November 4, 2026

“To love this world is not a simple thing.”

“It is like democracy is a bottle someone can threaten to smash and do a bit of damage with.” —Ali Smith, Autumn, 2017

Last night many remarkable things happened, but chief among them—from my perspective—is that I went to bed entirely relaxed and not even that engaged with the results of the election in a country that I don’t live in. Not because the election wasn’t consequential, but instead because I had a pretty good feeling (based on facts) that the results of the election were going to be fine, that democracy would do the thing it was supposed to do; I didn’t have to manage it. And I can’t remember the last time I felt like that about a US election, about any election really. To think that there might have been a time that I did, but then I would have been young then, and really didn’t know anything.

It’s been an incredible season for democracy lately—not just the US, but Brazil, and Serbia. My own city decidedly reelected our progressive mayor last week in a victory that defied pollsters’ predictions. Voters in Alberta stood up for Canada the week before that. I’m still thinking about Hungary, the tremendous odds of Magyar’s victory, how hard and persistently Hungarians fought to make it happen. And what is most heartening about all of this is that it’s not about winning, us versus them, but instead an understanding that these are electoral results that are ultimately going to serve everybody—even the people who might not be celebrating them yet.

At a different time in my life, I would have wondered if these victories were indicative of a broader shift, a realignment. And in some ways, they are—we have seen what authoritarianism looks like and we do not like it. But I have also grown wary of reading too much into such patterns, of supposing a few data points can tell us anything definitive about how the future might go. Which I say not to put a damper on the joy of all this, but instead to suggest that the recent election of a far right party in a German state (for example) also might not be indicative of something sweeping to come, and the reality is more likely that there will always be this and that to contend with, that the future is gong to go all of the ways, that the tension is inherent, and while it means we cannot be complacent, it also means there might be something that all of us could stand to learn from each other. That the world might be more complex and interesting than left versus right, or just that we might require a different kind of framework by which to properly understand who we really are.

There are some days when it feels especially easy to love the world for what it is, which was what I was thinking about yesterday before I even knew how the election would turn out. The light was so incredibly golden, and it was shining through whatever autumn leaves had not yet fallen into a carpet across the street and sidewalks, and the sky was so blue, and the beauty of it all was just absolutely breathtaking. And I was thinking of how it’s easy to love the world, even when it breaks my heart, the fragility of life itself only underlining how precious and miraculous it is to be here at all, to be able to hold what we hold. And to hold it all so close, while we can, as the seasons and cycles swirl around us, nothing ever finished, nothing ever still.

“To love this world is not a simple thing. But no matter what you do, life happens. That’s the funny, forgivable thing about the earth, It is not only loss that is imminent: it’s creation.” —Alessandra Naccarato, Imminent Domains, 2023

September 6, 2026

A Great Day

Yesterday, I got to see Pitbull in the company of 15,000 other fans. It was wonderful.

On March 14, 2025, we were driving home from a visit to the the Royal Botanical Gardens, and a song played on our Spotify playlist that I’d somehow never heard before, performed by an artist I knew nothing about, including his area code (unbelievably). A new release, I’d assumed, because it had come on after Charli XCX, but it turned out the song was 12 years old and everybody in my family—in the world, even?—knew it, except for me.

“Why did nobody tell me about this?” is what I kept thinking in the days to follow when I wouldn’t stop playing it over and over.

That song was “Timber.” (Full credit to Kesha, without whom….)

Now, an essential detail of this story and of my whole “Come to Pitbull” moment was that by March 14, 2025, I was six weeks into a difficult bout of anxiety, my first experience of such a thing since the major episode on 2022 that almost broke me and made me realize that I had an dysfunctional relationship with anxiety in the first place. Watching the US government wreak havoc on the post-WW2 world order had once again sent me down a road of terror and existential dread that made ordinary functioning difficult and left me sad and scared all the time in a way whose disproportions I did not comprehend. It was awful.

But “Timber” made me happy, it really did, and everybody in my family was pleased about this development because during my previous bout with anxiety, I’d listened to Phil Collins over and over, and they all determined that Pitbull was a vast improvement.

And then Leon Musk put on a cheese hat and a Democrat won the Wisconsin senate race, I realized that the forces of evil were not necessarily omnipotent, and my anxiety lifted.

But Pitbull remained.

