What is your cruising speed in your reading at the moment? Are you up to date with your book stacks? Satisfied or unhappy with what we suggested to you? Already choosing the titles you are going to give this Christmas?
As usual, I lost control, but over time I have learned to welcome chaos. Besides, I shouldn’t say that we are in the middle of autumn, that’s too poetic or old-fashioned, it would be more accurate to say that we are at the halfway point of the literary season, which resembles sometimes at a wrestling match where you want to give a thumbs up to get a break. I’m not going to complain, it was my dream in life, but I receive so many books that a very specific form of anxiety afflicts me with each delivery: suddenly that this new book appeals to me more interesting than the one I’m reading?
I swear, it’s a constant struggle to finish a novel that’s high on the order of priority when another one catches our eye.
I sometimes envy the lover, who has the freedom to read what he wants, he who has just gone through the work of Mordecai Richler, the only novelist of his autumn.
Proof that I am receiving too many books: six months after my move, and even though I have made as many address changes as possible, the new tenant of my old apartment is still receiving packages sent to his home in my name. Meanwhile, I try not to think about the boxes of books that are still unopened in the basement.
Many temptations in the autumn batch have diverted my reading program, to the forefront What I know about you by Éric Chacour that I had missed, released at the beginning of the year (while I was moving, in fact), and which found itself in the lists of the Femina and Renaudot prizes, in addition to very recently winning the Bourse de the discovery of the Prince Pierre of Monaco Foundation. I understand the praise. This moving novel takes place between Cairo in the 1980s and Montreal before the 2001 attacks in the United States. Tarek, who is a doctor, will choose exile for having loved a man, which is not forgiving in Egyptian society; rumor has it that his dispensary will be attacked. For a good part of the book, we do not know who the narrator is who describes Tarek’s life, and I am careful not to tell you, otherwise I would reveal one of the many surprises of this novel where tenderness and reconciliation through political upheavals.
I like to learn by detour, in the story of an impossible love, a few scraps of history.
Received in advance and read immediately, the new Pierre Bayard, Hitchcock was wrong – “Rear Window” counter-investigation. I’m going to tell you about it soon since I will finally have the chance to meet this essayist, of a rare breed, because gaming is part of his art, and all of whose books I have read. Not only did I read it in advance, forgetting about emergencies, but I obviously couldn’t help but go and watch Hitchcock’s film again to increase the pleasure.
And while I’m immersed in Controlled distress by Marilyse Hamelin and The Wisconsin Masquerades by Thomas C. Spears, two books that address intergenerational violence each in their own way, there are Qimmikthe new novel by Michel Jean which has just been released, the essay File a complaint by Léa Clermont-Dion, and soon Voices lightning thunder by Myriam JA Chancy which focuses on the earthquake in Haiti and also Kanatuut, the huntress by Natasha Kanapé Fontaine. I didn’t even have time to go buy the latest Rabagliati, which I always give myself as a gift.
When I think that very soon, we will have to look back over the last 12 months to draw up our essentials of the year, this favorite moment for list lovers.
And you, where are you in your reading assessment? What are your findings? Because it’s far from over, there’s the Montreal Book Fair on the horizon, and I’m curious to know what signings you’re going to pursue.