My Favourite Books from 2018

The year is coming to an end and it was frankly a wonderful year in books. So here it goes. Just a caveat, I will be only listing books that were actually published in 2018, so leaving out amazing books like Arundhati Roy's The Ministry of Utmost Happiness and Helen Ann Thompson's epic history of the Attica Prison uprising, Blood in the Water. Go read those too!

But here is the Top 10 Books I have read this year:

10. Richard Powers, The Overstory (W.W. Norton and Company)

I am not quite done this but I am confident that this will be on my top ten and could very well be near the top. Powers book has made many top ten lists and was shortlisted for the Man Booker and maybe would have won if not for the fact that Americans had won the previous two years. The story is structured like a tree, with 8 stories (roots) introduced separately to merge (trunk). An homage to the great lifeforms that are trees, Powers prose is elegant and rich and entrancing. By the time I finish, I may claim the work is a masterpiece.

9.  Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Heads of Colored People (Atria)

The best short story collection I read this year, Thompson-Spires dives deep into the contemporary African American experience, with a strong grasp of politics, pop culture, history. Funny and engaging, each story leaves one chuckling or astonished. Looking forward to future work of hers.

8. Esi Edugyan, Washington Black (Serpent's Tale)

Edugyan won herself a second Giller Prize for this story of an escaped slave who sets of on a fantastical journey that forces him to confront the price freedom brings as well as the limits it presents to a black man, even one incredibly talented. Edugyan's story is told in spell binding prose and paints rich characters, even if the story at times the story is a bit too apocryphal. Nonetheless, its an adventure story like no other, a powerful retelling of the slave narrative, that will have longevity as a text for many years to come.

7. Sigrid Nunez, The Friend (Riverhead)

The Friend follows a woman dealing with the death of her good friend who has left her an aging Great Dane to take care of. Emotionally wrecked, she quickly finds solace in the dogs embrace and restructures her entire life to meet the needs of him. This slim book packs so much as it offers a powerful lamentation about death, grief, and how we process the most difficult moments in our life. A pleasant surprise winner of the National Book Award last month.

6. Ottessa  Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation  (Penguin Press)

Moshfegh is the master of writing the most engaging characters who are simultaneously disgusting and offputting. Here she gives us an unnamed narrator, lost and bewildered as her parents have died, who decides to confront her existential anxiety by sleeping for the year. Filling herself with drugs prescribed by a hilariously frightening psychiatrist, she tries to sleep away her sorrows only to find herself doing things while she is out. Funny and sharp, Moshfegh delivers her best work yet.

5. Julian Barnes, The Only Story (Vintage)

Barnes tells an emotionally devastating novel about a young man who begins an affair with a much older married woman and tells the story of their relationship as it descends into chaos as addiction and depression overtakes all feelings of lust and love. Beautifully told and executed perfectly, Barnes' only story is one of sadness but also one that speaks to many truths about love and loss.

4. Nick Drasdo, Sabrina (Drawn and Quarterly)

The first ever graphic novel longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Sabrina tells the story of the aftermath of a young woman's murder, following her sister, her boyfriend and her boyfriend's childhood friend as they try to process what has happened while the lunatic world of conspiracy theories shows its fangs in response to the death. The drawing is stunning, flat and cold but fitting of the chilling story being told. Panels are allowed to convey silence and loneliness, capturing perfectly the world that has left so many vulnerable to violence and pain. Graphic novels are expensive so if out of your budget get it from the library!

3. Rebecca Makkai, The Great Believers (Viking)

Also did a full review here. Makkai delivers the big social novel of the year about the AIDS crisis in the mid 1980s, taking place in the heart of Chicago's gay community, where Yale, a young donations solicitor for a university affiliated art gallery is watching his friends die off. Flash thirty years into the future, Fiona, one of Yale's friends, who was a caregiver for many of the dying, deals with consequences of death and loss in her early life as she searches for her missing daughter. This book is a punch in the gut and a faithful retelling of a shameful period in American history, where an entire community was ostracized and left alone in their most vulnerable moment. Already shortlisted for the National Book Award and the Carnegie Medal in Fiction, don't be surprised to hear this one winning the Pulitzer Prize in April.

