Book Club: C.J. Lavigne
Hello fellow isolators, and welcome to the fourth edition of the Well That’s Cool Book Club, and our first meeting of 2021! Things are getting cold here in Edmonton so what better time to curl up with a good book and get reading? Or in this case, to get on Zoom with some friends new and old to talk about books!
Image credit: Berni Scott.
In this episode, I talk with author and communications scholar, C.J. Lavigne. C.J.’s debut novel, In Veritas, was published in May 2020 and is already getting rave reviews. This novel explores the nature of truth and the complexities of human communication, all within a rich and imaginative fantasy version of Ottawa and with a character who experiences synesthesia.
Our conversation explored writing speculative fiction (which, as I found out, is an umbrella term for lots of work you might call fantasy or “genre”), how In Veritas was constructed over eight years, and how Verity’s world of synesthesia and a magic-adjacent Ottawa shapes C.J.’s exploration of human communication.
There was a LOT of book talk in this episode as well, including some great questions from our virtual audience. Just some of the titles C.J. mentioned include Premee Mohamad's Beneath the Rising, Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Mexican Gothic, and Sarah Gailey's The Echo Wife, along with C.L. Clark's The Unbroken and Tamsyn Muir's Alecto the Ninth.
As for my monthly reading update, along with finishing the last few chapters of In Veritas, I’m halfway through The Museum of Forgotten Memories by Anstey Harris, a book my mom gave me for Christmas, but with the temperatures dropping here in Edmonton I might need to pull out another Antarctic exploration book to brush up my cold-weather survival skills. I’ve got a biography of Roald Amundsen looking pretty good for that!
Do you have any new year reading recommendations for me, or any good books you got for Christmas? You can get in touch with the podcast on Facebook at wellthatscoolpod or on Twitter at @well_thatscool, or by sending me an email at wellthatscoolpod@gmail.com.
I am excited to announce that the Book Club is getting extended into February! Join me on February 18 at 8 pm Mountain Time for a conversation with poet, environmentalist, professor, farmer, traveller, and writer Jenna Butler. We’ll be talking about everything from bee keeping to boating in Svalbard – it could be one of the biggest episodes yet! Register here.
Thanks as always to Ron Yamauchi for the theme tune and to Anna Schroeder of Annather Design for the cool podcast logo, check out her work at annatherdesign.com. Other music heard during this episode and all the other podcast stuff is done by me, Ben Fast.
Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts! Until next time, stay well, and happy isolation reading!
