Soon after this season’s year was announced, finding nothing published in 1949 in the local library, I logged onto the Internet Archive and, at first, found only a few options.

One of them was an exhibition catalogue of Palestinian artifacts held in Toronto that year, which included a compact history lesson that felt so urgent, so relevant, that I read it straight through.  It was seemingly staple-bound, about 60 pages long, with black-and-white illustrations, which was also interesting, as today’s exhibition catalogues are so fancy: hardcovered and glossy-paged.

I looked for it again this week, but no luck. I did, however, find other publications which create an interesting picture of life in Canada in 1949:

• The Annual Toronto February 1949 Shorthorn Sale: Exhibition Grounds Cattle Grounds, Toronto, Ontario (many goodlooking cows and steers herein);
• Talking about Unions: Woodsworth House, Toronto, December 1949. Via the Women’s Conference on Organized Labour, (a reminder that women’s role in the wartime workforce created new opportunities); and the
• Court Report of Investigation into the Circumstances Attending the Loss of the S. S. Noronic in Toronto Harbour September 17, 1949 (regarding the deaths of more than a hundred passengers in an early morning blaze).

A few months ago, I visited the second-hand shop, where I found two novels (including John O’Hara’s and Elizabeth Goudge’s) which I added to two from my own shelves, as a small stack of potentials for this week’s reading. But neither of them suited my mood at the beginning of the month: O’Hara’s reads like a cross between dos Passos and Metallious, and Goudge’s like a cross between Jean Plaidy and Anya Seton.

In other moods, either could have been a match. But the days were slipping past, and I started to think, well, maybe a short story by Jean Stafford (“Children are Bored on Sunday”) would be the only viable choice.

But, Stafford can be so unsettling, I thought, so I picked up Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski (1915-1988). In my mind I had muddled it with another Persephone reprint, Miss Ranskill Comes Home, so you can see that I thought a story about a woman who finds herself alone on a desert island was my only hope for a lighter-than-Stafford story this event.

For me, the most interesting characters were a laundress (Mme. Quilleboeuf in the town of A—) and a Mother Superior at an orphanage there, who have each been positioned differently during hard times. As in her other novels, including To Bed with Grand Music (1946) and The Victorian Chaise-longue (1953), Laski’s women are complex and multi-faceted characters, who are always believable and not always likeable (who among us is ALWAYS likeable anyhow).

All of the characters are believable enough to carry readers through a gruelling and complicated process; the story is compelling right to the last page.

And it was an added bonus to have been reading it alongside the third volume in Olivia Manning’s The Fortunes of War (also about WWII) and Tove Jansson’s The Moomins and the Great Flood, which was written during the war. Jansson’s author’s note begins: “It was the winter of war, in 1939. One’s work stood still; it felt completely pointless to try to create pictures.” But then, in 1945, Jansson picked up her half-written story, in response to a friend’s prodding, and she captured that time in pen and ink and paint. Just like Laski and so many others have done.

This week’s #1949Club is hosted by Stuck in a Book and Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings. Thanks you two, for taking my reading in unexpected directions. Even when I don’t make a good decision for good reasons, there’s often a good book in the end!

If you’re reading this, you probably know what I’m going to say: it’s nearly time!

Time to make your MARM selection to read this November! Time to gather the ingredients for the cake recipe you’re planning to enjoy on November 18^th (her 87^th)! Time to pull your handmaid’s bonnet and gown out of storage!

And, if you’re reading this, you probably already have a plan. After all, this is the ninth year. Some of you, I know, have been planning since before last November ended. Some of you usually do that, but you’re between MARM projects just now. (Hmm, that’s actually where I fit, this year.) Some of you keep a variety of possibilities in your backpocket, and pluck one out to suit your mood when November rolls around. Some of you suss out the reading landscape of your November and choose almost whimsically with its approach.

But it’s also possible that you’re reading this and you’ve never heard of MARM. Simply choose one work by Margaret Atwood and declare that you are MARMing, by reading something short (poems, stories, comics, essays, etc.)  or something long (novels, non-fiction, etc.) or several somethings, during the month of November, and stop by for cake on the 18th. Also welcome are the MARM-related options: like prefaces or introductions she’s contributed to other works, works by Graham Gibson (or, say, another Gibson, for instance), TV shows with which she’s involved (“The Handmaid’s Tale”, etc.), or books she’s strongly recommended over the years (say, Lewis Hyde’s The Gift). Then, post your links in comments on a MARM post here on BIP.

