When I have the privilege of being able to read, I feel obliged to help share knowledge worth sharing.
I completed, so far this year, reading 240 titles, from chapbook length to 2 dozen titles in the 350-500 page range. 50 of those I’d give top ratings to. Of those, my tip-toppest 20. (Sorry to those books I am only partway through.)
For poetry: Boat by Lisa Robertson (Coach House, 2022), You Might be Sorry You Read This by Michelle Poirer-Brown (University of Alberta, 2022), Ghost Ships by Marilyn Irwin (Apt 9 Press, 2022), How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton, edited by Aracelis Girmay (BOA, American Poets Continuum, 2020), A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far: Poems 1978-1981 by Adrienne Rich (Norton, 1981), Transcribing Moonlight by Skylar Kay (Frontenac House Poetry, 2022), A Season in Lowertown by David Blaikie (Wet Ink Books, 2022), Zom-Fam by Kamala La Mackerel (Metonymy Press, 2021), Stump Nib by Phil Hall (Lake’s End Press, 2022) and Sheets: Typewriter Works by Cameron Anstee (Invisible, 2022).
And novels: To be Taught if Fortunate by Becky Chambers (Hodder & Stoughton, 2019), Small Things like These by Claire Keegan (Grove Press, 2021), A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny (Sphere, 2006), Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper, 2000), A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie Little Badger (Levine Querido, 2021), The Samurai’s Garden by Gail Tsukiyama (St. Martin’s Griffin, 1994), and A Tiny Piece of Something Greater by Jude Sierra (Interlude, 2018).
And non-fiction: Ancient Rome on Five Denarii a Day by Philip Matyszak (Thames & Hudson, 2007), Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder by William Shatner with Joshua Brandon (Atria/Simon & Schuster, 2022) and What it’s like to be a bird by David Allen Sibley (Knoff, 2020).