the_siobhan | 2022 books: 20-23 (Reply)

The Toronto Book of Love and The Toronto Book of Death by Adam Bunch
The Ontario Genealogical Society recently hosted a lecture about the Toronto Clown Riot, which is one of my all time favourite pieces of historical trivia. The presenter was interesting and entertaining and he took a few minutes to shill his books at the end of the presentation, so I grabbed them both.

Both books start with the history of the location and tell their stories in chronological order to the present day. Some of the stories don't necessarily fall into the categories of the book titles - love and death - but they are included because they are either historically significant, because they involve famous people, or just because they are fun. Bunch is obviously passionate about his subject and he tells a great story.

Three Genres: The Writing of Fiction/Literary Nonfiction, Poetry, and Drama by Stephen Minot
A book from the library. This is obviously a High School copy.

Confession time: I only read the fiction section but I thought it was really well done. The author includes some short stories and then uses those stories to illustrate the principles he's trying to teach. I liked it enough that it's going to live on my bookshelf of How To Write Good for when I start to despair of whatever I think I'm doing.

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate by Naomi Klein
BC's condo has a recycling room with a shelf where people can put things that might be of interest to other residents. Mostly what it has is books, and whenever I'm assigned the task of carting down a box or two I check out the shelves. I'm about half-way through it, but I'm going to count it towards my 2022 reads.

The premise is pretty straightforward, uncontrolled consumption is incompatible with being able to maintain living conditions on earth. Current climate strategies and agreements are a fucking joke. People who have a lot of money have invested heavily in ensuring that fact is obfuscated as much as possible. So you know, a depressing read overall. .