Booklist 2014

Booklist 2014

January 1-March 19

1.       The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingslover

2.       The Great Depression by Pierre Berton

3.       The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien

4.       Old Man’s War by John Scalzi

5.       Because of Winn-Dixie b Kate DiCamaillo

6.       The Pagan Lord by Bernard Cornwell

7.       The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

8.       The Camping Guy by Dianne Greenlay

9.       The Children of Hurin by J.R.R. Tolkien

10.   The Last Viking: The Life of Raold Amundsen by Stephen R. Brown

11.   How to Publish a Book in Canada by Kim Staflund

12.   Write to Learn by Donald M. Murray

March 20-June 21

13.   John Gardner: Literary Outlaw by Barry Silesky

14.   Debt Free Forever by Gail Vaz-Oxlade

15.   A Glossary of Literary Terms by M.H. Abrams

16.   The Iliad by Homer

17.   Life of Pi by Yann Martel

18.   Life of Pi Book Club in a Box by Marilyn Herbert

19.   The Odyssey by Homer

20.   The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

June 22-Sept 20

21.   The Road to Middle-Earth by Tom Shippey

22.   On Writers and Writing by John Gardner

23.   Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

24.   The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell

25.   The Invasion of Canada by Pierre Berton

Sept 20-Dec 31

26.   Genesis: Chapter and Verse by Philip Dodd

27.   Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

28.   Flames Across the Border by Pierre Berton

29.   The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

30.   Finding Water by Julia Cameron

31.   Enemy of God by Bernard Cornwell

32.   The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

33.   The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbovsky

34.   Number9Dream by David Mitchell

35.   You Are Here by Chris Hadfield

                

Booklist 2013

The books I read in 2013:

(Jan 1—March 19)

1.       Doppler by Erlend Loe

2.       Rhode in the Sea by Kortnee Paiha

3.       The Elements of Style  by Strunk and White

4.       Waging Heavy Peace by Neil Young

5.       Tiassa by Steven Brust

6.       Wolf of the Plains by Conn Iggulden

7.       419 by Will Ferguson

(March 20-June 21)

8.       Anyway Anyhow Anywhere by Andy Neill and Matt Kent

9.       To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway

10.   Exploring the Hobbit by Corey Olsen

11.   Why Men Lie by Linden MacIntyre

12.   Tree and Leaf by J. R. R. Tolkien

13.   Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

14.   Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

15.   On Becoming a Novelist by John Gardner

16.   Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

17.   The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien

18.   The Silmarillion Seminars by Corey Olsen

19.   Dubliners by James Joyce

20.   The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje

(June 22-Sept 20)

21.   Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury

22.   Under the Dome by Stephen King

23.   The Annotated Hobbit by Douglas A. Anderson

24.   J.R.R. Tolkien; A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter

25.   Ru by Kim Thuy

26.   Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut

27.   The Wind Through the Keyhole by Stephen King

28.   William Shakespeare’s Star Wars by Ian Doescher

29.   The Joy of Writing by Pierre Berton

30.   Into Thin Air by John Krakauer

31.   Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese

(Sept 20-Dec 31)

32.   The Four Loaves by C.S. Lewis

33.   The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien

34.   Walking in This World by Julia Cameron

35.   The Two Towers by J. R. R. Tolkien

Booklist 2012

(Jan 1—March 19)

1.       Pontypool Changes Everything by Tony Burgess

2.       Pearl Jam Place/Date by Charles Peterson and Lance Mercer

3.       That One by Dianna-Marie Stolz

4.       Who Are You: The Life of Pete Townshend by Mark Wilkenson

5.       Running by John Stanton

6.       How to Write by Derek Beaulieu

7.       Great Bastards of History by Juré Fiorillo

8.       A Good Man by Guy Vanderhaeghe

9.       Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton

10.   Foundation by Isaac Asimov

11.   The Norse Myths by Kevin Crossley-Holland

12.   Imaginative Writing by Janet Burroway

13.   The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

14.   Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov

15.   Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zeppelin Saga by Stephen Davis

(March 20-June 21)

