The sun is beaming down; you’re reclining on a blanket at the beach or on a chair in a park. All you need is a good read for the summer: nothing too long because your friends are meeting you soon with a barbeque. A short read (or two or three) would be perfect.
Luckily, we have a selection of collections below for you to choose from to throw into your beach bag. Find out below why these 9 collections are worth a read this summer.
The Whole Beautiful World: Stories by Melissa Kuipers (Brindle & Glass)
Melissa Kuipers takes readers on a journey through fictional small rural towns, where characters navigate internal struggles and intimate relationships. Childhood sweethearts grow apart, a daughter helps her mother cope following a miscarriage, and a man’s best friend is paralyzed after a tragic accident. Poignant and raw, Kuipers’s words are the epitome of successful storytelling.
The Knockoff Eclipse by Melissa Bull (Anvil Press)
This powerful debut short story collection will take you to distant and future worlds where women’s clothes literally advertise their supposed desires, and where a couple meets in an old dive bar turned into futurist café. Through these stories Bull threads the theme of being looked at, and in doing so show how the characters oppose the male gaze.
Boobs: Women Explore What It Means to Have Breasts, edited by Ruth Daniell (Caitlin Press)
Kate Braid, Nancy Lee, and Fiona Tinwei Lam are a few of the brilliant contributors to this one-of-a-kind collection that chronicles what it is like living with breasts. Burdens, pleasures, and society’s expectations are explored through everyday stories. A mother finds the remedy to her isolation through breastfeeding her child, a sexual assault survivor learns she has more to offer the world than her body, and a young woman undergoes breast-reduction surgery and has to come to terms with her new shape.
Cop House by Sam Shelstad (Nightwood Editions)
With a twist of dark humour, the 16 stories in Cop House explore characters desperately trying to recapture or replace the things they’ve lost. From a doomsday cult operating out of an aquatic centre, to a deer imagining what it would be like to be hit by a car, Sam Shelstad skillfully explores what it is like trying to undo things that can’t be undone.
V6A: Writing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, edited by John Mikhail Asfour & Elee Kraljii Gardiner (Arsenal Pulp Press)
V6A is more than just the postal code of what is often referred to as “the poorest neighbourhood in Canada”. It is filled with writers with all walks of experiences. This collection of poetry, prose, and essays from writers who have a connection to Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside is one of those books you can go back to time and time again to gain new insight into Vancouver’s unique neighbourhood and its ever-changing community.
The World Afloat: Miniatures by M.A.C. Farrant (Talonbooks)
The human experience is a complex one, and in The World Afloat, M.A.C. Farrant examines it through 75 “miniatures” combining prose poem and farce. Winner of the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize, these miniatures are whimsical and strange. Farrant will take you on journeys unlike any others you’ve read with fantastical stories such as a spirit trapped in a little boy’s body and one where a salad ends a relationship.
His Little Douchebag & Other Stories by Lisa Pike (Anvil Press)
With a title like His Little Douchebag & Other Stories, it’s hard not to be curious about what Lisa Pike has done in this book. Linking characters from the working class communities of Windsor, Ontario in the 1950s to present day, Pike illuminates how interconnected the lives of blue-collar workers are, and how they are much more than their jobs.
A Family by Any Other Name: Exploring Queer Relationships, edited by Bruce Gillespie (Touchwood Editions)
Selected as a finalist for the 27th annual Lambda Literary Awards for Best LGBT Anthology, A Family by Any Other Name explores what “family” means in the 21st century. Stories of coming out, marriage, adopting, and polyamorous relationships fill these pages along with essays about having LGBTQIA2+ parents or children. It gives a glimpse into how North American families are breaking traditional definitions of “family.”
The Book of Marvels: A Compendium of Everyday Things by Lorna Crozier (Greystone Books)
Perhaps the best book to kick back in the sun with, The Book of Marvels is Lorna Crozier’s musings on household objects and was named a Globe & Mail Top 100 book in 2012. Teasing out the personality of these objects (a doorknob, kitchen sink, washing machine, and zippers, to name a few), readers will look twice at their own surrounding items to ponder their significance. A beach blanket, perhaps?