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My Favourite Books of 2014, Megan Radford

by Megan
December 31, 2014

2014 was a year that couldn’t help but feel heavy… every time I turned on the news and let the world rush in, it felt as if a progressive heaviness sank into both limbs and mind, like someone had snuck chunks of concrete into my pockets when I wasn't looking.

When I sat down to have a look at my favourite YA and kids books of the year, I noticed a common pattern. All of these books had a lifting, a lightness to them, whether it be a character vaulting over the Berlin Wall, breaking physical and psychological bonds, or floating through the air in a balloon with animal pals. My favourite books of the year lifted and released.

Here’s to a lovely and lingering lightness in 2015. And may you charter your own balloon.

 

The Winner’s Curse

This one caught me completely by surprise – privileged girl buys slave, falls in love... we know the drill, right? But this story is so complex and layered, showing a power dynamic that fluctuates back and forth, life and love complicated by a social fabric that is in complete upheaval. While a lesser storyteller might have been satisfied to end with “love conquers all,” this book challenges the reader to dig deeper. Love here is an inconvenience and a curse, something that challenges the pleasantly constant currents of a stratified system and one’s role within that system. An utterly captivating, historical-feeling fantasy, where the time and place is richly evoked in every brocade thread and piece of buttercream lace. Pssst - even better, it’s the first book in a trilogy!

 

Going Over  

February 1983, Berlin. Ada lives in West Berlin, Stefan in East Berlin, separated by that infamous wall. If these two are to be together, as the title suggests, they will need to surmount that wall, leap over and into the air and be happy forever (well, it’s not quite that simple...). Here we get another heroine, like Kestrel in the Winner’s Curse, who is fierce, passionate, and smart. Ada is a punk, navigating the mix of immigrants, punks, and rebels in West Berlin. We see the world through her eyes and through the spout of her paint can as she sprays graffiti across the wall and yearns for Stefan. Will these two end up together? And what will they have to sacrifice to do so?

 

Sebastian and the Balloon

Tired of the run-of-the-mill goings on about his street, Sebastian crafts a balloon from his grandmother’s afghans and patchwork quilts and takes flight, meeting a whole host of new friends in the process. Philip C. Stead’s gorgeous illustrations and simple, lovely story will make you wonder what’s lying just over the horizon in wait for you.

 

And Away We Go!

Mr. Fox takes off in his hot air balloon on a trip to the moon. But… can Elephant come too? Giraffe? Can we bring pizza? What about Squirrel? Before long, the balloon is chock full. Will Mr. Fox make it to the moon? Or will his new group of pals find a more fun destination together? The colourful, classic illustration style and focus on new adventures is a perfect combination, and one that will again make you feel like taking off and learning what lies just beyond the glaring city lights. 

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My Favourite Book of 2014, Alisha Whitley

by Alisha
Fiction / December 12, 2014

My favourite book of 2014 was Emily Gould’s debut novel, Friendship. It had been on my to-read pile for a couple of weeks when a friend forwarded me a July 18th New York Times piece about Gould along with three words: must-read-now. The next week was a flurry of texts and calls to one another (ex. “Have you read to the end of Chapter 5? What do you mean you’re eating? Book first, food second!”) as we read, laughed, and cried at (mostly) the same times. The story of Bev and Amy – two New Yorkers in their early thirties trying to navigate the not-so-perfect arenas of work, love, and friendship as they occur online and in real life – so perfectly captured the deep love shared by old friends and the complications of the heart that arise when two women begin to grow apart. Clever, heartwarming, and genuine, Friendship was the perfect book to share with my best friend (whose name also happens to be Emily).

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My Favourite Books of 2014, Brooke Kosty

by Alisha
Fiction + Psychology & Self-Help / December 12, 2014

Snow in May

I was recommended this book by a fellow Raincoaster and a native Russian who heard I have a thing for Russian literature, and this did not disappoint. Melnik tells five interwoven stories that center around characters who share the same Russian hometown as the author herself. Melnik has an elegant writing style that lets you find moments both haunting and beautiful – without being told they are such – and by doing so, she plants them in your mind long after you’re done reading. One story about a mother’s painstaking journey to purchase a rare bundle of bananas for her children still tends to pop up in my mind every time I’m in what feels like a painfully long line at the grocery store.

What I Know For Sure

As many of my Raincoast coworkers know by now, I love anything and everything Oprah; this book is no exception. A curated selection of her ongoing magazine column, What I Know For Sure is the perfect amount of Oprah’s life lessons, wisdom, and anecdotes, all in small, beautifully-packaged doses.

