OUR FAVOURITE BOOKS OF 2016.
The best, mosttalked about and quite simply,
the99. Brown.Red Morning RisingThe Star: conclusionTrilogy, Book PierceIII of of this trilogy classically-delivers inspiredwhat it promised:upended. Buta solarit doesn’t system come easy for the heroes. 98 Cowboys of the Americas, Luis Fabini and Wade Davis. Though the cowboy is an out-sized figure in our cultural imagination, this photo book manages to do them one better. 97 Avid Reader: A Life, Robert
Gottlieb. Normally a publishing memoir is a little too inside- baseball, but in the case of Robert Gottlieb it’s a cast of household name authors. 96 Hag-Seed: The Tempest Retold, Margaret Atwood. Atwood’s version of The Tempest takes place not on a remote island, but in a town very much like Stratford, Ontario.
95 Ooko, Esmé Shapiro. A fox named Ooko envies all the other “foxes” in town with two- legged friends to play with, and he sets out to find one of his own.
94 The Candidate: Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, Noah Richler. Richler’s memoir of running for parliament is a humorous story of accidental political ambition. 93 In My Humble Opinion: My So-Called Life, Soraya Roberts. Roberts is a tremendous chronicler of pop culture and her history of MSCL puts it in its proper context. 92 Take Us to Your Chief: And Other Stories, Drew Hayden Taylor. When Taylor couldn’t get a science- fiction anthology by indigenous writers off the ground, he decided to write a collection himself. 91 Buddy and Earl Go Exploring, Maureen Fergus and Carey Sookocheff. Buddy the dog and Earl the hedgehog go on an adventure around the house. 90 The Conjoined, Jen Sookfong Lee. Lee uses a cold case to explore Vancouver’s cross- cultural relations in a novel informed by her own experience working in social services.
89. But What If We’re Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past, Chuck Klosterman. Klosterman wonders aloud which of the things we universally agree on today will be profoundly wrong tomorrow.
88 Real Food/Fake Food: Why You Don’t Know What You’re Eating and What You Can Do
About You’re It, being Larry played Olmsted. for a sucker at the grocery store and in restaurants: find out how to avoid it. 87 Flannery, Lisa Moore. Giller finalist Lisa Moore flirts with the magic common in young adult literature, but settles on a real teenage protagonist.
86 Unmentionable: The Victorian Lady’s Guide to Sex, Marriage, and Manners, Therese Oneill. It’s fun to ridicule things that are ridiculous, such as the daily assumptions faced by women during the Victorian era. 85 News from the Red Desert,
Kevin Patterson. Based on his own experience as an ER surgeon in Afghanistan, Patterson’s novel explores the dynamics at play between civilians and military in a charged setting. 84 Against Everything: Essays, Mark Greif. The essays of Brooklyn literary magazine n+ 1 co- founder Mark Greif provide a refreshing and contemporary approach to intellectual dissent. 83 Pond, Claire-Louise Bennett. Bennett’s unconventional book about an unnamed, reclusive narrator has gained international attention because of its sensual prose. 82 George Lucas: A Life, Bryan Jay Jones. It’s hard to overstate Lucas’s impact on pop culture, and Jones’s biography reveals much about Lucas and peers Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola.
81 Klein. numberYou’ll There Growof entertaininghaveOut of beenIt, Jessia memoirs comedians fromin recentgreat femaleyears, butthe mostJessi Klein’s honest. might be Networked80 Marconi: the The World,Man Who Marc Raboy.the first Marconi successful conductedtransatlanticand set the radio stage transmissionfor how we communicate today. 79 Rolling Blackouts: Dispatches from Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, Sarah Glidden. Glidden’s graphic study of the relationship between journalists and their subjects is a nuanced look at the news.
78 Precious Cargo: My Year of Driving the Kids on School Bus 3077, Craig Davidson. Known for his much darker fiction, Davidson’s memoir of driving a bus for special needs students is uplifting, enlightening and funny. 77 Finding Franklin: The Untold Story of a 165-Year Search, Russell A. Potter. Potter, an acknowledged “Franklin junkie,” brings the generations of mostly heartbroken Franklin Expedition searchers to centre stage. 76 The Goddess of Fireflies, Geneviève Pettersen, translated by Neil Smith. A smash hit in Quebec, the novel encapsulates a generation coming of age in the 1990s.
