Can Lit: Great books to curl up with in October

Ah October. That chill in the air means it’s time to dig out a sweater and cosy up to a good book, and maybe a takeout menu, writes Pat St. Germain.

The Coincidence Problem: Selected Dispatches 1999-2022

Stephen Osborne

Arsenal Pulp Press

Co-founder and star contributor to Geist magazine, writer Stephen Osborne is described in The Coincidence Problem’s promotional material as a “modern flaneur.” That’s a fancy way of saying he’s — as the Cambridge Dictionary puts it — “someone who walks around not doing anything in particular but watching people and society.”

Also a gifted raconteur, Osborne shares his observations in these 48 engaging dispatches. Conversational in tone, they cover a range of topics and historical periods: The time he and his brother followed an astronomer’s advice for betting on horse races. His ancestral connection to the Salem witch trials. The final days of an elderly cat named Althea. And the fact that Vancouver’s first city ambulance made its debut in 1909 by running over and killing a pedestrian — an event that was almost duplicated as Osborne stood at the same intersection 100 years later.

Personal, universal, casually poignant, critical or humorous, most of these short pieces first appeared in Geist, which Osborne founded in 1990 with his partner, Mary Schendlinger. He founded Arsenal Pulp Press in 1971.

[non]Disclosure: A Novel

Renée D. Bondy

Second Story Press

When a Catholic priest abuses dozens of children over several decades, the Church simply moves him to another parish, where he preys on more victims. That scandalous tragedy has played out in real life in countless locations.

After one such story came to light in Chatham, Ont., where reactions ran the gamut from shock to (literally), disbelief, Renée D. Bondy felt compelled to cast a spotlight on common issues surrounding abuse and, hopefully, to spark discussion.

In [non]Disclosure, a Catholic schoolgirl who is abused by a priest from the age of six in 1969 is retraumatized when he’s arrested years later and she realizes there were more victims. Through a close friend who falls ill during the HIV-AIDS crisis of the 1980s, she has become involved in hospice care, and it’s not long before she sees a parallel between the deadly silence that allows AIDS to flourish and the toxic silence that allows the Church to cover up abuse.

Poutine: A Deep-Fried Road Trip of Discovery

Justin Giovannetti Lamothe

Douglas & McIntyre

Warning: Do not reach for this book on an empty stomach. The cover photo of golden French fries dotted with those squeaky cheese curds and bathed in rich brown gravy will have you running for the nearest poutinerie.

The fact that there is almost certainly a poutinerie, or a reasonable facsimile, within easy reach is a relatively new phenomenon. Before the Vancouver Olympics, poutine wasn’t a common craving in English Canada, according to journalist Justin Giovannetti Lamothea.

Born to an English mother and French father who was often absent during his childhood, Giovannetti Lamothea grew up in small-town Quebec, close to the very spot where poutine was born in the mid-1900s.

As an adult, after he had worked for years as a reporter in Alberta and Ontario, he moved back to Quebec, where poutine provided a bridge of sorts, helping him reconnect with his father when they embarked on a road trip to explore the dish’s history.