WORD UNDER THE STREET
You know when you see a stranger on the subway immersed in a book and you’re just dying to know what they’re reading? Well, Geoffrey Vendeville asked for you
Jon Frank, 31, Works for a clean energy investment platform Book: The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America by Thomas King Stop: Dupont It took Thomas King six years to write The Inconvenient Indian, an account of what it means to be an aboriginal person in North America. Although his subject is serious, he approaches it with wit and irony.
Frank says King’s book should be required reading for all Canadians and Americans. “It’s overlooked in most history textbooks and it’s such a huge part of our history and culture,” he said.
Laura Eggertson came to the same conclusion in her Toronto Star review of the book. “Every high school English and history teacher should teach it,” she wrote. “It’s funny, it’s readable and it makes you think.”
Andrea Robledo, 27, Student
Book: Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante
Stop: St. Clair West Everyone, it seems, is reading Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels. Even Hillary Clinton has been able to find time to read the four-part series. “I could not stop reading it or thinking about it,” she said, according to Entertainment Weekly.
Robledo is also enthralled by the coming-of-age story of two women in Naples, which begins in the 1950s. “It’s about the relationship between two women who have been competing with each other since they were kids,” she said. “You could say they’re frenemies.”
Chandra Bhattacharjee, 27, Student
Book: Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson
Stop: Union Reading a series of 10 books that spans millennia and has a character list running five pages, you can miss a few details.
That’s why Bhattacharjee is rereading The Malazan Book of the Fallen series, one he rates among the very best fantasy stories.
Deadhouse Gates, book two, is “set in a brilliantly realized world ravaged by dark, uncontrollable magic,” according to the Amazon blurb. Writing for the Guardian, Theo WolfTiger said the series ranks with Lord of the Rings. “
“Tolkien might have made the most authentic feeling fantasy or sci-fi world I have encountered, but Erikson is the only writer who can compare.”
Anne Winter Epidemiologist
Book: Star Quality by Joan Collins
Stop: Bloor-Yonge Winter reads scientific journals regularly to stay up to date with developments in her field. For fun, she turns to her “little free library,” small communal book collections on the street where passersby can take and leave titles.
She traded a mystery novel for Star Quality, the story of a “gutsy Irish redhead” who goes from singing in music halls during the First World War to the Broadway stage, according to the book’s Amazon blurb. “In the subway, you’re interrupted all the time, every day. I thought I’d read something rather light,” Winter said.