Books of the year 2011: fiction

What makes a book of the year? There’s no formula for deciding. Some are critical darlings, some are word-of-mouth favourites. Some introduce us to important new voices, some represent the best work from established authors. And some are simply exceptional works we think people will be reading and talking about for years to come. Together, these five books made the biggest impact in fiction in 2011.

Click through the images below to read why each book was chosen.

Quillcast episode three: Charlotte Gill and Eating Dirt

Quillcast is a new podcast series from Quill & Quire featuring behind-the-scenes conversations with authors and publishing insiders. In this episode, the second in a two-part series on non-fiction authors, Vancouver writer Charlotte Gill speaks about her experiences as a professional tree-planter, the subject of her memoir Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big Timber, and Life with the Tree-Planting Tribe (Greystone Books), one of Q&Q’s 2011 books of the year.

Eating Dirt was shortlisted for the inaugural Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for non-fiction, and was recently longlisted for the B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction.

Scroll down to listen to the episode, and click on the thumbnails to view photos from Gill’s life as a tree-planter:

Quillcast is produced with media partners The Walrus, Open Book: Ontario, and Open Book: Toronto, with support from Toronto Life. This project has been generously supported by the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Entertainment and Creative Cluster Partnerships Fund.

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

Podcast: Play in new window | Embed

Pop Sandbox launches interactive film version of The Next Day

Toronto transmedia company Pop Sandbox has launched an interactive Web version of The Next Day, which chronicles the stories of four suicide-attempt survivors.

The animated online documentary, a co-production with the National Film Board, accompanies the 100-page graphic novella of the same name. The book was released in early May during Canadian Mental Health Week.

Pop Sandbox is best-known for its graphic novel Kenk: A Graphic Portrait (a Q&Q 2010 book of the year), which, along with The Next Day, was just released in the U.S. An animated film version of Kenk is also in the works, as is a photographic novella adapted from an original Russell Smith story, shot by Toronto artist Jaret Belliveau.

Click here to read Q&Q’s profile of Pop Sandbox and to read a review of The Next Day.

Booksellers’ picks of the year: international non-fiction

Canadian booksellers contacted by Q&Q say 2011 has been an especially strong year for international history and biography, with one book clearly taking the lead.

“The huge one would be the Steve Jobs title,” says Colin Holt, manager of Bolen Books in Victoria. Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson’s biography of Apple’s late co-founder and CEO, had its publication date moved up from 2012 after Jobs’s death in October. Indigo, Chapters, and Coles stores opened early on Oct. 24, the book’s release date, so Canadians could get their hands on a copy right away. Steve Jobs has since become a #1 bestseller.

In Toronto, Book City branches have already seen high sales of U.K.-born historian Niall Ferguson’s latest title, Civilization: The West and the Rest, a follow-up to Ferguson’s 2009 bestseller, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World.

At Nicholas Hoare’s Toronto location, books with buzz include Rome: A Cultural, Visual, and Personal History by Australian art critic Robert Hughes and Jerusalem: The Biography by British writer Simon Sebag Montefiore. Fiona McCarthy’s The Last Pre-Raphaelite, a biography of artist Edward Burne-Jones, and Franny Moyle’s Constance, chronicling the “tragic and scandalous” life of Oscar Wilde’s wife, are also top sellers.

Outside of history and biography, booksellers also pointed to Gully Wells’s memoir, The House in France, and Arguably, an essay collection by British-American writer Christopher Hitchens.

Booksellers’ picks of the year: international fiction

Canadian booksellers contacted by Q&Q all pointed to American author Erin Morgenstern’s debut novel, The Night Circus, as one of the top books of 2011. “The buzz has been huge, and all the reviews I’ve seen have been raves,” says Christopher Johnson, a manager at Nicholas Hoare in Toronto.

Michael Hamm, manager of Bookmark in Halifax, credits much of The Night Circus’s buzz to the fact that early adopters of Harry Potter and the Twilight series have grown up reading supernatural tales. “Now that they’re adults, they’re looking for a fantastical book, and this one certainly fits the bill,” he says.

Another top seller this fall is The Marriage Plot, U.S. novelist Jeffrey Eugenides’s follow-up to Middlesex, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2003. “A lot of people hold Middlesex in such high regard that it’s kind of hard to top that,” Hamm says, “but I read [The Marriage Plot] and I loved it.”

Booksellers contacted by Q&Q also consider The Sense of an Ending, British writer Julian Barnes’s 2011 Man Booker Prize–winning novel, one of the year’s biggest successes. “That was selling well before it was given the award, and now it’s selling even more,” says Ian Donker, manager of Book City in Toronto, adding that The Sense of an Ending is an in-house favourite.

