An English advertisement for Elizabeth Arden lipstick from 1943. Photo: Apic/Getty Images

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The story of Canadian-born beauty tycoon Elizabeth Arden and Canadian director Norman Jewison are among our picks of new notable memoirs and biographies / BY Nathalie Atkinson / May 21st, 2021


From Renaissance men and women of the Resistance to the lives of trailblazing women like Katherine Johnson and Elizabeth Arden and a deep dive into filmmaker Norman Jewison’s life and stellar career, here are our picks for the season’s notable memoirs and biographies.

Obsessive Book Buyers: Zoomer editors have carefully curated our book coverage to ensure you find the perfect read. We may earn a commission on books you buy by clicking on the cover image. 

1All the Rage: A Partial Memoir in Two Actsand a PrologueBrad Fraser

An award-winning Canadian playwright and cultural commentator, Fraser unflinchingly looks at his impoverished and abusive childhood growing up in towns across Alberta and British Columbia, and his discovery of theatre as a teenager, when he won his first writing award at age 17. Now 61, the provocateur recalls his evolution as an artist (Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love was later made into a movie by Denys Arcand) and coming of age as a young gay man against the backdrop of the AIDS crisis in what is being called an important work of gay history from a Canadian perspective.


2Behind the Red Door Louise Claire Johnson

Canadian-born beauty tycoon Elizabeth Arden pioneered many firsts, including the in-store makeover and the destination spa concept in North America through her famed Red Door Spa on Fifth Avenue (cemented in pop culture as the fictional salon in the 1939 movieThe Women). What begins as an homage to Arden, the self-made millionaire born Florence Nightingale Graham in Woodbridge, Ont., in 1884, is layered with Johnson’s own memoir, including her time as a cosmetics company intern in New York. There’s a Julie and Julia quality to the chapters that alternate their life stories and extract parallels as one generation inspires another, decades later.


3The Bookseller of Florence Ross King

Bookseller is too pedestrian a term for Vespasiano da Bisticci, an overlooked Renaissance figure whose richly bound, illuminated manuscripts attracted clients that included nobles, religious leaders and Medicis. The scope of this biography, by the bestselling Canadian author of books on Brunelleschi, da Vinci and Michelangelo, revels in the details, taking you inside the laborious, handmade process and materials (like saffron, ultramarine, gesso and gold leaf), and what was lost when the technological disruption known as the printing press arrived in Florence.


4Norman Jewison: A Director’s Life  Ira Wells

Norman Jewison, 94, remains Canada’s most celebrated and distinguished director. He already recounted much of his life and career in his 2004 autobiography, but this new biography by University of Toronto professor Wells centres the work. And how! Wells sources widely from archives, interviews, reviews and other biographies (and with access to the filmmakers papers in Wisconsin and the Norman Jewison Special Collections at his alma mater, U of T’s Victoria College) to assemble this prismatic look that covers everything from Jewison’s friendship with Robert Kennedy to the founding of the Canadian Film Centre. Jewisons 24 motion pictures and 46 Academy Award nominations culminated in his honorary Oscar (the Irving Thalberg Award) in 1999.

Wells’ biography also doubles as a historical tour of show business in the second half of the 20th century, beginning in the early 1950s when Jewison was a floor director at the CBC (on the very night the television division went live). It continues through his TV specials for Judy Garland and Harry Belafonte, followed by hits like The Thomas Crown Affair, In the Heat of the Night, Fiddler on the Roof and Moonstruck. The career longevity of a Hollywood outsider who grew up in the working-class Beach neighbourhood of Toronto was as much about talent as it was about adaptability and reinvention. (May 28)


5Films of Endearment Michael Koresky

This charming memoir-through-movies is a love letter to the author’s mother Leslie, an avid moviegoer, in the guise of film criticism about not-so-great cinema. (Koresky is a film critic and co-founder of the Museum of the Moving Image publication Reverse Shot). His project revisits ‘80s movies like Terms of Endearment, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Aliens, 9 to 5, Baby Boom and the beloved Jewish rom-com Crossing Delancey –all of which feature female characters in the foreground. Each chapter is dedicated to watching a movie and unpacking its context and impact, but more importantly spurs deep conversations with his mother about how they reflect and resonate with her own life choices. It will inspire you to do the same with your nearest and dearest.


