Five books for the week
October 29th-November 4th, 2023
In my opinion two consecutive weeks is a streak and a streak is a world apart from a routine.
Last week, I selected five books for the week and I was successful in reading one of them and part of three others.
Still Born by Guadalupe Nettel was a whirlwind for me. It’s deeply intimate and not easy and those are two of the things that I strive for in my personal interactions and that I love in my art. Centred around the friendship between two women and their relationships with their attachments to mothering and children, it’s vulnerable, touching, and very thoughtful.
There was some confusion (probably all mine) about Naniki. In my ARC copy of the book, it didn’t specify that she currently lives in Montreal which makes it possible that the book qualifies as one written by a Canadian authour. I committed to reading only five books that are not Canadian this year and Still Born was my fifth so I put Naniki to the side not knowing whether it fit. I’ll come back to it at another time either way.
I did read parts of Huge, The Double Life of Benson Yu, and Your Body is a Revolution this week. I got the furthest with Benson Yu, but I still didn’t get all that far. I was tempted to put all three to the side for now, but I decided to keep Kevin Chong’s Giller Prize shortlisted title around for another week and try to get a bit further into it. It’s early enough that I don’t have a good handle on the who’s who that is required to enjoy a book like this, but I also know that can change at any moment.
I have a couple of vacation days this week and then I’ll be out of the office and away from home for about two weeks. It feels so exciting to say that, but the reality is that it will cost me some really intense days because there is a lot of work that just won’t get done in my absence. In other words, I’m picking five books for this week, but I’m not optimistic about the amount of reading time I’m going to get. Cross your fingers for me. 🤞
Here are my five books for the week:
Back in the Land of the Living by Eva Crocker - Back in the Land of the Living’s was my most surprising most anticipated book of the year. I hadn’t known that Crocker was working on a new novel until she started mentioning it on Instagram very shortly before its publication date. I had loved reading her first book, the Giller longlisted All I Ask, so much that I’d have read anything of hers. I visited Glass Bookshop in Edmonton on the morning of Back in the Land of the Living’s release and snagged the only copy they had on the shelf, but still haven’t started it yet. I have a strong tendency towards delaying my own pleasure and this is a perfect example. I think I’ve been saving it to be a travel read, but I have decided that don’t want to wait any longer.
Bottle Rocket Hearts by Zoe Whittall - Although I’ve never thought about it before right this minute, it is probably appropriate to say that I am a Zoe Whittal stan. She is an authour whose backlist I plan on thoroughly completing and I’m excited to get to her gritty, 2007 debut novel. Like Back in the Land of the Living, Bottle Rocket Hearts is centred around a young queer woman finding herself and her place in the world in Montreal. I think these two books in succession could really compliment each other.
Trailer Park Shakes by Justene Dion-Glowa - This was the first book I bought at this year’s Whistler Writers Festival. I’m a little intimidated when reading poetry, but I have found that I really enjoy listening to poets read their own work and Dion-Glowa gave an outstanding performance at the Literary Cabaret. I’m committed to trying to learn to read and experience poetry on my own and her poems felt very accessible.
“These poems, while dreamlike and playful, bear unflinching witness to the workings of injustice — how violence is channeled through institutions and refracted intimately between people, becoming intertwined with the full range of human experience, including care and love.”
Skid Dogs by Emelia Symington-Fedy - Skid Dogs is another book that I was compelled to purchase at Whistler Writers Festival (shout out to Armchair Books, the official bookseller of the festival) after listening to a reading by the authour. Symington-Fedy sat on the Thrills and Chills: Mystery and Crime Writers panel which was kind of unique and very interesting because, unlike the other writers on the panel, her book is a memoir.
The book focuses on Symington-Fedy’s experience of being a teen girl in a small town and is written after the murder of a girl of a similar age in the same small town and at one of the locations where she and her friends hung out decades earlier. What really attracted me to this book and to Symington-Fedy is that she seems to have approached the book from a factual perspective while deeply layering it with observations on and reflections of how young girls are treated. I anticipate her wry and raucous voice to culminate in my favourite kind of memoir - one I can’t put down.
The Double Life of Benson Yu by Kevin Chong - I wrote about this one last week.
I’ll be back with a report on this week’s five and five for another week next Sunday and I hope to have a couple of posts published in between. If you like to talk books and random topics, please be sure to subscribe and get these delivered to your inbox.
Sign up for Susan Sanford Blades’s newsletter, Girls to the Front!, to get her email next Friday, November 3rd. In it, you’ll find her latest interviews and reflections on writing and books. In addition, you’ll get to read my little review on my book for November and I promise it’s a selection you do not want to sleep on (even though you might have a little trouble sleeping after.) You can only read my review in her email, though, so make sure you subscribe!
What will you be reading this week?