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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Manitoba Anishinaabe author wins Governor General’s Literary Award

Anishinaabe author Kyle Edwards, a member of Ebb and Flow First Nation who grew up on Lake Manitoba First Nation, has won the 2025 Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction for his debut novel, Small Ceremonies.

Farmers’ Almanac say it will cease publication after 208 years, citing financial challenges

A 208-year-old publication that farmers, gardeners and others keen to predict the weather have relied on for guidance will be publishing for the final time.

Farmers’ Almanac said Thursday that its 2026 edition will be its last, citing the growing financial challenges of producing and distributing the book in today’s “chaotic media environment.” Access to the online version will cease next month.

The Maine-based publication, not to be confused with the even older Old Farmer’s Almanac in neighboring New Hampshire, was first printed in 1818. For centuries it’s used a secret formula based on sunspots, planetary positions and lunar cycles to generate long-range weather forecasts.

The almanac also contains gardening tips, trivia, jokes and natural remedies, like catnip as a pain reliever or elderberry syrup as an immune booster. But its weather forecasts make the most headlines.

Children’s author Robert Munsch donates letters, story drafts to Guelph Public Library

Children’s author Robert Munsch is donating his stash of story drafts, publisher notes and fan letters to the Guelph Public Library.

The southwestern Ontario library said the collection will offer a rare glimpse into Munsch’s decades-long career, during which he penned bedtime classics including “The Paper Bag Princess,” “Love You Forever” and “Mortimer.”

It will be a key part of a new Central Library currently under construction and set to open in late 2026 or early 2027.

"This is a huge coup for the Guelph Public Library, and I'm grateful to the fact that they recognize the importance that public libraries play in the community," library CEO Dan Atkins said Tuesday.

Salman Rushdie’s new book is his first fiction since a brutal attack. He tells us why

NEW YORK (AP) — Salman Rushdie's new book, his 23rd, is also a resetting of his career.

“The Eleventh Hour,” which includes two short stories and three novellas, is his first work of fiction since he was brutally stabbed on a New York lecture stage in 2022. His recovery has been physical, psychological — and creative. Just finding the words for what happened was a painful struggle that culminated with his memoir “Knife,” published in 2024. Fiction, the ability to imagine, was the last and crucial step, like the awakening of nerves once feared damaged beyond repair.

“While I was writing ‘Knife,’ I couldn’t even think about fiction. I had no space in my head for that,” Rushdie told The Associated Press last week. “But almost immediately after I finished the book, before it came out, it’s like this door swung open in my head and I was allowed to enter the room of fiction again.”

Two of the pieces in his book out Tuesday, “In the South” and “The Old Man in the Piazza,” were completed before the attack. But all five share a preoccupation with age, mortality and memory, understandable for an author who will turn 79 next year and survived his attack so narrowly that doctors who rushed to help him initially could not find a pulse.