winter
The wind is having a moment right now. We’ve only just made it through the year’s longest night, and the lights are starting to flicker. It’s a wonderful time to shelter in place with a book. “I read with a headlamp,” a bookshop customer tells me, and I’d call that A-plus emergency preparedness.
Besides, good stories can get us through dark times by helping us create better ones. That’s something I learned from one of today’s book recommendations: Harold Johnson’s The Power of Story: On Truth, the Trickster, and Fictions for a New Era. This book is based on some teaching Johnson gave around a Saskatchewan campfire to a small group of people from many different backgrounds.
“We become the stories we are told and the stories we tell ourselves,” he writes. To unravel the power of storytelling, Johnson draws upon his knowledge and life experience as a Cree Elder, Harvard-trained lawyer, logger, trapper, miner, and enlisted member of the Royal Canadian Navy to gently peel back the layers of story that undergird modern life. Stories like capitalism and socialism, colonialism and nationalism, religion and science, and interconnected biosphere are all up for discussion as the group swats mosquitoes.
Ultimately, this is a book about transformation and our ability to imagine and enact positive change together. Johnson wrote 12 books, and this is his last. He finished editing it only a couple of weeks before he died in 2022, and his writing is a gift to anyone seeking to build bridges across cultures or make the world better on purpose. I found it extremely hopeful, and I’m not the only one looking for these kinds of stories, either.
Huuyeejaad Svea Poulsen is a regular at Which 3rd Avenue Books in Daajing Giids. Svea’s Instagram bio says “#ExperiencesOverThings”. How do books fit into that equation? “Well, obviously [books are] a thing. But you’re reading about someone else’s experience,” Svea says, “or I feel like you’re brought into an experience, especially if it’s a well-written book.”
Svea often brings a book with her when she travels, and her reading increased even more after the pandemic began in 2020. “I just love learning new things, and I think books are a good way to learn about anything, really.” She’s typically into non-fiction titles related to psychology or based on true stories, “Especially characters that have a difficult upbringing, but then come out like a good human,” she says.
The Glass Castle is one of her favourite reads. This 2005 memoir by author and journalist Jeannette Walls recounts the dysfunctional, poverty-stricken years of Walls’ childhood and her unconventional family of origin. It’s an emotional journey of redemption and resilience that was adapted into a film in 2017.
This year, Svea read The Shortest History of Israel and Palestine by Michael Scott-Baumann, “a really good overview of that deep history.” And it’s a timely read, given how important it is to de-escalate this moment of conflict and stop the genocide in Palestine.
Closer to home, Dolores Churchill’s 2024 book, From a Square to a Circle: Haida Basketry, stood out to Svea for its many photos, the story about her life, and the instructions and diagrams it gives to keep the artform alive. “If I wanted to start weaving, I could use that as a reference book,” she says.
And, of course, Svea is a fan of Curve!: Women Carvers on the Northwest Coast, a stunning 2024 release featuring work by several Haida artists. “My cousin Cori’s in that one. Yeah, as soon as Heidi posted that on Instagram stories, I messaged her, and I’m like, could you please save me two copies?”
Curve! has proven popular. Copies signed by Yahl ‘aadas Cori Savard sold out at the Haida Art Pop-Up Shop held at Which 3rd Avenue Books in December 2024, where both Cori and Iljuuwaas Tyson Brown displayed their prints and tees.
Svea, you said you’d like to get into fiction titles a little bit more, so that got me thinking. Given your interest in psychology and complex, changing characters, I have two recommendations for you and anyone reading along.
Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner: An introspective, suspenseful spy thriller set in rural France. An American secret agent worms her way into a cultish commune, aiming to disrupt local uprisings. But who is she working for? And why?
This was an engaging read from start to finish. It ponders some typically French existential ideas about human origins, thanks to the musings of cult leaders living near the ancient caves of the Guyenne region. This book serves up action right alongside melancholy, offering absurd, humorous observations of humanity.
Thyme Travellers: An Anthology of Palestinian Speculative Fiction, edited by Sonia Sulaiman: A moving set of short stories by 14 Palestinian writers. For me, this book opened a small window into a beautiful culture through one of my favourite genres.
These stories are tender, imaginative, sorrowful, and sometimes funny. The first pages introduce a pair of women digging from Australia to Palestine. My favourite story, by Seattle-based author Elise Stephens, probes the ocean depths off the coast of Port Townsend, WA to investigate the mysterious intentions of a space-faring species of jellyfish. Fans of the movie The Abyss, you’ll like this one.
This has been BookTalk, a column about books and the people who read them. Have a recommendation to share? Email me at [email protected] or find us on Instagram.