Best of 2009 list excludes women writers

Publishers Weekly, that venerable (and some say dated) institution, has compiled its best books of 2009 list, and the top ten authors are all men. Interesting, given that the Booker and the Pulitzer (fiction) prizes both went to women this year. 

The list has resulted in predictably divided responses, with one camp arguing that perhaps no women-authored books were worthy of inclusion this year (justice is blind!), and the other asserting that this lineup is but the latest manifestation of the (often unconscious) gender bias in the literary world (you suck, PW).

Register your approval/howl of outrage at the WILLA (Women in Letters and Literary Arts) website.  You can also add your picks to their list of favorite books by women in 2009.   

Here’s the PW list in full: 

PW Top 10

Cheever: A Life

Blake Bailey (Knopf)

Bailey, who was given access to the journals Cheever kept throughout his life, shines a new light on Cheever’s literary output, making possible a fresh reappraisal of his achievement. In addition, Bailey offers up juicy, appalling, hilarious and moving anecdotes with verve, sensitivity and perfect timing.

Await Your Reply

Dan Chaon (Ballantine)

Chaon was a National Book Award finalist for Among the Missing, and this gripping account of colliding fates, the shifty nature of identity in today’s wired world and the limits of family is easily as good, if not better. It’s a literary page-turner, a cunningly plotted and utterly unputdownable novel.

A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon

Neil Sheehan (Random House)

The development of the ICBM as a key part of the cold war arsenal wasn’t inevitable. In a splendidly reported and narrated account, Sheehan credits Air Force Gen. Bernard Schriever with the foresight and shrewdness to triumph over powerful Pentagon opponents and develop the crucial and terrifying weapon.

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders

Daniyal Mueenuddin (Norton)

An NBA finalist (we found him first), Mueenuddin delivers Pakistan through the stories of its people: yearning, struggling, plotting, in a heartbreaking story collection that is specific and universal all at the same time.

Big Machine

Victor LaValle (Spiegel & Grau)

LaValle’s brilliant second novel is unlike anything else out there: Ricky Rice, an ex-junkie African-American bus station porter, gets sucked into the bizarre machinations of a rural Vermont cult dedicated to studying “The Voice.” The narrator is blisteringly funny in chronicling his bizarre quest, providing both a blazing story and an astute commentary on race.

The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science

Richard Holmes (Pantheon)

In a thrilling narrative of scientific discovery and the spirit of an age, Holmes illustrates how the great scientists of Britain’s romantic era gripped the imaginations of their contemporaries and forever changed our understanding of the universe and our place within it.

Stitches

David Small (Norton)

A graphic novel to bring us all back to comics, Small’s account of his terrifying childhood is amazing. The drawings of his parents and the small suffering boy who doesn’t quite understand until much, much later will pull you along panel by panel and tear your heart out.

Shop Class as Soulcraft

Matthew B. Crawford (Penguin Press)

Philosopher and motorcycle mechanic Crawford makes a brilliant case for the intellectual satisfactions of working with one’s hands—and why white-collar work is the assembly line of the new millennium. Crawford is catholic in his tastes (references range from Aristophanes to Dilbert), unsentimental and irresistible as he extols the virtues of “knowing how to do one thing really well.”

Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi

Geoff Dyer (Pantheon)

Dyer creates an aging hipster grinding it out as a freelance journalist who pursues the girl instead of the story: covering the Biennale. Then, depending on your point of view, he either loses or finds himself when he’s sent to Varanasi. Dyer has many books to recommend him, but all you need is angst-ridden Jeff: funny, frank and utterly charming, and if you haven’t walked in his shoes, you’ll wish you had.

Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon

David Grann (Doubleday)

In this classic adventure tale, New Yorker writer Grann—who gets winded climbing the stairs of his New York City walkup—follows in the footsteps of early–20th-century Amazon jungle explorer Percy Fawcett, who disappeared along with his son on a 1925 expedition. Grann expertly and energetically weaves the story of Fawcett’s explorations with that of his own.

And for further reading, here’s a link to a NYT article about gender bias in the (American) theater world.

Then Again by Elyse Friedman

Seldom, I believe, has a writer been as poorly served by her book covers as Elyse Friedman. Waking Beauty, a darkly thoughtful exploration of the unfair advantage beauty bestows upon the (unworthy) recipient, had a pink-and-white and-blonde-and-sparkly cover, thus dooming chick-lit fans to chagrin even as readers of literary fiction averted their eyes. 

