The Seaboard Review of Books: Monday Edition
March 2, 2026
In this issue:
Happenstance by Thomas Chamberlain (Fiction)
There’s Always More to Say by Natalie Southworth (Fiction, Short Fiction)
Edna Taçon, curated by Renée van der Avoird (Non-Fiction, Art)
Yes! To Canada: When Grampa Refused to Fight in The Vietnam War (Non-Fiction)
Conor Mc Donnell’s What We Know So Far Is … (Poetry)
Reading Black Poetry Across Canada: Part One (Poetry)
Thanks for reading this issue of The Seaboard Review of Books!
James M. Fisher, editor-in-chief
Fiction
There’s Always More to Say by Natalie Southworth
Natalie Southworth's debut literary fiction collection, There's Always More to Say, presents children as intimate witnesses to parental failures ranging from comically offbeat to devastating. In each of the nine stories, a girl or woman chronicles a domestic crisis that passes for everyday life, which in turn infects her view of her own future. Southwor…
Happenstance by Thomas Chamberlain
John Lennon’s well-known statement, “Life is what happens when you’re making other plans,” is undoubtedly appropriate when discussing the plot of Happenstance.
Non-Fiction
Yes! To Canada: When Grampa Refused to Fight in The Vietnam War
There he is, U.S. Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara, smiling out from a page of Yes! To Canada: When Grampa Refused to Fight in the Vietnam War, by Roger Davies, watercolours by Inae Kim.
Poetry
Conor Mc Donnell’s What We Know So Far Is …
A few years back I was in the emergency room for some moderately painful infection, staring at the walls where they’d chosen to display their new Strategic Plan pillars in gigantic font, beginning with “1. STRENGTH through ENDURANCE.” Dr Conor Mc Donnell, a physician at the Toronto Hospital for Sick Children and author of the book-length poem What We Kn…
Reading Black Poetry Across Canada: Part One
In a time when book sections continue to disappear from newspapers and magazines and journalism about literature can be difficult to find, I believe part of my role as a Canadian writer is to uplift CanLit through reviews and commentary. I spent this Black History Month/African Heritage Month reading and rereading poetry by Black authors and authors of …
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The Baseball 100 by Joe Posnanski
Picking the top 100 baseball players of all time is a challenging task. No matter who you choose, you’re likely to hear arguments about who else should have been included. Nobody recognizes this better than Joe Posnanski, author of The Baseball 100. In fact, Posnanski has a list of another hundred players that arguably could have made his list. Nonetheless, he did go ahead and publish The Baseball 100, which provides his list of the top 100 players of all time.
Ty Cobb, Willie Mays, Babe Ruth, Stan Musial, and Roberto Clemente are included, as are Yogi Berra, Cy Young, Reggie Jackson, Justin Verlander, Derek Jeter, and Max Scherzer. Canadians Larry Walker and Ferguson Jenkins are also on the list. The Baseball 100 also profiles some of the standout players from the Negro Leagues, where African-American players starred before Jackie Robinson began playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Posnanski provides stats that support the players’ inclusion on the list, but he does much more than that, offering insights into players’ childhoods and their route to the big leagues. Anecdotes liven up the content. Father-son relationships, some harmonious and some less so, were central to many players’ origin stories. Many of the players came from small towns or farm communities, and some of the pitchers started on the path to the big leagues by throwing rocks rather than baseballs. Entertaining and authoritative, The Baseball 100 makes for an interesting read. (Contributed by Lisa Timpf)
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