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My Favourite Books of 2012, Dan Wagstaff
by Dan
December 17, 2012
I'm actually getting pretty used to the idea that very few people like the same books that I do. I like to say my taste is unique, but when it comes down to it maybe I'm just odd!
Needless to say, the books I love are so rarely the ones that sell in vast quantities and I've all but given up recommending personal favourites to my colleagues.
I did, however, make an exception this year for a collection of stories by English novelist Edward St. Aubyn, which I raved about for like a maniac for 12 solid months (just ask our reps!).
Edward St. Aubyn's semi-autobiographical novels about the dysfunctional Patrick Melrose are quite well known in the UK. Never Mind, was first published in 1992. The fourth, Mother's Milk, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2006. But St. Aubyn's novels, horrifying and comic in turn, were presumed to be altogether too British for Canadian and American tastes. You had to really hunt them down if you wanted to read them on this side of the Atlantic.
Fortunately, all FIVE of St. Aubyn's Patrick Melrose novels were finally released properly in the US and Canada in January this year.
The Patrick Melrose Novels collects the first four stories — Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope and Mother's Milk — into one thick paperback (a bargain at $23.00!) and the fifth, concluding volume, At Last, (published in the UK in 2011), is now also available in paperback — just in time for Christmas.
If you like your prose surgical, your humour black, and your heroes alcoholic, I can't recommend these books enough (and Alice Sebold agrees with me!).
It is hard to pick a favourite comic book of the year, but I really enjoyed Guy Delisle's latest travelogue Jerusalem. I had the pleasure of meeting Guy at the Toronto Comics Arts Festival this year and witnessed his deadpan humour firsthand. As a dad, I can't wait to see his new book A User's Guide to Neglectful Parenting in the new year...
I also had the pleasure of meeting Tom Gauld at TCAF. Goliath, Tom's latest graphic novel, is a charming and funny retelling of the familiar bibilical story and well-worth picking up. Tom has a new collection of literary comic strips out in January called You're All Just Jealous of My Jetpack, which I'm very excited about. If you liked Hark! A Vagrant, I think it might be a book for you...
Also recommended (although sadly overlooked in my opinion) is Baby's in Black by German cartoonist Arne Bellstorf. It's beautifully drawn and, although the story will be familiar to a lot of people from the movie Backbeat, it is lovingly told. It would be a perfect for a teenage Beatles fan.
Lastly, we had several photography books that really caught my eye this year. Balthazar Korab: Architect of Photography is a must for anyone who loves midcentury-modern style and beautiful pictures — it's the perfect book to adorn your Noguchi coffee table.
Instant: The Story of Polaroid by Christopher Bonanos and The Disappearance of Darkness: Photography at the End of the Analog Era by Robert Burley are companion books in a way. Both are about the changing face of photography and the replacement of film technology with digital.
Instant details the Apple-like innovation and inventiveness behind the creation of Polaroid and the company's subsequent decline with the rise digital cameras. Likewise, Robert Burley's photographs in The Disappearance of Darkness capture the rapid end of the once-thriving analogue film industry around the world. Burley's photographs of the Kodak plant in Toronto and it's eventual demolition are particularly compelling, if not the cheeriest images for Christmas!
Dan Wagstaff, Online Marketing Manager