Japanese writer Haruki Murakami’s ambitious new novel, 1Q84, has been extremely popular in Canada since its release in October, according to booksellers. Other top 2011 titles include Nobel Prize–winning Portuguese author José Saramago’s posthumous novel, Cain; British novelist Alan Hollinghurst’s new title, The Stranger’s Child; and American writer Stephen Mitchell’s translation of The Iliad.

Books of the year: Q&Q review editor Steven W. Beattie

Creating lists of the year’s best books is an annual ritual in which I am frequently asked to participate. These requests never fail to make me uncomfortable: such judgments ultimately come down to matters of individual taste, and in any case, it is impossible for one person to read the sum total of books published in a calendar year, and therefore to make an informed decision as to what constitutes the “best.”

It is possible, however, to look back on a year’s worth of reading and identify a handful of books that rose above the pack, books that proved more affecting, more memorable, or more enjoyable than the rest. Not necessarily the best, whatever that might mean, but a group of personal favourites. With that in mind, here are five books that made an impression on me in 2011.

Quillcast episode two: Andrew Westoll and The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary

Welcome to Quillcast, a new podcast series from Quill & Quire featuring behind-the-scenes conversations with authors and publishing insiders. In this episode, the first in a two-part series on non-fiction authors, Andrew Westoll speaks about his experience writing The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary (HarperCollins Canada).

Andrew Westoll is a Toronto journalist and former primatologist. In The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary, which was recently longlisted for the B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction and named one of Q&Q’s 2011 books of the year, he writes about a group of chimpanzees living out their last days in a Quebec animal sanctuary after enduring years as the subjects of medical testing.

Scroll down to listen to the episode, and click on the thumbnails to view photos of the Fauna Sanctuary chimps:

Quillcast is produced with media partners The Walrus, Open Book: Ontario, and Open Book: Toronto, with support from Toronto Life. This project has been generously supported by the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Entertainment and Creative Cluster Partnerships Fund.

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

Podcast: Play in new window | Embed

Booksellers’ picks of the year: sports

Although it was released just last month, Cornered: Hijinks, Highlights, Late Nights and Insights (HarperCollins Canada) by Ron MacLean with Kirstie McLellan Day has quickly become one of Canada’s top sports titles of 2011.

Booksellers from coast to coast have seen the Hockey Night in Canada co-host’s memoir sell to a broad audience.

“That’s done really, really well,” says Ian Donker, manager of Book City in Toronto. “And I think it’s going to continue to do well.”

Another autobiography, Georges Laraque: The Story of the NHL’s Unlikeliest Tough Guy (Penguin Canada), written with Pierre Thibeault, is poised to join Cornered as another hit of the holiday season, says Michael Hamm, manager of Bookmark in Halifax.

“[Georges Laraque] is one of those sports books where the readership will expand into people who don’t normally follow hockey,” says Hamm. “It touches on wider subjects.” The book addresses topics including racism, animal rights, Haitian relief efforts, and drug use among athletes.

At Bookmark, local appeal has made Chris Cochrane’s Inside the Game: The Stories Behind Nova Scotia’s Sports Headlines (Nimbus Publishing) a top pick of 2011, Hamm adds.

Out West, Celebrating the 2010–2011 Season of the Vancouver Canucks (Fenn-M&S) by Andrew Podnieks has been a best bet this year, says Colin Holt, manager of Victoria’s Bolen Books – perhaps because 2011 was the Canucks’ first shot at the Stanley Cup since 1994, or because no list of Canadian sports lit would be complete without a heavy dose of hockey.

Booksellers’ picks of the year: science fiction and fantasy

Agreeing on this year’s top seller in Canadian sci-fi and fantasy is no difficult task for booksellers. Wonder (Viking Canada), the third volume in the WWW trilogy by Robert J. Sawyer, has been flying off shelves across the country.

“His books always do well,” says Walter Sinclair, co-owner of White Dwarf Books in Vancouver, crediting Sawyer’s busy touring schedule with much of the author’s success. “He makes sure his books are visible. He works hard to get his bestseller status.”

Wonder is also the best-selling 2011 title at Bakka Phoenix Books in Toronto. Watch, the second novel in Sawyer’s series, is among the store’s top 10, too. “Sawyer is huge in Canada, so that doesn’t surprise me,” says manager Chris Szego.

In YA sci-fi and fantasy, Once Every Never (Puffin Canada), the first book in a trilogy by Lesley Livingston, has been a top seller since its release in July. “I was really pleased to see Lesley’s book [become a bestseller],” says Szego. “We’ve sold as many of Lesley’s books as we have The Hunger Games. That’s a thrill for us.”

Books of the Year 2010

There’s no formula for choosing the books of the year. Some break ground, some tackle familiar themes with new energy. Some represent the best work from established authors, some introduce us to important new voices. And some are simply in-house favourites we feel deserve a little more attention. Together, these 20 books made the biggest impact in 2010.

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