Linden MacIntyre reads in his Toronto home.Fernando Morales/The Globe and Mail
WHO: Linden MacIntyre is a Canadian journalist, broadcaster and novelist, currently with CBC's the fifth estate, who has won eight Gemini Awards, an Emmy and numerous other awards for writing and journalism, including last fall's Scotiabank Giller Prize for his novel The Bishop's Man.
WHAT: Cockroach, by Rawi Hage; Love and Summer, by William Trevor; A Colossal Failure of Common Sense, by Larry McDonald; Too Big to Fail, by Andrew Ross Sorkin
WHY: In my life, reading is a duty and a pleasure. There's the reading I must do and the reading I want to do and rarely are they complementary. Growing up, the necessary reading happened, as a rule, at the kitchen table or on a school bus. I reserved my bedroom for the reading that I chose. The pattern hasn't changed much. I find it difficult to read for enjoyment in an office and resent work-related reading in the quiet places where I find relief from obligations.
There are, of course, neutral zones like airplanes, where, from necessity or a need for inspiration, I do both. In recent weeks I devoured two (soon-to-be-published) manuscripts by authors who had asked for comment. I also breezed through Cockroach, by Rawi Hage, and Love and Summer, by William Trevor, established authors I admire and envy. For enhanced pleasure, I chose to read them in the quiet of a rural hideaway. But I'd have read them all easily, fully engrossed, in the bedlam of a day-care centre or on the concourse of a busy shopping mall.
I've also been reading and rereading two important books for work: A Colossal Failure of Common Sense and Too Big To Fail, both accounts of the collapse of the Lehman Brothers bank, the former by Lehman insider Larry McDonald, whom I've interviewed for a documentary project I'm working on for CBC and PBS; the latter by journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin. Both are worthy, thorough books, well worth the effort and the time - but not necessarily books that would normally have found their way to the bedside table. They required discipline and focus and a quiet space. More for the kitchen table, the school bus or the airplane.