Reading Challenges

photo by Randall Edwards

The aim of reading challenges is either to discover new authors and genres, or to spur you into reading more (classics, intimidating tomes, translated works, more books in general, whatever), all while having fun by making a game out of it. I enjoyed playing the book bingo that Ann and Michael, of the now-defunct Books on the Nightstand podcast, promoted in 2015 and 2016. (Click here to see my book bingo posts.)

Over time, I've come to realize that I read widely enough without such challenges. What I've been doing instead is to check back on my year of reading, using Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge as a gauge. As described on their website, "Read Harder has 24 tasks designed to help you break out of your reading bubble and expand your worldview through books." I didn't look at the 2020 challenge categories until the end of December, then I checked if I'd read something in all of the categories. How well do you think I did?

1. Read a YA nonfiction book ✔ 

Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X Kendi. This was one of my top books of 2020.

2. Read a retelling of a classic of the canon, fairytale, or myth by an author of colour ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 

Library of Legends by Janie Chang, which combines historical fiction with Chinese mythology, plus 9 other books in this category.

3. Read a mystery where the victim is not a woman ✔ 

All the Devils Are Here by Louise Penny

4. Read a graphic memoir ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 

Good Talk by Mira Jacob (one of my top books of 2020) plus 9 others

5. Read a book about a natural disaster ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 

The End of Everything by Katie Mack (all the different ways that our planet Earth might come to an end -- you can't get more disastrous than that!) plus 3 others

6. Read a play by an author of colour and/or queer author ❌

If I really stretch this category, perhaps I could count Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu.

7. Read a historical fiction novel not set in world war two  ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 

A popular genre for me. My favourite out of 35 in this category is Hamnet and Judith by Maggie O'Farrell

8. Read an audiobook of poetry ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 

An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo, which is one of my top books of 2020 (I listened to this audiobook four times), plus 4 others

9. Read the LAST book in a series ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 

Most notable out of 8 is the long-awaited final book about the Logan family, All the Days Past, All the Days to Come by Mildred Taylor

10. Read a book that takes place in a rural setting ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 

Two that stand out in a crowd of 16 are both set in my home province of Alberta: Mad Cow by Alexis Kienlen and Watershed by Doreen Vanderstoop.

11. Read a debut novel by a queer author ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 

I've read at least 8 that I know are debuts and it's hard to pick which of those to mention. All I Ask by Eva Croker; Vanishing Monuments by John Elizabeth Stintzi; Nitisanak by Lindsay Nixon; Real Life by Brandon Taylor; and Butter Honey Pig Bread by Francesca Ekwuyasi

12. Read a memoir by someone from a religious tradition (or lack of religious tradition) that is not your own ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 

Angry Queer Somali Boy by Mohamed Abdulkarim Ali plus 6 others

13. Read a food book about a cuisine you've never tried before ✔ 

Meal by Blue Delliquanti and Soleil Ho (about insect cuisine).

14. Read a romance starring a single parent ✔ 

Song of the Sea by Jenn Alexander. Romance isn't my usual genre, but thanks to my lesbian book club, I have one in this category; book clubs are another way to stretch one's reading.

15. Read a book about climate change ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 

Out of 4, Hope Jahren's The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where We Go from Here is the most memorable.

16. Read a doorstopper (over 500 pages) published after 1950, published by a woman ✔ 

The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel. (Breasts and Eggs and Ridgerunner were both about 50 pages too short to count in this category.)

17. Read a sci-fi/fantasy novella (under 120 pages) ✔ ✔ 

Two gems: The Black God's Drums by P Djeli Clark and This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

18. Read a picture book with a human main character from a marginalized community ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 

I Will See You Again by Lisa Boivin, one of my top books of the year, (and which also counts in category #24), plus 8 others. Picture books, people! They are great.

19. Read a book by or about a refugee ✔ ✔ ✔ 

How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa, the Giller prize winner, plus 2 others.

20. Read a middle grade book that doesn't take place in the US or the UK ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 

The Girl and the Ghost by Hanna Alkaf (set in Malaysia), plus 6 others (set in Canada, Ivory Coast, Japan, Singapore, Mongolia and India).

21. Read a book with a main character or protagonist with a disability (fiction or non) ✔ 

Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability and Making Space by Amanda Leduc, which I highly recommend.