6My Remarkable Journey  Katherine Johnson

Trail-blazing NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, who died last year at 101, rose to public fame when the 2017 biopic Hidden Figures, about Johnson and her Black colleagues Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, became a smash hit. This affecting posthumous memoir, co-written with her daughters, chronicles the scientist’s childhood in West Virginia as well as her groundbreaking career, including insider accounts of the space race, the role of Black women in STEM, and her experience of major world events. (May 25)


7On Juneteenth  Annette Gordon-Reed

Gordon-Reed is the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, scholar of slavery, and Harvard professor who helped convince America that president Thomas Jefferson had fathered the children of Sally Hemings, a woman he enslaved. Growing up, Gordon-Reed was also the first Black student to be integrated into public schools in her small east Texas town. The professional and personal come together in this powerful memoir, which explores the origins of Juneteenth (the once-obscure holiday that has become a celebration of Black American independence) alongside her own family history. As Gordon-Reed takes on the swaggering mythology of the Lone Star state where, she writes, “Texas is a White man,” she debunks the false narratives of America’s convenient historical amnesia.


8One Good Thing M.A.C. Farrant

North Saanich, B.C., writer Farrant, 74, structures the 64 short chapters in her book as though she is requesting advice from longtime Victoria gardening columnist Helen Chesnut. They also emulate Chesnut’s style, which combines personal observations about the region and its people. These are meditative and melancholy musings that ponder the Farrant’s relationship to nature, technology, community and aging, and they are wonderful to dip into.

 


9Somebody’s Daughter: A Memoir  Ashley C. Ford

This is one of the most anticipated memoirs of the season. In her deeply personal book, the celebrated U.S. culture writer and podcast host revisits different phases in her life to consider her journey to self-acceptance and how we are shaped by our families – in her case, a fragmented, traumatized family. The complicated relationship with her angry, narcissistic single mother, loving ties with her grandmother, and how she worshipped her father (who began serving a lengthy prison sentence when she was a child and whose absence defines her youth) all cast a long shadow. We recommend the audio edition, narrated by Ford herself. (June 1)


10The Light of Days Judy Batalion

Nearly 15 years ago, Batalion came across a dusty old Yiddish thriller about so-called “ghetto girls” who hid guns in teddy bears and blew up German supply trains. That book inspired the Montreal-born author, and granddaughter of Polish Holocaust survivors, to embark on years of research. She unearths previously untold stories of the female Jewish resistance fighters who risked their lives as couriers, saboteurs and intelligence agents. It is little surprise that Steven Spielberg’s Amblin production company has already optioned this pacy biography of Renia Kukielka and her peers about survival, friendship and heroism, with Batalion writing the screenplay. Skip the new Malcolm Gladwell and read this instead.


11The Secret to Super Human Strength  Alison Bechdel

The author of acclaimed memoirs, including one about growing up in a funeral home with a closeted gay father (Fun Home), is back. In her first new graphic novel in almost a decade, the bestselling cartoonist, inventer of a feminist pop-culture litmus known as ‘the Bechdel test’ and MacArthur Foundation genius examines her complicated lifelong pursuit of fitness. Bechdel, 60, documents the changes in her body, anxious mind and exercise trends decade by decade she moves from the physical to the metaphysical with the same wry observational insights as her work on the intricacies of family relationships.


THE SCROLL

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2023 Booker Prize: Irish Writer Paul Lynch Wins For Dystopian ‘Prophet Song’Canadian Booker Prize jury chair Esi Edugyan called the novel a "a triumph of emotional storytelling, bracing and brave."


