Last month, we presented our silent book club report and reading list with pictures of our meeting participants holding up the books they were reading and discussing. We rather liked that way of showing off our reading, so we’ve decided to do it again this month. As one participant emphasized, we wanted to show booklovers “cradling” their book treasures – holding them gently, delicately, protectively, like cradling an infant. Isn’t that a rather lovely, evocative and accurate way of capturing how we care for books and what they can mean to us?
No matter the composition of a particular silent book club gathering – there are unique alchemies in the different combinations of regular, occasional and new readers coming from different experiences and perspectives – each gathering seems to collectively speak to interesting recurring themes. In this month’s meetings, we touched time and again on how books allow us to immerse ourselves in the lives of others, ultimately allowing us to better understand both others and ourselves. (AbeBooks states it plainly and beautifully here.)
The following list encompasses books discussed with passion, read with joy and touted with enthusiasm over two meetings this Family Day long weekend. We present this list after every month’s gathering or gatherings, not only as a service to everyone who attends in person, but to extend what we share at each meeting to a virtual network of fellow readers. We invite you to explore the lists and pursue the books. Each title links to additional information about the book, either from the publisher, from articles about the book or author, or from generally positive and/or constructive reviews.
If you’ve so far enjoyed the silent book club experience virtually, are you tempted to experience it firsthand? Via Guinevere and Laura’s Silent Book Club web site, you can find information on meetings happening around the world and close to where you live. If you’re interested in starting your own silent book club or are in the Toronto area and perhaps interested in checking ours out, check out the resources on the Silent Book Club web site, or please feel free to contact me for more information.
Some snow swirling about did not deter us from making it to Press on the Danforth for two silent book club meetings this week. Really, we were quite cognizant that we had nothing to complain about weather-wise. We were grateful we could open our doors to get out to come to our meetings … unlike our fellow Canadians in St. John’s, Newfoundland, who were quite literally house-bound by the storms that hit their region.
Back in September, we hosted two meetings in one weekend to meet continued demand for the somewhat limited number of seats at our silent book club table. As we observed then, by doubling the number of meetings, we were able to welcome new attendees, still have room for our ongoing members, and not compromise the quality of our gatherings – or blow out Press’ walls – with too large a group. Then and now, we also encourage people to seek out the new silent book clubs starting to flourish in midtown Toronto and Mississauga. (Please contact me for more details.)
Another good reason to double up our meetings, when and if we can, is simply because we love them and they’re an excuse to help us through the winter. That’s why we’re doing just that this month and in February and March. So, enjoy this month and stay tuned for the next two months’ reports for especially bountiful book lists which will capture two days’ worth of great discussions and reading.
While we’re always looking to multiply our own bookish pleasures, we had another tremendous opportunity to extend the book manna our group enjoys with others. One of our members is involved in harvesting book donations for Canadian prison libraries, so our group, our generous venue and others gathered more than a carload of books for the cause. (In fact, the donation drive continues to February 14th if anyone reading this report is interested in contributing.) When we are not contributing to specific initiatives like this, we also contribute to the many Little Library boxes in this neighbourhood the books that have made the rounds in our group.
In addition to, as usual, extolling the virtues of the books we’re all enjoying, silent book club members touted this year’s Toronto Public Library Reading Challenge and an under-the-radar online book source, Book Outlet. Oh, and I modeled my recently acquired SBC hoodie (so utterly perfect for cozy reading) from the newly refreshed selection of Silent Book Club merchandise.
And then, after all that, we got down to some companionable silent reading together!
The following list encapsulates two meetings’ worth of books discussed thoughtfully, read voraciously and honoured with love and respect by truly avid readers (also captured in this month’s pictures of bookish affection). This list, presented after every month’s gathering or gatherings, is not only a service to everyone who attends in person, but it’s meant to extend what we share at each meeting to a virtual network of fellow readers – so enjoy! Each title links to additional information about the book, either from the publisher, from articles about the book or author, or from generally positive and/or constructive reviews.
During each silent book club meeting, we usually spread our books out on the meeting tables, and I take a few pictures (occasionally a video) to give a visual summary of what we read and discussed. For a change of pace, I took some pictures at this weekend’s meetings of our readers proudly and lovingly presenting their books.
As always, you can catch up on our previous silent book club meeting reports and book lists here.
We’re pleased and honoured to have been interviewed about the silent book club concept and how to start a club of one’s own.
If you’ve so far enjoyed the silent book club experience virtually, might you resolve in the new year to experience it firsthand? Via Guinevere and Laura’s Silent Book Club web site, you can find information on meetings happening around the world and close to where you live. If you’re interested in starting your own silent book club or are in the Toronto area and perhaps interested in checking ours out, check out the resources on the Silent Book Club web site, or please feel free to contact me for more information.
Early January, in that sweet cushion of time between post-holiday festivities and pre-back to work, has become a time I relish for contemplating my year past in reading and for absorbing and appreciating the musings of fellow readers as they share their own reflections. Interestingly, I find myself leaping/flipping/scrolling past the “best of” lists and instead gravitating more and more to the reflections about reading as exploration, revelation, often deliciously meandering journey, shared experience, opportunity to bust out of staid categories and forge new ones … and more.