I absolutely love our cosy little group, the easy camaraderie amongst MARM readers, across the spectrum of enthusiasm for her work. On one end, casual interest because she’s an “important” figure in literature; on the other end, dedicated reader—which might mean one stellar reading experience that’s made you curious about her other books, or several selections with some “fines” and some “favourites”;  and everything between.

Many people count “A word after a word after a word is power” among their favourite Atwood quotes. Her work is a great opportunity to flex your reading muscle, a reminder that what you find (on the page) can inspire you to act (off the page). To write a different ending for a story that you see playing out around you, on the broader stage, beyond your comfortable chair.

This year it feels particularly important that… we who value the power that resides in telling stories, in reading stories, in sharing stores… we join and celebrate their importance. We must remind one another that, with this thing we do so much of—this reading thing, we ARE often alone, but we are not as alone as we (sometimes) feel.

It has taken me an extraordinarily long time to choose my MARM read for this November. It’s Survival, subtitled A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature. First published in 1972, it’s a book I’ve not centred during MARM previously, because most MARMers are not Canadian. But, this year, when Canada has been in the international news more than usual, it seems appropriate.

It will be easy to portion throughout the month, as it’s divided into four parts, so I can dabble in some poems around the edges, and maybe I will finally watch the last season of “The Handmaid’s Tale” (and the first season of “The Testaments”…has anyone seen it?). Maaaaayyyyybe.

How about you?

I remember what some of you mentioned last year, but perhaps your reading moods have shifted.

And maybe some of you, who haven’t felt pulled to take part in the past, will find yourself thinking that this year is different, and what you really need is a bit of Margaret Atwood to pull you through November 2026.

Do tell!

A very simple act of reconciliation is reading and discussing books by (and, to some extent, about) First Nations and Indigenous and Metis and Inuit peoples; for bookworms, this is an action within reach every day…

but particularly today, on Orange-Shirt Day, or Truth & Reconciliation Day. An official act of remembrance, on which we can recognise how First Nations and Indigenous and Metis and Inuit peoples, in the land currently called Canada, have been impacted by imperialism and colonization, so we can identify historical patterns of exploitation and abuse, in order to create a future that’s respectful, cooperative, and just. (APTN broadcasting of events here.)

It’s Phyllis Webstad’s experience of having been forced to attend Resdential School, and having been stripped of the beloved orange T-shirt her grandmother had given her, which is crystallised in the casual name for the day; it was never returned to her, and came to symbolise home and safety and identity lost to her, but also there were many children who never returned either (gravesites continue to be scanned and studied, but many “disappearances” remain unresolved).

The public library is an excellent resource: here’s a peek at my reading through this summer.

Most Canadians will find the story of Aqueduct (2016) curious and strange, the idea that the capital city of Manitoba, Winnipeg, didn’t have clean drinking water until an aqueduct, 154 km long, was built to extend from Shoal Lake near present-day Kenora, Ontario. A story that is also shameful and unjust, because diverting the water in this way meant that the Indigenous residents of Shoal Lake, instead, spent decades without access to clean drinking water (members of the Objibwe/Anishinaabe nation)

Winnipeg reclaimed the reservation lands in 1915, and it wasn’t until 2021 that a water treatment plant opened and the boil-water advisory was lifted in Shoal Lake. Adele Perry is a settler: research like hers and publications like this from ARP (a skinny, pocket-sized volume in the Semaphore series) are important steps on the road to reconciliation. There are almost more footnotes than pages, but it’s accessible with lots of photographs and images, and some of the details are so outlandish it feels like fiction.

Amanda Peters began by writing short fiction although her debut novel, The Berry Pickers was published first. Her collection of stories, Waiting for the Long Night (2021), is an excellent introduction, not only to her work, but to the general themes and historical sweep of Indigenous history in what’s called Canada today. She herself is of Mi’kmaw and settler descent, and the collection is also a blend of historical and present-day stories which highlight the conflict between colonial and Indigenous priorities against a backdrop of ordinary, day-to-day life.

