The Joy of Book Lists

This past week I received two opportunities that made my book lover’s heart sing: for 49^th Shelf I was asked to put together a list of ten Canadian books (CanLit) I love, and for Shepherd I was asked to put together a list of five books related to my own.

I’m not going to reveal my top ten for 49^th Shelf here, except to say that I made some tough choices. This blog shares the books that didn’t make it on the list but easily could have had they given me a 20-book limit. I’m not going to share my Shepherd list—you’ll have to wait until that one comes out!

So without further ado: another ten other books I would have put on my CanLit list. Surprisingly my list for 49^th Shelf is mostly fiction, while this list is a mix of fiction and non-fiction.

• The Sweet Edge by Alison Pick

Adam goes on a two-month canoe trip in the Arctic, leaving Ellen behind in the city where she works in an art gallery. But when Adam returns, have they changed too much to be together?   

• Surfacing by Margaret Atwood

A city woman is called to the hinterland to find her missing father. She travels with three companions: her lover, and a man named David and his wife. As she pieces together clues about where her father is, she comes to believe that he’s deep in the woods, watching them, which sets up a major standoff between the four travellers.  

• Lands of Lost Borders by Kate Harris

Kate and her friend Mel travel the entirety of the old Silk Road by bike, and realize that “an explorer, in any day and age, is by definition the kind of person who refuses to live between the lines.” They are explorers, travelling across the roof of the world into their own unknown.

• River in a Dry Land by Trevor Herriot

You may think Saskatchewan is just dry and flat, but the Qu’appelle River valley is an oasis of lushness and beauty that cuts across the province. Herriot’s memoir, set in this landscape, won a number of awards and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Non-fiction.

• The Annual Migration of Clouds by Premee Mohammed

I stumbled across Premee’s writing by accident. The Migration of Clouds was on the “recently returned” shelf at my local library, so I decided to check it out. I loved it. The main character is fierce and proud, acting older than her age because her life—after the apocalypse—requires it. I’m looking forward to reading the next book in the series, We Speak Through the Mountain.

• The Monster and the Mirror by KJ Aiello

I picked up this book because it’s about mental illness, and I find there’s not a lot of decent, recent non-fiction literature about mental illness out there. There’s William Styron and Kay Redfield Jamison, but the mental health literature needs new voices. KJ is one of them. This book is a mix of memoir and cultural criticism, making space for mental illness in public discourse.  

• Interwoven Wild by Don Gayton

Don Gayton was an ecologist for the BC government, and when he retired he started writing nature books. This book is a series of essays about his garden and the larger ecosystem around his Kootenay home, a sort of manual on how to live within the natural world by understanding how it works.

• Lost in the Valley of Death by Harley Rustad

Like John Krakauer with Chris McCandless, Rustad follows the path of Justin Shetler from his home in the US to his disappearance in India. Along the way he speaks with people who knew Shetler, and gets a sense of his two-faced life: he wanted to be popular and liked (he shared many Instagram posts about his travels), but he was also drawn to a life of solitude. Rustad follows Shetler’s story to an unexpected ending, making the reader consider how they want to live their life and be remembered.

• Drawing Botany Home by Lyn Baldwin

Winner of the 2024 Mountain Literature Prize at the Banff Book Awards, Baldwin’s book is a piece of art in itself, with images of her field drawings throughout—images that have been exhibited at art galleries across the west. Along with these notebooks, Baldwin writes about the natural world, her daughter’s future, and what it means to be an environmental scientist at this point in time.

• All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews

This book broke my heart. Sisters Elf and Yoli are fiercely connected. Elf is the successful one, with a career as a concert pianist and a loving husband. Yoli, on the other hand, is divorced and constantly picking the wrong man. But Elf desperately wants to die, and Yoli tries hard to make sure she doesn’t. The push and pull between the sisters provides the tension in the story, rising to an ending that everyone—and no-one—saw coming.

The only trend in this list is that I’ll pretty much read anything, which makes for interesting connections between books and ideas. During high school I consumed CanLit like an addict. Michael Ondaatje, Margaret Laurence, Margaret Atwood, Sheila Watson, Aritha van Herk, Timothy Findley, Jack Hodgins…all found a place on my reading pile. I’ve enjoyed all of those books and many more, including the Flavia de Luce series by Alan Bradley, and Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache series. Though I’ll have to read her latest book to see if it’s time for Gamache to retire.

I could make endless lists of books I love: books about the west, about women in science, about the outdoors, on writing craft, and more. I have two piles of books in the house that need to be dismantled before they fall over and smother me in my sleep. And another two piles that might send my tea flying if they collapse. Each pile is loosely centred around a specific theme, though one is just: “books I need to read next.” Another is “books to read for my next book.” Maybe I’ll share some of those next time.

In the meantime, put your favourite CanLit books in the comments! More than ten is perfectly fine. 🙂