Those who read steadily and think about reading inspire me, including Shawna Lemay, Kerry Clare, Tanis MacDonald (who, if you’re fortunate to be connected to her on Facebook, has done some mighty category-busting this year). Those who gather to share with delight and fervor their varied reading experiences, such as the generous attendees at two different silent book club gatherings I attended regularly this year, bring my reading enthusiasm and devotion to new levels every month.
Reading is not a competitive sport, but that doesn’t stop me from challenging myself (and, I hope not intimidatingly, others at times) … and this turned out to be a banner year, particularly after the struggles with which I contended in 2018. I read the most books ever in a year since I’ve been keeping track – 65 – and I came this close to considering posting a “10 best” list this year because some of the reading was that good. But I reminded myself that sometimes the setting and circumstances and company and more around each particular read often elevated what I was reading, and it’s those experiences I want to celebrate and strive to have more of in future.
In addition to my year’s reading list, I continued my commitment in 2019 to a daily devotion to at least one poem … and usually more, as friends on Twitter continued to generously share their poem choices and reflections via the #todayspoem hashtag. I’m now heading into my ninth uninterrupted year (that’s right, I have not missed a single day) of poetry tweets.
Another practice that heightens my weekly reading joy as I navigate through books is that of #sundaysentence, tirelessly championed and curated by author David Abrams. As I observed last year, seeking a weekly gem seems to sharpen my attention when I’m reading, and I love discovering new works through the #sundaysentence choices of other readers.
Last year, my husband arranged for my then 35-year-old book of books (in which I’ve recorded my reading since I graduated from university in 1983) to be beautifully rebound, by bookbinder Don Taylor. Now 36 years old, it is still the place I go to first to record my continued adventures in reading.
Here are the books I read and read aloud in 2019, with a few recollections of where I was when I was reading them.
“Knowledge didn’t guarantee power, safety and relief and often for some it meant the opposite of power, safety and relief – leaving no outlet for dispersal either, of all the heightened stimuli that had been built by being up on in the first place. Purposely not wanting to know therefore, was exactly what my reading-while-walking was about.”
I so enjoyed getting lost in the feisty and singular voice of reading-while-walking maybe-girlfriend middle sister in Anna Burns’ Milkman. This book was a steady companion for the first couple of weeks of the year, at home, on transit and at silent book club.
I remember reading this at home in a fairly swift and gorgeous swoosh. Helen Humphreys is consistently masterful at creating lush prose around sometimes unlikely subjects, this time the imagined life and thoughts of real life salmon-fly dresser, Megan Boyd, a craftswoman who worked for sixty years out of a bare-bones cottage in a small village in the north of Scotland. That remote cottage was visited by Prince Charles, an avid user of her uniquely crafted flies who made the trip there to present her with the British Empire Medal.
“He walks. That is his name and nature. / Rows of buildings, all alike, / doors and windows, people going in, looking out; / inside – halls and stairs, halls and stairs, / and more doors, opening and closing.”
Robin Robertson’s The Long Take is a singular and hypnotic blend of poetry and prose, sometimes starting as one and ending as the other in one paragraph, sentence or phrase.
From the very, very cold January night when Ian Williams launched his debut novel to a very cold night in November at the end of the Canadian literature awards season, it was a pleasure to cheer on Reproduction. The book is challenging in its experimental approach to how language on the page can evolve – clearly drawing on the poetry foundation of Williams’ oeuvre – and its cast of characters is thorny, but diligent readers are rewarded for giving this book full and concentrated attention.
Yes, dear readers, we read Wuthering Heights aloud … and its tempestuous plot and characters and often exquisitely overwrought prose made it a surprisingly entertaining experience from beginning to end. As the likes of Meghan Cox Gurdon contend – and my husband and I have known and appreciated for years – “Storytime isn’t just for young children”.
Can You Ever Forgive Me? Memoirs of a Literary Forger
Lee Israel
2008
In rapid succession, I read the book and then we saw the movie, where Lee Israel is portrayed unforgettably by Melissa McCarthy. Book and movie are an unusually well-matched pair of interpretations of an intriguing bookish tale and singular character.
Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk
Kathleen Rooney
2017
Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk made the rounds as a popular choice of our silent book club.
Nirliit
Juliana Leveille-Trudel, translated by Anita Anand
2018
Human Hours
Catherine Barnett
2018
This collection of sometimes rueful but always very grounded poems about everyday human frailties and foibles was one of my favourite poetry reads of the past year.
Living Up To a Legend
Diana Bishop
2017
(read aloud)
These are not the potatoes of my youth
Matthew Walsh
2019
“I get so worried when I see space news. I heard astronauts
incinerate their underwear and the ash falls to Earth.”
Couch potato by Matthew Walsh from These are not the potatoes of my youth
Indisputably my favourite title of the year, this was also one of my favourite poetry reads of 2019.