Her language is precise and she intuitively spirals around the headiest narrative moments with feeling (but not sentimentality) so the prose feels clear (not cloying). “Too many white men causin’ us grief all the time. Stay away from them. Stick to the ones you know. At least when they fuck ya over, you can tell their moms….” When I borrowed her novel previously, I wasn’t in the right frame of mind, but I’m looking forward to it now.

A Steady Brightness of Being (2025) was a whimsical selection for me, from a Climate Justice display in the public library. Including this anthology, with classics by Naomi Klein and John Muir, edited by Sara and Stephanie Sinclair, could have been a nod to the attractive cover design alone! Or, evidence of understanding that First Nations, Métis, Inuit, and Indigenous nations more broadly speaking, are knowledge keepers whose traditional ideas about stewardship and responsibility offer solutions to counter the havoc wrecked upon the Earth by colonisation and the human race.

Either way, I’m glad it was there, because this collection was proof that my intention to explore more anthologies is a worthy goal. These voices are distinct and diverse, and the pieces are varied in tone and scope—arranged in four parts: Tobacco, Sage, Cedar, and Sweetgrass. I enjoyed every single one of them from the opening piece by Terese Marie Mailhot to the closing by Waubgeshig Rice. What a work of quality!

Waubgeshig Rice’s novels are discussed in some detail in Patty Krawec’s Bad Indians Book Club (2025) which grew out of conversations with reading friends and a podcast, about the power of reading and writing and discussing stories. Krawec is consistently stretching to engage with narratives, as a means of understanding (both herself and others) and she encourages everyone else to do so too. “Remembering the first rule of Bad Indians book club: Always carry a book.”

Part Anishinaabe and part Ukrainian, she has a footnote about how the scope of her book must be limited, but one’s reading should not be: narratives of colonialism exist in many cultures and one should read widely. She also includes examples of writers and readers and scholars whose early works did not include an Indigenous presence but whose worldview expanded to recognise gaps and slants in cultural narratives that they’d been encouraged not to question.

“This is why I chose multiple books for each genre for our conversations. Multiple stories from Bad Indians can be put into conversations with each other and prevent, or hopefully minimize, the ways we misunderstand or misread the stories being told.”

(Keen eyes may have noticed two books in the photo aren’t discussed here. One is Cherlie Dimaline’s YA novel, which I’ll chat about with some other seasonally, spooky reads soon. The other is a dense and scholarly work of non-fiction, which tidily reveals the shortcomings of consulting only archival material retained and maintained by settlers when exploring a historical conflict between settlers and Inuit communities.)

Any of these would make great reading on Orange Shirt Day, but even more importantly, any- and every- day.

Which have you read, or which would you be most likely to choose?

When I last wrote here, I could have posted one of Alistair MacLeod’s famous short story openings: “It is August now, towards the end, and the weather can no longer be trusted.” It’s from “The Closing Down of Summer” and I think of it every year about mid-way through August.

But now I could turn to Maud Hart Lovelace: her talk of how September was very Septemberish that year, or that it smells like the first day of school. And, soon enough, we’ll have the kind of October day that Colson Whitehead describes as being the kind of cold that sneaks up on you like a pickpocket.

I have been reading in a gust, all season (with just a couple of disruptions), determined to make these six months of to-and-fro-ing to the library worthwhile.

The bicycle rides are cool in the mornings now, and we are nearing the end of what the Anishinaabe call Leaves Changing month—Waatebagaa-giizis—with Leaves Falling next. It won’t be long, before I drop the last returns of the season into the slot, and I renew my connections with the books on my own shelves.

This morning I updated all the various reading challenges, just to see if there’s anything else I want to borrow, to edge those toward completion. It seems unlikely that any of them will be complete at the end of the year, actually; but I’ve enjoyed playing with them along the way, and chatting about them with others (some more, some less, dedicated to finishing).

Over the summer, I’ve borrowed quite a few new books by Canadian and Indigenous-Canadian writers; the one in this photo which I haven’t yet finished is P.P. Wong’s Slice the Water—because I just finished reading Hum by Helen Phillips, which Bookish Beck and I chatted about along the way, and I try to keep only one of this sort of story in my stack.

And what sort of book is that? A rather ordinary story really, about day-to-day life, in a slightly altered version of our world right now: sometimes this really gets under my skin. And the fact that the book has quotes from both Kevin Chong and Nalo Hopkinson makes me feel both eager and nervous.

