My 2017 year in reading was for a third or fourth time, a #95books challenge to read more than the supposed amount GW Bush was able to crank out while in office. I read 101, ending the year last night with Danez Smith’s Don’t Call Us Dead – a fitting book of poems for an awful year.
Because Excel lets me track information, and because it is interesting to see if my reading follows any curves, I know that poetry made up 49% of my reading, fiction 27%, non fiction 16%, “other” 3% and graphic novels 1%. Sorry, no plays.
The breakdowns are not rigorous and there are lots of other metrics I could track for, but here are a few wide swathes that are imperfect in their definitions and divisions:
71% of the titles were written by women. 24% by men. 4% by non binary authors. 1% coauthored.
68% of the authors of the books I read self-identified as straight, 20% as LGBTQ, 12% I didn’t have info on.
63% of the authors are white, 37% of the authors on the list are people of colour. 14% of them are Indigenous authors.
76% of the authors are Canadian and 22% from the US. I read only 2% of authors from outside North America? How did that happen?
It’s always funny to look back at the year though titles. In some places the titles are more accurate markers than any calendar entries: I can perfectly recall who lent me the book, who I was while I read it, where I was when I finished it. The next book I am reading is Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith and unless I finish it today, it will appear on next year’s list on December 31 2018.
The Painted Drum – Louise Erlich |
Born a Crime – Trevor Noah |
New and Selected Poems,1956-1996 – Phillip Appelman |
Driving Force – Dick Francis |
10lb Penalty – Dick Francis |
Status Update – Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang |
Passage – Gwen Benaway |
Fun House – Alison Bechdel |
The Chick at the Back of the Church-Billie Livingstone |
(alive) – Rhea Tregebov |
Peace in Duress – Janet Rogers |
The Woods – Amber McMillan |
Hologram – PK Page |
A Perimeter – rob mclennan |
Defending Darkness – Pamela Porter |
Broom – Brecken Hancock |
Friendly Fire – Danielle LaFrance |
Memoirs of a Polar Bear – Yoko Tawada |
In the Darkroom – Susan Faludi |
Born Out of This – Christine Lowther |
Leak – Kate Hargreaves |
Nochita – Dia Felix |
Swing Time – Zadie Smith |
Milk Black Carbon – Joan Naviyuk Kane |
Prosopopoeia – Shazia Hafiz Ramji;Silo Society/Right Hand Hymns – Aidan Chafe; Good for Nothing – Curtis LeBlanc |
Black Trumpet – Evan Mallett |
The Divinity Gene – Matthew J. Trafford |
Indigenous Writes- Chelsea Vowel |
This Accident of Being Lost – Leanne Betasamosake Simpson |
Son of a Trickster – Eden Robinson |
Calling Down The Sky – Rosanna Deerchild |
The Best Kind of People – Zoe Whitall |
Patterns on Black Ice – Louise Vacca Dawe |
Snow Feathers – Writers North of 54 |
Skung Cabbage – Writers North of 54 |
Bad Ideas – Michael V. Smith |
Prologue for the Age of Consequence – Garth Martens |
An Honest Woman – Jonina Kirton |
LaRose- Louise Erdich |
Everything is Awful and You’re a Terrible Person |
A Stitch of Time – Lauren Marks |
Canyon Creek: A Script – Sheila Peters |
The Earth Remembers Everything – Adrienne Fitzpatrick |
The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead |
The High Mountains of Portugal – Yann Martel |
He Wants – Alison Moore |
The Art of Growing Old – Marie de Hennezel |
Where it Hurts – Sarah de Leeuw |
A Wall of Light – Edeet Ravel |
Grayling – Gillian Wigmore |
Terra Incognita – Adebe DeRango-Adem |
Metanoia – Sharon McCartney |
Octopus Poems – Patrick Warner |
Adult Onset – Ann-Marie MacDonald |
Throaty Wipes- Susan Holbrook |
Lanterns at Guantánamo – Jordan Scott |
How Festive the Ambulance – Kim Fu |
Ghost Town – Susan Telfer |
Heaven’s Thieves – Sue Sinclair |
Washita – Patrick Lane |
Hard Work Cheering Up Sad Machines – Jason Heroux |
Medic Against Bomb – Frederick Foote |
They Called me Number One – Bev Sellars |
Knockdown – Dick Francis |
The Signature of All Things – Elizabeth Gilbert |
We Are Not Citizens We Are Magicians – Jordan Abel, Rae Armantrout, Juliane Okot Bitek, Anne Boyer, CAConrad, Mercedes Eng, Jasmine Gibson, Dionne Lee, Cecily Nicholson |
Hard Body Candidate for Soft Embrace – Nicole Dumas |
Commonwealth – Ann Patchett |
The Siege – Helen Dunmore |
To Love the Coming End – Leanne Dunic |
Someone You Love is Gone – Gurjinder Basran |
God in Pink – Hasan Namir |
Flightpaths – Heidi Greco |
The Revolving City – Wayde Compton and Renee Sarojini Saklikar |
Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name – Vendela Vida |
Perpetual – Rita Wong and Cindy Mochizuki |
Still No Word – Shannon Webb-Cambell |
Delirium for Solo Harp – Nadine McInnis |
Next year, For Sure – Zoey Leigh Peterson |
Brother – David Chariandy |
300 Arguments – Sarah Manguso |
The Dog Lover Unit – Rachel Rose |
My Ariel- Sina Queyras |
Silvija – Sandra Ridley |
Don’t Tell Me What to Do – Dina del Bucchia |
3 Summers – Lisa Robertson |
Afterglow – Eileen Myles |
Linger, Still – Aislinn Hunter |
Bad Endings – Carleigh Baker |
Wayside Sang – Cecily Nicholson |
Refugium – Yvonne Blomer, ed |
Ecodeviance (soma)tics for the Future Wilderness – CA Conrad |
Intertidal – Daphne Marlatt |
Voodoo Hypothesis – Canisia Lubrin |
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – Carson McCullers |
Advice from the Lights – Steph Burt |
Prison Industrial Complex Explodes – Mercedes Eng |
Cool For You – Eileen Myles |
Float – Anne Carson |
Left Unsaid – Joan Flood |
Don’t Call Us Dead – Danez Smith |