Phew! Nine days and 18 hyper-specific book recommendations later, #unwrapALU is ready to end its final day with two more dynamite picks. This time we’re going to the islands: first to a book mecca in Mont-Saint-Michel with Rhonda Mullins’s English translation of The Island of Books by Dominique Fortier (Coach House Books), then to mountains-galore in Vancouver and Shikoku, Japan with Joy Kogawa’s Gently to Nagasaki(Caitlin Press).
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ALU Editor
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Everyone has one – that tricky booklover on your list for whom you’re stymied on what to buy. Fret no longer: we’ve rounded up twenty books for hyper-specific people. Check our recommendations, and buy on. BONUS: get a set of our holiday gift cards FREE when you buy any of our featured books.
by Dominique Fortier, translated by Rhonda Mullins (Coach House Books)In The Island of Books, a 15th-century portrait painter, grieving the sudden death of his lover, takes refuge at the monastery at Mont Saint-Michel, an island off the coast of France.The novel explores survival, grief and impermanence both as it relates to the early written word, and more broadly, human existence. The scribes who are trying to save, and ultimately lose, their library teach us all that everything, including life, is fleeting, but that through the things we create, we live on.
As a child during WWII, Joy Kogawa was interned with her family and thousands of other Japanese Canadians by the Canadian government. In Gently to Nagasaki, she interweaves the events of her own life with catastrophes like the bombing of Nagasaki and the massacre by the Japanese imperial army at Nanking, as she wrestles with essential questions like good and evil, love and hate, rage and forgiveness, determined above all to arrive at her own truths.***We hope you enjoyed following along with us as we unwrapped 20 books for the truly picky pals on your list. And remember we’re still giving away a sweet set of CanLit holiday gift cards to go along with your literary gifts.