Texts from Jane Eyre

As a literature major in school, I thought I’d worn myself out of anything and everything pertaining to classic literature. Apparently all it took was publishing a funny blog to knock me back off the wagon. Writer Mallory Ortberg captures famous novels and their characters so well that I often found myself (embarrassingly enough) thinking I was reading texts between old friends, ‘Oh man, that’s classic Jane…’ My favourite were the texts “by” Daisy Buchanan of Great Gatsby fame; the quintessential self-centered brattiness that made you forget she even had a child in the original novel is conveyed perfectly through Daisy’s manipulative texts pestering Nick for a ride home from the Valley of Ashes.

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My Favourite Books of 2014, Sandy Cooper

by Dan
Fiction + Food & Drink + Kids / December 11, 2014

The Forgotten Seamstress

From the author of the well received The Last Telegram, fans were waiting for this next novel.

Caroline Meadows life is taking some unexpected turns, her Mother needs to move into care and so while she is clearing her mother’s attic, she discovers a beautifully crafted quilt and begins a search to find out the origins of this mysterious quilt and who might have stitched it.

1910 and Maria, an extraordinary seamstress, is employed to work for the Royal Family. Maria is young and beautiful, and soon catches the eye of the Prince of Wales. But this connection soon leads to trouble for Maria and her life takes a sudden unexpected turn.

Will Caroline be able to find out about the quilt and discover what happened to Maria?

A very interesting and moving story that keeps you involved the whole way through. I can see this book as a movie…much like Philomena… past and present, following clues and revealing secrets as you go…

The Dirty Apron Cookbook

This is a fantastic cookbook. Great recipes, beautiful photography, and the nicest chef and teacher you could wish for. The mushroom soup recipe is straight from heaven. It will ruin you for any other mushroom soup anywhere.

If you are ever in Vancouver treat yourself and go by the Dirty Apron deli, or even better, sign up for one of David Robertson’s incredible classes at the cooking school. But if you can’t… buy this book and work your way through it from start to finish. You’ll be a pro in no time.

Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site Sound Book 

Everyone has heard of the New York Times-bestselling children’s picture book…It’s my three year old Grandsons’ favourite bedtime story. But this sound board book is for an even younger audience… a sturdy board book with the favorite characters and a bonus side panel of wonderful realistic machine and engine noises. Great fun!

Sandy Cooper, Sales Director

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My Favourite Books of 2014, Laurie Martella

by Dan
Kids / December 11, 2014

Mix it Up!

A fun companion to the hugely popular Press Here.

Mix It Up! takes the interactivity element one step further by introducing children to the concept of colour mixing. It encourages kids to have fun by not just simply mixing…but by smudging, smearing, smooshing pages together, and why not use your whole hand?!

I had the pleasure to meet author Herve Tullet in person, and watch him in action. His voice really resonates  through the text of his books, in a cool, fun and down to earth tone. What a creative, fun and colourful book!  

The Who, the What, and the When: 65 Artists Illustrate the Secret Sidekicks of History

It is the format and the subject of this book that I love. That combined with the fantastic artwork! It all blends together so well to illustrate the unsung heroes and what we don’t know about these people that helped shape the legends we cherish today.

Love Letters to the Dead

What better way to spill your heart out, than to write letters to dead legends? This was my favourite YA book of the year. Since it was mostly written in formal letter sytle, it gives the character the chance to really digs deep into her story. A story which starts off as a school assignment, which she can’t turn in because she’s hooked on writing more and more. It’s as if she is really connecting with people like Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, Amelia Earhart – all these people who’ve died can relate.  And she certainly has lots to say. Mostly about losing her big sister May.

There are heart-breaking moments, nostalgic moments, awkward moments, and exciting moments too – all had me hooked and deeply connected to the experiences.  

Laurie Martella, Hornblower

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My Favourite Book of 2014, Jamie Broadhurst

by Jamie
History / December 11, 2014

Orlando Figes had me at the opening sentence of Revolutionary Russia 1891-1991: A History, “My aim is to provide a brief account of the Russian Revolution in the longue durée, to chart one hundred years of history as a single revolutionary cycle.”

This takes me right back to my happiest days at school reading French medieval social history and Soviet politics. The longue durée is a style of historiography that tries to show that history happens at a deeper social, material and environmental level than a purely political narrative can capture. A lot of these types of books are massive, this is not a big book in the traditional sense. Revolutionary Russia is a beautifully written work of historical concision; precise and clipped but never feeling rushed. It is a literary work that befits a recipient of the Wolfson History Prize. His writing stimulates all sorts of fresh questions and opens up vistas into the deeply tragic Soviet experience from which the reader can think about more deeply. I wish I had this excellent book in school.  It is the best single volume on Soviet history I have ever read.