Belonging – A German Reckons with History and Home
Nora Krug
2018
This book presents an intriguing approach to a non-fiction/memoir piece tackling troubling subject matter. Nora Krug uses a beautifully realized illustrated / graphic novel format to confront her family’s wartime past in Nazi Germany. I came to this book by way of a trusted recommendation from a silent book club friend.
No Bones
Anna Burns
2001
This early Anna Burns novel was also recommended to me by the silent book club friend from whom I learned about Nora Krug’s Belonging – A German Reckons with History and Home. It was interesting to see Anna Burns building her craft to what culminates so exquisitely in Milkman.
The Perseverance
Raymond Antrobus
2018
The Perseverance by Raymond Antrobus – moving, fierce, unforgettable – garnered awards and attention galore in 2019, particularly astonishing and gratifying for a debut collection. How wonderful that the work was shortlisted for the 2019 Griffin Poetry Prize, which means we got to see and capture a powerful presentation of his poems:
“You’ll know when the Queen of the Sea is here because she calms the waters and the clouds gather overhead.”
I enjoyed Michelle Kadarusman’s gorgeous middle grade novel Girl of the Southern Sea myself before giving it to a young friend. The book was a highly deserving finalist for the 2019 Governor General’s Literary Awards in the category of Young People’s Literature.
This book is astoundingly well-crafted, a perfect balance of contemporary family drama, intriguing and cautionary character study and flat-out pageturner suspense thriller. Lynn Coady has created something singular, giving us food for thought about how we care for each other and how life evolves and sometimes changes abruptly and demands that we cope – all while mining our deepest fears yet never losing sight of the value of human compassion and resilience.
There Are Not Enough Sad Songs
Marita Dachsel
2019
“Tell me, as we take in this splendour,
have we run out of firsts – the ones that glow,
that bring joy? Old friend, please say no.”
now is the season of open windows by Marita Dachsel from There Are Not Enough Sad Songs
"Tell me, as we take in this splendour, have we run out of firsts – the ones that glow, that bring joy? Old friend, please say no."#todayspoem now is the season of open windows by @MaritaDachsel from There Are Not Enough Sad Songs (2019 @UAlbertaPress) pic.twitter.com/lEOzybjRuX
Having just read Heave (again, another spot-on recommendation from a silent book club friend), it was a particular treat to then get an advance copy of Christy Ann Conlin’s riveting short story collection Watermark, in which one of the stories is a variation on the startling opening sequence of Heave (which, by the way, was written 17 years earlier).
Our annual cottage weekend with friends includes an evening of readings, for which I selected the Flannery O’Connor-esque story “Full Bleed” – whoa.
“For healing, esp asthma in a child: core out a hole in trunk, put lock of asthmatic’s hair in hole. Plug hole. When child has reached height of hole, asthma will be all gone.”
from Casting Deep Shade by C.D. Wright
At its very simplest a meditation on the power and presence of trees, C.D. Wright’s posthumously published Casting Deep Shade is a treasure with which to spend concentrated and devoted time as it runs the emotional and intellectual gamut and takes you through poetry, prose, folklore, technical and scientific discourse, history and much more.
“it’s no crime to resemble discarded inventory
not a crime to regard others
with what appears to be only basic species recognition”
An Unexpected Encounter with He Who Has Been Left Alone to His Perils by Karen Solie from The Caiplie Caves
"it's no crime to resemble discarded inventory not a crime to regard others with what appears to be only basic species recognition"#todayspoem An Unexpected Encounter with He Who Has Been Left Alone to His Perils by Karen Solie from The Caiplie Caves (2019 @HouseofAnansi) pic.twitter.com/FLKDRoxWPL
Spirited Janina is one of my favourite characters tromping determinedly out of the pages of another one of this year’s reading highlights. And again, it seems it was a great year for titles, too … this one stirs my blood!
“Air empties, but for the squeak of strings and the tap tap of wooden fists against the walls.”
And Yet, on Some Nights by Ilya Kaminsky from Deaf Republic
Unnerving, astounding, incredibly moving …
In My Own Moccasins – A Memoir of Resilience
Helen Knott
2019
Say Nothing – A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
Patrick Radden Keefe
2019
(read aloud)
Patrick Radden Keefe has crafted an absorbing and compelling combination detective story and oral history out of one of the most heartrending of the unsolved murders during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. This was absolutely amazing to read aloud, too.
Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann was not only the reading experience of the year for me, but it will remain as one of the most indelible of my life as a reader, I predict. The 1,000-page one-sentence tome capturing the rambling thoughts of a nervous pie-making mother and homemaker in contemporary Ohio could be dismissed and avoided on so many grounds, perhaps, but it is not to be missed. As she runs the gamut from recipes and grocery lists to concerns for her four children, love for her second husband, memories of her mother and other family members, anger and fear at the state of her home and nation under the odious shadow of Trump … and more … and more … and more … her voice doesn’t just remain in your head, it sinks into you at a cellular level. How her life seemingly inexplicably intertwines with that of a mountain lion tirelessly seeking the children that have been taken away from her turns the last pages of the book into a suspenseful ride that is almost unbearable … but by then, you simultaneously do not want it to end.