And what was I planning to say about all this reading? A little about the other 18^th-century women writers I’ve been exploring. A little about my ongoing audiobook experiments, and my flailing effort to read more non-fiction. A little about the slow progress on some pet projects (prize nominees and imprints, and the like), and wrangling the back-issues of magazines that breed in dark corners unobserved. Maybe even a little more about some of these very books…

But, will I be quoting Anakana Schofield about November instead? We’ll see! But, meantime, a moment to #LoveYourLibrary … the source of so much information and entertainment since May. (BookishBeck hosts this event the last Monday of each month.)

If you could add a single volume to my library list, to fetch before the snows come, what would you choose? 

With my return to library borrowing after the snow melted, I had realized that 2026 found me reading less non-fiction than ever (well, for nearly twenty years, anyway).

And, why? If anything, I have more questions about the world than ever. So, I resolved to browse in the non-fiction (and not just the 300s and 800s either). Calling oneself a curious reader requires unleashing of one’s curiosity.

One result was Shohini Ghose’s Her Space Her Time (2023) which proved fascinating. (I even watched her TED Talk on Quantum Computing.) She begins by noting that just 90 Black women have PhDs in physics in the United States out of 60,000 degrees awarded between 1972 and 2017. And, as of 2023, there’s not a single Black woman holding a professorship in physics or astronomy in Canada. (Ghose herself is a prof at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada, and she was routinely the only woman of colour as an international student in the United States—in Florida and New Mexico.)

She offers a lot of facts but focusses on relationships, so it was surprisingly compelling. In short, she presents a narrative (often about how/where the women stumbled/backed into this sphere) and hooked me on story.

What have I retained? Honestly, not a lot! Partly because I raced through this, in a state of excitement twinned with disbelief that almost all of this was news (sometimes centuries later). Partly because I need to layer new information, and this was new territory.

As it turns out: physics is not boring and it’s never been the exclusive domain of men even though women’s names have been routinely (and sometimes deliberately) omitted (and sometimes excised) from the historical record. Here are the women discussed, and I’d love to know how many you recognise:

Annie Jump Cannon, Anna Draper, Williamina Fleming, Antonia Maury, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, the Women of the Harvard College Observatory, Henrietta Leavitt, Margaret Burbidge, Mary Golda Ross, Joyce Neighbors, Dilhan Eryurt, Claudia Alexander, the Women Who Powered NASA’s Space Program, Harriet Brooks, Marie  Sklodowska-Curie, Lise Meitner, Marietta Blau, Hertha Warnbacher, Bibha Chowdhuri, Elise Frota-Pessoa, Maria Mitchell, Vera Rubin, Wu Chievn-Shiung, and the Women of the Atomic Age.

Alongside these women’s stories, Ghose also explains relevant concepts. (I think I finally understand parallax: for reals.) And she also presents context, mentioning for instance that one in four married women went to work after America entered WWII in 1941 and, by 1943, women comprised 2/3 of the aviation workforce. As a way of introducing Mary Golda-Ross, one new recruit (and a descendant of the Anigiduwagi/Cherokee leader John Ross). Ghose has a great instinct for providing just enough information to allow for a foundation to take shape and, strangely, despite my inherent resistance to non-fiction reading, I can easily imagine rereading this cover-to-cover (and, hopefully, retaining more of it) and then seeking out related books.

Marina Warner’s Stranger Magic (2011) landed in my stack because I’ve enjoyed her writing on fairy tales and other literature; her work on the Arabian Nights is divided into five parts (the fifth being about the magic of flight, which is why I chose to photograph it with the NYT spread focusing on Charles Ross’s land art) and I found it quite interesting. In theory it should have been a more comfortable read, pulled from the 398s, but because I don’t know the Arabian Nights very well, all the history and talk of versions and previous studies was as new-to-me as talk of physics (and the supporting material in the back amounts to more than 100 pages).

The sheer bookishness pulled me through the exposition about literary and historical roots and connections, as did the personal disclosures (her favourite tales and characters) and links to modern publications (from Dick King-Smith’s The Sheep-Pig to Barrack Obama’s memoir). If you’ve read more of the stories from the Arabian Nights, this is one for you.

