Today is Canada's 142nd birthday. W00t! From coast to coast and from the 49th parallel to the Arctic circle Canadians are celebrating today. Fireworks, barbeques and the resurrection of 80s bands (seriously, Loverboy is playing here) are on the menu at communities all across this country of ours. It is one of the few days of the year, along with World Junior Hockey finals, that we let our Canadianness shine and revel in it. Here's how Canadians are celebrating this year.

With the current economic situation many people are turning back to the Depression for lessons. What did they eat? What did they garden? And for bibliophiles, what did they read? Where did they get their books? Well, thanks to the NPR and Publishers Weekly we know the answer to that. Depression-era reading looked much like today's mass market offerings and that many people got their books from libraries.

June seems like the perfect time to talk about Pride in Canada. I mean it's Pride month and all right? Well, sorta. One of the first things you need to know about Pride in Canada is that up here in Canada we can't seem to decide on the best time for Pride so it's celebrated in different areas all through the summer. Edmonton last week, Toronto this week, Montreal's and Vancouver's in August and Calgary's is in August. We can't decide on a single point to celebrated it but we know it's important that we do.

Words. They have the power to move us. They open up new worlds and ideas. I really love words. There are good ones and bad ones, long one and short ones, easy ones and hard ones. Some words are fun to say (personally I'm fond of "schnitzel"). Words can also utterly confound us. The New York Times recently released a list of words that are most often looked up on their site and the world added the one millionth word to the English language.

It's the day before Father's Day and you still haven't picked out the right gift yet. I sympathize. My father is not so easy to shop for, even when I go the book route. Any book that would ever interest him he's already read and I've exhausted the hockey history section. My father-in-law is just not big on the gift thing at all. So I put out a call to people who know best - twitters and book bloggers of course. Here are their suggestions for that perfect book for dad.