2. Lisa Halliday, Asymmetry (Simon & Schuster)

I did a full review for this already here and it is one of the most contested and talked about books to have been released this year. Told in three seemingly unconnected parts, loosely depicting a relationship a young Halliday had with a much older Phillip Roth in the early 2000s, an Iraqi American being held in London on his way to visit his brother in Iraq, and the Roth character's appearance on a famous BBC radio show, this book is both tender and poignant but also revealing of so much, whether the nature of power dynamics of a relationship like the one depicted but also the disjointed world the early 2000s produced. Not for everyone, but if you connect with it, totally rewarding.

1. Sally Rooney, Normal People (Faber & Faber)

Rooney introduced herself with Conversation With Friends but she confirmed herself as the next big thing with this amazing delve into modern romance, which was criminally not shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. It is so simply written but don't let that fool you for how deep and profound Rooney's prose is. You will power through this novel and fall in love with both Connell and Marianne and come feeling rejuvenated at the end. Won't be released in Canada and the US until April 2019 but do not hesitate when it does.

2019 Reading Goals

The year is coming to an end and it is time not just to reflect on what I have accomplished as a reader this year, but also what I hope to accomplish next year. So here are some of my 2019 reading goals.

Although 2018 was likely my most productive year reading wise, I found myself compelled to read things I wasn't super interested in, having signed up for some challenge or trying desperately to finish an awards longlist. Toward the end of the year, I tried to focus on what I wanted to read rather than trying to check off books from some list. I don't think I'll get away from that completely (see below) but I definitely want to focus on some diversifying what I read and what determines what I read next.

Firstly, I will not be doing the Book Riot READ HARDER challenge. Every year the folks at the website put together a list of 24 categories aimed at encouraging people to go beyond their comfort zone. Every year I commit to do it, every year I fall short of reading from each of the specific categories. Frankly I don't think the challenge (which this year feels way too specific) encourages me to do what it wants. I already read quite diversely, reading more female authors than male, consciously aiming to read more writer's of colour, queer authors, works in translation etc. I will continue to do so and consciously think about reading diversely when I decide what is next for my eyes.

Secondly, I really want to explore some new genres more aggressively. I am a lover of literary fiction and will continue to gobble it up but I really want to read more crime/mystery, fantasy and science fiction. I am committing to read Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie series as well as a bunch of others from the genre on my Kobo. In terms of fantasy, a genre I am totally uncomfortable with, I'll start with Marlon James' much anticipated Black Leopard, Red Wolf, which has been described as the African Game of Thrones. For Science Fiction, we'll see what comes out, but I do hope to finish the Three Body Problem trilogy and maybe tackle some classics like Ursala K. LeGuin.

Another hope is to follow more closely the New York Times Book Review Podcast. I was so impressed with their Top Ten this year and if I had paid closer attention to their weekly show I may have opened these books up sooner. I know, this kind of goes against my no lists goal but maybe if I catch good stuff earlier on I won't be beholden to lists at the end of the year.

One place where I know lists will remain a burden will be for awards. This year I read long and short listed books from the Women's Prize for Fiction, the Man Booker International Prize, the Man Booker Prize, the Giller Prize and the National Book Award. I never pressured myself to read the entire list before the award was handed out and I liked that more relaxed approach. I'll try to repeat this method in 2019.

In terms of this page, I'll try to keep on reviewing the books that really impress me and make regular booktube videos about a variety of topics. We'll see how that works out.

Anyways, here is to another great year in reading!!

My Year In Reading

This has been an eventful year for me. I became a father and introducing a child into life's equation
certainly shook things up. She is wonderful of course but quite dependent. Thankfully I have been able to take a full year off work, and that certainly resulted in more reading time in between naps and diaper changes.