Then Again, with a smart, punchy title that can be interpreted in at least two different ways in the context of the  plot, written with a precision that would make a watchmaker glow, features a split image of a pallid, glowering girl on its cover. Everything about it–the girl’s faintly repellent gaze, the gimmicky shot , the shiny stiff paper of the cover– begs that the book be tossed aside. Which I would have undoubtedly done had I not LOVED Waking Beauty.

Tom Robbins once famously said, “It’s never to late to have a happy childhood”.  What if someone took that to heart–a someone with the wealth and connections of a successful Hollywood screenwriter–and decided to relive his childhood for an entire weekend, literally? The reluctant participants in the scheme include the screenwriter’s sisters Michelle (the novel’s narrator), and Marla.  The trio’s parents are dead (natch), but Joel the screenwriter has arranged for a faux mom and faux dad. The Toronto house the siblings grew up in twenty years ago is recreated down to the avocado green carpet and the struggling tree out front.

What a setup. And Friedman has the prose skills and the sheer balls to carry it off.  The narrator’s voice alternates between syrupy sentimentality and hard-edged observation, and this pairing works beautifully with the theme of revisited adolesence. The novel’s pacing is impeccable, skittering between past and present till the two fuse in an explosive climax. The delight of such a book lies as much in the big idea as in the tiny details; I was reminded on more than one occasion of the film Goodbye Lenin .

I leave you with this image from the novel. “…Canadian movies, publicly funded and carefully crafted–like chilled white pie crusts, pinched and perfect…”  I’m going to tear off the miserable front cover of Then Again  and replace it with a gilded portrait of Friedman.  

This review-ish piece is my contribution to John’s Read a Canadian Book Month challenge.

Weekend roundup of literary tragedies.

The  past literary week brought nothing but misery. First: the wonderful and amazing site Readerville has ceased its existence. I am indebted to Readerville for many reasons, but most for introducing me to E. F. Benson’s Mapp and Lucia series. I’m going to write an ode to the books one of these days, but for now: Benson is to P. G. Wodehouse as wine is to Welch’s.  The raw material is the same–upper-class Britons in the 1920s and 1930s–but Benson is more subtle, more acerbic, and far more addictive. If you are an oxygen breather who speaks English, you ought not miss this series.

I was a lurker on the Readerville site for the most part, and it was a privilege to eavesdrop on a group of intelligent, articulate people all incorrigibly obsessed with books.  The site’s demise has halved my daily surfing time. 

I also finished  the new Sookie Stackhouse novel “Dead and Gone“  this weekend. The 9th book of Charlaine Harris’s vampire-meets-bonkable blonde series marks the point where I’ve officially quit the habit. Dead and Gone is not much more than a pile-up of corpses and perfunctory sex, and the prose has as much life as do Sookie’s vampire suitors. Any faith I might have had in Amazon.com’s ratings has been destroyed by the four stars readers awarded this pap.   

 

And finally, David Eddings, author of the The Belgariad and The Malloreon series, died last week. In spite of the predictable plot, the spineless female non-sorceress characters, and the not-so-hidden similarities with The Lord of Rings, these  books are beloved to me, and as much a part of my teenage years as Clearasil and Air Supply.

David Eddings. Picture Copyright: Ballantine Books

Now that Eddings has reached the great big Faldor’s Farm in the sky, I am going to re-read all ten books in memorium of a writer who never failed to entertain his readers. 

Can we please move past the accent, idioms and the head shake?

India newbie Jil Wheeler dives joyfully into stereotypes about the country in the article  It’s like this, only  in The Morning News. The mention of tandoori chicken and Kingfisher beer in the opening sentence set off my cliche alert.    

It’s the end of a long night eating tandoori chicken and drinking Kingfisher beer  in Mumbai with visiting friends. Traffic has slowed to a few cars here and there, and we flag down a cab. The stereo is pounding Bollywood disco, but the driver turns down the volume to ask where to. “Turner Road,” I reply, or, more accurately rendered, ““Tournah Rrrr-ooad” with several up-and-down vocal inflections.