22. Read a horror novel published by an indie press ✔ 

Another category that's not my usual genre. Fortunately, as part of my Shadow Giller project, I read You Will Love What You Have Killed by Kevin Lambert, translated by Donald Winkler. It was published by Biblioasis (and the original French title was published by Heliotrope).

23. Read an edition of a literary magazine (digital or physical) ✔ 

I live with a writer, so we have a lot of these around the house. I read several issues of New Quarterly plus part of a back issue of Room.

24. Read a book in any genre by a Native, First Nations, or Indigenous author ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 

My top read of 2020, Noopiming by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, plus 20 others.

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23 out of 24. Yay! I feel confident that I'm doing well in choosing books that expand my worldview. Note to self: read more plays!

2020 Year End Reading Stats

(Note: The book listed as one page in length actually had no pagination.)

It's the last day of 2020 and that means it's time for reflection. It's also time for my favourite kind of pie -- pie charts! -- to see how well I did in my efforts to read diversely, and how this compares to previous years. 

44% of my reading was actually listening to audiobooks (166 of them).
Ebook reading was up from last year: 7% in 2020 vs 2.5% in 2019, strictly due to access.

31% were by queer authors in 2020, versus 29% in 2019

In 2020, 35% of my reading was written by people of colour and 5% by Indigenous authors,
which is about the same as in 2019.

26% of the books I read were either by men or various authors.
The rest (74%) were by women, trans and nonbinary authors.
My effort to read more women is working, because in 2019, 30% were written by men.

I read 35 books in translation and 2 in French this year, which is about 10% of the total.
Last year I did slightly better, with 46 books (12%) in translation or in French language.

At the start of 2020, for the first time I began keeping track of something else: my sources of reading material. And then COVID happened, which shifted my usual formats and usual sources to more digital library materials (rather than print, since the public libraries were closed for part of the pandemic) and more online purchases from my local bookshops. 

All of which in turn prompted me to look at the value that I get out of my library. I spent a little over $2,000 on books this year, which is quite a bit more than is usual for me. If I would have purchased ALL of the books I read, I would have spent more than 75 per cent of my annual pension, so I am deeply grateful to the Edmonton Public Library.

The totals for the skinny pie pieces are: 9 received as gifts; 
5 from the publisher; 5 loaned to me by friends from their personal collections.

Another thing that happened was being invited to participate in a Shadow Giller jury. 63 out of the 120 Canadian books that I read this year fall under that category. It was a memorable experience, and is probably the reason that my percentage of Canadian books jumped from 26% in 2019 to 32% of my total read in 2020.

Something new I discovered this year is that popular science is my comfort read. Never too old to learn new things... about myself and about the world.

30% of my reading was nonfiction in 2020, down somewhat from 2019 (38%).
I am guessing it's because Giller reading edged out some of the nonfiction this year.

One more thing that I like to do at the end of the year is to see how well I did in Book Riot's Read Harder challenge for this year, simply by chance, without having looked at the categories ahead of time. I will save those results for tomorrow's post.

Happy Birthday to Eric Karl Anderson

Eric Karl Anderson

Author, book blogger and booktuber Eric Karl Anderson, aka lonesomereader, is 40 today and our mutual friend Shawn Mooney (Shawn the Book Maniac) has created tags to celebrate his birthday. (Tags are a booktube thing.) I've not embarked on the booktube wagon, and have mostly fallen off the old-fashioned book blog wagon, but here I am. Because Eric is an inspiration through his passion for books and I love reading his reviews and watching his channel.

Shawn the Book Maniac

1. THANKS A BUNCH: A book you first heard about from Eric's channel or blog.

I distinctly remember that I heard about Mrs Engels by Gavin McCrea from Eric's review. I loved so many things about it, including the immersive experience of the voice and historical setting. My full review is here.

2. LOOKING FORWARD: A book you want to read because of Eric's channel or blog.

Eric says that Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata is similar to, and even better than, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, which I loved. It must be good! I was conflating this title with one that I didn't finish because I disliked it - Nakano Thrift Shop by Hiromi Kawakami - so I'm glad to be corrected and I look forward to reading it when the hold list dies down at the library.

Eric's favourite author is Joyce Carol Oates. I've tried and quit a few of her books, so I thought I would try again, this time with one that Eric mentioned recently: The Mysteries of Winterthurn. Except that I read in the synopsis that it's a gothic novel, and I generally hate a gothic style, so I changed my mind. JCO is perhaps just not for me. I'm sorry about that, Eric, but we do have similar tastes in literature otherwise.

