The fourth instalment of Read Local BC’s nine-part gift guide series
Part 1: Books to Relax With
Part 2: Reading for Pleasure
Part 3: Get Creative
Is there someone on your gift list who makes the same New Year’s resolution year after year? We bet that goal they’re trying to accomplish is a big, scary, difficult one! When the going gets tough, it always helps to look to the folks who’ve been there.
This list features creative nonfiction about facing death, (re)building nations, and stepping far outside your comfort zone. These books will remind you that often it’s the hardest things that are most worth doing.
Books that Inspire
Memoirs and personal essays to spark inspiration.
Against Death: 35 Essays On Living edited by Elee Kraljii Gardiner (Anvil Press).
Against Death: 35 Essays On Living articulates the personal experiences of each author’s “near-deathness,” utilizing fresh and inventive language to represent what “magical thinking” proposes. These pieces are incisive and articulate, avoiding the usual platitudes, feel-good bromides, and pep talks associated with near-death encounters. The writing moves past the sob story and confronts the tough circumstance of facing death with truth and compassion, no matter how ugly or (in)convenient.
Escape to the Wild: A Family’s Return to Simplicity by Andrea Hejlskov (Caitlin Press).
For Hejlskov and her family, life had become too complicated; no matter how fast they ran they never really got anywhere, no matter how much they worked they never had enough money. Facing a constant feeling of failure and always falling behind, the Hejlskovs chose to bolt in the other direction. On a quest to find out what really counts, they made a bold move: they sold their house and parted with most of their belongings. In the year that followed, the family built a cabin deep in the wilds of Sweden and conducted an experiment: could they live a fulfilling life while measuring their impact on a world desperately in need of change? What was meant to be a one-year experiment became a six-year journey that fundamentally changed everything in their lives. Escape to the Wild: A Family’s Return to Simplicity is the remarkable true story of a family that drops everything to start life anew. Both a poignant memoir and passionate critique of modern life, Escape to the Wild is a reminder that we can choose to lead the life we live.
From Where I Stand: Rebuilding Indigenous Nations for a Stronger Canada by Jody Wilson-Raybould (Purich Books, an imprint of UBC Press).
An Indigenous leader who has dedicated her life to Indigenous Rights, Jody Wilson-Raybould has represented both First Nations and the Crown at the highest levels. And she is not afraid to give Canadians what they need most—straight talk on what has to be done to move beyond our colonial legacy and achieve true reconciliation in Canada. In this powerful book, drawn from speeches and other writings, she urges all Canadians—both Indigenous and non-Indigenous—to build upon the momentum already gained or risk hard-won progress being lost. The good news is that Indigenous Nations already have the solutions. But now is the time to act and build a shared postcolonial future based on the foundations of trust, cooperation, recognition, and good governance.
Let ‘Em Howl: Lessons from a Life in Backroom Politics by Pat Sorbara (Nightwood Editions).
Patricia Sorbara has been a political operative for more than forty years. She’s worked for and with Liberal Opposition Leaders, Premiers, Members of Parliament, Members of Provincial Parliament and more candidates than any staffer could imagine. In December of 2014, a potential candidate in Sudbury, ON, went to the media with the allegation that Sorbara, acting on behalf of the Party, had offered a bribe in exchange for stepping down from a nomination race. She was blindsided. While on trial in Sudbury in the fall of 2017, Sorbara found herself leaning on the unique education of decades in politics. In Let ’Em Howl: Lessons from a Life in Backroom Politics, Sorbara shares her best lessons from the back room—the ones that sustained her in the darkest hours—illustrated by stories featuring key political figures in Canadian politics. The result is required reading for anyone interested in Canadian politics or government.
My Year of Living Spiritually: From Woo-Woo to Wonderful—One Woman’s Secular Quest for a More Soulful Life by Anne Bokma (Douglas & McIntyre).
In My Year of Living Spiritually, Bokma documents a diverse range of soulful first-person experiences—from taking a dip in Thoreau’s Walden Pond, to trying magic mushrooms for the first time, booking herself into a remote treehouse as an experiment in solitude, singing in a deathbed choir and enrolling in a week-long witch camp—in an entertaining and enlightening way that will compel readers (non-believers and believers alike) to try a few spiritual practices of their own. Along the way, she reconsiders key relationships in her life and begins to experience the greater depth of meaning, connection, gratitude, simplicity and inner peace that we all long for. Readers will find it an inspiring roadmap for their own spiritual journeys.