In general this has been a fantastic year. I was introduced to fantastic up and coming authors like Sally Rooney (Normal People) and Lisa Halliday (Asymmetry), as well as blown away by Rebecca Makkai's amazing  social novel about the AIDS epidemic in 1980s Chicago, The Great Believers.

I tried to follow the big awards, the Booker, the Pulitzer, the Women's Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award. I didn't pressure myself to finish the long or shortlists, but was able to read enough to have my favourites or least favourites, as the case may be.

For the first time I decided to tackle the Giller Prize before the award was handed out. I read the entire shortlist and was happy to see Esi Edugyan win her second Giller for the epic Washington Black. It would have been nice to see Eric Dupont's work in translation Songs for the Cold of Heart win, but Eduyan was worthy winner.

I was lucky enough to continue with some great online reader communities (my Pulitzer group) and started making BookTube videos. I am taking a bit of a break from the latter but will hopefully get back to it in the new year, although I must say I prefer blogging. I also was invited to join a great Goodreads group of readers that share my passion and keep up a very intense schedule of group reads and award follows.

I'll try posting a 2019 Reading goals in the next few days. I really want to do somethings differently but we'll see.

Anyways, here are the stats for the year:

Total Books: 125
Fiction: 77
Non Fiction: 27
Graphic Novels: 7
Short Story Collections: 5
Women Authors: 71
POC Authors: 38
Canadian Lit: 15
Works in Translation: 5
Children's Books: 13
DNFs: 4

Asymmetry: A Rare Case of Experimental Fiction That Blew Me Away

I recognize that Lisa Halliday’s Asymmetry is a polarizing novel, that has received both significant praise (see NY Times Top 10 Books of 2018) as well as scorn from those who could not get into it for a variety reasons I understand. That said, there have been few books this year that have impressed me as much both in the quality in writing but the audacity in its choices in form and how these choices made the book’s thematic explorations that much more poignant for me as a reader.

Asymmetry is a book told in three parts.

The first follows Alice, a twenty-something editor who begins an affair with renowned author Ezra Blazer, who is loosely (maybe not so loosely) based on Philip Roth, who Halliday has admitted to having a romantic relationship with in the early 2000s. This is definitely the hook of the book and I imagine many rushed to read the section eager to get the dirt on Roth’s sexual escapades. But we get so much more. Halliday certainly presents a famous author able to use his power and wealth to engender romantic feelings from Alice and at times this power is exerted manipulatively and is expressed condescendingly, but she also presents a very tender, genuine relationship, where Blazer cares deeply for Alice and desperately fears losing her. Halliday is not interested in a hit job but offering an intimate insight into the author, both personally, but also his determination and single mindedness as an author, an insight Halliday stresses in her interviews.

The second part feels incongruous (asymmetrical one could say) and takes its time to catch the reader. Amar is an American-Iraqi travelling back to Iraq in the late 2000s to visit his brother and is held by authorities during a transfer in London. We quickly get taken back through Amar’s past, from being born over American airspace to his many returns to Iraq, witnessing first hand the destruction of the country as a result of the 2003 war that claimed to seek democracy but delivered chaos and death. We get grizzly accounts of the havoc as Amir recounts how he got to where he stood, suffering further indignity at the hands of the power that has destroyed his ancestral home and caused so much pain for his family. While the first section at first appears to be the more intimate and close to Halliday’s self, it is Amar’s story that is told in the first person, offering a depiction of pain and suffering that Alice’s romantic heart-break cannot.

The third part, the coda, is the transcript of an interview on the BBC Desert Island Discs, where a famous person (Ezra Blazer reappearing) offers up their musical desires if they were stranded on a desert island while retelling their life story. While meant to tie things up, Halliday is quite subtle in doing so, allowing Blazer to only give passing insights into the writing process, extolling authors to not force their characters together if not realistic but let their individual stories follow their own destinies. Blazer remains audacious, still eager for romantic hook up, but Halliday does not punish Blazer (or Roth) too much for his lechery, having awarded him the Nobel Prize for Literature (that Roth never won despite coveting it for so long).