For some insight on Latin American and Spanish-language writing, I chose José Saramago’s The Notebook, his writings from 2008 (translated by Amanda Hopkinson and Daniel Hahn in 2010). It was there: thoughts on Carlos Fuentes (Mexico), Jorge Amado (Brazil), and Borges (Argentina), for instance. Along with plenty of bookishness: from the publishing fairs in Lisbon and Frankfurt, to talk of poets from Pessoa to Darwish, to talk of books on shelves and in shops (like the Livraria Cultura in Brazil), and summer reading in lieu of a holiday.

What I wasn’t expecting to find was writing about an American president who “expelled truth from the world, establishing the age of lies that now flourishes in its place”. Writing about the Left: “It doesn’t act, it doesn’t risk taking a step.” and writing about Gaza: “Let every demonstrator bear in mind that the violence, humiliation, and scorn that the Palestinians have been victims of from the Israelis has been going on for sixty years without interruption.” Go ahead: check the date. (I did.) An unexpectedly relevant and engaging volume.

Also unexpectedly interesting was Peter Wohlleben’s The Weather Detective (2010; translated by Ruth Ahmedzai-Kemp, 2018) which drew my attention because of The Hidden Life of Trees. It’s written for the common reader rather than a science-y sort, and I learned why daisies close up during the rain (to protect their pollen so it will be there later for the bees) and how (there are two separate rows of petals, that are constantly growing to facilitate the mechanic of open-close).

I also learned that the nursery rhyme about red skies is correct (and why) and that the saying about swallows (when they fly high…) is not. AND… that our garden beds move by 24-32 inches “in the course of a day”? Because of the pull of the moon and tides, even though it can only be measured with sophisticated equipment. This blew my mind even though I can’t even properly articulate how/why. If you read the book, maybe you can explain it to me! If you enjoy Margaret Renkl but wish she wasn’t so sad, you’ll probably like his books.

A typical browse at the library mostly hits the same markers each time, choosing a starting point based on who else is browsing and shifting without thinking. Disrupting that, forcing myself to browse the non-fiction, required a separate trip. On the heels of having recently chosen many other books–more typical choices. And I had to set aside ideas I’ve absorbed about marketing–little clues I follow based on artwork and titles to guess whether a book will be a good match. And I depended on the very jacket copy I deliberately avoid with fiction.

This is probably going to be a slim non-fiction year for me anyway, but I’m glad to have tried these. Have you found a new way to #LoveYourLibrary lately? (Hosted by Bookish Beck on the last Monday of each month.)

Designed to mimic my Lorna Sage reading project of six women writers each year (here in 2024 and here in 2025), I chose Julia Alvarez, Alexis Wright, Annie Ernaux, Olga Tokarczuk, Gish Jen, and Leslie Marmon Silko for 2026.

At first, I thought I would read a few books by each writer and then look for some essays/non-fiction. Quickly I realised that the project worked because of its structure: one book and one essay. So, even though a single selection felt random—when I was the chooser, and not Lorna Sage—I resumed with more modest expectations.

Julia Alvarez (b. 1950), the Dominican-American writer, was born in New York City, where she lived with her family for three months, before they returned to the Dominican Republic; ten years later, her father participated in the plot to overthrow the dictator, Rafael Trujilio, so they fled to the United States. She describes this time period through the eyes of the Mirabel Sisters, who were part of the same resistance movement, in her 1994 novel In the Time of the Butterflies. She’s also written poetry, and many books for children of all ages.

Butterflies is both engaging and informative, and it’s the Alvarez novel I had in mind from the start, but the one unread here longest is How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (her first, from 1991), which draws on her adjustment to life in the United States. I didn’t realise the Mirabel sisters are historical figures, but that only added to the novel’s impact (because I didn’t know how their story would end). “They became real to my imagination. I began to invent them,” she explains in a postscript to the novel. They appear off-stage in her book for teens, Before We Were Free (2002), which was also good. Her most recent novel is her seventh: The Cemetery of Untold Stories.

Other reading: A Lithub article about how a detached retina forced her to rethink her ideas about storytelling and narrative. There’s also a collection of essays from 1998 (Something to Declare) and a memoir from 2012, about three key relationships in her life (A Wedding in Haiti). And a fortuitously timed interview in the Jan/Feb issue of Poets&Writers (requires a login).

