Books for Dad: Father’s Day Sale and Gift Guide
Father’s Day is just around the corner. In honour of dads everywhere, we’ve curated a list of recommended reads to help you pick the perfect book for the father figures in your life. From must-read novels to stand-out poetry and short story collections, here are some suggested books Dad will love. Besides, you can only buy him so many ties, bbq tools, and tech gadgets.
To make things even easier for you, we’re also hosting a Father’s Day sale because nothing says love like a good book. So, this year, treat dad to the gift of reading!
Save 20% off all available titles* from June 11 to 16, 2024.
Simply use discount code FATHERSDAY24 at checkout to redeem the 20% discount!
*Excludes forthcoming releases and already discounted subscription packages.
The Loneliness in Lydia Erneman’s Life by Rune Christiansen, translated by Kari Dickson
Winner of the Brage Prize, the most prestigious award in Norwegian Literature, The Loneliness in Lydia Erneman’s Life is a quiet, beautiful exploration of solitude and how we relate to other beings. It has been lauded by European critics for doing something very rare: offering deep pleasure and joy in reading with little theatrics. Written in concise prose, the gravity and tranquility of this novel make it a gift—a soothing, contemplative offering about the depths of our inner worlds.
Duct-Taped Roses by Billeh Nickerson
In Duct-Taped Roses, Billeh Nickerson shares heartbreaks and offers odes and elegies in reflections on family, community, life, and loss. As a bush pilot, Nickerson’s father would duct-tape his planes to keep them flying. The poignancy of his relationship with his father is celebrated here in the long poem “Skies.” Through his signature irreverence, honesty and wit, Nickerson explores what can be repaired, what must be celebrated, and what—inevitably—is lost to time.
My Dinosaur by François Turcot, translated by Erín Moure
In My Dinsosaur, Turcot’s first collection of poems to be published in English (and translated by renowned poet Erín Moure), he pays tribute not just to the father, but also to the figure of the son, and to writing itself as key to story, emotion, memory, and history.
Grand Menteur by Jean Marc Ah-Sen
The secret world of Mauritian street gangs is not for the faint of heart. Fraught with peril and mischief, its inner workings are a mystery to the daughter of one of its most valued members: Serge, the Grand Menteur. A liar of exceptional caliber whose sole responsibility is to purposefully confuse police with alibis, the Menteur fears for the criminal future he has unwittingly introduced into his daughter’s life, when her clear knack for violence attracts the notice of senior gang members.
Coconut Dreams by Derek Mascarenhas
Coconut Dreams explores the lives of the Pinto family through seventeen linked short stories. Starting with a ghost story set in Goa, India in the 1950s, the collection weaves through various timelines and perspectives to focus on two children, Aiden and Ally Pinto. These siblings tackle their adventures in a predominantly white suburb with innocence, intelligence and a timid foot in two distinct cultures. Derek Mascarenhas takes a fresh look at the world of the new immigrant and the South Asian experience in Canada. Singularly and collectively, these stories will move you with their engaging narratives and authentic voices.
Sadie X by Clara Dupuis-Morency, translated by Aimee Wall
Having followed the brilliant virologist Régnier from Montreal to Marseille many years ago, Sadie now works as a researcher in a lab, spending most of her time among microscopic creatures who teach her about life as a parasite. By day, she pushes the limits of her understanding alongside Régnier, who taught her that to study viruses, she must think infectiously, allow herself to be contaminated by dangerous ideas. By night, Sadie loses herself in bars, music, drugs, sensuality. Until she gets a call from the past that lures her back across the Atlantic. When her estranged father tells her that a bizarre virus has been found in his hospital, Sadie returns to Montreal and her family, and all the unexpected changes time has wrought, to solve this new puzzle.
False Friends by Stephen Cain
False Friends takes inspiration from the linguistic term “false friends”—two words from different languages that appear to be related, but have fundamentally different meanings. In this book are poems both humourous and unforgiving that Cain uses to explore errors, misapprehensions, and mistranslations and offer insights into the “secret operations” hiding within everyday language. These poems spin punk with pastoral, comic book with lyric, the misunderstood with the obvious. And at its core, False Friends is a thought-provoking investigation of the power of poetry as political discourse.
Blue Notes by Anne Cathrine Bomann
A Danish university research group is finishing its study of a new medicine, Callocain: the world’s first pill for grief. But psychology professor Thorsten Gjeldsted suspects that someone has manipulated the test results to hide a disturbing side effect. When no one believes him, he teams up with two graduate students to investigate. Together, these sleuthing academics try to discover what’s really happening before the drug becomes widely available. Blue Notes is brimming with ethical and existential ideas about the search for identity and one’s place in the world, while offering a highly original literary adventure that ultimately underscores the healing power of love.
Umbilical Cord by Hasan Namir
Lambda Literary and Stonewall Book Award-winner Hasan Namir shares a joyful collection about parenting, fatherhood, and hope. These warm, free-verse poems document the journey that he and his husband took to have a child. Between love letters to their young son, Namir shares insight into his love story with his husband, the complexities of the IVF surrogacy process, and the first year as a family of three. Umbilical Cord is a heartfelt book for parents or would-be parents, with a universal message of hope.
Remnants by Céline Huyghebaert, translated by Aleshia Jensen
For fans of Annie Ernaux, Remnants is a profound investigation of a father’s life and sudden death. With various voices and hybrid forms—including dialogues, questionnaires, photographs, and dream documentation—Huyghebaert builds a fragmented picture of a father-daughter relationship shaped by silences and missed opportunities. The reader attempts to untangle fact from fiction: multiple versions of Huyghebaert’s father are presented while remnants of his life disappear achingly quickly. What is left of someone who was not important enough to be archived? How do we talk about what no longer exists?
Bystander by Mike Steeves
Peter Simons doesn’t spend much time at home in his apartment. Thanks to his job at a multinational company, he is often flying around the world, enjoying a life of luxurious solitude in five-star hotels. So when he returns after being away for nine months and notices a strange smell coming from his neighbour’s apartment, he initially tries not to get involved, but when a body is discovered, Peter’s carefully cultivated detachment begins to crumble. And when new people move into the vacant apartment, he gets caught up in a petty dispute that will bring him to the brink of moral ruin.
Rich and Poor by Jacob Wren
Jacob Wren’s acclaimed novel is about a man who washes dishes for a living and decides to kill a billionaire as a political act. It is literature as political theory and theory as pure literary pleasure—a spiralling, fast-paced parable of joyous, overly self-aware, mischievous class warfare.
Don’t forget that all of these books are 20% off as part of our Father’s Day Sale!