So the question then is does Halliday pull off this very ambitious novel that asks the reader to fill in so many blanks, to find the connections, to create the meanings that would allow Asymmetry to exist as a cohesive novel. For me it does and I believe that partly this has to do with the novel situating itself in a time period that was incredibly formative to me, the early to late 2000s. The moment that struck me most was when I was forced to contrast visceral reactions I had to two moments, one in each of the two parts.

The first was an account of Alice and Ezra watching the now infamous American League Championship Series between the Yankees and the Red Sox in 2004, where the Sox came back from three games to none down to upset the Bronx Bombers and eventually go on to win the World Series. Alice, a devout Red Sox fan, is intensely watching the late innings of Game 5 when Ezra asks her to fetch a series of things from the neighbourhood store to deal with some physical discomfort he was experiencing. Alice becomes bitter and when forced to converse with Blazer after she returns she loses her patience. Being a Red Sox fan, who also remembers these moments, I was vicariously angry along with Alice, furious at Blazer’s selfishness, his lack of consideration for what was important to Alice.

The second moment is when Amar is on one of his visits to Iraq between 2005 and 2007. He is surrounded by the bloodshed, the anger of a people boiling over, but also a people fearful to carry on with their lives, worried about kidnappings, bombs, living. I felt a moment of shame both because this dire moment contrasted so much with the triviality of missing a few innings of a playoff game but also because my visceral reaction was greater for Alice’s misfortune than Amar’s. As someone who was actively involved in the anti-war movement in 2003, organizing massive protests to try to stop the invasion, how was it that I felt so distanced from the bloodshed. If the war and its consequences felt like such an abstraction for me, how would others less involved weigh their feelings?  Was it just as Ezra insinuates in his interview that war for Americans (full disclosure I’m Canadian) is just a game, even for those opposed to the conflict?

For me this contrast perfectly encapsulates the asymmetry that Halliday is trying to depict, the stark incongruousness of the experiences that are nonetheless experiences that exist side by side in the current moment of humanity. There are likely several other asymmetry's to be explored here but for me this reading moment sunk me a little and made me appreciate what Halliday was trying to do.

A few more thoughts.

I imagine that if you have not read Philip Roth this book may not connect with you. I am hardly a Rothophile but I have read enough of his work, seen a few documentaries, that the hook of the first story drew me in immediately. I could hear Roth’s cadence in Blazer’s words. I could see his flaws (very much present in his work) in Blazer’s actions. Halliday’s portrayal is neither hitjob nor hagiography so maybe not the kind of hot gossip some hoped, but it is insightful into the mind of an author whose influence continued to permeate in American letters well after his star as a writer had begun to fade. If one does not have a relationship with Roth's work then maybe this fascination does not exist.

Secondly, I also understand why for some the structural choices made by Halliday does not work. I personally am not someone that impressed with experimental fiction, tending to prefer straightforward narratives with deep thematic explorations and emotional punch. Halliday manages to cover these as well as offer a formalistic choice that asks readers to work for meaning, to impose their own narrative structure. That may not work for everyone and maybe the time period the stories are set in helped me do so in ways others could not.

Lastly, the three books I enjoyed most this year (Sally Rooney’s Normal People, Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers, and Asymmetry) are fantastic examples of a stripped down writing styles that deliver a lot without being bogged down with overly ornate or descriptive prose. I do not know if this is a new trend, nor do I want to lessen the quality of writing from those with more verbose and adjective filled styles (like Chabon or Whitehead) but I find it refreshing and speaks to how powerful language can be without overdoing it.

Anyways, great work and looking forward to seeing what is next for Halliday.

