Life of a Writer. #13. Writer as Reader.

So much to read out there, how to choose. Often a book just falls into my awareness, but also there are times when something a colleague has written rises to the top. At the moment, I have been doing less reading than usual. That has been true over the past year. There have been many distractions, such as downsizing and moving.

 But now I begin to have time again. So, I downloaded a couple of books to take to Morocco and have just finished one of them. Louise Erdrich's The Round House was a superb read. I had read a couple of her earlier books and went to hear her interviewed last fall at IFOA (International Festival of Authors) in Toronto (where I live) by Eleanor Wachtel. A terrific interview, which I listened to again when it was broadcast on the CBC. All of that made my reading experience of The Round House even richer, told movingly from the point of view of 13 year old Joe. As he witnesses the impact on his mother of a savage rape, cooperates with his father to find out who did it, only to find that the white perpetrator can't be prosecuted as the jurisdiction on reserve and other land limits the rights of the First Nations population, we follow Joe to conclusions and actions that will determine the rest of his life. And that leave me as the reader more aware of the tragedies of legal systems created by governments that need to be addressed for true justice to occur.