : Aug 02, 2025 14:11 IST - 8 MINS READ In a 2014 keynote address on writing in the anthropocene, the author Ursula K. Le Guin suggested a simple antidote to extractivist ideologies: 'One way to stop seeing trees, or rivers, or hills, only as 'natural resources', is to class them as fellow beings—kinfolk.' This theme, of finding fellowship with ecosystems, of finding how best to channel human language to express the experience of a non-human other, forms the crux of the environmental humanities and literature scholar, Cambridge University professor, and bestselling nature writer Robert Macfarlane's recent book, Is A River Alive?, which sets out to 'imagine water otherwise'. It attempts to 'daylight long-buried ways of feeling about water, both in history and in us'. The answer to the question the title poses is yes, a river is alive, in what seems a no-brainer—as Macfarlane recounts in the book's introduction—to the author's 9-year-old son, Will. Is a River Alive? By Robert Macfarlane Penguin Hamish Hamilton Pages: 384 Price: Rs.1,699 Set in the cloud forest of Los Cedros, Ecuador; Chennai, India, home to the Adyar, Kosasthalayar, and Cooum rivers; and Nitassinan/Canada, through which the Mutehekau Shipu river (also known as the Magpie) runs, the book explores past and present manifestations of the global rights-of-nature movement, animating the land- and waterscapes through which it runs in vivid, compelling detail. The debates surrounding an ecosystem's aliveness—which, paradoxically, makes it killable—loom large over the places and people the book undertakes to represent. Also Read | India's environmental pioneers: The forgotten story At one level, Macfarlane's intention is crystal clear: 'Rivers should not burn. Lakes should not need funerals. How has it come to this?' The many rivers embodied in this book are embattled to this day, denizens of the natural world over whom communities, environmental defenders, corporations, and governments have historically tussled. Macfarlane names them as his co-authors, averring that 'this book was written with the rivers who run through its pages'. He is accompanied in his sprawling transcontinental sojourn by some key humans as well: through Los Cedros by the mycologist Giuliana Furci, the musician Cosmo Sheldrake, and the lawyer César Rodríguez-Garavito; through Chennai by the naturalist-educator-writer Yuvan Aves and various other members of his Palluyir Trust; and along the Mutehekau Shipu with the 'river-people' and fellow kayakers Wayne Chambliss, Raph, Danny Peled, and Ilya Klvana. Landmark legislations To set the stage for these three far-flung encounters, Macfarlane chronicles celebrated rights-of-nature rulings such as the the passing of the Te Awa Tupua Act granting legal personhood in 2017 to the Whanganui river in Aotearoa/New Zealand, and the Uttarakhand court's recognition of the Ganga and Yamuna rivers as living beings later in the same year. Such landmark legislation as the enshrining of the rights of nature in the Ecuadorian constitution and the ensuing recognition of the personhood of Los Cedros cloud forest in 2021, provide precedent and inspiration for further ecological action. An intricate welter of stakeholders and interests is revealed as Macfarlane digs deeper into each of the three cases. And yet, this global story on a grand scale is anchored to a tiny chalk stream near Macfarlane's home in Cambridge, to which the book and its author repeatedly return. Is A River Alive? is a soul-stirring paean to nature, deeply felt and thought, marvellously meditative, awash with literary, historical, and metaphysical detail representing indigenous voices and schools of thought as well as more canonical presences from Europe and North America. It is penned with imagistic ingenuity and precision by a seasoned scholar-practitioner and writer of place with the ability to instantly, intimately, render the unfamiliar familiar: 'The interior of a cloud-forest is a steaming, glowing furnace of green. To be inside a cloud-forest is what I imagine walking through damp moss might be like if you had been miniaturized.' On the other hand, a dead olive ridley sea turtle on a Chennai beach is shockingly strange, simultaneously inducing grief and horror: 'Her eyes have been eaten from their sockets by the ghost crabs. This is the fifth turtle corpse we've met that day. The geometry of her shell-scales is beautiful even in death. She stares sightless from blue-white eyeholes.' The turtle serves as a stark reminder of senseless human cruelty and violence, juxtaposed with the reeking, mortally wounded rivers of Chennai and its overflowing beaches. Fusing riverine and human consciousness Also unfolding in this section is the remarkable life story of Yuvan Aves, his escape from a physically abusive stepfather, and eventual emergence as an ecological activist and educator during and after his years at Pathashaala, a J. Krishnamurti school on the outskirts of Chennai. Finding an admirer in Macfarlane, Aves' first book, Intertidal (2023), bears witness to the ravaging of Chennai's water bodies and marshlands even as it stands testament to human fortitude and the resilience of the natural world. Far from Chennai and on the road in Nitassinan/Canada next, Macfarlane describes the juggernaut that is hydroelectric power (its convoys advancing inexorably towards the Romaine river project) in contrasting strokes. 