On Indian English:

The English spoken in Mumbai is, to my ears, nothing short of fantastic. It is a loopy, sing-song spaghetti mess with odd accents, quick flicks of the tongue, and excessive nasalization. Veg becomes wedge, Jil becomes gel, and films, flims.
The words themselves are enamoring. Indian English is stuck in a time warp—the problem is no one can figure out exactly which decade, or what century. A casual business email from a local colleague concludes, “The details will be intimated presently. Please do the needful. Most respectfully yours.” Wikipedia claims overly formal language is a holdover from the East India Company, but I think that’s a bit generous, even though certainly the language has more in common with letters my grandfather wrote than texts I send my friends. If “updation,” “prepone,” and “felicitate” aren’t already in your office vocabulary, they really should be.

On Indian mannerisms:

Oh yes, the Indian head bobble. Did I forget the bobble? Telling a cab driver “Tournah Rrrr-ooad” will get you nowhere unless you also insert the appropriate head waggle and/or bobble. The head bobble speaks volumes, but that is a Bombay discussion for another day.

 

It wasn’t a WTF moment, but the article left me somewhat disturbed. I don’t, for a nanosecond, think Jil Wheeler is channeling Katherine Mayo. But I do wish a journalist paid to visit India to record her impressions would move beyond the obvious.  The subject matter is new and comment-worthy to Wheeler, but (if I might presume to speak on behalf of a country) most Indians feel this kind of writing has been done to death over the past decades, if not centuries. We didn’t like it then, and we don’t like it now; please move on, Wheeler. 

Something else I’m grappling with: Wheeler’s piece seems to presuppose the existence of an absolute standard of correctness for accent and speech against which other patterns fall short. But such an ”absolute standard” is, in reality, a construct of the writer’s particular circumstances. In other words, the writer finds the subject funny mostly because it is unfamiliar. Surely the mere fact of being an outsider ought not privilege the writer to such an extent?  In sum: I wish my beloved Morning News had an old India hand vet Wheeler’s writing before featuring it on their front page.

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Yellowknife by Steve Zipp

Your hunt for the most boring Wikipedia entry ever ends now. Type “Yellowknife” in the search box; you’ll hear the gurgle as the spirit is sucked out of one of the most intriguing cities on the planet. 

I mention Wikipedia because most non-Canadian readers of Steve Zipp’s debut novel Yellowknife will in all likelihood want need to look up the city. I’m providing some facts about Yellowknife in this post before I begin my review.   

First, a map of Canada.  Yellowknife is just above the big black C.

 

 

(This map is available at http://atlas.nrcan.gc.ca/site/english/index.html)

 

Yellowknife is the capital of the NorthWest Territories. The NorthWest Territories are almost twice the size of France. The population of the NorthWest Territories is about 41,000 people. All together now: Looonely! 

 

 In the 1930s, Yellowknife was discovered to contain sizable gold deposits, leading to a mini gold rush. The rush waned towards the end of the century, but save your sympathy for the Yellowknifers; in the early nineties, the area turned up diamonds. The city now calls itself “The Diamond Capital of North America.” 

 

 And in what is possibly the most redundant sentence in Canadian prose, I add that Yellowknife is very cold.

 

Steve Zipp’s Yellowknife is set in the eponymous city in 1998. It’s a delirious read, one that incorporates the region’s history into a truly zany storyline. Endeavoring to describe the plot any further is akin to eating soup with a fork–you get some bits and pieces, but miss the main meal. Picking up my spork: The book features an entomologist who offers his arm for mosquito bait, a conceptual artist who wanders around garbage dumps, a drifter who learns to live off dog food, and about twenty other oddball characters who come together to do their thing in Yellowknife.  

And what a city it is, in a region “so remote it’s almost mythical.” A restaurant menu in Yellowknife might include fried ptarmigan, sweet and sour bearpaw, scrambled caribou brains on toast, and detoxified bear liver.  There’s an annual  Caribou Carnival, where activities include tea boiling and log sawing; people sip frosty drinks “in glasses made of ice.” The local newspaper is called the Yellowknife Blade. A posh restaurant accepts diamonds in lieu of cash; waiters carry loupes on their person. Zipp assumes the reader is familiar with the region (or has a huge vocabulary); I for one had to look up “pomarine jaeger” (a sea bird),  mukluks (a type of boot), horsetails (a plant)…you get the idea.  At least I knew   Zamboni, thanks to my years in Canada. 

The real joy in this novel, however, lies in the sharp, acerbic writing. Zipp quotes from Kafka, Jack London and Bulgakov, amongst others, and his prose is notable as much for its intelligence as its humor. You read it here first: Zipp is blood brother to Tom Robbins.  There are many interesting and erudite passages to showcase; it is purely a function of this reviewer’s base mind that the quoted section deals with sex (or its lack thereof).  

