Book keepers

>> 10 great reads from the past 12 months

by JULIET WATERS

1. The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross. The classical music critic for The New Yorker has written a masterpiece about masterpieces. Ross traces revolutions in contemporary music all the way from Strauss to Public Enemy. Not that there’s anything wrong with a world full of music bloggers, but this book reminds us why there are music critics.

2. Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris. Sure, I loved the original BBC version of The Office, in all its poignant nastiness. But I’ve grown awfully fond of the NBC remake and its teeny tiny moments of sentimentality. Ferris’s excellent debut novel mines that same territory, the soul-destroying secure job that is becoming increasingly less secure.

3. The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. Who’d have thought a book that essentially argues how much better the planet would be without us could be so readable and ultimately uplifting? This isn’t to say we should give up all efforts at reversing environmental disaster, but Weisman makes a brilliant argument for radically slowing down consumption, breeding and the making of the plastic junk that will be the longest lasting evidence of our civilization.

4. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz. Yes, Díaz would be the Kanye West or the David Foster Wallace of Latino lit if he were the kind of writer who published every damn thought in his head. Unfortunately, he seems to be pacing himself at roughly one book a decade, which makes him more like the Grace Paley of Latino lit. Too bad. Oscar Wao is not a perfect book, but it’s still one of the most fabulous books of the year, and frankly, the millennium.

5. The Head Trip by Jeff Warren. I’m still re-reading this book, and expect to be doing so for quite some time. Warren’s adventures in Montreal sleep labs, Hawaiian lucid dreaming camps and Scottish meditative retreats—to name a few of the places he visits—have created a whole new genre: gonzo science writing. Take out the drinking, drugs and self-destruction, leave in the curiosity, independence, intelligence and sense of humour and Warren may well turn out to be Canada’s own Hunter S. Thompson of consciousness.

6. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I know, I know, she was on Oprah twice last month, but if only all gurus were this fun to read. And if only we all had the kind of relationship with God that landed us in Italy, India, Bali and now Hollywood. Last time Gilbert sold the film rights to her life (Coyote Ugly) she was played by Piper Perabo. Next year that job falls to Julia Roberts.

7. Bang Crunch by Neil Smith. The year started with a bang for Smith when his first collection was published by Knopf New Voices series in January. Inevitably, by fall, it got lost in the crunch of writers vying for attention, prizes and sales. No competition, however, for best book published by a Montrealer this year. (This may come as a surprise to many, but Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O’Neill was published in fall ’06. See Mirror Best Books 2006.)

8. Shining at the Bottom of the Sea by Stephen Marche. This is going right on my bookshelf next to The Very Richness of That Past: Canada Though the Eyes of Foreign Writers, Vol. 2 ed. Greg Gatenby. Every time I reread that detail, “volume 2,” I bust a gut all over again. Shining at the Bottom of the Sea is Marche’s parody of all such endlessly entertaining and irrelevant Toronto anthologies. Marche’s invented country, Sanjania, bears a suspicious resemblance to Canada and pretty much every other country that isn’t Britain, the USA, or France; and that must struggle daily with that fate.

9. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon. Another invented country. This one bears a suspicious resemblance to Israel, if it was Alaska, and the official language was Yiddish. A recently divorced detective must solve the suspicious death of a chess prodigy while the country tries to solve its many political problems. Noir, cold and anything but kosher.

10. Aya by Marguerite Abouet, illustrations by Clement Oubrerie. I don’t want to take anything away from this year’s successful books by and about African boy soldiers. But Abouet’s lovely graphic novel about coming of age as an African teenage girl in the ’70s is a reminder that life in Africa is always hard, but not always misery, war and squalor.