If you’re a regular reader, you might recall that my reason for participating in the Toronto Public Library Reading Challenge was my failure to complete it in years past (more about that here and here), but throughout last year I worked towards this goal.
I’ve talked about most of the books here already—save for three—and one of them was a real favourite: Mia McKenzie’s Skye Falling (2021). Nothing really happens, but every character’s life at the end of the book has profoundly changed from the beginning. Skye’s voice captures the balance perfectly, for me, between flawed and funny; this is the kind of book I wanted when I picked up Eleanor Oliphant, and I super wanted everyone in this story to be completely fine.
“I lean back in my chair and rub my eyes. I think about the ways good and not-so-good times fold together and overlap, the ways a memory of stress and one of reparation can sleep like lovers in the same bed, touching fingertips in the quiet, and I question myself. Why do I pretend it was all bad?”
As a sequel, Satoshi Yagisawa’s More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (2011; 2024 Eric Ozawa) sustains the first book’s tone. People spend a lot of time in their own minds, drinking coffee and wondering how other people are feeling and thinking (only occasionally actually asking). And there are often books around. The central plot element might not have the same resonance for readers who haven’t read the previous book, but in the end this isn’t a book you’re going to read for plot. You’ll read it because you like the cover, or because you’ve picked up the habit of these seemingly-cosy Japanese books about cats and hot drinks and solitude (there aren’t actually any cats in this one) and you don’t mind the undercurrent of grief and impermanence simmering inside.
“People forget all kinds of things. They live by forgetting. Yet our thoughts endure, the way waves leave traces in the sand.”
And Shokoofeh Azar’s The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree (2017; Trans. 2020, Translator’s Name Withheld) which I know Sue and Bron both really enjoyed and admired so, when I saw it on the Library Sale table, all the way on the other side of the world, I snapped it up. A delicate interweaving of family stories and Persian tales, here reality and imagination dance so fluidly that one struggles to find the borders. When the story began, I thought it would be the sort of book that takes some time to absorb, because this Iranian novel is filled with loss and heartache, but there is something about the way that she captures these experiences and transforms them, deftly but determinedly, which makes it almost unputdownable. There are so many stories within this story, that as soon as I was finished, I was struck by the conundrum of wanting to immediately share this copy with a reading friend but, simultaneously, not feeling prepared to let it go yet either, because I feel as though I would notice completely different aspects of the story on a reread. Really wonderful.
“It’s life’s failure and its deficiencies that make someone a daydreamer. I don’t understand why prophets and philosophers didn’t see the significance in that. I think imagination is at the heart of reality, or at least, is the immediate definition and interpretation of reality.”
BASIC CHALLENGE
A Book Published in 2024: Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! (2024)
A Lambda Literary Award Winner: Mia McKenzie’s Skye Falling (2021)*
A Book by an Author with a Chronic Illness: Samantha Irby’s we are never meeting in real life (2017)
A Non-Fiction Book by an Indigenous Author: Angela Sterritt’s Unbroken (2023)
A Book by a Caribbean Author: Charmaine Wilkerson’s Black Cake (2022)
A Book about Growing up in a Religious Household: Kelli Jo Ford’s Crooked Hallelujah (2020)
A Memoir by a Canadian Author: Anais Granofsky’s The Girl in the Middle (2022)
A Book about an Historical Female Figure: Phong Nguyen’s Bronze Drum (2020)
A Book about an Invention: William Kamkwamba’s The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (2009)
A Book Set in a Library or Bookstore: Satoshi Yagisawa’s More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (2011; 2024 Eric Ozawa)*
A Book about Community: Délana R. A. Dameron’s Redwood Court (2024)
A Book about a Holiday: Uzma Jalaluddin and Marissa Stapley’s Three Holidays and a Wedding (2023)
ADVANCED CHALLENGE
A Book Set in the Canadian Territories: David Robertson’s The Barren Grounds (2020)
A Book Recommended by Your Library: Jessica George’s Maame (2023) Recommendation here.