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Governor General’s Literary Awards: Anuja Varghese’s ‘Chrysalis’ Among This Year’s WinnersEach of the 14 writers, illustrators and translators will receive a prize of $25,000


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Five Authors Shortlisted for This Year’s $100,000 Scotiabank Giller PrizeDionne Irving and Kevin Chong are among the finalists who "probe what it means to be human, to survive, and to be who we are"


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The Book Thief: An Italian Man’s Guilty Plea Ends a Caper That Puzzled the Literary World for YearsFilippo Bernardini’s elaborate phishing scam netted 1,000 unpublished manuscripts by prominent authors including Margaret Atwood and Ian McEwan


The Late Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison Is Honoured with an American StampThe Obamas and Oprah Winfrey pay tribute to the writer whose poetic interpretations of the African American experience gained a world-wide audience


Five Canadian Writers Make the Long List for the Inaugural Carol Shields Prize for FictionThe US$150,000 English-language literary award for female and nonbinary writers redresses the inequality of women in the publishing world


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Prince Harry’s Memoir Breaks U.K. Sales Record On First Day of ReleaseThe publisher of the new memoir, 'Spare", says it had sold 400,000 copies so far across hardback, e-book and audio formats.


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Here are the 5 Books on Bill Gates’ Holiday Reading ListThe billionaire philanthropist is giving hundreds of copies to little libraries around the world


Sheila Heti and Eli Baxter Among 2022 Governor General’s Literary Award WinnersToronto writer Sheila Heti took home the fiction award for 'Pure Colour,' a novel the GG peer assessment committee called "a work of genius."


Suzette Mayr Wins $100,000 Scotiabank Giller Prize for ‘The Sleeping Car Porter’The 2022 Giller Prize jury called Mayr's novel "alive and immediate — and eerily contemporary."


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Canadian Council for the Arts Reveals Governor General’s Literary Awards FinalistsThe finalists for the Governor General's Literary Awards spotlight books in both the English and French language, as well as translated works.


New Penguin Random House Award Named After Michelle Obama Will Honour High School WritersMichelle Obama Award for Memoir will provide a $10,000 college scholarship to a graduating public school senior based on their autobiographical submission.


French Author Annie Ernaux, 82, Becomes First French Woman to Win Nobel Prize for LiteratureThe author said, of winning, that "I was very surprised ... I never thought it would be on my landscape as a writer."


Hilary Mantel, Award-Winning British Author of ‘Wolf Hall’ Trilogy, Dies at 70Wolf Hall, published in 2009, and its sequel Bring Up the Bodies, released three years later, both won the Booker Prize, an unprecedented win for two books in the same trilogy and making Mantel the first woman to win the award twice.


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Rawi Hage, Billy-Ray Belcourt and Sheila Heti Make the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize Long ListThe jury read 138 books to choose 14 titles for the long list, one of which will win the $100,000 prize, one of the richest in Canadian literature


Salman Rushdie, Novelist Who Drew Death Threats, Is Stabbed at New York LectureThe Indian-born novelist who was ordered killed by Iran in 1989 because of his writing, was attacked before giving a talk on artistic freedom.


Raymond Briggs, Creator of Beloved Children’s Tale ‘The Snowman’, Dies at 88First published in 1978, the pencil crayon-illustrated wordless picture book sold more than 5.5 million copies around the world while a television adaption became a Christmas favourite in Britain and was nominated for an Oscar.


Canadian Author Emily St. John Mandel Makes Barack Obama’s 2022 Summer Reading ListObama's list includes everything from fiction to books on politics, cultural exploration and basketball.


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Brian Thomas Isaac’s “All the Quiet Places” wins $5,000 Indigenous Voices AwardThe B.C. author, a retired bricklayer, drew on his childhood growing up on the Okanagan Indian reserve for his coming-of-age story set in 1956


Canadian-American Author Ruth Ozeki Wins Women’s Book Prize for “The Book of Form and Emptiness”The UK judges said her fourth novel, inspired in part by the Vancouver Public Library, contained "sparkling writing, warmth, intelligence, humour and poignancy."


The Bill Gates Summer Reading List Includes a Sci-Fi Novel On Gender Inequality Suggested by His DaughterBill Gates' summer reading list includes fiction and non-fiction titles that cover gender equality, political polarization and climate change.