Alexis Wright (b. 1950) is a Waanyi writer from present-day Australia who has won the Miles Franklin Award for Carpentaria (2006), the Stella Prize for Tracker (2018), and won both prizes a second time for her 2024 novel Praiseworthy. My intention was to read Tracker, because I had never read her non-fiction, but I read her debut novel Plains of Promise. Fantasies I spun about rereading the other novels quickly receded: both because this biography of Tracker Tillmouth is such an engaging account, that it feels a little like reading fiction (besides the record-breaking number of acronyms) and because it’s eleventy-billion pages long (I finished mid-July).

Presenting multiple perspectives, each of which reads like a transcript of conversations that one imagines taking places on porches with the ends of cigarettes burning in the night or in kitchens where food is being prepared in the background and cups of coffee instinctively refilled, makes this volume fascinating from start ‘til stop:

“Yes, we are all Aboriginal. Yes, we understand that, but are we more Aboriginal than that Aboriginal—and on and on it goes. So you have this argument time and time again with what being Aboriginal means, going out in bush camps and so forth, saying you want to understand your country and finding it difficult because language and cultural norms are not there. So Aboriginal society itself, it is not a different society, it is a vast society of transition if you like, from traditional Aboriginal life to the urban Aboriginal life.”

Other Reading: Her essay “The Inward Migration in Apocalyptic Times” published in Emergence Magazine is an excellent introduction to the foundational ideas about storytelling, but there are also many references to The Swan Book (at least one of you counts that as a favourite). There’s a listening option too.

My first reading of Annie Ernaux (b. 1940) was in the late ‘90s when I came upon Simple Passion (translated from the French by Tanya Leslie) in the library fiction stacks. Her style was so direct and intimate, it stood out in the landscape of my reading. (I’d recently discovered Barbara Pym and Rumer Godden too: European authors equated with U.K. authors typically.) Exteriors takes the form of a diary with segments for 1985-1992 containing her observations of life in Paris, often on the commuter rail system.

“Also, committing to paper the movements, postures and words of the people I meet gives me the illusion that I am close to them. I don’t speak to them, I only watch them and listen to them. Yet the emotions they arouse in me are real.”

I also read Shame: “At the age of twelve I was living by the rules and codes of this world; it never occurred to me that there might be others.” And three translated by Alison L. Strayer: The Other Girl, Getting Lost, and The Years, which I read with Bookish Beck (such an expansive but compact work: company was much appreciated). And Do What They Say or Else translated by Trans. Christopher Beach and Carrie Noland: “All these people at the supermarket, or in their cars, who didn’t know they had missed out on their lives. I felt superior to them for knowing.” Bron has been on an Ernaux kick for a while now, so she joined in with A Woman’s Story: Ernaux is a MustReadEverything author for her.

Other Reading: “The Walrus” published this interview with Ernaux by Karin Schwerdther (translated by Neil Smith) three weeks after Ernaux received the Nobel, in which she discusses the unspeakable, the importance of letters, and having had the same email address forever.

I hadn’t planned on so many by Ernaux: more ILLs came through than expected (and, as it turns out, together they’re about the same length as Alexis Wright’s Tracker). So we’ll see how this project’s second-half unfolds. It’s nearly the end of August and I’ve barely begun Tokarczuk’s Flights, but I’m also reading Gish Jen’s Bad, Bad Girl (she’s my Sept/Oct selection): my plan for Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony in Nov/Dec might yet work.

So far, I’ve not thought about whether to continue this project next year, because another fun project has been my summer of Claires (Claire Keegan, Claire Fuller, Claire Lombardo, Claire Messud, Claire Vaye Watkins, Claire Oshetsky and, ohhhhh, I am forever forgetting one Claire …and it is always a different one).

But if you were to choose an author for a project like this yourself, whose names would vie for inclusion?

For nearly as long as I’ve been a reader, I’ve sought out books about/by people who were preoccupied by ideas about how and where we belong. At first, I used to look for stories with characters who felt they didn’t belong in the same ways that I felt I didn’t belong. But, over time, I found it more interesting to see how different characters’ situations can be and still they feel similarly about not fitting in, not belonging.

In one of the most frequently challenged/banned books, George M. Johnson’s All Boys Aren’t Blue (2020), George doesn’t even kiss another boy until thirty pages from the end of the book. (Although identifying as he/him while writing, they now identify as non-binary: the narrative triumphs the concept of fluidity from start to stop.)

