January is always a special time of year for readers: while we collectively shake off the weight of the previous year and begin making plans for a crisp new season of wordy adventures, publishers everywhere are revealing their catalogues –– giving us early previews of the books that will indelibly make their marks on our psyches (and bookshelves).
There’s no better time, then, to explore the delightful, powerful and much-anticipated titles coming out this spring from BC’s local publishing community. Below, Read Local BC suggests our top picks for your “TBR” (To-Be-Read), book clubs and wishlists. These are your can’t-miss, must-read books of the season!
Run Riot: Ninety Poems in Ninety Days by Ash Winters (Dagger Editions; January 2021)
From the Publisher: Written each day in rehab, Ash Winters’ debut collection is a vulnerable and powerful portrait of the struggle against addiction. With one poem written each day during Ash Winters’ ninety-day stay at a Vancouver rehab centre, Run Riot is a fiercely personal account of what it feels like to stop drinking after a decade of excess. Run Riot takes the reader through moments of determination, anger, hilarity, and heartbreak. Winters’ frank portrayal of early sobriety offers companionship to those who know it well and insight for those that want to know it better. Weaving the past and the present together with ruthless vulnerability, Run Riot is a powerful portrait of one person’s struggle against addiction, laying bare an honest search to heal and better understand one’s self.
Glorious Birds: A Celebratory Homage to Harold and Maude by Heidi Greco (Anvil Press; February 2021)
From the Publisher: Cinematic film, the art form that came into its own in the 20th Century, is not only familiar to all of us, but is likely the form that lodges most clearly in memory. Harold and Maude, the 1971 film that brought Bud Cort and Ruth Gordon to what are possibly their most memorable roles, is a cult-classic: a cockeyed love story that stretches the definition of a May/December romance, revealing that love can indeed be blind to matters of age or appearance. Glorious Birds takes us to when this one-of-a-kind film was released during its golden anniversary, and is worthy of celebration.
Neighbourhood Houses: Building Community in Vancouver, edited by Miu Chung Yan and Sean Lauer (UBC Press; February 2021)
From the Publisher: Neighbourhood Houses draws on a five-year study to document and contextualize the neighbourhood house network in Vancouver. Globalization and migration are creating disconnected societies in modern urban cities and urban communities are at risk of becoming fragmented. Nonetheless, the local community is where most aspects of everyday life occur, where people establish their homes and pursue their ambitions. It offers a secure haven in an unpredictable, globalized world. Bringing neighbours and newcomers together, today’s neighbourhood houses are hubs for community development programs and services such as public recreation, child care, health care, and adult literacy classes. Neighbourhood Houses demonstrates that place-based community organizations can provide an antidote.
Saltus by Tara Gereaux (Nightwood Editions; March 2021)
From the Publisher: It’s the ’90s in a small Canadian prairie town and fourteen-year-old Aaron Gourlay, born a male, asserts that she is female, a claim that no one in her life will accept — except for her single mother, Nadine. After wrestling with the health care system and having her identity invalidated time and time again, Aaron tries to kill herself. Desperate to keep her child alive, Nadine calls on a neighbouring town’s outlier and loner, Al Klassen, to perform a radical procedure. Aaron’s attempt to jumpstart her own gender transition with Al’s assistance creates shockwaves that throw everyone around them out of orbit — and out of their resigned apathy in the stifling town of Saltus, where nothing new ever seems to happen. Aaron and Nadine’s situation, the talk of the town, forces each townsperson we encounter to look long and hard at themselves, at their own identities, at the traumas and experiences that have shaped them.
The Octopus Has Three Hearts by Rachel Rose (Douglas & McIntyre; April 2021)
From the Publisher: To the outside world, Roxanne seems terribly lonely: her husband Earl has passed away, and her daughter Linda was murdered. What people don’t understand is that Earl and Linda are still keeping Roxanne company, reincarnated in the forms of a wiener dog and standard poodle. But this relationship — not idyllic, it’s true, but at least relatively harmonious — is disrupted when Roxanne accidentally hits a pit bull with her car. On the precipice of having the dog put down, she recognizes the eyes of her daughter’s killer, Helmut. Should she choose retribution, or forgiveness? The stories in The Octopus Has Three Hearts combine vivid characters and original premises with Rose’s trademark combination of whimsy and irony to explore universal elements of the human condition, from parenthood to sexuality, identity to fidelity. It is a collection that will appeal to animal lovers, readers of literary fiction and anyone looking for their place to belong.
The Capybaras by Alfredo Soderguit (Greystone Kids; April 2021)
From the Publisher: A charming and hilarious tale for kids ages 4-8 about how accepting others can enrich us all — featuring capybaras, the beloved animal sensation capturing hearts around the world. In this beautiful and simple book, hens and their chicks are living safe and secure in their coop, or at least it seems that way. Then, the capybaras appear! To the hens, they are too hairy, too wet, and too big. They don’t even follow the rules! But it’s hunting season, and the capybaras need refuge. As time passes and days change, minds begin to open and new possibilities appear. Can the hens accept the capybaras after all? This delightful story teaches readers about the importance of caring for each other, no matter our differences.
