Y’all know that I love the library, but one of the aspects I love most is being able to sample, to see if there’s a match for my reading taste before I purchase. It’s an hour’s walk—there and back, in total—but I can plan to avoid the rain. (I don’t mind the rain myself, but books hate the rain: you know.)

But, as much as I love the library, this winter I dropped the habit deliberately and entirely, for the first time. Even though I love the winter, too, and especially love walking on trails in winter. (I borrowed whenever we had access to a car last year, but that made returns tricky.)

In southern Ontario cities, the temperatures hang either side of zero for most of the winter: you might have some icy days but mostly just slushy days, and so it’s gross but generally safe. It’s rare to strap on a pair of cleats, like you’re glacier-bounding, in southern Ontario (only on hiking trails, in wooded areas, say).

In northern Ontario, when autumn temperatures hover around zero for too long, snow falls and freezes and melts, alternately, for long enough that a layer forms on flat surfaces, like sidewalks and driveways. In the earliest stages, occasionally black ice also forms, where surfaces gleam like they’re covered with water but it’s actually frozen. The longer we have this above-below-zero dance underway, the thicker this accumulating layer becomes and, once the temperature falls permanently, that layer remains.

Once formed, it’s there for the duration; it will be nearly the last sign of winter, although the snow in the bottoms of the ditches, shaded areas in the underbrush (and caves) are the very last to go. But you’ll only learn that layer’s there when you step on part of it you’ve exposed (the type and amount of snow make it more/less likely that you’ll connect with it, but it’s always a surprise when your legs fly out from under you).

Because we have walked everywhere for about twenty years, I fall maybe five or six times a season, but I had a bad one at the end of last winter and wasn’t quiiiite fully recovered when this winter arrived, so I decided I wouldn’t go to the library until May (the snow’s all gone, spring is here, but two nights last week the temperature fell below zero).

All this snow and ice talk is for the Australian readers here (and anyone else who doesn’t live where it snows): my apologies to the Canadians who’d rather not talk about winter in May. Also, feel free to clarify that/how winter in other provinces can vary from what I’ve described here too. I’m not claiming any grand Winter Expertise.

But back to the books, which I was tremendously excited to bring home. First, these lovely Charco Press gems, both by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara: Slum Virgin (translated by Frances Riddle) and The Adventures of China Iron (translated by Fiona and Iona Macintyre).

Slum Virgin does not sound like it will be a good time, eh? And she does not sugar-coat poverty conditions or systemic prejudice, but there is something joyful about the writing style. Part of the fun comes from the idea that Quito is a writer and, thus, qualified to tell stories, but Cleo believes only she knows how to tell the story properly and periodically interrupts with her own chapters and explains why she must intrude. (Cleo “met” the Virgin Mary on the night that she was recognised as a man while dressed as a woman, when several policemen beat her and left her for dead—she identifies as a transvestite.) Most of the story takes place in Argentina, but some in Miami.

The Adventures of China Iron is a retelling of a traditional gaucho tale, Martin Fierro, which plays with not only genre but gender: this one I’ve yet to read. After Slum Virgin, I have no idea what to expect!

Álvaro Enrigue’s Death of an Installation Artist won the Joaquín Mortiz Prize in 1996, when he was a young man and, since then, his work has been widely acclaimed (by writers like Octavio Paz and Carlos Fuentes), widely translated (including by Gallimard in France) and, so, I was thrilled to find Now I Surrender (translated by Natasha Wimmer) on the new books shelf. Then intimidated, because it’s long and historical: but, neither has been a concern. His style is direct and clear, with tempered lyricism, and thoughtful use of detail: I’m not done yet, but I will be looking for more of his work.

I couldn’t remember why Hannah Lillith Assadi’s novel Paradiso 17 (2026) seemed familiar, but it’s on the Women’s Fiction Prize longlist. This is her third novel, and it’s Sufien’s story, which begins just before the 1948 Nakba. Assadi has one Jewish parent and one Palestinian parent, and grew up celebrating both Jewish and Muslim holidays. Twists and turns in Sufien’s life take him to New York City, where he meets a Jewish woman. I haven’t read very far, but the short chapters feel rich and immersive: and fragments are fitting when a sense of belonging is elusive.

Now, one just for the cover: Viktorie Haniŝová’s The Mushroom Gatherer (translated by Véronique Firkusny, 2025). When I got home, I discovered it’s published by Seagull Books, which maybe I should have guessed, because their covers are always striking… but their books are so often skinny, and this one is about 300 pages. Random words on the inner jacket that stood out when I looked-but-didn’t-read: nature, memories, mushrooms, family, atmospheric. I’ve only read two chapters, which introduce readers to Sára when she’s back in the family home for her father’s funeral, where things are uneasy with her two brothers, where she’s not returned for seven years—and you KNOW there’s a reason.

My library visit occurred before I considered this year’s reading log, and now you can see how I ended up with so few volumes of non-fiction this year: all of these are fiction!

This post is written to coincide with Bookish Beck’s #LoveYourLibrary. Which of these would you have borrowed first? Which is your favourite cover? And did your last visit to the library reveal the gap in your reading too?