Pick-A-Day

August 2018
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Been readin’

Like always, I am often found with a book in my hand – recently including two actual books (like on paper), and one on my Kindle that is actually a collection of three works by one author.

There is a common theme through the three books that I’m reading.

Starting up with a recommendation by a friend in Hamburg, I read Late Nights on the Air by Elizabeth Hay – set in a radio station at Yellowknife. The book reminded me of (at least in the first part) of works by Tom Bodett – at the End of the Road (among others). It’s really hard for me to qualify how – other than the fact that both authors capture some kind of intrinsic essence of living in the rural, cold, north. The flashbacks I had to the body of Tom Bodett’s work caught me off guard – making me wish I had copies of his books to re-read. It’s been way too long.

The book took a somewhat dark turn at one point – something that caught me off-guard, but actually dovetailed the book in the collected works.

The largest one, The Collected Works of Grey Owl, is a startling work: writing in the 1930s, Grey Owl is remarkably perceptive about the environment. In fact, the book sounds like it was written today:

I’m currently reading about his two pet beavers – and am not really ready to say anything about it, other than the idea of having two pet beavers is cute.

He also says some nice things about his home, Canada:

All of this, by the way, is not meant to ignore some of the inate controversy about Grey Owl himself: Grey Owl is actually an Englishman, Archibald Stansfeld Belaney. It’s not clear to me if he bestowed the name upon himself (thus meaning cultural misappropriation) or if it was bestowed upon him by a local native. I’m not a scholar in this area and I do not want to wade into this mess – rather, I want to focus on the fact that he is a transformational figure in Canadian conservation/environmental history, changing Canada for the better.

The third book I’m reading is a collection of poems by Billy-Ray Belcourt, This Wound is a World. Poetry is not something that generally speaks to me, but I decided to take a whack at it. Again, it’s not what I normally read, but his poetry seems to work for me. If you want to know more about who he is, his bio, stolen from his website, says:

Billy-Ray Belcourt (he/him) is a writer and academic from the Driftpile Cree Nation. He is a Ph.D. student and 2018 Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholar in the Department of English & Film Studies at the University of Alberta; he is at work on a creative-theoretical project called “The Conspiracy of NDN Joy.” He is also a 2016 Rhodes Scholar and holds an M.St. in Women’s Studies from the University of Oxford and Wadham College.

There’s a common theme running between these three works – all represent, on some level, my next vacation.

2 comments to Been readin’

  • Ian in Hamburg

    Saskachewan. Can you spell it without looking?

    • I can, at least right now, but I’ve forgotten how to spell the name of the largest city in New Mexico and I’m clueless how to spell the name of the river that runs through Winnipeg…