TSR Listmania! Favourite Books of 2007, Part 10

Posted 19 December, 2007 in Favourite Books of 2007 | No comments

Amy Shearn is a Brooklyn-based writer and teacher. Her writing has appeared at Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood, the Mississippi Review, and Bookslut, among other places. Her first novel, How Far Is the Ocean from Here, is due for release in January.

Amy Shearn:

I kept putting this off and thinking too much about it because I am indecisive and worry about hurting books’ feelings. These things are so hard! But I think my favourites that came out this year were:

Modern Life, poems by Matthea Harvey

Hotel Theory, by Wayne Koestenbaum

No One Belongs Here More than You, by Miranda July

Famous Fathers, by Pia Z. Ehrhart

Twenty Grand, by Rebecca Curtis

An Absolute Gentleman, by R.M. Kinder.

Books that didn’t come out this year that I happened to read and particularly loved included:

The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf, by Kathryn Davis

Raise High the Roof Beams, Carpenters, by J.D. Salinger

Wise Blood, by Flannery O’Connor.

But then, I feel like somehow I didn’t read very much this year, comparatively I mean.  Well, it’s been busy. Also I listened on audiobook to The World Without Us, by Alan Wiseman. I can’t decide if that counts as reading, but at any rate I really enjoyed it.

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The complete collection of lists can be found by clicking on the category link Favourite Books of 2007.

TSR Listmania! Favourite Books of 2007, Part 9

Posted 18 December, 2007 in Favourite Books of 2007 | No comments

Today’s list is from Claire Cameron. Claire’s first novel, The Line Painter, was published by HarperCollins Canada in 2007. You can view her author home page and blog here.

Claire Cameron:

Mine, when I look, are a bit strange.

1. Goodnight Moon, by Margaret Wise Brown

If you read a book every night of the year, I think it deserves to be number one. There is something exceptionally graceful about the structure of this children’s book, the way it comes to an end that is satisfying, inevitable, and also slightly unexpected. Or, perhaps the sheer force of repetition makes the heart grow fond?

2. Zeroville, by Steve Erickson

I reviewed this book for the Globe & Mail and likened it to getting smashed over the head with a tray. It reminded me of why I like the music of Joy Division or Interpol: a dispassionate delivery, when done right, can have incredible feeling.

3. Deliverance, by James Dickey

Like most, my memory of this book was superseded by the movie. I went back and reread the book this year. Action aside, I loved Dickey’s quieter descriptions, the tension he creates between characters, and the simple structure. It’s a beautifully crafted book.

4. Twilight of the Superheroes, by Deborah Eisenberg

My agent, Denise Bukowski, recommended this — perhaps she wishes I’d write short stories like Eisenberg? I’m sure she does, because Eisenberg is a master. The stories feel like they grow around you.

5. On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan

I love the writing of Ian McEwan. I loved this book. I forgive McEwan for a slightly trite ending, because I give always give him whatever slack he needs (I’m thinking of you, Enduring Love).

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More to come. Check back tomorrow. The complete set of lists can be found by clicking the category link Favourite Books of 2007.

TSR Listmania! Favourite Books of 2007, Part 8

Posted 17 December, 2007 in Favourite Books of 2007 | 3 comments

I’m a bit late posting this, because I’ve been digging out after the mother of all snowstorms. (Or, if not the mother, then the mother-in-law of all snowstorms.) But, better late than never, today’s list of favourite books comes from Panic Girl, a blogger who administers the brilliantly named In the Midst of Life We Are in Debt, Etc. She also administers the Facebook group Douglas Coupland for Prime Minister. (Okay, I made that last bit up.)

Panic Girl:

2007’s been an odd year for me, reading wise, in that it’s the first year I’ve really concentrated on reading mostly new books (thank you Toronto Public Library!).

House of Meetings, by Martin Amis.

I was completely absorbed from the first page. This is the first Amis I’ve read, so I had no idea what to expect from him, though I was aware of the accolades, and the Yellow Dog fallout. I’ve always enjoyed a good family epic, and on that score, Amis doesn’t disappoint. I’ve never been all that interested in Russia, or Russian history, and was actually a bit trepidatious to tackle something partially set in a Siberian work camp. In the end though, I was drawn into the relationship of the brothers, and their lives, in a world very alien, and thus very compelling.

