Art by Gina Ortiz.

We like consuming words on the page almost as much as we like consuming food on the plate. Welcome to the Scout Book Club: a brief and regular rundown of what we’re reading, what’s staring at us from the bookshelf begging to be read next, and what we’ve already read and recommend.

The 2025 Vancouver Writers Fest goes down from October 20th to 26th at various venues spotting Granville Island. Although the VWF Reading List is glut with good, apropos books to read leading up to the festival – and in general, any time at all – once again, we took advantage of the event’s impressive roster of writers to elicit a whole slew of book recommendations from its participants. Consult them below for your ongoing reading pleasure:

Audition (Riverhead Books, 2025), by Katie Kitamura | I read this book once, and then I had to read it again immediately after. An actress meets a young man who claims to be her son, and then, acting and daily life become indistinguishable. Kitamura is so skilled — Audition experiments with language, the form of the novel, characters and perspectives in more ways than one. Yet, this book maintains a sense of honesty. All the experiments, formal and within the story, felt deeply personal. At the time of this writing, I am reading this book for the third time. DETAILS | — Recommended by Aaron Tang (aka Sheung-King), author of Batshit Seven. List of VWF events here.

Available from such local independent bookstores as Massy Books, Iron Dog Books, and Upstart & Crow (special order only).*

Ghostroots: Stories (W.W. Norton & Company), by ‘Pemi Aguda | I picked up this book on a whim and couldn’t put it down. Aguda’s stories are bizarre and haunting and full of realness. The best story collection I’ve read in years. DETAILS | — Recommended by Jacquelyn Zong-Li Ross, author of The Longest Way to Eat a Melon (Sarabande Books). Read our Scout interview with her here. List of VWF events here.

Available as a special order from such local independent bookstores as Massy Books, Iron Dog Books, and Upstart & Crow.*

Light Years (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group), by James Salter | The narrative of James Salter’s Light Years, which tracks the slow dissolution of a marriage, may not strike you as innovative or even interesting. But the language in which Salter unspools that story, in sentences that are seductive, lyrical, lacerating, and vibrating to their own secret chord, offers an experience of the numinous. Light Years is, quite simply, the most beautiful novel I’ve ever read. | — Recommended by Ira Wells, author of On Book Banning: Or, How the New Censorship Consensus Trivializes Art and Undermines Democracy (Biblioasis). List of VWF events here.

Available as a special order from such local independent bookstores as Massy Books, Iron Dog Books, and Upstart & Crow.*

All Things Move: Learning to Look in the Sistine Chapel (Biblioasis), by Jeannie Marshall | A gorgeous meditation on art and religion, on how we see the world and how we communicate. Especially valuable at a time when communication has become so bowdlerized, and how we see the world has become so distorted. The religious wars of the sixteenth century pitted Christian sects against one another, united in their hatred of Rome. And through it all, Michelangelo’s genius. DETAILS | — Recommended by Don Gillmor, author of On Oil (Biblioasis). List of VWF events here.

Available from such local independent bookstores as Massy Books, Iron Dog Books (special order only), and Upstart & Crow.*

Show Don’t Tell: Stories (Penguin Random House), by Curtis Sittenfeld | I anticipate any and all new writing by Curtis Sittenfeld — novel or stories — but for me a new collection of short fiction is an event. I savour each story like an artisanal chocolate and allow myself just one every few days so as not to run out too soon. Equal parts uncomfortable, familiar, startling, and funny, each story in Show Don’t Tell is delectable in its own way. DETAILS | — Recommended by Clea Young, author of Welcome to the Neighbourhood: Stories (House of Anansi Press). List of VWF events here.

Available from such local independent bookstores as Massy Books (special order only), Iron Dog Books (special order only), and Upstart & Crow.*

Tender at the Bone (Penguin Random House), by Ruth Reichl | My TBR stack holds many titles from this year’s reading list – books I can’t wait to start! – but for a book that’s already special to me, I’ll have to go with Tender at the Bone, by Ruth Reichl. This was the first culinary memoir I ever read, back in 1998. At the time, I was a service journalist with the soul of a chef, and this book told me I was not the only one for whom food was lens through which to see the world, planting a seed that became my own culinary memoir 27 years later. DETAILS | — Recommended by Bonny Reichert, author of How to Share an Egg (Appetite by Random House). List of VWF events here.

Available as a special order from such local independent bookstores as Massy Books, Iron Dog Books, and Upstart & Crow.*

Letters to Kafka (House of Anansi Press Inc.), by Christine Estima | A powerhouse leading woman, illicit love, and a glittering cast of artists and writers from the post-World War I era – what’s not to love? In Estima’s hands, Milena Jesenská, the Czech journalist who took the writer Franz Kafka as her paramour, is an irresistible melange of contradictions, defiance, and humour. A historical novel full of verve and interest. DETAILS | — Recommended by Saeed Teebi, author of You Will Not Kill Our Imagination (Simon & Schuster Canada). List of VWF events here.

