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Canada is a nation of readers – and perhaps none more enthusiastically so than its class of authors. As crisp fall weather drives us all indoors, and winter’s cold embrace beckons, The Globe and Mail reached out to writers across the country to get their reading recommendations from recent months. The list is impressive, spanning economic tomes, thrillers and historical fiction, and incorporating subjects ranging from whaling to social justice. Here, our literary luminaries share autumn’s bedside table books.
Value(s): Building a Better World For All by Mark Carney
Recommended by John Boyko, Lakefield, Ont., author of Cold Fire: Kennedy’s Northern Front and The Devil’s Trick: How Canada Fought the Vietnam War
“The former governor of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England explains the sad prices we have paid for having moved from a market economy to a market society. Carney argues that we must meet the challenges and opportunities of the 4th Industrial Revolution by aligning our values – and how we determine economic valuation. Carney believes we can make the difficult but necessary change and, in so doing, create societies that are greener, richer, safer and more equitable.”
Real Life by Brandon Taylor
Recommended by Mandy Len Catron, Vancouver, author of How to Fall in Love With Anyone
“Real Life takes place over a single summer weekend in the life of Wallace, a queer Black grad student in a mostly white university town. It is, at its heart, a novel about the limitations of intimacy, how easily we fail to truly know one another, despite our best efforts. Though it’s definitely not a frothy beach read, Taylor manages to capture the beautiful ephemerality of late summer – and the sense that real life is always lurking just around the corner.”
On Property by Rinaldo Walcott
Recommended by Antonio Michael Downing, Toronto/Kitchener, Ont., author of Saga Boy
“Masterful. A powerful tract. Whether a believer or not, it is worth the read for the ideas it provokes about what we could be. Rinaldo Walcott’s gift is that he makes what seems preposterous to most seem like common sense: abolish property as a completion of abolishing slavery as a means to solving the savagery of modern policing. A mad idea? Perhaps, but I found it hard to argue with his logic. As the Rastafari would say: bun Babylon!”
Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah
Recommended by Genevieve Graham, Halifax, author of The Forgotten Home Child
“The complicated, intertwined stories of a cold, emotionally distant mother and her two daughters who are forced to unearth a long-buried family secret. When that truth comes to light, the reader is plunged into an incredible, heartbreaking story from decades before, during the brutal Siege of Leningrad, when one woman kept her family alive by making impossible and sacrificial decisions. Through the telling of her own story, she leads her daughters through the darkness then relies on it again decades later, to save herself. Winter Garden is an absolute masterpiece. I should have read it long ago.”
Interior States by Meghan O’Gieblyn
Recommended by Kate Harris, Atlin, B.C., author of Lands of Lost Borders
“When I first stumbled on one of O’Gieblyn’s essays online, I knew I’d found a writer I’d follow for life, whose every published sentence I’d track down and read several times over. Luckily this book gathers much of her work to date in one place: essays that aren’t confessional so much as testimonial, questioning what and how we worship in an increasingly secular world. Her book left me with renewed faith – not in the usual gods, or their contemporary substitutes in politics or technology, but in the power of whip-smart writing infused with nuance and soul.”
Saint X by Alexis Schaitkin
Recommended by Ann Hui, Toronto, author of Chop Suey Nation
“On the surface, it seems the perfect light read: a wealthy young American woman mysteriously disappears while vacationing at a Caribbean resort. But in telling the story of the long tail of trauma that follows that murder – including the stories of the resort workers accused – Alexis Schaitkin’s Saint X reveals itself for what it is: a unflinching examination of race, class and privilege.”
Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby
Recommended by Sheena Kamal, Toronto, author of Fight Like a Girl
“I read Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby in one straight shot. It’s my favourite kind of novel, an action-packed thriller with a huge heart. When a young gay couple is murdered, their two fathers – one black and one white – begin their own investigation into who killed their sons, and why. Compelling characters, plenty of social commentary and a plot that really moves. I couldn’t put this novel down!”
11/22/63 by Stephen King
Recommended by Ethan Lou, Toronto, author of Once a Bitcoin Miner
“I’m not a Stephen King guy. Read it only because I found it in my condo’s trash room. Doesn’t even have a dust jacket, and I could see the ending from a mile away. But the foreboding throughout and the escalating pain and struggle of the protagonist sucked me in like books did when I was a kid. I missed a meeting because I was too engrossed.”
The North Water: A Novel by Ian McGuire
Recommended by Philip Slayton, Port Medway, N.S., author of How to Be Good and Nothing Left to Lose
“This is a brilliant and original story about violence and evil surrounding a 19th-century whaling expedition to the Arctic Circle. A bloodthirsty and impetuous harpooner and the ship’s doctor, a disgraced ex-army surgeon, seek each other’s destruction. Misery, catastrophe and death are everywhere. What better book to read on a peaceful afternoon as you look out over the calm Atlantic from a seaside porch on Nova Scotia’s South Shore and sip a sundowner martini?”
Pew by Catherine Lacey
Recommended by Joan Thomas, Winnipeg, author of Five Wives and The Opening Sky
“In Catherine Lacey’s Pew, a young stranger is found sleeping in a church and so is given the name Pew. The cringingly earnest folks that take Pew home are thwarted in their efforts to figure out their silent guest – what sex are they, what race? Even Pew, the first-person narrator, is not sure. The novel is a sharp satire of a Southern U.S. community, but mostly it’s about what people reveal of themselves when they can’t rely on the conventional identifiers. Prepare to be unmoored.”