16.   Barbarian Rites by Hans-Petter Hasenfratz

17.   The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

18.   The Art of Fiction by John Gardner

19.   The Poets’ Corner by John Lithgow

20.   Aztec by Gary Jennings

21.   Hotel Edonda Mountain by Keith Forrest and Mitch Goertz

22.   The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

23.   On the Road by Jack Keroauc

24.   Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

25.   Kill Shakespeare by Conor McReery

26.   Buddhism Without Beliefs by Stephen Batchelor

27.   Close to the Edge: The Story of Yes by Chris Welch

28.   Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett

(June 22-Sept 20)

29.   The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs

30.   A Brighter Discontent by Anna Kristina Schultz

31.   The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

32.   Work Book by Steven Heighton

33.   Death of Kings by Bernard Cornwell

34.   Walking in This World by Julia Cameron

35.   Savages by Don Winslow

36.   11/22/63 by Stephen King

37.   Dzur by Steven Brust

38.   Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

39.   The Bishop’s Man by Linden MacIntyre

(Sept 20-Dec 31)

40.   Clockwork Angels by Kevin J. Anderson

41.   Jhegaala by Steven Brust

42.   Beautiful Trouble  by Andrew Boyd

43.   Hunter S. Thompson by Jay Cowan

44.   On Moral Fiction by John Gardner

45.   Frankenstein, Or the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley

46.   The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

47.   Ortona by Mark Zuehlke

48.   Stories by Anton Chekhov

49.   Iorich by Steven Brust

50.   Azincourt by Bernard Cornwell

Booklist 2011

As always, I've kept a list of the books I read over the year:

January

The Top 100 Canadian Albums by Bob Mesereau

The Forest Laird by Jack Whyte

Comfortably Numb: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd by Mark Blake

The Top 100 Canadian Singles by Bob Mersereau

February

The Worst Thing She Ever Did by Alice Kuipers

Maus by Art Spiegelman

WE3 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

March

The White Raven by Robert Low

Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes by Neil Gaiman

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

Louis Riel by Chester Brown

April

A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen

The Village That Moved

May

The Wars by Timothy Findlay

The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill

Deathwatch by Robb White

100 Photos That Changed Canada by Mark Reid

June

The King’s Speech by Mark Logue and Peter Conradi

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

July

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard

Not Wanted on the Voyage by Timothy Findley

August

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

Flow Beyond the Weir by George Freeman

Beatrice & Virgil by Yann Martel

September

      26. The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson

      27. The Music of Yes by Bill Martin

October

     28. Grunge is Dead by Greg Patro

     29. Of the Butterfly by Audrey Gene

     30. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

November

     31. Ottawa by James Hale

     32. Getting Things Done by David Allen

     33. Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman

     34. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (started in July)

     35. Can’t Buy Me Love by Jonathon Gould

December

     36. John Lennon: The Life by Philip Norman

     37. The Prow Beast by Robert Low

     38. PJ20

     39. 5x1 by Lance Mercer
     40. The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt

The Reading List, 2010

A friend got me onto this idea of keeping a list of the books I read by year. This is the second year I've done it but I'm not sure I'm going to do it again: too stressful. I actually found myself occasionally reaching for something thinner near the end of the month so I met my quota (three per month was the aim). Screw that; I have two kids and a busy job. Anyway, FYI. A few I've read before (Pi, etc), but needed to re-read for work. Comments and questions welcome.