Bottle Rocket Hearts, by Zoe Whittall.

I heard Zoe read an excerpt of her then novel-in-progress in 2003, and I’d been eagerly awaiting it since. I was not disappointed in the least.

I was nineteen when Eve, the main character, was nineteen, and the book created a huge lump of nostalgia and longing in my chest that didn’t go away for some time after I’d finished the book. Zoe knows how to recreate that time, in perfect grimy, glittery detail. One of the few criticisms I’ve read of the book is the attention given to Eve’s fashion choices, but you have to remember that for people that age trying to break free of something, one of the first and best ways they assert themselves is through clothing, and appearance. I thought these details gave the book credibility.

The Gum Thief, by Douglas Coupland.

When Coupland gets it right, he gets it so very, very right. The lingering, lonely sadness of Eleanor Rigby; postmodern touches that work (rather than distract as they did in J-pod); the awareness of low/pop-culture and how it infiltrates and shapes us … it’s all there. Again, I’d like to respond to a criticism: Coupland takes a lot of flak for the pop-culture stuff, but that’s just elitist thinking. Most people, we unwashed masses, don’t live in a world where only Mozart plays, where only Walden is read, where TVs never existed. I often think in pop-culture references (don’t get me started on how my internal monologue had been hijacked by lolcats), and it’s good, and necessary, to see that reflected in modern literature.

Strange as this Weather Has Been, by Ann Pancake.

A bit of a surprise. I had an advance reading copy, and on reading the back said to myself, “What the hell, I like things set in the South.” Strange as this Weather Has Been details the lives of a poor Virginian family in the shadow of a giant mining operation. Pancake knows what she’s talking about, and doesn’t spare the reader any of the horror of mountaintop removal and strip mining, from the economic impact of the mining companies using nonunion workers, to the ecological changes in the region (tainted water, floods, destruction of forests). While the characters are made up, this isn’t entirely fiction. The conditions described exist, and that’s what’s most horrifying. Strange as this Weather Has Been is the new Southern Gothic, and as chilling as anything Flannery O’Connor ever dreamed up.

Nobody Passes, ed. by Matt Bernstein Sycamore.

This anthology was published at the end of 2006, but I only came to read it this year. The essays are based around the idea that we’re all supposed to want to be the ultimate societal ideal: white, straight, male, wealthy, and able-bodied. So what happens when we’re not one of those things, or any of those things? The writers explore difference, how it can harm, how it can liberate, how difference is important to identity, and how it marks one as a target of scorn, derision, and systemic discrimination. Each essay approaches the topic from a completely different point of view. As I said in my blog, this should be the primer on third-wave feminist thought, since third-wave is very much interested in how different “isms” collide and combine, creating a different experience for individuals.

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More to come; keep checking back over the next few days. The complete collection can be found by clicking on the category link Favourite Books of 2007.

TSR Listmania! Favourite Books of 2007, Part 7

Posted 16 December, 2007 in Favourite Books of 2007 | No comments

Sunday’s list features Sarah Williams, a former editor in the Canadian publishing industry, who inexplicably left all that glamour behind to pursue a Ph.D. in London, England. If you’re an armchair traveller, you can read Sarah’s blog, Something Slant, and become horribly jealous.

Sarah Williams:

I found it a sparse year for good new books. But off the top of my head:

Let Me In, by Mario Testino (Taschen, 2007). Not since Photographs: Annie Leibovitz 1970-1990 has there been such a spectacularly good celebrity photography book. Sexy, explosive pop culture. In the year Brangelina dominated the news and Britney lost her shit, celebrity culture has never been so relevant.

The Pain and the Itch, by Bruce Norris (Nick Hern Books 2007). Had its U.K. premiere this summer at the Royal Court — even more of a leading theatrical presence since Dominic Cooke became artistic director this year. One of the best depictions of the aspirations and hypocrisies of the middle class that I’ve ever read. And having an entire play centered around a mysteriously gnawed avocado is beyond brilliant.

