To briefly sum up some of my reading highlights in 2011, here are the winners in a few categories, with my brief Goodreads reviews attached (and if you want to see everything I read in 2011, you can check out my 2011 Reading Challenge bookshelf on Goodreads – and you can friend me over there, too):

Best New Book (published in 2011): Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan

This book easily and thoroughly swept me up in its magic, transporting me directly into the times and places inhabited by its characters. Despite a few slower sections, the story was incredibly compelling and kept me on my toes right until the very end. The characters were excellently realized and although the period/cultural slang was a bit off-putting in the beginning, it quickly became very natural and definitely helped to immerse me in the story.

Best YA Book: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie and When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead (tie)

Fascinating YA read for young adults and adults alike. Alexie’s characterization of Junior is flawless and engaging, and the story’s exploration of both race issues and the struggles of growing up is just as messy and compelling as real life. Really great read, and I look forward to reading more of Alexie’s books.

Absolutely fantastic book. A delight to read and incredibly enjoyable to try to unravel its very clever mystery. If you loved Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time as a kid (I know I did!), you definitely must read this. Its plot is integral to When You Reach Me, but Stead’s book is still extremely charming and clever even if you have no knowledge of its related predecessor. I read a lot of YA, but this is definitely one of the very best books of that genre that I’ve read in a while.

Best Canadian Book: The Incident Report by Martha Baillie

The concept of this novel was brilliant and expertly executed. Don’t for a second think that the storytelling might be limited by the incident report style – quite the opposite, in fact. Baillie’s prose is beautiful and detailed as she intertwines reports from her love life, her past, and actual library interactions. A quick and engaging read that you’ll easily gobble up.

Best Short Story Collection: Once by Rebecca Rosenblum

Such a wonderful debut collection of stories. Rebecca Rosenblum is all at once self-assured and tentative, harsh and tender. A captivating look at human relationships. I’m really looking forward to reading her new collection, The Big Dream.

And because I love stats, here’s a few key stats I pulled out from my 2011 reading list:

Fiction: 44
Non-Fiction: 6

Female Author: 36
Male Author: 14

Canadian Author: 28
Non-Canadian Author: 22

Adult Book: 30
YA/Kids Book: 20

Paperback/Hardcover: 33
E-Book: 17

As for 2012, I still have a goal of reading 50 books (and you can follow my 2012 Reading Challenge on Goodreads, too – I’m still currently on book #1, Come, Thou Tortoise by Jessica Grant), but I’m not sure if I should try to put any other structures around my to-read list. I want to continue reading at least 50% Canadian authors (I was at 56% in 2011), and I enjoyed reading 40% YA/Kids books last year. Looking at my stats, I feel like I should increase my non-fiction reading, but I rarely feel the pull towards non-fiction, like I do towards fiction.

What were some of your favourite reads in 2011? And what are your reading goals for 2012?

This may be a story about superheroes (and comic book fans will definitely love that aspect), but even more it’s a heartbreaking yet heartwarming tale of an outsider who must beat the odds in winning back his true love. Kaufman’s main character Tom is an everyman to the extreme, surrounded by the extraordinary – I mean, his friends are actually superheroes, from the Perfectionist to the Amphibian. Funny, sweet, and oh-so-relatable, Tom lives in a version of Toronto that you have to read to believe. I dare you to find a book that packs a better punch in only 100 pages.

Check out my full recommendation over on the Advent Book Blog…and if you want to buy the book (and I obviously think you should!) go on and buy it from Coach House Books, who just added it to their holiday sale thanks to my Advent Book Blog recommendation. If you buy it through their site before December 31, you’ll get 25% off the list price and it’s free shipping, too!

