Rick Mercer’s Road Years drives our Staff Picks
From Atlantic Books Today 98 fall 2023
The Road Years, by Rick Mercer
Editor Jon laughed four times just reading the introduction to Rick Mercer’s new memoir, The Road Years: A Memoir, Continued. His latest book returns to his iconic TV show, The Rick Mercer Report, and takes us along for the wild and hilarious ride. How did he get Prime Minister Stephen Harper to tuck him in? Which Canadian singer agreed to teach tobogganing safety? And why did Jann Arden take him to a zoo for an unscheduled appointment? The answers are inside.
Uttering the Unutterable, by Louis F. Groarke
Louise Groarke has spent a professional lifetime pondering the power of prose as a professor of philosophy at St. Francis Xavier University. “Literature takes the seemingly mundane, the boring, the trivial, and the mediocre, and metamorphoses them into something that pushes readers toward an epiphany of something that borders on something otherworldly and glorious,” he writes in Uttering the Unutterable: Aristotle, Religion and Literature. “Literature transfigures human experience.” We at ABT say amen to that.
Groarke’s fascinating book looks at what lifts literature above fleeting prose into something loftier and lasting. Groarke argues that people have mystical experiences, though they can’t directly share them. But they can write books, a form of sharable wisdom, thus “uttering the unutterable.”
Our Mom is Sick – Really, Really Sick – But She Rocks!, by Angela, Parker and Paris Parker-Brown
Writing with My Eyes: Staying Alive While Dying by Angela Parker-Brown was one of the best books of spring 2023. With her bright spirit determined to “sparkle at full capacity,” Parker-Brown detailed her life as it was taken over by ALS, a fatal motor-neuron disease. She also wrote a second book with her daughters, Paris and Parker, Our Mom is Sick – Really, Really Sick – But She Rocks!.
The friendly, accessible book takes the form of conversations between the twins and their mother as the 12-year-olds try to understand the disease stealing their mother from them. They share how they learned the news, how they felt about it, and how friends and family stepped up for their family as the ALS advanced. The last chapter features only the voices of Parker and Paris. It’s heartbreaking as the girls say goodbye to their mother, who died in February.
As their mother taught them, nobody knows how long they will live on this Earth, so we all ought to sparkle at full capacity while we can.
The Grover School Pledge, by Wanda Taylor
Arlaina Jefferson is a bright girl eager to broaden her mind during her last year in elementary school. But she soon learns that her school needs an education. As she prepares to give a talk on her personal Black history to her mostly white class, her teacher suggests she go first, “since you like to talk about yourself so much.” And after her talk, a classmate calls her and her white friend “Oreo cookies.” And then the class is joined by Nadia, a new student from Egypt.
Nadia brings a worldly sophistication to the class as the daughter of an ambassador. When that teacher asks one too many personal questions about her appearance. Nadia tells him off and storms out. Arlaina is transfixed. Nadia has never lived in a white-majority place before, and Arlaina is emboldened by her confidence. She starts dreaming up a plan that would change her school forever. Wanda Taylor’s new book is perfect for parents, and teachers, and kids to read together.
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