Even with its heft and awkwardness, I couldn’t help taking it everywhere with me … which means I’ll associate it with reading on the subway, in bed, at the cottage, at the blood donor clinic … and being utterly absorbed and entranced, no matter where I was.
“By the Don, beneath the bridge, gargoyles brought to earth, scale-model dragons and angels of revisionist history, beasts of Bay Street brought low and eye to eye with ideology and staghorn sumac …” Jane and the Monsters for Beauty, Permanence, and Individuality by Tanis MacDonald from Mobile
Who better than a poet to orchestrate uncommon magic on a gray Saturday morning in the heart of noisy #Toronto? Read the whole story here.
I Am Sovereign
Nicola Barker
2019
A new Nicola Barker is always cause for celebration, at least by this reader. This novella is signature Barker brilliance, and another step in her experimentation with breaking down the walls between characters, reader and writer. Utterly fascinating!
This captures, by the way, one of my favourite places and times of the day to read – breakfast on a working weekday, after I’ve done my initial check-in for email and work-related social media updates and have my working day mapped out.
Deborah Levy’s interview with Eleanor Wachtel in November at Revival Bar was peculiar and strangely recalcitrant, but Wachtel’s team ably edited it for broadcast. I love Levy’s work, so I tried to block out the odd interview behaviour as I read The Man Who Saw Everything and enjoyed it immensely. It’s the sort of book that I suspect I will go back to and glean different gems of insight with each reread.
Renaissance Normcore
Adele Barclay
2019
My Father, Fortune-tellers & Me
Eufemia Fantetti
2019
Night Boat to Tangier
Kevin Barry
2019
Kevin Barry offered a lively reading and generous insights to interviewer Charles Foran at the Toronto Public Library in September, still fresh in my mind when I read and was utterly enthralled with the book in November.
One of three rereads this year, Marina Endicott’s Good to a Fault has been calling to me for a while, and I’m so glad I heeded the call. This was a wonderful, affecting revisit.
Crow Gulch
Douglas Walbourne-Gough
2019
“All this hard living just to stay alive.
Nice to escape, though. This feather bed.
Dream up whatever life you want.”
Escape by Douglas Walbourne-Gough from Crow Gulch
"All this hard living just to stay alive. Nice to escape, though. This feather bed. Dream up whatever life you want."#todayspoem Escape by Douglas Walbourne-Gough from Crow Gulch (2019 @goose_lane) pic.twitter.com/6PyXVNwiN7
Spent some lovely time this afternoon reading the Something to Write Home About script in conjunction with this screening and talk (including info on the Seamus Heaney HomePlace @SHHomePlace) @JaipurLitFest in 2018: https://t.co/AZ1tGoBpGj
Another of three rereads this year, a final silent book club meeting during the holiday season helped me to finish this hefty but absorbing read. I was inspired to reread it after binge watching the superbly realized mini-series of the book. The first time I read this book (the book was published in 1996 and I first read it in 2003), Margaret Atwood’s voice was the narrator in my head. This time, Sarah Gadon as Grace was the voice.
Worry
Jessica Westhead
2019
In 2019, I read a total of 65 works, a considerable leap from my challenging 2018 reading year:
33 works of fiction (novels and short story collections) – the exact same as my 2018 total
21 poetry collections and
11 works of non-fiction.
I reread 3 books, read 3 works in translation, read one graphic work (interestingly, not a novel but non-fiction) and read 36 works by Canadian authors (again, surprisingly, the exact same as my 2018 total). My husband and I read 3 books aloud to each other this year and have another one in progress as we greet the new year.
I also kept track again this year of the publication dates of the books I read. In 2019, the oldest book I read was published in 1847 (Wuthering Heights, which was also a read-aloud book and, oh my, quite the rereading experience), and I also read a number of books published in the 1990s, further fulfilling last year’s intention to read or reread some more older books (a yearly practice I intend to keep up). More than half of the books I read this year were published in 2018 or 2019.
Currently in progress, heading into 2020:
Grand Union
by Zadie Smith
Arias
by Sharon Olds
I’ll Take You There: Mavis Staples, the Staple Singers, and the March up Freedom’s Highway
by Greg Kot (reading aloud, with gusto!)
For yet another year, I’m looking back fondly and with great satisfaction on my 2019 reading and looking forward eagerly to where my 2020 reading will take me. I’m grateful to the writers, publishers, reviewers and fellow readers who have spurred on and broadened my reading. I’m thankful for the bounty of beautiful words that came to me via so many conduits, evoking such an array of ideas, trains of thought, memories and associations, providing so much off the page, too, from solace and companionship to challenges and even healthy discontent.
I’ll simply conclude (as I always do) …
It’s not how many you read that counts. It’s that you read that counts.
