We asked the BookNet staff for their favourite books of the year. Our picks range from children’s books to mystery, calligraphy, and more. All our recommendations can be found in this CataList catalogue.
Monique, Project Manager
Big Friendship by Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman
What better, in a year of unexpected distance, than a book about friendships, keeping them strong, and weathering life's challenges in your platonic partnerships? While readers might be familiar with Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman from their podcast, Call Your Girlfriend, I didn't become a listener until after reading this incredibly honest and vulnerable account of their friendship and how it nearly fell apart. They do a great job interweaving interviews with experts on friendship and social behaviour alongside their own experiences to highlight the ways conflict arises in friendships and the ways friendships often get short shrift next to romantic partnerships and other family ties.
Hand-Lettering for Everyone: A Creative Workbook by Cristina Vanko
If pandemic sourdough-making isn't your bag, but you're looking for something to amuse yourself with through the winter, this book features tons of fun, offbeat activities to help you improve your lettering skills or help occupy your nervous hands if you're watching a too-suspenseful TV drama. Maybe you'll even pick up some new flourishes in time for holiday card season?
Jackie, Director – Product Development
Hamnet or its Canadian version Hamnet and Judith by Maggie O'Farrell
Winner of the Women's Prize in 2020, Maggie O'Farrell risks a lot by portraying a fictional life of Shakespeare's family and imagines the events that influenced the writing of what is arguably his greatest play. It’s a plague year in England and the Shakespeare/Hathaway household is not immune in this fictional imagining of Shakespeare's family and their home life when he was away in London writing plays and making money. His wife, Agnes (Anne is what it was anglicized to), is home with the three children and the extended family and is a healer, farmer, falconer, brewer, and mother. O'Farrell's portrait of a mother living out these few days is so beautifully imagined and written. Her imagery is outstanding. I think it's the banal, workaday existence, the small decisions made as one does every day and how they add up to the events that follow that makes this a compelling work of fiction.
Quiet by Tomie dePaola
We lost one of the great children's book illustrators, Tomie dePaola, in 2020. An educator and child advocate, Tomie was one of great humanists. I was fortunate enough to read Tomie's books my whole life and the great thing about him is that he never talked down to children. I read Quiet this year, published in 2018, and in it he explores the themes that permeated so many of his books — about the important things in life: hope, love, beauty, family, friends, teamwork, nature, and art. His colour palette is distinctive and immediately recognizable, his drawing style was simple but full of emotion, and his simple stories contain magnitudes. His focus on children lives on in The Tomie dePaola Art Education Fund through the Currier Museum of Art in New Hampshire.
Love you Tomie.
Lauren, Director – Customer Relations, Conferences & Operations
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
Yaa Gyasi's debut, Homegoing, is on my ever-growing list of favourite books. Transcendent Kingdom surpassed even that momentous achievement and I cannot recommend it enough. It’s a book that balances the beauty of science with the comfort of faith, and the internal struggle that can cause. Gyasi also explores a young woman's relationship with her family, with trauma, and with memory. I gobbled it down over a single weekend and kept stopping to re-read passages aloud. Beauty on every page.
High School by Tegan & Sara Quin 🍁
Tegan and Sara have penned a memoir that honours their independent identities as twins and their coming together as a musical duo. There's a reason the US cover features a mirror: you will find yourself reminiscing about your own teenage years and will find many of your own experiences mirrored back to you. It's a memoir by music icons, but an intimate story about sisterhood, family, early loves, coming out, and finding your way. Hot tip: I enjoyed the audiobook version of this memoir, told in alternating performances between the two, as it features early recordings of the band from their aptly-identified high school years in Calgary, AB.
An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good by Helen Tursten
I’ll admit, it was the cross-stitching on the cover design that attracted me to this book. Then I fell in love with the murderous elderly Swede at the centre of the story. Maud is 88, lives rent-free, spending her days traveling and trawling the web, and has no husband, family, nor morals to slow her down. What's not to love? Through a collection of six hilarious stories, we follow Maud as she leaves neighbours, exes, and strangers in her quest to have the perfect solitary life, with a psychopathic eye to make sure no one's wrongs against her go unnoticed. Maud gets hers, and it's with this most unlikely of narrators that a delightful take on dark Scandinavian murder tales unfolds.
Noah, President & CEO
Infinite Detail by Tim Maughan
While this title came out in 2019, I didn't get to it until part way through 2020 and boy does it ever hit 2020 on the nose. Touching on post-apocalyptic and mass/data surveillance themes it somehow seems to be written for this year. Sounds dark, but it is infused with hope and music, so don't despair. Fans of Willam Gibson are likely to enjoy Tim Maughn's Infinite Detail.
The Third Rainbow Girl by Emma Copley Eisenberg
The Third Rainbow Girl is ostensibly about a double murder that took place in West Virginia in 1980, but is really about Appalachia and the characters and stories of that region. Part true crime and part memoir that provides valuable insight into a very interesting part of America. It has stayed with me throughout the year and when we can travel again, an Appalachia visit is not far away.
Madeleine, Software Developer
The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
“The youngest, half-goblin son of the Emperor has lived his entire life in exile, distant from the Imperial Court and the deadly intrigue that suffuses it. But when his father and three sons in line for the throne are killed in an "accident," he has no choice but to take his place as the only surviving rightful heir to a several-thousand year old elaborate elvish court.”
The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
I started reading this after N.K. Jemisin’s also excellent Hundred Thousand Kingdoms series. A post-apocalyptic fantasy set in a world where constant seismic activity leaves humanity struggling for survival. There are people called Orogenes who can control the earth, but they are hated and enslaved for their abilities. It initially follows three different women who are struggling to survive in this world. I found the characters to be wonderfully written.
