“I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.”
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
While staring at the dust bunnies and wondering what to write for the next blog, my mind wandered to the novel I’m reading, Joseph Boyden’s harrowing Through Black Spruce. My thoughts travelled further back to the last novel I read, Where White Horses Gallop by Beatrice MacNeil, then to the book before that. I grabbed a pen and started jotting down everything I can remember reading during my sabbatical thus far. Herewith, in no particular order, my list:
Novels:
The Diviners, Margaret Laurence
No Great Mischief, Alistair MacLeod
The Boys in the Trees, Mary Swan
The In-Between World of Vikram Lall, MG Vassanji
The Assassin’s Song, MG Vassanji
Kiss The Joy as it Flies, Sheree Fitch
Quintet, Douglas Arthur Brown
Glass Voices, Carol Bruneau
Where White Horses Gallop, Beatrice MacNeil
Short Story Collections:
The Watermelon Social, Elaine McCluskey
When She Was Queen, MG Vassanji
The Lost Salt Gift of Blood, Alistair MacLeod
As Birds Bring Forth the Sun, Alistair MacLeod
Barnacle Love, Anthony de Sa
Non-fiction:
Paper Shadows, Wayson Choy
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, Bill Bryson
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, David Sedaris
A recent letter to the editor in a Canadian national newspaper lamented the fact that “barely half of Canadians can name even a single Canadian author, or that a federal department that calls itself Canadian Heritage doesn’t know how to spell the name of this country’s most beloved author, the late Margaret Laurence.”
Humph.
There are thirteen authors on my list. All but two are Canadian; I had little trouble remembering their names. As a writer friend reminded me, readers will remember who they’ve read. And that’s what really matters.