Earlier this year, I read Britt Wray’s Generation Dread, which is where I learned about the philosopher Thomas Attig, who tells us: “grief allows us to ‘relearn the world’ by thinking about how the world has changed when something that matters deeply to us is lost, and how that affects our relationship to places, other people, other species, and especially to ourselves.”

He continues to discuss the choices we make “about who we are going to be in the face of events we can’t control” and elaborates: “Grieving is about much more than recognizing one’s own feelings; it is about welcoming how those feelings can teach, change, and heal you. It strengthens our connection with the most vital things that matter in life.”

Now that it’s October, I’ve begun gathering my reading for MARM in earnest: have you?

Meanwhile, I’m reading with other projects in mind. My Reading Log is bursting, even though I’ve not been posting. In My Notebook? Countless lists and unreasonably complex plans. In My Bookbag? A constant rotation. For now, here’s a peek at what’s In My Stacks.

Keeping up with reading from Indigenous authors, I’m enjoying Inuk author, Aviaq Johnston’s series that begins with Those Who Run in the Sky about a shaman-in-training, whose experiences and responsibilities change over time. I’ve become quite attached to the characters.

With Bill, I’ve been reading from the longlist for the Ursula K. Le Guin Fiction Prize; we’ve recently finished Brother Alive by Zain Khalid (link to Bill’s post) and are now reading the strange, fragmenty stories in Ten Planets. (He’s written about Arboreality already.)

“The Prize will be given to a writer whose work reflects the concepts and ideas that were central to Ursula’s own work, including but not limited to: hope, equity, and freedom; non-violence and alternatives to conflict; and a holistic view of humanity’s place in the natural world.”

(This is a functional quotation, but I absolutely love the quotation at the top of the prize’s page: a perfect summary of why I read UKLG.)

Prizelist curiosity also had me reading Nghi Vo’s Siren Queen, nominated for the World Fantasy Award; her style reminds me of Silvia Moreno-Garcia, with a satisfying balance between plot and characterisation. I keep thinking “Oh, I’ve got to tell So-and-So about this one” while reading; the Old Hollywood setting is appealing and her deftly handled hint of the unexplained.

(Nicola Griffith’s Spear is nominated for both those awards; her deliberate and sleek prose style suits that story very well and she perfectly captured Camelot-time—Caer Leon in her hands, because she’s telling a Welsh tale—but, as much as I appreciate the love story, I wasn’t in a mood to inhabit her retelling.)

Namwali Serpell’s The Furrows is in my stack because of the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction (my tenth from the longlist). Her voice is direct and compelling, although partly because the main character is overwhelmed by grief, the story spirals, in an unmoored and near-chaotic way.

From the Giller Prize longlist, I’m reading David Bergen’s Away from the Dead. This is not The Age of Hope Bergen or The Matter with Morris Bergen, it’s Here the Dark or The Time In Between Bergen. I’ve got to restart; I wasn’t ready.

I’m also finally reading Lawrence Hill’s The Illegal, which was nominated for a blur of Canadian awards a few years back, as part of my effort to fill the gaps in my CanLit reading experience; it begins at a clip and does not slow. Earlier this summer I read Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost and Madeleine Thien’s Dogs at the Perimeter too: both beautiful, both painful.