11 of the year's most inspiring books to read or gift
Booksellers, librarians and other book lovers share their top pick of 2019
It can be overwhelming to look at the bountiful display at bookstores, let alone make a selection, and there are so many bestseller lists, literary prizes and even celebrity-curated recommendations to consult. Plus, when it comes to gifting, the types of books that a friend or family member might love may not be a genre that you're personally familiar with, which can make literary gift-giving more challenging.
To get you sorted for great reads over the next few months (at least until the 2020 releases start arriving), and for the holiday book-buying rush, we asked some of our favourite book lovers from across the country including authors, librarians and booksellers, to share their most inspiring read of the year with CBC Life.
Here are the 11 books they raved about — you can't go wrong with one of these brilliant selections.
Lindsay Wong, writer, editor and author of The Woo-Woo: How I Survived Ice Hockey, Drug-Raids, Demons, And My Crazy Chinese Family:
"I was recently stuck in Sault Ste. Marie for five and a half hours. When we finally got on the tarmac, they couldn't clear the snow so we just sat there for two and a half hours with the plane door open and the snow blowing down on us in the front row. Alix Ohlin's Dual Citizens kept me company on my fifteen hour journey from Ontario to Vancouver. There is something really phenomenal about a book when the writer makes you forget about the chaos and cold descending around you.
I really loved how Ohlin wove together such a complex, nuanced story about sisterhood, artistry, family, and identity with so much beauty and depth. This was my last and favourite novel of 2019. The prose is absolutely exquisite and so much of the drama is quietly, but intensely, riveting. When a book forces you to re-examine your own haunted relationships with your mother and sister, you know that it's a tour de force."
Rules for Visiting by Jessica Francis Kane
Nathalie Atkinson, freelance film critic and culture journalist in Toronto:
"Jessica Francis Kane's quietly surprising novel Rules for Visiting is about an extremely introverted university gardener who uses a sabbatical to revive lapsed longtime relationships, and has musings on empathy, cultivating meaningful connections with others, and being known. In the age of more-is-less when I sometimes feel everywhere and nowhere at once (see also: Jenny Odell's How to Do Nothing), I found it a fortifying and encouraging read. Loosely organized in thematic chapters (hosts, guests, thank-you notes) that wink to Emily Post, I loved it as much for the resonant message as for its lovely digressive and allusive qualities — ruminations on botany, etiquette, solitude, and friendship, and references to Samuel Johnson, Homer, and May Sarton. And it's funny! P.S. We also need to get 'arbotchery,' Kane's made-up word to describe the heartless pruning of trees around power lines, into the lexicon."
Days by Moonlight by André Alexis
David Alexander, Festival Director for The Word On The Street Toronto:
"A magical mystery tour of small-town Ontario — a landscape Alexis illustrates with real and invented traditions, histories, folklore, and plant life. At the centre of things is the classic story of a botanist joining an aging professor on a road trip in search of a once acclaimed, now vanished Canadian poet. Days by Moonlight had me recounting whole episodes out loud to anyone who would listen, and left its mark on both my imagination and my sense of place and history. Recommended for aspiring poets and botanists alike."
Daughter of Family G: A Memoir of Cancer Genes, Love and Fate by Ami McKay
Sarah Weaver, Collection Development Librarian at Halifax Public Libraries:
"Ami McKay, bestselling Nova Scotian author of The Birth House, published [this] memoir. McKay shares the incredible story of her family's long history with hereditary cancer. Despite travelling through life knowing she has a rare genetic mutation, McKay has written a memoir that celebrates life, love and her incredible family. As someone who has spent endless hours researching my own family history, I envy McKay's ability to pull together all of her research into such an intriguing story. This memoir beautifully weaves together the present day with her own memories and well-researched scenes depicting her long-lost ancestors. Daughter of Family G is a unique and engrossing read."