'A bird with a voice of water trills on, unseen. Vast, triple-wagoned trucks thunder eastwards, shaking earth and whipping tree branches with their back-blast.' Macfarlane counters these forces of industry by flinging the reader into a splendid, spinning, stream-of-consciousness vortex, fusing riverine and human consciousness towards the end. The book's exquisitely textured cover, designed from a linocut by the artist Stanley Donwood for both the UK and US editions (published by Penguin and W.W. Norton respectively), pays tribute to maps of the ancient Mississippi river imagined and crafted by the cartographer Harold Fisk in the 1940s: 'In them, the Mississippi comes to life: twisting like mating snakes, writhing with river ghosts.' In deep trouble Anyone reading Is A River Alive? should revisit in tandem Krupa Ge's ground-breaking 2019 book, Rivers Remember, a fiercely anguished insider account of Chennai's waterways that Macfarlane references alongside Nakkeeran's Neer Ezhuthu (also published in 2019). Ge's book, the first to fully acknowledge the trauma of the Adyar, Kosasthalayar, and Cooum, combines personal and intergenerational knowledge with painstaking political and legal explication to shine a light on the same Chennai rivers Macfarlane meets in 2025. She highlights the gruelling conditions under which sanitation workers, health workers, fishing communities, community organisers, and—astonishingly—Eelam refugees worked to alleviate suffering during the dread-inducing December 2015 'man-made flood'. Read together, the two books memorialise a unique culture of water storage and stewardship vanishing before our eyes, in which tanks, streams, ponds, rivers, and ocean were venerated throughout the Tamil region. Can rights-of-nature proponents truthfully engage with the material conditions under which humans live and work worldwide as part of the fight? Dwelling at length on whether rivers are alive is arguably a privilege. In the Global South, nature is not typically experienced at leisure through a window or contemplated in tranquillity as a painting in a frame. Macfarlane's own chaotic Chennai experience proves this point. For anyone seeking to protect the natural world in these contexts, there can be no ignoring the situation of communities whose livelihoods depend on the industries and governments that power nature's exploitation and destruction. Even as I write, Tamil Nadu is planning a 92 kilometre sealink flyover along its East Coast Road to ease traffic congestion—a heavy infrastructure and investment project with grave consequences for marine life, environmentalists assert. Will such 'progress' really benefit a choked city and its inhabitants, continually reeling from cycles of flood and drought? As recent protests against deforestation in Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and Manipur in the midst of heatwaves and other signs of a rapidly accelerating ecological crisis illustrate, the natural world is in deep trouble. So are humans. The plot thickens. Unconvinced by what he sees as Macfarlane's irrational animism, the writer and evolutionary biologist Rowan Hooper dubs Is A River Alive? 'anti-science' in his recent review of the book for New Scientist. Rivers simply are not living beings, in Hooper's estimate. But he does admit the need for ecological thinking that emphasises the interconnectedness of all life forms to replace 'the Cartesian justification for exploitation'. Hooper's blithe confidence in science and scientific reasoning is somewhat troubling as is his wholesale rejection of Macfarlane's premise. Implicit in Hooper's dismissal of 'spiritualism' as unscientific is the erasure of traditional/indigenous ways of knowing, and centuries-old practices of situated cognition and wisdom that Macfarlane has, to his credit, assiduously assembled and honoured throughout. Also Read | Moments in the sands of time Must science always advance at the expense of the soul? Has not this sort of either-or framing deepened divides and brought societies and cultures the world over to this current, polarised pass? 'Science explicates, poetry implicates. Both celebrate what they describe,' Le Guin concluded in the same keynote address from 2014 with which this essay began. In her view, science has the capacity to 'increase moral sensitivity' while poetry can 'move minds to the sense of fellowship that prevents careless usage and exploitation of our fellow beings'. If the twain shall ever meet, perhaps science and poetry can together keep us all alive. Akhila Ramnarayan is a writer, theatre actor, indie musician, and college educator at Krea University.