After Dark, by Haruki Murakami (Harvill Secker, 2007). Not the best of his last few novels, but any new Murakami translation is cause for celebration. His novels are seeming to become darker with each passing year, which makes me salivate for the next one. This one was prostitues, pimps, and a comatose girl caught in a surreal bedroom fitted with a flickering television screen that seems to contain an alternate world. What possibly could be next?

To the Wedding, by John Berger (Bloomsbury, 1995). One of the only books I reread each and every year. It’s the book that makes me realize why I read in the first place and the book I wish I had written. Sweeping themes of post-Cold War sensibilities portrayed in a simple story of various family members travelling to celebrate one particular wedding. The tragedy of the situation is indicated at the beginning of the story and yet is somehow miraculously transcended by Berger into joy and celebration. Magical.

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Still got a few of these on tap, you lucky, lucky people. I’ll post them over the next few days. For the complete collection, click on the category link Favourite Books of 2007.

TSR Listmania! Favourite Books of 2007, Part 6

Posted 15 December, 2007 in Favourite Books of 2007 | No comments

Today’s list comes courtesy of Alex Good. Alex’s criticism has appeared in Quill & Quire, the Toronto Star, Canadian Notes & Queries, and elsewhere. He administers the literary website Good Reports.

Alex Good:

Here are my thoughts:

Not a bad year for Canadian books, as long as you stayed away from things like the Giller shortlist. Of course it’s impossible for one person to read more than a tiny percentage of what gets published any given year. But here are three worth mentioning.

Time’s Covenant, by Eric Ormsby. It says “Selected Poems” but it has pretty much everything by this major poet. An essential book.

Hitting the Charts, by Leon Rooke. An excellent selection of Rooke’s stories, showcasing his truly unique voice and vision. Together with the Ormsby these are two books that belong on every CanLit lover’s bookshelf.

The Gum Thief, by Douglas Coupland. Nobody’s been harder on Coupland over the years than I have, but I thought this was clever and funny and I really enjoyed it.

Since you open things up to books that aren’t new but were on my reading list anyway, I would also add Mark Ames’s Going Postal, which I thought was far-fetched in places but was the angriest political book I’ve read in a very long time, and Marian Engel’s Bear. I suppose I should have read Bear before this but I finally got around to it this year. And it was better than I expected. A bit obvious, but overall very well-handled.

TSR Listmania! Favourite Books of the Year, Part 5

Posted 14 December, 2007 in Favourite Books of 2007 | No comments

Today’s list comes courtesy of Finn Harvor, a Canadian expat living in South Korea. He has appeared on the CBC, and online his work has been published by Rabble, Now, The Quarterly Conversation, LitKicks, The Korea Times, and Standard Hostility Index. Finn blogs at Conversations in the Book Trade.

Those of you who read this site’s comments will already be familiar with Finn. He is an articulate critic of world literature, particularly that of his home country. He provided me with more than I asked for with regards to a list of favourite books from the past year, finishing off with an extended meditation on Canadian parochialism and its effects on our culture on the world stage. Although I don’t entirely agree with him (there are other reasons beyond parochialism to account for the lack of Canadian fiction being published abroad, beginning with the chauvanism of many — though not all — foreign markets, which is something I learned about first-hand when I sold subsidiary rights for a Canadian publishing house), I’ve elected to reprint his comments in full, because they are provocative and thoughtful.

Finn Harvor:

FICTION

The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen. An uneven but necessary novel. An example of the sort of writing about contemporary life that more Canadian writers might consider producing.

The Innocent, by Richard Kim. Found in a used book bin, it is a fictionalized account set during the 1960s of a South Korean army officer who is bystander to an army coup orchestrated by a senior South Korean officer with ties to American intelligence. The book was published over forty years ago. Interestingly, its basic premise — that U.S. intelligence had a hand in establishing a military dictatorship — has remained the stuff of rumours. It is a sign of how divisive some of the underlying history of South Korea is that a shroud of mystery still surrounds some of its key events. Put another way, a lot of people have a vested interest in keeping the truth obscured.