As I confessed recently, 2018 was a challenging reading year for me. I read some great books and attended some memorable readings and book events, but how I read (mostly books, sometimes on screen) and my normal reading tempo was impeded by vision problems. My vision deteriorated in an alarmingly short period of time due to the swift and severe onset of cataracts. (I didn’t mind being told I was too young to be experiencing this problem so acutely, but that was the only meagre comfort at the time.)
For a time, I didn’t know if these vision problems would be protracted or even permanent. If it was, I knew I had to accept changing how I read and would have to adapt accordingly. Other readers read in other ways, and I could too if I had to. As it turns out, surgery and support from excellent professionals means I’ll be able to continue casting my gaze on the printed page, my preferred way of reading. I’m grateful I have that option, and have heightened respect for those who come to the written word with patience and resourcefulness in other ways.
Because I was tussling just to read, I didn’t write about my reading much this year – except, as you may have noticed, about our beloved silent book club. Still, I did my best to share a few thoughts on my reading as I went along, and managed to put up some snippets on Goodreads, Twitter and even Instagram. Sometimes those wee comments sparked a bit of conversation with fellow readers, which was nice and some continued reassurance that not all of social media is a relentless dumpster fire.
I continued my commitment in 2018 to a daily devotion to at least one poem … and usually more, as friends on Twitter continued to generously share their poem choices and reflections via the #todayspoem hashtag. I’m now heading into my eighth uninterrupted year of poetry tweets. In 2017, I gathered up all my tweets here. I’ll try to do something similar with my 2018 #todayspoem tweets in the near future.
Another reading practice that sparks joy (ahem) as I navigate through books is that of #sundaysentence, tirelessly championed and curated by author David Abrams. Seeking a weekly gem seems to sharpen my attention when I’m reading, and I love discovering new works through the #sundaysentence choices of other readers.
An important milestone this reading year just past is that my treasured but admittedly battered, over 35-year-old book of books got a much needed restoration.
My husband arranged for the book (in which I’ve recorded my reading since I graduated from university in 1983) to be beautifully rebound, by bookbinder Don Taylor. If you need something that further sparks reading joy, get yourself a gorgeous book in which to record your reading – you won’t regret it.
Here are the books I read and read aloud in 2018, with a few recollections of where I was when I was reading them.
This was the only book I reread this year, but it was a splendid one to revisit. As I remarked at the time, it’s a moving, intimate and instructive look at how women can be each other’s best allies and worst enemies.
Scarborough, by Catherine Hernandez
The Finest Supermarket in Kabul, by Ele Pawelski
This book was good company during my subway travels.
I very much enjoyed this introduction to Louise Penny and Chief Inspector Armand Gamache thanks to enthusiastic recommendations from my silent book club friends.
Not only was the book captivating, but it was great to hear about it firsthand from Aitken and Anne Carson (gasp!) about a month later at the Toronto Reference Library.
Collected Tarts & Other Indelicacies, by Tabatha Southey
My husband and I read this book aloud. Much, much laughter …!
Ties, by Domenico Starnone, translated by Jhumpa Lahiri
Muskoka Holiday, by Joyce Boyle
My husband and I read this book aloud at the cottage. I remember quite vividly that this was when my vision was just about at its worst, about a month before the first of two eye surgeries. I was pleased to be able to read this book, though, because of its large print.
If you’ve read them both, you might not think Lynn Crosbie’s Chicken and Pamela Mulloy’s The Deserters have much in common. I gathered notes for, but my weary eyes never allowed me to complete a review comparing the two books on the theme of troubled relationships.
As I remarked when I finished it, Transcription‘s Juliet is an endlessly fascinating creature – who, of course, we still don’t entirely know in the end – and her adventures and dilemmas are absorbing and, at times, horrifying. This incredible book was a favourite amongst the readers in our silent book club, and a bunch of us went to here her read from it and converse with Rachel Giese at the lovely Church of the Holy Trinity in downtown Toronto.
The Blue Clerk, by Dionne Brand
Both a stunning book and a gorgeous book object, this was one of the most pleasurable reading experiences of my year.
We read this aloud – voraciously and with immense delight – and finished it on New Year’s Eve, which felt rather perfect.
In 2018, I read a total of 54 works: 33 works of fiction (novels and short story collections), 16 poetry collections and 5 works of non-fiction. I reread one book, read 4 works in translation, and read 36 works by Canadian authors. My husband and I read three books aloud to each other this year and have another one in progress as we greet the new year.
I also kept track this year of the publication dates of the books I read. In 2018, the oldest book I read was published in 1953, and I also read books published in 1967, 1987 and 1988, fulfilling last year’s intention to read some more older books. Exactly half of the books I read in 2018 were published in 20 18.
Currently in progress, heading into 2019:
Milkman
by Anna Burns
Voodoo Hypothesis
by Canisia Lubrin
Wuthering Heights
by Emily Brontë (reread and … read aloud!)
For yet another year, I’m looking back fondly on my 2018 reading, looking forward eagerly, with anticipation and even some curiosity to my 2019 reading, I’ll simply conclude (as I always do) …
It’s not how many you read that counts. It’s that you read that counts.
