December 12, 2008

Top Eleven Indie Picks of 2008

My favourite books by independent publishers this year in no particular order (except perhaps a bit chronological). And my list’s explanation.

• Pulpy and Midge by Jessica Westhead (Coach House)
• Things Go Flying by Shari Lepena (Brindle and Glass)
• Stunt by Claudia Dey (Coach House)
• Flirt by Lorna Jackson (Biblioasis)
• Skim by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki (Groundwood Books)
• Girls Fall Down by Maggie Helwig (Coach House)
• Silent Girl by Tricia Dower (Inanna)
• Once by Rebecca Rosenblum (Biblioasis)
• Entitlement by Jonathan Bennett (ECW)
• What It Feels Like for a Girl by Jennica Harper (Anvil Press)
• The Myth of the Simple Machines by Laurel Snyder (No Tell Books)

December 9, 2008

Top Eleven Picks of 2008

That any book was reviewed here during this past year means that I liked it enough to recommend it to you, though my very favourites are listed here. And of that crop, I’ve narrowed to eleven for the sake of conciseness. My top eleven of 2008 as follows:

• When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson: “If this was the first book by Atkinson you’d ever encountered, you’d forget genre and just fall in love with it. You would fall in love with her.”

• American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld: “…this a marvelous achievement of Sittenfeld’s work, that she makes love for a George Bush-y character seem plausible. Not that it’s all sentimental, and throughout the book Alice herself is at times downright unsympathetic, but these aren’t caricatures, or even ‘characters’; they’re people and they’re real.”

• The Flying Troutmans by Miriam Toews: “…the book is a joy to read, however disturbing and awful. The Flying Troutmans is touching but without compromise, and only a really great writer could do that.”

• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer: “That this delightful book was brought to me, full of all the things I like the best– an epistolary novel, begun on the basis of a used book’s passage from one reader to another, full of wonderful literary references, even a bookish mystery of sorts, plus a reference to the joys of peering in windows, and a teapot that’s used as a weapon.”

• Girl Meets Boy by Ali Smith: “But Smith’s language, of course, is always her most marvelous trick. Amidst all the stuff, rendering her thesis quite simple: that in a world where things are changeable, things can change. Innumerable doors swinging open upon this promise, that progress is a way forward after all.”

• Novel About My Wife by Emily Perkins: “Perkins has created a puzzle of a puzzle. I read this book in anticipation of the ending the first time, and then the second time I pored over the text in search of clues. But both times I was entirely caught up in both this extraordinary story and its more ordinary concerns.”

• The Girl in Saskatoon by Sharon Butala: “Thriller, novel, historical record, reminiscence, elegy, etc., all contained within one mesmerizingly readable package.”

• The Letter Opener by Kyo Maclear: “…this is rumination after all. The Letter Opener is primarily the story of Naiko’s own self-discovery, as she realizes her constructions of others through their objects tells more about her own self than anybody else’s. And this story is fascinatingly beautiful, a satisfying read.”

• Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner, translated from French by Lazer Lederhendler: “‘Nothing is perfect,’ so goes the next line in the story, but I really might put forth that Nikolski is… Dickner has married cleverness with depth, sustaining his ideas with a tireless deftness.”

• Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk: “So I was prepared for something Woolfian then, which in my experience has always required a different kind of reading. One in which you let the prose lead you where it may, but paying utmost attention. It’s a significant cerebral investment, and necessitates a period of adjustment upon returning to the real world once again.”

• The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff: “With a spirit threatening to fade when the monster dies, when all seems bleakest, but there is so much hope, and such a gorgeous ending: ‘and it is good.’ I finished reading this last night near 1am, and couldn’t sleep for a long time, just thinking about it, and smiling.”

