My reading year began with a reread of The Radiant Way (1987), which begins with a New Year’s party. The first time I read the novel, I was in my 20s and I hadn’t yet read Virginia Woolf; this time I couldn’t help but think of Mrs. Dalloway as the women in Margaret Drabble’s novel make their preparations (as hostess, as guests). And this time around, there were two additional volumes to read, which set the tone for my reading year: expect excellence.
HarperCollins, 2015
So, Favourite Reading Experiences of 2016:
*Rereading and Reading Margaret Drabble’s Thatcher Years Trilogy, including A Natural Curiosity (1989) and The Gates of Ivory (2007)
*Judith Kerr’s Anna Trilogy (which brought me to her Mog stories, also to her memoir Creatures)
As a girl, I reread When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit (1971) periodically, but this was my first reread as an adult. Not only does it stand up very well, but the idea of seeing her transform her life into fiction (as described in Creatures) is fascinating too. Both The Other Way Round (1975) and A Very Small Person Far Away (1978) were wholly enjoyable because she consistently approaches dark subject matter (war, illness, struggle) while allowing for some light to shine.
*Robert Wiersema’s The World More Full of Weeping (2009)
One night, unable to sleep, I selected an e-book and the device choked and opened this one instead; around 3am, I was too impatient to try again for the book I’d been aiming for and instead fell hard and fast into this delightfully haunting novella, read it straight through and loved every minute.
*Madeleine Thien’s Do Not Say We Have Nothing (2016)
This was my final read from this year’s Giller Prize longlist reading (and the jury chose it as the winner) and I reserved it deliberately; I wanted to savour it and make sure it had the bulk of my reading attention for that week. Each time I picked it up, I felt both safe and vulnerable: a trusted storyteller, with all the intensity that comes with crafting.
*Shared reads with bookfriends (including Budge Wilson’s Before Green Gables (2008) and L.M. Montgomery’s The Blythes are Quoted (2009) with Naomi, Andre Alexis’ Fifteen Dogs (2015) with Stephanie, Jane Smiley and Antonia White with Danielle, and 22/11/63 (2011) with Eva.
New-favourite authors:
Michael Helm’s After James (2016)
Karen Molson’s The Company of Crows (2016)
Riel Nason’s The Town that Drowned (2011) and All the Things We Leave Behind (2016)
Already-favourite authors:
Lisa Moore’s Flannery (2016)
David Mitchell’s Number 9 Dream (2001)
Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby (1981)
Outstanding rereads:
Marian Engel’s Bear (1976)
Timothy Findley’s The Piano Man’s Daughter (1995)
Jean Rhys’ Good Morning Midnight (1939)
Woman-soaked stories:
Tricia Dower’s Becoming Lin (2016)
Kate Taylor’s Serial Monogamy (2016)
Katherena Vermette’s The Break (2016)
Beautiful and Painful:
George Eliott Clarke’s George & Rue (2005)
Tracey Lindberg’s Birdie (2015)
Billie Livingston’s The Crooked Heart of Mercy (2016)
Delightfully Bookish:
Margarita Engle’s The Lightning Dreamer (2013)
Jhumpa Lahiri’s In Other Words (2016)
Margaret Mackey’s One Child Reading: My Auto-Bibliography (2016)
Single-sitting readings (or, nearly):
Catherine Leroux’s The Party Wall (2016)
Luisge Martin’s The Same City (2013; Trans. Tomasz Dukanvich)
Lydia Perović’s All that Sang (2016)
Coming-of-age:
Ann K.Y. Choi’s Kay’s Lucky Coin Variety (2016)
Melanie Mah’s The Sweetest One (2016)
Louise Meriwether’s Daddy was a Number Runner (1970)
Cormorant Books, 2016
Short Stories:
Cherie Dimaline’s A Gentle Habit (2015)
Langston Hughes’ The Ways of White Folks (1933)
Olive Senior’s The Pain Tree (2016)
Non-Fiction:
Norman Doidge’s The Brain’s Way of Healing (2015)
Margot Lee Shetterly’s Hidden Figures (2015)
Truth and Reconciliation Committee’s Honouring the Truth Reconciling for the Future (2015)
Reading Projects:
Finally my marker moved steadily through Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth (1905), Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale (1988), Sky Lee’s Disappearing Moon Cafe (1990), Zadie Smith’s On Beauty (2005), Leslie Marmon Silko’s Gardens in the Dunes,(1999), and Marge Piercy’s Gone to Soldiers (1987); I’d made multiple attempts but gotten stuck in them previously. (There are a few others in this category which I hope to read in 2017.)
I also finished some series which have been underway a long time (including Chinua Achebe’s African Trilogy (finished the second and third), E.M. Forster’s Howard’s End (last of his novels), Guy Vanderhaeghe’s Western Trilogy (first of three), Antonia White’s Clara series (volumes three and four), the remaining Gabrielle Roy books, and L. Frank Baum’s Oz stories. And I continued with other long series with an aim to completing them, and tried to complete some new ones (like Susan Philpott‘s and Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes and the Giant Days graphic novels) instead of simply reading the first and declaring “someday” for the remainder. Either I finished, or brought up to date, sixteen series, and I’ve read towards twelve others.
Many of my reading projects feel like they belong to an earlier reading-me, but I began to revisit some of them in earnest, to see if I wanted to continue, and that brought some animal stories onto my stacks, including James Oliver Curwood’s The Grizzly King (1916) John and Jean George’s Meph the Pet Skunk (1952) Mary O’Hara’s Thunderhead (1943). This year I’m planning to read Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ The Yearling, and the last in Mary O’Hara’s series (Green Grass of Wyoming), among others.