75 Float, Anne Carson. The new poetry collection from one of Canada’s most mysterious and celebrated writers comes in the form of 22 chapbooks that can be read in any order.
74 Hanawalt.Hot Dog Taste From Test, the Lisa creator of Dog Bojack Taste Horseman,Test could be Hot the show’s hilarious cutting gems room of floor.her
Monet73 Mad and Enchantment:the Painting Claudeof the Water enthrallingLilies, Ross biographyKing. King’s reveals an artist who saved something truly revolutionary for his final years.
72 The Remedy: Queer and Trans Voices on Health and Health Care, edited by Zena Sharman. Queer and trans people face obstacles to proper and empathetic care that can and should be resolved. The Remedy is an necessary call to action. 71 The Life-Writer, David Constantine. A grieving biographer turns her gaze upon her deceased husband in this spellbinding novel. 70 Frantumaglia: A Writer’s Journey, Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein. Ferrante fans can now decode the pseudonymous memoirist alongside the characters of her Neapolitan Quartet. 69 The Genius of Birds,
Jennifer Ackerman. As dinosaur contemporaries, birds have had a long time to develop ingenuity, and they’re going to need it as they are increasingly threatened – by us. 68 The Hidden Keys, André Alexis. Alexis follows up his Giller Prize- winner Fifteen Dogs with this Treasure Island- inspired novel that brings the romantic quest to Toronto. 67 The Nutshell, Ian McEwan. McEwan’s latest is told from the point of view of an unborn child, an amateur sleuth piecing together the attempted murder of his father by his mother and a family friend. 66 So Sad Today: Personal Essays, Melissa Broder. Based on the immensely popular Twitter account @sosadtoday, Melissa Broder’s essay collection builds on the honesty of her tweets. 65 The Girls, Emma Cline. A haunting story of a Manson- like cult in late ’60s Northern California, The Girls focuses not on on a charismatic leader, but instead on the young women that surround him. 64 Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, J. D. Vance. Of the books touted to “explain” the angry white working-class culture at the centre of recent elections, J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy has been the most lauded. 63 The Last Days of New Paris, China Mieville. In this alternative history, the Nazis have dropped a “surrealist bomb” on Paris during the Second World War, releasing countless manifestations of the human subconscious. 62 The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads, Tim Wu. A comprehensive history of getting eyeballs from 19th century newspapers to today, Wu’s history shows where we might go from here. 61 The Return of History: Conflict, Migration, and
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Beaton’s60 King Baby, latest Kate is Beaton.a charming little picture tyrants book that abouttake overthe our right. lives as if by divine 59 Volker Hitler: Ullrich. Ascent, We 1889–1939,invoke Hitlerhave Godwin’sso often Law that to we show for it – but Ullrich’s history of Hitler’s rise is suddenly required reading.
58 Mexican Hooker #1: And Other Roles I Have Played Since the Revolution, Carmen Aguirre. Canada Reads winner Aguirre’s details her struggle to become an actor while managing the pressures of a dual identity, and finding inspiring strength as a rape survivor.
57 The Content Trap: A Strategist’s Guide to Digital Change, Bharat Anand. Connectivity, not content, is the game- changer in today’s digital economy. Anand shows why some businesses grow into empires overnight while others vanish. 56 The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life, John le Carré. If there’s an author who can undersell a memoir with the tagline “Stories from My Life,” it’s David Cornwell, a.k.a. John le Carré. 55 Lab Girl, Hope Jahren. Jahren’s Lab Girl reveals an astonishingly complex world of botany through a truly singular memoir. 54 Born to Run, Bruce
Springsteen. Each year brings a tour bus’s worth of rock memoirs, but few have been as eagerly anticipated as Springsteen’s, especially since the Boss refused to mail it in with a ghostwriter. 53 Willem de Kooning’s Paintbrush: Stories, Kerry Lee Powell. Powell received nods from major awards for her debut collection. Reviewer Naomi Skwarna says of the stories, “Each one feels like the favourite until the next.” 52 The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter, David Sax. Sax’s analog travelogue traces the reemergence of analog technologies all over the globe, focusing on the value these crafts bring to our digital age. 51 All That Man Is, David Szalay. One of two
Canadians on the 2016 Booker Prize shortlist, the Montreal-born, U.K.-bred David Szalay delivers a European-trekking collection that investigates the state of manhood, and its often overblown sense of self. 50 Swing Time, Zadie Smith. A lyrical ode to dance, Swing Time follows two young women from Northwest London, similar in so many ways but ultimately separated by talent, circumstance and envy. 49 Before the Wind, Jim Lynch. Lynch’s Puget Sound- set novel of a sailing family is an American epic, sharing something of John Steinbeck and something of John McPhee.
