With August comes the sunset of the year. August is lazy evenings spent savouring the summer heat before September returns us to the chaos of school and work. It is campfires and music, lemonade and comfy seats on the porch, it is picnics, it is fireflies, it is coziness. This month’s book recommendations are perfect reads for an evening spent lounging on a couch or a bed, with the soft golden glow of the sun setting outside.
Split Tooth, Tanya Tagaq
Hold this memoir-novel carefully in your hands knowing its sharp edges will cut you as you rush to turn the page. There is nothing fantastical about the myths that Tagaq blends into her story, only an undeniable truth. Euphoria and despair, curiosity and fear: opposites hold hands in this book and make the world whole.
-Sam
Pixiu’s Eatery; No Way Out, Hai Jingluo
I love Chinese manhuas that incorporate their culture and supernatural/fiction tropes all blended together. This book is a beautiful and super cute mix of fantasy, romance and comedy—all my favourite genres
-Tusharika
On Beauty, Zadie Smith
On Beauty is a fantastic book for a variety of readers. It follows various family members, the secrets they hide and how those secrets come out. If you’re a fan of art history, poetry or gossip you’ll love this book.
-Jack
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Arundhati Roy
I wish I could have both started and finished this book outdoors while facing an orange and pink sunset—which might be possible for some quick readers out there. Arundhati Roy is very delicate, specific and artistic with her style of writing, making this novel one that’s tough to put down once you pick it up. She intertwines the stories of different people from various walks of life in India and Kashmir, tying in the harsh realities of politics and society, as well as the violence they both draw.
-Umaymah
Lullabies for Little Criminals, Heather O’Neill
In this Canadian novel, Heather O’Neill playfully and carefully tells the story of a young, twelve-year-old girl through her child-like perspective as she is forced into very grown-up experiences. She navigates her life by building relationships with those around her and in her own neighbourhood—but not everyone has the purest of intentions in mind. Born into poverty to a teenage father, she is pulled into the world of addiction, child prostitution and human trafficking that she can’t seem to escape.
-Umaymah
Essays & Fiction, Brad Phillips
I read a lot of books this year and this one I picked up around 11:30pm and by 3:00am I was just over halfway through. It somehow seems to be both low and high art blended together, reminiscent of the authors visual art.
-Kurtis
Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
Cloud Atlas could be described as a book about the sundown of human civilizations, told from the perspective of individuals. It follows the journey of a soul reincarnating into different societies across time and charts the different obstacles they face in each one. The plot spans a massive length of time, beginning in colonial history and ending so deep in the future that the world is unrecognizable to the present. While the structure of the book is unorthodox, organized like “nesting dolls”, this choice disarms the reader and fully engages them in Mitchell’s beautiful prose about predation and interconnectivity.
-Jessi
Where the Forest Meets the Stars, Glendy Vanderah
Where the Forest Meets the Stars is about a young woman who lost her mother to breast cancer. She returns to Illinois to continue her graduate research on nesting birds to quell her depression.
One day, Joanna meets a young homeless girl, Ursa and tries to help her find her parents. While doing so, she met her neighbour/university drop-out, Gabriel Nash, who works as an egg seller after suffering from a panic attack while attending school. Their mission of finding Ursa’s family helps them deal with their past traumas and move on. The moral (of the story) is that everyone undergoes different struggles, so we shouldn’t feel jealous of other people for things we don’t have. Living with prejudice and past trauma won’t bring you happiness in the future. The only thing to overcome that mental obstruction is to move on.
-Sangjun
Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun is a story about a 14-year-old girl who adopted a robot named Klara as her childhood companion. The story occurs in a dystopian future where children are artificially augmented to become smarter. They attend school from home and rarely have outside interaction with other children their age. This book seems like a metaphor for the COVID-19 pandemic and reveals some intriguing yet disturbing aspects of human nature and how it copes with isolation.
This book is for younger generations who experienced the pandemic while attending school and understand the feeling of living in isolation without outside human contact. The book encapsulates the maturing process of a person and the changes they undergo depending on the place they grew up in and the people they associate with.
-Sangjun
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