This isn’t even one of my organized reading projects, more a collection of books and intentions. Out of the reading lists I’ve been keeping, there are four projects which I didn’t even touch last year. It could be that they just aren’t as satisfying as more recent discoveries, but it could be that I have started more projects in my mind since then, which I’ve not written down. The lists which I did make progress on were the Giller Prize longlist reading, the Toronto Book Award reading, with more than five books read for each during the year, and the quarterly short story project continued strong (the winter 2016 edition was here).
Next, talk of 2017. Because it seems to have arrived. And not just on the calendar, but on my bookshelves. At last.
Have you read any of these? Were you pleased with your reading last year?
Is there anything you’re looking to change in this reading year?
Such a variety of books! I have a couple of these on my radar and will be looking more into some of the other titles. I love your categories 🙂
Thanks, Iliana: I hope you find more to add to your TBR!
I’ve read Howard’s End! I like how you called out the books that your marker has moved forward in but not yet finished. I have those books too. The major one has been Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Gerard.
I just realised that I can watch the movie now of “Howard’s End”: have you seen it? I didn’t recognize your bookmark-sticker, but now that I’ve looked it up, it seems like the perfect book in which one would get stuck! (I actually finished each of those I listed in 2016, most having been unsuccessfully finished for more than ten years, and currently I’m working on Beloved. *crosses fingers*)
Love this post! Love the categories you have and there’s so much variation here!
After nearly twenty years of trying to push the reading envelope, the diversity is beginning to make a mark in my stacks – just beginning! 🙂
I love reading about how your reading projects are progressing. And you’ve definitely read lots of amazing books this year!
Thanks, Sharlene. Not all of them are progressing, but even a handful of reads each year does eventually show up as progress for many of the projects!
I loved so many of these books too — Birdie, of course, and The Break, and notably Do Not Say We Have Nothing which I loved so very much. Serial Monogamy & The Crooked Heart of Mercy were also wonderful reads. And of course anything LMM! I don’t really have a 2017 plan except to catch up on some of the non-Canadian reading I haven’t even touched for the last few years 🙂 Perhaps.
It seems to go in stages, doesn’t it? As much as one tries to stay current on CanLit, there are so many publications that you can’t help but leave internationsl choices on the TBR and the stacks to make time for them and, then, eventually you feel the pull back to those too!
To Mrs Dalloway… Didn’t notice that ridiculous predictive text.
Heheh Sometimes they’re helpful, but clearly your elf on duty wasn’t a Woolf fan!
Loved your list, though I’ve read very few of the books in it. I do remember reading The radiant way when it came out. Interesting connection you make to Mrs Sallow you.
I can’t recollect when I last read a book in one, or almost one sitting. I seem not to have the reading stamina these days … Two reasons I think. One is that my eyes tend to tirw, but the other is that of I am loving a book I seem to want to savour it, so I find myself putting it down to not rush through to the end. I’m not sure it makes me read better but it seems to be the only way I can read.
I could make more comments but this would get to long. I’ll just make a final comment on the books your marker has progressed on, specifically The house of mirth. This is a book I gobbled up, way back in the 90s now, and is probzbly up the with my most memorable books. I wonder why you are finding it slow going?
Have you considered going back to finish the trilogy? I tried once before, but perhaps it was too soon. Now that more time has passed, it felt distinctly like a record of another time and it was paradoxically more interesting because it felt more removed from the present-day (and, yet, patterns were visible, politically in particular).
Reading in a single-sitting is something I don’t do as often either; earlier lists included some remarkably long titles, now that I look back at them, I wonder how I managed it!
There’s no good reason why my marker got so solidly and/or repeatedly stuck in these books. The Wharton in particular was one I’d tried at least three times, but I enjoyed it just fine when I made the vow to persevere last year (although of course there are many disappointments and sadnesses in her stories), so I can only assume that it was as much the memory of getting stuck as anything else, that I talked myself out of progressing in fact, simply by expecting to slow/halt.
One of the remaining titles on that stack is Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy, for which I do have a specific reason; about 500 pages into it, someone revealed to me who was the suitable boy, and the incentive to continue faded away. But otherwise, no good reason, just unfortunate pauses!
What a varied selection! Look forward to hearing what you read this year!
Graphic novels, poetry, children’s books, series installments and some literary stuff: just as varied so far this year too. Oh, and someone might convince to add some Russians into the stacks! *nudges*
Several of these books I have also loved! But one that I missed (and am now feeling keenly, since I loved his other books) is The World More Full of Weeping. I will have to get my hands on it somehow!
I have also loved our buddy reading! Thanks for reading with me. 🙂
Buddy reading is so awesome and you’re an LMM kindred spirit too: I don’t think I’d’ve finished either of those without you (mainly because the idea of ‘completing Anne’ was such serious business)! Maybe you can get an epub of the Wiersema? It’s a delicious read, especially at 3am! Also, if you’re at all interested in Springsteen, his listening memoir was right up there with good reading for this year….
I put in an ILL request for it, even though it didn’t show up anywhere in the system that I could see. However, I recently learned that Halifax library is not included in what I can see when I do a search. So I asked for it anyway!
glad to know you are also a fan of Madeleine Thien’s novel – I loved it too and could not understand why it didnt win the Booker
I know! Juries are complicated creatures, I guess. If you haven’t seen her acceptance speech for the Giller, check it out such grace!
I really enjoyed “Kay’s Lucky Coin Variety” by Ann Y.K. Choi.
I could have put that in my Nearly Single-sitting Read category too: I gobbled it up in an evening and the next afternoon and still think of it whenever I pass the park in which I was reading the second half of it. I’m looking forward to her next book, whatever that might be.