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.

It’s Spring cleaning season, and I have “excess” on the brain. The most apropos example being the excessive amount of books in my possession – in stacks on the floor and crammed into makeshift milk crate “bookshelves” – all vying for my attention. In broader terms, the world has an excessive amount of…well, pretty much everything (except for natural resources to sustain our current habits; the distribution of said excess is whole other story, though). For example, as of early 2024 there was reported to be enough clothing to clothe at least the next six generations; meanwhile, the richest 1% continues to accumulate excessively wealth. (Not-so-fun fact: according to Oxfam Canada, “Canadian billionaire wealth could easily carpet most of Vancouver (93%) in CAN$50 notes.”) And, of course, you can’t discuss the topic of excess without mentioning its relationship to food and appetites…

To get a better idea of what other literary and academic minds think about a small spectrum of ideas of “excess”, check out the following fiction and non-fiction titles below:

Currently Reading, Recently Read, and Recommended

Wasted (Blasta Books), by Conor Spacey | In this hybrid illustrated manual-slash-cookbook, Irish chef, author and sustainable food system champion/activist, Conor Spacey, focusses his punk-as-f*ck attitude and approach towards food and cooking on MacGyvering a bunch of the most commonly wasted home kitchen food items into tasty, plant-based recipes – ultimately cutting back on excessive food waste by recruiting and transforming every reader/user into another proponent for a sustainable global food system. If you’re already an adept, conscientious home cook, then a lot of the content of the 7th volume in the Blasta Books Series may seem intuitive (pickling, making yogurt from scratch, soup stock making, etc.)…However, being one myself, I can attest that Wasted also contains many truly clever surprises. A few cases in point: although I personally regularly miraculously revive free, days-old, hard-as-rock baguette “corpses” into French toast and croutons, this is the first instance I’ve heard of using them to make “bread hummus”; and with the amount of overripe bananas that get consumed in my household, I could have made a lot of banana skin chutney – same-same if you swap out “overripe bananas” in the latter statement with “coffee”, and “banana skin chutney” with “chocolate chip & coffee grounds cookies”…Intrigued yet? You should be! The world would be a better place if there were more cookbooks like this: ones that promote making the most out of the underdog and overlooked ingredients already in your fridge and cupboard without skimping on flavour, instead of seeking out obscure, specialized ingredients to attempt an elaborate chef-inspired recipe that you’ll only ever probably make once, relegating those hard-found ingredients to a second life of obscurity in the back of the fridge/cupboard or straight into the trash/compost.

DETAILS | Although there are not currently any local stockists of this or any other book in the Blasta Books Series that I’m aware of, the publisher does ship to Canada!

The Glutton (Simon & Schuster Canada), by A.K. Blakemore | The glutton to which A.K. Blakemore’s latest historical fiction novel refers to, Tarare, possesses an outrageously prolific and insatiable pathos: absolutely nothing in existence – animal, vegetable, or mineral – is inedible or off-limits for his exorbitant appetite. After a brutal, near-deadly transition from childhood into early manhood, Tarare becomes aware of this unique grotesqueness and his helplessness against it. From thereon out, he is demonized, fetishized, and taken advantage of for his hunger: performing as the headlining act of a travelling troupe of misfit performers, prostitutes and petty thieves; and eventually being subject to cruel experiments at the hands of a sadistic doctor. His ravenous thoughts are occasionally interrupted by lucid observations of beauty in his surroundings, but for the generally impoverished and/or imprisoned Tarare, such instances are rare, and largely obscured by the violence and debauchery of his late 18th century revolutionary France setting. Even as bread costs rise, and the rich and powerful kill and are killed, Tarare remains mostly unmoved…only his hunger truly compels him; to such extremes as joining the army in order to be provided rations (not enough, of course).

According to Blakemore’s ‘Afterword’, the story of Tarare is inspired by “true” accounts of an actual Glutton; however, it’s probably safe to assume that The Glutton‘s sordid details are mostly culled from her own imagination. Although the story’s plot continuity and character development are both a bit patchy, it is too well-written and sympathetic to its protagonist to be waved off as simply gratuitous…However, at a point (probably around the time that *spoiler* a couple of kittens are introduced as temptations to the famished Tarare) I just wanted to consume its length as efficiently as possible, and pray that it would be digested by my mind without too much stress or side effects (hello, bad dreams). Squeamish readers, you’ve been warned! However, if after reading this you still decide to give it a shot, I highly recommend planning ahead to follow up The Glutton with something sweet and easily digestible to get rid of its aftertaste. On an aesthetic note: the hardcover edition’s book cover provides quite an accurate idea of the contents within it, by depicting a gorgeous, rich-hued garden with a wretched naked baby bird crying out in what we can only assume is its own desperate, debilitating hunger. Props for the stylistic choice!