Who will win the Giller Prize? It's Washington Black's to lose.

I had really hoped to finish the shortlist before Monday's award show, but alas getting through the 600 page epic Songs for the Cold of Heart has taken longer than anticipated. That said, I am about half way through and feel confident that I can give a decent analysis of this year's short list and discuss who I think is likely to win.

For those new to the Giller (or who are non-Canadian Lit fans), this award was established 25 years ago by Jack Rabinovitch, in honour of his late wife Dorris Giller, who was a literary critic. Since then, it has established itself as the most lucrative ($100,000 Canadian for the winner) and arguably the most prestigious award for Canadian fiction. In addition to the prize money, a real commercial phenomena called "The Giller Bump" often results in significant sales for the book, especially for holiday shoppers eager to get their friends and family the "it" Canadian book of the year.

Past winning books have often used the award to propel themselves into the esteemed literary "CanLit" canon, becoming instant classics. Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance, Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace and Madeleine Thien's Do Not Say We Have Nothing remain among my favourite books and have won over a large swathe of readers as fans.

Unlike the Man Booker Prize, whose focus on form and experimental structure is at times too obsessive, the Giller Prize tends to award much more reader friendly books whose strength are the themes explored and the profound emotional response they engender.  For that reason, those looking to give a Giller gift, the chances of the recipient actually reading and finishing the given book are pretty good.

As I have indicated in other posts, award predictions is a fun past time for many, but it's a difficult task when dealing with a relatively small jury of 5 people deciding what they think is the best book. It's not like larger membership bodies that award prizes (like the Oscars or Emmys) where more idiosyncratic tastes are often lost among the mass of voters. Here it is five writers or people with ties to the arts arguing in a room and deciding who they believe deserves Canada's most prestigious literary award. For that reason, take my prediction with a grain of salt.

This year, the shortlist feels quite strong. I enjoyed the four books I finished and am thoroughly enjoying Songs for the Cold of Heart. Anyone would be an acceptable, if not deserving winner (which is definitely not how I feel about other shortlists). That said, gotta make my picks. Here the books, in the order of least likely to most likely to win:


5. Patrick deWitt, French Exit (House of Anansi)

It has been a good year for deWitt. His breakthrough Sisters Brothers was turned into a very good movie. His new book has received plenty of critical acclaim and another shortlisting for the Giller Prize. This clever and witty story of an eccentric socialite woman and her too attached oddball son dealing with the drying up of their significant fortune is well done. It's an enjoyable and quick read, one that fans of his kind of humour will embrace. That said, it's definitely not as strong as Sisters Brothers and one wonders how necessary a book about the pratfalls of the rich really is. I just don't think the jury will feel inclined to awarding French Exit the title.

4. Thea Lim, An Ocean of Minutes (Viking Canada)

I was pleasantly surprised with this one. Following a young woman who time travels to the future to pay for her husband's medical treatment after a disasterous flu pandemic, Lim explores the consequences of making those decisions  andhow disaster strains and leaves in tatters the strongest bonds of love. In some ways, Lim tackles a topic that has been well explored before and the comparisons to Station Eleven are with some merit. But it still felt fresh and captivating and the writing is beautifully melancholic, perfectly capturing the mood required for such a story. That said, Lim is relatively young and this is her first novel. I think we are going to get better and even more substantial works from her that will be more worthy of the Giller.

3. Sheila Heti, Motherhood (Knopf Canada)

Heti is definitely one of the better known names on the shortlist, having written extensively, mostly essays and short stories that were widely read. Her How Should A Person Be was recently included as a top choice for a 21st Century literary canon by Vulture Magazine. In Motherhood she embraces the very popular fad of autobiographical fiction, exploring through a first person voice of a near-forty year old woman (also named Sheila) the thoughts and anxieties when confronting whether to have children or not. It is very profound and engaging and if the Giller jury decided to go in the direction of embracing the autofiction trend this may come out on top. I had some issues with it though, which I do with other examples of the subgenre, unable at times to really decipher the fictional elements in an execution that feels like a collection of introspective non-fiction essays rather than the kinds of story telling we associate with fiction. Heti's book is already a best seller and likely does not need this award to establish herself as a leading Canadian voice, but if the jury goes in this direction it will be a bold break from the kinds of books that have won the award.