Scientific American
01-07-2025
- Politics
- Scientific American
See The 4 Books Scientific American Loved Reading In June
In 2008 Ecuador startled the world. Articles 71 to 74 of the nation's then newly ratified constitution stated that nature had rights —rights to be respected for its existence and the crucial, life-giving services it provided and rights to be restored when damaged. Further, it asserted that the government could intervene when human activities might disrupt these inherent rights. In his latest book, Is a River Alive?, Macfarlane travels to three very different rivers (in Ecuador, India and Quebec) to examine the question of a river's sovereignty. He discovers that rivers create interconnected (and often fragile) worlds of plant and animal species—confirming they are life-giving wherever they run, as many Indigenous populations throughout the world have recognized for thousands of years. Now rivers are fighting for their lives as corporations, governments, pollution and climate change violate their vitalizing flow. 'Muscular, wilful, worshipped and mistreated, rivers have long existed in the threshold space between geology and theology,' Macfarlane writes. 'Rivers are—I have found—potent presences with which to imagine water differently. We will never think like a river, but perhaps we can think with them.' —
Irish Examiner
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Summer catch-up: 20 of the best non-fiction books so far in 2025
1. Pure Gold: Memorable Conversations with Remarkable People by Eamon Carr Eamon Carr, lyricist and drummer with Horslips, amongst other polymathic gifts, has gathered the best celebrity interviews from his years as a journalist. The collection describes how the interviews unfolded with giants from the era like J.P Donleavy, Rudolf Nureyev, Shane MacGowan and Jack Charlton. Written with his wry, entertaining voice, and full anecdote, it's a book to be devoured. 2. Busy and Wrecked: Create Space and Energy for the People and Things That Really Matter by Dermot Whelan Comedian and mindfulness expert Dermot Whelan's follow-up to his best-selling book, Mind Full, is an exploration of modern-day busyness and how to alleviate stress. His conversational tone, weaving in his own personal life and experiences, as well as interesting research, makes for an easy, insightful read. 3. Homework: A Memoir by Geoff Dyer Geoff Dyer's memoir about growing up as an only child in a lower middle-class neighbourhood in provincial England (Cheltenham) in the 1960s (childhood) and '70s (adolescence) might not sound appealing, but in the hands of a writer so smart and so funny, with a brilliant philosophical bent, it's a book you can't put down. 4. The Black Pool: A Memoir of Forgetting by Tim MacGabhann While in university in Dublin, Tim MacGabhann's flatmate's father killed himself at Christmas. In the silence around the news, MacGabhann asked his flatmate how the holidays had been. His flatmate laughed and said, 'Other than that, Mrs Lincoln, how was the play?' Thoughts of his own suicide is something the nomadic MacGabhann tackles head on in his brilliant, whirlwind memoir about addiction. 5. Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane In what could be his finest, and certainly his most personal, work to date, the great nature writer Robert Macfarlane examines the fate of our rivers, in particular three rivers in Ecuador, India and Canada, arguing rivers should be treated like humans – or else we're all doomed. Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane; Picnic on Craggy Island: The Surreal Joys of Producing Father Ted by Lissa Evans; and Ballybunion to the River Kwai. 6. Picnic on Craggy Island: The Surreal Joys of Producing Father Ted by Lissa Evans Lissa Evans got a plum job as a producer working on the Father Ted sitcom series in the 1990s. The book she's written recalling her experiences is an enjoyable read, full of yarns about the capers the actors and crew got up to on set, and insight into how the magic happened. 