3. TABLE TURN: A book you recommend to Eric to read.

Dr Edith Vane and the Hares of Crawley Hall by Suzette Mayr, because I think the dark, dry wit will hit the right notes for Eric. It's a lesbian Alice in Wonderland-ish spoof on the politics of academia, set at a university with malevolent buildings infested with jackrabbits. The central character is modelled on Eleanor Vance from The Haunting of Hill House. Here's a quote:
"Edith claws through the chlorinated water in the university's Olympic-sized swimming pool. She squints through her goggles. 7:35 a.m. Soon it will be 8 a.m. and her day basically gone. Wasted!"

Kai Cheng Thom

4. ERIC. KARL. ANDERSON. A book by an author with three names.

Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl's Confabulous Memoir by Kai Cheng Thom. A trans girl with a body full of killer bees is raised by Chinese immigrants in a crooked house in a city called Gloom. When mermaids die on the beach, she packs her switchblade, moves to the City of Smoke & Lights, and comes of age amid the love, magic, miracles and violence of a diverse group of trans femmes, and she learns to bake a cake of forgiveness. The moral of this fabulous fable: "Don't get stuck in any one story, not even your own."

5. EXPATRIATE LOVE: A book by and/or about an American living in the UK, or vice versa.

Rachel Cusk is a Canadian living in the UK. Her writing shines: funny, fierce, piercing, unsentimental, supple and disturbing. Read her.

6. META: A book with a novelist/writer as protagonist.

The Heavy Bear by Tim Bowling is about as meta as you can get, since the main character in the novel (an author who avoids showing up to his other job as a teacher) has the same name as the author. His companions during a day-long existential crisis include the ghost of Buster Keaton and a large, invisible bear-poet. Read my full review here.

7. LORDY LORDY: A book published 40 years ago, i.e. in 1978.

Faggots by Larry Kramer is a gay classic mentioned recently by Simon Savidge and it's one I've been meaning to read for a long time. Simon's co-host Thomas Otto on The Readers podcast calls it "brilliantly spiteful." It's never been out of print since its first publication in 1978.

8. HANDLEBAR NONE: A book by or about someone with a fabulous moustache and/or beard.

What immediately comes to mind is The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil by Stephen Collins, a bewitching, unsettling study of modern life, in comics format. I reviewed it here.

9. OUT OUT BRIEF CANDLE: A book in which a birthday figures prominently.

Molly Fox's Birthday by Deirdre Madden. I found it introspective and engrossing when I read and reviewed it in 2009. It has no chapter breaks, so sit down with it when you have time to go straight through.

10. MANY HAPPY RETURNS: Tag some buddies.

I won't tag anyone. I just want to wish Eric many happy returns. If you haven't watched his Lonesome Reader channel, start with this tour of his new bookshelves: https://youtu.be/xNkxUQ8MUOY

New Year's Reading Goal: More Canadian Please!

Reading Envy podcaster and blogger Jenny, who lives in South Carolina, has set herself a goal to read more Canadian books this year. She asked some Canadian readers for suggestions and shared these on Reading Envy episode 107, linked here.

I was one of the people she invited on for this show. It's always so hard to narrow down choices from among the many fine Canadian books, so it was great to hear that some of my favourites that I didn't mention were recommended by her other guests. It also served to increase my own TBR with their suggestions.

Shawn talked about Brother by David Chariandy, which I've been meaning to read since it came out last September. Casey recommended one I hadn't heard of that sounds right up my alley: The Mystics of Mile End by Sigal Samuel.

Reading more local, more Indigenous, and more Canadian authors has been my goal for a number of years. Comparing my 2015 stats to my 2017 stats, (2016 was the year I had to switch from Shelfari to Goodreads, messing up that year's stats), I was pleased to see that my intentions have made a difference. In 2017, I read 137 Canadian books (18 of those were by Edmonton authors) while in 2015 I read 56 by Canadian authors. In 2017, I read 30 books by Indigenous authors, from Canada and elsewhere. I hope to increase that number this year, as a way of deepening my understanding of different viewpoints, and enlarging my inner world.

