I generally read a lot of memoir and science, but novels have foregrounded lately and poetry has dropped to less than half of my titles read in 2019.
In my total I include chapbooks (27/111 titles) and YA and lids books, comic books, graphic novels and audio books. Still it adds up to over 18, 300 pages of completed. (I have a couple dozen partly read books as the year closes.)
After the list are graphs of where I found books & the demographics read. Another post will highlight my favourites.
1 Gros Morne National Park by Michael Burzynski (Breakwater Books, 1999)
2 Towers by Frances Boyle (Fish Gotta Swim Editions, 2018)
3 The Way of Tanka by Naomi Beth Wakan (Shanti Arts LLC, 2017)
4 Petit-Bleu et Petit-Jaune by Leo Lionni (lutin poche de l’école des loisirs, 1970)
5 Spherical Harmonic by Catherine Asaro (TOR, 2001)
6 Yellow Crane by by Susan Gillis (Brick Books, 2018)
7 Diamond Star by Catherine Asaro (Baen, 2009)
8 Raising Goats Naturally: The Complete Guide to Milk, Meat and More by Deborah Niemann (New Society Publishers, 2013)
9 The Night Chorus by Harold Hoefle (mqup, 2018)
10 A Season in Lowertown By David Blaikie (unpublished)
11 The Invention of Hunger by Rae Armantrout (Tuumba 22, 1979)
12 27 canadian sail craft by Daniel f Bradley (unarmed, 2018)
13 Carnelians by Catherine Asara (Baen, 2011)
14 The Second time by Marco Fraticelli and Philomene Kocher (King’s Raod Press, 2004)
15 The Way of Haiku by Naomi Beth Wakan (Shanti Arts LLC, 2019)
16 The Windigo Chronicles by David Groulx (Bookland, 2016)
17 The Little Book of Hygge: The Danish Way to Live Well by Meik Wiking (Penguin, 2016)
18 Calling Down the Sky by Rosanna Deerchild (Bookland, 2015)
19 Sunrise Alley by Catharine Asara (Baen, 2006)
20 Asleep by Banana Yoshimoto, translated by Michael Emmerich (Grove Press, 2001)
21 Pooh’s Workout Book by Ethan Mordden (Dutton, 1984)
22 Living Starts with Love: Learning To Make Your Life Shine by Lesley Strutt PhD
23 We, Old Young ones by Dominik Parisien *Frog Hollow, 2019)
24 Sister-Mine by Nalo Hopkinson (Grand Central Publishing, 2013)
25 I’ve been meaning to tell you: a letter to my daughter by David Chariandy (M&S, 2018)
26 Yardwork: A Biography of an Urban Place by Daniel Coleman (Wolsyk & Wynn, 2017)
27 When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times by Pema Chödrön (Shambhala, 1997)
28 Keep Moving: And other tips and truths about living well longer by Dick van Dyke (Hachette Books, 2016)
29 The Inner Life of Animals: Love, Grief and Compassion: Surprising Observations of a Hidden World by Peter Wohlleben, trans by Jane Billinghurst (Grestone, 2017)
30 The Reason you Walk by Wab Kinew (Viking, 2015)
31 Dead as a Doornail by Charlaine Harris (Ace, 2005)
32 Choose your own poem by Laura Farina (above/ground, 2019)
33 Beautiful Stupid by John B Lee (Black Moss, 2018)
34 All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris (Ace, 2005)
35 You’re going to have to keep this up Forever by IAN MARTIN (AngelHouse, 2018)
36 Trauma Head by Elee Kralji Gardiner (AnvilPress, 2018)
37 Bob Snider: on Performing, or how to break a leg (Gaspereau, 2008)
38 from Turtle Island to Island Gaza: poems by David Groulx (AU press, 2019
39 Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 years by Sarah L Delany and Elizabeth Delany with Amy Hill Hearth (Dell book, 1993)
40 Dirty River: A queer femme of colour dreaming her way home by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (Arsenal, 2015)
41 Who Fears Death, by Nnedi Okorafor (DAW, 2010)
42 Rommel Drives on deep into Egypt by Richard Brautigan (A Delta Book, 1979)
43 Con/tig/u/us by Kevin Heslop (Blasted Tree, 2018)
44 No Tv for Woodpeckers: poems by Gary Barwin (Buckrider, 2017)
45 Water by Bapsi Sidhwa (key porter, 2006)
46 Make Contact: Contributive Bookselling and the Small Press in Canada Following the Second World War, thesis by Cameron Alistair Owen Anstee (U of O, 2017)
47 a hole in the light: the red moon anthology of English language haiku of 2018: ed by Kim Kacian (red moon, 2019)
48 This is where I get off by Kirby (Permanent Sleep press, 2019)
49 Witness: poetry and prose of Joanne Page by Stan Dragland (A Fieldnotes Chapbook, 2014)
50 Am a Skin Too by David Groulx (anstruthervpress, 2018)
51 Fireborn by Keri Arthur (Penguin, 2014)
52 Dear Kestrel by Khashayar Mohammadi (K | F | B, 2019)
53 At the water’s edge, edited by Devin Harrison and Mike Montreuil (HaikuCanada, 2019)
54 The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks, edited by Peter Kahn (University of Arkansas Press, 2017)
55 These Wings by Kim Fahner (Pedlar, 2019)
56 Sasanka by Doris Fiszer (Bywords, 2018)
57 China Suite by Julie de Belle (Éditions Vaudreuil, 2018)