As part of Ada Lovelace Day, the Finding Ada site calls upon bloggers to share a story about a woman who has inspired them in becoming who they are today. And although I know I’m a few days late, I wanted to join in by talking about two females who have affected my life and development as a person, even though they’re fictional. Obviously there are lots of real-life women who have inspired me, as well, but when you’re as obsessed with books, TV and movies as I am, sometimes your brain instinctively goes the fictional route first. Even while rustling through the character card catalogue in my head, many worthy female candidates popped up (Buffy Summers and Sydney Bristow should both be honoured on a day that’s about ladies who kick ass…literally), but in keeping with the Ada Day theme, I decided to focus on two brainy girls that enchanted me as a child and have stuck with me through to today: Meg Murry (from Madeleine L’Engle’s Time Quartet series) and Hermione Granger (from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series).

Meg Murry
I’ll start with Meg, as I suspect that less of you may be familiar with her. If I’m correct and you have no idea who Meg is, and you love sci-fi/fantasy YA fiction, get thee to your local library/bookstore, pronto. A Wrinkle in Time, the first book in the Time Quartet, was one of my favourite books as a child, and upon re-reading it a few years ago, I happily discovered that it was just as spellbinding as an adult. (One of my biggest fears as a reader and lover of children’s/young adult literature is that I’ll re-read a book I loved as a kid and find it now falls flat for me.)

Meg is the novel’s lead protagonist, an awkward and self-conscious teenager, whose parents claim she’s brilliant (and she is!), even though she does poorly at school (except in math). A Wrinkle in Time is the story of how Meg, her little brother Charles Wallace, and her friend Calvin travel to other planets in order to rescue Meg’s father, a scientist who was experimenting with time travel when he mysteriously disappeared. When I first encountered this book as a child, I definitely could relate to Meg, except for the time and space travel part, unfortunately. But the nerdy, brainy, self-conscious parts? Yup, I had that covered. Yet despite the fact that Meg initially sees these elements of her personality as drawbacks, during the course of the novel she learns that her individuality is in fact an asset, not a liability. Meg’s bravery, loyalty and love, in addition to her smarts, help her succeed in this book, and I like to think that all of this helped me succeed as a teenager, too. Meg’s unlikely triumph helped me to believe, at a very young age, that I could work through my self-conscious tendencies, too…while also helping me realize that maybe being a nerd wasn’t so bad, after all.

Hermione Granger
In case you’ve been living under a rock, here’s the scoop: Hermione is one of the three main characters in the Harry Potter series, and is one of the smartest girls to hit the children’s lit market in years. If brainy is now considered cool, I think we all have Miss Granger to thank for that. I first met Hermione in 1999, when my sister Ali returned from a summer in the U.K. with Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone tucked into her luggage. Ali had eagerly devoured the book while she was away, and quickly forced it upon her impressionable younger sister who was about to turn 14. Just like my sister, I fell in love with the book instantly, and, as a self-conscious, nerdy kid, I instantly related to Hermione.

Where Meg is definitely uncomfortable with her misfit status, Hermione, on the other hand, isn’t remotely ashamed of her know-it-all attitude and social ineptitude. And, as such, not only did I relate to Hermione, but I also immediately admired her ability to embrace all parts of her personality at such a young age. Hermione sometimes also used her encyclopedic brain as a security blanket of sorts, shielding herself from revealing her insecurities. And while I’d never claim to being as smart as the star pupil of Gryffindor, I can relate to hiding behind one’s brains occasionally. Hermione constantly inspires me not only to be brilliant, but to be as comfortable with my true self as she is.

Meg Murry and Hermione Granger are two fictional heroines who have helped inspire me to become the woman I am today. In honour of Ada Lovelace Day, what women, real or fictional, have inspired you? Tell me about them in the comments!

I’d really like to give this book a 4.5 rating, to be honest. I use the word “honest” because that’s what this book is: brutally, brutally honest. While I wasn’t thrilled with the ending and thought it was a bit too neat and tidy, this book kept me completely engaged from beginning to end. The characters were fantastically created and I feel like I’ll be seeing them randomly on the street, just like main character Tom Violet does with the characters in the novel he’s writing throughout the book. I was actually somewhat surprised by how engaged I was by this book, thinking that it might be too much of a stereotypical “guy” book for me, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Norman’s style is very Nick Hornby-esque, and thus will be easily loved by men and women alike, even if his books continue to open with awkward chapters about erectile dysfunction! Laugh-out-loud funny and extremely relatable, I highly recommend this debut novel and look forward to more from the author.