I look forward to following Jenny's journey through Canadian literature this year, and to discovering more great books by Canadian authors myself. Join us.

My 2017 Reading Stats in Pie Charts

Goodreads makes the wonderful infographic above possible. I read 345 books in 2017, up from 323 last year.

I like to examine my reading stats at the end of each year, to see how well I'm doing in my efforts to read as diversely as possible and to focus on reading books written by women. Looking at my statistics regarding format, genre and categories like poetry and nonfiction also help me know myself better as a reader. And so I made a whole bunch of pie charts. If you like pie, please grab a fork and scroll down. The numbers shown next to each piece of pie are the numbers of books that I read in that category.

Note: Add Edmonton authors to Canadian authors for the total from Canada: 137.

Other interesting stats: 25 titles read in translation and 4 books read in French language.

In making comparisons to 2015, the last time that I looked at stats this closely, I discovered: 

• I'm reading about the same percentage of books by women (62% in 2017 vs 63% in 2015).
• I've increased the queer content in my reading (18% in 2017 vs 12% in 2015).
• I'm happy to have a big increase in reading more by Indigenous writers and People of Colour. Last time, I put these two groups together. (31% PoC + Indigenous in 2017 vs 17% in 2015.)
• I've also dramatically increased the number of Canadian books that I'm reading. (40% in 2017 vs 19% in 2015)

A Year of Literary Trepanations

In 2016, I read six different books that mentioned trepanation. So far in 2017, I have read none. So, I am looking back on 2016 as my Year of Literary Trepanations.

Venomous by Christie Wilcox

Fascinating information about deadly poisons and how people can benefit from them. Did you know that a handful of botulism toxins is enough to kill everyone on the planet, if divided equally among them? Yet you can safely inject minuscule amounts of it into the forehead of someone who is overly concerned about their wrinkles. I learned about bee sting therapy and the recreational use of snake bites and all kinds of other cool stuff. Wilcox mentions trepanation in a tangental way:

"... dubious antique medical practices like trepanation: drilling a hole into one's skull to let out evil spirits"


Patient H.M.: Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets by Luke Dittrich

The subtitle says it all. Much of what we know about memory is thanks to Henry Molaison, a patient with epilepsy who received a botched lobotomy. It sometimes felt like a thriller, with unexpected twists even towards the end. The audiobook has a great narrator, George Newbern, but I'm too squeamish for play-by-play details of brain surgery, so I had to fast-forward through those parts. Engrossing true subject matter.

"My grandfather, like most lobotomists, performed a disproportionate number of psychosurgeries on women. The known clinical effects of lobotomy, including tractability, passivity and docility, overlapped nicely with what many men at the time considered to be ideal feminine traits."

"Freeman believed he could train any reasonably competent psychiatrist how to perform an ice pick lobotomy in an afternoon."

"August 25, 1953. Henry lies on his back on an operating table in the Hartford Hospital neurosurgery suite. At the head of the table, flanked by scrub nurses and assistants, my grandfather leans over Henry with a trepan in his hand. Henry has been sedated and given a local anesthetic, and the flesh has been peeled down from his forehead, but he is conscious. A trepan is a sort of wide-mouthed serrated drill."

The Portable Veblen by Elizabeth Mckenzie

Warmth, wackiness and squirrels. Lessons about being true to yourself. I loved this satirical feel-good novel. One of the characters is a young guy who has invented the "versatile Pneumatic TURBO Skull Punch," a trepanning device "well suited to a range of hole punching operations," and both the pharmaceutical and defence industries are excited about its possibilities, calling it "the greatest contribution to warfighter injuries in years." Trepanations everywhere!

"I pledge allegiance to the marketplace of the United States of America TM and to the conglomerates, for which we shill, one nation, under Exxon-Mobil/Halliburton/Boeing/Walmart, nonrefundable, with litter and junk mail for all."

"Art is despair with dignity."

The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henriquez

A poignant, insightful novel with an ensemble cast of immigrants from various Latin American countries, who live in the same cinderblock apartment building in Delaware. One of the central characters is a Mexican teen with severe head trauma.

"So now what we need to do - what I need your permission to do - is remove a small piece of her skull to make room for the swelling and to keep the pressure from building too much." He stopped and looked at us again. "If it builds too much, she could die. And the longer we wait to relieve it, the more damage she'll likely experience."