December 16, 2007

Pickle Me This Picks of '07

These are my picks, my favourites, which is why I don’t feel bad that so few were authored by men (though does it count that another author has a man’s name?). I don’t claim that they’re the Best books of 2007 (though they might be) but just my best. I did try to read more books by men this year, by resolution, as I’d so been neglecting that poor gender. And I’m better for it, but still the books women write seem to be the ones I like the very best, however diverse they might be amongst themselves. What follows are such books, listed in the order in which I encountered them.

New Fiction

• Afterwards by Rachel Seiffert (From my review: “a startlingly original novel… What do you do with the past once it’s over?”)
• The Lizard Cage by Karen Connelly (From my review: “her achievement is creating a novel so truly beautiful out of some of the ugliest stuff the world has on offer.”)
• Certainty by Madeleine Thien (From my review: “…ultimately it is the sum of these stories which provides the “certainty” amidst uncertainty: meaning is evident, and beauty abounds.”)
• The Ladies’ Lending Library by Janice Kulyk Keefer (From my review: “Here is a summer book through and through, all the while substantial, well-written.”)
• Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name by Vendela Vida (From my post-review: “has been positively haunting me since I read it.”)
• Rosie Little’s Cautionary Tales for Girls by Danielle Wood (From my review: ” Rosie Little is “the next Bridget Jones” for which we’ve been longing for ten years.”)
• Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay (From my review: “This book feels too whole to have been created… [A]n entity unto itself, its own world, and a truly magnificent literary achievement.”)
• Remembering the Bones by Frances Itani (From my review: “The Stone Diaries without the ghost, but also something original, beautiful, gentle and lovely in its own right.”)
• The Frozen Thames by Helen Humphreys (From my review: “The Thames freezing is a perfect example of an extraordinary moment in time… and Humphreys links these moments together in this small beautiful book.”)
• The Great Man by Kate Christensen (From my review: “There is joy here, and there’s goodness, and the whole wide world, which is certainly something for a book.”)

New Non-Fiction

• Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose
• Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford by Jessica Mitford
• The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel
• Cake or Death by Heather Mallick
• 28 Stories of AIDS in Africa by Stephanie Nolen
• A Memoir of Friendship: Shields and Howard by Blanche and Allison Howard (eds.)
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
• Beijing Confidential by Jan Wong
• Ambivalence by Jonathan Garfinkel

Not New but Glad I Discovered

• Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson
• Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
• Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe
• Happy All the Time by Laurie Colwin
• Middlemarch by George Eliot
• 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff

December 20, 2006

Pickle Me This Picks of '06

What you’ve all been waiting for, to enhance your reading lists for ’07, or to help you get that Christmas shopping done.

New(ish) Fiction Picks
Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
Alligator by Lisa Moore
The Accidental by Ali Smith
Mean Boy by Lynn Coady
When I Was Young and In My Prime by Alayna Munce
Saturday by Ian Mcewan
The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Memoir Picks:
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Giving Up the Ghost by Hilary Mantel

Poetry Pick:
The Octopus and Other Poems by Jennica Harper

Anthology Pick:
Writing Life by Constance Rooke (ed)

Non-Fiction Pick:
The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth by E.O. Wilson

New to me only (but I loved them all the same):
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
A Big Storm Knocked It Over by Laurie Colwin
Wonder When You’ll Miss Me by Amanda Davis
Collected Stories by Grace Paley
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

Our Favourite CD was “Let’s Get Out of this Country” by Camera Obscura and we also liked “Sam’s Town” by The Killers

Our Favourite movie was Little Miss Sunshine

Our Favourite Holiday destination was Prince Edward County.

It’s been a very good year. And all the best for 2007!

December 31, 2005

Year of Great Fortune

My best of the year:
Book: We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
Single: Jerk It Out by The Caesars
Magazine: Spacing
CD: I’m a Mountain by Sarah Harmer
Holiday Destinations: (tie) Miyajima and Brighton

In Numbers:
Weddings: 2
Residences: 4
Continents: 3
Visas: 6

This time last year: in Tokyo!

This time next year: right here, happily.