There’s talk of both challenges and joys of being an effeminate boy in elementary school, about preferring to play Double Dutch with the girls at recess to playing sports with the boys, all described in direct and simple terms.

But it seems possible that the most subversive idea in this memoir is the willingness to question boundaries and expectations, to simply allow people to express and explore themselves.

Nnedi Okorafor’s LaGuardia (2019) was inspired partly by her Nigerian parents’ experiences having emigrated to America in 1969 (and staying, unexpectedly, because of the Biafran War) and partly by her own experience stopped at customs because she was wearing headgear (she wasn’t: this is how her hair was described to another border official).

What does it mean to be viewed as an alien?

She describes herself as being weary of dystopian narratives like her own Who Fears Death (pure dystopia) and excited by stories like Lagoon and Binti (set in the same universe as this story) for their more optimistic view. LaGuardia is brightly coloured and good fun to read—and the “aliens” are the best part.

Little Dog, in Ocean Vuong’s first novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (2019), lives with his mom and grandmother, who came to Hartford, Connecticut from Vietnam, with a legacy of wartime trauma.

There’s a sense of suspension between beauty and pain, with Vuong’s lyrical language sometimes offering respite and sometimes heightening the despair. Little Dog’s injuries—he absorbs blows of all sorts—leave deep wounds: that’s the hinge on which this story turns.

“It’s not fair that the word laughter is trapped inside slaughter. We’ll have to cut it open, you and I, like a newborn lifted, red and trembling, from the just-shot doe.”

In one of my favourite scenes, his mother pockets the payment made by a woman who comes to the salon before opening hours.

This economic reality is significant (how does one family survive in a new country, with an ageing mother and young child depending on a single income).

But even more crucial, the customer has a prosthetic leg and Little Dog’s mother massages the space no longer occupied by the woman’s leg: pain inescapable but also invisible.

Randa Abdel-Fattah’s Discipline (2025) landed on my TBR because it landed on an episode of David Naimon’s podcast, and after that, more controversy ensued. (Which my Australian friends have summarised and linked to, here and here.)

There were people who tried to stop this book from being published. They failed,” she writes, in her Acknowledgements. There are some redacted lines there too: the situation is fraught.

Discipline is controversial in some of the same ways that the TV series Mo is controversial on-screen, simply by prioritising the inner- and outer-lives of young Palestinians and Muslims.

They have families and tasks to complete each day: they are not simply the stuff of headlines and a set of tragic statistics. And because the novel is written as a series of scenes, it feels a little like you’re watching a show. But, simultaneously, there’s a sense of this being a thesis brought to life.

Abdel-Fattah writes:

“They were all constantly encountering their lives through a lenticular lens. Viewed from one angle: joy, love, laughter, tensions, privilege, routine. Viewed from the slightest tilt: tragedy, injustice, oppression.” And the author risks being seen as the representative resistor, as Hannah: “Hannah refused to acquiesce to the process. She refused, she refused, she refused.”

Christina Li’s Clues to the Universe (2021) was a whimsical borrowing from the children’s department because instead of the usual jacket copy, there’s a numbered list, and that reminded me of my beloved Anastasia Krupnik series (by Lois Lowry). The list is from the second chapter, which is in Benji’s voice; the novel begins with Ro’s— Ro, for Rosalind—voice.

Neither kid fits with their classmates, but they seem to fit together, because neither has a father: Ro’s has died and Benji’s has disappeared. Ro is all about science and rockets and space; Benji is all about drawing and superheroes and licorice. Li’s language is simple, her themes timeless, and the alternating pov invites us to lean in, where just the right-amount-of-resolution settles in a place I like: where things aren’t perfect, but they might be okay.

“You don’t think I hear what people say about me? You don’t think I know that they say I’m a homeless-looking, know-it-all freak?” Her voice rose. “What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with wanting to figure out how fast the Earth rotates around the sun or wanting to launch a rocket because I want to know things? Because I actually care?”

All year, stories like these have been in my stack. Now, in Ocean Vuong’s next novel, in Natsuo Kirino’s Swallows (Trans. Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda), Amitav Ghosh’s Ghost-Eye, and in Elena Ferrante’s Neopolitan Quartet, other characters are whispering that I hold back this post and include them too. I like to think of them all, chatting amongst themselves in the next room, after I go to sleep: finding company with one another, at last.

Have you been meeting characters like this in your reading lately?