Book cover of Never in Anger: Portrait of an Eskimo Family

Book description

In the summer of 1963, anthropologist Jean Briggs journeyed to the Canadian Northwest Territories (now Nunavut) to begin a seventeen-month field study of the Utku, a small group of Inuit First Nations people who live at the mouth of the Back River, northwest of Hudson Bay. Living with a family…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Never in Anger as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Never in Anger was a life-changing book for me. It led me to my deep interest in anthropology and, ultimately, to me writing.

Jean Briggs was dropped off in Northern Canada to do her fieldwork for her PhD by studying an Eskimo (now Inuit) family. The bush pilot would be back to pick her up in a year! She wanted to study shamanism, but they refused to talk about what they considered their primitive past, so she studied the children instead.

Some of the book is about language acquisition, I skipped over that part when I reread it. What interests…

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Book cover of December on 5C4

December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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