For the beach, backyard or your bedside table, Western News suggests 10 summer reads written by faculty and alumni.
Interesting Facts About Space
Emily Austin, BA’11, MLS’13
In her second novel, author and St. Thomas, Ont. native Emily Austin introduces readers to Enid, a serial dater obsessed with space. She can tell you about black holes and their ability to ‘spaghettify’ you without batting an eye in fear. Her one major phobia? Bald men. But she tries to keep that one under wraps.
Voted as an Apple Books’ February Favorite Staff Pick, Interesting Facts About Space is described as a “hilarious and ultimately hopeful novel for anyone who has ever worried they might be a terrible person.”
“Enid is an eccentric, lovable, wonderfully sex-positive heroine, and we were right there with her even when her story went from feeling like a heartwarming rom-com to a potential spy thriller. This is a funny, tender and relatable read that also includes lots of fascinating facts about the universe!”-Apple Books
Bird Suit
Sydney Hegele, BA’18, Western student writer-in-residence, 2017-18
Following the success of their first novel The Pump, Sydney Hegele returns with another “gorgeously strange, marvelously written” work in the genre she understands well: “Southern Ontario gothic literature.”
In Bird Suit, Hegele tells a tourist town folk tale of stifled ambition, love, loss and the bird women who live beneath the lake.
Every summer the peaches ripen in Port Peter and the tourists arrive to gorge themselves on fruit and sun. They don’t see the bird women, who cavort on the cliffs and live in a meadow beneath the lake. When summer ends and the visitors go back home, every pregnant Port Peter girl knows what she needs to do: deliver her child to the Birds in a laundry basket on those same lakeside cliffs. But the Birds don’t want Georgia Jackson.
Twenty-Seven Minutes
Ashley Tate, BA’03
Welcome to West Wilmer. Where everyone knows everyone. And where everyone has a secret.
In Ashley Tate’s debut novel Twenty-Seven Minutes, a small town grieves the loss of a young girl beloved by everyone. It’s been ten years since the car crash that tragically took her life, yet one question lingers: Why did it take her brother Grant twenty-seven minutes to call for help?
The Globe and Mail calls Tate “a writer to watch,” while fellow Western grad and best-selling author Ashley Audrain, BA’08 – and Tate’s long-time writing partner – calls Twenty-Seven Minutes “an unforgettable portrait of grief and the darkest ties that bind.”
Alphabetical Diaries
Sheila Heti, Alice Munro Chair in Creativity, 2023-24, department of English and writing studies
A little over a decade ago, award-winning author Sheila Heti began looking back at the typed diaries she’d kept over the previous ten years, searching for signs of deeper change inside herself. She then loaded all 500,000 words of her journals into Microsoft Excel, to order her sentences alphabetically, searching for patterns and repetitions.
The exercise allowed Heti to see herself – and the Self – in a new way. It also provided the impetus for her most recent novel, Alphabetical Diaries and what Heti describes as “a book about how difficult it is to change, why we don’t want to and what is going on in our brain.”
“Thrilling, very funny, often filthy and a surprisingly powerful weapon against loneliness . . . [Alphabetical Diaries] is a screwball replication of how consciousness operates.” —The Guardian
Photography in Canada, 1839-1989: An Illustrated History
Sarah Bassnett, professor (art history), department of visual arts, and Sarah Parsons
Ever since its invention in 1839, photography has revolutionized the way Canadians understand themselves and their country. From the moment the first visionary practitioners in Canada took up cameras to create portraits, capture landscapes and record history, photographs have played a pivotal role in shaping national identity while offering compelling opportunities for creative express.
Photography in Canada, 1839-1989: An Illustrated History is the first comprehensive book on the history of photography. Sarah Bassnett and Sarah Parsons take readers into the country’s earliest studios, follow the adventures of geographic expeditions, trace the significance of cameras for soldiers in battle, reveal the roles of imagery in colonial oppression and resistance and examine how photography has transformed the art world.
Hell of a Ride: Chasing Home and Survival on a Bicycle Voyage Across Canada
Martin Bauman, BA’15
In Hell of a Ride: Chasing Home and Survival on a Bicycle Voyage Across Canada, award-winning journalist Martin Bauman chronicles his solo bicycle trek across Canada. It was a ride that came in the wake of his father’s sudden depression, his cousin’s suicide and the stirring up of Bauman’s childhood of buried memories.
