#Hello

This year, I set a goal for myself to read 20 books. I’ve read 23 books so far all neatly documented on StoryGraph.

Next year, I want to set the ambitious goal of reading 30 books. The genres I want to explore next year are books told in the third perrson. I’ve had my fill (for now) of books with unreliable first person narrators with slippery notions of time.

The only book that stood out to me this year with first person narration was Long Live the Post Horn!. A short but wickedly surreal book about a media consultant hired to do PR for the Norweigen Post Service. The author does an amazing job of describing all the mundaness of white collar work and a life associated with it.

My favorite non-fiction this year is Encampment. A memoir by Priest Maggie Helwig, detailing the period of time of the rise and fall of an unhoused persons encampenet outside her church. The housing situation in Toronto is more challenging than I’ve seen in years, and Maggie writes from an endless reservoir of empathy. It has changed my prejudice over that community and I’m grateful for encountering such a beautiful piece of work.