The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold
A slow-burn fantasy. Cazaril, a former noble of Chalion, returns being betrayed and sold into slavery for many years. Wanting peace and quiet, he never the less finds himself pulled into a much larger power struggle after he starts to work as a tutor to the second in line to the throne.
I’ve loved every story written by Lois McMaster Bujold. If you’re looking for a rip roaring sci-fi adventure you’ll enjoy her Vorkosigan Saga.
Honourable mentions: The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia by Ursula K. Le Guin, Shaman's Crossing by Robin Hobb, and The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson.
Tom, Bibliographic Manager
Kitchen Think: A guide to design and construction, from refurbishing to renovation by Nancy R. Hiller
This is an aptly named and remarkably good guide to kitchen renovation, especially if you're thinking about old houses and period kitchens. It's more a methodology than a how to, though it's not short on explanation for scribing, cabinet construction, or, if your hankerings run to linoleum, as an option for countertops. Around half the book is illustrated case studies of what can be done, cheaply in many cases, crazily in others. If you have a 1910 stove you'd like to build around you'll be very happy to have this book.
The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel
The final volume of Mantel's historical fiction trilogy that explores the world of Henry the Eighth from the inside of Thomas Cromwell's head starts with a considered account of the death of Anne Boleyn and cascades along to a sudden end. I'm reluctant to recommend it as an easy read. It forced me to consider just how much repetition my mind goes through and on reflection I thank Mantel for her lack of excess in mirroring my normal. I did wonder more than once if a signature was repeated but I'm pleased to say they weren't and that it's worth the effort to get to the end.
Carol, Project Manager
The Boat People by Sharon Bala 🍁
I loved this novel from the first page to the last page. Topical and insightful, it fictionalizes a real event of Sri Lankan refugees arriving by boat off the coast of Vancouver in 2010. The human stories of both refugees on the boat and those involved in the judicial process in Canada unfold against the backdrop of media coverage and public sentiment. To avoid spoilers, you will either love or hate the ending — I am firmly in the former category. An exceptional read.
Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard by Douglas W. Tallamy
I have a perennial interest in gardening — pun intended! I’ve been learning more about native plants and the benefits of integrating them back into our rural, urban, and suburban landscapes, and Doug Tallamy is a highly respected voice in this field. In this book, he explains the problems with leaving conservation to the conservationists, and advocates for homeowners to rethink the value of their land when it comes to offering habitat for wildlife. It will make you reconsider humanity’s relationship with the insects that support food chains, and challenge the idea of expanses of lawn as an ideal.
Ainsley, Communications and Marketing Manager
Africville by Shauntay Grant 🍁 and Eva Campbell 🍁
Shamefully, I didn’t know much, if anything about the community of Africville in Nova Scotia until this year. I found this children’s book and really appreciated the beautiful illustrations and storytelling that appeals to young children, but also the resources at the back for older children and adults, like me, to learn more about it.
Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh
I loved Allie Brosh’s blog Hyperbole and a Half and her first book of the same name, which was a graphic memoir of sorts. I was so excited to learn this year that she was back from a seven year hiatus with a new book! It’s funny, it’s awkward, it’s sad, and weirdly relatable. If you want to know what you’re in for, she’s published the first (and maybe the best) chapter, “Richard,” on her blog.
Nataly, Marketing Associate
Growth Hacker Marketing by Ryan Holiday
A great book for anyone entering the marketing world. Ryan shares case studies from companies that we are all familiar with, and that perhaps will have you wondering how did the companies grow so fast? What was the secret sauce? He thoroughly explains why some marketing strategies work better than others, and why when comes to marketing, the most complex and expensive path won't always lead to success.
Mickey, Financial Administrator
The Songs of Trees: Stories from Nature's Great Connectors by David George Haskell
Wonderfully lyric and very informative ecology of the fascinating interconnected systems of what we call trees.
The Forest Unseen: A Year's Watch in Nature by David George Haskell
Watching and replicating in detail, the life of one square meter of forest for one whole year!
Shim, Research Associate
The Brown Sisters series by Talia Hibbert
For the ultimate romantic comedy hilariousness with serious heart.
Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving by Celeste Headlee
An informative and thought-provoking book about how labour movements and ideas about leisure time have changed over time and influence how we think about measuring our time, work output, and life.
Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga
A heartbreaking and hopeful story about home, fitting in vs. belonging, fighting for a better present and future, and living with courage. And food.
The Name Jar by Yangsook Choi
A book with a great ending. A story about the importance of our names: the struggle between if/when to anglicize your name or pick a new one and if/when to teach others how to pronounce the original one.
The Great Puppy Invasion by Alastair Heim 🍁 and Kim Smith
A very cute book, especially enjoyable for dog people, with a great story and fun illustrations.
Hannah, Product Coordinator
The Stormlight Archive series by Brandon Sanderson and The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey.
The settings are unique, but both series feature multiple point-of-view characters and awesome world building. The Stormlight saga takes place in a world beset by powerful tempests called highstorms, with various magical consequences. The Expanse, on the other hand, is set in a near future where humans have colonized much of the Solar System. I have always loved reading juicy, multi-volume novels, and this year in particular have enjoyed hours getting lost in both of these worlds. Lucky for me, the fourth volume of The Stormlight Archive is publishing on November 17, 2020 and the ninth title in The Expanse series is forthcoming in 2021. Hallelujah!
In this podcast episode, we talk to Simon Crump to discuss the EUDR and its impact on the book industry.