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

Piglet (Henry Holt and Co.), by Lottie Hazell | Fast forward to modern day London with Lottie Hazell’s examination of a woman’s appetites told through the fictional story of “Piglet”, so nicknamed by her family for her impressive appetite as a child. Adult Piglet is finally breaking away from her family and piggish reputation, keeping her appetite in check through her relationship with Kit – a well-off man of good breeding and bourgeois taste – and by compulsively cooking and feeding others various cookbook recipes published by her employer. However, when Piglet’s romantic relationship takes a serious hit less than two weeks before their planned wedding, our protagonist begins to give in to her appetites again – even concocting an elaborate backstory in her head about being some sort of hot-shot restaurant reviewer with an impressive expense account in order to justify her elaborate public binges. Whenever there are other people around, Piglet is never not performing: around her family, coworkers and future-spouse, Piglet’s secret desires discreetly eat her from the inside-out, while she overcompensates by putting on the airs of a well-adjusted, unaffected caretaker, career woman, and perfect domestic partner (yikes!). So long as she puts her personal needs and desires on the back burner, and follows societal conventions, the more intensely they threaten to destroy her true identity and truly most valuable relationships. Piglet’s only chance to regain her autonomy and have any semblance of satisfaction with her life seems to be to cede control over her overwhelming physical hunger, thereby ultimately stabilizing it.

Piglet is an astute depiction of the fine line women walk between fulfilling themselves and others’ expectations, using the stigmatization of a singular woman’s “disordered” appetite as its centrifugal force. But it’s true brilliance, I think, is in how Hazell handles Piglet’s inner conflict between shame and pride in her ability to eat, and how she depicts the ecstasy that Piglet derives from her feasts, as well as her pride in the shock value effect her indulgences can have on other people. Fun fact: Piglet‘s author is an English scholar, specializing in food writing in 21st century literature – how cool is that? – and, likely as a by-product, her own food writing is both adept and tantalizingly, even when it borderlines the grotesque.

DETAILS | Available from such local independent bookstores as Iron Dog Books.*

Readopolis (Book*hug Press), by Bertrand Laverdure, Translated by Oana Avasilichioaei |. The protagonist of Quebec author’s 2006 award-winning novel, Ghislain, is a self-professed “reader” – in all its prolific, particular, pretentious, and under-appreciated “glory” – who moonlights as a dep (aka convenience store) clerk, living in Montreal. He takes his reading task so seriously and reads so excessively, in fact, that he counters its affects by consuming mainstream, brainless movies and laying…
As such, Readopolis is full of a combination of early-oughts popular culture references, alongside obscure, niche book and film titles and musicians, snappy observations, and witty verbal sparing / bantering. If you aren’t also a literary nerd, amateur philosopher, hipster, Francophile / connoisseur of Quebecois culture in some combination, then you are excused from feeling a bit out of you depth. To be sure, Readopolis is a feat of form – stylistically, kind of an off-spring of Infinite Jest, which was published a decade earlier, albeit one that is mercifully a quarter of its length – prone to tangents, shapeshifting, and hopscotching non-commitally from one narrator to another. Overall an amusing, zeitgeist-y, and brain-bending read from an important member of modern Quebec/Canadian literature.

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

American Bulk: Essays on Excess (W.W.Norton), by Emily Mester | Through a series of personal essays that are three-quarters anecdote and reflection, and one-quarter critical analysis, first-time published author, Emily Mester, describes the various ways that the theme of ‘excess’ has played out in her life – from overeating to scrolling and compulsive online shopping. As she tells it, Mester herself is imbued with a genetic predisposition to excess consumption, inherited paternally through her frugal, hoarder grandmother and her politically conservative, obscenely wealthy, pile-stocking son (Mester’s father) – and cultivated by her middle-upper-class suburban Middle American upbringing. American Bulk is simultaneously a unique and adept examination of the pillars of American consumer-capitalist culture, and an incredibly vulnerable and raw collection of stories of pathos. What it is not is a ‘bear trap’ – the harsh clamp-down on American excessiveness that seems implied/inevitable never really happens. Instead, the surprise element comes from Mester’s underlying sympathy (towards herself, her neurotic family members, and American excessiveness, in general) that is commonplace throughout each chapter of her pseudo-memoir.