A Book with Dark Humour: R.F. Kuang’s Yellowface (2023)
A Book You Discovered through an Unexpected Source: Shokoofeh Azar’s The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree (2017; 2020)*
A Book about Playing Games: Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (2022)
A Book Recommended by Someone Younger than You: Mimi Grace’s Make a Scene (2020) from Rachel
A Book with a Long Title: Quan Barry’s When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East (2022)
A Book about Politics: Sevgi Soysal’s Dawn (Translated by Maureen Freely)
A Book from an Animal’s Perspective: Sōseki Natsume’s I Am a Cat (Illustrated by Chiroru Kobato and Translated by Zack Davisson (1905-6; 2010)
A Thriller or True Crime: Stacey Abrams While Justice Sleeps(2021)
A Book that Takes Place in a School: Mariko Tamaki’s I Am Not Starfire (2021)
A BIPOC Romance: Kevin Kwan’s Lies and Weddings (2024)
A Canadian Immigrant Story: Mai Nguyen’s Sunshine Nails (2023)
A Book Referencing a Work of Art: Kent Monkman and Gisèle Gordon’s Volume One of The Memoirs of Miss Chief Eagle Testikle (2023)
Which of these categories do you think would have been the simplest to fulfill from your stacks, and which the most challenging?
Which one(s) do you think you might adopt for your 2025 even if you aren’t officially reading for challenges?
Are there goals—reading or life—that you’ve abandoned or failed in the past, that you would like to “begin again” and achieve? It doesn’t have to be a new year, to choose to begin again.
Congratulations on completing the challenge! That’s a lot of book categories you had to fill. Will you be doing it again this year, or was finally completing it satisfying enough?
Thank you! /curtsy The intent was only to see if I could actually complete it. But I do think their own format with a Bingo card is a lot of fun, so I was tempted. If a librarian friend of mine decides to join (she’s debating), I will probably tag along for a row/column, not to fill the grid.
That challenge is impressive, but even if you didn’t finish it, just working towards the categories would be enriching. I don’t personally enjoy reading challenges much. But if I were to participate, the one from an animal’s perspective would be the most challenging. Usually they’re kind of sad so I avoid those!
Congratulations on finishing this year! I keep thinking about doing this–and I see the new year is out–but I never do…
Martyr is on my list of things to read, but haven’t yet.
Ahhh, that makes me feel so much better! It’s just always there, isn’t it.
Yes, they just launched the 2025 at the Runnymede branch apparently. (That branch has so many cool events.)
I don’t think I could match a book read in 2024 to more than 4 or 5 of these categories. Though Murakami’s The City and Its Uncertain Walls is set in two libraries (so far, I’m halfway through). As for carrying out resolutions, I’m sure I told someone I would obtain and read The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree ‘immediately’ some months ago.
That category was one that I thought I would be easily able to fill, but it proved more difficult than expected!
Ahhhhh, I know that feeling. heheh While I was reading, I wondered how you would find it, there is a bit of a whiff of short-story-ness to it, which made me think you wouldn’t but, then, that’s true of Stead’s Salzburg Tales, which makes me think you’d overlook those aspects of Greengage Tree too because it’s also very well done.
I’m reminded Murakami has another book about libraries – The Strange Library – which is probably YA, or maybe just ageless, and, to tie in with another recent post of yours, the illustrations are integral to the text.
It comes in its own sort of envelope or packaging too: it’s striking! I wished that I’d not already read it, when I saw that category in the challenge. (His newest is still not available in the library. I think the “speedy” arrival of Rooney’s novel was a fluke.)
Congratulations on completing the challenge!
I love those categories even if I’d struggle with a lot of them if I did this challenge. But it led you to a great variety of books and that’s such a treasure!
I’m curious about these cozy cat/book/coffe Japanese books but I’m not sure I’d like them. I loved I Am a Cat. It was so funny to see life from a cat’s perspective.
Thanks, Emma: those other half-finished challenges are not so intimidating now (I briefly considered adopting an older one as a “new-to-me” challenge)!
One particular bookfriend persisted with her recommendations until I could no longer resist. I’m still adjusting, I think, but on occasion I think I’ll enjoy one of them.
He’s got a great sense of irony and a dry wit: great qualitites in a narrator, whiskered or otherwise!