“The Grey Snowman,” by Chae Yoon. Not a novel but a long short-story, this is a dry-eyed account of a university-aged girl who has fled her hometown and is struggling to survive as a deeply impoverished student in 1970s Seoul. The girl is both on the edge of starvation and emotional breakdown. She gets involved with a printer who produces anti-government publications. Apolitical herself, she is drawn into his world. The girl’s loneliness, and cynicism mixed with desperate need for contact with others, makes the story so heartbreaking that by its end the reader literally shivers. Highly recommended.

The Wings, by Yi Sang. A series of surreal short-stories by a Korean writer who lived under the Japanese occupation and died an early death accelerated by imprisonment as an allegedly decadent writer. Reminiscent of Kafka and Bruno Schulz, the stories seem dreamlike, but they are psychologically real enough in their depiction of human relations, especially between the sexes.

Chinatown, by Oh Jung-hee. An autobiographical account of a girl reaching puberty while living in deep poverty in 1950s Incheon. The book focuses on the girl’s relationships with her friends and family, but also illustrates the tension that exists between the townsfolk, who are simple, common people and merely trying to eke out a living, and the American soldiers stationed nearby — also simple, common men whose tragedy is that they often cannot connect to the Korean townspeople except through exploitation or violence.

The Life of Pi, by Yann Martel. This isn’t one of my favourite books of the year. In fact, I haven’t even finished it (and, in a sign of my underlying feelings about the book, am not sure I will). All the same, it’s the only Canadian novel I’ve taken a stab at this year, and that in itself is worth discussing, because it suggests something about some of the challenges facing Canadian writers and publishers who want to take advantage of the international marketplace. More about this below.

NON-FICTION

Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War, by Robert Beisner. An autobiography as well as political history of Dean Acheson, who served as Secretary of State from the end of World War II to the end of the Truman administration. Acheson, although powerful, suffered greatly during the McCarthy period. A vicious campaign to have him ousted from office was launched by McCarthy and his followers.

One reason for the campaign’s venom was Acheson had somewhat odd, starchy manners that made him easy to make fun of. He was the son of Canadian parents, and as a result he seemed to have one foot planted in American culture, the other in the postcolonial manners of the Canadian establishment. (His father was an Episcopal bishop who was born in Britain but had lived for several years in Canada, where he married Eleanor Gooderham, an heiress of the Gooderham and Worts distillery fortune.) This “Canadian connection” of Acheson’s might be stretching it a bit — after all, he was born and raised in America. And Beisner does not dwell on the Canadian angle; if anything, he views Canadians — or at least, successive Canadian governments — with palpable condescension. But the two countries are linked, and, as Canadians well know, the political decisions taken in America often have effects in our own country. Furthermore, the major crisis of Acheson’s tenure as Secretary of State was the Korean War.

The war was termed a “police action,” and its putative purpose was protection of a sovereign state (South Korea). From a geopolitical perspective, the war was part of a much larger game. From Acheson’s point of view, it was a proxy war against Soviet and Chinese power.

The war was primarily an American operation, but was fought under the banner of the United Nations. The Canadian contribution is generally mentioned only in passing.

FDR, by Jean Edward Smith. I’m still in the process of reading it. But its author was a professor at the University of Toronto for thirty-five years, so I thought I’d put it in as partial CanCon. It is a well-written account that, unfortunately, may not be historically accurate in its depiction of the events leading up to Pearl Harbor. However, since it possesses, in the career of its author, a Canadian aspect, I’d like to discuss an issue that it raises in terms of our national identity.

That Roosevelt is seen as one of the towering figures of World War II highlights the degree to which Canada plays a role in its own marginalization: in fact, among the Commonwealth countries, Canada’s contribution to WWII was very great. We were responsible for one of the beaches at Normandy, and we fought in many of its major battles. We had a large industrial base of factories that were Canadian owned. These factories produced Canadian-designed ships and planes. (Canada had a very advanced aeronautics industry of its own until the scrapping of the Avro Arrow in the 1950s.) Yet despite the degree of international power we once possessed, in recent years we have tended to become passive in terms of defining ourselves as having a central place on the world stage. This is true economically, where we have accepted a branch-plant mentality. And it’s true — in my opinion, to an exasperating extent — of our culture, too.

