In which there is talk of the slim stories which have travelled with me within the city.
While bulkier volumes stayed home.
Like Robertson Davies’ Murther and Walking Spirits (1991).
And Nazanine Hozar’s Aria (2019).
These are awkward travelling companions: thick and heavy
But some of the skinnies in my current stack are awkward travelling companions too.
Like Mikella Nicol’s Aphelia (Trans. Lesley Trites).
Which is the kind of book that you could read on a single (long) train ride (but which requires more concentration than you might guess).
Travelling with books: a delicate business.
Although it isn’t how one is intended to read it, I have found Mike Barnes’ Be With: Letters to a Caregiver (2018) to be good company when travelling on public transit in the city’s core.
When the distance between stops is shorter and the conditions occasionally crowded; it is a compact volume which nestles into one’s hand and the narrative is structured so that caregivers can read in short bursts.
Barnes is an experienced writer and he strikes the perfect tone here: intimate and universal, fundamental and profound.
It reads the way that I imagine another person’s religious text might satisfy them, so that one can read a few lines or pages and contemplate or, simply, breathe.
The book landed on my stack thanks to its recent nomination for the Toronto Book Award and the blurb from Margaret Atwood on the cover – “Timely, lyrical, tough, accurate” – intrigued me further.
Tope Folarin won the Caine Prize in 2013 and was shortlisted again three years later.
His debut novel A Particular Kind of Black Man (2019) takes readers straight to the heart of Tunde, rooting us in a way that Tunde himself longs for:
“Home, in my mind, was a jumble of the various places I’d lived. My favorite bookshop in Hartville right next to my favorite pizza place in Cirrilo. Friends from Bountiful and Cirrilo and Hartville laughing and gossiping with one another. The place I missed did not even exist.”
Although a quiet coming-of-age story in many ways, the narrative voice is so engaging that even the events of the past feel urgent.
Perhaps because it is a young man’s memories which close the gap between what he longs for and what is within his grasp.
I stopped on a park bench the day I brought this home from the library because I found the first few pages so compelling (for character, not for plot).
Jane Gardam’s A Few Fair Days (1971) is her first published work and she is one of my MRE (MustReadEverything) Authors.
When I was browsing the shelves in the children’s library, reluctant to leave because it was so hot outdoors and so pleasantly cool inside the library, it seemed a delightful idea to bring home this collection of stories about a summer “in a small cold town by the sea in the farthest part of the north of Yorkshire where things changed very slowly” and I started reading on the subway home.
The book is arranged in chapters, which makes sense because some of the chronicled events are in sequence (so, for instance, a family member is absent at the beginning but restored to the family home later in the work).
Bbut there are some stories within these stories which make it seem, simultaneously, more a collection of tales.
The overall sense is beyond both of these: that nostalgic sense of time suspended, where Lucy and the others girls are summering and they are all-the-ages-there-ever-were all at once.
I just love the cover of A Few Fair Days. I want to be one of those girls. I imagine them sitting there for ages, digging their hands and feet into the warm sand as they tell secrets and pledge to be friends forever.
Oh, it’s such a lovely story. Make a note in your book and ILL it next July! 🙂 (Though it almost sounds like you’ve read it already.)
My bookbag seems a complicated business at this point. I’m waiting to see what books I have to read for Wordfest coming up, as I will probably be hosting a few events and want sufficient time to read the authors. I’ve just finished Tegan and Sara’s memoir (they’re a rock duo) and onto a summery-thriller to end off my Labour Day weekend 😉
To whom have you been speaking that you’ve had to explain who Tegan and Sara are? 😀 Not that I’m a huge fan, I just like some of their stuff. Do you think the memoir is of broad interest or mainly for their devoted followers? (I’m behind with online stuff. Feel free to include a link in your reply if you’ve already answered this on your blog.) I know what you mean about seasonal reading waiting in the wings: September is going to make my bookbag bulge!
It’s funny, I’m a bit unsure of how ‘famous’ Tegan and Sara really are I suppose. The memoir was interesting to read, not just for their super fans so I do recommend it. It’s also an interesting look at coming out, coming to terms with one’s sexuality as a teen, etc.
I like the pictures from it: they seem so much the same (as each other and in themselves, too, across time) and so much not, simultaneously. But it’s hard to make time for non-fiction, as I know you understand.
I had no idea who Tegan and Sara were until I saw their book!
Then you’re their perfect audience: are you planning to read it? 🙂
I’m sure I’d like it, but I probably won’t. Just because there are so many others. But never say never!
Plus, you’ve got your Atlantic reading to keep in mind. Devotion in any direction always means choosing against as much as one chooses for: only so many reading hours!
I enjoyed Be With even if I’m not the ideal audience, and could see it being the perfect thing for someone to pick up in a few free moments in a hospital or nursing home. It was unusual to find an Atwood puff on such a book, wasn’t it?
I just had a tour through your MRE list! Does it help to have it as a checklist — do you then make a plan for chipping away at it incrementally?
I appreciate Atwood’s quieter (i.e. less blurb-y) support of writers through individual mentorships and what-not and occasional accolades on a book cover: one has the sense that she truly does value the books she chooses to blurb. Not that I think frequency alone suggests that someone’s blurb isn’t sincere: I think, for instance, Stephen King, reads a tonne of books and I can see where he would have even more opportunities to blurb from that perspective (especially given that the kinds of books he tends to blurb are super plot-driven, the sit-down-and-read-until-you’re-done sort of book). The opposite of Be With.
Yes, the list does help. I usually choose at least a dozen books from it a year (sometimes more, depending on the year) and many of the writers are no longer writing, so that’s keeping me about even overall. Are you thinking of trying it?
I’d have to have a think about who I’ve read everything by already, and who I would definitely pledge to read everything by. I have a few authors I’ve given up on in recent years, though I would previously have read their every new release (John Irving, Sebastian Faulks). With my favourites I’m still holding back a novel, or at least an obscure critical work, in case they don’t publish anything else (David Lodge, A.S. Byatt).
We change, they change: I think it makes sense to consider these kinds of pledges as being changeable as time passes. Byatt used to be a hardcover-buy for me (post-Possession) and I’m less interested now (but still have The Biographer’s Tale on my list all the same). What’s your favourite of hers so far?
Possession (due for a reread), followed by Still Life and a couple of the story volumes. Biographer’s is also very good.
Have you read Martha Cooley’s The Archivist? I’ve been told it’s a good one for fans of Possession. I like the physicality of the newer story collections: perfectly hand-sized. (Sugar being all ordinary sized. Bah.)
Yes, I’ve read that one and enjoyed it well enough, though it’s not a patch on the Byatt 😉