January

1.      Shakey: Neil Young’s Biography by Jimmy McDonough

2.      The Burning Land by Bernard Cornwell

3.      A Writer’s Notebook by Caroline Sharp

February

4.      Notes for Monday by Barb Gordon

5.      Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

March

6.      Grendel by John Gardner

7.      The Book of Lists

8.      Write to Learn by Donald M. Murray

9.      For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

April

10.  Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

11.  The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

12.  Life of Pi by Yann Martel

13.  Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

May

14.  Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk

15.  501 Must-See Movies

16.  10 Simple Solutions by Glenn R. Schiraldi

June

17.  The Power of One by Bryce Courteney

18.  The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

19.  All My Creative Writing 25 Manuscripts

July

20.  Friday by Robert Heinlein

21.  How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci by Michael J. Gelb

August

22.  Sarum by Edward Rutherfurd

23.  Riotous Assembly by Tom Sharpe

September

24.  The Whale Road by Robert Low

25.  The Bathroom Book of Saskatchewan Trivia by Glenda MacFarlane

26.  Jonathon Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach

October

27.  The Shining by Stephen King

28.  Life on the Refrigerator Door by Alice Kuipers

29.  Quintspinner by Dianne Greenlay

November

30.  1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro

31.  Blue Ink and Epiphany by Anna Kristina Schultz

32.  The Wolf Sea by Robert Low

December

33.  The Forest Laird by Jack Whyte

Books are So Dead

How many times has the death knell been rung for books? Well, this time it really sounds like it, but then it's sounded like it before.

I'm reading a book called The Case for Books: Past, Present, Future by Robert Darnton, a Harvard librarian. I like reading books like that, books that have a touch of irony when people see you reading them on the bus. I read Harold Bloom's How to Read and Why and I always delighted in what people must have been thinking when they saw that.

"How can you read a book about it if you don't know how to read?"

Danton's book is interesting because he's telling us why books are important now, when they may be done for good. There must be thousands of books written every year telling us that books are dead. Irony again.

In university, I attended a conference called The Future of the Page. Pretty self-explanatory. There was fear in some parties that books were being killed slowly by the Internet. That was almost ten years ago. I mean, they were worried that books were obsolete and we were still using Windows '98 for God's sake! Barbaric.

Darnton addresses these neat little devices, one made by those dastardly Sony folks--no, constant reader, I'm not banging that drum again--upon which you can read an entire book. Google is uploading books by the thousands now, though there are still some lawsuits pending.

They're getting close to the convenience of a book in device form.

Now, people can say these things will never take the place of real books. Bill Gates himself says he can't read more than three pages of text on a screen before he feels he's got to print it off.

Great, we're using more paper since digitization. My word, that's more irony, that is.

Darnton was recently interviewed on CBC Radio and besides Mr. Gates' inability to stare at computers too long, the professor described a study that had revealed that some French students found smell to be a really huge part of their reading experience. I knew a girl once who said the smell of the stacks in the library was an aphrodisiac. . . . Digression. Anyway, an enterprising company provided the French students with those handy dandy book-readin' gadgets, which had been affixed with a sticker that gave off the smell of books.

They're creating long-lasting batteries and water/weather-proof cases so you can read in the forest or by the seaside for almost the same duration you can with a regular book.

So much work being done to make something like a book, seems to me a book might still be the way to go.

But maybe Bill Gates has an issue because he's from an older generation, a generation raised on the printed word. Maybe kids who grow up reading books on hand-held doohickeys will be accustomed to the experience, especially as Gates' underlings continue to play with screen resolution and fonts and electronic ink (no idea, I heard about it somewhere) which'll make the whole thing much easier on our poor peepers.

So, yeah, I think this time, for real, just maybe, the end of the book might, eventually, probably be coming . . . soonish. SHOUT IT FROM THE MOUNTAIN-TOPS!

As a writer and a book-collector, I should be worried. As a writer who values ideas more than money, I'm not. Sure, I'll miss looking at my bookshelves and daydreaming about the joys of past summer reads, but this won't be the end of the book. It just might be the end of the paper book . . . in a while.

I like trees. S'okay.

If I write a book. If I have a good idea, I put it down, and you read it, and one of the purest forms of communication transpires, does it matter how? Not to me.

Oh, but what will writers sign? Publishers may find you less viable to promote without the pretty front cover. Blah, blah, blah. Has anyone considered that the publishing industry is long overdue for the same digital kick in the ass that Big Music suffered? Gets us back down to the basics of what it's about--the art, not the package.

Just as an aside, Google is doing some pretty ambitious work in digitizing books, but I'm not so sure I like where it's headed. See, you'd pay to access their database, and that isn't the noble goal a library has: enlightenment to the masses. No, Google wants to charge you an access fee, which they say'll be cheap for now. But it's being done for dollars, and anything that is done to make money first is soulless, and I despise it.

Print newspaper ain't dead, but it's waiting to be unplugged from life-support. But that isn't the end of journalism. Hell, it isn't even the end of newspapers.

Books are going, yeah, but it's hardly the end of books.