Winner of the Pottersfield Prize for Creative Nonfiction, Bauman’s work takes readers from the rain-slicked streets of Vancouver, B.C., to the hills of St. John’s, Nfld., on a journey of self-discovery that raised more than $10,000 for mental health initiatives.
In 2016, Martin Bauman, BA’15, rode his bike across Canada, raising more than $10,000 for mental health initiatives. (Photo via @martin_bauman on X)
Out Here: Governor Sir Humphrey Walwyn’s Quarterly Reports from Newfoundland, 1936-1946
Peter Neary (1938-2024), professor emeritus, department of history and Melvin Baker
Throughout his career, history professor emeritus and scholar Peter Neary wrote extensively on the political, economic and social history of Newfoundland. His final book, Out Here: Governor Sir Humphrey Walwyn’s Quarterly Reports from Newfoundland, 1936-1946, cowritten with Melvin Baker, centers on Walwyn, the British-appointed governor of Newfoundland during a period of remarkable change, culminating in Newfoundland’s union with Canada in 1949.
Assembling records from the British national archives and the provincial archives in Newfoundland and Labrador, Out Here includes Walwyn’s quarterly reports to the secretary of state for dominion affairs in London and detailed accounts of his daily life.
Michael Whitby, retired senior naval historian with Canada’s Department of National Defence, calls Out Here “a gem of a historical resource,” crediting Neary and Baker for providing context and highlighting the qualities that made Walwyn an important actor in Newfoundland’s history.
Doris McCarthy: Life & Work
John G. Hatch, professor (art history and theory), department of visual arts
John Hatch knew little of pre-eminent painter Doris McCarthy until he encountered her 1966 painting Rhythms of Georgian Bay.
“It was one of the most refreshing and novel approaches to the Canadian landscape I had seen in a very long time,” Hatch wrote.
Now, in Doris McCarthy: Life & Work, Hatch shines the light on “one of Canada’s most indomitable talents,” tracking McCarthy’s trajectory, from her childhood in Toronto, Ont. to her weekly art lessons with Group of Seven member Arthur Lismer, to receiving a scholarship to the Ontario College of Art (now OCAD University).
“As historical and critical attention on women artists in Canada has grown, Doris McCarthy has emerged as a force among her peers. Her longevity, tenaciousness and relative disregard for conforming to current trends were exemplary and forged important new ground in Canadian art.”–Professor John G. Hatch, author, Doris McCarthy: Life & Work
Sexy, Sticky, Sad: Swipe Culture and the Darker Side of Dating Apps
Treena Orchard, professor, School of Health Studies, Faculty of Health Sciences
In 2017, Treena Orchard, an anthropologist who studies sexuality, reluctantly downloaded a dating app after a “self-imposed period of celibacy following an abusive relationship.”
“I enter Swipedom when the effects of the #MeToo movement are beginning to ripple across the globe,” she writes. “Writing emerges as a way to manage the chaos and the compelling things I experience while swiping my way into new bodies and witnessing the realignment of feminism, sexual rights and gendered advocacy.”
In her memoir Sexy, Sticky, Sad: Swipe Culture and The Darker Side of Dating Apps, Orchard sets out to answer the following questions: How do we learn to swipe? How are these apps impacting sex? What other functions do they serve? What are the feminist implications of surrendering to swipe culture and can we navigate these choppy digital waters with dignity and find ways to feel empowered?
Health for All: A Doctor’s Prescription for a Healthier Canada
Jane Philpott, MD’84
Dr. Jane Philpott, Canada’s former Minister of Health, has spent her life learning what makes people sick and what keeps them well. She has witnessed miracles in modern medicine and has watched children die of starvation in a world that has plenty of food.
In her new book Health for All: A Doctor’s Prescription for a Healthier Canada, Philpott calls for a radical disruption in our health care system, seeing it as “broken, but not beyond repair.”
“The good news is that when you reach a crisis, it opens people’s minds to consider new ideas. Health for All is my opportunity to put out an idea that is simple and doable. It’s a vision we can actually create – a national health system where every person has access to primary care.”-Dr. Jane Philpott
