Ways of Reading

Because we're readers before we're writers.

Halfway through this year, I got back to reading for fun after an intensive period of reading for work.

That reading was also fun, though. I’m one of the jury members on the American Literary Translators Association’s National Translation Award in Prose for 2025. Along with the other jury members Ilze Duarte, Peter Constantine, Hoyoung Moon, and George Henson, I read 60-odd books to determine the longlist, the shortlist, and the winner—which will all be announced later this year.

I’ve served in literary juries before, but this was the most intensive reading experience I’ve had, mainly because of the sheer number of submissions. For several months I had to carve time out of my work, and put aside all of my free time, to get through all of the books. All of my waking hours were occupied. I forgot to call family members. I didn’t meet friends. The usually active social life that my partner and I pursue fell quiet.

But I felt immensely enriched by the reading, because this is one of the prizes I consult every year to put together my own reading list. I was getting to read books I would have sought out anyway—though at a far slower pace. I read books from so many different languages, literary traditions, and aesthetic sensibilities: I was left in awe of the brilliance of human creativity. It shelltered me from all the bad news in the world, and inspired me in my own creative pursuits. When I was done reading—and had to turn to the very unfun task of deciding which books would make the longlist—I missed all that reading.

But I was also glad to get back to reading in a more forgiving manner. When you read for a jury, you read cruelly, to (at worst) eliminate books from consideration or (at best) to compare them with other books. The mind is always in judgement.

I would hate to always read that way.

The first book I picked up was one that would decidedly not win any awards today, though it did win Canada Reads in 2005: the novel Rockbound by Frank Parker Day. Published in 1928, this is the tale of a young clansman claiming the land, and the livelihood, that is by rights his in his family’s fishing community in Nova Scotia. The dialogue is written in dialect, with a local accent so thick it took me some time to understand it. And the book comes with a warning from the publisher that the text contains language that is considered offensive today.

This was not a novel I’d normally be drawn to, but I quite enjoyed it, because I was traveling in Nova Scotia when I picked it up. Reading the literature of any place I’m traveling in is hands down my most favourite way to read. When I’m organized about it, I research my reading list before the start of my journey and lug around the books as I travel. This time I wasn’t organized. In Lunenburg Bound Books, I saw that there was a section on Atlantic Canadian writers; and I picked up the one that felt the most exotic to me. And I learned a lot about traditional fishing practices on the islands of southern Nova Scotia, very close to the areas my partner and I were traveling through. I also got a feeling for the land in the way I wouldn’t have got without the book.

After that, I looked up other novels about Nova Scotia, or by Nova Scotian writers, and I plan to spend this month reading them at a leisurely pace, not worrying about whether they’re good or not, just taking from them what I can, or, in other words, enjoying them.

And then I’ll consider my next reading project. To expand into the rest of Atlantic Canada? To return to reading memoirs and autobiographies, as I’d been doing last year? To read literature in translation? To catch up on the Booker longlist? To make another go (of many) of trying to catch up on Nepali literature? There’s so much to read—and so many ways of reading.

Drop me a line and tell me what you’re reading—and pass along recommendations, too.

One final recommendation from me: Peter Beinart’s Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza. It’s essential reading for today: not simply for the information, but for the deep feeling with which Beinart discusses matters Israeli and Jewish. Do pick it up if you can.