Figes picks his details like novelist. Like for example, the night of the October insurrection when the Lenin is smuggled back in Petrograd but is stopped by a policeman—he is not recognized and is allowed to pass, and rushes off to bully the Central Committee into launching the October revolution. A great “What If? “ question of history. And the torture techniques of the Red Terror during the Civil War in places read likes pages out of 1984 and Room 101: what is with police states and torture by rabid rats eating flesh? Or the social mobility caused by Stalin’s purges where young apparatchiks took the job titles and prestige of their seniors who were dragged off to the Gulag. The fact that Brezhnev and Khrushchev were both promoted off the factory floor in 1928 in the wake of their immediate party superiors being arrested personalizes the argument about the social basis of Stalinism in a way I hadn’t thought about before.

Soviet foreign policy also comes into sharper relief. That Castro and Cuba voluntarily chose Communism led the Kremlin to remember too fondly the lost opportunity of the suppressed Soviet uprisings of 1918 across Europe and to over play their hand in the Caribbean. This rings true to me for all countries are haunted by the spectre of the past success and failures (to misquote Marx). And the immense fortitude of the Soviet people to endure the unbearable comes across in almost every page; the slave labor used to dig the White Canal by hand in which tens of thousands died (and was used as PR triumph by the regime) or the great Patriotic War where the daily loss of life was double the Allied losses on D-Day. That is two D-Days every day for four years.

Revolutionary Russia came out earlier this year, just as Russia was pushing back into its traditional spheres of influence in Crimea and the Ukraine, acting on imperatives that would have been well understood by the Soviet regime. In doing so, the contours and control of the security state run by the former KGB officer Vladimir Putin have become ever more apparent. The last question then is whether Figes has been too optimistic in dating the end of the Revolution at 1991, perhaps the longue durée of Soviet history is longer than we suspected. 

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My Favourite Book of 2014, Mark Penney

by Dan
Graphica / December 10, 2014

If you’ve seen Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line you’ll be well-prepared for what you’re getting into with Showa 1944-1953. The anti-war tone and island imagery are very similar; both tales also revolve around a central character whose positive experiences with native islanders contrast sharply with what they’re forced to endure fighting a short distance away.

I think that, like me, you too will be surprised when Shigeru Mizuki makes it out of the war alive (forgetting for a moment that there is a fourth volume coming that deals with events into the 1980s). It’s surprising that he survives not only physically, but also emotionally. If you’ve read the first two volumes, you know that Shigeru Mizuki’s possesses a unique sense of humour that is often expressed through his ravenous appetite and staggering capacity for punishment. That he didn’t lose his sense of humour or his life despite the severe mental and physical trials he went through is deeply affecting.
Mizuki’s escape from the war isn’t an escape from suffering. Postwar Japan was a hard place, and although Mizkui seems finally to have escaped regular beatings, his prodigious hunger rarely gets a break amid regular food shortages and frequent unemployment. Fishmongery will not contain Mizuki’s energies; running a boarding house merely provides an insecure launch pad into the world of professional art. We leave volume three with Mizuki poised for great accomplishment.

Showa 1953-1989 will be coming soon, but I really feel that Showa 1944-1953 is the heart of the story.

Mark Penney, Ampersand Inc. 
 

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My Favourite Book of 2014, Chelsea Newcombe

by Chelsea
Kids / December 09, 2014

It was easy to choose my favourite book of 2014. I looked back over all of the books I encountered and thought, “Which one stuck with me? Who made me care enough to lose sleep?” Without a doubt it's Ann M. Martin’s Rain Reign¸ inspired by her personal experience with the aftermath of Hurricane Irene.

Growing up, I devoured a steady diet of The Babysitter’s Club, Martin’s blockbuster paperback series now synonymous with the ‘90s. But even though I read every single one in numbered order with an almost religious fanaticism, they might as well have been magazines for the lack of an impression that the stories or characters had on me. Fast-forward 20 years later and I’m reading Ann M. Martin’s writing again, but this time to a much different effect. Rain Reign made me laugh and cry, feel worried for and proud of our heroine Rose, and hug my dog a couple of times.

