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On the final day of the Canada Reads: True Stories debates Carmen Aguirre's darkly comic memoir Something Fierce knocked off Ken Dryden's lauded hockey book, The Game. This year marked the first time Canada Reads offered non-fiction.

This dramatic, darkly funny narrative, which covers the decade from 1979 to 1989, takes the reader inside war-ridden Peru, dictatorship-run Bolivia, post-Malvinas Argentina and Pinochet's Chile. Writing with passion and deep personal insight, Carmen Aguirre captures her constant struggle to reconcile her commitment to the resistance movement with the desires of her youth and her budding sexuality. Something Fierce is a gripping story of love, war and resistance and a rare first-hand account of revolutionary life.

I had the pleasure of meeting fantasy author James Maxey while attending World Fantasy Convention in Columbus, Ohio. His new novel Greatshadow, Book One of the Dragon Apocalypse releases today.

CG: What made you love fantasy?

JM: Comic books. I devoured comics as a kid. Marvel published Conan the Barbarian, and DC had books like Warlord and Claw the Conqueror. When I read actual books in my youth, they were heavily weighted toward science fiction; I was only dimly aware of the fantasy genre. (This may have had something to do with small town libraries feeling it was okay to stock books about spaceships, but not okay to stock books about wizards and spell casting.) I didn't read Lord of the Rings until I was in college.

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British crime writer Reginald Hill passed away Jan 12, 2012. A winner of the Crime Writers' Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement in 1995, Hill was the author of over fifty novels, but he was best known for his characters Dalziel and Pascoe. In addition to starring in twenty of Hill's novels, the characters were also dramatized on the BBC.

His most recent novel, The Woodcutter, was published in Fall 2010.

McNally Robinson has acquired a machine that manufactures a quality paperback book every 4 minutes or so. The machine is part of the bookstore, standing in the front window, and customers can watch books being printed and bound.

The finished book is hard to distinguish from books printed by publishers except for the fact that the paper used for print-on-demand is better quality.

The print-on-demand machine (called the Espresso Book Machine by its manufacturer, On Demand Books, because you can custom order like a specialty coffee and in about the same time), immediately addresses three niche markets.

First, self published authors can now print, launch and distribute through McNally Robinson, avoiding the difficult decision to print many copies without knowing how many will sell.

Second, readers and researchers can buy physical copies of out-of-edition titles, of which there are millions available to McNally Robinson through print-on-demand databases like Google Books and Lightning Source.

Third, teachers and professors can customize textbooks and print only as many as they have students enrolled.

In future, print-on-demand will meet mainstream demand. Negotiations are in progress to make publisher catalogues available for print-on-demand in independent bookstores, which would help shore up the physical supply chain.

The store can now print a book faster than anyone can deliver it from a distant warehouse, with no shipping and handling fees.

Self publishers can email enquiries to bookmachine[AT]grant.mcnallyrobinson.ca.

For more information contact Liz Treidler (453 0424 extension 242) or Paul McNally (955 1937)