If I may refer back to The Life of Pi: it’s the only Canadian book that I’ve seen over here that is easy to find. There are others, of course — Atwood is in the shelves of the larger book stores, and, depending on where you do your shopping, you have a reasonable chance of finding Munro or Ondaatje (or at least, a DVD of The English Patient). The one exception to all this is Gabrielle Roy’s Les enfants de ma vie, which has been translated into Korean and is something of a phenomenon. (Koreans love books about kids.) I doubt The Big Three of CanLit are translated. Life of Pi might be. It’s the nearest our country has come to producing an international bestseller in recent years.

All this would be neither here nor there except for the following: buying American contemporary fiction is very easy over here. Any book that makes a splash in the West — whether it’s The Corrections, The Road, or The Devil Wears Prada — is very easy to find at a major bookstore in Seoul. This is also true of a fair number of British titles.

It certainly isn’t the case with Canadian titles. While books that win a GG or Giller may be big news among bibliophiles back home, they are largely absent on this side of the pond. And it goes without saying that other Canadian titles — those books deserving attention but not blessed by the wand of media attention — simply don’t exist over here.

And what is true for Canadian literature is true for Canadian film. I have only seen one — count it, one — Canadian movie in a video rental shop (The Red Violin). And I’ve only seen one appear at a local cinema for its just-like-in-Toronto-one-week-run: The Fast Runner. Canadians have become so numb, I suppose, to accepting a movie culture that barely registers, that this sort of invisibility in S. Korea is acceptable because, hey!, our movie culture is invisible at home, too!

Finally, the Canadian literary establishment needs to do some soul-searching about the degree to which we are implicated in our marginalization internationally. As I said at the beginning of this list, The Corrections is an uneven book but it is still worth reading. And the reasons for this are simple: it is about life as it is lived now, and it dares to take on some big themes in part by drawing connections between the past and present.

We don’t do that kind of writing so often in Canada nowadays. I realize I’m generalizing here, and will rankle some writers who do just that. But it seems to embarrass us as a people to think that we are permitted to take on big events. This leads to novels that are either thematically narrow (and therefore unlikely to succeed internationally), or overly staid, and built around clichés of Canadianness. The result is fiction that is, in the words of one writer I know, “worthy.” But the price of this worthiness is a lack of energy and wit. Ultimately American and British literature gain more global attention not simply because they are supported by superior distribution systems, but because they sometimes — note, sometimes — take more chances artistically.

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I’ve still got some lists in the pump, so stay tuned over the weekend for some bonus posts, and there may indeed be more into the beginning of next week. The complete set can be viewed by clicking on the category link Favourite Books of 2007.

[UPDATE: Earlier this week, Finn sent me a final paragraph to append to his thoughts above, which I promptly neglected to do. With apologies to the author, here it is: “We might find it a little easier to get our books on the book tables at the absolutely massive Kyobo bookstore in downtown Seoul if we were sometimes a little more ambitious in the material we used as the basis for our novels, and allowed our literature to possess increased vividness by defining ‘the literary’ in a more open-minded manner.”]

[UPDATE: The Canadian film that had a brief theatrical run in South Korea was Saint Ralph, not The Fast Runner. Saint Ralph ran in S. Korean theatres under the title Little Runner. TSR regrets the error.]

TSR Listmania! Favourite Books of 2007, Part 4

Posted 13 December, 2007 in Favourite Books of 2007 | No comments

Today’s list of favourites comes from Corey Redekop, author of the novel Shelf Monkey. He’s too modest to include Shelf Monkey on his list of favourite books from the past year, but it would certainly have a place on my own.

Corey Redekop:

Sounds like fun, so here we go, the books I read in 2007 that stand out:

The Architects Are Here, by Michael Winter (2007) — Fun, strange, familiar yet totally original. Winter is one of the great new treasures in Canadian fiction.

From the Notebooks of Doctor Brain, by Minister Faust (2007) — A love letter to superheroes from someone who knows the genre inside-out.

Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife, by Sam Savage (2006) — A rat who eats books, and a lonely, unsuccessful science-fiction author. What’s not to love?

Damnation Alley, by Roger Zelazny (1969) — Because it’s Zelazny, and because the protagonist’s name is ‘Hell.’ ‘Nuff said.

