Some of my 2011 reading highlights…
– available at Polar Peek Books & Treasures in Fernie
– Reviewed by Angie Abdou for The Fernie Fix’s January 2012 Issue

To 2011 was a stellar year for Canadian Literature. I did manage to recommend a few of the great ones in my monthly columns. Here are some of my favourites that I missed.

The Blue Light Project by Timothy Taylor

Timothy Taylor, author of the best-selling novel Stanley Park, is one of the great thinkers of our time, and The Blue Light Project is his best novel yet. On the dust-jacket, Steven Galloway claims he read the book cover-to-cover in a single sitting and then started reading it again the very next day. I thought: typical hyperbolic blurb nonsense! But then I found myself doing exactly that: finishing The Blue Light Project on a bus to Whistler (even that view couldn’t distract me!) and then immediately starting again right at the beginning. I would say I raced through this compelling, high-suspense story, except there were lines so profound and brilliant that I had to rest the book on my lap and sit for a while inside a single sentence. I’ve been quoting from it ever since. This is a novel packed with life: hostage-takings, reality TV gone wrong, parkour, drug addiction, street art, explosions, corrupt journalists, disillusioned Olympians, resilient children, disappearing brothers. The Blue Light Project is a jaw-droppingly good book about contemporary urban existence and the role art and celebrity play within it. I wanted to put a copy under every tree this Christmas.

Carapace by Laura Lush

One of my favourite poetry collections of 2011 was Carapace – mainly for its powerful and beautiful descriptions of birthing and motherhood. It’s a gorgeous book that I will cherish and revisit often.

The Song Collides by Calvin Wharton

I read The Song Collides on a weekend just after we were lucky enough to have Calvin Wharton visit the Fernie Heritage Library. This preference might say more about me than the book, but my very favourites were the parenting poems (especially "Heirloom" & "Toothfairy") but then on the opposite end of the spectrum I also loved the poems about the elderly (especially "That Mountain" & "West: Palliative Care"). For humour, my favourites were "Big Study (1)" and "Tracey Calls." The whole of family life – with all its love, humour, and tragedy – is packed into this masterful collection

What Echo Heard by Gordon Sombrowski

At the end of November, Gordon Sombrowski launched his much-anticipated first book, What Echo Heard, before a packed house at Fernie’s Park Place Lodge. It was the kind of event that makes me proud to call Fernie home. I raced home and devoured this very readable collection of short stories, all the while thinking, oddly enough, about the lauded Manitoba poet Dennis Cooley. I met Dennis Cooley at the Saskatchewan Festival of Words in 1999. After learning that I had studied Old English poetry but had recently decided to try writing fiction rather than pursuing an academic career, he signed a book for me with this inscription: "To Angie, who knows where words began and where they’re going." That sentiment stuck with me through every page of Gordon’s new book. We have to know the past to know the future, and What Echo Heard allows readers just that kind of time travel. By knowing where Fernie has come from, we can better understand, imagine and shape where it is going. I hope every Fernie-ite will spend some quality time with this collection. I look forward to the "What was your favourite story?" conversations that I imagine springing up on Second Avenue, in the Overwaitea, and on the chairlifts. For the record, my favourites were the ones with the most emotional heft: the ostracized immigrants, the lonely housewife tempted by the snow-shovelling ski bum, the gay teenage boys stuck in the completely wrong time and place, the high-school lovers re-meeting (and remembering) in middle age at the funeral of a town doctor, the bereft mother.… Hmmm, that is a lot of favourites, isn’t it? I will have to narrow my selection before I find myself in one those chairlift conversations! Congratulations, Gordon. Now … Let’s see the novel.

@WheresAndrew – National Geographic’s Digital Nomad

Here it is: the first time I am including Twitter in my LitPicks. As an Oxford scholar and a student of the world, Andrew Evans knows where language came from and where it is going. He has placed himself right on the cutting edge of publishing’s digital revolution. In his hands, tweets are an art form. His individual tweets appeal to senses, create characters, and entice readers with suspense and humour. For readers who prefer a narrative arc (beginning, middle and end), just read the whole tweet thread at once: it’s all there. Click on follow and join @WheresAndrew as he travels the world, bringing far flung and diverse places to life in pitch-perfect, 140-character slices of narrative.