Book of the week
Identities: A Short Story Collection is an illustrative and powerful read
May 21, 2018By: Ruramai Munyanyi An adjunct professor in SFU’s Beedie School of Business, Yabome Gilpin-Jackson, sets her foot into the fiction arena and holds her own with some of the best fiction I have ever read. Identities: A Short Story Collection is an enticing summer read about the nuanced experience of the contemporary African immigrant. It’s for anyone who has always wondered about the eclectic lives of Africans, but has been too shy to ask. “Where are you from?” Gilpin-Jackson opens with the question most immigrants of colour are asked as soon as people realize they look different, sound different,…
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If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler: a book to experience
May 8, 2018By: Maxwell Gawlick You pick up a new novel, but the pages are out of order. You pick up a new copy, containing only the first chapter, but that chapter makes you desperate for the next. You search for the…
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Around the circumpolar world in 180 days
March 28, 2018By: Natasha Tar Let’s say you just had a baby. Would your first thoughts be “cool, now I should plan a 180-day trip to different artist residencies in the circumpolar north in the dead of winter”? Probably not, but that’s…
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Max Porter’s Grief is the Thing with Feathers is a short, but powerful read
March 22, 2018By: Aaron Richardson Often during periods of mourning, the grief you are experiencing can feel almost physical in its presence. It can feel as if it is following you around, inhabiting the room with you, sitting beside you, and putting…
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Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is more than just another dystopian story
March 1, 2018By: Marco Ovies Now I know what you’re thinking, not another post-apocalypse story. But hear me out, The Road is not something you want to miss out on. Cormac McCarthy takes a seemingly overused plot and through his mastery of…
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The Tiger is a gritty book that shatters reality and your perception of the world
February 21, 2018By: Maxwell Gawlick John Vaillant’s The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival is a visceral tale of man versus nature. It flips our human-focused perspective upside-down and puts us in the tiger’s domain. Vaillant incorporates fascinating historical details…
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Poor Things will have you second guessing your own interpretations of the truth
February 14, 2018By: Róise Nic an Bheatha Are you looking for a ‘90s Scottish take on Mary Shelley’s cult classic Frankenstein? Yes?! Then you’re lucky you stumbled upon Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things. Be warned, this book is not for the poor-hearted: expect a…
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The House of the Spirits shows Chilean history through the lens of magic realism
January 23, 2018By: Annie Bhuiyan The House of the Spirits is the first novel by Chilean author Isabel Allende (published in 1982). Allende delivers a text rich in reflections and retellings of the political atmosphere of Chile in the mid-20th century, told…
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Burnt Shadows is a novel that explores history in unexpected and moving ways
January 17, 2018By: Jennifer Russell Kamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows follows the interwoven lives of two families as they live through what are now considered major historical events. As soon as I opened the novel and saw the date and location, I couldn’t…
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My favourite books from 2017
January 6, 2018By: Victoria Lopatka, Staff Writer The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, this exceptional novel follows Starr Carter, a sixteen-year-old living in a poor neighbourhood and attending an upscale high school across town,…
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