I broke my glasses the day before I started reading "Getting to Maybe." Unfortunately, I had another pair. Written by Frances Westley, Brenda Zimmerman and Michael Quinn Patton, this is a book about "social innovators." You know, people who find solutions.

But don't expect this book to clearly define the problems. It doesn't. And don't expect it to offer practical advice. It won't. Instead it rambles on about Bob Geldof, who has saved Africa twice, and applies complexity theory (chaos theory) so sloppily that it makes Jurassic Park's interpretation look profound. When it offers advice, it uses so much jargon that you'll need a decoder ring.

I was a bit worried when I picked up Noah Richler's literary atlas of Canada, "This is My Country, What's Yours?" There's a lot of ways for a book like this to go wrong. It could be dry, self-important or both. But I was in for a pleasant surprise.

Although the title sounds like something a redneck might slur after last call, this is an amusing and informative read. Richler combines Canadian history with a broad knowledge of our land and culture as seen through its storytellers. Its scope is as big as Canada, ranging from the oral traditions of the Inuit and First Nations to the modern work of recent immigrants. Richler's real accomplishment is managing to discuss all of this in such intimate and entertaining detail.

If "This is My Country, What's Yours?" has a problem, it is that there is no real center to the book. Rather, the center is everywhere. But this echoes Richler's philosophy of Canada as a nation that is being formed by its myths and is in the process of growing up; a place that is nowhere and is slowly becoming somewhere.

He has, in the writing of this atlas, contributed an important part to that process. I actually feel like a better Canadian for having read it.

I have a secret. While I am, by all accounts, a handsome drunkard with a dynamite sense of fashion, I am also an incorrigible geek who believes that science fiction is not only the most successful of twentieth century literary movements, but also the most important.

For the past month I've been eagerly awaiting the release of "Tesseracts Ten"; a collection of Canadian science fiction. And, on Saturday, it finally came out.

The launch party was at Bakka Books on Queen West. Although I should have been at work, I skived off to attend. Both of the editors, Hugo Award Winner Robert Charles Wilson and Bram Stoker Award winner Edo Van Belkom, were there - as were a good portion of the writers. SF fandom was also out in force.

There is a story about Mark Twain. He loved to swear but his wife hated it. One day, hoping to reform him, she repeated back every profanity he had uttered. He said: "You got the words right, Livy, but you don't know the tune."

That story reminds me of the zombie movie "Severed" by director Carl Bessai. It takes place in the British Columbian rainforest. A group of loggers and tree huggers are forced to put their differences aside and fight the undead horde. It's a great idea. I attended the premiere at Jackman Hall looking forward to hippie-eating zombies, limbs being chopped off by chainsaws and a few chuckles. But that, unfortunately, was not what I got.

What I got was a Zombie movie that took itself far too seriously.

While Electro-Clash may be dead in other cities, it was alive and thriving last night at The Boat. Crystal Castles was releasing their CD, Kids On TV were dressed up like monsters and Angie Reed stole the show.

Angie, who hates the electro-clash label, performed songs from her album X,Y,Z Frequency while interacting with a video screen. It was as much animated video art as music. But this is probably to be expected. She is an accomplished visual artist who was just stopping in Toronto before her art show in Cincinnati.

I had a chance to speak with her at The Drake and learned that her half-hour set was only a portion of the whole seventy minute performance. Over sushi she told me that X,Y,Z is actually a concept album involving tricksters, aliens, parallel universes, the afterlife and a mythical land in the Bermuda Triangle. And I just thought it was a bunch of great songs.

Politics and prose have been comfortable bedfellows in the West for some time now. But sometimes politics starts snoring and prose has to elbow him in the ribs. The PEN Canada benefit was just such a shot. Hosted by Ann-Marie MacDonald, it featured award winning authors from around the world, including Wole Soyinka, Wayson Choy, Azar Nafisi, Miriam Toews and M.G. Vassanji.

Kim Bolan won the Paul Kidd Courage Prize and delivered an excellent speech. The readings dragged for a bit until Mr. Wayston Choy. He was funny, entertaining and insightful.

But the night was all about African Noble Laureate Wole Soyinka. His prose was recited in a halting manner that found its own rhythm; quite unrelated to any reading I had ever heard before. Even better, much of his story was about cold beer.

Adrianne Clarkson showed up at the Gala and once again proved herself to be fascinating woman and great conversationalist; tolerant of my boozy breath and strange, though strongly held, opinions.

This was the sort of politics that I could get into. Instead of being surrounded by shabby hippies shouting slogans at surly cops, I was at a gala, surrounded by the literati. We drank wine, ate hors d'oeuvres and no one was arrested. This was the sort of place where politics really happen. The sort of place I usually can't afford.