And I’ve loved Pitbull ever since, Mr. 305, Mr. Worldwide, a product of Dade County always. Not in such a way that I’m sure you’ll love him too, if you don’t already. My love for Pitbull makes no sense, and doesn’t map neatly onto anything, weird and incongruous. But Pitbull himself is weird and incongruous, and I think that’s part of the appeal for me. After having my mind broken by its insistence on absolutes, Pitbull showed me how to relax a bit, to hold multitudes. He has taught me that some things are simpler than they seem, and that there’s power in rejecting cynicism. That I *could* consider myself too smart and worldly for a platitude like “Every day above ground is a great day,” and yet there is truth in it, so why would I?

He’s author of the line, “This biggity boy’s a diggity dog.” He does not take himself too seriously, and yet he also comically takes himself way too seriously. His lyrics are super-sexualized, his dancers practically naked, and his female fans show up at his concerts in drag, dressed like him in bald caps. He’s spoken of spending his childhood driving around with his mother listening to Tony Robbins’ cassette tapes and used his private jet to fly cancer patients from Puerto Rico to the US for treatment after Hurricane Maria. He’s a caricature, but there’s something more there that’s oddly compelling. You should read Jennine Capó Crucet’s novel SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND, which tried to skewer the Pitbull persona, but could not bring itself to do so entirely at the end.

I love him so much, and I love the world better because he’s in it.

May 19, 2026

Immortality is Perhaps Unreasonable

I wrote this last Wednesday, and it appears in my latest ENTHUSIASMS newsletter. You can subscribe to ENTHUSIASMS here!

I’m writing this message on a train, somewhere between Belleville and Kingston, en-route to the first of two sold-out events this week which will cap off my spring of abundant book promotion (which started here). Which is the way I’m choosing to frame things, even though I’m relatively sure that my presence is not the reason why these events have proven popular, but I’m pleased to be hitched to success however I can manage it; one mustn’t quibble. And I’ve had a very good time this spring, almost all of my events well-attended (or well-enough), every one of them fun and inspiring, opportunities to connect, a good use of my time.

And I’ve been thinking a lot about publishing a book and what it means, and what we can expect expect from the experience, concluding that immortality is perhaps unreasonable. If it sounds like I’m being facetious, I’m not.

In his most recent book, Time Management for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman wrote about reading and rivers in a way that shifted so many things for me, about holding on, and letting go, about relinquishing control, and being free. And what he wrote was that we must think of our to-be-read piles as a river of reading rolling by that we can dip into, instead of a more imposing project that requires completion. There is no completion, there is no arrival. We’ll never do it all, and so accepting that—and that this singular moment in time is what actually matters, what you’re doing now instead of what you’ve done or what you still need to do—is to release the weight of the world from our shoulders.

I’ve been thinking about the books I’ve written in a similar way, accepting the transience of it all. Which came about when I was perusing my blog archives from 20 years ago and found reviews of books I loved and had thought deeply about at the time and which I can no longer remember having read or even knowing about at all. And accepting the same about my own books—that many people will never ever read them, and that even those who do and love them might not hold my books forever—is actually fine, and I don’t have to beat myself up for my books’ ephemerality, because all books are ephemeral (all THINGS are ephemeral), even the SERIOUS LITERARY BOOKS written by the pen of men, or the runaway bestsellers that years later turn up as boxes upon boxes at library book sales.

And maybe this is an easier fact to accept when it’s accompanied by a feeling that my novel has had a warm welcome into the world, that it’s found its way into the hands of readers through avenues outside my control, that I don’t necessarily need to orchestrate everything, that when I say I’m willing to let it go, I actually realize that this isn’t synonymous with “let it disappear.”

I used to celebrate my book birthdays. I used to bake a chocolate pie in honour of my first novel. And at a certain point this ritual stopped being meaningful to me, and I realized that it was me trying to cling to some intangible thing, and eventually I stopped clinging.

May 15, 2026

For the Love of Toronto

When I received the opportunity to be part of the For the Love of Toronto/Toronto Confessions event from the Museum of Toronto, I said yes without thinking. And then I did think, and panicked, and sent a note to Emma, my publicist at House of Anansi Press: “OMG, just checking, this is real, right? It occurs to me that if the AI scammers wanted to get to me, this would be the way to go!!” Because it does seem like it could be too good to be true: the chance to perform on an iconic stage for an up-and-coming cultural institution, to tell my story of this city where I’ve lived for half my life, to do so alongside eminent Torontonians, including event host, the nation’s BFF, Elamin Abdelmahmoud.

