Christian Fennell's Blog
December 2, 2025
Book Recommendation
Cold Chaos: Stories From a North by Nathalie GuilbeaultMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
COLD CHAOS, Stories from a North, by Nathalie Guilbeault
Fourteen stories that explore with honesty, humour, and insight a young woman's coming-of-age in a work camp of mostly men in the James Bay region of northern Quebec. Auto-fictive in nature, Guilbeault brings it all forward - what is the world; family; life from the eyes of Adeline, walking with wonderment through a world of isolation and men? The author creates a dance of time and place and the impact that has on everyone her pen touches. Love, loss, a certain craziness, and happiness too. It's all here. Guilbeault immerses us in lives lived together in a way that allows us to feel as if we too were participating in this narrative that feels like a secret, such that we arrive at the need of asking the same questions; from life. Here. Now. This place. These people. It's slice of life unflinching and unafraid. It's Munro's small town Ontario that is all too human. Open this book - read the words, and and you too will lean into these people and what it meant to be them; in that place; that time. Gone now, and here again, thanks to Guilbeault.
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December 1, 2025
November 28, 2025
The Possibility of Everything
Prepping to start a new book …
Books to Read:
American Rust, Philipp Meyer
Travels with Charley: In Search of America, John Steinbeck
No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy
The Dew Breaker, Edwidge Danticat
My Other Life, Paul Theroux
Winter’s Bone, Daniel Woodrell
Themes:
when the world seemingly offers no purpose, we must create our own through love, integrity, and quiet revolt.
being human in a world that so often disregards humanity.
refusing to surrender to despair - finding an “invincible summer.”
at times we must let our integrity sit quietly in its certainty and allow it to weather storms. Once it does, we shall see what remains of us, or better yet, what we've become now.
grace is truth in motion.
tension, love & hope against a broken landscape.
____________
Before the first light of each day wakes the possibility of everything.
_____________
Books to Read:
American Rust, Philipp Meyer
Travels with Charley: In Search of America, John Steinbeck
No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy
The Dew Breaker, Edwidge Danticat
My Other Life, Paul Theroux
Winter’s Bone, Daniel Woodrell
Themes:
when the world seemingly offers no purpose, we must create our own through love, integrity, and quiet revolt.
being human in a world that so often disregards humanity.
refusing to surrender to despair - finding an “invincible summer.”
at times we must let our integrity sit quietly in its certainty and allow it to weather storms. Once it does, we shall see what remains of us, or better yet, what we've become now.
grace is truth in motion.
tension, love & hope against a broken landscape.
____________
Before the first light of each day wakes the possibility of everything.
_____________