Danny the drifter finally has a chance to get it off with the most beautiful woman in our dimension. But then she asks if he has a condom.

The answer was plain on his face. She might as well have been asking for a condominium. “Christ” she muttered and reached for her clothes
“No, wait, I can find something. A plastic bag. A rubber glove.”

No luck. Danny then tries to salvage the situation.

“No problem…I’ll pick some up tomorrow….Do you have a favorite brand?…Any particular color or flavor?”

 

 

If I have one quibble, it is that Yellowknife sometimes feels like too much of a good thing. It’s as though Zipp had a hundred great ideas, and he shoehorned them all into this 286-page book. The resulting read is breathless though manageable, but it gets sticky when it comes to the characters. There are so many appealing dramatis personae vying for the role of protagonist that ultimately, I wasn’t truly invested in any character. Just as I got into Danny’s adventures, bam! a new character squealing “Forget Danny, look at me!” would cavort on the page. I suppose I could have treated the book like the aforementioned soup and just enjoyed whatever came along, but I kept getting distracted, wondering where that tempting piece of pineapple lurked, and if the spongy object I was chewing on was a mushroom or a pellet of Bounty…

It is a sad, sad thing that Zipp’s novel, published by the small press Res Telluris, should languish in obscurity. I do not know the author (apart from exchanging a brief email correspondence regarding the timing of this review) and I have no hesitation in flogging his work in every possible way. Here is the publisher’s website, and here is the author’s blog. Do buy the book. Or, if you must, download it for FREE  from the publisher’s site. And don’t forget to send Zipp a mash note asking him to write another novel real soon.

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Read Your Way Around the World Challenge: Iceland

Today (April 23rd)  is World Book and Copyright Day. It’s organized by  UNESCO to promote reading, publishing and copyright. I feel obliged to honor the occasion–especially now that I’m in the middle of a copyright flap  

Global Voices is conducting a book challenge titled “Read your way around the world”  to mark the day.   

  

The Challenge is as follows:

1) Read a book during the next month from a country whose literature you have never read anything of before.
2) Write a blog post about it during the week of April 23.
3) Tag your posts with #gvbook09

I joined the challenge on Lotus Reads, and chose Paradise Reclaimed by the Icelandic writer Halldor Laxness.  Laxness  won the Nobel prize for literature in 1955, and his book has been on my shelf for a long long time. It seemed the perfect choice.

Alas, my response to the challenge was less than successful. This book was just not my thing. 

Paradise Reclaimed deals with the adventures of a farmer named Steinar of Steinahlioar (I don’t know how to insert the special characters that every proper noun in this novel seems to require). Steinar is a simple man who happens to own a  beautiful horse. When the king of Denmark visits Iceland, Steinar decides to present him the horse, and thus sets out on the first of his travels. On the way, he meets an Icelandic Mormon who tells him all about the Promised Land.  After a couple of adventures, Steinar abandons his wife and son and daughter and sets off for Utah.

Steinar’s farm falls into disarray. The daughter is raped and becomes pregnant; in her innocence, she insists it’s a virgin birth.  The wife and son are relentlessly exploited. Their land is destroyed.

I quit reading here, midway through the novel. It was just too depressing and infuriating.

I’ve no doubt that this novel is a saga of the redemptive power of goodness, but mostly, I just wanted to kick Steinar in the seat of his pants. The introduction by Jane Smiley states that the novel “asks us to accept in Steinar a man of radical innocence, who neither ruminates upon nor questions his own decisions, but acts and then accepts the results of his actions.” Well, the novel failed to make me accept Steinar or suspend judgement; I blamed him soundly for going off half-cocked to Utah. Laxness evidently intends Steinar to be something of a tragic hero. Not that I’d dream of contradicting a Nobel prize-winning writer, but Steinar seems to me a bit of an ass; I can understand his desire to see the Promised Land, but why couldn’t he take his willing family along instead of leaving them to the wolves? As for his wife and children, they never blame Steinar for abandoning them; rather, the daughter weeps for her father and says “If Daddy is a  Mormon, then I want to be a Mormon woman.”

I also think much of my inability to relate to this book stems from my ignorance of Icelandic folklore–I can tell I’m  missing all sort of references to myths and historical events that would have made this book a much richer read.  This omission is of course entirely my fault (I should  have hunted out the Cliffs Notes), but if I had read something about Iceland, I couldn’t have chosen this book for the challenge.  Anyway, the overall feeling was rather like reading Beckham’s autobiography without ever having seen the man kick a ball.  Not satisfactory.

