Joke’s on me… it is April 1st and I realized I have never shared my 2019 reading list. Better to throw it together late than never! 2019 was a year of reading as a way to distract myself from a double election year; often by tackling some of the many unread books sitting on my shelf.

Looking back on my reading list, I managed to complete over 60 new-to-me books this year. I again completed all of the Canada Reads books and continued to keep a nerdy spreadsheet to ensure I stayed focused on reading authors with a wider diversity of backgrounds and identities, including local, Indigenous and LGBTQ2S authors.

It was also the 100th Anniversary since the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike so I took time to devour many of the books looking back on that milestone event in labour history.

It was hard to pick some top choices this year, so in no particular order, here goes my best shot:

Fiction: Fire Song, Guapa, Brother, Crocuses Hatch from Snow, Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore and Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir

Non-Fiction: Homes, Outside In, Women Who Dig, Red State Revolt, Rebent Sinner and No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power.

Beyond that, this year’s complete reading list is below, broken up by totally made up categories. So really, if you want to know more about any of them definitely feel free to ask. And as always, reading recommendations for this year are most welcome!

Canada Reads Books – 2019

• By Chance Alone – Max Eisen
• Homes: A Refugee Story – Abu Bakr Al-Rabeeah with Winnie Yeung
• Brother – David Chariandy
• Suzanne – Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette, translated by Rhonda Mullins
• The Woo-Woo: How I Survived Ice Hockey, Drug Raids, Demons, and My Crazy Chinese Family – Lindsay Wong

Indigenous

• Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature – Edited by: Qwo-Li Driskill, Daniel Heath Justice, Deborah Miranda and Lisa Tatonetti
• The Red Files – Lisa Bird-Wilson
• nîtisânak – Lindsay Nixon
• Moccasin Square Gardens – Richard Van Camp
• Talking to the Diaspora – Lee Maracle
• Love Beyond Body, Space & Time: An Indigenous LGBT Sci-Fi Anthology – Edited by: Hope Nicholson
• This Place: 150 Years Retold – Forward by Alicia Elliott
• A Girl Called Echo Vol 2 – Katherina Vermette
• Fire Song – Adam Garnet Jones
• NDN Coping Mechanisms: Notes From The Field – Billy-Ray Belcourt
• Split Tooth – Tanya Tagaq

CanLit/Fiction

• The Shore Girl – Fran Kimmel
• A Wake For Dreamland – Laurel Deedrick-Mayne
• Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir – Kai Cheng Thom
• The Melting Queen – Bruce Cinnamon
• The Heart Begins Here – Jacqueline Dumas
• Vi – Kim Thúy
• Frying Plantain – Zalika Rei-Benta
• The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore – Kim Fu
• The Hand Maid’s Tale: The Graphic Novel – Margaret Atwood
• Crocuses Hatch From Snow – Jamie Burnet
• Christmas at the Vinyl Café – Stuart McLean

Other Lit/Fiction

• Camino Island – John Grisham
• White Houses – Amy Bloom
• Hope Never Dies: An Obama Biden Mystery – Andrew Shaffer
• Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was – Sjón
• Paradise Rot – Jenny Hval
• Guapa – Saleem Haddad

Labour

• 1919: A Graphic History of the Winnipeg General Strike – The Graphic History Collective & David Lester
• Papergirl – Melinda McCracked with Penelope Jackson
• The Winnipeg General Strike: Ordinary Men and Women under Extraordinary Circumstances – Michael Dupuis
• The Great Labour Revolt, 1919 (ALHI Booklet) – Alvin Finkel
• We’re Going to Run This City: Winnipeg’s Political Left after the General Strike – Stefan Epp-Koop
• Magnificent Fight: The 1919 Winnipeg General Strike – Dennis Lewycky
• The Workers’ Revolt in Canada 1917 – 1925 – Edited by: Craig Heron
• Winnipeg 1919: The Strikers’ Own History of the Winnipeg General Strike – Edited by Norman Penner, Intro by Christo Alvalis
• Direct Action Gets The Goods: A Graphic History of the Strike in Canada – The Graphic History Collective with Althea Balmes, Gord Hill,Orion Kereszetsi & David Lester
• No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age – Jane. F. McAlevey
• Red State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics – Eric Blanc
• Semi Queer: Inside the world of gay, trans, and black truck drivers – Anne Balay

Cultural Studies and other Non-Fiction

• Women Who Dig: Farming, Feminism, and the Fight to Feed the World – Trina Moyles
• Black Like Who? Writing Black Canada – Rinaldo Walcott
• King Coal: A Social History of Coal Mining in Alberta – Khalehla Kitschel
• Whose Water Is It, Anyway? Taking Water Protection into Public Hands – Maude Barlow
• History of the Weyburn Mental Hospital 1921-1947, Saskatchewan Hospital Weyburn 1947-1971 – Soo Line Historical Committee

Memoir and Personal Short Stories

• Outside In: A Political Memoir – Libby Davies
• A Family Outing: A Memoir – Ruby Remeda Swanson
• Soar, Adam, Soar – Rick Prashaw with Adam Prashaw
• No, Really, Where are You From? Personal Stories of Chinese Identity Retention and Loss – Nancy Ng
• Females – Andrea Long Chu
• Rebent Sinner – Ivan Coyote
• Little Yellow House – Carissa Halton

Graphic Novels/ChapBooks/Comics/etc

• The Real Cost of Prisons Comix – Edited by: Lois Ahrens
• My Gender is Saturn Return – Cee Lavery & JB Brager
• A Full Life: James Connolly the Irish Rebel – Tom Keough, Edited by Paul Buhle
• A Share In The Honour: Canada’s Fight for Decent Work in Joseph Atkinson’s Times – Willow Dawson with Patricia Pearson and Jon Weir(Atkinson Foundation)
• Wage Slaves – Daria Bogdanska
• Images for Change – Don Kossick (This is an activist poster photo book without any words but it’s a fun one to flip through the old posters!)

Looking back on past years:

• Link to my: 2018 Reading List
• Link to my: 2017 Reading List
• Link to my: 2016 Reading List
• Link to my: 2015 Reading List