But Emma confirmed that the event was indeed legit, that she’d pitched me for it, and I couldn’t have imagined a more beautiful way to cap off this season of busy book promotion (for which Emma cannot receive enough credit for all she’s done).

I was also excited by the opportunity to try something that was new to me, totally outside my wheelhouse. To tell a story of this city in a seven minute presentation, create 15 slides, to recite the whole thing off my heart—but was my nearly half-century-old brain even capable of such feats? Could I tell a story remarkable enough to be worth people’s time, even though my experience of the city is a fairly pedestrian one (and not even in a cool flaneur way)? There were moments where I was preparing and feared I was out of my depth, that I would make a fool of myself, that this might be a story of triumph and adversity in which the latter came out on top.

But readers, I did it. Last night triumph was had. And yes, yesterday was perhaps the most iconic day of my entire life as I began it with a 7am swim in the art-deco pool at the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa and finished it on stage at The Second City in Toronto delivering my talk, “Holding It All: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” about learning to hold the city in all its fullness, seeing the holy in the humble, on how we have to persist in loving with this imperfect city because our frustration (underlined by anxiety about a city that’s changing all the time) can be too easily hijacked by people who want to profit from our fear and disunity.

The other speakers were wonderful, hilarious, inspiring, and it was an honour be among these others (iykyk). The audience was so warm and responsive. The Museum of Toronto is so fantastic.

And I am so so lucky.

April 10, 2026

Definitely Thriving is a Bestseller

On April 1, the day we arrived in England, I learned that Definitely Thriving had made the indie bestseller’s list for Canadian fiction for the week of March 21, certainly thanks to record sales via my events that week at Blue Heron Books and Take Cover Books, as well as to every other copy sold that week at a Canadian indie bookstore. I’ve made this list in the past, but it never felt as significant as it did this time, not least because I’d made peace with making no list at all the week my book came out, because it’s hard to get on any list these days unless your name is Rachel Reid, and also because I’ve figured out the trap of never-enoughness in publishing, and I’m just not playing that game. So I was overjoyed, and so pleased to be celebrating this milestone, and even doubly pleased to be celebrating the milestone while I was on vacation, so it didn’t even feel like this wonderful success was the best thing in my life. I’m so pleased with this little book that can, and grateful for the opportunities it’s bringing me as its author.

March 11, 2026

Scheduled Maintenance

Once again, as has been the case for the past three years in March, “my” pool has closed for a week of scheduled maintenance, and so my daily routine (do we call it a “rut” for short? Maybe we do?) has had to temporarily shift. As it’s the week following the clocks’ change to Daylight Savings Time, the shift has been extra, me waking before the sun and venturing out in the early morning amidst the cheer-cheer-cheers from wakey cardinals singing in the trees to ride the subway east and then walk south to the Wellesley Community Centre, a bright and modern swimming pool that’s free for everyone and whose cool water is such a refreshing change from where I usually swim. And I really love the shift so much, a window onto a different part of the day, a different part of the city, a new direction, a bit of flexibility that demonstrates just how much room there is to stretch and grow, room I don’t pay much attention to most of time. Because I like my routine very much—if this is a rut I will take it. But it’s just so easy to forget how much more there is, how different things can be, how invigorated I feel when I step out of my comfort zone, and so it’s useful to be reminded, and it makes me wonder how I might look for this kind of space in other part of my life.

March 4, 2026

Mysteries of Pittsburgh

Due to a winter storm, my short trip to Pittsburgh for the American Booksellers Association Winter Institute was even shorter than scheduled, but oh, we made the most of it. My publisher House of Anansi Press set up meetings with delightful and inspiring booksellers across the US doing inspiring and life changing work everyday, standing up for the kind of world they believe in. Meeting so many booksellers at the Authors Reception was exciting and I was thrilled to be able to tell them about the fictional bookshop in my book.

I also loved exploring this gorgeous city, being awed by its beautiful rivers and so many bridges. (I got to cross the Rachel Carson Bridge TWICE last Wednesday!). Pittsburgh is even more stunning than it is during the opening scenes of FLASHDANCE, which is saying something because that was a tremendous promise.