2. Eric Dupont, Songs for the Cold of Heart (QC Fiction)

The one I have not finished yet, but that is no fault of the very skillful storytelling Dupont employs in this dense family epic that takes us from rural Quebec to the cities of Europe, exploring themes of changing social and cultural norms that transformed the province and its people during the post-War years. Those who love the prose of John Irving (with a dash of magical realism), falling into this book will be a pure joy (and even at the very slow pace I have attacked this text, I can say I am thoroughly enjoying the folksy charm of Dupont's writing). That said, the Giller Prize has never gone to a work in translation and this would be a departure. I think it would be a good one though. For a pan-Canadian prize to have effectively excluded the immense cultural products coming from the French speaking province is a shortcoming that a Dupont win will do a lot to overcome. However, the juggernaut that is the next book will likely keep that from happening.

1. Esi Edugyan, Washington Black (HarperCollins Canada)

When the shortlist initially came out, I would not have bet on Edugyan's third novel. She has already won the Giller for her 2011 Half-Blood Blues and only two other authors have repeated (Alice Munro and M.G. Vassanji). Washington Black is certain to be a best seller and already appeared to have received sufficient acknowledgment when it was shortlisted for this year's Man Booker Prize. Edugyan's place as one of the leading literary lights in Canada is well established. If it had won the Booker, maybe the jury would feel less in need to award Edugyan. But since Anna Burns' Milkman upset Washington Black for that prize, the latter has added a plethora of award and critic acknowledgments. It is shortlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Prize for Fiction. It was both Amazon and Chapters/Indigo's top fiction choice for 2018. It has been on the Washington Post and Time Magazine Top 10 Fiction books of the year and is certain to make additional appearances in the lists about to appear across publications. It is one of the "it" works of fiction of 2018. If it were not to win the big national prize in Canada it would feel a bit odd.

In terms of the quality of the book, it also matches if not betters the others on the shortlist. Although at times inconsistent, with some clunky dialogue and questionable plot choices, for the most part the writing is extraordinary, finding myself lost in these beautiful passages that conveyed so much emotion. Additionally, Edugyan is doing something really interesting in her reinvention of the slave narrative, adding hints of adventure, but also exploring important themes of the erasure of black genius and how the past continued to haunt the freed. It is a hefty book with lots of gravitas (not to mention some really great cover designs--the UK cover is gorgeous and the Canadian and US editions are quite unique as well).

So for those wanting to skip all I have written, in conclusion:

Who will win: Washington Black

Who should win: Washington Black or Songs for the Cold of Heart

Darkhorse: Motherhood 

The Great Believers: Devastating and Beautiful account of 1980s AIDS Crisis

It's often dangerous to read a too hyped book, the fear being that the clamour among critics, award juries, and other readers sets the expectations way too high. Rebecca Makkai's The Great Believers, a recounting of the AIDS crisis in 1980s Chicago certainly brought the hype. Starred reviews from Kirkus and Publisher's Weekly, shortlisted for the National Book Award and the Carnegie Medal in Fiction and certain to make dozens of year end lists for best book of the year and is a favourite to win the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction next April. Despite the praise, I'd put off picking it up until the time was right, and it certainly was when I finally did a few days ago. Makkai has delivered a heart wrenching account of what she describes as a war, with the casualties of the crisis scarring the survivors with emotional wounds that never will completely heal.