I have to say: Laxness has perfect control of his material. I’m admiring the way the author plays off Steinar’s innocence against his child-like wisdom even as I resent the plot turns. He successfully  uses a strange satirical humor while writing about brutal events, and there’s a fable-like tone to the prose that perfectly suits this kind of story. In sum, I think I’ve picked the wrong book by the right author. I can’t bring myself to finish Paradise Reclaimed, but I’ll be hunting out other works by Laxness. Oh, and I’ll have start figuring out those special characters soon.

Many lie over books ‘to impress’

Four in 10 people have lied about what they had read to impress friends or potential partners, according to an article on the Beeb website.

I’m really heartened by this news. Being widely read makes a person attractive! Deal with that, you iphone flaunting skinny jean wearers. I see your piercing, and I’ll raise you my Rushdie.

“The men polled said they would be most impressed by women who read news websites, Shakespeare or song lyrics.

Women said men should have read Nelson Mandela’s biography or Shakespeare. “

Of course I lied about reading when I was younger.  Joseph Campbell. Shakespeare. Couple of French writers. A surfeit of poets. Upon reflection though, I think I lied more about what I hadn’t read. Self-help books. Linda Goodman’s Love Signs. Woman’s Era.

I don’t lie about reading any more–it’s too dangerous and stupid, now that I’m a professional reviewer.  Moreover, one of the few benefits of growing old is that you don’t care as much about impressing people–co-existence, that’s my goal.  So: I haven’t read Nelson Mandela’s biography. The last song lyrics I looked up: Bohemian Rhapsody. 

What books have you lied about?

This article made me fondly recall Changing Places by the incomparable David Lodge.  The novel mentions a party game called Humiliation, where each person names a book he hasn’t read but assumes others have, and gets a point for every one who has read it. So the person who hasn’t read a book everyone else has gets the most points.  For instance, if you haven’t read Harry Potter but everyone else has, you’d be winning. 

The players at this particular party are English professors from a large American university. I don’t remember the exact details, but there’s a Type-A character whose need to win is only matched by his need to look good–a real dilemma if you’re playing Humiliation, eh?  Anyway, this professor admits to not having read Hamlet, and wins the game–but is subsequently rejected for tenure because everyone knows he hasn’t read Hamlet. My description does no justice to the sparkling irony that imbues Lodge’s writing…please, if you’ve never read his work, do so at once, and I’ll bet his backlist will head your 2009  TBR list.

 

The Famous Five in the Mystery of Political Correctness

I return to blogging after a month during which I was so frantically busy I had neither the time nor energy to read anything but children’s fiction, and previously-read children’s fiction at that. I revisited my Captain Underpants box set, several Eva Ibbotsens, and my collection of Richmal Crompton’s William books (I own all thirty-eight; make of that what you will). I then picked up one of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series. The Famous Five, as most know, are a crime-fighting group consisting of Timmy the prescient dog who unfailingly barks at villains and nuzzles the good guys, junior studmuffin Julian, his brother Dick (I kid you not), their weepy-eyed sister Anne and their cousin George, poster child for serious therapy failing which a sex-change operation is certainly in her future. The foursome lived in some part of Britain conveniently peppered by caves and smugglers, and were always eating enormous teas and renting caravans in between catching Desperate Criminals Who Had Baffled Scotland Yard. 

I loved the series as a child. Twenty years later, the book made me want to rinse my eyes out with Purell. The part where Julian tells a female character the trouble with her is she doesn’t have a brother to “keep her in her place”, I quit reading, and donated the book to my local library. (But now, upon sober reflection, I think I ought to have stamped out its existence completely, ideally by stabbing it with a Basilisk fang.)

I now hear the Famous Five is being relaunched as an animated series. By Disney. With the offspring of the original Four as the lead characters. With a new PC angle. According to this article on the BBC website,

They feature 12-year-old Anglo-Indian Jo, short for Jyoti – a Hindi word meaning light – who, like her mother George [NB: So she got that gender thing sorted, eh?], is a tomboy and the group’s team leader.

Other characters include Allie, a 12-year-old Californian “shopaholic” who enjoys going out and getting “glammed up” but is packed off to the British countryside to live with her cousins.

Her mother was Anne in the Famous Five, a reluctant adventurer who has now  become a successful art dealer.

