Big Reader - Freehand Books

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Big Reader

  • Publication Date: May 1, 2021
  • ISBN: 9781988298818 / 1988298814
  • 6" x 8½"

Free Reading Guide

A book about memory, loss, and a love of books from one of Canada’s finest essayists

Ever since childhood, Susan Olding has been a big reader, never without a book on the go. Not surprising, then, that she turns to the library to read her own life. From the dissolution of her marriage to the forging of a tentative relationship with her new partner’s daughter, from discovering Toronto as a young undergrad to, years later, watching her mother slowly go blind: through every experience, Olding crafts exquisite, searingly honest essays about what it means to be human, to be a woman–and to be a reader.

Big Reader is a brilliant, achingly beautiful collection about the slipperiness of memory and identity, the enduring legacy of loss, and the nuanced disappointments and joys of a reading life.

“Susan Olding’s essays in Big Reader are soaring, searing love letters to the reading life. Profound, intimate, and breathtakingly beautiful.” HELEN HUMPHREYS author of Rabbit Foot Bill

Big Reader is a perfect collection of essays, especially for those of us who rediscovered a love of reading during challenging times. As we delve into Olding’s life flavored by literature, she becomes that smart friend we adore, in whose company we become our brightest selves.” BRENDA MILLER author of An Earlier Life

“If these essays were glass bells and you struck them one by one with your favourite pen, they would ring with the purest, clearest notes, each chapter in its singularity contributing to the gorgeous orchestral music that this book is. Olding has found exactly the right balance between the details of her life and the wide reach of research and obsession. This book pays tribute to what the essay has done in its long and honourable past and what it continues to do in the hands of a remarkable thinker and wordsmith.” LORNA CROZIER author of Through the Garden: A Love Story (with Cats)

News & Events

Big Reader reviewed in Canadian Notes & Queries
Five Freehand titles nominated across four 2022 Alberta Book Publishing Awards categories
Big Reader receives an Honourable Mention for Fred Kerner Book Award
Big Reader reviewed in I've Read This
Sunday, June 5, 2022: Susan Olding on WGA's 'The Salve of Narrative' panel discussion (online)
Big Reader reviewed in Hippocampus
Review Roundup: Big Reader by Susan Olding
Big Reader on CBC's Daybreak Alberta
Susan Olding in BC Bookworld
Susan Olding (Big Reader) on podcasts
Recording of the launch of Susan Olding's Big Reader
Big Reader reviewed in the Ormsby Review
June 6, 2021: Susan Olding launches Big Reader
Big Reader reviewed in the Toronto Star
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