48 Brown: What Being Brown in the World Today Means (to Everyone), Kamal Al- Solaylee. Al-Solaylee, a professor of journalism in Toronto, delivers a worldwide examination of brownness, implicit aspirational whiteness, and globalization’s effect on brown populations. 47 Little Labors, Rivka Galchen. A highly literary and stylized exploration of motherhood, Little Labors focuses perhaps most on its mysteries. 46 Rowdy: The Roddy Piper Story, Ariel Teal Toombs and Colt Baird Toombs. Who knew that professional wrestling would break into the literary club? This account of wrestling’s greatest heel confronting his demons is one of the subgenre’s best. 45 Grace, Natashia Deón. Deón’s debut takes place in the times surrounding the American Civil War, and shows in devastating detail the ways in which slave families were decimated – and what slave women in particular endured. 44 Waiting for First Light: My Ongoing Battle with PTSD, Roméo Dallaire. For decades the misperception that peacekeeping soldiers don’t experience the trauma of war has persisted. In Roméo Dallaire’s candid memoir about his own PTSD, he offers a way forward. 43 Grief is the Thing With
Feathers, Max Porter. Its title an homage to Emily Dickinson, Porter’s novel sees a crow alight in the home of a family after the sudden death of its mother, to stay until it’s no longer needed. 42 What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, Helen Oyemi. In a series of literary sleightsof- hand, Oyemi’s story collection delivers what short fiction has at its best: huge imagination. 41 Pumpkinflowers: An Israeli Soldier’s Story, Matti Friedman. Pumpkinflowers recounts a small group of soldiers’ defence of a single hill in Lebanon as a microcosm for regional conflict and many asymmetrical conflicts worldwide. 40 The Wonder, Emma Donoghue. In Donoghue’s latest, people are travelling from all over Ireland to see a miraculous starving girl, each for reasons that are all their own. 39 Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains, Yasuko Thanh. The winner of the Rogers Writers’ Trust Prize for Fiction, Thanh’s debut novel is based on the true story of a Vietnamese resistance plot against colonial France.
38 What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins, Jonathan Balcombe. What a Fish Knows dem- onstratesmostour planet, exploitedhow but fish speciesalso are surveystheon our amazingmany underwaternot capabilitiesso different cousins’– than our37 Closer: own. Notes from the Orgasmic Sexuality,Closer is not FrontierSaraha guide Barmak.of Femalefor achievingit’s an explorationan orgasm.of how Instead womenown sexual are identitiesdefining theirin a worldmale pleasurethat continuesas the norm.to see 36 The Jerusalem,creator of Alan WatchmenMoore. and ExtraordinaryThe League Gentlemenof provesas epic thatas the nowhereplace youis know Moore’s best: hometownin this case,of Northampton, England.
World35 Invisible Watching: Man, A Got Young the Black Whole DenzelMan’s Education,Smith. The Mychal path to black America manhoodis burdenedin North with misconceptions.writes about his own Smith path to he manhoodhas had to and expandthe wayshis definitions of it.
