In 2023, I read so many great books. Here’s a list of all the books I read in 2023 in the order I read them (not the order I enjoyed them).

When I look back at this list, four books really stand out. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (so good I read it twice—thanks Alison for the reco!), Black Cake (excellent, much better than the new Hulu series), Adrift by a great local author Lisa Brideau, and the spectacularly ambitious and immensely readable Babel by R. F. Kuang.

I also really enjoyed the Children of Time trilogy by Adrian Tchaikovsky and the two “Moon” books by Waubgeshig Rice. I’d also like to mention We Do This ’Til We Free Us by Mariame Kaba because it is the source of an amazing quote my friend Parker taught me earlier this year: Hope is a Discipline. I think of that quote frequently when the problems of the world seem so much bigger than our efforts of repair.

I appreciate my book club for introducing me to books I otherwise wouldn’t have read. Every year when I publish this list I always get into great conversations about our favourite books, so what books stood out to you in 2023?

1. Girl, Woman, Other — Bernardino Evaristo
2. Directed by James Burrows — James Burrows
3. The Persuaders — Anand Giridharadas
4. We Are All Made of Scars — Christopher Morris
5. New York 2140 — Kim Stanley Robinson
6. A Psalm for the Wild-Built — Becky Chambers
7. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow — Gabrielle Zevin
8. A Prayer for the Crown-Shy — Becky Chambers
9. Chokepoint Capitalism — Rebecca Giblin & Cory Doctorow
10. The Long Road Home — Debra Thompson
11. The Creative Act — Rick Rubin
12. The Myth of Normal — Gabor Maté
13. The Theory of Crows — David A. Robertson
14. The Power of Story — Harold Johnson
15. Banking on a Human Scale — George Hofheimer
16. Greenwood — Michael Christie
17. Between the World and Me — Ta-Nehisi Coates
18. Urban Magnets — Bruce Haden, Mark Holland & Bruce Irvine
19. Care Of — Ivan Coyote
20. Children of Time — Adrian Tchaikovsky
21. Unbroken — Angela Sterritt
22. God Human Animal Machine — Meghan O’Gieblyn
23. Power, for All — Julie Battilana & Tiziana Casciaro
24. Poverty, by America — Matthew Desmond
25. all about love — bell hooks
26. Black Cake — Charmaine Wilkerson
27. The Making of Another Motion Picture Masterpiece — Tom Hanks
28. A Visit from the Goon Squad — Jennifer Egan
29. Truth Telling — Michelle Good
30. How to Break Up With Your Phone — Catherine Price
31. An American Marriage — Tayari Jones
32. Junie — Chelene Knight
33. Children of Ruin — Adrian Tchaikovsky
34. We Do This ’Til We Free Us — Mariame Kaba
35. The Book of Boundaries — Melissa Urban
36. Children of Memory — Adrian Tchaikovsky
37. Stamped From The Beginning: A Graphic History of Racist Ideas in America — Ibram X. Kendi & Joel Christian Gill
38. The Country of the Blind — Andrew Leland
39. Happy-Go-Lucky — David Sedaris
40. All That She Carried — Tiya Miles
41. Yellowface — R. F. Kuang
42. Post Capitalist Philanthropy — Alnoor Ladha & Lynn Murphy
43. Not Here — Rob Goodman
44. Ducks — Kate Beaton
45. American Prometheus — Kai Bird & Martin J. Sherwin
46. Doppelganger — Naomi Klein
47. Monsters — Claire Dederer
48. The Righteous Mind — Jonathan Haidt
49. Moon of the Crusted Snow — Waubgeshig Rice
50. Adrift — Lisa Brideau
51. Moon of the Turning Leaves — Waubgeshig Rice
52. MCU: The Rise of Marvel Studios — Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzales, & Gavin Edwards
53. The Candy House: A Novel — Jennifer Egan
54. Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult — Maria Bamford
55. The Fire Next Time — James Baldwin
56. Babel — R. F. Kuang
57. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow — Gabrielle Zevin
58. Young Jane Young  — Gabrielle Zevin

Happy 2024, all!

