Old landlords sue the state to keep their lands.
Crushed corpses rot upon the holy sands.

Holy smoke! Momentous moments in this chapter! I don‘t usually get on with courtroom drama but Vikram Seth managed to make even that compelling. But little Bhaskar is my main concern. I hope we don‘t have to wait to long for an update.
#SuitableBoy2024

Friday Reads: #PoetryMonth #TransGirlApril #PeopleApril #PictureThis #MentalHealthMay #GraywolfMay

You are invited to check out my latest episode of booktube:

https://youtu.be/DYz6mPpEJEY
.

Sashi, a Tamil girl determined to be a doctor, is 16 when this novel opens in 1981 in northern Sri Lanka. Before long, she and everyone around her are in the midst of a civil war. Her searing voice makes this novel unputdownable and unforgettable.

When I returned from the clinic, I flung myself not into bed or back into my studies, but into those volumes. Their words drained the night of terror. In the Colombo refugee camp, I had longed for a book to remove me from reality. With every chapter I read now, I felt not removed but partially returned to a safety I had thought entirely lost. I tethered my interior life to the pages.

You must understand: there is no single day on which a war begins. The conflict will collect around you gradually, the way carrion birds assemble around the vulnerable, until there are so many predators that the object of their hunger is not even visible. You will not be able to see yourself in the gathering crowd of those who would kill you.

Saturday Reads April 13: poetry, picture book biography, Canadian & queer authors, artists & more!
https://youtu.be/ud_wbFWHV_c

I could feel the boredom, heat and elasticity of time that Maan experiences in village life, and yet there‘s so much drama in this chapter too, not least of which is the wolf hunt. If Maan can control his temper, perhaps politics would be a good career path. But I am most curious and concerned about Rasheed‘s future.

Fellow readers, we have only 9 parts left to go! #SuitableBoy2024

I love the voice of Enid, a neurodivergent lesbian obsessed with true crime podcasts. She struggles with anxiety and phobias. She worries about her mother‘s mental health issues and checks in on her often. Enid has a huge heart and a wry sense of humour and she could really use some psychotherapy. A funny, touching novel. #LGBTQ #CanadianAuthor

We are going to watch a scary movie. I felt like watching something frightening so I could exert power over it. I want to eat popcorn while I watch it and laugh while it tries to scare me.

Two outcasts try to keep a low profile at their huge high school in Nova Scotia; they‘ve each had enough unwanted social media attention, for different traumatic reasons. They share an interest in music, finding the stairwells where reverb enriches voice and strings, and they start to heal. Gripping, heartbreaking and beautiful. #CanadianAuthor

In my latest booktube episode I talk about 7 great reads: neuroscience nonfiction; lesbian poetry; Canadian & Italian fiction; trans and nonbinary comics; Australian picture book

https://youtu.be/dxkkvvk7e7o

(And there‘s a garden tour at the end 🌸)

When we talk about memories being true or false, we are fundamentally mischaracterizing how memory works. I like to think of memory as less like a photograph and more like a painting.

[painting is by my friend Gillian Willans]

The role of words, several languages, and poetry are shown to be central to the poet‘s sense of herself as a strong, queer Asian immigrant to the UK, capable of loving and deserving of love. Mary Jean Chan even explains why readers find her work so accessible & clear: “I‘ll confess: it‘s what happens when you want to be understood.” An absolutely brilliant collection, currently shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. #LGBTQ #poetry

I am a poet, I said to the world‘s rage, its grief. Now I offer this
in return, the way trees do.

The novel feels like a springer spaniel running off-
leash the poem a warm basket it returns to always

Funny and devastating. I loved this satirical look at the intersection between race and literary culture in the USA. Audiobook superbly performed by Sean Crisden.

It was the season of the absent or lazy editor. So many of the novels were needlessly fat.

“A desperate mother ventures to deploy
Fair means or foul to net a suitable boy.”
The more I get to know Haresh, the better I like him. He remembered Bhaskar‘s question! He was smart to hold back on his impulse to immediately propose to Lata, however. She needs time to warm up to him… if he is indeed the right man. Meanwhile, I fear for Rupa‘s cousin‘s daughter Kiran. Her father is evil. Kiran needs to hop a train and get away from him.

