If you haven’t read Colum McCann’s novel Let the Great World Spin, I highly recommend you do. It’s one of my favourite finds of the last ten years. I’d lend you my copy, but it’s sitting on someone’s bookshelf in Vancouver where it’s likely to, unfortunately, remain unread.

The Irish born and raised author lives in New York now, and stopped by Toronto on a very snowy night to discuss his recently published non-fiction collaboration (co-authored with Diane Foley) titled American Mother and it was a fascinating, thoughtful hour long conversaton–despite the fact that his co-author couldn’t attend.

Diane Foley is the mother of journalist James Foley, who was brutally murdered by the ISIS regime, with video of the murder circulating widely on the Internet. It’s not a spoiler to mention that Diane later met with one of her son’s killers, and the story is frankly remarkable. The book is on my to be read pile.

McCann is well imprinted with an Irish wit and a storyteller’s gift of the gab and the night made for great listening. He’s a man who’s interested in connecting people, with a clear mission–“people say the world is held together with molecules but really it’s held together with stories”–he wants to help us share.

One of his more interesting and insightful comments touched on one of the perils of the modern Internet era and its culture: “I do think one of the big diseases we have these days is that we’re all so certain of ourselves…” he said. These “canals of certainty” are dividing us, in a world with enough divisions already.

There probably aren’t better parting words than another comment he himself made late in the hour, so I’ll leave it there without elaboration except to say that I couldn’t agree more–take ten minutes out of your day and go listen to someone else’s story. You won’t regret it.

“We don’t need to love each other, but we absolutely must understand each other and the way we do that is by telling stories” — Colum McCann