TSR Listmania! Favourite Books of 2007, Part 2

Posted 11 December, 2007 in Favourite Books of 2007 |

Today’s list of favourite books from 2007 is courtesy of Zachariah Wells, a New Westminster-based poet and critic. He is the Reviews Editor for Canadian Notes & Queries, and has had criticism printed in Quill & Quire, Maisonneuve, and Northern Poetry Review, among other places. His collection of poetry, Unsettled, was published by Insomniac Press. He blogs at Career Limiting Moves.

Zachariah Wells:

Non-fiction:

Colour, by Victoria Finlay

My mom got this as a gift for Christmas last year and I was so intrigued by it that I ordered a copy for myself. I’m a sucker for this kind of focused non-fiction book and this is one of the better examples of the genre I’ve come across.

Little Eurekas, by Robyn Sarah

For many years I’ve enjoyed reading Robyn’s occasional prose on poetry. Wonderful to have the best of it collected in one volume.

God Is not Great, by Christopher Hitchens

Hitchens’ support of the invasion of Iraq continues to puzzle and irritate me, but this book isn’t, fortunately, tainted by it. Devastating logic, wicked-sharp prose and a wealth of Hitchens’ own life experience and exposure to various faiths make this a key addition to anti-theist literature (one of my favourite sub-genres!).

A Natural History of the Senses, by Diane Ackerman

The prose gets a bit purple at times, but this is nonetheless a very stylish and entertaining tour of our connections to the physical world. The chapter on smell alone makes it worth reading.

Everywhere Being Is Dancing, by Robert Bringhurst

Okay, the title makes it sound hokey, but believe me it isn’t. This sequel to last year’s The Tree of Meaning collects essays on a dizzying range of subjects. Bringhurst, a polymath non-specialist of exceptional acumen, writes passionately and eloquently about the interconnection of all things and sciences (in the classical sense of the word).

The Lost Coast: Salmon, Memory and the Death of Wild Culture, by Tim Bowling

A bit erratic at times, but still a very compelling blend of memoir, ecology and B.C. history. Bowling comes from a salmon-fishing family, so this is no detached objective report. His intimate knowledge, combined with the research he’s done, lends this book its urgency and tang.

Fiction:

Hitting the Charts, by Leon Rooke

Rooke’s short stories are really more vocal performances. And they’re virtuoso vocal performances, at that. His warped imagination and intoxicating style make this collection very damn hard to put down.

The Life and Times of Michael K., by J.M. Coetzee

I read a book of Coetzee’s every two or three years, am completely unsettled by the experience and don’t want to read another for some time. He writes with such ruthless, unsentimental economy about some of the more brutal aspects of humanity that it can be hard to love his books even though they’re easily some of the best novels I’ve read. This very compact and experimentally bi-partite story is no exception. I’ll probably read another of his books in 2010 or so.

Notes from Underground, by Fyodor Dostoevsky

I’m a huge fan of Dostoevsky sprawling classics Crime & Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov and I’d been meaning to read this book for years. I’ll probably be rereading it for years. There are few better psychologists in fiction than him.

Being Dead, by Jim Crace

My mother-in-law gave me this book as a birthday gift and am I ever glad she did. Mesmerizing prose and a riveting story that gets to the heart of those two themes — really one two-sided theme — that won’t go away: sex and death.

Poetry:

How We All Swiftly, by Don Coles

I came late to the early work of Don Coles. Kudos to Carmine Starnino for republishing all six of his first books in one volume. Coles is one of our best poets, no doubt.

The Book of Contradictions, by George McWhirter

George is now the poet laureate of Vancouver, and an excellent man for the job. This recent book was my introduction to his work, and it’s full of odd and wonderful things. George comes at nothing directly in person or in his poetry, and its wonderful to watch — and hear — his eccentric intelligence and trickster humour at work in these poems and sequences.

Domain, by Barbara Nickel

I blame terrible jury selection on this book not being nominated for the GG. I reviewed it for Quill & Quire, so I’ll just point you to that review for a more detailed take on the book.

Tyrannosaurus Rex Vs. the Corduroy Kid and The Universal Home Doctor, by Simon Armitage

I include both of these books not so much for their strength as collections, but because of individual poems that each contains. Armitage is one of the Big Names in English poetry and he proves time and again that deserves it.

The Mundiad, by Justin Clemens

This was a fluke find in a remainders store. A bizarre, warped satire in the mode of Alexander Pope (the title being a pretty obvious allusion to The Dunciad), it’s a book that’s both classical and topical — and enormously entertaining, which can be said of very few poetry books, even good ones.

Ox, by Christopher Patton

Another book I would’ve liked to see nominated for the GG. Chris blends the physical and the metaphysical in dense, knotty, formally intricate poems that compel and reward close attention and rereading. Think Marianne Moore meets Gerard Manley Hopkins and you’ve got some idea of what this book is like.

One Muddy Hand, by Earle Birney

Are other countries as bad as we are at keeping our best poets’ work in print? Anyway, this book, like the republication of Irving Layton’s A Wild Peculiar Joy, is not necessarily the best selection of Birney’s work that could be made, but it still contains an awful lot of very good poems.

The Essential George Johnston, by George Johnston, ed. Robyn Sarah

One of Canada’s most underrated poets. I love that The Porcupine’s Quill is undertaking this series of “essential” selections, since most volumes of selected poems published these days are far too inclusive to appeal to readers who aren’t already fans of the poet in question. Robyn’s done a lovely job picking the poems for this book, even if, predictably, there are poems absent that I wish were included.

Recollected Poems, by Daryl Hine

At the time of writing, I’m still not finished reading this, but it’s already one of my favourite books of the year, and probably one of the best books of poetry ever published in this country. Hine is a Canadian poet who wouldn’t be, in many ways, an expat, a classicist (he’s translated several volumes of Latin and Greek verse), and a devotee of intricate stanzas and metres — as a metrist, there are very few contemporary poets who can match his skill. He’s got a significant international reputation, but tends to get ignored here. He shouldn’t be.

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Keep checking back throughout the week for more faves from 2007. The complete collection can be found by clicking on the category link Favourite Books of 2007.

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