Most recent of poet Alice Oswald’s many accolades is the 2017 Griffin Poetry Prize, for her 2016 collection Falling Awake. While the words on the page are glorious unto themselves without further enhancement, it is even more enchanting and satisfying when an accomplished poet’s beautiful words are showcased with rich and gorgeous packaging. Such is the case with Oswald’s early work, Dart, produced in a special edition by publisher Faber & Faber.
Artist Jonathan Gibbs’ design feels very attuned to how Oswald approached the extended poem’s subject matter, as she describes it:
“This poem is made from the language of people who live and work on the Dart. Over the past two years I’ve been recording conversations with people who know the river. I’ve used these records as life-models from which to sketch out a series of characters – linking their voices into a sound-map of the river, a songline from the source to the sea. There are indications in the margin where one voice changes into another. These do not refer to real people or even fixed fictions. All voices should be read as the river’s mutterings.”
I don’t know what Gibbs’ creative brief might have been for this lovely assignment, but the phrase “river’s mutterings” seems captured perfectly by the lush tumblings of leaves and strands and colours on the cover.
This inviting book has already inspired me to share its contents:
someone stood shouting inarticulate /descriptions of a shape that came & went/all night under the soft malevolent /rotating rain #todayspoem
When I graduated from university, I started to keep track of my books read in this wee diary that was a gift from my roommate.
I started the books diary in 1983. It’s coming apart at the seams a bit. Over the years, I’ve backed up my list in databases, spreadsheets, Goodreads and other book apps du jour … but I’ve always updated this little diary as part of my reading routine. Yes, this book and this part of my reading ritual is getting on 34 years …
Here are the books I read in 2016 – once again, diligently recorded in my book diary, along with a backup spreadsheet and Goodreads – with links to reviews where I have them. By the way, this is an exhaustive, “all of” list, not a “best of” list.
I continued my commitment in 2016 to a daily devotion to at least one poem … and usually more, as friends on Twitter continued to generously share their poem choices and reflections via the #todayspoem hashtag. Now five years in, I still haven’t missed a day, both contributing and enjoying selections from others in this edifying, often spirit-lifting and vital communal experience. I’ve now pondered the works of close to 1,000 unique poets, writers, translators, songsmiths and wordsmiths I’ve revisited or unearthed myself, and countless more via others wielding that often revelatory hashtag. On into its sixth year, I’m continuing with my #todayspoem habit every day heading into 2017. I hope many contributors will continue or join anew.
I welcomed some wonderful and insightful guest reviewers and correspondents to this blog in 2016. I’m so grateful for the time and thought they spent on their pieces, from which I learned a lot and hope you did, too. Let’s revisit them again:
Here are the books I read, reread and read aloud in 2016. Wherever I go, I try to carry a book with me, so for each book, I’m also going to try to recall where I was when I was reading it.
Hope Makes Love
by Trevor Cole
I vividly recall reading this book at the cottage during the wintry first days of the new year.
I was reading this amazing book while waiting for a friend who was arriving by GO Train at Toronto’s Union Station. We were meeting another friend to go to a poetry reading – how perfect is that?
I went through a protracted period of insomnia last winter and if, after trying to relax and consciously breathe myself back to sleep, I was still wide-eyed in the dark, I would turn on my little book-light and read. This book actually didn’t help get me back to sleep – quite the contrary – but it was stunningly memorable company during those sleepless hours. What an unforgettable wallop of a reading experience.
The Mark and the Void
by Paul Murray
I read this two-volume paperback (a very interesting packaging of the story) mostly at our dining room table. It was February, when this household observes a month of abstinence from alcohol, so the accompanying beverages were likely tea and coffee.
"Loneliness is one of the few growth areas these days." Paul Murray, The Mark and the Void #sundaysentence
Just Watch Me – The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau (1968-2000)
by John English (read aloud)
A lot of our reading aloud takes place in the kitchen, with my talented husband cooking and me singing for my supper. We actually read a lot of this book during the interminable 2015 Canadian federal election and it was a great reminder that there were dedicated, thoughtful and honorable politicians of all political stripes as recently as just a generation or two ago.
This poetry collection was company on several subway rides.
Birdie
by Tracey Lindberg
This book was warm and fascinating company on streetcar rides to physiotherapy appointments.
Innocents and Others
by Dana Spiotta
Among his many talents, my husband is a great seeker and finder of first editions of books. When I fell in love with author Dana Spiotta on the basis of this intriguing New York Times Magazine interview, he made it his mission to find all of her novels for me. And then I read them all this year. To a book, they were amazing. I already can’t wait for what she’ll do next.
Don’t Be Interesting
by Jacob McArthur Mooney
I read this collection (which had me at the John Darnielle references) at home and on public transit.
You know what? I was so wrapped up in the entrancing, often horrifying but also heartwrenchingly beautiful world of this collection that I in fact don’t recall a specific place or moment when I was reading it. What does that say?