Shining at the Bottom of the Sea, by Stephen Marche (2007) — Marche is an absolutely exquisite writer.

A Small and Remarkable Life, by Nick DiChario (2006) — The reincarnation of Theodore Sturgeon.

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, by Kurt Vonnegut, jr. (1965) — Because we must never, never forget him.

RUNNER-UPS:

Rant, by Chuck Palahniuk (2007)

Bad Monkeys, by Matt Ruff (2007)

The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, by George Saunders (2005)

The Shipping News, by E. Annie Proulx (1993)

The Mysterium, by Eric McCormack (1992)

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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.

TSR Listmania! Favourite Books of 2007, Part 3

Posted 12 December, 2007 in Favourite Books of 2007 | 4 comments

In TSR’s continuing series of year-end lists, we today spotlight August C. Bourré, whose Reading 2007 project involved him reviewing every title he read over the past calendar year. The complete set of reviews is available on his blog, Vestige.org.

August C. Bourré:

This sounds like fun, and it actually didn’t take me long to come up with a list (mine will have to all go under the category of “classics,” because I don’t generally read books in the year they are published; I don’t often have the scratch to buy hardcover books). Below is a list of my favourite six books from the last year, including comments and a link to my blog post about each.

My list:

1. The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick

My head nearly exploded after reading this one. It has all the classic Dick hallmarks of paranoia, drugs, and alternate realities, but it hit home for me in a way that none of his other have. What could have been intellectual games-playing struck an emotional chord in me, and I found myself excited about this book in a way that I still can’t fully articulate. You can read my initial comments here.

2. Famous Last Words, by Timothy Findley

It’s a truism that Canadians are endlessly concerned about their identity, not just in terms of how we see ourselves, but in how the outside world views us. I have been told on more than one occasion by American bibliophile friends that Canada lacks any truly great works of literature, that no Canadian author can ever stand shoulder to shoulder with even a mid-list American. We lack a solid enough culture to support any such work. Famous Last Words is a book to be thrown in the faces of such people. Not only is it a book that we can acknowledge the excellence of here at home, it’s a book that we can be confident will have a respected life outside our borders. I wouldn’t suggest it’s our “national novel” (if such a thing could ever exist), but it’s a novel that I think calms much of what is most fickle about us. You can read my initial impression of the novel here.

3. Starship Troopers, by Robert A. Heinlein

Despite coming from a family with strong military ties, I have never been one for the military, nor for involving violence in the politics of the everyday. In Starship Troopers, Heinlein makes the case for a more militaristic style of democracy and an abandonment of many of the values and principles that I, as a liberal, hold dear. The book did not cause me to let go of any of my beliefs, but it did challenge them to the point that I no longer feel like I could successfully defend them. This book has affected me in a way that no other book has, which is something I didn’t expect from so-called “pulp” science fiction. I now feel like it’s my responsibility to better understand why I believe what I believe, even if it takes years of hard work and introspection to come to such an understanding. You can read my first impression of the book here.

4. Childhood, by André Alexis

If nothing else, this book proves that authors can experiment with form and remain accessible and emotionally engaging. You can read my initial response here.

5. Who Do You Think You Are?, by Alice Munro

For several years, both publicly and privately, I have spoken out about what I see as the dismal state of the Canadian short story. I have long felt that, as a form, it has become predictable and very conservative. Even “experimental” pieces have become predictable. Having read this book by Alice Munro, however, I see that it is not the short story that needs to be rethought, but rather that there are simply too few masters and far, far too many pretenders. Decades after the stories were published, they still feel new and vibrant, though many of them conform to what I had previously thought of as the most clichéd ideas of what the short story should be. My initial impression of the book can be read here.

6. The Bell, by Iris Murdoch

This book was sophisticated in a way that few contemporary novels seem to be. The characters are sharply drawn and very, very real, but even the worst of them is allowed a certain amount of dignity, even if it’s never exposed to the light of the world. Murdoch seems to care about her characters as much as about writing, and so they are alive and their world is real to an extent that I could never imagine from a Dave Eggers or a Michael Winter. Novels like this are the reason I apply the word “writer” to many, but “author” to only a few. You can read my initial response here. [Ed. note: This review is worth reading especially for the comment from Bourré’s professor about Murdoch’s relation to A.S. Byatt.]