"We're the unknown Americans, the ones no one even wants to know, because they've been told they're supposed to be scared of us and because maybe if they did take the time to get to know us, they might realize that we're not that bad, made even that we're a lot like them. And who would they hate then?"

Saving Montgomery Sole by Mariko Tamaki

Monty is an endearing 16-year-old coping with mean girls and rude boys, making mistakes and finding forgiveness. Her parents are caring and in the forefront (a rarity in YA, where parental absence allows the protagonists more freedom to act) and Monty's parents are also lesbians (a rarity in any novel).

"a link to the craziest thing I have ever seen on the Internet, a site about people who actually drill holes into the tops of their skulls to increase brain blood flow. To improve psychic powers. That's what trepanation is!"

I resisted the temptation to actually search for this sort of thing on YouTube. It makes me shudder just thinking about it.

The Fireman by Joe Hill

Post-apocalyptic thriller with a plague that causes people to burst into flames. Harper Grayson, a conscientious nurse, is one of the central characters in this fast-paced story. Kate Mulgrew performs a fantastic narration for the audiobook, which is over 22 hours long.

"[Harper] told him about trepanning Father Storey's skull with a power drill and disinfecting it with port."

"She had treated John Rookwood's mauled arm with a weak dose of good intentions."

"The hens are clucking. Harper thought it would be a toss-up, which term for women she hated more: bitch or hen. A hen was something you kept in a cage, and her sole worth was in her eggs. A bitch, at least, had teeth."
________________________________________

The Colony of Unrequited Dreams by Wayne Johnston

The pamphlet described in great detail a medical procedure that you called mental ventilation, that is the drilling of holes in the skulls of the sick to let the evil spirits out.

________________________________________

New entry, April 2018. I saw a museum replica of a skeleton, from either the Neolithic or the late Stone Age, with a trepanned hole in its skull. Bru na Boinne, Ireland.

Museum exhibit at Bru na Boinne.

New entry, April 1, 2019. (This is not a joke.) I've come across reference to trepanation in:

How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan

Amanda Feilding, who was born in 1943, is an eccentric as only the English aristocracy can breed them. (She’s descended from the house of Habsburg and two of Charles II’s illegitimate children.) A student of comparative religion and mysticism, Feilding has had a long-standing interest in altered states of consciousness and, specifically, the role of blood flow to the brain, which in Homo sapiens, she believes, has been compromised ever since our species began standing upright. LSD, Feilding believes, enhances cognitive function and facilitates higher states of consciousness by increasing cerebral circulation. A second way to achieve a similar result is by means of the ancient practice of trepanation. This deserves a brief digression. [...]

Trepanation was for centuries a common medical practice, to judge by the number of ancient skulls that have turned up with neat holes in them. Convinced that trepanation would help facilitate higher states of consciousness, Fielding went looking for someone to perform the operation on her. When it became clear no professional would oblige, she trepanned herself in 1970, boring a small hole in the middle of her forehead with an electric drill. (She documented the procedure in a short but horrifying film called Heartbeat in the Brain.) Pleased with the results, Fielding went on to stand for election to Parliament, twice, on a platform of "Trepanation for National Health.” 
________________________________________

Notes from a Young Black Chef: A Memoir by Kwame Onwuachi and Joshua David Stein

The first step is to score a circle with a tourné knife, the smallest in a knife roll, a third of the way down the eggshell. Then, score it again to cut the top cleanly off, leaving the shell looking like a trepanned head. Then you carefully empty out the yolk and white, separating them into bowls to be used later. 
[on preparing eggshells to be used as serving vessels for custard]
________________________________________

The Red Threads of Fortune by J.Y. Yang

Mokoya saw the hole [the dragon-type creature] had trepanned into the domed roof. […] a yawning lobotomy of cracked roof…
[Note: It‘s the roof of the tower containing the library, so this comparison to a brain is apt.]

________________________________________

Reading Envy Podcast

Do you love book podcasts as much as I do? If so, you can understand how excited I was to be a recent guest on Reading Envy.

Jenny Colvin is a warm host and we enjoy similar kinds of books, so I felt quite relaxed during our conversation. I took advantage of the opportunity to draw attention to three Alberta authors that I admire: Tim Bowling (The Heavy Bear), Kimmy Beach (Nuala) and Suzette Mayr (Monoceros). Jenny shared three titles as well.

