Fall Arts Preview: Three books to read while staying warm and cosy this fall
Credit to Author: Dana Gee| Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2019 18:08:58 +0000
Summer reading lists are fun, but it seems the serious nose-in-the-book time happens once the cool weather arrives and we embrace sweater season with the fashion zeal it deserves.
We also seem to embrace the big book, the weighty book. Something like Lucy Ellmann’s new novel Ducks, Newburyport is a great example of that for this season. The 1,020 page tome is told in one sentence — yes, move over Proust — by a mother in Ohio. The Booker Prize-shortlisted outing sets its sights squarely on the America Donald Trump has given a very loud voice to.
Joining that much buzzed about release are new works from fiction powerhouses like Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, Alice Hoffman and Zadie Smith. Also getting a lot of attention is journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates’ first novel The Water Dancer.
For non-fiction there are plenty of titles that focus on the issues of the day and the people who are at the forefront of those issues.
Here are three new books from Canadians that you might want to drop into shopping cart as you start to build your fall reading list:
Charlotte Gray | Harper Collins
$33.99
Historian Charlotte Gray turns her focus to the kind of mystery we all love: rich guy with enemies is mysteriously murdered on an island paradise. In this case the rich guy is Sir Harry Oakes, an American-born, British/Canadian gold mining tycoon who was considered the “richest man in the empire.”
In the 1930s he moved to the Bahamas for tax purposes, and was murdered there in 1943.
The murder became big news. It was dubbed the crime of the century and people followed it as closely as we followed the other crime of the century, O.J. Simpson.
In Murdered Midas; A Millionaire, His Goldmine and a Strange Death on an Island Paradise, Gray takes the reader from small prospecting towns in Canada to fancy parties in the Bahamas. There’s even a king involved.
At the end of the day the investigation was mishandled, a fortune went missing and no murderer was ever convicted.
Diane Pinch | Harbour Publishing
$36.95
In 1969 when Apollo 11 was inspiring people to look to the stars, a group of folks here in B.C. decided to join together to focus on saving what was beneath their feet.
Those people started the Sierra Club of B.C. Fifty years later, as young activists take to the street and appear before the United Nations, it seems appropriate to re-visit the story and the accomplishments of this organization.
Pinch’s book is filled with interviews, photos and maps as it chronicles the group and reminds the reader that the issues that mobilized this gang of environmentalists are issues that sadly, haven’t gone away. More than ever we need more of the Sierra Club’s “passion and persistence.”
Michael Christie | McClelland & Stewart
$35
The new novel from Victoria and Galiano Island-based author MIchael Christie is about family, history and of course secrets.
It’s 2038 and the world is trying to manage after the environmental collapse known as the Great Withering has altered the world. Meanwhile, scientist Jacinda (Jake) Greenwood is a tour guide in a rare (remember it’s 2038) old growth forest of thousand-year-old trees on Greenwood Island.
Jake thinks her shared name with the Island is just a coincidence until someone from the past reappears with a very interesting book in hand. From there the novel delivers a journey through generations of characters and the abundant histories that settle deeply into the foundation of a family’s origin story.
As you can imagine it’s not all-good news for Jake as she peels back layer after layer of family history.
This new novel has already made the long list for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.