November 2024 reads
by Alana
Time is always weird during this long stretch of vacationless days between Thanksgiving and Christmas – fast and slow all at once. The busier life gets – holiday parties, family plans – the more I want to retreat indoors with my books and my cat. Trying to find a balance between the social things and the introvert-recharge time.
But then there’s the added pressure of my totally arbitrary Goodreads goal to read 130 books this year! Thanks to everyone who gave me short book recommendations for November and December. As you can see from last month’s reviews, I appreciate the suggestions!
Here’s an update of my 2024 Reading Map with November’s reads:
Nonfiction
A Season of Loss, A Lifetime of Forgiveness – John Mannasso
After teaching an outdoor yoga class this summer, my student Graham invited me back to his house to catch up. We had coffee, talked yoga, gardening, and sports, and Graham asked if I knew about ‘his family’s story’. I had heard bits and pieces, but that day Graham showed me the corner of his basement dedicated to his son Dan Snyder, an NHL hockey player.
Dan died in a car accident in 2003, a few days before the start of his first season as a third-line centre for the Atlanta Thrashers. He’d worked his whole life to make the NHL, persevering when many others would’ve quit. The driver of the car was Dany Heatley, an NHL All Star and the Thrasher’s star player. Dany was driving too fast on a strip of road in Atlanta and collided with a wall, destroying his Ferrari and launching Dan out of the car.
Graham lent me this book which chronicles the accident, the days that followed when there was hope that Dan would survive, and the grief and outpouring of support that followed when he didn’t. The author interviews family, friends and colleagues of both Dan and Dany and documents the season that followed the accident. The descriptions of Dan’s funeral in Elmira – the eulogies, the way the town rallied around the Snyders, and the presence from the NHL community – brought me to tears.
I can’t put into words the weight Dan and Dany’s story, and the grace with which the Snyder family navigated tragedy is awe inspiring. The forgiveness Graham, his wife LuAnn and Dan’s brother and sister show Dany Heatley, and the restorative justice in sentencing that they advocated for, are values I can only hope to embody throughout my life.
Conversations on Love – Natasha Lunn
One of my favourite reads of 2024, this collection of essays explores love in all its myriad forms. From romantic partners, to parental and sibling connection, to faith, friendships, and beautiful encounters with strangers, Lunn collates tidbits of wisdom from the array of authors and creators she interviewed. She weaves her own lessons through each chapter, deconstructing romantic tropes and the ways in which expectations restrict our perception of how love shows up in our life. More than one essay made me pause in gratitude, reflection, or deep feeling.
Recommended by Melissa
Polysecure – Jessica Fern
Fern began her career as a psychotherapist with a broad counselling practice. But as she developed her own polyamourous relationships, she identified a need both in clinical resources and in her clients for support navigating relationships of consensual non-monogamy. This book summarizes Fern’s work on the topic, providing an update on traditional attachment theory to support those who are seeking to build healthy, secure relationships with more than one partner. I don’t know much about polyamoury or attachment theory and learned a lot from this book about communication, boundary settling, and understanding attachment styles.
Recommended by two lovely coworkers and friends
Fiction
Wandering Souls – Cecile Pin
A lyrical refugee tale of a sister who shepherds her younger brothers out of war-torn Vietnam, through a Hong Kong refugee camp, and to London, England, where they are expected to create a new life. I’ve read many books about displacement, the shock of cultures colliding, and the survivor’s grief that so many refugees carry, but Pin’s novel may be one of the best for conveying the oppressive weight felt by those who escape traumatic situations. It takes decades for the narrator Anh to allow herself happiness, so great is her sense of responsibility for her brothers and the parents and siblings who never made it out of Vietnam. A powerful, poignant little book.
Recommended by Syerra
The Beekeeper of Aleppo – Christy Lefteri
Another refugee story, this time from Syria. Nuri and Afra, a beekeeper and a blind artist, resist leaving Aleppo because it is the place where their son died. Lefteri’s novel pulls no punches. The pain of deciding to flee their ravaged homeland, the contradictory tangle of goodness and corruption in refugee camps, the abuse suffered by migrants in their new countries – you experience it all through the eyes of Nuri and Afra who are simply trying to move through their grief and find hope again. A moving story of resilience, slowly and methodically told.
Recommended by: Soumodip
Goodnight Mr Tom - Michelle Magorian
A warm hug of a book about the unexpected family we find in dark days. William Beech is one of thousands of children sent away from London during World War II, relocated to houses in the country before and during the Blitz. William, who suffered abuse at the hands of his unwell mother, is placed with stoic Mr. Tom Oakley. An Anne of Green Gables-esque story rife with the small joys of youth – quick friendships, foolish ventures, awkward first love, newfound talent, and forays into big emotions like grief – Magorian’s novel is also heavy with the implications of its setting. A satisfying, sometimes sad read.