View my Goodreads profile to read more of my reviews or add me as a friend!
Thanks to NetGalley and Harper Perennial for the review copy!

If it wasn’t already painfully obvious from one of my recent posts, I love libraries. I’ve been a member of the Toronto Public Library for almost two years now and have fallen deeply in love with it from the very beginning of our relationship. The collection is massive (I’ve yet to find a book, no matter how obscure, that they don’t already have in stock), the branches are fantastic (my local Pape/Danforth branch is gorgeous on the outside and super friendly and welcoming on the inside), and the staff is always pleasant and helpful.

And it’s because my love for this public library system is so strong, that the threat of it becoming privatized upsets me so much. Due to Mayor Rob Ford’s cost-cutting agenda, the TPL could suffer severe cuts within the next week and some or all services could become privatized. I can’t write enough about how essential I think libraries are to a city and its people, not only as a place to check out books, but also as a cultural community hub. The Toronto Public Library is one of Toronto’s greatest assets and any reduction in its locations, services or staff would be of enormous detriment to this city. Mayor Ford’s brother, councillor Doug Ford, (falsely) claimed this week that, “We have more libraries per person than any other city in the world.  I’ve got more libraries in my area than I have Tim Horton’s.” If only, Mr. Ford, if only! In reality, we have 3.9 libraries per 100,000 people, which is the same number as Vancouver. Halifax has 4.3 libraries per 100,000 people, and the state of Vermont, which has only one-quarter of the population of Toronto, has 30 libraries per 100,000. Oh, and in Doug Ford’s area (Etobicoke), there are 13 library branches and 39 Tim Horton’s stores. You do the math.

We don’t, however, have to take the Fords’ plan sitting down. If you haven’t yet signed the petition to keep the Toronto Public Library open and public, please take a minute to do so now. To date, over 13,600 people have signed the petition and we need to get that number as high as we can before the Executive Committee of Council discusses the issue on July 28th. It’ll take you less than a minute to sign the petition and to spread the word, either by sharing or tweeting the petition link or this blog post. Please help fight for the protection of our library!

This is a delicate matter. I can already hear some readers turning the page (perhaps a Kindle “page”), muttering that only an elitist jerk picks friends or lovers based on what they can be seen reading. Well, maybe. This essay is for the rest of you, the ones who freely admit to having been seduced by a serendipitous volume of Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John glimpsed on a potential girlfriend’s living-room shelf or by a spine-broken copy of Robert Lowell sitting atop that boy’s nightstand. Maybe that was your first time in the apartment, you had been reluctant to go, and now you wanted to linger a while …

If all they’d had were e-book readers plugged into a convenient socket, what would you have done then—asked to have a look? That feels like a fifth-date move, at the earliest—and it was always talking about books that got you the first date! That was my experience, anyway.

If you, like me, are dismayed that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to judge a person by their (book) cover, read the full article here.

I still remember the first library ticket I ever had. It must have been about 1957. My mother took me to the public library just off Battersea Park Road and enrolled me. I was thrilled. All those books, and I was allowed to borrow whichever I wanted! And I remember some of the first books I borrowed and fell in love with: the Moomin books by Tove Jansson; a French novel for children called A Hundred Million Francs; why did I like that? Why did I read it over and over again, and borrow it many times? I don’t know. But what a gift to give a child, this chance to discover that you can love a book and the characters in it, you can become their friend and share their adventures in your own imagination.

And the secrecy of it! The blessed privacy! No-one else can get in the way, no-one else can invade it, no-one else even knows what’s going on in that wonderful space that opens up between the reader and the book. That open democratic space full of thrills, full of excitement and fear, full of astonishment, where your own emotions and ideas are given back to you clarified, magnified, purified, valued. You’re a citizen of that great democratic space that opens up between you and the book. And the body that gave it to you is the public library. Can I possibly convey the magnitude of that gift?