58 The Kennedy Moment by Peter Adamson (Myriad Editions, 2018)
59 Paperdoll by Manahil Bandukwala (Anstruther, 2019)
60 Babymouse: our hero by Jennifer L Holm & Matthew Holm ( RandomHouse, 2005)
61 Still No Word by Shannon Webb-Campbell (Breakwater, 2015)
62 Flesh, Tongue by Yaya Yao (Mawenzi House, 2015)
63 The Orville: New Beginnings, part 1 of 2, by David A Goodman (2019)
64 Binti: The Complete Trilogy by Nnedi Okorafor (DAW, 2019)
65 In the Silhouette of your silences: poems by David Groulx (Now or Never Publishing, 2916)
66 Hiraeth: Tercets from the last Archipelago by Eileen R. Tabios (Knives, forks & spoons press, 2018)
67 Forest Primeval: poems by Vievee Francis (University of Illinois, Triquarterly, 2015)
68 You are enough: love poems for the end of the world by Smokii Sumac (Kegedonce Press, 2018)
69 The Spaceship Next Door by Gene Doucette (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018)
70 An Aorta with Branches, A Travelogue by Deborah Wood (Sunnyoutside, 2017)
71 Machina by Nina Jane Drystek (& co collective, 2017)
72 Welcome to the last earth show by Michael Sikkema (where is the river, 2018)
73 Ninety Tiny Poems by Stuart Ross (above/ground, 2019)
74 The Orville: New Beginnings, part 2 of 2 by David Goodman (Blackhorse, 2019)
75 Algonquin Wild: a naturalist’s Journey through the seasons by Michael Runtz (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2019)
76 Probability Moon by Nancy Kress (Tor, 2000)
77 The Allspice Bath by Sonia Saikaley (Inanna, 2019)
78 Rose-water syrup: a poetry collection by Maha Zimmo (Cyberwit, 2019)
79 Hard work cheering up sad machines by Jason Heroux (Mansfield, 2016)
80 The accidental chef: a memoir by Caroline Ishii (2016)
81 The Orville # 3: the Word of Avis, part 1 of 2 by David Goodman (Blackhorse, 2019)
82 If I were born in Prague: poems of Guy Jean, trans by Katie Farris and Ilya Kaminsky (Argo Books, 2011)
83 Grave Importance: A Dr Greta Helsing novel by Vivian Shaw (Orbit, 2019)
84 Side by Side: a novel by Anita Kushwaha (Inanna, 2018)
85 On Forgetting a Language by Isabella Wang ( Baseline Press, 2019)
86 Spells for Clear Vision by Neile Graham (Brick Books, 1994)
87 No one can pronounce my name by Rakesh Satyal (Picador, 2017)
88 Fish in a Tree: a novel by Lynda Mullaly Hunt (Penguin, 2015)
89 What looks like crazy on an ordinary day by Pearl Cleage (Avon, 1997)
90 The day the moon went away by Marilyn Irwin (above/ground, 2019)
91 Hymnswitch by Ali Blythe (icehouse, 2019)
92 Maze by Hugh Thomas (invisible books, 2019)
93 These are not the potatoes of my youth by Matthew Walsh (Icehouse, 2019)
94 The cat who said cheese by Lilian Jackson Braun (Jove, 1996)
95 Frying Plantain by Zalika Reid-Benta (Anansi, 2019)
96 The Fly in Autumn by David Zieroth (Harbour, 2009)
97 Blood Memory by Neile Graham (Buschek Books, 2000)
98 The Kabir Book: 44 of the Ecstatic Poems of Kabir, versions by Robert Bly (Beacon Press, 1971)
99 Slip Minute by Anne-Marie Turza (Baseline Press, 2018)
100 Od Magic by Patricia A. McKillip (Ace, 2005)
101 Love lives here: a story of thriving in a transgender family by Amanda Jetté Knox (Viking, 2019)
102 Brave: Living with a concussion by Kanika Gupta (Language of Growth, 2019)
103 Son of a a Trickster by Eden Robinson (alfred k knoff, 2017)
104 The Lost Ones by Sheena Kamal (Harper, 2017)
105 A Thief, A Spy, and the corpse who rode shotgun by Adam Thomlison (40-watt spotlight, 2019)
106 Annie John by Jamaica Kinkaid (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1983)
107 The Landscape that isn’t There by Mary Lee Bragg (Aeolus House, 2019)
108 Amusement Park of Constant Sorrow: a novel by Jason Heroux (Mansfield Press, 2018)
109 Journey of a Thousand Steps by Madona Skaff-Koren (Renaissance Press, 2015)
110 Cluster by Souvankham Thammavongsa (M&S, 2019)
111 Becoming by Michelle Obama (Crown, 2018)
In the year my poetry reading dropped by more than half of total. I didn’t do as much classics as I planned reading half that were published within 2 years. I binged on a couple novelists. I did more audio books than ever.
Most ends of year book list have ones I’ve heard of. Or ones I own, but haven’t read, and some I’ve read but most I’ve never heard of although I’m pretty bookish. Some lists are contained to books of 2019, or books that moved, or a genre or a geography. What amazes me of end of year enjoyed books lists is how few overlaps there are, which underscores how many books there are. Here are lists of others: derek beaulieu, Kerry Clare, Vicki Ziegler, rob mclennan, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Jonathan Ball,Nick Moran, CBC, Esquire, 49th shelf poetry, and all the #95books people on twitter, and weekly regulars of Michael Dennis and Jessica Drake Thomas.