Amy Dennis, Head of Marketing for Toronto International Festival of Authors:
"Sometimes I feel overwhelmed just by turning on the news these days. Between politics, poverty and the loss of privacy to technology, it's easy to feel like a small cog in a wheel of uncertainty. In her debut novel, The Farm, Joanne Ramos conjures a beautiful story of women challenged with these real world issues in a surreal setting. Their stories become intertwined when they meet at a futuristic retreat where they have agreed to trade nine months of their freedom to bear children for anonymous, wealthy benefactors. Driven by their own unique reasons, their stories take you on a thrilling journey of hope and resilience. The Farm reminds us that, despite the complex world we live in, as long as there is love, there can be redemption."
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells
Caroline Crowe, Librarian at Vancouver Public Library:
"Scientists have spent decades sounding the alarm on the consequences of climate change. In The Uninhabitable Earth, David Wallace-Wells depicts a future far worse than ever imagined: warming will cause rising sea levels, food shortages and population displacement on a mass scale, catastrophes that will transform our politics, our culture, our relationship to technology and our relationships to each other. Wallace-Wells' goal is to write with 'enough horror to induce a panic attack in even the most optimistic'. Though unbearably bleak, there's a glimmer of hope that the West's apathetic good intentions may finally be galvanised into concrete action. For a brief moment this autumn and with youth in the vanguard, the issue was forcibly thrust into the collective awareness as millions took to the streets worldwide to protest the wholesale mortgage the planet's future. The anxiety this book will induce in the reader may further what is long overdue — the motivation to incite real change."
I Hope We Choose Love by Kai Cheng Thom
Moti Lieberman, bookseller at Librairie Argo Bookshop, Montreal:
"The world has no shortage of evils, and it takes an author with bravery to take on a range of them with honesty. This slim collection of essays ranges over racism, transphobia, self-harm and other traumas with insight and realism. But what really makes this worth your read is the way that Kai Cheng Thom works to help us imagine new ways we can rebuild our world, and ways for the world to be. We have a lot of choices, but I hope we choose love, too."
To Speak for the Trees: My Life's Journey from Ancient Celtic Wisdom to a Healing Vision of the Forest by Diana Beresford-Kroeger
JoAnn M., co-owner of Shelf Life Books, Calgary:
"I had the opportunity to meet this author on a trip to Ireland last summer, and to have an in-depth conversation with her about kelp! (Who knew there was so much to say about kelp?) She is an extraordinary person and her book is a potent mixture of science and spirituality. It inspires the reader to re-envision the human relationship with the natural world, in the tradition of The Hidden Life of Trees, The Overstory, and Greenwood."
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
Rosemary Griebel, Service Design Lead for Readers at Calgary Public Library:
"It is rare to find a book so beautifully written that it makes you hold your breath to the end of a sentence. Vuong's book is a painfully raw, intimate, and tender novel-length letter about family and the immigration experience, written by one of this generations' best poets. Of all the books I read in 2019, this is the one that I will return to again and again."
In Love With The World: A Monk's Journey Through The Bardos Of Living And Dying by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoch
Rebecca Andoff, bookseller at TYPE Books Junction, Toronto:
"Sometimes, just sometimes, a book can actually reframe your worldview. At age 36, Tibetan monk Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche stepped away from his lifetime of training in Buddhist monasteries to experience greater humanity, and rapidly discovered the impossibility of living with the same impeccable principles when faced with the chaos of the world. Part memoir, part travelogue, part gentle transformative guide to being a person on Earth. Keep a pen handy, because you'll want to keep notes."
Sarah Pietroski, owner, and Katie Middleton, bookseller, at A Novel Spot Bookshop, Etobicoke, ON:
"Katherine, the protagonist in The Tenth Muse is a young lady of great intellect. Her passion for mathematics sets her apart from others. [The book is] set in the 1950s and Katherine is fighting for her place in the world. She struggles with complex moral decisions and she weighs the cost of love against ambition with a candour that makes this story very compelling."
Truc Nguyen is a Toronto-based writer, editor and stylist. Follow her at @trucnguyen.