The story is told through the eyes of two protagonist in two time periods. The first being Yale, a thirty-something gay art gallery procurer recounting his life from the mid 1980s just after the death of a close friend, Nico, up until the early 1990s. Dealing with the emotional turbulence of death surrounding him, the constant paranoia of becoming infected, and surviving a political and cultural environment keen to dispose of him and his friends, Yale's story is an intimate depiction of someone eager for stability, for love, and some professional success, all things we all take for granted but for Yale things so hard to attain because of the AIDS epidemic. Yale's sections are emotional juggernaughts, providing us an insight into a war zone that Yale has to navigate through, with others but often alone.

The second storyline takes place in 2015, following a fifty-year old Fiona, Nico's younger sister who remained loyal to her brother when her parents exiled him and chose Nico's friends as her family after his death. Thirty years later, she is in search of her long estranged daughter and ends up in Paris reconnecting with old friends and the community she stood by during the bleakest periods of the 1980s. While trying to figure out what went wrong with the relationship with her daughter, Fiona must face up to the impact the death that filled her youth had on who she was and how she related to those she cared deeply for. Some have suggested that her storyline is less powerful than Yale's, but I found it both necessary (allowing the reader to catch their breath, Fiona's timeline giving us some distance from the harshest and saddest moments of the story) but also a valuable perspective of those who embraced allyship during the 1980s and investigating the toll that brought with it.

Filled with discussions of art, love, friendship, sexuality and with a  darkly sentimental reverence for a place and time that left so much carnage behind, Makkai delivers an emotionally devastating novel that while hard at times to take in, reads beautifully and fills the reader with the sense of loss that so many experienced during the period. Makkai delivers a book that is meticulously researched and is a worthy companion to other works of art and non-fiction that form the canon of gay and AIDS related depictions of the 1980s crisis.

One additional point I do want to bring up is the issue of allyship versus appropriation, that Makkai herself brings up in her acknowledgment. A few years ago, author Lionel Shriver launched a discussion about cultural appropriation, suggesting that writers were no longer allowed to write characters that shared their identities and that this amounted to censorship. She was, somewhat dishonestly, responding to legitimate criticisms of her book, The Mandibles, and racist tropes she resorted to in depicting African American characters. Most retorted (here and here) Shriver, noting that of course authors are able to write characters that did not share their identities or experiences, but when one does so writers must do their homework, research, be respectful and cognizant that you are voicing an experience and a story that is not yours.

In many ways, The Great Believers is an example of doing this right.  Makkai is a straight woman who is too young to have been in the middle of the crises. Yet she engaged in years of research, numerous interviews of those who were there, and used these first hand sources as readers to assure an authenticity to the story. The product speaks for itself, and shows what authors can do rather than repeat Shriver's dishonest laziness and faux outrage.

Anyways, this was a spectacular book and merits all the praise it has received. Hopefully with some award attention it will get the readership it deserves.

Non-Fiction November

Taking a bit of a break from YouTube as I try to figure out a workable set up while travelling. That said, still want to do some writing about books, and what better way to start than discussing what I hope to read for Non Fiction November, a whole month where those inclined to read fiction make an extra effort to read some subject matters less steeped in the made up.

So here are three book I hope to get through this month.


The first I hope to get to is Asperger's Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Germany. Autism is a subject matter close to my heart, an issue that has touched my family. A couple of years ago I listened to the marvelous NeuroTribes, which masterfully laid the history of autism and reframed how we see the condition as a reflection of neurodiversity in the human species.  Asperger's Children delves deeply into the notorious and morally problematic experiments that one of the first studies of autism engaged in during the Third Reich's reign over Germany.

The second I hope to get to is Alexander Chee's How to Write an Autobiographical Novel. Chee wrote the epic opera novel, Queen of the Night a few years ago and is an entertaining and insightful presence on twitter. I'm looking forward to hearing his more elaborated thoughts on all sorts of issues impacting the social and political zeitgeist.

