Posted at 7:00 a.m.
With nothing and no one
Mary Laberge
Quebec America
“I like to read, but I like having the time, I don’t like being in a hurry. There are some who read a little bit every day, I like to dive into books, to invest myself fully in reading. I read very few political books; I don’t read books that remind me of my daily life, I want to get out of it and go into completely different fields. The one who knows how to get me out of my daily life with her characters is Marie Laberge. What I love about her is the strength of the character description. You understand it, you live it — there is nothing superficial about the descriptions. You really fit into this skin. With nothing and no one, it’s a bit different because it’s a detective story. But there are other kinds of things, the end of the life of a man who wants to understand what happened with his daughter, this filial bond, the hardness of life because the characters don’t have had easy lives, even traumatic at the limit, the resilience that we discover, too. Sometimes, we buy by author; Marie Laberge is an example of that. For sure there will be a Marie Laberge with me this summer. There are a few that I haven’t read, so I’ll read them. »
forest woman
Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette
leaf merchant
“I haven’t read it yet; I bought it, it is on my corner of the table, so it is sure that it [fera partie de mes lectures d’été]. A bit of poetry too, maybe… I would recommend We won’t betray the poemby Rodney Saint-Éloi — this collection cries out for existence, cries out for life — [et aussi le roman] Manikanetish, by Naomi Fontaine, which is a tribute to the professors. I was raised by two teachers; it’s the teachers who make the difference in someone’s life and we need them so much, they have so much a role to play and I think we don’t realize the importance we have to give to our education system. […] I read this book and my elders [de 15 et 13 ans] ; we are reaching an age where we are capable of doing this kind of shared reading. »
Memoirs of Hadrian
Marguerite Yourcenar
Gallimard
“I like historical novels, even if it’s fictionalized. […] Sometimes I reread a chapter of Memoirs of Hadrian, sometimes a passage; it is an absolutely landmark book that took 20 years to write because of the historical research associated with it. It is so topical. It’s so relevant today, 2000 years later, to say that power is being able to listen. It’s an obviously political book, about power, magnificent. It’s worth reading it again because you realize that there are things that mark you. »