I talk about books on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/-3_uqx3eiF4

#PoetryMonth #TransGirlApril #PeopleApril #PictureThis2024 #Indigenous #Queer #WomenInTranslation #audiobooks #kidlit

Opening lines from the tagged novel. How appropriate that I started reading this today, which is Easter Monday. 😊

Vlog: I read and listen only to trans writers for one day, March 1st, the International Transgender Day of Visibility

https://youtu.be/cdiKQd_eUTY

I love the storytelling style, which shifts between each chapter, and the sense of vast time—centuries pass—and the vivid sense of place in this novel about the inhabitants of a small piece of land in western Massachusetts. The inhabitants are wild animals, insects, and trees as well as humans; I love this too. It‘s a wonderful, life-affirming novel.

With regard to the beetle, the romp began, as sex romps often do, with carpentry. A female beetle, slightly smaller than a rice grain, had found herself, one summer afternoon, wandering about the logs that lay beside the off-ramp. Do not ask me how she got there; she came from another log, as did her mother before her—it is logs and beetles all the way back.

Final observation. A heron in the treetops — really, do they perch so high? I‘d always imagined them swamp- walkers. But there, above, I have my answer.
(Photo: Great Blue Herons in Beacon Hill Park, Victoria)

“Beneath the neem the village children play.
Worn cattle churn the burning earth to clay.”

This chapter makes it clear why land reform is important. I admire and applaud Rasheed‘s passion for justice. I fear for the trouble it will cause him and others.

#SuitableBoy2024

Good books for Good Friday — audiobooks; nature writing; literary awards
https://youtu.be/M8O36AiymKY

In this fabulous graphic memoir, Pedro Martín recounts the time when he was 12 and his entire family—including 8 siblings—travelled in a motorhome from California to the Mexican state of Jalisco in order to bring his grandfather home to live with them. Adventures, misadventures, and poignant scenes too. I loved it. #MiddleGrade #comics for all ages.

-Do you eat to live or live to eat?
-Are you stupid naturally or naturally stupid?

March Readathons & Recent Reads: Indigenous, Canadian, Queer, Mexican,
Memoir & Middle Grade & Women in Translation,
Audiobook & Comics formats

https://youtu.be/Exc7wbg0uq0

#booktube

My lesbian+ book club will be discussing this queer, Mexican American essay collection tonight and there‘s so much to talk about! Myriam Gurba uses fierce words and a sense of humour to dissect the many ways she—and others—have been affected by racism, colonialism, rape culture, misogyny, domestic violence and other societal ills. Invigorating truth-telling. #LGBTQ

I wasn‘t allowed to be funny in front of my wife. She let me know this after I complimented myself on having come up with a joke I thought was funny.
“No!” she said. “You‘re not funny. I‘m the funny one! You‘re the smart one. And the pretty one. You don‘t get to have everything.” Pointing at her chest & then tugging at the collar of her Sesame Street t-shirt, she snarled, “Funny is mine.”

Headlines play language games. The headline “Heir‘s Pistol Kills Wife; He Denies Playing Wm Tell” hides the murderer behind a gun, making it seem that a pistol, and not a man, did the dirty work. […] If I could‘ve written a headline for what happened that night, it would read “To Impress Two Men, One That He Was Sleeping with, Man Plays Russian Roulette with Head of Smart Wife Who Wanted Divorce.

After watching Naked Lunch with Matt, I bought a copy of the book from the used bookstore.
I went through a whole bottle of Advil trying to finish it.
It wasn‘t a novel.
It was chaos.
I didn‘t admit that to anyone. Instead, I told people I loved it. I told people Uncle Bill was a genius. Brilliant. I pretended to get it. This impressed Matt‘s friends. It made me likeable.

