What I liked best about the book The Little Literary Pharmacythese are the prescriptions at the end, sometimes a “vitamin for endless love” (Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez), sometimes a “pill of comfort against abandonment” (milk and honey of Rupi Kaur), or rather an “accelerator of non-conformism and cynicism” (Tales of Ordinary Madness of Bukowski).
Otherwise, the book by Elena Molini – herself a bookseller who prescribes books to heal the soul – is part of the purest tradition chick bedquite cutesy thank you, perfect to accompany a spring cold, and again… it risks turning into sinusitis. https://bit.ly/41e0gP0
But I retain the idea of a literature that heals, the personal or the universal, a literature that shakes up and makes us question the intimate and social, even political sphere, through books of which we do not suspect not even existence.
Let’s go with my spring crocus dosage or recent must-haves lying around on the stairs because I love them.
The Little Literary Pharmacy
First of all, a tonic for writers hanging around at the Salon du livre de Québec and wondering about the relevance of publishing with a sigh “The flesh is sad, alas! and I have read all the books”: Literature is a political affair by Alexandre Gefen, interviews with French writers on the function of literature and its political commitment, which is necessary for democracies.
I really like this sentence from Yannick Haenel: “Literature is on the side of what says no. He adds: “What matters is not that writers speak out in public debate, but that their works themselves question what is happening in the world in which we live; what is important is that they think, through inventions of sentences, romantic intensities or even through poetic openings, the devastation we are witnessing: both the economic horror, the destruction of the planet and the sacking of language. ” And wham ! Annie Ernaux, Laurent Gaudé and Marie Darrieussecq are in the game, along with around twenty others.
https://bit.ly/415F524
You feel less alone while waiting for the barge.
https://bit.ly/43qsIyQ
Literature is a political affair
As bath salts or essential oils in inhalations or as a cold shower for those who still delude themselves, I recommend burning questions by Margaret Atwood. This collection of lectures and various essays by the author of The Scarlet Maid and more than fifty works of fiction mark a freeze frame of our civilization.
The collected texts go from 2004 to 2021, that is to say if they touch on current political and social questions. The writer — especially of speculative fiction (she wrote The Scarlet Maid in the early 1980s) — explains: “My fictions of this type extrapolate from current trends and facts, which they project in time and whose consequences they imagine. Atwood wonders what kind of story we are in: a comedy, a tragedy or a melodrama?
“We are inside a terrible machine that we have built ourselves, and we don’t know how to get out of it. The Canadian writer is as interested in science, politics as the environment. Not without humor, the octogenarian makes an implacable synthesis of the currents which lead us and transposes them in the form of tests which lead to fiction.
We are able to get the genies out of their bottles, but trying to put them back now seems beyond our reach.
We could have called her Cassandra, but she is a visionary with a keen intelligence who knows how to translate a vast horizon into strong images.
Quoting William Blake, she recalls that it is the human imagination that drives the world: “Understanding the imagination is no longer a hobby or even a duty, it is a necessity; because, more and more, if we imagine it, we will be able to do it. The worst as well as the best, by the way.
https://bit.ly/3Gvgnj1
https://bit.ly/3Gz5nkS
burning questions
A CBD herbal tea against loneliness, the book by Camille Toffoli (corsair girlsEssay Booksellers Prize 2022) Engage in friendship is aimed at teenagers, but can have an effect on everyone. At a time when the couple is questioned and when many young people (generation Z, Y and even X) place their friendships before love, this essay is a hit.
The author even talks about it, in a touching segment where she lived with her boyfriend at 17, friendships that saved his life (said boyfriend was violent). She describes the sometimes blurred boundaries between friendship and love, roommates, male friendships and the great loneliness faced by cisgender boys who must look manly (therefore, always in representation), competitive sport and friendships online. In short, an overview of deep friendships that are more resistant to washing/drying than many passing loves. Friendship is an underestimated political force and is no longer relegated to the secondary roads of our wanderings.
https://bit.ly/43rQkn1
Engage in friendship
An antidepressant, a confession at the end of the course or a will, as you choose, that this book of poetry by Louise Dupré, joy exercises. An aging woman, a woman of desire and sensitivity, practices gentleness “as a combat discipline”.
“we’re driving you crazy
and you Know it
but you prefer your torment
to illness
hardened hearts”
The poet addresses us, me, you, and our humanity in distress, so often flouted.
“Joy is not Eden, you know that now, it comes with disgrace, like faith with the flames of hell and wrinkles with the years. »
Your poem can rise to joy
A collection that arises and rests from the ambient noise, brings us not very far from the cemeteries that await us as we flee ahead. “You want to die human. Human as loving. »
Who knows ? Mildness will perhaps become a political weapon.
https://bit.ly/3KTGIdc
joy exercises
Sometimes no medicine will do it, it just takes a shock treatment. Desperate ? Afflicted with an orphan disease? Parent of a difficult child? Read The chosen by Catherine Perreault won’t cure anything, but may take your breath away and put your problems into perspective. Moreover, these individual sufferings find a very imperfect net at the social and medical level.
In this novel dedicated to Eliott, the mother of this autistic teenager, heavily affected, confides. This book is a torrent of lava that pours out, of poignant distress that we would like to take in our arms, of love that finds so little echo, the most unconditional and desperate love there is. “Your autism will eventually kill us both,” she wrote.
This very solo mother faces all the bankruptcies, that of the “system” too, can no longer work, has to drive three hours a day to go daily to caress the back of her son, placed at 13 in a care center. ‘accommodation. How to survive this pierced love, this warrior love which resembles all thwarted maternity. “I have already read in an American study that the stress level of mothers living with children like you is similar to that of a soldier in combat. The difference is that for us, the war never ends. »
We don’t know what people are going through. This is why one should practice the kindness prescribed by fairy poetesses.
https://bit.ly/3MzVAyH
In bookstores April 18.
The chosen
A final order from the DD Blanchett? The book Tested and approved 2 directed by Marie-Julie Gagnon: “Quebec in more than 100 new extraordinary experiences”. I missed the first edition, but I am amazed by the choice of activities, the photos and the horizons deployed, whether you are an all-terrain sportswoman or a homebody. With the arrival of good weather, I want to test (almost) all of these destinations, participate in a light painting session (photo) at Mont Mégantic, visit LG2 or the Château Frontenac with a historical figure, listen to the harp while having tea in a hammock in Rosemont, paddling in the largest heronry in the world in Sorel or grabbing a zip line on the North Shore (phew!), whispering in the ears of horses in Saint-Boniface. Sometimes the leak offers temporary Band-Aids. You can’t always bleed.
https://bit.ly/3KTLwPL