Don't worry, we mean last days of summer—not end times! (You never know lately.) Three lucky winners will get to choose a book from the following stellar list! These are all fantastic books.
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Dirty Birds, by Morgan Murray (Breakwater Books)
"Canadians rejoice! Our Vonnegut has finally arrived! Morgan Murray’s debut is a great, brawling, sprawling, muscular glory of a story. Funny, dark, and wholly original." —Will Ferguson, author of 419
About the book:
In late 2008, as the world’s economy crumbles and Barack Obama ascends to the White House, the remarkably unremarkable Milton Ontario— not to be confused with Milton, Ontario—leaves his parents’ basement in Middle-of-Nowhere, Saskatchewan, and sets forth to find fame, fortune, and love in the Euro-lite electric sexuality of Montreal; to bask in the endless twenty-something Millennial adolescence of the Plateau; to escape the infinite flatness of Saskatchewan and find his messiah—Leonard Cohen.
Hilariously ironic and irreverent, in Dirty Birds, Morgan Murray generates a quest novel for the twenty-first century—a coming-of-age, rom-com, crime-farce thriller—where a hero’s greatest foe is his own crippling mediocrity as he seeks purpose in art, money, power, crime, and sleeping in all day.
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The Last Goldfish, by Anita Lahey (Biblioasis)
"Anita Lahey writes about friendship and loss with nimbleness and grace. Her memoir brings back to life what illness and death took away."—Elizabeth Hay, author of All Things Consoled: A Daughter’s Memoir
About the book:
When Anita Lahey opens her binder in grade nine French and gasps over an unsigned form, the girl with the burst of red hair in front of her whispers, Forge it! Thus begins an intense, joyful friendship, one of those powerful bonds forged in youth that shapes a person’s identity and changes the course of a life.
Anita and Louisa navigate the wilds of 1980s suburban adolescence against the backdrop of dramatic world events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall. They make carpe diem their manifesto and hatch ambitious plans. But when Louisa’s life takes a shocking turn, into hospital wards, medical tests, and treatments, a new possibility confronts them, one that alters, with devastating finality, the prospect of the future for them both.
Equal parts humorous and heartbreaking, The Last Goldfish is a poignant memoir of youth, friendship, and the impermanence of life.
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On Nostalgia, by David Berry (Coach House Books)
"We're so lucky to have a writer as thoughtful, funny, smart, and cutting as David Berry. Nostalgia dictates so much of our world, and there isn't a better cataloger, critic, and guide through it than Berry." —Scaachi Koul, author of One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter
About the book:
From Mad Men to MAGA: how nostalgia came to be and why we are so eager to indulge it.
From movies to politics, social media posts to the targeted ads between them, nostalgia is one of the most potent forces of our era. On Nostalgia is a panoramic cultural history of nostalgia, exploring how a force that started as a psychological diagnosis of soldiers fighting far from home has come become a quintessentially modern condition. Drawing on everything from the modern science of memory to the romantic ideals of advertising, and traversing cultural movements from futurism to fascism to Facebook, cultural critic David Berry examines how the relentless search for self and overwhelming presence of mass media stokes the fires of nostalgia, making it as inescapable as it is hard to pin down.
Holding fast against the pull of the past while trying to understand what makes the fundamental impossibility of return so appealing, On Nostalgia explores what it means to remember, how the universal yearning is used by us and against us, and it considers a future where the past is more readily available and easier to lose track of than ever before.
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The Home Stretch: A Father, a Son, and All the Things They Never Talk About, by George K. Ilsley (Arsenal Pulp Press)
The Home Stretch is a wonderful book—witty, tender, and lucidly written—about the caregiving of sons and the complicated inheritances of fathers. It is about finding through the challenges of elder care the parent you've never really known. Lifegiving and bracingly honest, George K. Ilsley's writing is a welcomed punch to the heart. —David Chariandy, author of Brother
About the book:
A moving, honest memoir about a man who returns to his rural hometown to take care of his cranky elderly father.
George K. Ilsley explores his complex relationship with his aging father in this candid memoir full of sharp emotion and disarming humour. George's father is ninety-one years old, a widower, and fiercely independent; an avid gardener, he's sweet and more than a little eccentric. But he's also a hoarder who makes embarrassing comments and invitations to women, and he has made no plans whatsoever for what is inevitably coming over the horizon.
Decades after George has moved four time zones away, he begins to make regular trips home to help care for his cranky and uncooperative father, and to sift through the hoarded fragments of his father's life. In doing so, George is forced to confront some uncomfortable family secrets and ugly personal truths, only to discover that the inexorable power of life's journey pulls everyone along in its wake.
The Home Stretch is a beguiling, moving book about aging parents who do not "go gently," and their adult children who must reckon with their own past before helping to guide them on their way.
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