I love that you returned to this challenge and took another run at it. The advanced challenge categories actually don’t seem all that matter – a true crime or thriller would be easy to find in my stacks. A longer book title might be a bit difficult…one of the hardest I think would be a book that’s set in Canada’s territories, not many come to mind other than David’s series. I always find that’s the hardest, finding books with specific settings.
Thanks, Anne! For me, when I can change a behaviour with my reading, it helps me try it elsewhere in life. And that’s what I think, too, about the advanced instructions: are no more challenging, only that there are twice as many categories in total. The NWT would have been easier with non-fiction, but I was craving a novel (David Robertson’s setting is actually imagined, but I decided it “should” count). Does the Calgary library have a challenge too? I know you have similar kids’ programs in your Alberta library (as in Ontario, for anyone international wondering which different regions you and I inhabit). Not that the TPL challenge is limited to Torontonians either…
Actually, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this to you yet, but I’ve started a new fundraising job at the Calgary Public Library Foundation, so now I (sort of) work at the library!!! We have a program called the Ultimate Summer Reading Challenge, but it’s more about reading books, or at the very least reading every single day, rather than certain titles. It’s more used to simply get people reading as much as possible.
Congratulations: I don’t think you told me that, but it’s excellent news! You must be very excited. And that makes sense, to focus on the habit more than the details of books/pages. I have done that with exercise at times, when I’ve fallen off the mat, adopted a “One Minute is Enough” approach just to get myself back on the mat (and, then, of course I spend more time, after I trick myself with the whole minute thing …repeatedly…why do I continue to fall for this, I dunno LOL). And I know the one-page-a-day technique has worked, similarly, for people to spark a reading habit.
I’m so pleased you loved Greengage Tree as much as Sue and I did. It’s a book I still think about after all this time, and I really wish I had kept my copy because it is a book that cries out to me for a reread too.
Ohhhh, I should hang onto this copy after all (as I can still hardly believe my luck at having found it on the library sale cart) and reread before passing it along. If you’re still thinking about this one, do you know about Tali Girls, which Joe reommended last year? Wholly different stories, but they resonate with the same power.
I’ll probably get to More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop … I enjoyed the first one enough. I hope it’s better than the first one?
I’d say they’re on par, but if pressed for a preference, the story line in the first one (if you can call it that!) appealed more.
Well done on the challenge! The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree is the kind of book that would have attracted me just based on its title, but it’s good to know that you found it so rewarding. It was shortlisted for the Int’l. Booker. I’ll check whether my library system still has a copy.
It was also shortlisted for the Stella Prize (women’s writing in Australia), a prize I follow but have trouble accessing those books to read. My copy is still sitting here, always a good sign, when I don’t want to return a book to the shelf or pass it along yet.
Hey, congrats! That’s quite the challenge. Good for you for persevering and completing it in the end. Such varied reading goals here. A few would be very easy for me to complete—”A Book about Politics” describes about half of the books loitering unread on my Kindle! But some others, like “A Book from an Animal’s Perspective” or “A Book by an Author with a Chronic Illness” would require a bit more research and planning. I don’t tend to do reading challenges because I enjoy veering all over the place and reading what I feel like at any particular time, but if I did, this would be a very interesting one to try. Have you set new goals or challenges for 2025?
Thanks! It’s been very useful to see that a different outcome is often simply a different choice (or a series of different choices). Heh, yes, I can see where that would be an exceptionally quick category for you to fill! I think a lot of people (and sometimes I do this too, but not with this one) view a challenge like this and as an opportunity to finally get to long-time shelf-sitters (Kindle-sitters?!) or stuck-on-the-TBR titles. I just finished my 2024 stat’s a couple of days ago, so I’m still thinking about 2025 (straight-off I had reading planned for work and for Bill’s Australian Fellas event, following his series on Australian Women Writers) but I did jot down some possibilities last year to consider.
The categories in this challenge are a really interesting range, I can definitely see the appeal. Skye Falling sounds wonderful. I’ve two ongoing challenges: Around the World in 80 Books which I’m hoping to finish this year, and Le Monde’s 100 Book of the Century which I suspect I’ll never complete! I do enjoy a challenge/blogging event, as they’re good for getting me to choose from the TBR mountain rather than just go for recent acquisitions.