Category: Campus

Shortlist for Trent Reads 2012

After sixteen nominations were received from Trent students, faculty, staff, and alumni, four books have been chosen for the shortlist of Trent Reads. A special Battle of the Books event will be held on Wednesday, February 1 at 7pm in Gzowski College, room 114. The entire Trent community is invited to participate by going online to vote for their favourite book from this selection. Voting dates will be announced.

Here are summaries of the four books chosen:

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

The story is told as a series of memories by a ninety-three year-old man who lives in a nursing home. As the memories begin, Jacob Jankowski is a twenty-three year old Polish American preparing for his final exams as a veterinary student during the Great Depression. When he receives the news that his parents were killed in a car accident, he has a breakdown and leaves school before graduation. He jumps on a train and learns it is a circus train belonging to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. So what does he do? He joins the circus.

The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative by Thomas King

This book explores how stories shape who we are and how we understand and interact with other people. Whether we talk about personal experiences, historical anecdotes, social injustices, racist propaganda, creation stories, or works of contemporary Native literature, King examines Native culture’s deep ties to storytelling. King ties in events from his own life as a child in California, an academic in Canada, and a Native North American with a discussion of stories told by and about Indians. King reminds the reader that storytelling carries with it social and moral responsibilities, whether the stories are native or non-native.

The Flying Troutmans by Miriam Toews

In this story, a family of damaged, misfit Manitobans take atrip across the Western United States and down to the Mexican border. The narrator, Hattie Troutman, is a Canadian living in Paris and pretending to be an artist. Late one night, she receives a distress call from her older sister, Min, whom has suffered another psychotic breakdown. Despite the fact that it was Min’s chronic misery that sent Hattie fleeing to Europe, she flies home to arrange for her sister’s hospitalization and to hang out with her neglected and emotionally injured niece and nephew. Overwhelmed by the situations both at Min’s house and at the hospital, Hattie impulsively gases up the family van and drives the kids down into the States to search for their father.

The Englishman’s Boy by Guy Vanderhaeghe

In alternating chapters, two narratives (one set in the American West, the other in Twenties Hollywood) gradually unfold and intersect. The Western saga centers on a boy who attaches himself to a band of wolvers making their way through hostile Indian territory into Canada. In the Hollywood chapters, fifty years later, Saskatchewan native Harry Vincent is taken in hand by Rachel Gold, as a scenarist for a studio headed by the mysterious and elusive Damon Ira Chance. Chance dreams of producing an epic Western that will stand as a landmark of cinematic history, and hires Vincent to track down an old man whose story he thinks will help him fulfill this dream.

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