Somewhere in Blackbird Leys, somewhere in Berinsfield, somewhere in Botley, somewhere in Benson or in Bampton, to name only the communities beginning with B whose libraries are going to be abolished, somewhere in each of them there is a child right now, there are children, just like me at that age in Battersea, children who only need to make that discovery to learn that they too are citizens of the republic of reading. Only the public library can give them that gift.

Read the full speech here.

{Photo by Adrian Hon}

…I’m at least much more placated when a cupcake shop is opened in its place! Very excited that the lovely Desmond & Beatrice is opening soon on Queen St. E., just a bit east of Broadview, in the spot that the equally lovely Roxanne Reads used to be.

Funny side note: My roommate and I looked at an apartment right next door to this spot. Yup, that’s right, I almost lived next to a bookstore that later became a cupcake shop. I would’ve been poor, and then poor and fat. Probably a good thing that I live a 45-minute walk from there.

And while I’ve never thought that the book-loving nature of my family was particularly unique, I still love hearing stories about other families like us. As such, I recently read an excellent post on book blog Vulpes Libris, in which writer Chris Harding shared stories about her “bookish family”. Here’s the opening paragraph:

I come from a bookish family. My maternal grandmother ran away from her Norwegian home and arrived in England in 1915, accompanied only by a trunk full of books. It must be a hereditary trait because I never travel without a book – and nor do my mother, my daughters or my brother and his family. Other people pack clothes and suncream for their holidays: we pack books. And while on vacation we don’t buy souvenirs: we buy books.

You can read the rest of the post over on Vulpes Libris, and once you have, come back and tell me your own bookish family stories, won’t you?

(Photo by Vimages on Flickr – and it’s not a photo of my own family!)

Local Motion: Election Hangover Party, Tuesday 7-11:30pm, Lula Lounge, $5 or FREE with book purchase (Facebook event page)

Still down in the dumps after the municipal election? Don’t worry, you’re not the only one. Come join a bunch of like-minded folks at the launch of the final title in Coach House Books’ uTOpia series: Local Motion: The Art of Civic Engagement in Toronto. If the politicians aren’t going to get things done, let’s take matters into our own hands, Torontonians! Now, more than ever, it’s time to get engaged in our city and make positive change our mission. Coach House is touting the event as “Toronto’s unofficial election hangover party,” and it will feature a roundtable discussion with some of the book’s many contributors (including Kelly Grant, Jonathan Goldsbie, John Lorinc, and Mike Smith), discussing “how individuals and groups can make things happen in their neighbourhoods in the months to come.” (If you can’t make it to the event on Tuesday, you can still buy the book wherever cool books are sold!)

MeshMarketing, Wednesday 8am-5pm, AllStream Centre, $539 regular/$99 student/FREE volunteer (Website)

For the past two years I’ve volunteered at the Mesh Conference, an annual web conference that’s always a fun and informative experience. This year I’m also helping out at MeshMarketing, described on their site in 140 characters as: “1 day of insight & info 4 U 2 capitalize on growing digital market. Thought-provoking keynote talks in AM. Followed by interactive & engaging panels & workshops.” Speakers at this year’s event include representatives from online superstars such as Porter Airlines, Pepsi Canada, Zappos, and Whole Foods. If you’re interested in marketing in the digital space, this is the conference for you, so go check out the varying ticket options – they might even still be in need of a few more volunteers, who get to attend the entire conference for free.

ECW’s Fall Literary Party, Thursday 7-11:30pm, Supermarket, FREE (Facebook event page)

My publisher, ECW Press, is holding their fall literary party with readings from a host of fantastic authors (including George Murray and Evie Christie), and I’ll be there to show my support! Come and join me for a night of great readings, great books for sale, great conversations, and great drinks. The event is free (!), but you’re definitely going to want to pick up a few books after you hear these talented authors read, so be sure to bring your wallets!

What cool upcoming events are you going to in Toronto?