And best of all: Pittsburgh booksellers. I got to visit Posman Books, White Whale Books, and City Books, which is pretty good coverage for a single day in town. I loved each store so much and the suitcase I brought home was SO HEAVY.

The most surprising and wonderful thing about all of it, particularly for an event that was so massive, was how intimate and human it all was. From my cab driver from the airport, an immigrant from Cote D’Ivoire, who talked to me about how much he loved Pittsburgh, the bookseller from Kentucky I had dinner with whose colleague was someone I’d been chatting with on Substack, to the friends-of-friends who I met at the Authors Reception, and the bookseller I’d met that afternoon who popped into the reception to pick up a copy of my book—it was all so magical and affirming.

Best whirlwind ever. Thank you, Pittsburgh!

November 17, 2025

November Enthusiasms

New issue of my ENTHUSIASMS newsletter is out now, and it contains lots to be excited about, including two book giveaways. Check it out and enter for your chances to win here.

November 4, 2025

Wanting It All

It feels good to be part of a beautiful story, which was a chief appeal of jumping on the Blue Jays post-season bandwagon this year. The bandwagon has been an experience that echoed last year’s of Tay-ronto, when the Taylor Swift Eras tour arrived in our city and the vibes were so electric that one was even able to be a functional human being in spite of an American election outcome concurrently that was just devastating. Both of these collective experiences were so restorative for me, and when I’m called on to articulate why, the image comes to mind of boarded up windows across downtown Toronto in June of 2020 in the wake of the George Floyd protests after we’d just lived through a season of lockdown, the insult and injury of all that ugly plywood, and then eventual weekly “convoy” protests just blocks from my house that were loud, mean, and as antisocial as they were stupid. It’s been a hard five years, a hard ten years, and things are still hard, and scary, so much of what we feared at those election results last year having come to pass, and then some. And along the way I’d lost my faith and trust in community, and in any certainty I’d had about what our story was and just where we were going.

It’s been a long time since I’d dared to #WantitAll. Or even dared “to live for the hope of it all.” To provide some context, when I had a mental breakdown nearly four years ago, we’d known something was up when I was expressing secret desire “to just be put into a coma for a few months,” which I thought sounded perfectly reasonable at the time. As recently as last April, I was having conversations with my therapist about how I might manage to avoid the gutting disappointment of yet another electoral result that felt like somebody was stomping on my face, wondering if there was any way I could just cease feeling altogether—until I realized how ridiculous that sounded, and remembered the central tenet of therapy, which is that feeling things is unavoidable (I KNOW, SO UNFAIR).

And so spending the last month cheering for the Blue Jays has been kind of a wild experience, daring to hope, daring to want. Taking part in the collective joy in loving the team as well, as the wonderful example these players have set for what healthy masculinity is all about, including teamwork, and friendship. Sitting with the uncertainty of what baseball offers us—oh, those last few innings Saturday night were just agonizing, the worst. But also the best. So exciting.

As Gillian Deacon writes: I’m going to go so far as to call this wild ride of the Blue Jays’ post-season a love affair with the unknown. The stakes are a lot lower for the viewer in a ball game than in much of the rest of life, but it bears pointing out that the very thing that draws us to watch the World Series—or any other sporting match—is uncertainty. It’s the not-knowing that draws us in; it’s the possibility of what may or may not come that makes our hearts soar (and makes sports betting scandals so offensive). This exciting few weeks in Major League Baseball has been a great reminder that we have not just the skills for handling uncertainty, but an appetite for it.

And I’ve needed that reminder. I’ve spent the days since listening to “Didn’t We Almost Have It All,” by Whitney Houston (along with “Centre Field,” by John Fogerty), and relishing the line, “The ride we took was worth the fall, my friend.” Yes, I’m being dramatic, but it really was. And I’d forgotten that was even possible.

It feels really good (and hopeful) to remember.

October 28, 2025

Reading Habits

Saturday happiness is plenty of books coverage in my Toronto Star, and even happier happiness is my own book (WHAT??) mentioned in formidable company—along with 12 copies of the Bible and Archie comics!—as Ann Y.K. Choi shares her reading habits and celebrates the release of her new novel, ALL THINGS UNDER THE MOON. Thanks to Ann for saying lovely things about ASKING FOR A FRIEND and including it in your round-up. And if you know Ann, you’ll know that this kindness and generosity is most characteristic. I’m so looking forward to reading her book!

Read the whole piece here (gift link).