I’ve been following a thread through this year’s reading for the past four days, from Roe to Revolution, Revolution to Secrecy, Secrecy to Corruption, Corruption to Colonialism, and now, linking from one fiction about labour and status to another, moving from Colonialism to Corrosion. Did you guess from yesterday’s
Dirty Work by Eyal Press (2021) landed in my stack following an interview with the New York Times Book Review editor. Its subtitle—Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America—summarizes the content aptly, but doesn’t express how un-put-down-able I found this book. Most of the time, when
Boyles, Chen, Clerson, Eunyoung, Li, Ruffin, and So Short Stories in July, August, and September Whether in a dedicated collection or an anthology, these stories capture a variety of reading moods. This quarter, I returned to a favourite writer and also explored seven new-to-me story writers.
Before I post about the new reading year, there are a few memorable reads from my 2020 log that I haven’t mentioned yet. Like Pourin’ Down Rain, Cheryl Foggo's memoir about growing up in 1960s Calgary, in a small and tight-knit Black community. When she was young, she heard
“This is the way it’s done, isn’t it? This is how other people do it.” How other people live their lives, that is. When Carol Shields tells the story of Larry Weller’s life, it begins with his having picked up somebody else’s coat and it ends with a party.
