Category: 52 Titles
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52 Titles: Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar
Can you believe I’ve never read this until now? I think a lot of things about this book will only make sense to female readers, much in the way that Joan Didion does. All the details — living with a gaggle of other young women; the oppressive archetypes of the women that surround you; being…
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52 Titles: Jose Saramago’s “The Gospel According to Jesus Christ”
Jose Saramago is one of my favourite authors. I like that he isn’t afraid to spend 1,000 words cataloguing every step of a character’s thought process — especially when that person is Jesus Christ. Nuance isn’t always considered when people talk about the Bible and its tenets, so it’s nice to read something that contextualizes…
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52 Titles: John Vaillant’s “The Tiger”
I bought John Vaillant’s first book, The Golden Spruce, because it was on one of my reading lists in fourth year. Stupidly, I never read it for class (sorry, Bill!). Part of why I decided to read a book a week this year was to finally catch up on all those books I’d bought and…
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52 Titles: Sara Marcus’ “Girls to the Front”
I started going to hardcore shows when I was 15 or 16, probably getting out to one a week during my high school and university days. Ten years on, I’m lucky if I have time to make it to one or two in a year — that distance (and time) has given me space to…
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52 Titles: M.F.K. Fisher’s “The Art of Eating”
This book is actually five of her early titles, bound into one, so I will count it as five — a welcome loophole, as I was falling behind schedule and this put me back on track. M.F.K. (Mary Frances Kennedy) Fisher was a locavore and proponent of nose-to-tail eating before either of those concepts became…