I’m not sure what compelled me to start publishing the list of all the books I read in the year, but I’ve been doing it a couple of years in a row. Since three makes a trend, here’s my third annual list.

I gotta start with Homegoing. This is literally one of the best books I’ve read in a few years. It is super compelling, very touching, enthrallingly written and weaves a complex story in a very satisfying way.

Looking back at this list, some of the standouts were the truly excellent Half a Yellow Sun; Sea of Tranquility, which I finished and re-read almost immediately to better understand all the nuances (which I’d never done before); Finding the Mother Tree was something I’d been meaning to read for a while and it was beautifully written and an important subject; Namwayut was a book by Chief Robert Joseph, whom I’ve known a little for many years and found his telling of his story to be powerfully written and deeply moving.

VanBikes was written by my friend Colin, and I’m so proud of him for telling this story which he’s been working on for so many years—it came together beautifully. Run Towards the Danger has stayed with me and still feels very present. Invisible Boy was an amazing insight into a situation I know nothing about and is extremely compelling. Finally, I’ve been an Elvis Costello fan since I was a teenager, so I don’t know why it took me so long to read his memoir, Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink. As I write this I’m about half-way through and am enjoying it a lot.

Here’s my list of books I read in 2022 in the order I read them:

1. Indigenous Relations — Bob Joseph & Cynthia F. Joseph
2. Under a White Sky — Elizabeth Kolbert
3. Life in the City of Dirty Water — Clayton Thomas-Müller
4. Half of a Yellow Sun — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
5. Factfulness — Hans Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund & Oka Rosling 
6. Homegoing — Yaa Gyasi
7. The 1619 Project — Nikole Hannah-Jones
8. How the Word is Passed — Clint Smith
9. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time — Mark Haddon
10. The Sixth Extinction — Elizabeth Kolbert
11. Caste — Isabel Wilkerson
12. State of Terror — Hillary Clinton & Louise Penny
13. Stolen Focus — Johann Hari
14. Heart of Darkness — Joseph Conrad
15. How to be Perfect — Michael Schur
16. Finding the Mother Tree — Suzanne Simard
17. Americanah — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
18. The Comedians — Kliph Nesteroff 
19. Sing Backwards and Weep — Mark Lanegan
20. Underground Airlines — Ben H. Winters
21. Transcendent Kingdom — Yaa Gyasi 
22. Origin — Jennifer Raff
23. Entangled Life — Merlin Sheldrake 
24. Big Lonely Doug — Harley Rustad 
25. Fundamentals — Frank Wilczek
26. The Islander — Chris Blackwell
27. Ragged Company — Richard Wagamese
28. Paris 1919 — Margaret MacMillan
29. Sea of Tranquility — Emily St. John Mandel 
30. Lonely Boy — Steve Jones
31. Sea of Tranquility — Emily St. John Mandel (I had to read it again immediately to fully appreciate it)
32. Vanishing Half — Brit Bennett 
33. The Glass Hotel — Emily St. John Mandel 
34. Station Eleven — Emily St. John Mandel
35. Quiet — Susan Cain
36. Subdivided — Jay Pitter & John Lorinc
37. The Netanyahus —Joshua Cohen
38. The Midnight Library — Matt Haig
39. How to Be Animal — Melanie Challenger
40. Nasty, Brutish, and Short — Scott Hershovitz
41. Namwayut — Chief Robert Joseph
42. The Last White Man — Mohsin Hamid
43. Humble Pi — Matt Parker 
44. Monkey Beach — Eden Robinson
45. Too Dumb for Democracy? — David Moscrop
46. Vanbikes — Colin Stein
47. Profiles in Ignorance — Andy Borowitz
48. Run Towards the Danger — Sarah Polley
49. True Reconciliation — Jody Wilson-Raybould
50. Surrender — Bono
51. Invisible Boy — Harrison Mooney
52. Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink — Elvis Costello

I’m looking forward to all the books to read in 2023!

As 2021 comes to a close, I wanted to share all the books I read this year. My habit of reading is one of the few things that has benefitted from all my time at home this year.

