Fav reads 2024

Towards to the end of the year I’ll post my usual summary of my reading stats, how many Canadian vs, not, and indigenous reads or gender parity, by genre and all the etc. For the moment, I’m collecting up my fav reads. With caveat that I have in progress probably a dozen.

Here are my top 10% of I read so far in 2024. Maybe this will tip an idea to you of what to give for gifts. (Bolded are the ones released this year.)

Memoir:

• Notes to Myself: My struggle to become a person by Hugh Prather (Real People Press, 1970)
• And Now I Spill the Family Secrets: An Illustrated Memoir by Margaret Kimball (Harper, 2021)
• Summer of the Horse by Donna Kane (Harbour, 2018)
• James Wright: a Life in Poetry by Jonathan Blunk  (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2017) 
• Crooked Teeth by Danny Ramadan (Viking, 2024)

Short Stories:

• Buffalo is the New Buffalo by Chelsea Vowel (Arsenal, 2022)

Plays:

• Faith Healer by Brian Friel (Faber & Faber, 1980)

Novels:

• Looking for Her by Carolyn Marie Souaid (Baraka Books, 2024)
• We Meant Well by Erum Shazia Hasan (ECW, 2023)
• Denial by Beverley McLachlin (Simon & Schuster, 2021)
• The Midnight Library by Matt Haig (Viking, 2020)
• Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (Corgi Books, 1990)

Fan Fiction:

• Bleating Hearts by HK Black (Archive of Our Own, 2023)
• Demonology and the Triphasic Model of Trauma: An Integrative Approach by Nnm (Archive of Our Own, 2019)
• By My Side series by DemonicPutto (Archive of Our Own, 2020-2022)
• Salinity (and other measurements of brackish water) by drawlight (AO3, 2019)
• Bonds of Blood by Dee_Morris (AO3, 2024)
• Public Relations by Cards_Slash (AO3, 2024)
• On the Same Page by Chekhov (Archive of Our Own, 2020)
• Every Damn Day by klikandtuna (AO3, 2024)

Poetry:

• The Unfolding: poems by Rosemary Wahtola Trommer, [ARC] (Wildhouse, 2024)
• Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World, edited by Pádraig Ó Tuama (Canongate, 2022)
• Spøkjelse I Japanske Drosjar by Dag T. Straumvåg, translation of Michael Dennis (A+D, 2020)
• Get Well Soon by Jamie Sharpe (ECW, 2024)
• Your Therapist Says it’s Magical Thinking: poems by Sadie McCarney (ECW, 2023)
• Dancing with the Dead by Red Pine (Copper Canyon, 2023)
• Skirrid Hill by Owen Sheers (Seren Books, 2005, 2009)
• The flesh is not a prison by Graham Cwinn (Things in my Chest, 2023)
• Entre Rive and Shore by Dominique Bernier-Cormier (Icehouse, 2023)
• Like a Trophy from the Sun by Jason Heroux (Guernica, 2024)
• Love is a Place but you cannot Live There by Jade Wallace (Guernica, 2023)
• after that: poems by Lorna Crozier (M&S, 2023)
• Reckoning: a poem by Patrick Friesen (Anvil Press, 2023)
• Beyond the Flames by Louise Dupré, trans by Antonio D’Alfonso (Guernica Editions, 2014)
• Rose by Li-Young Lee (BOA, 1986)

Poetry chapbooks:

• A Pandemic Inventory: Spring-Summer 2020 Brooklyn NY by Zane Koss (above/ground, 2023)
• Apocryphal Girl by Rebecca Macijeski (Pinhole Poetry, 2024)
• Life Cycle of a Mayfly by Maya Clubine (Vallum Chapbook Series, No. 37, 2023)
• a very little street by Stuart Ross (Turret House, 2023)
• Blizzard of None by Jason Heroux (Puddles of Sky, 2024)

Haiku:

• Weather by Rob Taylor (Gaspereau Press, 2024)
• No Heroic Measure by Roland Packer (Red Moon Press, 2023)

Since 2012 I’ve done a complete list of books read in the year. I generally have add demographics of writers to make me conscious of who I read so I don’t read all old dead white American men but include in my view everyone else.That desire got a wrinkle when reading fan fiction since it is like old usenet days where people have handles not visible identities for gender or nation or any other marker. I think that’s good. It prevents me from getting fixated on ratios or quotas. I want to read not just current books but voices from the 1800s and before to balance my filters. I like to read works in translation to inform my perspectives. I want to read not only poetry that I default to, but memoirs, science, history, novels to inform that project that is Build Self. I want to include easy reads and hard stretch reads. 

About 10% of my reads were re-reads. About 15% of titles were read aloud, thus far. Knowing I will be listing all at Instagram causes some torque as I read, wanting to not read the last portion if I didn’t like it so I wouldn’t have to add it to my list. Loophole-mind is never healthy. I do not include children’s books read or often don’t include graphic novels or list a book again if I’m re-reading more than once within a year. I don’t include books that I quit, naturally, but i have added a spreadsheet page for abandoned books where I foundered or stalled. Not that you need to know, just saying.