7. Ballybunion to the River Kwai: An Irishman's Story of Survival on the Death by Fergus Kennedy Fergus Kennedy is a retired doctor. He has pieced together his father's remarkable wartime story – he was an Irish prisoner of war in Singapore and Thailand during World War II, including time spent slaving on the notorious 'death railway' through the jungles of Thailand and Burma, which featured in the Hollywood movie Bridge on the River Kwai. 8. Careless People: A Story of Where I Used to Work by Sarah Wynn-Williams The New Zealander Sarah Wynn-Williams landed a dream job at Facebook, but it turned into a nightmare. Her exposé of the work practices at the tech giant, including insight into its founder Mark Zuckerberg, has caused a sensation. 9. Ireland's Curious Places: 100 Fascinating, Lesser-known Treasures to Discover by Michael Fewer Architect and academic Michael Fewer has written about a hundred curious places, with accompanying photos, to tell the story of Ireland – from the church that four-times married Brian Boru prayed at (Co. Clare) to Fionn mac Cumhaill's sliotar (Co. Wicklow) and Art Ó Laoghaire's grave in Kilcrea (Co. Cork). 10. When the Going Was Good: An Editor's Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines by Graydon Carter Graydon Carter is a flamboyant character. His memoir about his years as a magazine editor, including a long spell editing Vanity Fair (1992-2017) is a hoot, not least for details about his on-off relationship with Donald Trump. 11. Notes to John by Joan Didion There have been few better non-fiction writers than Joan Didion. The posthumous publication of notes from her years going to therapy provide a portal into her mind and her close relationships, including with her writer husband John Dunne and their troubled adopted daughter. Notes to John by Joan Didion; Mark Twain by Ron Chernow; and Original Sin: President Biden's Decline. 12. Big Mouth by Vogue Williams Everything Vogue Williams touches seems to turn to gold. Her autobiography delves into the darker moments in her journey, including her parents' marriage breakup when she was five years old, the breakdown of her first marriage with Brian McFadden and other misdemeanours. 13. Mark Twain by Ron Chernow Ron Chernow is a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer. His examination of America's first literary celebrity has caused considerable excitement. He doesn't hold back any punches, exploring how Twain carefully curated his image; his troubling attitude to race; and the dark final chapter of his life when he cultivated relationships with young girls, his 'pets'. 14. The Episode: A True Story of Loss, Madness and Healing by Mary Ann Kenny Shortly after her husband died suddenly, Mary Ann Kenny, an academic who lives in Dublin, descended into a hellhole of psychosis, including a belief that her young children had been harmed by medications she took. The story of how she managed to survive her illness is astonishing. 15. Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson are two experienced journalists on the Washington political scene. Their exposure of Joe Biden's deteriorating health during the final years of his presidency – and bizarrely why he was allowed run for re-election – is a fascinating read. Sports Book Highlights The Big Fight : When Ali Conquered Ireland by Dave Hannigan and Big Dunc by Duncan Ferguson. 