Lightning Field
by Dana Spiotta
I read this book at home, probably mostly at my desk and the dining room table.
Providence
by Anita Brookner (reread)
I read this tiny, battered, much loved paperback on the subway, where a fellow passenger remarked that it was her favourite Brookner.
Frayed Opus for Strings & Wind Instruments
by Ulrikka S. Gernes, translated by Per Brask and Patrick Friesen
This poetry collection accompanied me on more than one road trip.
This one took a while to read – which was fine, as it was a read to savour and get immersed in – so I had it with me everywhere. It’s another book that a fellow subway rider remarked on, most enthusiastically.
I’m thinking of ending things
by Iain Reid
I had the good sense to only read this book during daylight hours.
We read this book aloud – and learned a lot about greater and lesser known historical figures – during cozy reading sessions at home and at the cottage.
The Cauliflower
by Nicola Barker
Not my favourite Barker, although Barker remains one of my favourite writers … I read this book while on my own for a working week at the cottage.
I will remember The Clay Girl and the next book on this list, Still Mine, side by side and as my constant companions everywhere (home, out and about, cottage) for two or three weeks. I had the honour in 2016 of moderating a couple of special book club events for the Toronto Word on the Street Festival. Selected contest winners qualified for small, private book club meetings with authors Heather Tucker and Amy Stuart, and it was my job to introduce them to their book fans and keep the conversations going with pertinent questions about their respective books. I prepared exhaustively with questions and observations … but then didn’t need a lot of those preps because those book fans showed up excited, motivated and brimming with their own wide-ranging queries and reflections. It was really rewarding to see such warm and dynamic meetings of readers and writers – truly wonderful!
Still Mine
Amy Stuart
See my comments about The Clay Girl … I also recall enjoying Still Mine on a coffee shop patio on a sunny Saturday morning while waiting for my husband.
The Tobacconist
by Robert Seethaler, translated by Charlotte Collins
I read this fascinating and rather prophetic book at my desk in my home office, as I prepared the readers’ guide / book club questions for this book, offered by House of Anansi Press.
The Emily Valentine Poems
by Zoe Whittall
A squirrel jumped up next to me on the park bench I was sitting on as I read this while waiting for a friend in a parkette outside her office in downtown Toronto.
Wenjack
by Joseph Boyden
I read this small, moving book in one sitting at home.
I treasure this quirky read, a spontaneous gift from a lovely colleague.
The Albertine Workout
by Anne Carson
Another Christmas gift, I read this poetry pamphlet pretty much in one gulp while sitting at my home office desk.
In 2016, I read a total of 54 works: 32 works of fiction (novels and short story collections), 15 poetry collections and 7 works of non-fiction. I re-read one book, read 4 works in translation, and read 35 works by Canadian authors. My husband and I read two books aloud to each other this year and have a third in progress as we greet the new year.
Looking back fondly on my 2016 reading, looking forward eagerly and with anticipation to my 2017 reading, I’ll simply conclude (as I’ve done in previous years) …
It’s not how many you read that counts. It’s that you read that counts.
Postscript (added January 11, 2017)
I love the discussion this post has sparked, both here and on social media, including some debate about whether or not such list-keeping is usual or kind of nutty/anal-retentive. Obviously, keeping these lists every year is part of enjoying my reading. I’ve added a bit more to my scrutiny of what I’ve read every year, not so much with a view to altering the flow of what I decide to pick up and read every year as to just be aware if there was more or different directions in which I should explore. So, for example, I’ve looked in recent years at how much fiction vs non-fiction vs poetry I read, and how many works in translation, how much Canadian versus international literature, how many rereads, read-alouds, etc, etc, etc. Because the lists are easy to scan, I can quickly figure out the author gender mix every year … just to see how I’m doing, usually not to be corrective in my reading habits.
One thing I’ve decided to add to my record-keeping in 2017 is the publication year of each book read, to gauge how much current/hot-off-the-press vs back catalogue/older stuff I’m reading. I love that everyone who has joined this conversation loves their reading, loves to examine it to some extent and loves to share it. We all learn and benefit from that.
Another postscript (added March 17, 2017)
Sarah Emsley has segued a career teaching writing at Harvard University to her beautiful blog, where she writes about Jane Austen, Jane Austen for kids, Edith Wharton, Lucy Maud Montgomery and other writers, and about places she loves (especially Nova Scotia and Alberta). I am thrilled that she has taken a cue from this blog post to restart her own handwritten “books read” journal … and oh my, her journal and mine are twins!
In the past week or so, I’ve had a mounting sense that this might finally be the year that Penelope Fitzgerald gets the widespread attention that never really shone on her in her lifetime. This detailed appreciation (with its slightly bewildering for longtime devotees, but still tantalizing news of a screenplay in the works) appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, in the same week that Australian author Peter Carey revealed in his appearance at the Toronto Public Library that he was only now discovering the delights of his fellow Booker Prize winner’s slim, brilliant oeuvre. So, this is the time to celebrate this rare and quirky piece of the captivating Fitzgerald puzzle.
