Tim Falconer's Blog

Talking about Windfall

Here are I am talking about Windfall: Viola MacMillan and Her Notorious Mining Scandal on TVO's The Agenda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkiDT...

Klondikers on year-end lists

December is the time for year-end book lists and some of them included Klondikers:

• The Globe 100, the Globe and Mail’s list of “The books we loved in 2021”:
“Falconer tells the riveting tale of a bunch of guys who travelled from the Yukon to Ottawa because they just wanted to play hockey. The frozen continent they crossed in 1905 was so treacherous that for days, the newspapers chronicling their passage lost track of them.” (Here's the Globe's review of Klondikers.)

• CBC Radio’s Day 6’s last-minute gift list:
“For the first time in more than a decade as Day 6 books columnist, [Becky] Toyne is recommending a book about hockey. But she says that Tim Falconer's latest is about far more than that.

• Outside magazine’s 2021 Sweat Science Holiday Book List:
“Falconer’s book is the story of the unlikely challenge, but more generally it’s an entertaining dive into what sports—and society—looked like a century ago.”

And some interviews:

• CBC Radio's Sunday Magazine

• Scuttlepuck podcast

• Sasktoday.ca

Virtual Launch of Klondikers

Please join me for the virtual launch of Klondikers: Dawson City's Stanley Cup Challenge and How a Nation Fell in Love with Hockey

I'll be in conversation with Ian Brown of the Globe and Mail about the book.

Tuesday, Oct. 5 at 7 pm ET

Here's the Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87220179761

A Klondikers pic a day

Klondikers: Dawson City's Stanley Cup Challenge and How a Nation Fell in Love with Hockey includes no photographs so I am posting a pic a day on Facebook, Twitter (@timfalconer) and Instagram (@thetimoji) to introduce some of the characters, places and events in the book.

Puck Possession #7: Blame the Ref

A new edition of my Puck Possession newsletter went out today. It's about the time-honoured tradition of getting mad at referees.

Puck Possession newsletter

Puck Possession is my free newsletter about the roots of our love affair with hockey. Sign up and about once a month you'll receive an email with a brief story from the early days of the game.

Bad Singer excerpt

Bad Singer is, yes, about singing. But it's also about how we hear music. In this excerpt on Hazlitt, I explain why we undervalue timbre -- the terroir of sound -- because it is an intangible that has so far proven to be immune to measurement. Here's "Everything We Can't Describe in Music"

Bad Singer Giveaway Contest

Want to win a copy of Bad Singer? House of Anansi is running a book giveaway contest for my book. Enter by March 6 to win one of fifteen copies.
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...

The Globe and Mail names Bad Singer to most anticipated books list

In “16 Canadian reads for the first half of 2016,” Globe and Mail books editor Mark Medley includes Bad Singer on his list of the most anticipated books coming out in the first six months of the year. “Tim Falconer is an award-winning journalist and a godawful singer,” he writes. “I’m not trying to be mean, but simply accurate.”

Bad Singer also made 49th Shelf's "Most Anticipated: Our Spring 2016 Non-Fiction Preview."

"Face the Music"

How can someone who passionately loves music also be a terrible singer? The surprising science of tone deafness.

Here's a piece I wrote for Maisonneuve magazine about singing, tone deafness (or as the researchers call it, amusia) and how we hear music: http://maisonneuve.org/pressroom/arti...

I hope to turn it into a book.