Available from such local independent bookstores as Massy Books (special order only), Iron Dog Books, and Upstart & Crow.*

Wandering Souls, (Henry Holt and Co.), by Cecile Pin | After the end of the Vietnam War, three siblings lose the rest of their family en route to the US and wind up as orphaned refugees in the UK. Spare, tender, and haunting, Wandering Souls is a masterful work of diasporic fiction and the best thing I’ve read of late. DETAILS | — Recommended by Jack Wang, author of The Riveter (House of Anansi Press). List of VWF events here.

Available as a special order from such local independent bookstores as Massy Books, and Iron Dog Books.*

The Book of Records, (Knopf Canada), by Madeleine Thien | Set inside The Sea, a liminal space where the displaced come and go, this book blurs historic and current political moments while drawing on common threads weaved across time, space, and boundaries. The pages are packed with exquisite and thoughtful storytelling that leaves me questioning, and meditating, why we continue to define the world through difference when we all share similar struggles haunted by regrets, obligations, and the pursuit of hope and a place called home. The themes associated with home and identity are also reflected in Thien’s foreword in my book, Chinatown Vancouver. DETAILS | — Recommended by Donna Seto, author of Chinatown Vancouver: An Illustrated History (House of Anansi Press). List of VWF events here.

Available from such local independent bookstores as Massy Books, Iron Dog Books, and Upstart & Crow.*

I’ll Tell You When I’m Home (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster), by Hala Alyan | As in all of Hala Alyan’s books, there are passages of her memoir, I’ll Tell You When I’m Home, that are so beautiful they should be hanging in an art gallery. A mesmerizing story of surrogacy, exile, addiction and — at its throbbing heart — love. Damn, Alyan is amazing. DETAILS | — Recommended by Marcello Di Cintio, author of Precarious: The Lives of Migrant Workers (Biblioasis). List of VWF events here.

Available from such local independent bookstores as Massy Books, Iron Dog Books (special order only), and Upstart & Crow.*

How to Survive a Bear Attack: A Memoir (Knopf Canada), by Claire Cameron | How to Survive a Bear Attack is a multi-layered book that combines meticulous research with a deeply personal memoir. Its ability to bring trauma and triumph, wilderness and its beauty and danger to life, while also demonstrating how people can strive and heal in the face of adversity, is what I love so much about Cameron’s work. In the end, it’s about the survival of the human heart. DETAILS | — Recommended by David A. Robertson, author of 52 Ways to Reconcile: How to Walk with Indigenous Peoples on the Path to Healing (McClelland & Stewart). List of VWF events here.

Available from such local independent bookstores as Massy Books, Iron Dog Books, and Upstart & Crow.*

Her First Palestinian and Other Stories (House of Anansi Press), by Saeed Teebi | The list of things I loved about it is a long one, but at the top of it is the remarkable confidence with which Teebi asserts his Palestinian identity, as though the thought of proving his humanity to a Western audience never even entered his mind. That was so refreshing and inspiring to me. DETAILS | —Recommended by Ziyad Saadi, author of Three Parties. Read our Scout interview with Saadi. List of VWF events here.

Available from such local independent bookstores as Massy Books, Iron Dog Books (special order only), and Upstart & Crow.*

Crooked Teeth (Viking), by Danny Ramadan | It’s the deeply powerful, disturbing, honest, and hopeful memoir of a gay man who lived, struggled, and thrived in Syria before migrating to Vancouver during Syria’s devastating civil war. It challenged many of my perceptions, and I’m better because of it. DETAILS | — Recommended by Eddy Boudel Tan, author of The Tiger and the Cosmonaut. Read our Scout interview with Boudel Tan. List of VWF events here.

Available from such local independent bookstores as Massy Books (special order only), Iron Dog Books, and Upstart & Crow.*

Kilworthy Tanner (Vehicule Press), by Jean Marc Ah-Sen | In terms of Toronto writers, I had to recommend my dear friend and the very talented Jean Marc Ah-Sen, and his novel, Kilworthy Tanner. It’s set in Toronto beginning in 2004, and is a semi-biography of young writer and failing punk musician, Jonno. He begins a toxic relationship with an older more successful writer, Kilworthy Tanner, and writes with her, about her, and about his so-called friends, peers and everything in-between, while spiralling into a self-destructive wormhole. It features so many fantastic Toronto references, and music, and it’s funny! So very funny and sharp. Jean Marc Ah-Sen has this uncanny ability to write in his own genre, yet this is such an accessible piece it makes you feel like you’ve stumbled upon a small bit of literary rock n’ roll magic. I really love this book, I fear I’m not great at describing books as much as how much I just love the sense of them. But Jonno’s voice is so clear and relatable yet surreal and madcap, it’s an exhausting read in the best way. You’re just on this rollercoaster of books and music and sex and all things a young artist dreams of and then wakes up to in a cold sweat the next morning. DETAILS | — Recommended by Georgia Toews, author of Nobody Asked For This. Read our Scout interview with Toews. List of VWF events here.

Available as a special order from such local independent bookstores as Iron Dog Books and Upstart & Crow.*

*It would be remiss for me not to mention Vancouver’s various independent and used book stores, and encourage you to pay them an in-person visit to seek out these and other titles.