Hilarious and heartbreaking. Erin Bow keeps the suspense going — a late reveal of the traumatic thing that‘s happened to 12-year-old Simon, which necessitated a move to a town without internet — and she keeps the laughs rolling too: a church blessing of the animals gone awry, a murderous peacock, a death metal squirrel cult, etc. This middle grade novel has garnered numerous awards & accolades; now I‘m adding mine. It‘s fantastic. #CanadianAuthor

Today it‘s definitely feeling like spring. I can smell the ‘gentler, more organic pace of life‘ being spread on the surrounding fields.

Being gay is illegal in Nigeria. Arinze Ifeakandu‘s collection of tender stories shows the effect of enforced secrecy on the lives of gay men there. In vivid, emotional scenes that are like acts from longer plays, we get to know men of various ages and cultural backgrounds—Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa; Christian and Muslim. Audiobook performance by Mirron Willis is perfect. #LGBTQ

I am late to the party, just now having finished Akinze Ifeakandu‘s award-winning debut.

“…he‘d not expected Hausa to be, for this man, a language of tenderness, he‘d expected it to be a language for business, a language to be used and discarded and reused.”

This novel about intergenerational trauma by Dakota Sioux author Mona Susan Power has an effective structure: we first meet Sissy as a child in the 1960s, then go back in time to when her mother was a child, then further back to her grandmother‘s teen years at Carlisle Residential School, then return to Sissy as an adult. The therapy-speak in the final part isn‘t to my taste but otherwise I can see why this is on the Carol Shields Prize longlist.

Part 7 by the numbers:
-1 grouchy dog
-2 new suitors for Lata
-2 main suitors for Kakoli
-2 lovers for Meenakshi
-2 faces of Arun (affable vs tyrant)
-9 eccentric characters in 1 major family (Chatterji) explored
-63 flagged passages in 127 pages
-and the fundamental construct of Indian civilization is 4… no, it‘s 3… no, it‘s 2… no, it‘s 1… no, it‘s 0…
-Uncounted chuckles

I loved this section! #SuitableBoy2024

“As a broad generalization, one might tentatively hazard a guess therefore, that, all other things being equal, one should not make particular generalizations when general particularizations are equally available — and available to far less idle effect.”
[I‘m still finishing up Part 7, but the blather in 7.35 reminded me of the scene pictured above in Mexikid.]
#SuitableBoy2024

The Chatterji family at breakfast presented a scene of cordial conflict. It was an intelligent family where everyone thought of everyone else as an idiot.
#SuitableBoy2024

I tore off the cover and stuck it to my fridge with fruit-shaped magnets. I felt optimistic. I considered coming out to my parents again. (The first time I‘d told them I was queer, they‘d answered, “No,” and we left it at that.)

Writing this book was a healing endeavour. May it support the healing of others.
—from the Author‘s Note.

All beings are capable of providing love medicine.

Like magpies cackling over baubles—or discovering occasional gems and imagining them to be baubles—the excited guests chattered on. Despite the fact that they were shovelling in a great deal of food, everyone managed to shovel out a great many words. #SuitableBoy2024

My YA book club is discussing Those Pink Mountain Nights tonight and I read it way back in November so I watched my video to refresh my memory. Alternating POV, contemporary realism set in smalltown Alberta, queer & Indigenous characters, snappy dialogue, social issues — it all adds up in a satisfying way. If you want to watch, it‘s at the 21 minute mark here: https://youtu.be/x3K-R-2fkis?si=t1QQOBwjQIGf9q5e

“And tell me,” continued the woman, “does it take you long to think of a book? I‘m dying to read your new book.”
“So am I,” said Amit.

(I can see why reviewers have pegged Amit as a stand-in for the author, Vikram Seth.)

#SuitableBoy2024

Delicate artwork in coloured pencil and watercolour illustrate this graphic memoir about coming out as a lesbian later in life. Translation from French by Helge Dascher and Karen Houle. #CanadianAuthor #LGBTQ #comics

Throughout this memoir, Delporte references feminist and lesbian writers and filmmakers. In this illustration, she is holding a copy of Dorothy Allison‘s Skin.