An Arctic Arab, or, the story of Peter Baker, free trader

“I, Peter Baker, known as the Arctic Arab, came from Lebanon during the Turkish conquest,” begins this 1976 memoir.

I searched for value in this atrocity of a book; I found none

I had developed the idea, independent of this book, that this screed, which has been denounced repeatedly since it was first published in 2008, might actually contain some merit that had been buried in poor rhetoric and politics. Wrong.

Old Town, by Fran Hurcomb

A concise, charming book that definitively documents ‘Yellowknife’s defining neighbourhood.’

Fire into Ice: The insanely adventurous life of Chuck Fipke, diamond hunter

Armchair adventure at its finest.

The Right to Be Cold: Sheila Watt-Cloutier’s urgent memoir

Earnest memoir recounts minute details of a fascinating life, bureaucratic tussles included.

I, Nuligak: A memoir of Inuvialuit life in the last heyday of the whalers

‘Because I was an orphan and a poor one at that, my mind was always alert to the happenings around me. Once my eyes had seen something, it was never forgotten.’

A short, jam-packed book of Yellowknife yarns

Ah, here it is. The book about the Yellowknife Yellowknifers love to live in.

Arctic Smoke: A weird punk mystery of a book I barely scraped through

I’ve become something of a scholar of novels written by people who’ve spent time in the Arctic. Not recommending this one.

My Name is Masak, a childhood memoir by Alice French

This book is so spare, it’s nearly impossible to get through without wanting to read between the lines.

Booze and sex collide in this warm, gritty novel of AA in Yellowknife

Whoa! This book isn’t just about alcoholism: it’s about promiscuity, and the forces that drive it, and that’s something we just don’t talk about.