Looking back on my reading list from 2017: I managed to complete 39 books this year, a drop from previous years, with a higher ratio of non-fiction.

I again completed all of the 2017 Canada Reads books and got to attend Day One live at the CBC studio in Toronto with my friend Heather! A fun day… where The Break should never have been knocked off… but I digress.

2018 will be a year of tackling more novels and some of the growing number of unread books on my shelf.

As always, reading recommendations for 2018 are most welcome!

If I had to pick my top choices for fiction and non-fiction this year, in no particular order, they would be:

Fiction: The Break, Stone Butch Blues, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Company Town, and Roughneck

Non-Fiction: Listen Liberal, Trans: A Memoir, North of the Colour Line, How to Survive a Plague and My Decade at Old Sun, My Lifetime of Hell.

Beyond that, this year’s reading list is below, with my made up categories and inconsistent 5 star reviewing system. So if you want to know more about any of them definitely feel free to ask!

Canada Reads Books

• The Break – Katherena Vermette (Canada Reads 2017) (*****)
• Company Town – Madeline Ashby (Canada Reads 2017) (*****)
• The Right to Be Cold – Sheila Watt-Cloutier (Canada Reads 2017) (**)
• Nostalgia – M.G. Vassanji (Canada Reads 2017) (***)

Indigenous Literature/Studies

• Dancing on our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence and a New Emergence – Leanne Simpson (***)
• Take Us To Your Chief (and other stories) – Drew Hayden Taylor (****)
• Rose’s Run: A Novel – Dawn Dumont (****)
• Monkey Beach – Eden Robinson (****)
• Injun – Jordan Abel (****)
• My Decade at Old Sun, My Lifetime of Hell – Arthur Bear Chief (*****)

Other Lit/Fiction

• Us Conductors – Sean Michaels (2014 Giller Prize Winner) (*****)
• Rogue Lawyer – John Grisham (****)
• The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie (*****)
• Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama – Alison Bechdel (*****)
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon (*****)
• Roughneck – Jeff Lemire (*****)
• Stone Butch Blues – Leslie Feinberg (*****)
• the sun and her flowers – rupi kaur (****)
• Crying for the Moon: A Novel – Mary Walsh (****)
• Where the Sidewalk Ends: the poems and drawings of Shel Silverstein (****)

Labour Books

• The Death and Life of American Labor – Stanley Aronowitz (****)
• The Long Winding Road: Canadian Labour in Politics – Morden Lazarus (***)
• White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America – Joan C Williams (****)
• The Paradox of American Unionism: Why Americans Like Unions More Than Canadians Do But Join Much Less – Seymour Martin Lipset and Noah M. Meltz with Rafael Gomez and Ivan Katchanovski (***)

Political

• Listen, Liberal (or What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?) – Thomas Frank (*****)
• A Woman’s Place: My Life & Politics – Audrey McLaughlin (****)
• Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics – Richard Seymour (*****)

Cultural Studies and Other Non-Fiction

• Viola Desmond’s Canada: A History of Blacks and Racial Segregation in the Promised Land – Graham Reynolds with Wanda Robson (****)
• North of the Color Line: Migration and Black Resistance in Canada, 1870 – 1955 – Sarah-Jane Mathieu (*****)
• The Global Refugee Crisis: How Should We Respond? – The Munk Debates: Louise Arbour and Simon Schama vs. Nigel Farage and Mark Steyn (****)
• Notes from a Feminist Killjoy: Essays on everyday life – Erin Wunker (*****)
• Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (****)
• The Night Trilogy (Night – Dawn – Day) – Elie Wiesel (*****)
• Trans: A Memoir – Juliet Jacques (*****)
• How To Survive A Plague: The story of how activists and scientists tamed AIDS – David France (*****)
• The Social Attitudes of a Catholic – Father Michael T. Ryan
• Runaway Wives and Rogue Feminists: The Origins of the Women’s Shelter Movement in Canada – Margo Goodhand (*****)
• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck: A Counter-intuitive Approach to Living a Good Life – Mark Manson (***)
• Upstream Medicine: Doctors For A Healthy Society – Edited by: Andrew Bresnahan, Mahli Brindamour, Christopher Charles, Ryan Meili (*****)

Link to my: 2016 Reading List
Link to my: 2015 Reading List
Link to my: 2014 Reading List