American novelist Joshua Cohen wins the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for “The Netanyahus”The 2022 Pulitzer prizes include this satirical look at identity politics, focused on the father of former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at a crucial time in the Jewish state’s history


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Queen Elizabeth II’s Aide Reveals Details of Life in Royal Pandemic Lockdown in New Addition to BookAngela Kelly, who's worked for the Queen for 20 years, discusses everything from cutting the Queen's hair to "the light and laughter that was shared ... even in the darkest moments."


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Prince Harry’s Memoir is Set to Rock the MonarchyFriends say the California-based royal got a million-pound book deal to write "an intimate take on his feeling about the family."


European Jewish Congress Asks Publisher to Pull Anne Frank BookThe Congress says 'The Betrayal of Anne Frank' has "deeply hurt the memory of Anne Frank, as well as the dignity of the survivors and the victims of the Holocaust."


Canadian Author Details Anne Frank Cold-Case Investigation That Named Surprise Suspect in Her Family’s Betrayal in New BookAhead of the 75th anniversary of the publication of Frank's 'The Diary of a Young Girl' in June, a team that included a retired FBI agent and around 20 historians, criminologists and data specialists identified a relatively unknown figure as a leading suspect in revealing her family's hideout.


Man Who Tricked Authors Into Handing Over Unpublished Manuscripts Arrested by FBI in New YorkFilippo Bernardini, an employee of a well known publication house, has been arrested for stealing hundreds of unpublished manuscripts.


Hollywood Legend Betty White Has a Last Laugh in New Biographic Comic BookThe creators of the biographical comic book have released similar books about Hollywood legends like Carrie Fisher, Lucille Ball, David Bowie and Elizabeth Taylor.


Barack Obama Reveals His List of Books That Left “A Lasting Impression” in 2021Obama's favourite 2021 reads include two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead's 'Harlem Shuffle' and 'Klara and the Sun,' by Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro


“Interview With the Vampire” Author Anne Rice Dies at 80 — Tributes Pour in From Stuart Townsend and OthersThe author, who was best known for her work in gothic fiction, died on Saturday evening as a result of complications from a stroke.


Norma Dunning wins $25,000 Governor General’s English fiction prize for ‘Tainna’The Edmonton-based Inuk writer explores themes of displacement, loneliness and spirituality in six short stories


Omar El Akkad wins $100,000 Giller prize for “What Strange Paradise”The former Globe and Mail reporter, who published "American War" to acclaim in 2017, tackles the global migrant refugee crisis in his second novel


South African Author Damon Galgut Wins the Booker Prize For ‘The Promise’Galgut received nominations for his 2003 and 2010 works before finally taking home the prize this year. 


Hollywood Legend Paul Newman Discusses Life, Acting and Aging Gracefully in Newly Discovered MemoirPublishers of the newly discovered memoir say the Hollywood legend wrote the book in the 1980s in response to the relentless media attention he received during that time.


Here’s What You Need to Know About the Toronto International Festival of AuthorsDirector Roland Gulliver lands in Toronto to open his second, much-expanded virtual festival with more than 200 events


Tanzanian Novelist Gurnah Wins 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature for Depicting the Impact of Colonialism and Refugee StoriesGurnah, 72, is only the second writer from sub-Saharan Africa to win one of the world's most prestigious literary awards


Miriam Toews Garners Third Giller Prize Nomination for “Fight Night” after Shortlist AnnouncedSophomore efforts from novelists Omar El Akkad and Jordan Tannahill join debut books from Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia and Angélique Lalonde


Tina Brown’s New Book, ‘The Palace Papers’, Covers the Royal Family’s Reinvention After Diana’s Tragic DeathTina Brown's sequel to her 2007 release 'The Diana Chronicles' is set to hit shelves April 12, 2022. 


Audible.ca Releases Andrew Pyper’s Exclusive Audiobook “Oracle” For New Plus Catalogue LaunchThe thriller about a psychic FBI detective is one of 12,000 titles now available for free to members


Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen to Release Book Based On Their “Renegades” PodcastThe new book will feature a collection of candid, intimate and entertaining conversations


Prince Harry Will Publish a Memoir in Late 2022Harry says he's writing the book "not as the prince I was born but as the man I have become."


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