Big Reader; Essays
Shortlisted, Trade Non-Fiction Book of the Year, Alberta Book Awards
Honourable Mention, Canadian Authors Association Fred Kerner Award
Honourable Mention, Canadian Authors Association Fred Kerner Award, 2022
Judges’ Remarks:
“Big Reader is an exquisitely written collection of essays in which a vital passion for reading forms a mesmerising accompaniment to the author’s exploration of an understanding of self, the ebb and flow of relationships and the cruelty of disease and death. Each essay takes a unique form that fits its theme with elegance and meaning. The joy of language bubbling out of each paragraph makes this book a masterful and much recommended delight.”
“An achingly honest and engaging collection of personal essays, Big Reader entices and lays bare the complexities, pleasures and challenges of life, seamlessly weaving together stories of love, memory, aging, medicine and science, reading and literature, history, loss and deceit with an enduring zeal and gratitude for the unparalleled power of words. With the ability to move, heal, illuminate, empower, destroy and uplift, Olding has revealed the limitless capacity of human communication and the sensuousness of language, simultaneously a place to lose and find oneself.”
“Olding’s improvisatory approach offers not simply a justification for a reading life, but an examination of the multifarious pleasures, provocations and comforts such a life can offer.”
– Steven Beattie, Toronto Star
“Her work is intricate, intimate, and an absolute pleasure to read.”
—Heather Graham, The Ormsby Review
“In Anna Karenina Furs”
“So cold, it hurt to breathe. The squeak and crunch of snow beneath my boots, a flicker of lights from across the frozen lake. I walked quickly, swinging my arms, my whole frame vibrating, struck like a crystal goblet and still ringing. The cold, I told myself. It’s only the cold that makes me shiver.”
Susan Olding lives, reads, walks, and writes in the traditional territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən and W’SANEC peoples, in Victoria, BC. Big Reader is her second book.
What people are saying about Big Reader
“Susan Olding’s essays in Big Reader are soaring, searing love letters to the reading life. Profound, intimate, and breathtakingly beautiful.”
– Helen Humphreys, author of Nocturne
“Big Reader is a perfect collection of essays, especially for those of us who rediscovered a love of reading during challenging times. As we delve into Olding’s life flavored by literature, she becomes that smart friend we adore, in whose company we become our brightest selves.”
– Brenda Miller, author of An Earlier Life