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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.

TSR Listmania! Favourite Books of 2007, Part 2

Posted 11 December, 2007 in Favourite Books of 2007 | No comments

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.

TSR Listmania! Favourite Books of 2007, Part 1

Posted 10 December, 2007 in Favourite Books of 2007 | 1 comment

It’s the end of the year, which means it’s the season of lists. Best-of lists, must-have-for-the-holidays lists, etc. The arguments against such lists are well known: they are arbitrary, they aren’t truly representative of the “best” in a given area, but merely what’s hot, or au courant, or what the list-maker perceives will make him/her appear smarter, more well-read, sexier, hipper. However, I admit that I’m addicted to them, as much for the joy of picking them apart and discovering unconscionable MIAs as anything else. Conversely, I’ve discovered a lot of really great books that I otherwise would not have picked up save for their appearances on certain year-end best-of lists. Indeed, even people who profess to hate year-end best-of lists admit to a covert attraction to them.

Here at TSR, your humble correspondent felt that if everyone else in the schoolyard is playing this particular game, why should he stand on the sidelines shuffling his feet?

However, I remain wary of a kind of artificially limited selection of “best” books from the past year, proscribed by my own limited reading and individual sensibility. I wanted a wider range of opinion and, perhaps selfishly, wanted some different perspectives that might point me in the direction of books I’d overlooked for whatever reason in the past year.

Accordingly, I recently contacted a selection of people — bloggers, writers, editors — and asked them to provide me with a list of their favourite books from 2007. The rubric was very broad: this was not meant to be a survey of the “best” new books published in the past twelve months, but rather a subjective assessment of people’s favourites. They could be new books, classics, or books that the respondent rereads every year. What were the books that moved people in the past year, that made them think, or made them angry, or made them laugh? What are the books that have stuck with people? (Perhaps unsurprisingly, from the responses I’ve received thus far, not many of these are the ones that appeared on the big prize shortlists this year.)

The response I’ve received has been encouraging, and comprehensive. I’d originally planned on doing a roundup at the end of this week, but the generosity of the people I’ve approached has been such that I’ve now got enough material to fill a series of posts. So, starting today, and continuing throughout the week, I’ll be highlighting a different writer’s favourite reads from the year past. Some of the titles are familiar, some are more obscure, at least one list is composed exclusively of titles published in years other than the current one, and a number of respondents have chosen genre books as their favourites.

The books in these lists provide a wide cross-section of what people read, and enjoyed, in the year past. I’ve already found a number of books to pique my interest; my hope is that TSR readers might have the same experience.

Feel free to throw in your two cents’ worth in the comments, if you’d like.

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To kick this off, here is the list of favourites from Brenda Schmidt, a Saskatchewan poet, author of the collections More than Three Feet of Ice, A Haunting Sun, and the forthcoming Cantos from Wolverine Creek. Brenda is also the author of the blog Alone on a Boreal Stage.

Brenda Schmidt:

Thanks for this opportunity. I’ve read a lot of books this year, many of which I really enjoyed, but I’ll limit this list to my top five. Here are the books that stuck with me, haunted me, made me think.

1. The Crooked Good, by Louise Bernice Halfe.

This is the hands-down winner. By far the best. Published in the fall of 2007, it’s an outstanding book of poetry that will certainly be recognized as one of the most important books ever published in this country. An overstatement, no.

(Note: This book is by a nationally recognized SK author who I don’t know personally and published by a SK press with whom I have no affiliation. Halfe was nominated for the GG for her last book.)

2. A Worldy Country, by John Ashbery.

What’s there to say? Ashbery is a great poet.

3. Disobedience, by Alice Notley.

The winner of the International Griffin Poetry Prize in 2002.

I’ve read it several times and it always feels new.

4. Shut Up He Explained, by John Metcalf.

I wish more writers of his generation would put forward their memoirs. Risky business perhaps, but the value is immeasurable. Writers need an awareness of their literary history. A context. I learned a great deal from this book.

5. The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins.

So much has been said of this book. I have nothing to add. It’s a book that should be read and talked about, not just talked about.

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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.