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With the winter break fast approaching, the staff at MQUP are eager to share our own recommendations for you to read on those long winter nights spent at home. We have quite a varied selection of books to choose from, with something for every reader!
Maria San Filippo
I had only been working at MQUP for a couple of months when I first learned that we would be continuing the legacy of the Queer Film Classics series. Working on this series as an editorial assistant was one of my first big projects, and I was excited to see how the series would grow. I’ve been continuously impressed by the diversity of films being highlighted, and how accessible these books are. The film Appropriate Behavior, Desiree Akhavan’s acclaimed debut that premiered at Sundance in 2014, was an instant classic of US indie filmmaking. Maria San Filippo’s volume not only highlights a relatively recent film, it is also the first in the Queer Film Classics series to spotlight a work by and about a bisexual woman of colour. Learning it would be an addition to the series is what prompted me to watch the film for the first time, and for that, I am very grateful!
Elli Stylianou, Web and Data Administrator
Millionaires, Medievalism, and Modernity in Toronto’s Gilded Age
If you grew up in the city of Toronto, and even more so if it’s generational, you will have some connection to Casa Loma. This is a beautifully produced book which takes you through the history of the castle and the city in it’s time. As a Torontonian, just a glimpse through the index might very well take you to your own family’s history (in my case I was looking for the family name ‘Thompson’). It would be a fabulous choice of gift for any one on your list who loves Hogtown, history, and architecture.
Jacqueline Davis, Publicist
Jenn Cole
Hysteria in Performance is the first book I ever worked on at MQUP and it’s still one of my favourites. The nineteenth-century hysteria research conducted at the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris might be author Jenn Cole’s jumping off point, but she doesn’t stop there, instead creating a fascinating and inventive study that pulls from topics as varied as medical history, the history of photography, theatrical performance and spectatorship, hysteria and women’s health, the study of pain, and the surprising ways agency can be created in even the most hostile environments.
Alyssa Favreau, Production Editor
Stephen Humphrey
Two summers ago I grew a single cornstalk on my tiny Montreal balcony. The tassel leaned precipitously outward to accommodate the balcony roof, while the ear sheltered below, protected by long enveloping leaves; my dryer vent regularly blasted hot air into the space between. Yet, miraculously, enough pollen made the journey from tassel to silk for about 80 per cent of the kernels to ripen by September (it was a modest meal, to say the least).
Stephen Humphrey’s Paths of Pollen reveals just how odds-defying a journey each grain of pollen takes, how much other-than-human labour goes into every meal we eat – and how far off balance we have thrown these complex systems. In his deft and approachable style, weaving in expert commentary that is by turns wry, sobering, and hopeful, he brings us along on that tender trip from stamen to pistil and shows us that if you look closely enough at a grain of pollen, you’ll see the whole world.
Kathleen Fraser, Managing Editor
An Illustrated Story of Hockey
Don Weekes
I have a favourite cartoon in Don Weekes’ book. It’s by Len Norris and goes back to the 1950’s when my hometown Penticton Vees beat the Soviets to reclaim the World Championship. A large blow-up of it still hangs in Memorial Arena. As a child I was mesmerized by it. I still am. But that’s what art does. One of the great things about Don’s book is that you can spend hours and hours thumbing the pages, revisiting the past, or … or you could actually read it. I’ve only started. It’s a brilliant way to read the history of the sport – our sport.
Roy Ward, Sales Manager
An Oral History of Nunavut
Edited by John Bennett and Susan Rowley
Foreword by Peter Irniq and David Serkoak
It’s at this time of year in most Canadian cities that we’re reminded of the daily changes that winter weather brings. I go through a period of carrying on as though it doesn’t make a difference – wet, cold socks, bruised elbows, and being perpetually late until I adjust my commuting expectations are the result. It’s a constant reminder of how the winter is a second thought to this Montrealer. Uqalurait (titled after a tongue-shaped snowdrift shaped by the west-northwest wind) is a book all about what it means to be aware of the cold and know that the weather matters profoundly to our way of being in the world – it’s the first thing to pay close attention to. But it’s about so many other things too – food, hunting, children and family, sickness and healing, work, leadership, animals, things that stay the same and things that change. Inuit testimony and stories are organized in short pieces that one can read one at a time and think about for the rest of the day, or that one can read in sequence and understand as a chorus of knowledge and life experience. It’s a great winter read whatever winter weather looks like where you are.
Jonathan Crago, Editor in Chief
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