1. The Big Fight: When Ali Conquered Ireland by Dave Hannigan: Dave Hannigan's book about Muhammad Ali's fight in Dublin in 1972 has been updated and re-issued in paperback. The co-promoter Butty Sugrue's story is so outrageous it warrants its own book. Not to mention other walk-on characters like Peter O'Toole, John Huston and Bernadette Devlin. A knockout read. 2. Shattered Dreams, Sliding Doors: The Republic of Ireland's 1982 World Cup Qualifying Campaign by Paul Little: The Republic of Ireland had a daunting task to qualify for the 1982 World Cup finals in Spain. In their qualifying group, Eoin Hand's squad faced Belgium, one of eight teams to qualify for the Euro 80 finals; Michel Platini's France; and the Netherlands, beaten finalists in the two previous World Cups. Paul Little, a child at the time, tells the story of what transpired in an engaging, third-person narrative. 3. The Last Ditch: How One GAA Championship Gave a Sportswriter Back His Life by Eamonn Sweeney: Eamonn Sweeney uses the 2024 All-Ireland series in hurling and Gaelic football – which threw up the most exciting hurling final in memory – as a platform for investigating his mental health struggles and the wonder of the GAA in Irish life. 4. Big Dunc: The Upfront Autobiography by Duncan Ferguson: Everton legend Duncan Ferguson's autobiography, which is ghost-written by Henry Winter, is proving very popular with football fans. His story includes three months spent in prison for headbutting an opponent. 5. The Last Bell: Life, Death and Boxing by Donald McRae: Donald McRae is one of the great sportswriters. His book Dark Trade: Lost in Boxing from the mid-1990s is a seminal book about the sweet science. Now, after 50 years immersed in the sport, comes his final book on boxing, and what it has become, mired in doping scandals, enthralled to easy money from Saudi Arabia. Read More Summer books catch-up: 20 of the best novels so far in 2025
Hamilton Spectator
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Hamilton Spectator
Toronto Star bestsellers: Robert Macfarlane answers yes to ‘Is a River Alive?' and Robin Wall Kimmerer's ‘Braiding Sweetgrass' returns
Two years ago, British author Robert Macfarlane won the first Writers' Trust Weston International Award , a Canadian prize that honours a non-Canadian non-fiction author for their body of work. Macfarlane was honoured for exploring 'the relationship between humans and nature in new and illuminating ways.' His latest, 'Is a River Alive?' — which entered the original non-fiction list in late May at No. 4 and this week is at No. 3 — is described by Penguin Random House Canada as a 'perspective-shifting book' that answers yes to the question of whether these much abused bodies of water are indeed living things. One of the threatened rivers the book highlights is in northeastern Quebec, where Innu poet Rita Mestokosho is defending the Mutehekau or Magpie River against death by damming; another, in Ecuador, is at risk because of Canadian gold-mining. The book, Penguin says, is ' a literary work of art, a rallying cry and a catalyst for change … that will open hearts, spark debates and challenge perspectives.' Another book that parses the relationship between people and nature, 'Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants' by Indigenous botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer , is back on the original non-fiction list although, since the book has racked up 154 weeks in the rankings, last appearing in mid-April, it never really went away. And Kimmerer's 'The Serviceberry' just passed its 30th week on the same list. Yet another book by an Indigenous author that feels like it never went away returns this week. Bob Joseph 's '21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act' — in which the member of the Gwawaenuk Nation analyzes the shortcomings of the problematic Canadian law that has governed the lives of Indigenous Peoples since 1876 — has been a mainstay of the Canadian non-fiction list since April 2018 and reappears at No. 5 this week. ORIGINAL FICTION 1. Atmosphere , Taylor Jenkins Reid, Doubleday Canada (3)* 2. One Golden Summer , Carley Fortune, Viking (7) 3. My Friends, Fredrik Backman, Simon & Schuster (8) 4. Never Flinch , Stephen King, Scribner (4) 5. Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil , V.E. Schwab, Tor (2) 6. The Robin on the Oak Throne , K.A. Linde, Red Tower (1) 7. Problematic Summer Romance , Ali Hazelwood, Berkley (4) 8. Caught Up , Navessa Allen, Zando (2) 9. The Tenant , Freida McFadden, Poisoned Pen (6) 10. Broken Country , Clare Leslie Hall, Simon & Schuster (12) ORIGINAL NON-FICTION 1. Anatomy of a Cover-Up , Paul Palango, Random House Canada (2) 2. The Anxious Generation , Jonathan Haidt, Penguin (51) 3. Is a River Alive? , Robert Macfarlane, Random House Canada (4) 4. 52 Ways to Reconcile , David A. Robertson, McClelland & Stewart (6) 5. A Spy in the Family , Paul Henderson, David Gardiner, HarperCollins Canada (1) 6. Free Ride , Noraly Schoenmaker, Atria (3) 7. One Day, Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This, Omar El Akkad, McClelland & Stewart (16) 8. The Serviceberry, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Scribner (30) 9. Original Sin , Jake Tapper, Alex Thompson, Penguin (6) 10. Braiding Sweetgrass , Robin Wall Kimmerer, Milkweed (154) CANADIAN FICTION 1. One Golden Summer , Carley Fortune, Viking 2. Every Summer After , Carley Fortune, Viking 3. The Handmaid's Tale , Margaret Atwood, McClelland & Stewart 4. A Most Puzzling Murder , Bianca Marais, Mira 5. Finding Flora , Elinor Florence, Simon & Schuster 6. I Hope You Remember , Josie Balka, Simon & Schuster 7. The Retirement Plan , Sue Hincenbergs, Harper Avenue 8. Whistle , Linwood Barclay, William Morrow 9. The Maid's Secret, Nita Prose, Viking 10. Wild Love , Elsie Silver, Bloom CANADIAN NON-FICTION 1. Value(s), Mark Carney, Signal 2. Anatomy of a Cover-Up , Paul Palango, Random House Canada 3. 52 Ways to Reconcile , David A. Robertson, McClelland & Stewart 4. One Day, Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This, Omar El Akkad, McClelland & Stewart 5. 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act , Bob Joseph, Indigenous Relations 6. The Mind Mappers , Eric Andrew-Gee, Random House Canada 7. Ally Is a Verb , Rose LeMay, Page Two 8. A History of Canada in Ten Maps , Adam Shoalts, Penguin Canada 9. Apple in China , Patrick McGee, Scribner 10. Outsider , Brett Popplewell, HarperCollins Canada CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULT 1. Oh, the Places You'll Go!, Dr. Seuss, Random House Books for Young Readers 2. Sunrise on the Reaping, Suzanne Collins, Scholastic 3. Karen's Ghost (Baby-Sitters Little Sister #11) , D.K. Yingst, Ann M. Martin, Graphix 4. Binding 13 , Chloe Walsh, Bloom 5. Love You Forever , Robert Munsch, Sheila McGraw, Firefly 6. Big Jim Begins (Dog Man #13), Dav Pilkey, Graphix 7. The Very Hungry Caterpillar , Eric Carle, Penguin Young Readers 8. Fearless, Lauren Roberts, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers 9. Warriors Graphic Novel (The Prophecies Begin #2), Erin Hunter, Natalie Riess, Sara Goetter, HarperAlley 10. Powerless , Lauren Roberts, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers SELF-IMPROVEMENT 1. The Let Them Theory , Mel Robbins, Sawyer Robbins, Hay House 2. The 48 Laws of Power , Robert Greene, Joost Elffers, Penguin 3. The High 5 Habit , Mel Robbins, Hay House 4. The Mountain Is You , Brianna Wiest, Thought Catalog 5. Big Freakin' Change , Cara Moeller Poppitt, Page Two 6. The Body Keeps the Score , Bessel van der Kolk, Penguin 7. We Can Do Hard Things , Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, Amanda Doyle, Dial Press 8. 101 Essays That Will Change the Way You Think , Brianna Wiest, Thought Catalog 9. The Courage to Be Disliked , Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga, Simon & Schuster 10. The Four Agreements , Don Miguel Ruiz, Janet Mills, Tarcher * Weeks on list The bestseller lists are compiled by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited from information provided by BookNet Canada's national sales tracking service, BNC SalesData.