We also talked about book clubs and what we are currently reading. Afterwards, I was embarrassed that I totally forgot Sylvia Plath's name when I mentioned her book Ariel, but Jenny smoothly edited out my fumbling. She carefully edits all of her recordings, making them nice and tight, which is one of the reasons that her podcast is such a pleasure for listeners.

What Jenny cannot do is put the right words in your mouth when you say the wrong thing. It was weird and humbling to hear my verbal quirks, like jamming two words together accidentally (voracious and ferocious became verocious) and I said "reader" when I meant "author," but there you have it. Human frailty.

To listen, click here, or follow one of the links on the Reading Envy website, or else search for episode 95 of Reading Envy (Lose the Outside World with Lindy Pratch) in your favourite podcast app.

Best of August 2017: Reading Wrap-Up

Above, my Goodreads page of books I've read in August. Let me tell you about some of them:

Most Outstanding Graphic Novel: 

My Favourite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris

I have been telling everyone about this gorgeous, hefty, moving graphic novel whenever the subject of books comes up. (It comes up a lot around me.) Ten-year-old gumshoe Karen Reyes doesn't want to be a vulnerable girl; she wants to be a scary monster. She stole my heart so fast. What a great character, and a budding lesbian too - reminding me of Harriet the Spy. This book is for adults, though. It's set in Chicago in the 60s, where Karen tries to make sense of the tragedies around her, starting with the death of her upstairs neighbour. It's the first of two parts and I am very excited about the yet-to-be-released sequel.

Best Audiobook: The Ministry of Utmost Happiness 

by Arundhati Roy [16.5 hr: narrated by the author]

Fiction may be the best way to grasp some understanding of the situation in Kashmir, the most militarized area in the world. I had so much to say about this brilliant novel that it has its own page here on my blog.

"How to tell a shattered story? By slowly becoming everybody. No. By slowly becoming everything."

Best Multiple Perspectives: Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie

A disturbing, suspenseful, heartbreaking novel about ethics, the individual and the state. Contemporary global issues dramatized in five perspectives from two British Pakistani families. Relevant and absorbing. 

I had heard before reading this that it was a retelling of the myth of Antigone, but forgot that entirely as I got caught up in the narrative. Then, in the final segment, all of the pieces that relate to the Greek myth suddenly popped into my awareness, adding a rich overlay. A more idiosyncratic connection came when I encountered reference to the Laila-Majnu Sufi folktale, which also came up in Arundhati Roy's novel that I had finished just before this one.  

Funniest: 

Dr Edith Vane and the Hares of Crawley Hall by Suzette Mayr

A lesbian Alice in Wonderland-ish spoof on the politics of academia, set in an invented university that could very well be Calgary... if the U of C had malevolent buildings infested with carnivorous jackrabbits. Nightmarish and funny.

"Edith claws through the chlorinated water in the university's Olympic-sized swimming pool. She squints through her goggles. 7:35 a.m. Soon it will be 8 a.m. and her day basically gone. Wasted!"

"She extracts her red pen from her purse and slowly begins scribbling and ticking her way through the wildly ungrammatical pages, miles of faulty logic, the written-the-midnight-before wool gatherings. Soon she is a marking powerhouse, she has graded 17 essays in 15 minutes, she is a marking automaton. She should grade papers at 3 in the morning every single day! Her mind vinegar-sharp, a slayer of dangling, squinting and misplaced modifiers."

Best Thriller: 

The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti

Character-based, funny, violent, rich and suspenseful. Timeline flips back and forth between early scenes leading up to each bullet wound in Hawley's body, and his current life doing his best to avoid trouble. 

Michael Kindness from the now-defunct Books on the Nightstand podcast gave this high praise long before it was released, so I've been looking forward to it ever since. I was not disappointed. As I read, I kept seeing Samuel Hawley as Parker in Darwin Cooke's graphic novel adaptations of Richard Stark's hardboiled noir series. The difference is that Hawley's earlier life of crime might be redeemed through raising his daughter on his own. 

Best Short Story Collection: 

A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin

At first I thought I was pushing too quickly through this 400-page collection, and that maybe I should space the stories out with other things, but by the middle of the book I was just too hooked to stop. Autobiographical, warm and colourful: the cumulative effect is like one fat post-modern novel. Berlin has a fabulous conversational style: "matter of fact you can lie and still tell the truth. This story is good and it rings true, wherever it came from." Oh, yes!