Rose is very unique; she’s obsessed with prime numbers and homonyms, a side effect of her high-functioning autism, which in turn makes school, friendships and her relationship with her father fraught with stress. Her uncle Weldon and adopted mutt Rain are the bright spots in her world. Rose’s dad found Rain behind the neighborhood bar, wandering lost without a collar with owners nowhere to be found (although he didn’t put much effort into the search); girl and dog are inseparable until a hurricane blows in, Rain becomes lost, and Rose has to challenge her core beliefs about right and wrong to get her dog back home. 

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My Favourite Book of 2014, Dan Wagstaff

by Dan
Biography & Memoir / December 05, 2014

"There have been many books and articles that revel in describing exactly how grotesque and shameful the behaviour of alcoholic writers can be. That wasn't my intention. What I wanted was to discover how each of these men — and, along the way, some of the many others who'd suffered from the disease — experienced and thought about their addiction. If anything, it was an expression of my faith in literature and its power to map the more difficult regions of human experience and knowledge." 

Olivia Laing, The Trip to Echo Spring

 

As I spend almost every day with books and authors, I think I’m probably predisposed to find stories about writers and alcohol fascinating—it rather comes with the territory. But you don’t have to work in publishing to be hooked by The Trip to Echo Spring by Olivia Laing, you just have to love great writing. 

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver were some of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. They were friends, allies, students, mentors and inspirations. They were also alcoholics. Booze defined their work and their everyday lives.

In The Trip to Echo Spring, Laing—who grew up in an alcoholic family herself—tries to get to grips with these men and their troubled relationship with alcohol by visiting the places they were closely associated with. As she criss-crosses the United States, slowly connecting the dots between them, it becomes a quest of sorts:

“I thought it might be possible to build a kind of topographical map of alcoholism, tracing its developing contours from the pleasures of intoxication through the gruelling realities of the drying-out process. As I worked across the country, passing back and forth between books and lives, I hoped I might come closer to understanding what alcohol addiction means, or at least to finding out what those who struggled with and were sometimes destroyed by it thought alcohol had meant to them.”

The result is a lyrical and introspective attempt to better understand these writers, and an poignant examination of addiction's parasitic connection to creativity—how is that alcohol can inspire writers even as it gnaws away at them? There are no easy answers here. But reading Laing's book is like floating slowly down a meandering river. It's best if you just let yourself be carried along.

(PS: if you’re curious about the title, it comes from a line in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. ‘Echo Spring’ is a nickname for a liquor cabinet.)
 

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My Favourite Book of 2014, Larisa Sviridova

by Alisha
December 03, 2014

If you are invited to someone’s house for the first time do you ever catch yourself picking through your host’s bookshelves and subconsciously judging their taste based on the selection of books on those shelves? I’ve done it! Even though reading preferences cannot be the only criteria for understanding someone, they could certainly tell you a lot about a person.

I enjoy asking people about the books they’ve read, reread or never finished reading. So does Pamela Paul, the editor of The New York Times Book Review. This is why I didn’t hesitate to buy the collection of interviews conducted and compiled by Pamela Paul in the beautiful hardcover edition By the Book, published by Henry Holt & Co in 2014. This book includes interviews with sixty-five interesting personalities such as writers David Mitchell, Jhumpa Lahiri, J.K.Rowling, John Grisham, Khaled Hosseini, John Irving, actors such as Emma Thompson or Arnold Schwarzenegger, and singers like Sting. It is fascinating to learn their reading preferences, their likes and dislikes, and the books which have had the greatest impact on them as individuals and professionals.

I learned that Jane Eyre remains a favorite literary character for Amy Tan; that of all the people in the world, Malcolm Gladwell would prefer to meet Shakespeare’s wife; that Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland had the greatest impact on Joyce Carol Oates; that James McBride has never read “the great Russian writers”; that the first and last horror book Dan Brown has ever opened was The Exorcist and that Sting is absolutely ignorant of self-help books. Oh! And Nicholson Baker likes reading diaries.

Even a devoted reader might have a few titles which they consider as “guilty pleasures” or a book, which would be just so alien, that it feels like they don’t belong to one’s shelf. Imagine writers have those too!

You will feel better if you know that there are books everybody is supposed to like, but the writers didn’t; or books everyone had read in the childhood but famous people did not. And of course, some celebrities might also have secrets: “Nothing can be compared to the excitement of a forbidden book”, admits Isabel Allende, who “discovered the irresistible mixture of eroticism and fantasy reading One Thousand and One Nights inside a closet with a flashlight”.

I wasn’t familiar with all the writers in this collection, even less so with the books they talk about. Needless to say, I now have a long to-read list and I can’t wait until my next visit to the library.

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