Linda's book list

In the serious business of reading for pleasure, my friend Linda and I have always been enthusiastic collaborators. For years, we shared books – second-hand, library, fresh-bought – back and forth, like precious treats.

That changed in 2014 when my reading time was snaffled by the university program I’m taking, but Linda was undeterred. Always the better noser-out of books, she kept right on checking the Vancouver Public Library for new releases from favourite authors. Every week, she reads the New York Times Sunday Book Review; the book sections in the Toronto Star, National Post and Globe & Mail, and she’s religious about the CBC’s Eleanor Wachtel’s Writers & Company and Shelagh Rogers’ The Next Chapter.

Linda has probably read hundreds of books since I stopped keeping her company, but at this time of year, I get a heartening reminder that all is not lost. Partly because she can’t endure not remembering the names of books she has read, she has begun keeping an annual list. On it goes every book she enjoyed that year.

 They’re not all 10s, she warns, but she doesn’t include any she skimmed or didn’t finish. While she moved toward more non-fiction this year, her fiction choices tend to be character-based, using traditional forms of story-telling, even though most are quite recent.

 “I would recommend all of these books and I wouldn’t recommend any of them,” she says, nodding to the reality of differing tastes. As for me, I hoard Linda’s lists. After I finish my program, I look forward to diving into them like a long-lost treasure trove.

Here is Linda’s 2017 list:

AUTHOR	BOOKS
2017
Roger Angell	This Old Man – A Life in Pieces
Muriel Spark	A Far Cry from Kensington
Anne Lamott	Stitches
Anne Lamott	Help Thanks Wow
Marcia Willett	The Song Bird
Oliver Sacks	Gratitude
Oliver Sacks	On the Move
Rebecca Solnit	Wanderlust
Helen Humphreys	The River
Joy Kogawa	Gently to Nagasaki
Robbie Robertson	Testimony
Cathleen Schine	They May Not Mean to But They Do
Cathleen Schine	The Three Weismann of Westport
Claire Fuller	Swimming Lessons
Jennifer Weiner	Hungry Heart
Anne Enright	Yesterday’s Weather
Shirley Hazzard	The Transit of Venus
Will Schwalbe	Books for Living
Kyo Maclear	Birds, Art, Life
Faye Weldon	Before the War
Anne Lamott	Halleluiah, Anyway
Francis Weller	The Wild Edge of Sorrow
Atul Gawande	Being Mortal
Ali Smith	Autumn, The Public Library, The Accidental
Elizabeth Strout	Anything is Possible
Barbara Gowdy	Little Sister
Geneen Roth	Lost & Found
Lisa Jewell	The Girls in the Garden
Michael Harris	Solitude – A Singular Life in a Crowded World
Bill  Hayes	Insomniac City
Sharon Bhutala	Where I Live Now
Elly Griffiths	The Crossing Places
Peter Robinson	Children of the Revolution
Julian Barnes	Pulse
Judith Jones	The Tenth Muse – My Life in Food
John Banville	Time Pieces – A Dublin Memoir
Susan Hill	The Beacon; The Service of Clouds
Jens Christian Grondahl	Often I am Happy
Julie Pointer Adams	Wabi-Sabi Welcome
Louise Penny	Glass Houses
Gail Bowen	The Winner’s Circle
Roz Nay	Our Little Secret
Polly Devlin	New York  Behind Closed Doors
John Le Carré	A Legacy of Spies
Margaret Drabble	The Dark Flood Rises
Jan Wong	Apron Strings
Erin Carlson	I’ll  Have What She’s Having – How Nora Ephron’s Three Iconic Films Saved the Romantic Comedy
Anita Brookner	Look at Me
P.D. James	Sleep No More
Ann Cleeves	The Seagull
Jamie Attenberg	All Grown Up
John Banville	Mrs. Osmond
Rachel Rose	Sustenance:  Writers from BC & Beyond on the Subject of Food