Recommended by Shannon
Antarctica – Claire Keegan
A collection of short fiction by an author I quite enjoy. Desire – both carnal and emotional – is the unifying thread through these stories which vary in tone from sort-of-mournfully messed up, to quietly depressing, to real dark and depressing. In her exploration of relationships (some healthy, mostly not) Keegan’s characters feel flawed, hopeful, and decidedly human. Resisting patriarchal oppression, thrill-seeking to break from ennui, and the guilt and shame desire can produce are recurrent themes. Set these against a backdrop of an 80ish Republic of Ireland, and you have stories rich in the visuals and language of a specific place and period. An engaging anthology, starkly different from Keegan’s later works.
The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
A novella in which a fisherman far past his prime strains to stay relevant in a changing world. Told with Hemingway’s standard economy of language, Santiago’s solo journey off the Cuban coast is windswept, salty, and rich with quiet wisdom. More than once, the old man chastises himself for the audacity of his actions, and through the precision of Hemingway’s prose I could feel my own arms strain and my own heart heavy with Santiago’s frustration and feeling of pointlessness. A short, existential read about the nobility of effort in the absence of meaning.
Working my way through my dad’s favourite authors.
The Ministry of Time – Kaliane Bradley
A recursive love story about how empire sustains itself. Told in an evocative, metaphoric style that I suspect is divisive (I loved it). Our unnamed narrator is an employee of the British government, charged with chaperoning a naval officer pulled out of time for an experiment on the feasibility of time travel. Commander Graham Gore is a real historical figure who served in the doomed Franklin Expedition of the mid-nineteenth century, and Bradley’s English-Cambodian narrator is assigned to help him adjust to the expectations of modernity.
Overt discussions of racism, of Gore’s role in the slave trade, and of the narrator’s pliant obedience to orders make it clear that the story is about more than ‘wibbly wobbly time stuff’. Empire is never far away - for Graham who was born under it, to the narrator who is a product of its effects, perpetuating imperial control over history itself. Tamer in its anti-colonialism than R.F. Kuang’s Babel, but an impressive and thought-provoking debut nonetheless.
Thornhedge – T. Kingfisher
A little fairytale from one of my favourite genre fiction writers. A shapeshifting fae guards a bramble-wrapped tower against princes and fortune seekers. The doomed princess within must not be freed, according to the protagonist. An Islamic knight-at-arms seeks the tower and finds the sometimes-a-girl, sometimes-a-toad narrator instead. Told in rhythmic, pleasing prose, Kingfisher captures the spirit of Arthurian legend, and the otherness of creatures that go bump in the night. A diverting, inventive story.
Recommended by Milana
The Grownup – Gillian Flynn
From the author of Gone Girl, this thriller novella makes the reader question every assumption made along the way. A cynical hack of a fortune teller is called to cleanse a haunted house and to thereby ‘save’ the stepson of her client. Characterized by the same plot twists and unreliable narrators familiar to fans of Flynn’s work, this memorable, murderous tale will keep you guessing even after it ends.
Recommended by Tina
An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good - Helene Tursten
A Swedish retiree has a great deal on her giant condo and isn’t afraid to defend it. Maud is an 88-year old resident of Gothenburg with an ample pension and a penchant for murder. Tursten’s anthology documents the plentiful ways that this elderly lady gets up to no good – weirdly charming murders at home, abroad, and everywhere in between! I didn’t know the premise of this book when I started it, but I enjoyed the inversion of expectations.
Recommended by: Meghan
Going Solo - Roald Dahl
An autobiography of Dahl’s early twenties. He was an employee of Shell company in Tanzania when World War II broke out. Dahl enlisted in the air force, underwent training, and flew to Greece where he was part of a doomed squadron of less than a dozen fighter pilots standing against the Luftwaffe. Irascible, self-deprecating, and incisive in observation, Dahl doesn’t downplay the horrors of war, the inadequacy of his training, or the idiocy of air combat. His relationship to his Tanzanian staff is racist and derogatory at times, and Dahl makes fun of himself just as much as he makes fun of others. In some cases, his humour seems a coping mechanism for the devastating futility of both the mission in Greece that he barely survived and of war at large.
Recommended by Shannon
The Life Impossible – Matt Haig
Retired math teacher Grace Winters is unexpectedly left a run-down house in Ibiza when a colleague passes away. Haunted by the loss of her young son and, more recently, of her husband, Grace relocates to the town where she feels out of place, too old for a place of such energy and wonder. But magic finds Grace in Ibzia and what follows is a quest for justice for the natural world and resistance against corporate development. Told with the same magic realism of The Midnight Library, Haig’s book features biologist surf instructors, miracle algae, and mind-reading. An enchanting story that I didn’t quite connect with.
