SLOW DEATH BY RUBBER DUCK: How the Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Life Affects Our Health By Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie, Vintage Canada, 339 pages, $19.95
Smith and Lourie take four days to experiment on themselves, ingesting or inhaling seven common household substances and taking their toxic "temperature" before and after. Scary.
STARPLEX By Robert J. Sawyer, Red Deer Press, 299 pages, $22.95
Sawyer is well known these days as the author of FlashForward, inspiration for the TV series of the same name. But his reputation was already growing in 1996, when he published Starplex, an old-fashioned science fiction novel with aliens and spaceships, and not afraid to deal with big issues.
COMBAT JOURNAL FOR PLACE D'ARMES: A Personal Narrative By Scott Symons, Dundurn, 400 pages, $26.99
Symons's novel, published hard on the heels of his scandalous coming-out as a gay man in 1967, when he left his wife and son to live with his teenaged lover, is a celebration of the sexuality of life. But it is also an insightful analysis of Canadian - and especially French Canadian - culture and traditions. A book much condemned and much praised.
SOME FAMILY The Mormons and How Humanity Keeps Track of Itself, by Donald Harman Akenson, McGill-Queen's University Press, 349 pages, $24.95
Akenson focuses his agile, inquisitive mind on genealogy, especially the massive Family History Library of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the world's largest collection of genealogical information, which was started in 1894 and now contains more than two billion names. A smart look at both Mormonism and the human urge to keep in touch with our roots.