The team is completed by adventure junkie Max, who is 13-year-old Julian’s son; Dylan, the 11-year-old son of Dick, and dog Timmy.

(Picture from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7306752.stm)

Back in the days, Blyton’s work had a huge following in the Commonwealth countries; perhaps one of the reasons for introducing Jyoti is an attempt to continue that appeal to the next generation there? I’m really curious to see if the Disney series will do the trick in the Indian market.  

Kate Christensen wins the 2008 Pen/Faulkner award

I was thrilled to hear Kate Christensen’s novel The Great Man had won this years PEN/Faulkner award.  Christensen is in good company–past winners include Roth and Updike and E.L.Doctorow and DeLilo.  Only 4 women have won the award since its inception 28 years ago…

Readers of this blog may recall reading my gushy review of the book posted here early Jan (the piece was originally published in Eclectica magazine). From my review:

The seeming effortlessness of the read is misleading however; this is fine, fine writing. Christensen can carve an image in your mind with a few deft words–a dog who resembles “a mournful miniature hippo,” or a toddler who looks like “an evil little elf,” with “potential for explosiveness in the manic corners of his mouth.” There are lovingly detailed, impossible-to- resist descriptions of food, which left me aglow with lunch ideas for the next few years.

But the prose truly takes off when Christensen is describing a setting. A dinner party, a kitchen with a meal in preparation, a trip to the grocery store are all described with such articulate panache that we are sucked right into the scene, eavesdropping on a neighbor’s revelations about an old flame even as we stir our soup bowls to identify that elusive spice. Somebody buy Christensen a ticket to see the Taj Mahal.

To have my taste affirmed by a discerning judging panel leaves me feeling all smug and satisfied. Seriously, though, do read this book–it’s devilishly clever.  

The Washington Post  has an interview with the author and more news about the award. 

The Canadian Book Challenge

I’ve joined John Mutford’s Canadian Book challenge. I’m 3 months late, which is actually pretty good by my track record…

The rules: to read 13 Canadian books before July 1, and blog about each one. The number 13 signifies Canada’s 13 provinces (Canada doesn’t have states, y’know).  I’m also copying John’s truly awesome list of suggested titles here. Readers who’d like to go beyond Atwood and Mistry in Canadian fiction: look no further!

(Titles in red: those I’ve read, in blue: authors I’ve read, just not that particular book. )

Newfoundland and Labrador-
Bernard Assiniwi- The Beothuk Saga
Ken Babstock- Airstream Land Yacht (Poetry)
Cassie Brown- Death On The Ice (Non-fiction)
Paul Butler- Easton
Joan Clark- An Audience of Chairs
Michael Crummey- River Thieves
Mary Dalton- Merrybegot (Poetry)
Bud Davidge and Ian Wallace (Illustrator)- The Mummer’s Song (Children’s Book)
Jim Defede- The Day The World Came To Town (Non-fiction)
Kenneth J. Harvey- The Town That Forgot How To Breathe
Harold Horwood- White Eskimo
Harold Horwood- Bartlett The Great Explorer (Non-fiction)
Percy Janes- House of Hate
Dale Jarvis- Haunted Shores: True Ghost Stories of Newfoundland and Labrador
Wayne Johnston- Colony of Unrequited Dreams
Kevin Major- Eh? To Zed (Children’s book)
Lisa Moore- Open (Short Stories)
Lisa Moore- Alligator
Bernice Morgan- Random Passage
Donna Morrissey- Kit’s Law
Claire Mowat- Outport People (Non-fiction)
Earl B. Pilgrim- The Ghost of Ellen Dower
Al Pittman- Down By Jim Long’s Stage (Children’s poems)
Al Pittman- West Moon (play)
E. J. Pratt- Complete Poems (Poetry)
E. Annie Proulx- The Shipping News
Edward Riche- Rare Birds
Ted Russell- The Holdin’ Ground (play)
Dillon Wallace- The Lure of The Labrador Wild
Michael Winter- The Big Why

Prince Edward Island-
Milton Acorn- I Shout Love and Other Poems (Poetry)
Anne Compton- Processional (Poetry)
Stompin’ Tom Connors and Brenda Jones (Illustrator)- The Hockey Song (Children’s Book)
David Helwig- Saltsea
Michael Hennessey- The Betrayer
Lucy Maud Montgomery- Anne of Green Gables
J. J. Steinfeld- Would You Hide Me? (Short Stories)