DETAILS | Available from such local independent bookstores as Upstart & Crow.*

All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess (Metropolitan Books), by Becca Rothfeld | On the other hand, Rothfeld’s respective book on the theme of excess (also published in 2024) pronounces her stance right on the cover, as adamantly “pro”. When Rothfeld champions excess, it is in the form of beauty, sex, food, love, and other worldly pleasures. Rife with cynicism and lush with poeticism, literary language and grand ideas, her new collection of writings on the topic definitely has a more philosophical bent than Mester’s more or less arbitrary one (not that there aren’t incredibly intimate moments here too, including details of personal lust, struggles with suicidal tendencies, and awkward bathroom moments). According to Rothfeld, in various instances minimalism and declutterers are excess’s antagonist; likewise, fragment novelists and new puritans play the roles of villain against excess; same-same the practice and proponents of mindfulness/under-thinking. In an especially provocative, Cronenberg-inspired essay (“The Flesh, It Makes You Crazy”) on the potential of a transformative sexual experience, the author expounds, “How to do justice to the longing for excess except excessively?”… From “More is More”: “I dream of a house stuffed floor to ceiling…too many books for the shelves; fictions brimming with facts but, more importantly, flush with form; long tomes in too many volumes; sentences that swerve on for pages; clauses like jewels strung onto necklaces; a kitchen crammed with cream, melting butter, sweating cheese…and a table set for a banquet bigger than I could ever host. I want all of this precisely because I do not need it.” Overall, Rothfeld’s essays are designed to provoke thought as well as feelings (in various bodily regions – not just the mind), to be thoroughly masticated and relished. And although I don’t think I’d go so far as to say that I enjoyed these essays “excessively”, I certainly did enjoy their profound excessiveness profusely.

DETAILS | Available from such local independent bookstores as Upstart & Crow.*

She’s Always Hungry (HarperCollins Canada), by Eliza Clark | Contained within She’s Always Hungry is an eclectic and deranged bunch of well-crafted short stories by a rather precocious young writer. Although Clark’s prose is undecorated, her ideas are wildly imaginative, and often horrific and gruesome. For instance, “Extinction Event” is set in an apocalyptic future, and follows a scientist held hostage with a group of esteemed peers being forced to study solutions for extreme climate change, to the peril of a species of potentially sentient plant-like “Objects”. In other narratives, including the titular story, humans are the victims of otherworldly appetites; or else, suffer from their own unusual inclinations, as in the story of a bizarre fusion restaurant which unfolds via a series of online reviews, or the tale of teenage girl who makes an extreme compromise in order to clear up her acne-ridden skin. It’s obvious from this collection that Clark likes to take a topsy-turvy approach to depict unusual relationship dynamics – be it through gender roles, or human-nature / human-alien connections. In the rare instance that Clark sticks to a more realistic scenario, the author still manages to reveal the absurdity of “real life” – tape worms, eating disorders, acid trips, alcoholism, sexual kinks, and all! – and, I’d argue, it’s these decidedly more human stories that are both the most poignant and successful of the She’s Always Hungry lot.

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

Hey, Good Luck Out There (Anchor Canada), by Georgia Toews | The breakout first book by Toronto-via-Winnipeg author (and recent Scout interviewee) Georgia Toews is divided into two parts: in the first, twenty-two-year-old Bobbi is beginning a 30-day-long stint in a rehab facility, after being checked in by her family for alcoholism; the second half follows the narrator after its completion, as she attempts to fashion a new, sober life for herself, basically from the bottom-up – new housing, employment, routines, relationships, friendships… From her various tormented recollections, Bobbi’s previously excessive lifestyle seems to have both precipitated abusive and traumatic relationships, while simultaneously providing a buffer of inebriation against them – and herself. It’s too easy to compare Georgia Toews’ writing to that of her mother, Miriam Toews (Women Talking, A Complicated Kindness, The Flying Troutmans, All My Puny Sorrows, Summer of My Amazing Luck – to name just a handful of her books). However, it is also probably remiss not to draw any parallels when it comes to her writing style, which is full of (inherited?) wry wit and dark humour – a buoyant characteristic which Georgia also extends to her protagonist, Bobbi. Clearly she is her mother’s daughter – which, at least, is good luck for us readers!

DETAILS | Available as a special order from such local independent bookstores as Massy Books, 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.