(Call to arms post from start of 2016.)
How well did I do for 2016, assuming that any book can appear in at most one category?
Legend:
| Success! | The novel superbly satisfies the criteria. |
| Quasi-sucess | Parts, but not all of the novel satisfy the criteria. |
| Failure | Didn’t manage to read even one book like this. Sad panda 🙁 |
| set in British Columbia | We Are All Made of Molecules | Susin Neilsen |
| set in Alberta | ||
| set in Saskatchewan | Tears in the Grass | Lynda Archer |
| set in Manitoba | The Evolution of Alice | David Alexander Robinson |
| set in Ontario | A Place for Margaret | Bernice Thurman Hunter |
| set in Quebec | Fanny & Romeo | Yves Pelletier and Pascal Girard |
| set in New Brunswick | A Cure for Madness | Jodi McIsaac |
| set in Nova Scotia | The Lynching of Peter Wheeler | Debra Komar |
| set in Prince Edward Island | ||
| set in Newfoundland/Labrador | Sweetland | Michael Crummey |
| set in Yukon/Northwest Territories/Nunavut | ||
| set in Africa | Cockroaches | Scholastique Mukasonga |
| set in Asia | The Night Parade | Kathryn Tanquary |
| set in Central America/Caribbean | Annie John | Jamaica Kincaid |
| set in Europe | The Woman in Black | Susan Hill |
| set in North America | The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer | Michelle Hodkin |
| set in the Pacific/Oceania | A Child’s Book of True Crime | Chloe Hooper |
| set in South America | Death in the Andes | Mario Vargas Llosa |
| set on an island | The End | Lemony Snicket |
| where someone goes to Antarctica | Know the Night | Maria Mutch |
| with a beautiful cover | Inspired! | Maria Bukhonina |
| with a blue cover | Find Me | Laura Van den Berg |
| with a cover not to my taste | The Origins of Everything in 100 Pages (More or Less) | David Bercovici |
| with cats on the cover | Our Cats Are More Famous Than Us | Ananth Hirsh and Yuko Ota |
| a First Nations author | The Whale Rider | Witi Ihimaera |
| a new-to-me author | The Blue Line | Ingrid Betancourt |
| a Nobel Prize winning author | The Piano Teacher | Elfriede Jelinek |
| an author who is a POC | Ghost Summer Stories | Tananarive Due |
| an author who is transgendered | ||
| an author with a disability | Girl at War | Sara Nović |
| an author with mental health issues | You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) | Felicia Day |
| an LGBQIA author | The Children’s Home | Charles Lambert |
| one of my favourite authors | Swing Time | Zadie Smith |
| a Buddhist author | ||
| a Christian author | Prophet’s Prey | Sam Brower |
| a Hindu author | ||
| a Jewish author | The Collected Novellas | Stefan Zweig |
| a Muslim author | Ms Marvel No Normal | G. Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona |
| an agnositic or atheist author | Bandit | Molly Brodak |
| a reread of a book I read in 2015 | The Grim Grotto | Lemony Snicket |
| a reread of a book I read in my 30s | The Penultimate Peril | Lemony Snicket |
| a reread of a book I read in my 20s | Yevgeny Onegin | Alexander Pushkin |
| a reread of a book I read in my teens | ||
| 1-99 pages long | The Turn of the Screw | Henry James |
| 100-399 pages long | Modern Romance | Aziz Ansari |
| 400-899 pages long | Purity | Jonathan Franzen |
| 900+ pages long | Dreamsongs 2-Book Bundle | George R. R. Martin |
| a comic of book length | Nimona | Noelle Stevenson |
| a commercial fiction book | The Accident | Chris Pavone |
| a fantasy book | The Whispering Trees | J.A. White |
| a horror book | Day Four | Sarah Lotz |
| a literary fiction book | The Heart Goes Last | Margaret Atwood |
| a manga | Gyo | Junji Ito |
| a middle-grade book | Fish in a Tree | Lynda Mullaly Hunt |
| a mystery book | The Likeness | Tana French |
| a science fiction book | The Three-Body Problem | Cixin Liu |
| a historical book | Margaret in the Middle | Bernice Thurman Hunter |
| a YA book | A Monster Calls | Patrick Ness |
| about feminism | ||
| about politics | Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner? | Katrine Marçal |
| about race | Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso | Kali Nicole Gross |
| about religion | Between Gods | Alison Pick |
| about science | Unnatural Selection | Emily Monosson |
| written in the first person | The Story of the Lost Child | Elena Ferrante |
| written in the second person | You | Caroline Kepnes |
| written in the third person | The Maze Runner | James Dashner |
| nominated for the (Baileys/Orange) Women’s Prize | The Country of Ice Cream Star | Sandra Newman |
| nominated for the Best Translated Book Award | The Story of a New Name | Elena Ferrante |
| nominated for the Commonwealth | The Case of Emily V. | Keith Oatley |
| nominated for the Danuta Gleed | ||
| nominated for the Giller | Fifteen Dogs | Andre Alexis |
| nominated for the Governor General’s | Maleficium | Martine Desjardins |
| nominated for the Hugo | ||
| nominated for the IMPAC | The Japanese Lover | Isabel Allende |
| nominated for the James Triptree Jr | Salt Fish Girl | Larissa Lai |
| nominated for the Man Booker International Prize | The Vegetarian | Han Kang |
| nominated for the Man Booker Prize | Year of the Runaways | Sunjeev Sahota |
| nominated for the National Book | A Little Life | Hanya Yanagihara |
| nominated for the Nebula | ||
| nominated for the Newbery | From The Mixed Up Files of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler | E.L. Konigsburg |
| nominated for the Prix Goncourt | Charlotte | David Foenkinos |
| nominated for the Roger’s Writer’s Trust | Inside | Alix Ohlin |
| a biography | So Long, Marianne | Kari Hesthamar |
| a collection of essays | Bossypants | Tiny Fey |
| a memoir/autobiography | The Cruel Country | Judith Ortiz Cofer |
| a novel | The Rabbit Back Literature Society | Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen |
| a poetry collection | You Can’t Bury Them All | Patrick Woodcock |
| a short story collection | The People in the Castle | Joan Aiken |
| translated into English | The Violin of Auschwitz | Maria Angels Anglada |
| translated into English from a non-European language | Slow Boat to China | Kim Chew Ng |
| a prequel | Who Could That Be at This Hour? | Lemony Snicket |
| an author’s final book | The Night of the Gun | David Carr |
| an author’s first book | Lost Girls | Robert Kolker |
| recommended to me by a Canadian | Fates and Furies | Lauren Groff |
| that grew on me | Escape From Mr Lemoncello’s Library | Chris Grabenstein |
| the first book in a series by a POC author | To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before | Jenny Han |
| the last book in a series by a LGBTQIA author | ||
| with the word “capybara” in it | Sisters | Raina Telgemeier |
| with the word “resplendent” in it | Horror Library+: The Best of Volumes 1-5 | Various |
| that brought me joy | Veins | Drew |
Comments
Impressive Meghan but no Alberta!? Garneau Block is cool (if you like Vinyl Cafe kind of stuff) otherwise Odori (though not entirely Alberta-based) is good!
I take that back. Read the Outside Circle (I don’t know if its explicitly set in Edmonton) but I think it is. It is excellent.
Author
2016 was a total Alberta-free year (apologies to you and Aritha van Herk and all my other Alberta-friends 🙂 )