Memoir34 In- Between About Days: Living A with Cancer, Teva Harrison. The near- universality of cancer in our lives and families makes this refreshing, heartbreaking, charming graphic memoir an indispensable read. 33 Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art, Virginia Heffernan. Reviewer Emma Healey states that Heffernan is particularly qualified to discuss “aesthetics ( and poetics)” of the Internet. “Nobody else talks about the Web this way.” 32 When Breath Becomes Air, Paul Kalanithi. When Kalanithi revealed his terminal cancer to a friend, he lamented that he hadn’t written anything, having devoted his life to becoming a neurosurgeon. In the time left him he produced an unforgettable work on how to die and how to live. 31 Infinite Citizen of the Shaking Tent: Poems, Liz Howard. Liz Howard, the youngest winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize, shared the award with other struggling young people, especially in her native Northern Ontario. She described poetry as an empowerment. 30 The Parcel, Anosh Irani. Taking place in the Kamathipura, Bombay’s red- light district, within the hijra community of transgender sex workers, The Parcel follows the older Madhu, who must prepare 10- year- old Kinjal for and protect her from the life Madhu has known. 29 Barkskins, Annie Proulx. Annie Proulx returns with her first novel in 15 years, one that follows the descendants of two indentured servants in New France and traces the fall of the world’s great forests. 28 On Trails: An Exploration,
Robert Moor. Moor’s book is framed with his own thruhike of the Appalachian Trail, an adventure that led him to wonder how that trail was formed – how every trail was formed. His resulting survey follows the paths of primitive forms of life to the way information travels today. 27 Yiddish for Pirates, Gary Barwin. This Gillershortlisted novel is a romp through both history and language – travelling from the Spanish Inquisition to Columbus’s voyages to ( basically) Pirates of the Caribbean, all with a polyglot parrot named Moishe as guide.
26 This Is Not My Life: A Memoir of Love, Prison, and Other Complications, Diane
Schoemperlen. How does a Governor General’s Award- winning author find herself in a relationship with a man behind bars for second- degree murder? Before she had the experience, Diane Schoemperlen couldn’t have told you, either. 25 The Best Kind of People, Zoe Whittall. This Gillershortlisted novel is so timely as to feel like required reading before you open Twitter, but to focus solely on its real- life counterparts would be to miss its success as a work of art. Whittall’s novel puts her front- and- centre of her CanLit generation.
24 Now I Sit Me Down: From Klismos to Plastic Chair: A Natural History, Witold
Rybczynski. Architect and prolific author Rybczynski returns to the ( deceptively) mundane with his history of the chair. What we quickly learn, however, is that to study the humble chair through the ages is to study culture itself. 23 Three Years With the Rat, Jay Hosking. In search of his missing sister, a man stumbles on an experiment into which she and her partner haveonly a disappearedlab rat to tell (with their story), and follows her into its labyrinth.
22 All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation, Rebecca Traister. All the Single Ladies is a historical investigation of women outside the traditional marriage structure – and the the massive socioeconomic changes they’ve produced.
21 Brothers, David Clerson, translated by Katia
Grubisic. Two brothers, one made from the arm of the other, set sail to find their dog of a father (who’s really a dog, we think) aboard a ship with a broken puppet attached to it. Editorial note: The National Post Arts Editor’s favourite book of the year. 20 The White Cat and the Monk, Jo Ellen Bogart and
Sydney Smith An illustrated retelling of the Irish poem Pangur Bán, this picture book follows a monk during his solitary evening work, drawing closer to the truth he seeks by watching his cat doing its own solitary evening work. 19 After James, Michael Helm. The Giller finalist delivers a highly literary exercise in three parts that plays with genre and intertextuality. Fans of Paul Auster may find a lot to like here – though Helm does it with voice. his own, very original the18 The Land Return:in Between, Fathers, HishamSons and Matar.ouster in After 2011, Gadhafi’s Hisham Matarfind his returned imprisonedto Libya father, to unsuccessfully.grapples with a The story Returnthat has realizesno end,the powerbut Matarof the also stories left him. 17 Bennett’sThe Mothers, debut Brit follows Bennett. three teenagers ( and one love triangle) in a conservative black Christian community in Southern California, and is a haunting exploration of the judgments from those left behind, those who leave – and both when reunited. 16 Zero K, Don DeLillo. DeLillo has an undeniable ability to juxtapose the lush with the sterile, and in Zero K he manages to write about clinical cryogenics alongside the mystery of death. 15 A Disappearance in Damascus: A Story of Friendship and Survival in the Shadow of War, Deborah Campbell. Veteran reporter Campbell’s prize- winning book is a chonicle of searching for her own fixer after she has disappeared in Syria.
