Buying Books

So - I said I was going to stay away from the Book Fair here at Congress ...and other than a visit there with Ross yesterday when we checked in (2 new books) I have.

Can I help it if authors bring their new books to the sessions too?

And if they are books that will help me with my Phd thesis so I just HAVE to buy them? Of course I do!

The last session I attended today was particularly interesting - it was a book launch for three new books - and even though all three sounded very interesting, I only bought one of them.

It is called Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy, and Healing by Jo-Ann Episkenew. I haven't read much of it yet, of course...I've been altogether too busy attending sessions and socializing - but I am very much looking forward to reading it. It, according to the back cover

traces the links between Canadian public policies, the injuries they have inflicted on indigenous people, and the role of indigenous literature in healing individuals and communities. Episkenew examines contemporary autobiography, fiction, and drama to reveal how these texts respond to and critique public policy, and how literature functions as "medicine" to help cure the colonial contagion.

In other words, it is about the function - and practical application - of fiction. And the author was there to sign it for me. Of course, I had to have it.

The Story Species, too, is about the function of fiction - literature as a "species survival tool". This one was written by Dr. Joseph Gold, who also wrote Read For Your Life, which is an incredible book that I have read - and cited - many times and will continue to use as I move into my doctorate. Oh, and he is here at Congress as well, and was willing to sign it for me. Of course, I had to have it.



Another book that we bought is Editing Modernity: Women and Little Magazine Cultures in Canada, 1916 - 1956, by Dean Irvine. He is the Director of Editing Modernism in Canada - a large project funded by SSHRC. I am attending 3 weeks of training that is all being offered through this project - and my RA at the National Archives of Canada, which I am having meetings about tomorrow - all of that is also under the EMiC project as well. So - duh - of course I had to have THAT book.


And...well...with all that heavy academic reading .... obviously I also had to have a copy of Lauren B. Davis' novel, An Unrehearsed Desire. Contrast, you know. I met Lauren at last year's Leacock Festival in Orillia...and have been following her blog since then... so when Exile was offering it for only $10 at the book fair....