"'You get DTs?' Pepe asked.

'Yes,' she lied. God, just listen to me... please accept me you guys, please like me you runny-eyed bums. I don't know what DTs are. The doctor asked me that too, and I said yes and he wrote it down. I think I've had them all my life, if, in fact, they are visions of demons." -from Her First Detox

"It had a fur collar. Oh the poor matted fur, once silver, yellowed now like the peed-on backsides of polar bears in zoos."

"Often they wore their hair in pin curls and a turban, getting their hair ready for - what? This still is an American custom. You see women everywhere in pink hair rollers. It's some sort of philosophical or fashion statement. Maybe there will be something better, later."

"Angie Dickinson liked my eye shadow. I told her it was just chalk, the kind you rub on pool cues."

"I couldn't go to heaven because I was Protestant. I'd have to go to limbo. I would rather have gone to hell than limbo, what an ugly word, like dumbo, or mumbo jumbo, a place without any dignity at all."

Best Picture Book: The Fog by Kyo Maclear and Kenard Pak

Friendship between misfits with a nerdy hobby + a love of the natural world + global activism on the part of the environment = an adorable picture book with the quiet heft of a velvet hammer. 

Kenard Pak's digitally-manipulated pencil and watercolour art reminds me of Jon Klassen's work. (See I Want My Hat Back, Sam and Dave Dig a Hole, and House Held Up by Trees.) 

Tiny yellow bird Warbler, the people-watcher, is pictured with a telescope inside a nest piled high with reference books about humans. The endpapers portray a whimsical array of human types, such as the "Dapper Bespectacled Booklover" and the "Hairy Orange-Crowned Male (Juvenile)." So much to love in this Canadian picture book for all ages.

Best Children's Graphic Novel: Brave by Svetlana Chmakova

Jensen gets through each day at middle school by treating it like a video game, fraught with dangers. This charming graphic novel is chock full of diverse characters and deals well with the issue of bullying. It even made me cry. Creator Svetlana Chmakova immigrated to Canada when she was a teen and she obviously knows what being an outsider feels like.

Best Nonfiction Reportage in Comics Format: 

Hostage by Guy Delisle [translated from French by Helge Dascher]

Another brilliant work of nonfiction comics by Guy Delisle, who can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned. This time, instead of documenting his own travel adventures, working in other countries, he tells the true story of a French NGO worker, held hostage in Chechnya for 111 days. I felt like I was right there, experiencing the boredom and despair while chained by the wrist for months. Amazing visual storytelling, few words.

Best Nonfiction Memoir in Comics Format: 

Imagine Wanting Only This by Kristen Radtke

An eloquent, marvellous and melancholy study of senescence, presented in meticulous art with minimal text. People, relationships, and the things created by humans-- all will crumble to nothing in the end. I've learned from this book that "ruin porn" is a thing. What Radtke manages to do, with clear-eyed compassion, is to allow us to see the beauty in the inevitable. The controlled lifework and attention to photographic detail reminds me of Alison Bechdel's art.

Best Science Fiction Graphic Novel: Bitch Planet, Book 2 

President Bitch by Kelly Sue DeConnick et al.

Volume 2 collects issues #6-10 of this outrageously funny feminist sic fi spoof. It's just as strong as the first volume and I want more! The fake adverts at the end of each issue help to lighten some heavy content in the storyline: "Makeup is also a LIE! You ugly cow, he actually thought you really did have cheekbones that were cut with a laser."

Best Science Fiction Novella: Nuala by Kimmy Beach

"'Why are these irons called sad? What makes an iron sad?'

She laughed at me and explained that neither the irons nor the future Iron-Servants were sad. Did I not notice the joy with which they performed their duties, even though there was then no Giant to wear the dress they tended? It was simply the name given to the heavy slabs of metal."

Teacher-Servant is the human man graced with a giant mechanical puppet's first awakening gaze. He rides on her shoulder as they communicate via thought. "Shh, my Nuala. I am with you. Today I shall teach you the newness of you."

My book club spent a long time discussing this intriguing exploration of jealousy and autonomy, written by an author from nearby (Red Deer, Alberta) and set in an atypical dystopia. The tale is short and haunting. It had me watching hours of videos of giant marionettes on YouTube.