14 At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails with Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Maurice MerleauPonty and Others, Sarah Bakewell. Bakewell’s At the Existentialist Café is something of a biography of existentialism, told through it’s primary philosophers – its people. 13 The Underground Railroad,
Colson Whitehead. An Oprah pick that has dominated many of the best- of lists south of the border, The Underground Railroad recreates its subject as an actual subterranean railroad. But this is no alternate history: instead it brings the actual history into greater clarity. 12 Red Star Tattoo: My Life as a Girl Revolutionary, Sonja Larsen. Sonja Larsen crisscrossed the continent with her radical parents before finding a prominent place in a Brooklyn wing of the communist party. Her memoir is a mesmerizing story of an often- forgotten part of history. 11 You May Also Like: Taste in an Age of Endless Choice, Tom Vanderbilt. Even if you make the exact choice an algorithm “thinks” you will, even if you routinely play to type, the actual process of your choice is more mysterious – and far more fascinating – than these endgames allow. 10 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, Mona Awad. As reviewer Blair Mlotek writes about Giller finalist Mona Awad’s debut, every chapter of Awad’s novel- in- stories contains that elusive moment “when an author boldly states the exact thought that has often gone through our own minds.” 9 Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?, Frans de Waal. Are We Smart Enough is also an entertaining whirl through the species and their capabilities, leaving the reader with a much broader understanding of what constitutes intelligent life. 8 Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi. The inspiration for Homegoing was a visit Gyasi made to Cape Coast Castle in Ghana. Later she visual- ized two women living there – one married to a British officer upstairs and the other in its dungeon awaiting the slave trade. Homegoing is one of 2016’s most memorable debuts. 7 The Break, Katherena Vermette. The Break begins with a brutal group assault in Winnipeg’s North End. Vermette, a Métis writer from Treaty One territory, traces its repercussions through a diverse community that must confront its own racism and responsibility.
6 How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS, David France. As a companion to the award- winning 2012 documentary of the same name, How to Survive a Plague is not only a tribute to those who fought and died and defeated an epidemic, but an inspirational primer on what it takes to effect real change. 5 The Vegetarian, Han Kang. The winner of the 2016 Man Booker International Prize, The Vegetarian follows a woman’s decision to cease eating meat after a bloody dream, and her subsequent philosophical and mental transformation into a plant.
4 Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, Jane Mayer. The Koch brothers have been relatively unkown to many, belying their immense power. Mayer traces their influence on policy – to an extent that the author claims is a subjugation of democracy.
3 The Party Wall, Catherine Leroux, translated by Lazer Lederhendler. Giller finalist The Party Wall is another step for French- Canadian literature in translation, and more evidence that Quebec literature in particular need not be constrained by its borders. 2 Do Not Say We Have Nothing, Madeleine Thien. As the winner of the Giller Prize, the Governor General’s Literary Award, and a finalist for the Booker Prize, Madeleine Thien has been justifiably called the Canadian author of the year.
1 The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate: Discoveries from a Secret World, Peter Wohlleben. From Paul Taunton, National Post Books
Editor: There were a lot of terrific books this year – more than 99 of them, in fact – but none have continued to delight and amaze me the way that The Hidden Life of Trees has. Wohlleben shares his decades of experience as a forest manager like the narrator from a novel we might expect to see in this spot. His book joins the ranks of recent eco- classics such as Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us and the work of Diana Beresford- Kroeger, and has been appearing on bestseller lists not only around the world, but in Canadian independent bookstores coast- to- coast. Putting together a best- of list must be recognized mainly as a vehicle for entertainment, not of authority. Chuck Klosterman (# 89) might recommend waiting a few decades or more before even trying it with any degree of clarity. But I don’t think that 2016 brought us a book that was more beautiful, more important – or better. So with all due respect to the other 99+ great books of the year, I’ ll argue against all comers that The Hidden Life of Trees is tied for # 1.