So here’s the list. This is in the order of how I read them, not how much I enjoyed them. There were so many good books, it’s hard to focus on just a few (and now that I look at them all, I must admit there’s one or two I don’t even remember reading).

As far as entertaining reads, I really enjoyed Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, A Short History of Nearly Everything, Project Hail Mary, The Soul of an Octopus, The Birth of Loud, and You’ll Never Believe What Happened To Lacey.

Meaningful and powerful reads included Seven Fallen Feathers, Paying the Land, The Power, Gutter Child, Just Mercy, Five Little Indians, This One Looks Like a Boy, A Fine Balance, and Overstory.

In the end, not a bad list…

1. Mediocre — Ijeoma Oluo
2. How To Kill a City — PE Moskowitz
3. Seven Fallen Feathers —  Tanya Talaga
4. Stories of Your Life — Ted Chiang
5. Paying the Land — Joe Sacco
6. Evicted — Matthew Desmond 
7. Exhalation — Ted Chiang 
8. Happy City — Charles Montgomery
9. Sputnik Sweetheart — Haruki Murakami
10. Do Better — Rachel Ricketts 
11. Good Lord Bird — James McBride
12. 21 Things You May Not Know About The Indian Act — Bob Joseph
13. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory — Caitlin Doughty
14. The Power — Naomi Alderman
15. Indigenomics — Carol Anne Hilton
16. Born Standing Up — Steve Martin 
17. The Devil You Know — Charles Blow
18. A Short History of Nearly Everything — Bill Bryson
19. All Our Relations — Tanya Talaga
20. Watchmen — Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
21. Peace and Good Order — Harold Johnson
22. How To Write One Song — Jeff Tweedy
23. Gutter Child — Jael Richardson 
24. The Body, A Guide For Occupants — Bill Bryson
25. The Right To Be Cold — Sheila Watt-Cloutier
26. Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls — David Sedaris 
27. Year Book — Seth Rogen 
28. Minor Feelings — Cathy Park Hong 
29. A Promised Land — Barack Obama
30. Project Hail Mary — Andy Weir
31. The Day the World Stops Shopping — J.B. MacKinnon
32. Power, A Users Guide — Julie Diamond
33. Think Again — Adam Grant
34. The Premonition — Michael Lewis
35. DreadfulWater — Thomas King
36. The Soul of an Octopus — Sy Montgomery
37. Willful Blindness — Sam Cooper 
38. Mission Economy — Mariana Mazzucato
39. The Bomber Mafia — Malcolm Gladwell
40. In Search of April Raintree — Beatrice Mosionier
41. This Is Your Mind on Plants — Michael Pollan
42. The Red Power Murders — Thomas King
43. How to Change Your Mind — Michael Pollan
44. Money — Jacob Goldstein 
45. Indian In the Cupboard — Jody Wilson-Raybould 
46. The Birth of Loud — Ian S. Port
47. Winners Take All — Anand Giridharadas
48. Just Mercy — Bryan Stevenson
49. Five Little Indians — Michelle Good
50. Bewilderment — Richard Powers
51. Unreconciled — Jesse Wente
52. This One Looks Like A Boy — Lorimer Shenher
53. Dune — Frank Herbert
54. You’ll Never Believe What Happened To Lacey — Amber Ruffin 
55. Amusing Ourselves To Death — Neil Postman
56. Lost Connections — Johann Hari
57. Slaughterhouse-Five — Kurt Vonnegut 
58. Birds Of All Feathers — Michael Bach
59. A Fine Balance — Rohinton Mistry
60. Out of Office — Charlie Warzel & Anne Helen Petersen
61. Overstory — Richard Powers

In the middle of all that, I happily finished my first book and released it, which was definitely one of my highlights of the year.

I haven’t decided what I’ll start 2022 with – likely Indigenous Relations by Bob Joseph & Cynthia F. Joseph.

If you read something you loved in 2021, leave a comment below and let me know.

Happy New Year, all!

PS: Here’s my list from 2020.