Running Downhill Like Water by Jane Woods (Now Or Never Publishing; April 2021)
From the Publisher: Set in a small town in Quebec, Running Downhill Like Water is made up of four interconnected stories spanning fifty years of the lives of four people whose prospects have been violently shattered. Lucy, a perennial misfit, is thwarted in her desperate hope for love and belonging; Sheila, a classical violinist, fails miserably in both her career and as a mother; and Brothers Evan and Neil, struggling with the disastrous fallout of a rigid fundamentalist upbringing, endure not only severe mental illness but catastrophic crises of faith. Running on quicksand, keeping small hopes aloft on faint breath, these four misfits move in and out of one another’s lives, somehow managing to drag themselves kicking and screaming to that place of acceptance and hard-won peace hiding in the deepest heart of failure, weakness and humility.
Craigdarroch Castle in 21 Historical Objects by Moira Dann (TouchWood Editions; April 2021)
From the Publisher: Told in 21 objects — including furnishings, artwork, and tools — this approachable museum guide takes readers into the family history, local lore, and oddities of one of Victoria’s most famous landmarks. Craigdarroch Castle, built by coal baron Robert Dunsmuir for his wife, Joan, and their family has operated as a museum since 1979, and is one of the top tourist attractions in the city, a prime example of a “bonanza castle” and a rich repository of Victorian-era furnishings and décor, as well as objects evoking the hospital and college eras. Author Moira Dann offers the reader 21 selections from the castle’s collection, using each artifact as a portal into the history of the building and life in Victorian and more recent times. Dann provides careful research into each object’s provenance and manufacture, while inviting readers to join her imaginative journeys into the lives of the castle’s occupants through the years.
Green Glass Ghosts by Rae Spoon (Arsenal Pulp Press; May 2021)
From the Publisher: At age nineteen, the queer narrator of Green Glass Ghosts steps off a bus in downtown Vancouver, a city where the faceless condo towers of the wealthy loom over the streets to of the east side where folks are just trying to get by. Armed with only their guitar and their voice, our hopeful hero arrives on the West Coast at the beginning of the new millennium and on the cusp of adulthood, fleeing a traumatic childhood in an unsafe family plagued by religious extremism, mental health crises, and abuse in a conservative city not known for accepting difference. Green Glass Ghosts is an evocation of that delicate, aching moment between youth and adulthood when we are trying, and often failing, to become the person we dream ourselves to be.
Seed to Dust: Life, Nature, and a Country Garden by Marc Hamer (Greystone Books; May 2021)
From the Publisher: From the acclaimed author of How to Catch a Mole, this meditative memoir explores the wisdom of plants, the joys of manual labor, and the natural cycle of growth and decay that runs through both the garden’s life and our own. In Seed to Dust, Marc Hamer paints a beautiful portrait of the garden that “belongs to everyone.” As he works, he muses on the unusual folklores of his beloved plants. He observes the creatures who scurry and hide from his blade or rake. And he reflects on his own life: living homeless as a young man, his loving relationship with his wife and children, and — now — feeling the effects of old age on body and mind. Just like all good books and gardens, Seed to Dust is filled with equal parts life and death, beauty and decay, and every reader will find something different to admire.
This is What I’ve Been Told by Juliana Armstrong (Medicine Wheel Education; May 2021)
From the Publisher: Knowing our culture means knowing who we are. When we know who we are, we can walk in a good way. It’s been said when teachings are passed down from one generation to the next, good things can happen. Language is learned, knowledge is shared, and culture is practiced. In this story of language preservation, Author/Illustrator and Anishnaabemowin language teacher Juliana Armstrong illuminates a number of Anishnaabemowin words along with their cultural connections, passed down from her Ojibway ancestors.
Come, Read With Me by Margriet Ruurs, illustrated by Christine Wei (Orca Books; May 2021)
From the Publisher: Join two young children as they begin an adventure through a world of books in this story-within-a-bedtime-story. This metered read-aloud pays homage to classic children’s literature: readers of all ages will love searching for characters they recognize from fairy tales and beloved picture books amongst the pages. Spiders weave words and mythical dragons soar as the children travel through magical lands guided by the rhythm and rhyme of acclaimed author Margriet Ruurs. Little ones will want to cuddle closer and settle in for a delightful journey before heading off to sleep themselves.
Aloft: Canadian Rockies Aerial Photography by Paul Zizka (Rocky Mountain Books; May 2021)
From the Publisher: An astounding, unique collection of some of the most stunning mountain landscapes in North America. There is a reason why the Canadian Rockies are some of the most photographed mountains in the world. Rugged peaks encircle glacier-fed lakes, rise up like protective walls around tree-filled valleys, and offer a stunning backdrop to open alpine meadows. In the most comprehensive collection of aerial photos to date, Aloft: Canadian Rockies Aerial Photography by Paul Zizka gives the reader a unique bird’s-eye view of this prized mountain range. From vast glaciers to winding rivers, animal overpasses to lakes that look like brilliant spills of turquoise paint on the landscape, these images provide a rare look at mountains that are as grandiose from the skies as they are from their better-known vantage points.