Nova Scotia-
Ernest Buckler- The Mountain and the Valley
George Elliott Clarke- Whylah Falls (Poetry)
Frank Parker Day- Rockbound
Brad Kessler- Birds In Fall
Thomas Chandler Haliburton- The Clockmaker
Ann-Marie MacDonald- Fall On Your Knees
Linden MacIntyre- Causeway (Non-fiction)
Hugh MacLennan- The Watch That Ends The Night
Alistair MacLeod- Island (Short Stories)
Alistair MacLeod- No Great Mischief
Ami McKay- The Birth House
Alden Nolan- The Best Of (Poetry)
Anne Simpson- Loop (Poetry)

New Brunswick-
Donna Allard- Minago Streets (Poetry)
Linda Hall- Black Ice
Elisabeth Harvor- Fortress Of Chairs
Antonine Maillet- Pelagie: The Return To Acadie
David Adams Richards- Mercy Among The Children
Charles G. D. Roberts- The Collected Poems (Poetry)
T. G. Roberts- The Red Feathers

Quebec-
Hubert Acquin- Next Episode
Peter Behrens- The Law of Dreams
Saul Bellow- Humboldt’s Gift
Frances Brooke- The History of Emily Montague
Nicole Brossard- Museum of Bone and Water
Willa Cather- Shadows On The Rock
Roch Carrier- The Hockey Sweater (Children’s Book)
Leonard Cohen- Beautiful Losers
Leonard Cohen- Let Us Compare Mythologies (Poetry)
Romeo Dallaire- Shake Hands With The Devil (Non-fiction)
Mavis Gallant- Home Truths (Short Stories)
Anne Hebert- Kamouraska
Naomi Klein- No Logo (Non-fiction)
Gordon Korman- Island: Shipwreck (Young Adult)
Irving Layton- Dance With Desire (Poems)
Markoosie- Harpoon of the Hunter
Yann Martel- Life of Pi
Colin McDougall- Execution
Stuart McLean- Stories From The Vinyl Café (Short Stories)
Heather O’Neill- Lullabies For Little Criminals
Jacques Poulin- Volkswagen Blues
Monique Proulx- The Heart Is An Involuntary Muscle
Mordecai Richler- Barney’s Version
Gabrielle Roy- The Tin Flute
Mairuth Sarsfield- No Crystal Stair
Gaetan Soucy- The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond Of Matches
Yves Theriault- Agaguk
Michel Tremblay- The Fat Woman Next Door Is Pregnant
Michel Tremblay- Forever Yours Marie-Lou (Play)

Ontario-
Margaret Atwood- Handmaid’s Tale
Joan Barfoot- Luck
David Bezmozgis- Natasha and Other Stories (Short Stories)
Christian Bok- Eunoia (poetry)
Joseph Boyden- Three Day Road
Morley Callaghan- More Joy In Heaven
Austin Clarke- The Polished Hoe
Matt Cohen- Elizabeth and After
Robertson Davies- Fifth Business
Gordon Downie- Coke Machine Glow (Poetry)
Marian Engel- Bear
Timothy Findley- The Wars
Phoebe Gilman- Something From Nothing (Children’s Book)
David Gilmour- A Perfect Night To Go To China
Douglas Glover- Elle
Barbara Gowdy- White Bone
Helen Humphries- Afterimage
Frances Itani- Deafening
M. T. Kelly- A Dream Like Mine
Thomas King- Green Grass, Running Water
Vincent Lam- Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures (Short stories)
Mary Lawson- Crow Lake
Stephen Leacock- Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (Short Stories)
Dennis Lee- Alligator Pie (Children’s Poems)
Charles de Lint- Moonlight and Vines
Jon McCrae- In Flanders Fields (Poem)
Anne Michaels- Fugitive Pieces
Rohinton Mistry- A Fine Balance
Farley Mowat- Never Cry Wolf
Alice Munro- Who Do You Think You Are? (Short Stories)
Robert Munsch- The Paperbag Princess (Children’s Book)
Michael Ondaatje- In The Skin Of A Lion
Al Purdy- Beyond Remembering (Poetry)
Paul Quarrington- Whale Music
Barbara Reid- Two By Two (Children’s Book)
Nino Richie- Lives of The Saints
Leon Rooke- Shakespeare’s Dog
Diane Schoemperlen- Forms of Devotion
Jane Urquhart- The Stone Carvers
M. G. Vassanji- The In-Between World of Vikram Lall
Richard B. Wright- Clara Callan

