Thanks to Straight.com for hosting my Christmas booklist again in 2019.

Alas, I am reading fewer books, the ongoing result of the volume of documents I consume in my day job.

With one exception, the selected books are short, and while all of them are worthy of a good reread, none require a two-month investment of spare time. This is a happy thing for those receiving books as gifts from me. The novels and poetry, though challenging, are memorable in form and content. And yes, immensely readable.

The criteria are simple. These are books I have read or reread in 2019 and I enjoyed and wish to recommend. (You can find links to my 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013 and 2012 booklists for more ideas and possibilities.) I organize the books by category and as always in random order.

Enjoy!

To Start, a Graphic Novel

The Blue Road: A Fable of Migration, text by Wayde Compton and illustrations by April dela Noche Milne. Arsenal Pulp Press

Compton and Milne’s graphic novel is pitched to young adults but works for everyone. This tale of the protagonist Lacuna, who moves from her lonely swamp to the halls of the Northern Kingdom, is a migration story filled with heartache but also resilience and is the kind of book you can imagine families reading together. At least, having given The Blue Road as a gift more than once, I hope so.

Novels, Novels, Novels

On Earth, We’re Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong. Penguin Random House

The Nickel Boys, by Colson Whitehead. Doubleday

Professor Andersen’s Night, by Dag Solstad. New Directions

These three novels each take the reader to dark places but are some of the best novels I have read this decade.

Vuong’s novel is the story of a Vietnamese immigrant born on a farm in Vietnam who grows up in the back of a Nail Salon in Hartford Connecticut. The narrator, named “Little Dog”, tells the story of an immigrant and ultra-outsider in a letter to his mother. His story is one of survival, of abuse both societal and familial, and of sheer endurance. The character transcends his brutally marginal existence to become, like Vuong himself, a successful writer. The writing here is beyond stunning.

The Nickel Boys is the latest novel from the author of The Underground Railroad. The story of a teenager and admirer of Dr. Martin Luther King who comes from a family of serving staff in a Florida hotel but has high hopes. A mistake causes him to be sent to a state-run reform school for African Americans in 1960s Florida. He faces viciousness and institutional depravity that challenge and then overwhelm his commitment to nonviolence. All of this evokes the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada Report on Indian Residential Schools and many recent Canadian works.

The novel opens with the depiction of a 21st-century development project on the site of the school unearthing a graveyard filled with the bodies of his former students—African American boys. While it's fictional, the events of the dig actually happened in 2014, and the novel is Whitehead’s exploration of that history.

Solstad has been writing great novels for decades, with Professor Anderson’s Night published in 2012. In the style of a detective story, the lead character is a Danish university professor who witnesses a crime in a building across from his apartment—Rear Window style—but takes no action and the rest of the story depicts his internal rationalizations. At every point he could act, he fails to do so. Inevitably, he encounters the murderer.

Non-Fiction Ideas

Patience and Fortitude: Power, Real Estate and the Fight to Save a Public Library, by Scott Sherman. Penguin Random House

The North-West Is our Mother: The Story of Louis Riel’s People, the Métis Nation, by Jean Teillet. Harper Collins Canada

Movies (and Other Things), by Shea Serrano and illustrations by Arturo Torres. Grand Central Publishing

Midnight in Chernobyl, by Adam Higginbotham. Simon and Schuster

Sherman’s book is about the history of the New York Public Library, a nonprofit institution controlled by the city’s powerful elite. It shows the dangers of private ownership and philanthropic control over what should be public institutions. This is also a rollicking tale of the battle for control of a public trust, among real-estate interests, government, artists, and those who love and use libraries. Ultimately, the decision to sell off beloved downtown libraries in New York was fought off, but the future of the New York Public Library system is uncertain.

Teillet is the great-niece of Louis Riel and her history of the Métis Nation is an impressive work and a “family thing”. This is my exception to reading shorter volumes this year—a thoroughly researched book that takes us from the 1780s through to the present. Riel is one centre of this history, but it details not only the extraordinary history of the Métis nation but its profound influence on the rest of Canada as well.

Serrano is one of my favourite writers and this book shows once again his remarkable sense of modern culture. The book is really a lot of fun—30 different essays on movies which are always insightful, often hilarious. Take, for example, the chapter that presents an Academy Awards for romcoms, or one speculating on what would have happened if the Rock had been cast in different movies, or the essay entitled "Which race was white-savioured the best by Kevin Costner?" And the illustrations by Torres paired with the text add depth to the entertainment.

Adam Higginbotham’s book on the Chernobyl nuclear disaster is fast-paced and filled with extraordinary and extraordinarily flawed characters. It depicts both system failure on a cataclysmic scale and the sheer magnitude of the response, once the initial cover-up was blown apart by the scope of the tragedy. The book has the feel of a fictional thriller. It dovetails with the acclaimed HBO television series Chernobyl starring Jared Harris, also released this year. For another fictional perspective, try Martin Cruz Smith’s Arkady Renko series novel Wolves Eat Dogs, set in and around Pripyat over a decade after the disaster.

Poetry

How She Read, by Chantal Gibson. Caitlin Press

Pots and Other Living Beings, by Annie Ross. Talon Books

I read a fair number of poetry books and attend more than a few readings (at least as a plus-1). Gibson and Ross merge writing, visual arts, grammar, and science in ways that expand our idea of poetry. Check out any poem in Gibson’s book—for example page 77, “Cease and Desist: From the Desk of Viola Desmond”, or page 64, “The Tiny People, How to use your book”, and you will be hooked to read the rest. Both poets skillfully challenge our ideas about how depictions of history, culture, and even language can reinforce prejudice.

Biography/Memoir

Woo, the Monkey Who Inspired Emily Carr, by Grant Hayter-Menzies. Douglas and McIntyre

Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding, Its Apocalyptic Weather, Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World-Class Metropolis, by Sam Anderson. Broadway Books

Becoming, by Michelle Obama. Crown Publishing

The biography of Woo, who lived with Emily Carr from 1923 to 1937 on Simcoe Street in Victoria, is a beautiful book and quite an achievement. The monkey deeply influenced her art and life. The book provides insight into Carr and more generally the sometimes healthy, often problematic relationship between pets and their owners.

The story ends tragically. Carr falls ill and cruelly Woo is sent to the Stanley Park Zoo, where the monkey leads a sad and brief existence before passing away.

Boom Town is social history dressed up as a sports book. It depicts in part the success of the NBA’s Oklahoma Thunder (the team stolen away from Seattle) and the history and ambition of Oklahoma City—a town created in the chaos of the Oklahoma “land run” of 1889. The story of the team is woven into the bizarre history of a town with outsized “world class” ambitions. Perfect for the basketball fan or urban-studies student in your life.

Michelle Obama’s Becoming is the very definition of a bestseller, with stadium-sized audiences for the book tour as well. Of all the memoirs of famous people, this one stands out. This book is very well-written and is always available in bookstores, grocery stores, pharmacies, and airports more than a year after it was published. Obama writes piercingly of father loss and passionately for the value of support networks in economically challenging neighbourhoods.

And finally, every year I try to read Doctor Zhivago at least in part. If you have never read it or only seen David Lean’s film, give it a try. This year, I read “Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street”, written in 1856 by the American writer Herman Melville (yes, he wrote something more famous) a half-century and more before Kafka. I am still recovering from the experience. The short story mimics an earlier style, but with a plot, idea and aesthetic that makes it feel 21^st century. It is a famous story but one I read for the first time in 2019—you should never stop learning or reading.

Happy reading! Happy holidays.