Those who are devoted fans of Penelope Fitzgerald’s work, or are becoming fans thanks to Hermione Lee’s definitive biography and the deserved accolades it is reaping, will appreciate that this is a very special book and a charmingly beautiful book object in its own right. To be clear, though, it is not a work of Fitzgerald herself, but of her eldest daughter Christina (Tina) Fitzgerald.
After winning a short story competition sponsored by the UK’s Sunday Express in 1960, nine-year-old Tina was given the opportunity to expand her precocious tale to book length. (The finished work is 80 pages, extensively and delightfully illustrated.) Novelist and poet Stevie Smith, who contributed to Penelope and Desmond’s World Review magazine, contributes an astute foreword. The lively illustrations are supplied by Mary Shepard, original illustrator of the Mary Poppins books and daughter of EH Shepard, who illustrated Winnie the Pooh and The Wind in the Willows. In other words, this wee book comes crammed with extensive literary pedigree.
Celebrations of Penelope Fitzgerald’s work often have a wistful tinge to them, as the start of her literary career at the age of 58 (with the publication of a biography of artist Edward Burne-Jones) is considered almost heart-wrenchingly belated. In a nutshell, she contended – with aplomb, but setting aside aspirations – with personal and professional pitfalls and with keeping her family together and cared for as best she could. It’s all rather tragicomically symbolized by the real-life sinking of the family houseboat, which became part of the fictionalized setting of her Booker-winning novel Offshore. So, a wistful irony about Mrs Killick’s Luck is that Tina became a published author before her mother.
Hermione Lee suggests in her biography that Penelope quietly harboured her own unique flavour of ambitious and competitive spirit – later in life, Penelope even cheated at games with her grandchildren. Would, then, the opportunity for her daughter to publish a novel when she so desired to do so herself have been perhaps bittersweet? As Stevie Smith observes in her foreword:
“So altogether I think this is a very good story, with such sharp eyes at work and sharp wits like little white teeth.”
Like mother, like daughter?
The book includes a page from the young author’s original manuscript:
In another recent “beautiful book object” post, I really loved seeing a sample of the author’s typescript. Seeing that gives you such a tangible sense of the person behind the book, doesn’t it?
Here are some of Mary Shepard’s rich and perky illustrations:
The special limited first edition of Ian McEwan’s latest novel, The Children Act, is not only a beautiful book object, but it offers some striking visual insights into the author’s creative and editing processes.
This edition charms right from the slipcover …
… which contains not one, but two pieces …
… the leatherbound edition of the book, plus an additional treat exclusive to the first 25 of the 100 copies of this specially crafted version.
The unique addition is a selection of facsimile pages of notebook manuscript and one page of hand-corrected typescript from an early draft of the novel, all supplied by the author – an intimate look into the author’s work and fascinating pieces to pore over and scrutinize.
See also:
IanMcEwan.com – The Children Act
– includes detailed description of the special limited first edition
I was blessed to receive a most beautiful book object this holiday season just past.
Reminiscent in exquisite form and haunting tone of Anne Carson’s Nox, Correspondences actually takes the gatefold book structure and the unfurling conceit even further. There are, in fact, at least two literary streams contained in this beautiful package. The first stream is a series of dour but entrancing portraits by Bernice Eisenstein of artists, philosophers, intellectuals and activists (including Paul Celan, Fernando Pessoa, Frank Kafka, Primo Levi and Anna Akhmatova) alive during and affected directly by the Second World War. The portraits are matched with excerpts from each portrait subject’s words or writings.
Before you turn the book over to discover the second literary stream, you’ll observe that the volume’s endpapers (in both “directions”) contain brief biographies of each of the portrait subjects. Those biographies reveal that many of the subjects crossed paths in varied and interesting ways.
The second literary stream is Anne Michael’s long poem that gives this beautiful bound compendium its title. In large part an elegy to her father, the poem also intertwines references to the intense and unusual correspondence between Paul Celan and Nelly Sachs, as well as individual poetic experiments and set pieces.
The excerpt engraved directly on the book cover on one side captures well what Correspondences encapsulates in its compelling interweaving of physical and textual forms:
“not two to make one,
but two to make
the third,
just as a conversation can become
the third side of the page”
It’s fitting that the story of a rather legendary crafter, dealer and seller of books should be encased in a beautiful book.
It’s also fitting that this beautiful book should take up residence in this household, alongside the many books and literary artifacts we’ve purchased from David Mason’s antiquarian treasure troves over the years.
From the warm-toned, linen-textured dustjacket to eye-pleasing and easing type to charming endpapers depicting watercolour streetscapes on which the various iterations of Mason’s shop have resided, this book welcomes the reader into what promises to be a series of delicious tales and absorbing commentary on the book trade. A most-anticipated book of the first half of 2013, you can learn more about it and its delightfully acerbic raconteur author here, here and here. If you can’t make your way to his shop (from which you will not emerge empty-handed), you can visit online at www.davidmasonbooks.com.