Manitoba-
David Bergen- The Time In Between
David Godfrey- The New Ancestors
Tomson Highway- The Rez Sisters (Play)
Margaret Laurence- A Bird In The House (Short Stories)
Margaret Laurence- A Jest of God
Corey Redekop- Shelf Monkey
Bill Richardson- Bachelor Brothers’ Bed and Breakfast
Carol Shields- The Stone Diaries
Miriam Toews- A Complicated Kindness
Adele Wiseman- The Sacrifice

Saskatchewan-
Sharon Butala- Lilac Moon (Non-fiction)
Paul Hiebert- Sarah Binks
Guy Gavriel Kay- The Summer Tree
Tim Lilburn- Kill-Site (Poetry)
W. O. Mitchell- Who Has Seen The Wind
Sinclair Ross- As For Me and My House
Kate Sutherland- All In Together Girls
Guy Vanderhaeghe- The Last Crossing
Dianne Warren- Serpent In The Night Sky (play)
Rudy Wiebe- The Temptations of Big Bear

Alberta-
Anita Rau Badami- Can You Hear The Nightbird Call?
Earle Birney- One Muddy Hand (Poetry)
Will Ferguson- Why I Hate Canadians (Nonfiction)
Katherine Govier- Three Views of Crystal Water
Greg Holingshead- The Roaring Girl (Short stories)
W. P. Kinsella- Shoeless Joe
Robert Kroetsch- The Studhorse Man
Gloria Sawai- A Song For Nettie Johnson
Thomas Wharton- Salamander
Christopher Wiseman- In John Updike’s Room (Poetry)

British Columbia-
George Bowering- The Gangs of Kosmos
Kevin Chong- Baroque-a-Nova
Wayson Choy- The Jade Peony
Douglas Coupland- Generation X
Margaret Craven- I Heard The Owl Call My Name
John Gould- Kilter (Short stories)
Jack Hodgins- The Resurrection of Joseph Bourne
Anosh Irani- The Song of Kahunsha
Joy Kogawa- Obasan
Susan Musgrave- What The Small Day Cannot Hold (Poetry)
bp Nichol- The Martyrology (Poetry)
Kenneth Oppel- Silverwing (Young Adult)
P.K. Page- Planet Earth (Poetry)
Gayla Reid- To Be There With You (Short stories)
Eden Robinson- Monkey Beach
Timothy Taylor- Stanley Park
Audrey Thomas- Coming Down From Wa
Michael Turner- Hard Core Logo
Sheila Watson- The Double Hook

Yukon-
Pierre Berton- The National Dream (Non-fiction)
Ted Harrison- Children of the Yukon (Children’s Book)
Pj Johnson- Rhymes of the Raven Lady (Poetry)
Jack London- Call of the Wild
Dick North- The Mad Trapper of Rat River (Non-fiction)
Al Pope- Bad Latitudes
Robert Service- The Best Of (Poetry)

Northwest Territories-
Robert Alexie- Pale Indian
Richard Van Camp- Lesser Blessed
Rene Fumoleau- Here I Sit (Poetry)
Elizabeth Hay- Late Nights On Air
Mackay Jenkins- Bloody Falls of the Coppermine (nonfiction)
James Raffan- Emperor of The North (Non-fiction)
Steve Zipp- Yellowknife

Nunavut-
John Bennett and Susan Rowley (Editors and compilers) Uqalurait: An Oral History of Nunavut (Non-fiction)
Pierre Berton- The Arctic Grail (Nonfiction)
Jan Brett- Three Snow Bears (Children’s Book)
Kenn Harper- Give Me My Father’s Body (Non-fiction)
James Houston- The White Dawn
Michael Kusugak- Curse of the Shaman (Young Adult)
Michael Kusugak and Vladyana Krykorka(Illustrator)- Hide and Sneak (Children’s book)
Tom Lowenstein (translator)/ Knud Rasmussen (compiled by)- Eskimo Poems (Poetry)
Kevin Patterson- Consumption
Robert Ruby- Unknown Shore (Non-fiction)
Zachariah Wells- Unsettled
Eric Wilson- The Inuk Mountie Adventure (Young Adult)

My knowledge of Canadian fiction is admittedly skewed because I read a lot of South Asian Canadian authors (such as Shyam Selvadurai and Shani Mootoo), but I’m still rather aghast at how much of this list is black rather than red or blue. On with the challenge!