I read a total of (roughly) 136 books this year, of which 43% were non-fiction. My audiobook count went up a bit this year, driven partially by what version was available through the Toronto Public Library and partially because I went to Spain and wanted to be able to look at scenery while still reading!

Here are some of my favorites from this year last, grouped by my attempt at relationship and cleverness.

OLDIES BUT GOODIES

Middlemarch, George Eliot. I did this one in audiobook version, mostly on planes and trains. I’d never read it before, and never really thought I wanted to, but I’m very glad I finally decided to take the plunge. I think the audiobook was the way to go, as the lovely narrator kept me engaged with the wonderful prose. There’s a reason it’s an influential classic.

The Feast, Margaret Kennedy. We jump ahead to 1950s Britain for the slyly satirical tale of impending disaster in a shabby holiday hotel in Cornwall. We know people die and we don’t know who. Despite the human frailties and foibles of the various characters, I couldn’t help thinking “I hope it’s not her” more times than I expected.

And the Rain My Drink, Han Suyin. I heard about this one through one of the long books about British colonialism I read last year. Set just after World War II, it explores the lives of the various groups that inhabit Malaya. Everyone is just trying to survive, and survival exacts a price.

SEAS SEDUCTIVE AND DEADLY

Wild Dark Shore, Charlotte McConaghy. Set in the near future, the protector of a seed vault on a remote island near Antarctica encounters the survivor of an unlikely shipwreck. The pasts of the island, the family that inhabits it, and the survivor are all revealed as the seas rise to swamp them.

Wavewalker, Suzanne Heywood. Heywood’s memoir of her childhood at sea informs WIld Dark Shore. Her feckless father, who had little sailing experience, decided to pack his family off to the south seas to live on a boat. How Heywood survived the experience, and built a new life for herself, was fascinating.

ANCIENT WORDS

There are Rivers in the Sky, Elif Shafak and Between Two Rivers, Moudhy Al-Rashid. The first is fiction and using the history of cuneiform, and it’s impact on three lives, to show the power of imagination and the beauty of writing (especially writing like Shafak’s). The second is non-fiction and uses the real history of Mesopotamia to show us how that writing emerged, and how the people who recorded their dreams, sorrows, hopes – and IOUs – are closer than we think.

BEHIND THE MYTHS

The Bright Sword, Lev Grossman. An engaging look at what happens after the events of the Arthurian legends. Fast-paced, funny, and exciting.

Inventing the Renaissance, Ada Palmer. Palmer, an historian and SF writer, explores the myths of the Renaissance vs. what the people who lived through it thought about it. Using Machiavelli as her lens, she introduces to a vivid cast of characters, some powerful, some not. Witty and always fascinating.

ALL THE COOL KIDS

I read a number of memoirs this year (all the cool kids are writing them) but my two favourites were Managing Expectations by Minnie Driver and The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You by Neko Case. Both women are funny, thoughtful, have … um… interesting childhoods…, and have struggled and survived.

THE PERILS OF TECH

Careless People, Sarah Wynn-Williams. A blistering take-down of Facebook and it’s leaders. She (mostly) doesn’t let herself off the hook for her contributions. A whole lot of idiocy from Meta makes a lot more sense after reading it.

Where the Axe is Buried, Ray Nayler. His book, The Mountain in the Sea, was one of my absolutely favourites of the last few years. This new work is short and sharp. There’s not a wasted word in this depiction of an authoritarian surveillance state and the people who struggle against it.

ORPHANS

I couldn’t find any clever way to link these, so here they are.

Treacle Walker, Alan Garner. This book benefits tremendously from having it read to you by long-time narrator of Garner’s works, Robert Powell. I’d read the print version a year or two ago, but got much more out of the incredible richness of the language and myth this time around.

Tigers Between Empires, Jonathan Slaght. The author of Owls of the Eastern Ice (another fave) returns with an exploration of the struggle to save the elusive Amur tigers that live in the borderlands of Russia and China.

Lud-in-the Mist, Hope Mirrlees. Originally published in 1926, this novel is set in a prosperous town on the border of the faerie world, but it completely unlike the typical human world/fey world book. The best description I read of it was “whimsical and creepy”. It’s both, but also droll and moving.