2018 was my year of reading, and it was a wonderful year full of awesome books! My goal was to read 50 books in total, and I ended up reading a total of 54 books - which doesn’t include a handful of books I didn’t finish and wouldn’t recommend.
For my column today, I thought I’d share some of my favourite books that I read this year.
Sadie by Courtney Summers
This stunning novel by Canadian high school dropout Courtney Summers was beautifully written and heart wrenching. Sadie is told in alternating viewpoints and timelines. Nineteen-year-old Sadie is a missing girl on the hunt for the man who killed her thirteen-year-old sister. We get to join Sadie on the hunt, and get an up-close look at her interior life, her thoughts, and her haunting past. In the second view we get a look at a Serial-like podcast transcript called The Girls. In it, host West McCray searches for Sadie and interviews people from Sadie’s life.
Sadie really challenged my view and understanding of small town American living, generational poverty, and how easily we dismiss and devalue young girls. Summers offers a nuanced critical analysis through her storytelling of our culture’s consumption of crimes against young girls, and makes us consider what our driving motivation is.
Tin Man by Sarah Winman
This compact novella packs a heavy punch. Tin Man introduces us to Ellis, a sad and lonely widower who is struggling to find meaning in life. Through a series of flashbacks and recollections we have the opportunity to look at Ellis’ past, his childhood friendship and first love with a boy named Michael, and the beautiful and kind-hearted Annie who he eventually marries. It’s a story about love, loss, friendship, and impossible choices, and I was so glad that I gave it a chance.
Tin Man was a tiny and quick read that left its imprint on my heart long after I finished the last page.
The Home for Unwanted Girls by Joanna Goodman
Another book by a Canadian author, Joanna Goodman’s The Home for Unwanted Girls was a gutting piece of untold Canadian history. Goodman takes us to 1950s Quebec, where French- and English-speaking residents tolerate one another with a veneer of hostility. Maggie Hughes’ parents – her English-speaking father and French-speaking mother – tolerate each other much the same. Maggie’s father has high ambitions for her, from his hope that she’ll one day take over his seed store, to her finding a suitable English-speaking husband. When Maggie becomes pregnant at 15, her parents force her to give her baby up with the hope that it will preserve her hoped for future.
The Home for Unwanted Girls gives us a glimpse into the lives of Maggie and her search for her lost daughter, as well as her daughter Elodie, who ends up institutionalized after a heartbreaking piece of Quebec legislation that turns orphanages into mental institutions.
I highly recommend this book and its important reminder of our Canadian history.
The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After by Clemantine Wamariya
I’m a big fan of memoirs, and this was one of the best memoirs I’ve read. Wamariya offers us a glimpse into her childhood fraught with violence and fear. At six she flees the Rwandan genocide, into the dark night with her 15-year-old sister Clare. They escape through seven different African countries, starving, abused, enduring refugee camps and eventually escaping them. When Clemantine and her sister are granted asylum into the United States, they must navigate an entirely new journey.
This true story offered an honest glimpse of a childhood spent under violence and fear, as well as the difficulty that children and adults have when seeking asylum in countries that are not their own.
Now it’s your turn: What were your favourite books that you read this year?
