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What is Chase Everett McMurren Reading?

By Chase Everett McMurren

Some years back, I learned about the word “tsundoku” in Ella Frances Sanders’s Lost in Translation. Tsundoku is a Japanese noun describing a pile of unread books.
 
For you, I’ll share handful of partially read, or while-ago read, or up-next books. I currently have six-and-a-half tsundoku surrounding my pandemic-chair (where I meet people virtually for sessions).
 
Here are the books I wish for all of us to read:


1. Behave by Robert M. Sapolsky — an accessible and adventurous dive into human behaviour 


2. Free Play by Stephen Nachmanovitch — a wonderful invitation to make space for improvisation in every-day surviving (and thriving)


3. Light the Dark, edited by Joe Fassler — a nourishing collection of essays on the artistic process by people like Eiizabeth Gilbert and Sherman Alexie


4. A History of My Brief Body by Billy-Ray Belcourt — a hot-off-the-press deeply evocative memoir by Indigenous scholar and poet 


5. You’re the One You’ve Been Waiting For by Richard Schwartz — a powerful DIY-way into exploring the many parts of our complicated, tired, beautiful selves 


6. The Bloom Book by Heidi Smith — a magical introduction to floral essences and making our ways through these trying times using ancient, Wise-Woman wisdom 


7. The Touch of Healing by Alice Burmeister — a delightful, simple how-to guide for using simple, deliberate touch to acknowledge and relieve distress of all sorts 


8. Advice for Future Corpses (and Those Who Love Them) by Sallie Tisdale — a wonderful guide for embracing the inevitable (death!) with a bit more ease 

Chase Everett McMurren is a queer, Métis, harp-playing, home-visiting physician for elders and a psychotherapist for artists.

Photo courtesy of Jon Tyson.

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