The third book I hope to tackle is Mistaken Identity by Asad Haider. Haider tries to address the very tangled subject of identity politics, which has both provoked right wing populist white identity politics and created divisions within the left trying to build a broad opposition to the emergence of extreme politics. I have heard great things about this and hopefully it's a tool that others wanting to build radical political alternatives to the mess we are in can use.

Man Booker Prediction

OK not enough time to do a prediction video for this year's shortlist so decided to do a little blog post.

First things first. The Shortlist:

Milkman by Anna Burns (Graywolf)
Washington Black by Esi Edugyan (Knopf)
Everything Under by Daisy Johnson (Graywolf)
The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner (Scribner)
The Overstory by Richard Powers (Norton)
The Long Take by Robin Robertson (Knopf)

This is the first year in three that I haven't finished the entire shortlist. One book, Robin Robertson's The Long Take is not available in Canada until the end of the month and attempts to order it from the UK had to be hastily stopped. Richard Power's The Overstory, a 500+ page door stopper about trees, interests me but I wasn't ready to commit.

So saying that take my opinions about who I think will win with the caveat that I cannot judge the books solely on literary merit, not that this is the only consideration taken into account anyways.

I must say, that this feels like a weaker year than last. I gave 6 books from last five stars on Goodreads and this year none. Also, the two books from the longlist that appeared to resonate most, Sally Rooney's Normal People and Guy Gunaratne's In Our Mad and Furious City, did not even make the final list. So we are left with these six, most of which have not built loyal armies of readers.

I'll also say that this year is one of the most unpredictable years since I started following closely. In 2015 it was clear that the award was going to be won by either A Little Life or A Brief History of Seven Killings. In 2017, Do Not Say We Have Nothing and The Sellout stood above the rest. Last year, Lincoln in the Bardo was the favourite both among bookies and critics. Although The Overstory is the bookies choice this year, one would not be totally stunned if any of the other books were to be named the winner.

Other issues that are informing the conversation this year is the fact that there has not been a woman victor since Eleanor Catton won for her breathtaking tome The Luminaries. Nor has there been a UK winner since Hilary Mantel won her second Booker Prize for Bring Up The Bodies. Will a jury feel inclined to award a book that ends these streaks? Purely on a law of averages, betting on a woman author from the UK would make sense. That would seem to give Anna Burns and Daisy Johnson an advantage.

Another and even more suffocating issue is the presence of American authors on the list, the result of a rule change five years ago, a rule change that continues to be controversial and officially opposed by UK publishing. Considering the last two winners (Paul Beatty and George Saunders) were American, would a jury decide to blow up everyone's head and give the award to another American author?

In terms of literary merit questions, of those I read, Washington Black felt like the most accomplished work, delving deep into thematic questions of freedom and the black experience in freedom all in the context of a compelling work of historical fiction. I also quite enjoyed Daisy Johnson's Everything Under, a chilling but very fresh retelling of the Oedipus myth and Rachel Kushner's women's prison drama, The Mars Room. Both brought such strong atmosphere and voice. Although many loved Milkman, I felt it to be such an exhausting reading experience. Set in the Troubles in Northern Ireland and told in a experimental style of dense, run-on sentences that leaves the reader few moments to catch their breath, I could imagine that its victory tomorrow will result in many people picking up the book and putting it down just as quickly.

Of the two that I have not read, they both appear to have significant merits behind them. Power's book is the best reviewed on Goodreads and appears to have wowed those who managed to get through it. But it's Americaness will certainly be hard to overcome this year. The Long Take is a arguably a long form poem and its inclusion on the list speaks to the Booker prize pushing the limits of what is a novel. It also seems to be a beautifully constructed narrative and I will definitely pick it up when available. But will it be too much for the Booker to award a work that would not be deemed a novel by most readers? The Prize does not need to be beholden to the lowest common denominator reader, but one shouldn't be too contemptuous either.

Anyways, here is my prediction (a foolish endeavour but nonetheless):

Who Will Win: Washington Black
Who May Win: Milkman
Dark Horse: The Long Take

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