Decade

As the aughts come to a close on my birthday, I can’t help but reflect on the last ten years. I’m kinda nervous about the coming decade, because in the last one I’ve gotten everything I want, and how do you top that?

In the year 2000 I decided to go back to school. I did my undergrad, then my masters, then I finally decided what I wanted to do with my life: work in Publishing. And then I was lucky to actually get a job! I moved into a home in a neighbourhood I love, just before prices went out of reach; I have wonderful friends and neighbours, and most importantly, I have these folks:




So, tonight I am making just one resolution: to be grateful every day.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Best Books of the Aughts

2010. Wow. One resolution I really must keep this year is to keep a reading journal. I seriously read over a hundred books last year, but I mislaid my journal before the end of January. Actually, I never even wrote in the damn journal, but had stuffed in it a napkin on which I’d scrawled a few notes about the books I read on our vacation.

So I can’t do a braggy post where I list all of the books I read last year. But I can do a list of my favourite books of the past decade. I actually put one together weeks ago to submit to the National Post. It came together pretty quickly, and I tried to keep the agonizing to a minimum. I’m sure I’m forgetting something brilliant, but oh well. Here are my five favourite books of the aughts:


1. Runaway by Alice Munro
2. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
3. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
4. Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden
5. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann


Well, what d'ya think? What would you add to my list?

The Fourth Annual Neighbourhood Crawl!

No Christmas would be complete without some pics from our annual holiday crawl. (And for the record, yes I walked home this year).










See previous crawls here and here.

My New Favourite Blog

I gave you my picks for holiday book buying, but if you want more do I have the website for you! The brilliant Julie Wilson (aka Book Madam aka the gossip girl of the book world) and Sean Cranbury (Books on the Radio) have teamed up to create The Advent Book Blog: Great Books Recommended by Great People. For the month of December they’re posting short recommendations from people who love books: authors, publishing professionals, bloggers and booksellers.



From Julie and Sean:

We’ve asked our participants to respond to the following imaginary scenario: You’re working in your favorite bookstore and a customer walks into the store and tells you that he/she needs a good book. A gift for a curious, open-minded and adventurous reader. The customer is someone that you’ve helped many times before and they trust your taste implicitly, but they’re in a hurry. In 25 words or less (or more, depending on your sense of restraint) what book do you recommend? What book, regardless of genre, format, relative bestsellerness, colour or shape, gets your unequivocal stamp of awesomeness?

The response has been overwhelming, and there are already many wonderful reading suggestions (and much more to come). My wish list is getting longer every day!

Follow Advent Books on Twitter.