Must-reads for Dad
This Father's Day, skip the grilling cookbooks, the corny bathroom joke books and cookie-cutter sports bios, and get dad a something new to read that he can really sink his teeth into.
The Free Press arts and life team have pulled together a list of books practically any dad will find compelling. From life on the road in a rock band to a fraught father-son story of addiction to the shifting landscape of geopolitics, a fiction writer's first novel in decades and beyond, any father on your list will find something they'll enjoy.
By Jeff Tweedy (Dutton, $28)
Jeff Tweedy had a dad, is a dad and makes, with his band Wilco, the kind of music sometimes described as Dad Rock, so Let's Go (So We Can Get Back) — also a deeply dad sentiment— has many dad bonafides.
It's also a laugh-out-loud funny and revealing memoir by a guy who has had to fight a lot of demons to become (in this writer's opinion) one of America's best living songwriters.
Obviously, there are a lot of Uncle Tupelo and Wilco stories in here, but one doesn't need to be a Wilco fan to enjoy this book; Tweedy's storytelling abilities transcend format. He writes affectingly about his father who worked on the railroad — yes, 'all the live-long day' — and his sons, who also make music.
But it's the stories from his childhood growing up in Belleville, Ill., that will stay with you; no spoilers, but an anecdote about Bruce Springsteen is worth the price of admission alone.
Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com
— Jen Zoratti
By Tim Marshall (Scribner, $26)
Tomes on geopolitics aren't usually high on my reading list, but this page-turner by Tim Marshall deserves to be on everyone's bookshelf, not just your dad's.
Marshall, previously a journalist at Sky News and the BBC, explains clearly and concisely how the 'land on which we live has always shaped us' — delving into the wars, the power, politics and social development determined by the rivers, mountains, deserts, lakes and seas of our landscape.
Originally published in 2015, the completely revised edition has been updated to reflect the global changes of the last 10 years and includes new material exploring the growth of China's military and strategic power, Moscow's alliances with authoritarian states and the Russia-Ukraine war, and America's pivot to the Pacific.
It's a riveting book that tackles traditionally complex subjects with aplomb. Witten in highly accessible language with nothing dumbed down, this is very much a must-read.
Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com
— AV Kitching
By Ron Carlson (Penguin Canada, $30)
This grim and gorgeous novel by American short-story author Ron Carlson is probably the most overtly 'manly' book I've ever read, but it's also startlingly tender.
It follows three men working on a summer construction project, building a stunt ramp to launch a motorcycle over a canyon in Idaho. All three are dealing with painful pasts, and Carlson carefully delineates the struggle of how each one defines manhood in the face of tough work, toxic masculinity and tragedy.
Arthur Key, the sort-of protagonist, is a taciturn man with no children, but he becomes a father figure to his co-worker Ronnie, a juvenile delinquent looking to straighten out.
Arthur doesn't talk about his feelings; his love is expressed by teaching, passing his knowledge of how things are made on to his protegé. Carlson delves into the mechanics of carpentry and building in a way that's incredibly detailed, and yet somehow sounds like a poem, not a user manual.
The writer has an unparalleled sense of place, delivering the reader to a remote location of wild beauty, but the hint of impending doom that looms over the summer does not go unanswered, and even the most macho-dude dad may find he has a little something in his eye by the book's end.
Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com
— Jill Wilson
For the Love of a Son: A Memoir of Addiction, Loss, and Hope
MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS
Scott Oake's moving memoir, For the Love of a Son, describes the devastating loss of his son, Bruce, who struggled with addiction.
MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS
Scott Oake's moving memoir, For the Love of a Son, describes the devastating loss of his son, Bruce, who struggled with addiction.
By Scott Oake (Simon & Schuster, $27)
After decades covering the Olympics, and as part of the Hockey Night in Canada broadcast team, Winnipeg's Scott Oake could have penned a rollicking memoir about highlights both in front of and away from the cameras. Heck, he still could.
Instead, in his memoir Oake (with Michael Hingston) takes readers through some of his darkest days as he reminisces about his son Bruce, whose struggles with drug use led to his death at age 25 in 2011. (Oake also recalls the loss of his wife Anne, who died in 2021.)
For the Love of a Son is Oake's candid and moving recollection of Bruce's highs and lows that will tug on the heartstrings of even the chilliest of dads. Oake's trademark wit and sly humour so often on display while covering sports also permeate the book's heavy subject matter, providing some levity.
The silver lining of everything Oake has endured is the creation of the Bruce Oake Recovery Centre in 2021 and the forthcoming Anne Oake Family Recovery Centre. Proceeds from sales of For the Love of a Son benefit the Bruce and Anne Oake Memorial Foundation.
Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com
— Ben Sigurdson
With the Boys: Field Notes on Being a Guy
By Jake MacDonald (Greystone, $23)
The late Winnipeg author Jake MacDonald spent a lifetime documenting and poeticizing a way of life that can feel as timeworn as the lodges and cottages he explores.
An arguably conservative way of life — where free time's absorbed by hunting, fishing and gallivanting through secluded, if not exclusive, wilderness milieus, mostly with other men.
While Manitoba's Hemingway found perhaps his most captive audience in the cottage crowd, his gentle humour, natural wonder and breezy but vivid prose made his work popular with Canadian literary reviewers and high school librarians alike.
MacDonald wrote both fiction — his kid-friendly Juliana and the Medicine Fish is probably his best-known novel — and literary non-fiction, which is to say mythopoetic odes to his world and friends.
With the Boys is the second type: a collection of vignettes about old drinking buddies, tossing barbs back and forth like rusty lures while they commune over the crap of life, amid (as the book jacket puts it romantically) 'crack-of-dawn motel breakfasts (and) starlit stakeouts in the bulrushes.'
MacDonald died right before the pandemic, and as this writer's father also ages out of this outdoorsy boomer culture, one wonders wistfully whether its best aspects are disappearing too.
Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com
— Conrad Sweatman
Ben SigurdsonLiterary editor, drinks writer
Ben Sigurdson edits the Free Press books section, and also writes about wine, beer and spirits.
Read full biography
Jill WilsonArts & Life editor
Jill Wilson started working at the Free Press in 2003 as a copy editor for the entertainment section.
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AV KitchingReporter
AV Kitching is an arts and life writer at the Free Press.
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Jen ZorattiColumnist
Jen Zoratti is a Winnipeg Free Press columnist and feature writer, working in the Arts & Life department.
Read full biography
Conrad SweatmanReporter
Conrad Sweatman is an arts reporter and feature writer.
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